State Department demands source of classified material (reporter for National Review VISA)

WASHINGTON (July 12, 2002 7:35 p.m. EDT) - A reporter for National Review magazine said Friday that State Department officials demanded he disclose the source of classified papers he had obtained on the U.S. visa program in Saudi Arabia and detained him briefly for questioning.

The reporter, Joel Mowbray, said he called a lawyer on his cell phone and was permitted to leave the building only after copies of the classified material that he had left in the press briefing room were recovered by Diplomatic Security Service officials.

Mowbray has written critically of the way visas were issued in Saudi Arabia and of other aspects of U.S. Middle East policy over four months at the National Review.

Minutes earlier, during the daily press briefing, spokesman Richard Boucher said Mowbray had written inaccurate stories. The reporter defended his work and said some of material was based on classified documents.

A State Department official defended the questioning of Mowbray by security officials and uniformed guards. He said signs were posted at the State Department doorways saying anyone who entered the building was subject to search.

Department employees and visitors are not permitted to take classified cables out of the building and they should expect to be questioned, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"He announced on the record he had a classified cable," the official said. "If you are going to advertise your possession of a classified cable you should expect to be questioned about what you had and where you got it," the official said.

Mowbray agreed the document was classified, but said "the only way to make the government accountable is through the use of sources."

He said that when guards intercepted him he thought it was because he was new and they wanted to get acquainted. "So I am shaking hands like at a cocktail party," he said.

Later, the department's press office defended the questioning of the reporter. "The Diplomatic Security Service is responsible for the protection of classified information, and investigates all alleged leaks of classified information to the fullest extent possible," it said in a statement.

There was no immediate reaction from the State Department Correspondents Association.

Earlier this year, U.S. prosecutors sent a subpoena to MSNBC demanding a reporter's notes, e-mail and other information about a hacker who had broken into computers at The New York Times. It was withdrawn weeks later.

Last year, the Justice Department obtained the personal phone records of Associated Press reporter John Solomon after he had written about a federal wiretap of Sen. Robert G. Torricelli, R-N.J.

See: Reuters: State Dept. missing two more laptops, Reuters, May 4, 2000 (posted May 5th by Thanatos).

WASHINGTON, May 5 (UPI) -- One day after she berated Foreign Service employees for security lapses, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright admitted that the State Department was missing two more laptop computers.
The Washington Post reported Friday that Albright testified Thursday before a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that two unclassified laptops were missing.
One of the missing machines was assigned to Morton Halperin, assistant secretary of state for policy and planning. Although Halperin said he had not used the computer, others in his office may have used it for tracking expenses and routine memos, the newspaper reported ...

See: House Chair Rips State Dept. Over Missing Laptops, AP, May 5, 2000, by Barry Schweid (posted May 6th by Native American Female Vet); excerpted.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Some of the computers at the State Department used for classified material are not equipped with passwords and other security features, a senior U.S. official said Friday.
Describing the computers as of the ''off-the-shelf'' variety, the official said he did not know whether a laptop computer discovered missing in February from the department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research had the devices.
The department confirmed Friday that two other laptop computers had disappeared, but only the one that vanished in February is known to have contained secret information.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the areas in which computers containing classified information are used are themselves secure and the computers are not supposed to be removed. The problem, he said, is that someone got into the secure area of the bureau who should have not been there. And, he said, it is the way the area is secured, not what is on the computers, that provide security.
Entry into secure areas are carefully logged, the official said.
Disclosure that some computers are not equipped with protective devices was the latest twist in the State Department's security situation and tensions between Congress and the department ...
But State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the job was in the competent hands of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security. ''It's comprised not only of special agents who conduct investigation and provide dignitary protection, but also of very seasoned information and computer security specialists with many years of experience,'' he said.
Thus far, three laptop computers have been reported missing. Of the two newly announced computers, one had been signed out to a senior official, Morton H. Halperin, the assistant secretary of state for policy planning.
Boucher said the computers were found to be missing during an inventory ordered after the unexplained disappearance in February of a laptop computer containing highly classified information. That is the only one of the three laptops known to contain classified material, he said.
Suggesting other equipment may be missing as well, Boucher said: ''I don't want to mislead anybody into thinking that we're saying there's only two others -- two unclassified machines missing. We're still in the middle of this inventory" ...
Officials have said the first missing laptop contained large quantities of documents about arms proliferation issues and highly sensitive information about sources and methods of U.S. intelligence collection.
Earlier, a bugging device was found in a conference room.

See: More State Department Laptops Lost, NewsMax.com, May 18, 2000 (posted by kattracks).

A total of 15 State Department laptop computers have vanished over the last year and a half, the Washington Post reported today, adding that the matter has now resulted in a security crackdown.
The missing laptops, all identified as "unclassified" or not containing classified information, are part of the State Departments inventory of some 1,913 portable computers. And a security check of the department's 60 laptops that could contain secret information revealed that only one was missing ...

Don't care what y'all think about any "visa express for terrorists". I even agree.

However, a reporter without a security clearance should never have classified material in his possesion. Who in the State Department gave it to him? What else has that "source" been giving him?

Remember, this is substantially the same State Department that we were all saying such bad things about just two years ago for leaking classified info like a sieve. Remember the classified laptop stolen from the same building as this latest incident? Remember the briefcase stolen from an office down the hall from Mad Maddie, while two secretaries watched? Remember the bug in the conference room?

Was this reporter actually naive enough to think he could just walk away after telling everybody that he had a classified document with him?

He says that "some" of his reporting was "based" on classified material. Everyone just assumes, then, that everything he wrote must be total gospel. Why would you think that without more information?

Yes, Mowbray had done a terrific job. However, why he took a classified cable into the State Department building and from their into the briefing room (if that is actually what he did) baffles me. If he was given the classified document while in the building he could be in trouble. For media types to be in possession of highly classified intelligence outside of controlled conditions but inside the State Department could get you arrested.

I've read all Mowbray's reporting on this issue, and he has not revealed anything that could be considered injurious to our national interests. On the contrary, he has shown the light of day on a culture that places its interests above Americans' security. It sounds like he was naive, or perhaps frustrated, enough to make a mistake in this instance, but I have a feeling the so-called "cable" contained nothing more than further embarrassing information about the State Department's handling of visas. State has outright lied and ducked about this issue for months, and what is obvious from Mowbray's writing is that there are people within the department who are just as outraged by the policy as he is.

I agree with you. Mowbray is doing a wonderful public service and practically single-handed snatched that Bureau from Colin Powell's embrace. My point is that he put himself really in an untenable situation when he announced in the State Department briefing that he had on his person (or this is how I interpret it) a classified cable. Whether or not the State Department overclassifies (and everyone knows they do) is immaterial. The higher the classification of an unauthorized document in his possession could lead to greater and greater penalty.

My hunch is that the cable was classified CONFIDENTIAL or the innocuous Official Use Only, or they might have really made trouble (which is what they wanted to do in the first place). Now State has undoubtedly got the original and there are markings on some cables that can give away its provenence. Let's hope he hasn't blown his source. I still say it is likely that he will lose his State pass privilege, because if for no other reason, he should have known better than to sound off the way he did

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