[Infowarrior] - Classification System Failure: the OLC Torture Memo

[Richard Forno]

(agree 100% -- have seen this stuff all over the place in recent
years.....-rf)


http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/2008/04/040308.html

THE OLC TORTURE MEMO AS A FAILURE OF THE CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM

The Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel memo on interrogation of
enemy combatants that was declassified this week "exemplifies the political
abuse of classification authority," Secrecy News suggested yesterday.

J. William Leonard, the nation's top classification oversight official from
2002-2007, concurred.

"The disappointment I feel with respect to the abuse of the classification
system in this instance is profound," said Mr. Leonard, who recently retired
as director of the Information Security Oversight Office, which reports to
the President on classification and declassification policy.

"The document in question is purely a legal analysis," he said, and it
contains "nothing which would justify classification."

Beyond that crucial fact, the binding technical requirements of
classification were ignored.

Thus, he explained: There were no portion markings, identifying which
paragraphs were classified at what level. The original classifier was not
identified on the cover page by name or position. The duration of
classification was not given. A concise basis for classification was not
specified. Yet all of these are explicitly required by the President's
executive order on classification.

"It is not even apparent that [John] Yoo [who authored the memo] had
original classification authority," Mr. Leonard said.

"All too often, government officials simply assert classification. To enjoy
the legal safeguards of the classification system, you need to do more than
that. Those basic, elemental steps were not followed in this instance."

"Also, for the Department of Defense to declassify a Department of Justice
document," as in this case, "is highly irregular," Mr. Leonard said.

(The DoD declassifier mistakenly cited "Executive Order 1958" on the cover
page of the declassified memorandum. The correct citation is "Executive
Order 12958, as amended.")

Violations of classification policy pale in comparison to the policy
deviations authorized by the Justice Department memo, which was ultimately
rescinded. Nevertheless, such classification violations are significant
because they enabled the Administration to pursue its interrogation policies
without independent scrutiny or accountability.

"To learn that such a document is classified has the same effect for me as
waking up one morning and learning that after all these years there is a
'secret' Article IV to the Constitution that the American people did not
even know about," said Mr. Leonard.

"There is no information contained in this document which gives an advantage
to the enemy," he said. "The only possible rationale for making it secret
was to keep it from the American people."