Classified Logic - Updated

by CKR

Lewis Libby’s lawyers claimed that Dick Cheney authorized him to leak classified information. Cheney claimed that he's got declassification authority. Cheney was careful to keep it abstract, and Brit Hume aided and abetted.

I’m not going to work over the implications of those two statements put together. Others (firedoglake, emptywheel) are doing a good job of that.

I’m not going to try to parse the law, either. Steven Aftergood is working that beat.

What I want to consider is what needs to be classified and declassified. Not the laws pertaining thereto, just the logic of keeping things secret. I've reread Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s Secrecy, written in 1998. It’s interesting, largely the history of secrecy in the US government. Moynihan uses the fall of the Soviet Union and the CIA’s blindness to the indicators to illustrate the dangers of letting secrecy limit the national security discussion.

What should be classified?

First, detailed plans for weapons: nuclear weapons, conventional weapons, missiles, whatever we might throw at an enemy. We don’t want others making them or making defenses against them. It may also be useful to classify the effects of a weapon to enable surprise.

The first time a weapon is used, its effects become known. When more common weapons, like rifles, are used in warfare, some will be captured by the enemy, and their dimensions and manufacture will become known. Missile guidance systems and inner dimensions of thermonuclear weapons can be kept secret longer. However, it may also be useful to let potential opponents know what your weapons can do, to intimidate them.

Second, specifics of ongoing or imminent war-fighting, diplomatic and trade negotiations, and other strategic interactions. Again, however, it may be useful to let others know plans and expectations, either to intimidate them or to bring them along as allies.

Third, sources and methods by which intelligence is acquired, both technical and human. As in the other two exceptions, however, it may be useful to let others know about the technical means.

That about covers it, I think. Pretty simple.

Time is a factor in all three categories. Once the war has been fought, once the negotiations are completed, once the intelligence is acquired, most of the need for secrecy dissolves. The design of a missile guidance system may become obsolete, and some of its components may become commercial products, like those GPS systems now available for your new car. Overhead photos of most of the globe are available to anyone.

The inclination of the bureaucracy is to be safe: classify if in doubt. Don’t declassify without very good reason.

A number of years ago, I saw a classified film of the Red Army practicing maneuvers. I commented to a colleague that I didn’t see why it was classified. “It’s their classified stuff,” he said. But wouldn’t it make sense to get their classified stuff out? That was what happened several months later: one of the television networks aired the film. On reflection several years after, I decided that if there had been a good reason for classification, it was sources and methods. Letting the Soviets know that the film had leaked might have endangered whoever supplied it.

Today the New York Times tells us that a reclassification program has been operating for the last seven years. Steven Aftergood and the links he provides give the history of the program. I’ll talk about the practical results.

Moynihan was pleased with Executive Order 12958 of 1995. This order attempted to beat back the accumulation of classified information, and many documents were declassified. The application of this order to nuclear weapons information resulted in a stream of declassification guidance that dismayed me. I recall thinking, more than once, “I don’t care if it’s declassified, I don’t ever intend to say that.” Now it appears that others thought the same thing and are doing something about it.

The trouble is that the horse is out of the barn. We have the internet, electronic copies, whatever. As the Times article notes, some scholars may now have classified material in their possession, a criminal offense.

One way to figure out what the other side thinks is important is to watch what disappears. That was a common way for scientists (presumably on both sides) during the Cold War to get hints at the direction of research on the other side. Journal articles would be published on an interesting subject, and then suddenly there would be nothing. Must have found something interesting, we surmised, and planned our experiments accordingly.

Homeland security presents another set of problems. It can be argued that details of customs and immigration procedures and facilities, of chemical and power plants, could be of use to terrorists. I’ve never quite understood why photographs are prohibited in customs and immigration; most of those places look bureaucratically neutrally, the same.

For scientists and probably spooks, the initial temptation in thinking about terrorism is to continue playing the “I’m smarter than you are” game we learned in college. The person who comes up with the most inventive idea wins. After you think about terrorism a little longer, you begin to realize that bringing down the LAX customs and immigration facility with a fountain pen filled with Semtex is probably not high on al-Qaeda’s list. Photos might be useful for that.

Terrorists use easy-to-get, highly-damaging stuff. Airplanes full of jet fuel. Trucks full of ammonium nitrate (more specifically, ANFO, ammonium nitrate - fuel oil mixture). They’re not looking to be the wittiest in Mechanical Engineering 502. For a truckful of ANFO, it helps to know the most vulnerable part of the plant near a road, but beyond that, blueprints are irrelevant. Someone with a bit of chemical engineering knowledge can walk around a plant and figure that out, or pull it up on Google Earth.

People living near a chemical plant need to know what is being made there and what they need to do in case of an emergency. Again, this kind of information isn’t a lot more than what the terrorists can figure out.

Security precautions, it is argued, need to be kept secret. Procedures should be varied from time to time, but, like the rifle that is captured during war, you can’t keep all of this secret because it’s carried out in public. My plane got stuck on the ground for a while in Minneapolis a few weeks ago waiting for Air Force One to take off. I was able to watch the motorcade arrive. So was everyone on that side of the airport.

I’ll admit that I have a prejudice in favor of openness. Moynihan’s argument that secrecy prevents the kind of argument that uncovers mistakes and omissions. I’m the kind of person who needs to talk or write in order to know what I think. Openness worked well for me when I was a middle manager.

As we see with the Bush administration, classifying plenty of stuff gives you room to play politics. It’s a one-sided game. If someone leaks the administration line, that’s okay. If a whistleblower leaks something that may be illegal, they may go to jail. Heads they win, tails we lose.

Update (02/22/06): The 6 February Chemical and Engineering News contains a long article on regulation of ammonium nitrate. The problem is that farmers use ammonium nitrate in large quantities, just like terrorists do. There have been proposals to "tag" ammonium nitrate with small plastic particles that would indicate the manufacturer, but manufacturers have resisted this because mixing plastics with a strong oxidizer may make it more likely to explode and the tags don't prevent its use as an explosive, they just allow the manufacturer to be traced after a blast. Registration appears to be the solution that government, manufacturers, and farmers are moving toward. Simplot, a manufacturer, has decided to remove ammonium nitrate from its product line.