SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2004, Issue No. 61
July 2, 2004


**      INTELLIGENCE SPENDING PUBLISHED IN UK, NOT US
**      DOD UPDATES SPECIAL ACCESS PROGRAM SECURITY


INTELLIGENCE SPENDING PUBLISHED IN UK, NOT US

The Intelligence and Security Committee of the British Parliament
published its annual report to the Prime Minister this week and
disclosed, as it routinely does, the total amount of money
allocated for intelligence, including past year expenditures,
current year estimates and future year projections.

The 2003-2004 aggregate "net resource" allocation for the three
major UK intelligence agencies -- the GCHQ, the Security Service
(MI5) and the SIS (MI6) -- was reported to be 1,130.9 million
pounds, a twenty percent increase over the previous year.

See the UK Intelligence and Security Committee Annual Report for
2003-2004, June 2004 (at page 11):

     http://www.fas.org/irp/world/uk/isc0304.pdf

Even this minimal level of public accountability remains beyond
reach in the United States.

In fact, the Central Intelligence Agency, which in some respects
is a remarkably primitive and backward organization, is litigating
this summer to prevent public disclosure of historical intelligence
budget figures from 1947 through 1970.  (Aftergood v. CIA,
DC District Court, Case No. 01-2524).


DOD UPDATES SPECIAL ACCESS PROGRAM SECURITY

The apparatus of government secrecy takes on its most concentrated
form in classified programs known as "special access programs"
(SAPs).  Security policy for SAPs has recently been updated by
the Pentagon.

There are three types of SAPs within the military: acquisition
programs, intelligence programs, and operations and support
programs.

Furthermore, according to DoD policy, these SAPs fall into two
categories, Acknowledged and Unacknowledged. "An Acknowledged SAP
is a program which may be openly recognized or known; however,
specifics are classified within that SAP. The existence of an
Unacknowledged SAP or an unacknowledged portion of an
Acknowledged program, will not be made known to any person not
authorized for this information."

As suggested in the previous sentence, there can be SAPs within
SAPs, creating concentric circles of ever-increasing secrecy.

By their nature, SAPs are a challenge to external oversight.  From
time to time the authority to create and conduct a SAP is abused,
as in the 1987-1991 unacknowledged SAP named Timber Wind that was
later exposed and found by officials to be over-classified.

The new DoD policy on SAPs was circulated in a March 30 letter
from Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (Counterintelligence and
Security) Carol A. Haave.

"Current circumstances indicate an urgent need to circulate this
guidance throughout DoD as soon as possible," she wrote.  See her
letter of transmittal here:

  http://www.fas.org/sgp/library/nispom_dod_overprint_rev1_cov.pdf

The new guidance itself is contained in the "Department of Defense
Overprint to the National Industrial Security Program Operating
Manual (NISPOM) Supplement," Revision 1, April 2004.  A copy was
obtained by Secrecy News and is posted here (3.2 MB PDF file, 219
pages):

     http://www.fas.org/sgp/library/nispom_dod_overprint_rev1.pdf


_______________________________________________
Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the
Federation of American Scientists.

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_______________________
Steven Aftergood
Project on Government Secrecy
Federation of American Scientists
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