President Clinton’s conduct was unacceptable on many levels. His resignation is past due. Forget about further apologies. Any apology unaccompanied by his resignation isn’t worth the time it takes to listen.
However, the president is not the only person who should tender his resignation. As I watched the proceedings of the Judiciary Committee I was appalled. I watched one congressman after another, from both parties, launch attacks against the president or his detractors. No one was listening, no one was trying to determine if the facts supported bringing charges to the floor of the house. The votes were foreordained. The Republicans were going to do whatever to took to bring down the president. Just as blindly the Democrats were going to do whatever it took to defend him. I call upon every member of the committee to resign.

The debate on the House floor was no better, a show staged for the benefit of the cameras. No one was listening, no one was considering if the facts warranted impeachment. One congressman after another went public with his decision before the debate even began! When it was over only 10 congressmen, evenly divided, voted against their party’s direction.

Bill Bennett asks where’s the outrage? Well I for one am outraged, … at both political parties. They have turned public service into a football game where all that matters is that their team win. In every speech, in every interview, in every sound bite, in their position on virtually every issue they demonstrate that they hold the interests of their party above the welfare of the nation. I call upon the electorate to send them a clear message, it ends now!

On March 3, 1997 the Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy issued its final report.

In its Summary of Findings and Recommendations the commission wrote:

“It is time for a new way of thinking about secrecy.

“Secrecy is a form of government regulation. Americans are familiar with the tendency to over-regulate in other areas. What is different with secrecy is that the public cannot know the extent or the content of the regulation.

“Excessive secrecy has significant consequences for the national interest when, as a result, policymakers are not fully informed, government is not held accountable for its actions, and the public cannot engage in informed debate. This remains a dangerous world; some secrecy is vital to save lives, bring miscreants to justice, protect national security, and engage in effective diplomacy. Yet as Justice Potter Stewart noted in his opinion in the Pentagon Papers case, when everything is secret, nothing is secret. Even as billions of dollars are spent each year on government secrecy, the classification and personnel security systems have not always succeeded at their core task of protecting those secrets most critical to the national security. The classification system, for example, is used too often to deny the publican understanding of the policy making process, rather than for the necessary protection of intelligence activities and other highly sensitive matters.”

The report goes on at great length (This is after all a government report.) to describe the problems created by excessive government secrecy and proposes a number of recommendations. On the whole the analysis is sound. Excessive government secrecy is both extremely expensive and in many ways counter-productive. Senator Moynihan gives a good example of this in his chairman’s forward.

“An example, on a subject that still troubles our foreign relations, is the abortive Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in April, 1961. Planned and carried out in secret, the object was to arouse a popular revolt against the regime of Fidel Castro, which had become unmistakably Communist units orientation. No such uprising occurred, and the events were set in motion that arguably led to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, the closest the United States and the Soviet Union came to a nuclear exchange during the Cold War.

“It need not have happened. In the spring of 1960, Lloyd A. Free of the Institute for International Social Research at Princeton (no friend of the new regime, but a social scientist, withal) had carried out an extensive public opinion survey in Cuba. Polling techniques now common to American politics were already quite developed by scholars such as Free and his associate Hadley Cantril; in this case the technique was the ‘Self-Anchoring Striving Scale.’ One thousand Cubans were asked to rank their well-being at that time, five years previously, and five years hence. Cubans reported they were hugely optimistic about the future, and mostly dreaded the return of the previous dictator Fulgencio Batista. They would learn better, as peoples the world over would do as the earlier excitements of revolution gave way to Leninist terror and intimidation. But they had not learned yet. Free’s report ended on an unambiguous note: Cubans ‘are unlikely to shift their present overwhelming allegiance to Fidel Castro.’ Cantril later recalled:

“This study on Cuba showed unequivocally not only that thereat majority of Cubans supported Castro, but that any hope of stimulating action against him or exploiting a powerful opposition in connection with the United States invasion of 1961 was completely chimerical, no matter what Cuban exiles said or felt about the situation, and that the fiasco and its aftermath, in which the United States became involved, was predictable.

“These data were public, and were dutifully provided to United States Government agencies. (The Cuban Embassy sent for ten copies.) It is difficult not to think that the information in the public opinion survey might have had greater impact had it been classified. In a culture of secrecy, that which is not secret is easily disregarded or dismissed.” I hope that Congress addresses the commission’s recommendations seriously.

Final Report: Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy

Secrecy : TheAmerican Experience

Over seven million documents are classified every year. It is time to revise our system. I suggest that before any information is classified, credible answers to the following questions must be provided.

• Is it a secret?
• Who must not find out?
• What harm will come to the United States if “they” find out?

Let me elaborate.

Is it a secret?

A simple question or so it would seem.

On March 9, 1979, a temporary restraining order stopped the Progressive from publishing an article by Howard Morland containing the “secrets” of the hydrogen bomb.[1] But were there any secrets? No classified information was used to prepare the article. Indeed, the most important reference was an article in the Encyclopedia Americana written by Dr. Edward Teller ten years earlier. While the lawyers were exchanging briefs in the case, highly technical H-bomb reports, UCRL-4725 and UCRL-5280 sat on the open shelves at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory’s public library. These reports were at least as revealing as the Morland article. They were later reclassified. The Justice Department’s case unraveled as it became more and more obvious that the “secret” was already out.

To be credible, a yes answer requires more than, “Well, I didn’t tell anybody.” In today’s world there are many sources of information. If any person with the desire, using only unclassified sources, can uncover the information then it is not secret. It follows then, that any compilation or reorganization of unclassified information cannot meet this standard.

Who must not find out?

During warfare this question has an obvious answer. An enemy acquiring information about troop movements or invasion plans or the like can create serious damage. Before any information can be classified the who must be as clearly definable.

The August 11, 1984 issue of Jane’s Defense Weekly included photographs of the first Soviet nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, then being built on the Black Sea. That started a chain of events that put Samuel Morison in prison.[2]

The Soviets knew they were building a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. The Soviets also knew we had the means to photograph the carrier. The photographs were taken by a KH-11 spy satellite. In 1978, the Soviets obtained a copy of the system’s manuals. In 1980, the Iranians published a number of photographs they recovered from the aborted U.S. mission to rescue the hostages. In 1981, Aviation Week printed a photograph of a Russian airstrip taken with a KH-11. The capabilities of the spy satellite were no secret.

In this case, who must not find out? I still can’t figure out that one.

In answering this question, the primary target of secrecy must never be the American public. During our involvement in Vietnam, the administration tried to keep the bombing in Cambodia a secret. Frankly, bombing is a difficult thing to keep secret. The Cambodians knew they were being bombed, so did the Vietnamese and through them even the Soviets knew what was happening. The real target of secrecy was the American public.

What harm will come to the United States if “they” find out?

The basic premise is that information must be classified to protect national security. National security is a vague term, one easily abused.

There was a substantial controversy surrounding the 1977 publication of Decent Interval by Frank Snepp. The real issue was less about protecting the national security than about protecting individuals and agencies from public ridicule.

All too often, classification is used not to protect the national security but to protect individuals, agencies, or the current administration from accusations of corruption, mismanagement, etc. Those individuals authorized to classify information must understand that their individual self-interest is not national security; the embarrassment of a government agency is not national security; the continued funding of a government program is not national security.

In 1982, Ronald Regan’s Executive Order 12356 removed the Carter restriction that information could only be classified if its disclosure could cause “identifiable” damage to national security. It is time to return to that standard.

Why should we be concerned about government secrecy?

In 1991, the federal government classified 7,107,017 documents. In 1989, the cost to industry of protecting classified information reached $13.8 billion according to Department of Defense estimates.[3]

The cost of secrecy goes beyond that. In 1991 there were 5,893 secrecy orders in effect including 506 “John Doe” orders.[4] The American public did not gain any benefit from these new technologies. The secrecy orders represent opportunities lost.

In 1970, the Defense Science Board’s Task Force on Security investigated the effectiveness of the nation’s security system.[5] The committee, containing such luminaries as Dr. Edward Teller, wrote:

“In spite of elaborate and very costly measures taken independently by the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. to preserve technical secrecy, neither the United Kingdom nor China was long delayed in developing hydrogen weapons.

“Also, classification of technical information impedes its flow within our own system, and may easily do far more harm than good by stifling critical discussion and review or by engendering frustration. There are many cases in which the declassification of technical information within our system probably had a beneficial effect and its classification has had a deleterious one.”

[2] Philip Weiss, “The Quiet Coup,” Harper’s Magazine (Sept. 1989)

[3] Steven Aftergood, “The Perils of Government Secrecy,” Issues in Science and Technology (Summer 1992)

[4] When applying for a patent, an inventor can instead be hit with a secrecy order. The invention must be kept secret. Typically secrecy orders are applied to technology developed with the assistance of government funding. A “John Doe” secrecy order applies to technology developed independent of government financing.

[5] Frederick Seitz, chairman, “Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Secrecy.” Office of the Director of Defense Research and Engineering, The Pentagon, July 1, 1970.