President Barack Obama’s executive order last Tuesday to declassify millions of secret U.S. government document delighted left-wing “open government” groups, but it may render impotent one of the intelligence community’s most vital tools: the President’s Daily Brief, or PDB.
Described as “the most highly sensitized classified document in the government,” every one of the overnight-written reports the commander-in-chief receives each morning from the CIA and other spy agencies, going back decades, would eventually be required by law to be revealed under Obama’s newly-established National Declassification Center within the National Archives.
As the White House describes the massively lengthy executive order, which approaches 13,000 words, “For the first time, it establishes the principle that no records may remain classified indefinitely and provides enforceable deadlines for declassifying information exempted from automatic declassification at 25 years.”
According to the president’s order, “No information may remain classified indefinitely.” And while much of the order does not take effect until mid-2010, some provisions do, such as the directive that “all classified records that (1) are more than 25 years old and (2) have been determined to have permanent historical value under Title 44, United States Code, shall be automatically declassified whether or not the records have been reviewed.”
Virtually every President’s Daily Brief ever produced, of course, would be considered to be of “permanent historical value” by historians. As Meredith Fuchs of the National Security Archives, a non-governmental research institute, told National Public Radio last week, the Obama order “would lead to the release of hundreds of thousands, millions of pages of records related to World War II, the Vietnam War, Korean War, I mean, things that historians are really eager to get their hands on.”
Previous administrations have judged national security to be of more importance than the yearning of scholars and journalists for state secrets, however.
For example, a March 2003 executive order by President George W. Bush gave the CIA veto power over the declassification recommendations of the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel (ISCAP), the governmental body established by a President Bill Clinton executive order in 1995. Legitimate CIA objections citied by Bush include determining that release of “the information could reasonably be expected to cause damage to the national security and to reveal (1) the identity of a human intelligence source, or (2) information about the application of an intelligence source or method (including any information that concerns, or is provided as a result of, a relationship with a cooperating intelligence element of a foreign government)…”
Obama’s order last week revokes both the Clinton and Bush executive orders, effective by the middle of this year.
The Bush 2003 order successfully prevented the release of, to cite one example, a 1968 President Lyndon Johnson PDB describing the implications of the Soviet Union’s manned space program. The Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy complained that the “CIA has consistently treated PDBs as sacrosanct and beyond the purview of ordinary mortals. Regardless of their specific contents, the fact that the PDBs served as their intelligence conduit to the president should render them permanently beyond legal access and independent review, the CIA seems to believe.”
Bush White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, in a May 2002 press conference, warned of the consequences of scrapping the rule that PDBs never become public.
Fleischer described “the overall principle about the President’s Daily Brief, which is shared with such an extraordinarily small number of people who are in a need-to-know situation, a need-to-know position, so they can use that information to protect the country, to prevent the next possible attack.”
Bush, Fleischer added, was “concerned with the fact that if the presidential daily brief, which is a highly sensitized – the most highly sensitized classified document in the government – if that document were to be at risk of public reporting, public release, the people who prepare it will hold back and not give the president of the United States, the person who needs the most information, they will be inclined to give him less, rather than more, because they fear it will get made public, and that could compromise sources or methods.”
George Tenet, CIA director under both Clinton and George W. Bush, in his book “At the Center of the Storm,” described the super-secret details contained in their PDBs, “the nitty-gritty on how we had stolen the secrets … it was an opportunity to pull back the curtain, to talk to the president about a sensitive source or a collection method.”
“The book,” as the CIA calls it, “was our most important product,” according to Tenet.
New Yorker staff writer Lawrence Wright in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book on the al-Qaida 9/11 plot, “The Looming Tower,” remarked on “a bizarre trend in the U.S. government to hide information from the people who most needed it,” in particular the wall the Clinton administration erected between the FBI and the CIA.
Has Obama now constructed a wall between himself and U.S. spy agencies, discouraging them from being candid about terrorism threats in their daily briefings – not only to him, but to future presidents?
ATLAS EXCLUSIVE: Obama's National Security Betrayal: Declassifies Treasure Trove of Intel to our Enemies
We have suffered another devastating attack on American security by the most secretive and opaque President we have ever had the misfortune to elect.
While Obama and his gang of thieves hide behind closed doors to pass secret, enslaving legislation under the Stalin- like propaganda chimera of "reform," he has opened the floodgates to a veritable treasure trove of intel to our mortal enemies.
On December 29th, and very much under the radar, (he was sunnin' and funnin' in Hawaii at the time), Obama declassified just about everything he possibly could to help foreign governments and his Communist-Socialist US conspirators to overthrow America.
This executive order is a tsunami info dump of newly declassified (ca. pre-June 29, 1985 classified) data. It is about to be dumped, with endangerment to US NationalSecurity and respective agencies at highest levels. Info dump commences 180 days from signing of the Executive Order.
Imagine, we can't see health care legislation but our enemies can see ........... all.
Huge shout out to Brian for going through the documents and alerting me to this breach of national security. It is the act of a traitor, an enemy in the White House. Clearly a gift to our enemies and fodder for a treasonous press.
Imagine such an action at a time of war.
Here is the HSS Energy page announcement, and then the White House announcement below. Links to both are provided.
(Quote)On December 29, 2009, President Obama signed Executive Order (E.O.) 13526 on Classified National Security Information. The new E.O. is posted on the White House website: and supersedes E.O. 12958, as amended.
As in the past, the new order in no way affects Restricted Data (RD) or Formerly Restricted Data (FRD) information which is classified under the Atomic Energy Act (AEA) and not under the E.O.. The E.O. specifically excludes RD and FRD information from its regulation.
As the President promised, this E.O. is designed to both reduce the amount of information initially classified, avoid overclassification, and raise the standards for what information can remain classified beyond its initial period, usually 25 years. The new E.O. was drafted in an interagency setting and used input from the public and from the Public Interest Declassification Board.
With the new E.O. signed, a new implementing regulation for the E.O. will be issued by the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO) within 180 days and in turn DOE must update its implementing directive to be in compliance.
Here are some changes from the new E.O. that will have an impact on DOE's classification program:
§ When determining to originally classify information, if there is significant doubt about the need to classify the information, it shall not be classified.
§ If there is significant doubt about the appropriate level of classification, information shall be classified at the lower level.
§ DOE will be required to complete a fundamental classification guidance review for NSI within 2 years of the effective date of the Order. This fundamental review will be led by the Office of Technical Guidance (HS-92) and will involve classification authorities and subject matter experts throughout the complex. This effort will evaluate whether information currently classified as NSI in our guidance should remain classified under this new E.O.
§ Derivative classification authorities must be trained every 2 years. If not completed, then the derivative classification authority must normally be suspended. [Note: We will be examining this requirement against our 3-year training cycle and looking at how we can minimize the impact to the field.] Original classification authorities must complete annual training. If not completed, then the original classification authority will be suspended.
§ Information in permanently historically valuable records exempted from automatic declassification at 25 years must be declassified at 50 years unless it concerns: a confidential human source, a human intelligence source, or key design concepts of weapons of mass destruction. There are exceptions to this rule and a process identified to extend classification in extreme cases. However, the general idea is that most information should be declassified at 50 years.
§ A new National Declassification Center (NDC) will be established to streamline declassification processes, facilitate quality-assurance measures, and implement standardized training regarding the declassification of records determined to have permanent historical value. Another important aspect of its mission will be to handle referred records. This is already a major effort for Office of Document Reviews (HS-93) at the National Archives and we support the new center and its focus on the review of millions of pages of records in an improved efficient and streamlined process. The President has committed the NDC to process over 400 million records by 2013 and so this center will be very large scale in nature.
§ A new paragraph has been inserted in this new E.O. at DOE's request. It states: " The Secretary of Energy shall determine when information concerning foreign nuclear programs that was removed from the Restricted Data category in order to carry out provisions of the NationalSecurity Act of 1947, as amended, may be declassified. Unless otherwise determined, such information shall be declassified when comparable information concerning the United States nuclear program is declassified." This paragraph is focused on foreign nuclear program information that was transclassified under section 142(e) of the AEA and protected as NSI. We have always had a fundamental equity to ensure this information is not declassified ahead of similar RD information. This new paragraph makes clear that other agencies must seek DOE declassification guidance for such information.
In addition, here are highlights of other changes to the new Order:
§ The Order is effective 180 days from the date of issuance, except for sections 1.7, 3.3, and 3.7, which are effective immediately.
§ The definition of "weapons of mass destruction" has been changed. [Note: For the purposes of the Order, this definition relates only to NSI.]
§ For information in records determined not to have permanent historical value, the duration of classification beyond 25 years shall be the same as the disposition (destruction) date of the records, although it may be extended if the records are retained beyond their disposition date for business reasons.
§ Delegations of original classification authority shall be reported to the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO).
§ Classified information originating in one agency may be disseminated to another agency or U.S. entity by any agency to which it has been made available without the consent of the originating agency unless the originating agency has determined that prior authorization isrequired for such dissemination and has marked or indicated such requirement on the medium containing the classified information in accordance with implementing directives issued pursuant to this order. [Note - Documents created prior to the effective date of this Order shall not be disseminated outside any other agency to which they have been made available without the consent of the originating agency.]
§ Classified information originating in one agency may be disseminated by any other agency to which it has been made available to a foreign government in accordance with statute, this order, directives implementing this order, direction of the President, or with the consent of the originating agency.
§ The Director of National Intelligence, as head of the Intelligence Community, will determine which information concerning intelligence sources, methods, and activities to declassify or downgrade for the Intelligence Community and will issue any necessary directives.
§ Classified, nonrecord materials will be declassified as soon as the information contained therein no longer meets the standards for classification.
§ The standards for exempting information from automatic declassification at 25 years have been strengthened.
§ Criteria for reclassifying information that has been released to the public under proper authority have been strengthened.
§ Authorized holders of classified information may challenge the classification of information originated by another agency. (unquote)
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