Comment by fragsworth
14 years ago
The article spoke distinctly of security clearances that you don't even know exist. You probably didn't have those.
14 years ago
The article spoke distinctly of security clearances that you don't even know exist. You probably didn't have those.
Top Secret SCI ("secret compartmentalized information") isn't one clearance: each SCI has a codeword, and you get cleared individually for each one. That's probably what Ellsberg means by about to receive "15 or 20 special clearances", and what throwaway is referring to. It's not uncommon for TS-cleared individuals to be additionally cleared on at least one TS-SCI thing. Obviously codeword-classified information can vary in interestingness.
SCI is 'Sensitive' compartmentalized information, not 'secret'. SCI information can be SECRET or TOP SECRET (or, in theory, FOUO, although that would be weird).
Not all SCI compartments are codeworded, some just have names or acronyms (e.g. HCS - HUMINT CONTROL SYSTEM [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitive_Compartmented_Informa...)
As a Govt leader, rather than a working-class flub DOD employee, Ellsberg was probably referring to various SAP access that Kissinger was about to be read into. SCI is just one SAP (well, most people consider it as such, but the IC seems to disagree for legal basis reasons). This article is actually pretty good for once:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_access_program
It doesn't even need to be top secret. There are "special access" projects at secret level as well.
It's likely referring to the SCI status - the point of SCI, over and above just Secret or Top Secret, is that you have different "compartments" (clearances) for different categories of information. A guy with SCI working for the DOE would see much different information than a guy working for the DOD, or the FAA. And it's much more granular than that. I don't know anything about how the SCI compartments are created, only that you can be cleared for one more many when you reach that point, though you'll never know the full gamut of which compartments exist or don't exist until you are cleared for each one.
Thus, there are likely many clearances/compartments that a great many people don't know exist or don't exist. I suspect there isn't really anyone who knows what every compartment is.
One thing I've always wondered about was what the President's clearance consists of. Are there things he doesn't have access to? Does he know he doesn't have access? Can he see a list of every secret program, but perhaps not get details? Does he have totally unfettered access to everything the US does?
Edit: the corollary is, "how many people have access to everything?" or alternatively, "if the president doesn't, does anyone have access to everything?"
Not being the President, this is purely speculation, but I would guess:
There are many things the President probably does not have unfettered access to.
There are many, many, many trainings and shit you go through that reinforce that seniority and superiority do not in themselves constitute the 'need to know' for classified information.
There should NOT be someone who has access to everything, as the entire point of the compartmentalization is that no one breach can be used against everybody/everything. I have a suspicion that there are actually compartments which are mutually exclusive - if you're in Compartment X, you are, by definition, not allowed in Compartment Y, specifically for that segmentation reason.
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I can think of two rationales for restricting the President's access to information.
One is plausible deniability: there's no need to expose the president personally to every misdeed everyone working for the government may have committed. Yes, that's a cynical, realpolitik type of answer that really pisses off people on HN, but it's true.
The other is simply that the President makes decisions at such a high level that low level information simply isn't helpful to him. The federal government is huge. The President can't function without hundreds of people who spend all day aggregating and summarizing information. This invests a lot of power in the aggregators and summarizers.
> I suspect there isn't really anyone who knows what every compartment is.
Unless the process is completely decentralized, there must be someone approving new compartments. They probably know at least a little about each one.
The main constraint is budgetary authority; it's easier to create a new secret program than to fund it. Ultimately all funding authority comes from the US Congress, although there are layers of obfuscation.
The ability to create new Special Access Programs is usually delegated to the level in an organization that actually does this routinely; definitely below Department level, above Combatant Command level.
On the Army side, check out AR 380-381, and legally, 32cfr159a. Basically someone more operational creates it, and then gets approval from above, but the authority to create the program is closer to the action than the ability to finance it.
They deconflict on names at one level, usually per department (e.g. Army, Navy). I think this is done by pre-assigning names in batches to be used. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_cryptonym is an interesting article.
Well, you have to keep in mind that compartments, from the way I understand them, are topical, or centered around the specific field they pertain to. Thus, the DOE and the DOD won't have the same compartments, and even the Army and the Navy won't have the same compartments.
This is, I believe, one of the reasons that intelligence sharing between agencies and the armed forces is so difficult. Some intel is compartmentalized in places that are inaccessible to another branch or agency, and changing the classification level or compartment of information is an extraordinarily inconvenient process.
The upside of this, however, is that we really do have a secure system for information
Once the authority to keep secrets has been delegated, it seems almost inconceivable that anybody would know all of them.
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