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De open geheimen van de CIA
Maandag, 27 Augustus, 2007
Toen een federale rechter het proces van Valerie Plame vroeger tegen het Centrale Agentschap van de Intelligentie deze maand verwierp, besliste zij dat het agentschap het recht had om Plame tegen te houden van het publiceren van de data van haar agentschapdienst, alhoewel deze data waren geleverd aan Congres in een niet geclassificeerde brief van de CIA en in het CongresVerslag gepubliceerd. Plame is enkel één in een lange lijn van werknemers de ex-CIA om gelijkaardige kostuums te verliezen, waarin het agentschap met succes de positie verdedigde dat de informatie in het openbare domein geclassificeerd was. Hoe kan informatie die is weg een vijf-miniem onderzoek Google is geclassificeerd? Het is eenvoudig. De geclassificeerde informatie is niet het zelfde ding zoals geheime informatie. Toen ik in het directoraat van de CIA van verrichtingen (nu genoemd de nationale heimelijke dienst) in de vroege jaren '90 werkte, werden wij verteld dat de informatie geclassificeerd was toen het bronnen of methodes impliceerde. Het scheen logisch dat de bronnen geclassificeerd waren. Dit waren daadwerkelijke agenten die worden in gevaar gebracht als hun identiteiten werden geopenbaard. Maar praktisch alles de CIA doet zou kunnen als een „methode worden beschouwd,“ zodat kan de CIA besluiten dat bijna om het even wat met betrekking tot zijn werk geclassificeerd is. U zou waarschijnlijk deze breedte willen als u een intelligentieagentschap leidde. Maar één van zijn ongelukkige bijproducten is dat niemand, binnen of buiten de intelligentiegemeenschap, werkelijk weet wat informatie classificeerde is. Omdat zo vele dingen bij de CIA geclassificeerd zijn, slechts is een klein percentage hen eigenlijk geheimen. Neem de regelingen van de agentschapdekking. Ik kan over hen in dit artikel in om het even welk detail schrijven niet. Als ik erop wijs dat de agentschapambtenaren vaak onder dekking als zijn, zal de CIA me maken het nemen alvorens dit artikel te publiceren. (Alvorens ik dit artikel aan de raad van het CIA- publicatiesoverzicht voorlegde, blacked ik het uit zelf om de recensenten het probleem te bewaren.) Maar zijn de dekkingsregelingen geheim? Meestal, nr. Iedereen met zelfs een voorbijgaande rente in spionage weet over het gebruik van de CIA van de specifieke dekking dat ik hierboven opstelde. Als u denkt weet u wat onder die zwarte staaf is, bent u waarschijnlijk juist. Zeker is elk buitenlands intelligentieagentschap in de wereld van het op de hoogte. Het kan onmogelijk als geheim worden beschouwd. Maar het is absoluut geclassificeerd. What about the CIA’s covert action in Afghanistan in the 1980s? Everyone knew about this at the time - in no way, shape or form was it a secret - but it was a covert action, and it was classified. I’m assuming it has since been declassified because I’ve read all about it in books by ex-agency officers that were vetted by the agency. If I’m wrong, there will be some more redactions in this paragraph. There are actually legitimate reasons to classify so much information that isn’t secret. Even if every foreign government in the world knows about our cover arrangements, countless diplomatic and legal problems would be created if we officially admitted that we use them. Official acknowledgment of covert actions would be even riskier. It was problematic enough to be arming rebels in Afghanistan who were killing Soviet soldiers. How would the Soviets have responded if we had openly admitted it? How would we respond today if Iran openly admitted training and arming insurgents in Iraq? We may know their denials are false, but they help Iran avoid international sanction, and they help us avoid being forced to respond militarily. If the government openly admitted various CIA activities, even those that are already well-known, it could also precipitate a great deal of negative news coverage in the foreign press. (It would create yet another public perception problem to admit we classify information because of public perception, which is one of the reasons the fiction is maintained that information is classified because it is secret.) In the end, then, the classification system serves a perfectly valid purpose. It draws a distinction between the information that the government does, and does not, want to discuss publicly. What ends up classified may seem a bit perverse at times, such as when information in the public domain is ruled off limits for publication. But that’s troubling only if you make the mistake of thinking that classified information is supposed to be secret. For former CIA employees turned writers, like Plame, the vagaries of the system have tremendous advantages. Plame just wrote a book that the CIA could reasonably maintain was entirely classified. After all, you’re not supposed to quit an intelligence agency and then tell everybody about what you did when you were there (certainly a lot of methods would be involved). But since nobody is really sure what is and isn’t classified, the agency permits publication of a lot of material that could go either way. It seems petulant to sue over a few dates the CIA wanted to take out of a book that it was otherwise allowing to go forward. Plame was right that the dates weren’t secret. But the agency didn’t want to officially admit them, so they were, in fact, classified. Joseph Weisberg is the author of the forthcoming novel “An Ordinary Spy.” Have Your Say: The CIA’s open secrets Please read our posting guidelines before posting. Alternatively you can discuss this report here. Related News
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