Classified Cabinet Docs Leak Down Under Via An Actual Cabinet Sale... Just As Aussies Try To Outlaw Leaking

from the what-a-world dept

Back in December, we reported on an effort underway in Australia to criminalize both whistleblowers and journalists who publish classified documents with up to 20 years in prison. 20 years, by the way, is also the amount of time that Cabinet documents are supposed to be kept classified in Australia. But just recently Australia's ABC news suddenly started breaking a bunch of news that appeared to come from access to Cabinet documents that were still supposed to be classified. This included stories around ending welfare benefits for anyone under 30 years old as well as delaying background checks on refugees. Some explosive stuff.

On Wednsday, ABC finally revealed where all this stuff came from. It wasn't an Australian Ed Snowden. It was... government incompetence. Apparently, someone bought an old filing cabinet from a store that sells second-hand government office furniture. The cabinet had no key, so he drilled the lock and... found a ton of Cabinet documents in an actual cabinet.

So... if that law were to go through in Australia... would that mean the government employee who didn't check the filing cabinet would get 20 years in jail? Or the store that sold out? Or the guy that drilled it? Or do all of them get 20 years? Why don't we just support whistleblowers and the press for reporting on important news that the public should know about?

Filed Under: australia, cabinet, classified information, leaks, reporting, security, whistleblowing

Not Just Hillary: State Department As A Whole Pretty Careless With Handling Of Classified Communications

from the but-we-swore-we-thought-no-one-would-find-out! dept

It may be that Hillary Clinton was the only State Department employee proactive enough to set up her own email server, but she's hardly the only one to use insecure channels to route classified information. Steven Lee Myers of the New York Times reports classified communications routinely traveled through the State Department's unclassified system.

A review of the 30,322 emails from Mrs. Clinton’s private server that the State Department has made public under the Freedom of Information Act provides an extensive record of how such sensitive information often looped throughout President Obama’s foreign policy apparatus on unclassified systems, from embassies to the United Nations to the White House.

The senders included Denis R. McDonough, currently the White House chief of staff and previously the deputy national security adviser, and Susan E. Rice, the former American representative at the United Nations who is now Mr. Obama’s national security adviser.

Many of the emails were sent over the State Department’s unclassified system, state.gov, which is considered secure but not at the level of the State Department’s system for emailing classified information.

In their defense, State Department officials say they often can't control how classified communications will be routed. After all, they have no control over receipt of messages from foreign government officials that might be considered classified. And they routinely use other insecure channels to communicate, like normal phone systems.

For that matter, it's difficult to determine what the government will consider classified at the point the communications are sent and received. In the case of Clinton's emails, the investigation (which James Comey recently confirmed is an investigation, not a "security inquiry" as Clinton has portrayed it) and response to FOIA requests have prompted an after-the-fact classification review of State Dept. communications contained in the FOIA response.

Of the 30,322 emails made public, 2,028 have had portions redacted and are now classified at the lowest level of classification, “confidential.”

[...]

In 18 emails, for example, information has been classified on the grounds that it identifies C.I.A. officials, including two instances that are now considered “secret.”

One of those was a seemingly benign photo opportunity listed on Mrs. Clinton’s daily schedule, with the person who gave her a daily intelligence briefing, making it obvious that the person was an agency employee.

That email was originally released as “confidential” but upgraded to “secret,” probably reflecting that the person holds an undercover position now.

It's not as though Clinton and others are blameless in their mishandling of classified information, but there are definitely some areas of the communications process that are entirely out of their hands. Other government agencies stepping in to add layers of classification to communications that once seemed innocuous enough to handle on insecure channels does little to mitigate the appearance of impropriety.

That being said, there's still plenty of digital blood on the hands of State Department officials when it comes to treating sensitive information insensitively. Communications that traveled across the State Department's less-secure channels apparently included discussions of the CIA's drone strike program, Palestine-UN communications about the country's bid for statehood and, ironically enough, conversations about how to handle the security details related to General Petraeus' sudden resignation following his own mishandling of classified information.

But the overall impression left by the review of the released emails shows the agency is willing to use less secure channels if it makes communications easier to facilitate -- even if this presents a greater risk of these communications being intercepted or obtained by hackers. And it's apparently considered acceptable -- right up to the point a server is hacked or a top official is spotted running their own email server.

Filed Under: classified information, emails, hillary clinton, state department

Compare And Contrast: Treatment Of Thomas Drake & Hillary Clinton For Having Classified Info

from the double-standards dept

The Washington Post has a big story delving deep into how the Hillary Clinton email scandal happened, noting that Clinton just didn't want to give up her BlackBerry, even as the NSA told her repeatedly that it wasn't secure and there were serious risks involved. What's amazing, from the story, is how much everyone was focused on the BlackBerry side of things, and sort of skipped over the fact that she was using a private email account with the server set up in her basement. The WaPo article notes that for the first few months in her job as Secretary of State, the email server didn't even have basic encryption tools enabled. All of that is a travesty, and you should read the whole article to understand the issue more, but I wanted to focus in on a related issue: the high court/low court treatment of Hillary Clinton as compared to others. In particular, the situation with Thomas Drake, the NSA whistleblower.

Almost five years ago, we wrote about the Thomas Drake case, highlighting some key passages in an astoundingly thorough New Yorker piece by Jane Mayer, which ripped the government's case to shreds. That long article is also worth reading, but for this story, the key points are that Drake was getting on some people's nerves by complaining about the decisions the NSA was making in the wake of 9/11 -- moving towards using an expensive computer system that would suck up everyone's data, while he and others had worked on a much more cost-efficient system that would get better results and had built-in protections for civil liberties. Drake blew the whistle and provided information to a Congressional oversight staffer.

When a big NY Times investigative piece came out later revealing the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program, and the NSA tried to figure out who had leaked, they raided Drake's home. He hadn't been the leaker, but after ruffling through basically everything, they found that Drake had kept a few marginal classified documents:

Then, in April, 2008, the F.B.I. told him that someone important wanted to meet with him, at a secure building in Calverton, Maryland. Drake agreed to the appointment. Soon after he showed up, he says, Steven Tyrrell, the prosecutor, walked in and told him, “You’re screwed, Mr. Drake. We have enough evidence to put you away for most of the rest of your natural life.”

Prosecutors informed Drake that they had found classified documents in the boxes in his basement—the indictment cites three—and discovered two more in his e-mail archive.

The "classified" information in question was totally meaningless. There was unclassified stuff he had kept because he had given it to the Inspector General as part of his whistleblowing and had been told to keep it. And there was a schedule of meetings that was marked unclassified, but which the government claimed should have been classified. And another document that was declassified soon after:

“They had made me into an enemy of the state just by saying I was,” Drake says. The boxes in his basement contained copies of some of the less sensitive material that he had procured for the Inspector General’s Trailblazer investigation. The Inspector General’s Web site directs complainants to keep copies. Drake says that if the boxes did, in fact, contain classified documents he didn’t realize it. (The indictment emphasizes that he “willfully” retained documents.) The two documents that the government says it extracted from his e-mail archive were even less sensitive, Drake says. Both pertained to a successor to Trailblazer, code-named Turbulence. One document listed a schedule of meetings about Turbulence. It was marked “unclassified/for official use only” and posted on the N.S.A.’s internal Web site. The government has since argued that the schedule should have been classified, and that Drake should have known this. The other document, which touted the success of Turbulence, was officially declassified in July, 2010, three months after Drake was indicted. “After charging him with having this ostensibly serious classified document, the government waved a wand and decided it wasn’t so classified after all,” Radack says.

Because of those five documents, none of which ever should have been classified and one of which clearly was not... the Justice Department threatened Drake with thirty-five years in jail.

Drake was no longer charged with leaking classified documents, or with being part of a conspiracy. He is still charged with violating the Espionage Act, but now merely because of unauthorized “willful retention” of the five documents. Drake says that when he learned that, even with the reduced charges, he still faced up to thirty-five years in prison, he “was completely aghast.”

Okay. Got that? Thirty-five years because he "retained" five documents the government claims were classified.

Now, back to Clinton:

State Department and Intelligence Community officials have determined that 2,093 email chains contained classified information. Most of the classified emails have been labeled as “confidential,” the lowest level of classification. Clinton herself authored 104 emails that contained classified material, a Post analysis later found.

Before the server received a digital certificate marking the use of standard encryption, Clinton and her aides exchanged notes touching on North Korea, Mexico, Afghanistan, military advisers, CIA operations and a briefing for Obama.

Right. So Drake gets his home raided and faces 35 years for "retaining" 5 documents. And Clinton appeared to run classified documents through her unprotected home email server pretty much all the time. Now, it's likely that a lot of those 2093 emails involved "overclassification" situations that are all too common in government. And I'm certainly not making the argument that Clinton should necessarily face jail time (let alone 35 years or more) for the use of her own email server.

I'm just pointing out the seeming difference in treatment that someone like Drake gets, as a known "whistleblower" on government waste, as compared to Clinton, a front-runner for the Presidential nomination and a former First Lady, Senator and Secretary of State.

Others have certainly noticed this double standard as well. Last summer, the ACLU called out this seeming unequal treatment, as did the Daily Beat, which referred to it as a double standard. Meanwhile, Glenn Greenwald has -- quite reasonably -- gone even further, in pointing to Clinton's own comments on another situation involving classified emails: the case against Chelsea Manning. That involved the leaking of classified State Department cables while Clinton was Secretary of State. Clinton condemned Manning and insisted that the State Department had to be able to keep communications protected. And, yes, she said this at a time when her own emails were being run off a server in her home's basement.

Who knows what's going to happen with Clinton's email situation, but at the very least, the differential treatment she's received so far, compared to whistleblowers, should highlight just how ridiculous the treatment was for those whistleblowers. And it should reinforce the nature of the "high court/low court" distinction among the politically powerful. They get to avoid the kind of legal troubles the "little people" deal with.

Filed Under: classified information, clinton emails, confidential information, differential treatment, emails, high court, hillary clinton, low court, thomas drake, treatment, whistleblowers

DOJ On The Verge Of Dropping Third Straight Espionage Prosecution

from the ever-vigilant-against-the-threat-of-non-spycraft dept

Maybe the DOJ has grown accustomed to the FBI handing over fully-groomed terrorists for it to prosecute. Its recent attempts to go outside of the realm of young, impressionable men when seeking spy-related prosecutions have gone disastrously.

Last month, it thought it had cornered a pesky Chinese spy and found itself instead looking at someone who had committed no criminal activity. The feds believed Xi Xiaoxing (the head of Temple University's physics department) had shared secret semiconductor-related blueprints with Chinese scientists. Well after moving forward with its prosecution, the DOJ discovered the FBI's investigative work had come to erroneous conclusions. It dropped all charges and left Xiaxiong to pick up the pieces of his shattered life.

This came on the heels of the DOJ's aborted prosecution of Sherry Chen, a National Water Service employee. While visiting China she passed on some PUBLIC website links related to water reservoir funding to a friend of hers, who was a senior official in China's Ministry of Water. She also put him in touch with a former colleague from the Army Corps of Engineers, who rewarded the official's queries by reporting this contact to the DOJ. Another life was turned upside down based on the most specious of suspicions.

Third time's the charm. The DOJ is seemingly ready to drop another espionage-related prosecution due to a lack of culpatory evidence. (h/t Unredacted)

Last fall, federal agents raided the home and office of Robin L. Raphel in search of proof that she, a seasoned member of America’s diplomatic corps, was spying for Pakistan. But officials now say the spying investigation has all but fizzled, leaving the Justice Department to decide whether to prosecute Ms. Raphel for the far less serious charge of keeping classified information in her home.

The fallout from the investigation has in the meantime seriously damaged Ms. Raphel’s reputation, built over decades in some of the world’s most volatile countries.

An intercepted conversation involving Raphael, collected during routine surveillance of Pakistani officials, seemed to suggest the State Department advisor was passing on state secrets. The government put Raphael under surveillance for several weeks, which culminated in a search of her home and office. The DOJ then stripped her of her security clearances, but refused to give her any information about its suspicions.

The smoking gun the DOJ found was tepid, given its recent prosecutorial history: some classified documents in Raphael's home. At this point, the DOJ doesn't appear to have any evidence this information was distributed, which puts Raphael in the company of other mishandlers of sensitive documents -- like General Petraeus… and Hillary Clinton. The range of punishments those two received ranged from a wrist slap to nothing at all. If the DOJ's going to maintain any consistency (and it won't), Raphael should receive something within that same range. And if that's all that's to come of it, it hardly seems worth pursuing.

For her part, Raphael has rejected the plea deals offered by the DOJ, claiming she's actually innocent. At most, she took home documents she shouldn't have. The DOJ seems hesitant to move forward, although the New York Times quotes anonymous prosecutors who would like to see her charged with a felony under the Espionage Act -- charges that could result in years of prison time. To do so would be unnecessarily punitive, considering the government's ongoing refusal to punish members of the "in crowd."

Even if the DOJ decides to drop the case, Raphael may be no better off than Thomas Drake -- another person whose career was destroyed over the alleged "mishandling" of classfied documents. The government claimed Drake held onto classified documents -- despite being told to hold onto them by the Inspector General investigating his whistleblower case and despite these documents being declassified before the prosecution was over. Drake went from working with the NSA to manning an Apple store "Genius Bar." Raphael is likely on a similar path, even if charges are dropped. Officials from combative nations will be far less likely to confide in someone who's obviously under US government surveillance and the US government itself likely won't be offering her any advancement opportunities.

Filed Under: classified information, doj, espionage, robin raphel

Purdue University Completely Freaks Out Because Bart Gellman's Speech Shows Classified Snowden Docs Already Seen By Millions

from the academia! dept

When Ed Snowden first gave his cache of documents to reporters, there were two sets handed out. Most famously, one set went to Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Ewan MacAskill, who went to Hong Kong on behalf of the Guardian. And the other set went to Bart Gellman, who wrote up reports on them (technically as a freelancer) for the Washington Post. Yesterday, Gellman wrote about a crazy story in which Purdue University absolutely freaked out, after it realized that Gellman gave a keynote speech -- for an event organized by the University President, and which Gellman had been specifically asked to give -- that showed some of the previously released Snowden documents during his presentation. Despite promising Gellman that the talk had been recorded and a link and a copy of the video would be sent to him, instead, Purdue ended up deleting the whole thing and basically stopped responding to him.

The reason? Apparently Purdue has a deal with the US government, in order to perform classified research on behalf of the government. To do this, the university had to get "facility security clearance." And, in order to keep that status, it has to abide by certain rules on "classified information spillage." Apparently, some at Purdue decided to overreact entirely, which Gellman discovered as soon as the Q&A section opened up:

If I had the spider sense that we journalists like to claim, I might have seen trouble coming. One of the first questions in the Q & A that followed my talk was:

"In the presentation you just gave, you were showing documents that were TS/SCI [top secret, sensitive compartmented information] and things like that. Since documents started to become published, has the NSA issued a declass order for that?"

I took the opportunity to explain the government’s dilemmas when classified information becomes available to anyone with an internet connection. I replied:

"These documents, by and large, are still classified. And in many cases, if you work for the government and you have clearance, you’re not allowed to go look at them…"

"Now, it’s perfectly rational for them to say, we’re not going to declassify everything that gets leaked because otherwise we’re letting someone else decide what’s classified and what’s not. But it gets them wound up in pretty bad knots."

By way of example, I mentioned that the NSA, CIA, and Office of the Director of National Intelligence “have steadfastly refused to give me a secure channel to communicate with them” about the Snowden leaks. Bound by rules against mingling classified and unclassified communications networks, they will not accept, for example, encrypted emails from me that discuss Top Secret material. In service of secrecy rules, they resort to elliptical conversation on open telephone lines.

My remarks did not answer the question precisely enough for one post-doctoral research engineer. He stood, politely, to nail the matter down.

“Were the documents you showed tonight unclassified?” he asked.

“No. They’re classified still,” I replied.

“Thank you,” he said, and resumed his seat.

And all of that apparently set off a chain reaction where some people freaked out and alerted Purdue's "Information Assurance Officer" who then told Purdue's representative at the Defense Security Service, leading to an escalation that resulted in a DELETE EVERYTHING FREAKOUT. Of course, once Gellman published his blog post making Purdue look silly, it quickly backtracked:

In an overreaction while attempting to comply with regulations, the video was ordered to be deleted instead of just blocking the piece of information in question. Just FYI: The conference organizers were not even aware that any of this had happened until well after the video was already gone.

I’m told we are attempting to recover the video, but I have not heard yet whether that is going to be possible. When I find out, I will let you know and we will, of course, provide a copy to you.

We've talked about this a few times before, and the head in sand approach the government takes to pretending that publicly available leaked classified information is still secret. Government employees are regularly told they cannot look at such documents even if those documents are splashed across the pages of the Washington Post, the NY Times or other news sources. The rationale for this is that it takes away at least some incentive for people to force declassification by leaking documents. But it doesn't really. It just makes everyone look foolish. In the business world, most standard non-disclosure agreements include a clause that says that if the material becomes public through other means, the agreement no longer applies. It's ridiculous that the same is not true for classified information as well.

Perhaps even more ridiculous is how the University responded to Gellman's questions prior to him posting the blog post about Purdue's overreaction:

I left word for Mitch Daniels, the former Indiana governor who became Purdue’s president two years ago. Daniels had introduced my talk and asked me to speak again for guests at a dinner he held that night. He was a delightful, well-read and open-minded host, but he has not returned my messages either. I sent one last note, detailing my main points here, to Purdue’s assistant vice president for strategic communications. I’ll update with her reply if she sends one.

The irony is that the Dawn or Doom colloquium was Daniels’s own personal project. Two of the organizers told me he is fascinated by the contradictory responses – from celebration to alarm – that tend to accompany big technological advances. He proposed to convene Purdue faculty members and leading national experts to explore the risks and promises of artificial intelligence, robotics, and Big Data surveillance, among other developments.

In his own view, Dawn or Doom is not a hard question. Daniels and I chatted about that theme as we stood in the wings off stage, shortly before my talk.

“The answer always turns out to be, it’s dawn,” he said.

Except when his own university overreacts. Gellman also notes that this suggests that this whole situation speaks ill of Purdue as an institute of higher learning:

Purdue has compromised its own independence and that of its students and faculty. It set an unhappy precedent, even if the people responsible thought they were merely following routine procedures.

Think of it as a classic case of mission creep. Purdue invited the secret-keepers of the Defense Security Service into one cloistered corner of campus (“a small but significant fraction” of research in certain fields, as the university counsel put it). The trustees accepted what may have seemed a limited burden, confined to the precincts of classified research.

Now the security apparatus claims jurisdiction over the campus (“facility”) at large. The university finds itself “sanitizing” a conference that has nothing to do with any government contract. Where does it stop? Suppose a professor wants to teach a network security course, or a student wants to write a foreign policy paper, that draws on the rich public record made available by Snowden and Chelsea Manning? Those cases will be hard to distinguish from mine.

The backtracking now that the university is embarrassed is better than ignoring the issue, but it's ridiculous that it got this far in the first place.

Filed Under: barton gellman, classified information, facility security clearance, head in sand, speech
Companies: purdue university

Congress Eagerly Leaked Classified Information To Try To Discredit Snowden For Leaking Classified Information

from the snake-eats-itself dept

It's been two years since the very first news report in the Guardian based on documents provided by Ed Snowden. The NY Times (and other newspapers around the globe in varying languages) has published an op-ed by Snowden himself that gives a nice summary of how much has happened in the past two years, with real pushback finally starting to appear. As Snowden says:

The balance of power is beginning to shift. We are witnessing the emergence of a post-terror generation, one that rejects a worldview defined by a singular tragedy. For the first time since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, we see the outline of a politics that turns away from reaction and fear in favor of resilience and reason. With each court victory, with every change in the law, we demonstrate facts are more convincing than fear. As a society, we rediscover that the value of a right is not in what it hides, but in what it protects.

And yet, on the same day, Jason Leopold has also published details of how Congress regularly leaked classified information in an effort to demonize Snowden and to make it look like his actions caused harm -- something they still cannot show.

As you may recall, late in 2013, a talking point emerged that Snowden had made off with 1.7 million documents -- many of which included military secrets. The number had changed a bunch. The first claim was 60,000 documents. Then 200,000. When 60 Minutes did an NSA puff piece in December of that year it had ballooned to 1.5 million documents. A few days later, politicians seemed to settle on 1.7 million documents -- even as Glenn Greenwald (who actually had the documents) pointed out that it wasn't even close to true.

As we, and many others, pointed out around then, the 1.7 million claim appeared to come based on faulty assumptions, with the big one being that he copied every document from every network he ever scanned. A few months later, after all the fuss died down, James Clapper finally admitted that the 1.7 million number was hogwash -- but, by then, most of the press had moved on.

As Leopold's reporting has turned up, however, Congressional Snowden-haters were really, really eager to use this claim of 1.7 million documents to "shift the story" on Snowden. They had received that number as a talking point in a DIA briefing and wanted to make use of it:

"Members from both sides (Reps. Richard Nugent, Austin Scott, Henry "Hank" Johnson, Jr. and Susan Davis) repeatedly pressed the [DIA] briefers for information from the [Snowden damage] report to be made releasable to the public," states a February 6, 2014 DIA summary prepared for then-DIA director Lieutenant General Michael Flynn and deputy director David Shedd about a briefing on the Snowden leaks for members of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities.

"[Redacted] explained the restrictions were to [redacted] but the members appeared unmoved by this argument. Overall, HASC [House Armed Services Committee] members were both appreciative of the report and expressed repeatedly that this information needed to be shared with the American public."

Of course, that didn't stop Congress critters from leaking the data anyway:

On December 18, the Washington Post's Walter Pincus published a column, citing anonymous sources, that contained details from the Snowden damage assessment. Three days earlier, 60 Minutes had broadcast a report that was widely condemned as overly sympathetic to the NSA. Foreign Policy and Bloomberg published news stories on January 9, 2014, three days after the damage assessment report was turned over to six congressional oversight committees. Both of those reports quoted a statement from Republican congressional leaders who cited the DIA's classified damage assessment report and asserted that Snowden's leaks endangered the lives of US military personnel.

Most of those came before the DIA released the number as an unclassified "talking point."

And the documents also reveal that Congress seemed pretty focused on figuring out ways to "change the narrative" on Snowden, rather than actually assessing what Snowden took -- and, apparently felt they could decide on their own which information in the briefing was classified and what was unclassified, so long as it served their own narrative:

During one classified briefing the damage assessment task force officials held for members of the House Intelligence Committee on Intelligence, lawmakers asked why Snowden, "who claims publicly to be seeking to reform NSA… acquired so many DoD files unrelated to NSA activities."

"[Redacted] explained that [Snowden] appeared to have acquired all files he could reach" was the answer. House Intelligence Committee chairman Mike Rogers and Congressman Adam Schiff "raised the issue that most documents were DoD related — which [redacted] confirmed — and both the congressmen stated they believed this simple fact was both unclassified… and was important for changing the narrative" about Snowden, states an undated summary of the House Intelligence Committee briefing the DIA prepared for Flynn and Shedd.

And, thus, it appears many in Congress had no problem potentially leaking classified information to attack Snowden as a "traitor" for leaking classified information, even though the claims about what he leaked were not, in fact, true.

Filed Under: classified information, congress, damage assessment, dia, ed snowden, leaks

Separate And Unequal: Gen. Petraeus Facing Mild Wrist Slap For Leaking Eight Books Full Of Classified Info To His Mistress

from the granted-Most-Favored-Leaker-status dept

The administration still wants to punish whistleblowers and leakers, but only if it can do it with logic borrowed from Animal Farm. When it comes to prosecution, some leakers are more equal than others.

John Kiriakou -- who exposed a single CIA operative's name while exposing its waterboarding tactics -- spent more time in jail than former CIA director Leon Panetta, who has spent (at last count) a grand total of 0 days locked up for leaking tons of classified info to Zero Dark Thirty's screenwriter, Mark Boal.

Of course, some leaks just aren't leaks, at least not according to the government. Kiriakou's were wrong. Panetta's were right. And Kiriakou spent three years in prison for a lesser "crime."

Thomas Drake faced a potential 35-year sentence for his exposure of wasteful NSA spending. The government's case against him self-imploded, however, resulting in a guilty plea to a misdemeanor and no jail time.

General Petraeus, who leaked classified information to his mistress, is in line to receive the lightest of wrist slaps for his indiscretion: two years probation and a $40,000 fine. The lightness of the sentence suggested by government prosecutors belies the extent of Petraeus' wrongdoing.

What he handed over to his mistress far surpasses anything the above whistleblowers "leaked."

While he was commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, Petraeus “maintained bound, five-by-eight inch notebooks that contained his daily schedule and classified and unclassified notes he took during official meetings, conferences and briefings,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of North Carolina writes in a statement of fact regarding the case...

All eight books “collectively contained classified information regarding the identifies of covert officers, war strategy, intelligence capabilities and mechanisms, diplomatic discussions, quotes and deliberative discussions from high-level National Security Council meetings… and discussions with the president of the United States.”

The books also contained “national defense information, including top secret/SCI and code word information,” according to the court papers. In other words: These weren’t just ordinary secrets. This was highly, highly classified material.

On top of that, he lied to the government about these books, first in the form of a sworn statement...

Petreaus retained those Black Books after he signed his debriefing agreement upon leaving DOD, in which he attested “I give my assurance that there is no classified material in my possession, custody, or control at this time.” He kept those Black Books in an unlocked desk drawer.

And again to investigating FBI agents.

In an interview on October 26, 2012, he told the FBI:

(a) he had never provided any classified information to his biographer, and (b) he had never facilitated the provision of classified information to his biographer.

Simply lying to the FBI has consequences far greater than those Petraeus will face. But that's because he's General Petraeus and you're not -- as 22-year-old Kirstie Barratt recently discovered.

United States Attorney Bill Nettles stated today that Kirstie Elaine Philome Barratt, age 22, of Fort Mill, South Carolina was sentenced to 24 months’ imprisonment today after earlier pleading guilty to making a false statement to a federal agent, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1001. United States District Judge Joseph F. Anderson, Jr. imposed the term of imprisonment, which will be followed by a 3 year term of supervised release. In October, Barratt plead straight up to the charge without a plea agreement. Barratt also may face deportation as a result of her guilty plea. During the sentencing hearing, Judge Anderson granted the government’s motion for an upward departure from the federal guidelines sentencing range of 0 to 6 months, noting that this was a “rare” case and that Barratt “knowingly placed a law enforcement officer’s life in jeopardy” by her false statement.

Petraeus was a trusted member of the military and the CIA. And he turned over eight books worth of classified info to his biographer/mistress just because she asked. But because he's part of the administration's arbitrarily-selected "in crowd," and because he didn't embarrass the government as much as he embarrassed himself, he's facing a sentence of nearly nothing. His suggested punishment will have zero effect on his current position at a top equity firm and his life will suffer none of the disruptions Kiriakou and Drake experienced. He'll be $40,000 poorer -- and with "deterrents" like these being deployed -- none the wiser.

What's most disgusting about Petraeus' cakewalk of a proposed sentence is that he himself took a hypocritical hardline stance on leaking after Kiriakou's sentencing.

When John Kiriakou pled guilty on October 23, 2012 to crimes having to do with sharing a single covert officer’s identity just days before Petraeus would lie to the FBI about sharing, among other things, numerous covert officers’ identities with his mistress, Petraeus sent out a memo to the CIA stating,

"Oaths do matter, and there are indeed consequences for those who believe they are above the laws that protect our fellow officers and enable American intelligence agencies to operate with the requisite degree of secrecy."

Yeah. "Oaths matter." Except when you're the one uttering them, right? Apparently, a "requisite degree of secrecy" means stashing eight books full of classified info in an unlocked desk drawer and handing them out to your clandestine SO in hopes of keeping your knob biography as polished as possible.

This administration is severely hypocritical, but seemingly no more so than in its treatment of whistleblowers. There are those who will be persecuted and punished and those whose similar indiscretions will be waved away by government prosecutors. The problem is: you may not know which of these faces of the administration you'll be facing when you decide to start blowing the whistle. Chances are -- given this administration's track record -- it will be the vindictive, angry administration that continually hopes to "send a message" with each new whistleblower/leaker prosecuted.

Those on the inside of the military/industrial/surveillance supercomplex -- who leak under the name of "anonymous official" to aid filmmakers, deploy talking points or steer narratives -- will never see this side of the two-faced administration. Their leaks are more equal than others.

Filed Under: cia, classified information, david petraeus, doj, fbi, john kiriakou, leaking, lying, punishment, thomas drake, wrist slap

NSA Finally Releases Keith Alexander's Financial Disclosure Documents; National Security Remains Uncompromised

from the Jason-Leopold:-destroyer-of-nations dept

If Vice contributor Jason Leopold isn't careful, he'll kill us all. Back in August, Leopold requested Keith Alexander's financial statements -- something required of certain government officials by the Ethical Government Act (EGA) of 1978. The CIA and Office of the Director of National Intelligence both complied. Keith Alexander, via the NSA's refusal to turn over the documents, is the lone holdout.

The NSA claimed Alexander's financial statements were exempted from public disclosure by the National Security Agency Act of 1959. But the EGA overrides the NSA Act, unless the president himself has issued a waiver making Alexander exempt from these stipulations. President Obama hasn't, although the NSA's lawyer -- Shadey Brown -- implied that he had, by extension stating that releasing the information "would compromise the national interest," i.e., threaten national security, which is the only way to receive this presidential waiver.

Alexander has been given no such waiver. As a result of Leopold's lawsuit, the NSA has released Alexander's documents and will be turning over incoming NSA head Michael Rogers' as well. All in "the interest of transparency." "See how open we are!" the NSA shouts as it is sued into compliance. Forced transparency isn't really transparency, and these government agencies should really stop using that word in this highly misleading way.

The documents forced out of the NSA's hands are apparently linked to national security interests, so it's only a matter of time before terrorist attacks on Americans become as common as 4th Amendment violations and FOIA lawsuits.

What's contained in Alexander's financial statements are several investments in little-known tech firms. Both James Clapper and Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Michael Vickers have looked over Alexander's investments and declared them to be completely free of conflicts of interest, but a look at some of Alexander's investments doesn't necessarily justify these unequivocal statements.

Alexander invested as much as $15,000 in: Pericom Semiconductor, a company that has designed technology for the closed-circuit television and video surveillance markets; RF Micro Devices designs, which manufactures high-performance radio frequency technology that is also used for surveillance; and Synchronoss Technologies, a cloud storage firm that provides a cloud platform to mobile phone carriers (the NSA has been accused of hacking into cloud storage providers).

In addition, RF Micro Devices secured nearly $13 million in R&D contracts from the US government between 2004 and 2010, with most of that money coming from the Defense Department. And while Pericom doesn't seem to have any direct contracts with the government, its products are (or were) used by Harris Corporation, the manufacturer of Stingray cell tower spoofers.

Then there's this:

Alexander also held shares in Datascension, Inc., a data gathering and research company. The Securities and Exchange Commission suspended trading in Datascension last August "due to a lack of current and accurate information" about the company. (Datascension was linked to telemarketing calls that apparently prompted one person in a complaint forum to remark the company is "trying to gain personal information.")

Alexander backs a bad company -- something that is probably just an indication that not even the most well-connected win every bet. With Alexander's initial investment appearing years before the company got smacked down by the SEC, this looks like not much more than somewhere the former NSA chief lost money.

What's included here may be slightly on the shady side, but Alexander's disclosures don't definitely point to wrongdoing. In fact, his financial disclosure sheets are nearly completely blank -- either a sign of clean living, or a case of conspicuousness in absence.

The most surprising thing isn't Alexander's investments. It's the fact that the NSA played hardball to protect nearly nothing of interest. Or perhaps it isn't surprising, considering the agency seems to believe it cannot release anything, no matter how minute, without somehow compromising its mission and the nation's security. Of course, considering how much has been disclosed without its permission, and the subsequent failure of the world's terrorists to turn the US into their personal playground, we know these phrases are largely empty and signify little more than the NSA's persistent allegiance to darkness and secrecy, even as it spouts (always) belated lip service to "transparency."

Filed Under: classified information, ega, ethical government act, financial disclosure, jason leopold, keith alexander, nsa
Companies: datascension, pericom semiconductor, rf micro devices, synchronoss technologies

Head-In-Sand Approach: White House Bans Current & Former Intelligence Staff From Discussing Any Media Leaks

from the that'll-work dept

The Obama administration continues to make incredibly ridiculous decisions in response to the whole Snowden thing. A few weeks ago, we wrote about new rules from James Clapper that banned intelligence community employees from interacting with anyone who was a reporter (or who just had a social media account) without first getting approval. And the latest is that Clapper has issued a new "instruction" which effectively bars all intelligence community employees (and contractors) from even referring to public news reports about any leaks. It appears that any current or former intelligence community official mentioning any of the reporting about Snowden's leaks without first getting permission may run afoul of these rules.

In the past, we've criticized the government's "head-in-sand" approach to dealing with leaked information. Back in 2010, we pointed out how idiotic it was for the Pentagon to tell all Defense Department employees that they weren't allowed to visit Wikileaks to see the State Department cables that were being littered all over the press. Similarly, after the Snowden revelations, the Defense Department blocked access to the Guardian's webiste, where the original documents were first posted. Similarly, Congressional staffers were told not to look at the Snowden documents -- and if they happened to see one accidentally, they had to call security "for assistance."

The thinking behind this approach is that those documents are technically classified, and if you don't have the proper clearance, you shouldn't have them on a government computer. And, yes, I do understand the complications it causes for government employees who have very strict rules about dealing with classified documents, and how it gets a bit trickier when classified documents are leaked publicly -- but at some point you have to sit back and realize the end result is preposterous and there are better ways to deal with it. In the business world, it's fairly standard for non-disclosure agreements to have a clause that says you're allowed to discuss the information you learned if it becomes public via other means. This is perfectly sensible. The intent is to try to block the initial disclosure. But once it's out there, it makes no sense to bar the discussion of it.

And while (as described above), it's always been the case that government officials were barred from making use of leaked classified documents, this new "instruction" expands things in two ridiculous ways. First, it appears to apply to former intelligence community employees in addition to current ones. And, second, it says they can't even refer to the news coverage of those leaks -- which has long been a way that people could refer to known leaks without referencing the leaked documents directly.

ODNI personnel must not use sourcing that comes from known leaks, or unauthorized disclosures of sensitive information. The use of such information in a publication can confirm the validity of an unauthorized disclosure and cause further harm to national security. ODNI personnel are not authorized to use anonymous sourcing.

The NY Times quotes a former White House intelligence employee, noting that this restriction is almost certainly a First Amendment violation:

Timothy H. Edgar, a visiting professor at Brown University who worked at the intelligence office and the White House from 2006 to 2013, said it was appropriate to block former officials from disclosing classified information and confirming leaks.

But, he said, it went too far to retroactively block former officials from citing news reports in the public domain, as long as they did so neutrally and did not confirm them as factually correct. That would amount to a prior restraint on former officials’ First Amendment rights that they did not consent to, he said.

“You’re basically saying people can’t talk about what everyone in the country is talking about,” he said. “I think that is awkward and overly broad in terms of restricting speech.”

Once again, beyond making a continued mockery of "the most transparent administration in history" claims, these rules just make no sense at all. Yes, Clapper and Obama don't want someone "confirming" what's in a leaked document, but to date there have hardly been many issues with anyone worrying about the legitimacy of leaked documents. Maybe this is part of a new idiotic strategy by Clapper to call into question the validity of future leaked documents from Snowden and from others.

Either way, barring intelligence employees (current and former) from even discussing clearly public information is the epitome of a head-in-sand approach in which denying reality seems like a better strategy than living in reality. I don't know about you, but I want a government that is willing to actually face up to the world we live in, rather than sticking its fingers in its ears and shouting "la la la -- I can't hear you." That doesn't seem like a sensible plan by any "intelligence" community.

Filed Under: classified information, ed snowden, free speech, james clapper, leaks, prior restraint

Whistleblower John Kiriakou Questions Why He's In Jail While Former CIA Boss Leon Panetta Is Free

from the who-did-worse? dept

We've written a few times about the ridiculous case against CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou. Kiriakou's main "crime" was revealing the CIA's waterboarding/torture program. It's difficult to argue against the idea that this was true whistleblowing. Both President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have admitted that waterboarding was torture and that it was wrong for the US to do. On top of that, as we've been discussing a lot lately, the Senate Intelligence Committee is sitting on a devastating 6,300 page report that supposedly condemns the CIA's torture program as being far worse than previously revealed and which obtained no useful intelligence. It seems like those are the kinds of things we'd want people to blow the whistle on.

Of course, despite trying to find a way to claim that Kiriakou's whistleblowing was illegal, the DOJ couldn't find any charges related to that which would stick, so it did what it's done to plenty of other whistleblowers: go in search of something else, really anything else to charge him with, and it finally came up with something. A reporter who was working on a book about the torture program asked Kiriakou if he could recommend former colleagues that he could interview. Kiriakou said no, but the reporter mentioned a former colleague's first name -- a former CIA operative who was well known to multiple journalists at the time, and Kiriakou confirmed that former colleague's last name, saying he believed he was retired. The DOJ spun this as Kiriakou revealing the name of a CIA agent, even though nothing Kiriakou did made that agent's name public (it was later revealed by others). For all of this, Kiriakou ended up taking a 30 month prison sentence as a plea deal, realizing it was better than fighting through a full trial, in which he could get many, many more years in jail.

Kiriakou hasn't been silent from jail, and he's even been punished for speaking to the press. However, it appears that this won't stop him from exercising his free speech rights. He recently penned a powerful op-ed for the LA Times asking why he's in jail, while former CIA boss and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta isn't even being investigated.

If you don't recall, a few months ago, we noted that Panetta was likely to get off scott free, despite revealing a ton of classified info, including the names of the Navy SEAL officers who shot Osama bin Laden to film maker Mark Boal, who wrote the screenplay for Zero Dark Thirty. Of course, in an effort to protect "important people" we wouldn't have even known about Panetta's revealing classified information if a report by the Pentagon's Inspector General hadn't leaked. Of course, after the leak, federal officials focused on tracking down those who leaked the report but have done absolutely nothing about Panetta who clearly leaked very sensitive information. It's a "high court" / "low court" situation where powerful people break the law in much worse ways and are left alone, while people without power are bulldozed by the system.

From under the bulldozer, Kiriakou questions how that's reasonable. He points out that part of the reason he took his plea deal was because, under the Espionage Act (as we've discussed before) all evidence of intent and purpose are inadmissible, allowing the government to paint perfectly innocent actions as nefarious. And that's clearly what they were going to do to him. And yet, these same officials say that Panetta's (much bigger) revelation of classified info was okay because it was an accident, and he didn't intend to reveal that info to a filmmaker. Kiriakou notes the double standard that now has him behind bars:

If an intent to undermine U.S. national security or if identifiable harm to U.S. interests are indeed not relevant to Espionage Act enforcement, then the White House and the Justice Department should be in full froth. Panetta should be having his private life dug in to, sifted and seized as evidence, as happened to me and six others under the Obama administration.

When the transcript of Panetta's speech and his inadvertent leak came to light in January, a CIA spokesman told the Associated Press that the agency had subsequently "overhauled its procedures for interaction with the entertainment industry." Such internal reviews are fine and good, but equality before the law is the rule in America. Your job title, your Rolodex and your political friendships are not supposed to trump accountability. Except when they do.

Stories like this aren't just distressing when you consider basic concepts like fairness, proportionality and common sense. They also undermine faith in our government, and -- more importantly -- its credibility.

Filed Under: cia, classified information, high court, john kiriakou, leon panetta, low court, retaliation, whistleblowers