[iwar] [fc:No.'Need.To.Know']

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2002-01-15 20:09:05
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From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net>
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Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2002 20:09:05 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [iwar] [fc:No.'Need.To.Know']
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Washington Times
January 15, 2002
No 'Need To Know'
By Frank J. Gaffney Jr.
A "need to know" is one of the most time-tested principles of information
security. According to this principle, if you don't have such a need, you
should not be given access to classified or other sensitive data.
Even if you think you have a "need to know," moreover, unless appropriate
background checks have been performed - establishing that you can be trusted
to treat such information confidentially - and the requisite security
clearances (known in the government as "tickets") issued, you do not
qualify. In sum, the basic rule has been: No tickets, no access.
That, at least, was the general practice until the Clinton administration
came to office, empowering a number of individuals who were critical of
governmental secrecy in general and the so-called "abuse" of classification
procedures in particular. Madeleine Albright, Tobi Goti, Hazel O'Leary,
Anthony Lake, Morton Halperin and John Podesta were among the senior
officials who, during the Clinton years in one way or another, pursued a
different approach.
For example, former Secretary of State Albright, and her department's
intelligence chief, Mrs. Goti, believed "sharing" sensitive U.S.
intelligence with other nations would demonstrate the validity of American
charges about their involvement in proliferation. The predictable result was
confirmed in a front-page article The Washington Post on Sunday about
Russian-Iranian missile cooperation over the past decade: The recipients of
such information were generally more interested in ascertaining - and
terminating - the ways in which it was obtained than in ending their
proliferation activities. All too often, putting them "in the know" meant
that, thereafter, we would be kept in the dark, having lost irreplaceable
intelligence collection "sources and methods."
Then there was the security-wrecking operation engaged in by former Energy
Secretary O'Leary and the anti-nuclear activists she chose to staff key jobs
in her department. For instance, she blithely ended the nuclear weapons
laboratories' traditional practice of giving different colored badges to lab
personnel based on their "need to know" and levels of security clearance.
Her rationale? It would be discriminatory to those (notably, Chinese,
Russian, Iranian and other foreign nationals) who had neither. We may never
fully know how much damage was done as a direct or indirect result of the
climate of insecurity and dysfunctionality created in the nuclear weapons
complex by O'Leary and Company.
An even more ominous legacy, however, may be that resulting from the
compulsory declassification requirements promulgated by President Clinton at
the urging of his then-National Security Adviser Tony Lake, Mort Halperin
(at the time one of his chief lieutenants on the NSC staff) and John
Podesta, who ultimately served as White House chief of Staff.
According to the champions of this approach, everybody had a "need to know"
about most government secrets; Mr. Clinton directed that - in the interest
of good government - after a certain number of years, basically all of them
were to be put into the public domain.
In some cases (prominent among them the Energy Department), the arbitrary
deadline and the quantity of secrets to be revealed meant that those
responsible for declassifying old, but potentially still highly sensitive,
information were obliged to give documents containing such data only the
most cursory of security reviews. As a result, whole boxes full of
classified information were sometimes summarily deemed declassified and made
accessible to anyone who wanted to review their contents. Presumably, among
that number were scientists from nuclear wannabe states like North Korea,
Iran and Iraq. Findings in the caves of Afghanistan suggest they may have
included operatives of al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations, as well.
Fortunately, to build even primitive atomic weapons, let alone thermonuclear
arms, one must have not only knowhow but access to fairly complex and
expensive manufacturing capabilities. The bad news is that is not the case
with biological weapons (BW). Knowledgeable people can use commercially
available fertilizer and pharmaceutical equipment to create batches of
viruses that can be employed with devastating effect.
Now, the New York Times reports that the Clinton declassification
requirements have caused U.S. government agencies to make publicly available
what amount to BW "cook books" - "hundreds of formerly secret documents that
tell how to turn dangerous germs into deadly weapons." According to Sunday's
Times, "For $15, anyone can buy 'Selection of Process for Freeze-Drying,
Particle Size Reduction and Filling of Selected BW Agents,' or germs for
biological warfare. The 57-page report, dated 1952, includes plans for a
pilot factory that could produce dried germs in powder form, designed to
lodge in human lungs." In the wrong hands, this recipe could enable a future
terrorist attack that would make the recent anthrax letters, and even the
destruction of the World Trade Center, pale by comparison.
In a number of areas, the Bush administration has, since coming to office a
year ago, taken steps to undo lunatic policies inherited from its
predecessor. These include, notably: the unworkably expensive and
inequitable Kyoto Protocol; business-crippling ergonomics rules; open-ended
adherence to the vulnerability-dictating Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty;
inaction on the Yucca Mountain repository for nuclear waste and other
impediments to national energy self-sufficiency; and an invitation to
industrial and governmental espionage masquerading as a protocol to the
Biological Weapons Convention.
A no-less-worrisome legacy is the Clinton declassification agenda.
Particularly in the midst of the war on terrorism, it is imperative that
President Bush re-establish proven and prudential information security
practices. Given the very serious stakes, should Mr. Bush fail to take
corrective action on this score, the American people will certainly have a
legitimate need to know why.
Frank J. Gaffney Jr. is president of the Center for Security Policy and a
columnist for The Washington Times.

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