[FYI] (Fwd) FC: Feds yank 50-year old spy records from National Archives

["Axel H Horns" <horns@ipjur.com>]

------- Forwarded message follows -------
Date sent:      	Mon, 25 Mar 2002 21:43:14 -0500
To:             	politech@politechbot.com
From:           	Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
Subject:        	FC: Feds yank 50-year old spy records from National Archives
Send reply to:  	declan@well.com

[From the Federation of American Scientists' Secrecy News 
(www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/index.html). --Declan]

---

SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2002, Issue No. 25
March 25, 2002


**	FIFTY YEAR OLD INTEL RECORDS PULLED FROM ARCHIVES
**	SHUTTLE LAUNCH SECRECY CRITIQUED
**	JASONS DISMISSED BY DARPA
**	SECRECY OF SEPTEMBER 11 DETAINEES CHALLENGED


FIFTY YEAR OLD INTEL RECORDS PULLED FROM ARCHIVES

Thousands of pages of historically valuable documents that served as
the basis for published research concerning intelligence in the early
Cold War years have been withdrawn from public access over the past
several years, to the dismay of intelligence historians and scholars
who found them missing from the National Archives in College Park,
Maryland.

The records, which were part of a special collection on "Translations
of Intercepted Enemy Radio Traffic" in Record Group 38 (Boxes
2739-2747), provided unparalleled insight into U.S. signals
intelligence activity in the period 1947-49.

Their unannounced withdrawal was discovered last week by historian
Matthew M. Aid, who lamented their loss.

"All in all, these records were essential reading for any serious
researcher trying to document the successes and failures of the
U.S.-British intelligence effort in the years after the end of World
War II," said Aid.

Despite their withdrawal, at least some of the substance of the
missing documents has already been integrated into the published
record of intelligence history.

Matthew Aid cited them extensively in a recent book he co-edited with
Dutch scholar Cees Wiebes entitled "Secrets of Signals Intelligence
During the Cold War and Beyond" (London: Frank Cass, 2001).

Historian David Alvarez, formerly a scholar in residence at the
National Security Agency (NSA), used the collection in his paper
"Behind Venona: American Signals Intelligence in the Early Cold War,"
that was published in the journal Intelligence and National Security
in Summer 1999.

The documents demonstrate, said Aid, that "our cryptologic successes
in the years immediately after the end of World War II against the
Soviets were far greater than previously believed."

"The sensitivity of these records lies in the fact that when taken as
a whole, they reveal the dramatic scope of the U.S.-British
intelligence effort in the early Cold War years," Aid said. 
"Virtually no nation was immune from the attention of the American and
British codebreakers, with the exception of our British allies and
their Commonwealth partners.

Similarly, Alvarez noted that "A review of this material would reveal
that in those years the US Government was intercepting and decrypting
the diplomatic and military traffic of some 39 countries."

So how is the withdrawal of the records from public access to be
explained?

"As you probably know, NSA has a general policy of not declassifying
documents dating from after the Japanese surrender in 1945," said
Alvarez.  "The surrender, in effect, represents the boundary between
an open period and a closed period for access to communications
intelligence records.  Before the surrender most comint records are
open, after the surrender hardly anything has been declassified.  The
collection in Record Group 38 seems to have accidentally slipped
through the declassification review."

A National Archives official confirmed today that the records had been
"erroneously released" and that the responsible agency (presumably the
NSA) had requested in 1997 that the records be withdrawn.  The
National Archives, as custodian of the records, with no independent
declassification authority, had no choice but to comply, the official
said.

In principle, the records should be subject to re-review and eventual
release, in whole or in part, according to the Archives official.  But
it was not possible to say when that might be accomplished.

"This is not the first time that something like this has happened,"
the official said.


SHUTTLE LAUNCH SECRECY CRITIQUED

To enhance the security of the space shuttle, NASA will not announce
the precise time of future shuttle launches until 24 hours prior to
launch, the space agency announced recently.  Up until that time, NASA
will only announce a four hour launch window for a particular launch.

Critics say the new policy makes no sense because the time of launch
is determined by objective factors that are not themselves secret.

The new policy takes effect with the next shuttle launch, STS-110,
which is scheduled for April 4 "during a launch period that extends
from 2 to 6 PM."

See "NASA to Keep Launch Times Secret" by Marcia Dunn of the
Associated Press:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46339-2002Mar18.html

"I trust everyone realizes that this is staggeringly stupid," said
Allen Thomson, a former CIA analyst and space policy expert.

"The shuttle is mostly used to support the international space station
[ISS], and in order to rendezvous with ISS, it has to launch when the
Cape is in or near the orbital plane of the station," Thomson noted.
"That can be determined days and weeks in advance to within a couple
of minutes from the ISS orbital elements, which are freely available
at any number of Web sites."

Likewise, satellite watcher Ted Molczan dismissed the NASA move as
"pretend security."  The launch of a shuttle mission to the space
station is constrained "to a single ten minute window on any given
day," he said.

"Basically, Earth rotates under the plane of the [ISS] orbit, so that
any latitude less than or equal to the orbital inclination will pass
beneath the orbital plane twice per day," Molczan explained.  "The
spacecraft will be northbound on one of the plane crossings, and
southbound on the other. KSC [Kennedy Space Center] launches to ISS
are limited to the northbound crossing."

Taking this and other factors into account, Molzcan estimated that the
next shuttle launch on April 4 will have to occur "at 22:11 UTC [5:11
PM local time] +/- 2 minutes."

Instead of a bogus secret launch schedule, Molczan ventured, a more
defensible security policy would be the establishment of a small
no-fly zone around the site of an impending shuttle launch.  See his
comments on the See-Sat discussion list here:

      http://satobs.org/seesat/Mar-2002/0210.html

Recorded information from NASA concerning the coming year's shuttle
flight schedule is available by telephone at (321)867-4636.


JASONS DISMISSED BY DARPA

In a move that augurs the further devaluation of independent
scientific advice, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
(DARPA) has terminated its contract with the JASONs, an illustrious
and secretive group of scientists who have long advised government
agencies on defense programs, including classified programs, involving
significant technical challenges.

The action reportedly came after the JASONs declined to approve a
DARPA request that it accept three DARPA nominees, including two
corporate executives, as new members.

It is not unusual for an agency to specify the particular competencies
required in a contractor.  In contrast, however, one does not normally
dictate the composition of a panel that is convened to perform peer
review.  These conflicting conceptions of the JASONs' role may have
contributed to the break with DARPA.

See "Defense Department Agency Severs Its Ties to an Elite Panel of
Scientists," by James Glanz in the March 23 New York Times:

      http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/23/politics/23RESE.html


SECRECY OF SEPTEMBER 11 DETAINEES CHALLENGED

"For the first time in at least recent history, the United States
government has arrested and jailed hundreds of individuals and kept
their identities secret," observed several civil liberties
organizations in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit they
filed to challenge the continuing secrecy surrounding persons detained
by the government in the aftermath of September 11.

"The government's refusal to release the names of the more than 750
detainees is a stark departure from the bedrock principle that the
government must disclose the identity of people whom it forcibly
deprives of liberty," the challengers said in their latest pleading.

Initially filed last December, the lawsuit -- Center for National
Security Studies (CNSS), et al, v. Department of Justice -- has
already produced an instructive record that rewards attention.

See selected pleadings from the case, particularly the plaintiff's
latest motion of March 18, on the CNSS web site here:

      http://www.cnss.gwu.edu/~cnss/cnssvdoj.htm




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