SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
August 22, 2001
** ANTI-LEAK BILL DRAWS OPPOSITION
** THE RWANDA GENOCIDE AND THE US RESPONSE
** FRUS VOLUME ON GREECE STILL SUPPRESSED
ANTI-LEAK BILL DRAWS OPPOSITION
As word spreads that Congress may enact legislation to make all unauthorized
disclosures of classified information a felony, public outrage and
opposition are beginning to mount.
"At a time when the rest of the world is looking to America for leadership
on openness, Congress would make it harder for Americans to know what their
government is doing," writes Tom Blanton of the National Security Archive in
a powerful op-ed in today's New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/22/opinion/22BLAN.html
The "anti-leak" proposal (which was vetoed last year by President Clinton)
would criminalize disclosure of "the kind of information Americans need to
debate issues like the effectiveness of Washington's military aid to
Colombia's drug war or the chances for success of a new peacekeeping
operation in Macedonia," the New York Times editorialized yesterday:
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/21/opinion/21TUE2.html
The Senate Intelligence Committee, which was criticized for pushing the
proposal last year without an opportunity for public debate, has scheduled a
seemingly perfunctory hearing on the matter on September 5.
THE RWANDA GENOCIDE AND THE US RESPONSE
The dawning awareness that a full-fledged genocide was taking place in
Rwanda in 1994 elicited only a feeble response from official Washington, and
many thousands of innocent lives that could have been saved were lost as a
result.
Newly declassified records documenting official reaction to reports from
Rwanda were obtained by Will Ferroggiaro of the National Security Archive,
which published them on Monday.
"Until now, we could only speculate as to what U.S. officials knew about the
genocide or what they were arguing in closed diplomatic forums," Mr.
Ferroggiaro said. "The documents provide essential evidence of official
inaction in the face of the slaughter in Rwanda in 1994." See:
http://www.nsarchive.org/NSAEBB/NSAEBB53/press.html
These records help inform a long, gripping article in the September issue of
The Atlantic Monthly entitled "Bystanders to Genocide: Why the United States
Let the Rwandan Tragedy Happen" by Samantha Power (not yet available
online).
Power's account of the genocide, in which 500,000 Rwandans were killed, is
passionately argued, but is unlikely to be the last word on this horror.
She explains the inadequate U.S. response primarily by pointing to the
personal defects of individual leaders.
"President Clinton certainly could have known that a genocide was under way,
if he had wanted to know," she writes angrily and somewhat coarsely.
Power insists that the Rwandan killers' intention to commit genocide was
known or "knowable" by U.S. policymakers early on. "Any failure to fully
appreciate the genocide," she insists, "stemmed from political, moral, and
imaginative weaknesses, not informational ones."
But this overlooks some of the "informational" complexities that appear to
have conditioned the U.S. response.
During the first week of the genocide, officials in Washington received as
many as a thousand separate intelligence reports on Rwanda per day, writes
Alan J. Kuperman in his important new book on the Rwanda genocide, "The
Limits of Humanitarian Intervention" (Brookings, 2001).
Due to the flood of often inconsistent information, "The circuits were
overwhelmed," Kuperman quotes a State Department intelligence official as
saying.
"One coping mechanism among veteran Washington intelligence officials faced
with such information overload is to dismiss extreme, unconfirmed reports,"
Kuperman writes.
Thus, other executive branch agencies rejected the "extreme" estimates of
the progress of the genocide that were developed by the Defense Intelligence
Agency, although these would subsequently prove to be the most accurate.
The other agencies explicitly noted their disagreement in intelligence
summaries prepared for the President, Kuperman reports in his book.
The point is not to diminish the responsibility of U.S. officials. Rather,
if Kuperman's analysis is correct, a close examination of the Rwanda case
may hold practical lessons for U.S. intelligence and national security
policy that go beyond reproaching the terrible failures of individual
leaders.
For more information on Kuperman's book see:
http://www.brook.edu/press/books/humanitarian_intervention.htm
FRUS VOLUME ON GREECE STILL SUPPRESSED
Under pressure from the Central Intelligence Agency, the State Department
continues to defer publication of a volume of historical documents on U.S.
policy towards Greece in the Johnson Administration.
The volume, "Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1964-1968:
Cyprus, Greece, Turkey," which is already printed and bound, sits in storage
awaiting official clearance for release.
According to news reports, some officials fear that publication of the FRUS
history, which makes references to clandestine U.S. intervention in Greek
elections in the 1960s, could inspire an attack by the Greek terrorist
organization 17 November. Others worry that it could disrupt the upcoming
Cypriot elections.
Recently, the delayed publication was analyzed in the Greek press, which
mocked the CIA's reluctance to permit publication.
"Everyone who has read it believes that this is much ado about nothing,"
wrote reporter Alexis Papakhelas, referring Homerically to the
"wine-colored" FRUS volume.
He quoted a US diplomat who said that "Even if we had nothing to hide, the
CIA's behavior reinforces the suspicion and the certainty that we are trying
to keep some sinful skeletons from the past buried."
Mr. Papakhelas is author of a related book (in Greek) based on documents he
obtained under the Freedom of Information Act entitled something like "The
Rape of Greek Democracy."
See his article "The CIA's Secret Files on Greece," published in the Athens
newspaper To Vima on August 12 and translated by the Foreign Broadcast
Information Service, here:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2001/08/gr081201.html
The matter was investigated further by George Lardner in the Washington Post
on August 17:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15770-2001Aug15.html
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Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the Federation
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_______________________
Steven Aftergood
Project on Government Secrecy
Federation of American Scientists
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