At 08:59 AM 12/12/1999 -0500, Arnold G. Reinhold wrote:
>As I recall, classified documents are required to carry a legend on
>each page saying something like "This document contains information
>affecting the national defense within the meaning of the espionage
>laws, Title 18 793 and 794, the transmission or revelation of which
>to unauthorized persons is prohibited by law."
I think that was common in older documents, but was probably dropped in
recent decades. The big deal these days is portion marking, which is driven
by the Freedom of Information Act. Portion marking makes redaction a bit
easier (in theory, at least).
>Since the Pentagon Papers case, I don't think the Government has
>dared to prosecute the press for publishing classified information.
A fellow named Morrison (grandson of the Naval historian, I believe) was
convicted several years back (late '80s or early '90s) for leaking a
classified photograph. Morrison was a government analyst with a part time
job for Janes Defence Weekly. He gave them a photo of a new Soviet aircraft
carrier after cutting the SECRET markings off the margins. It appeared in
print just as a US diplomat was trading a copy of the original photo with
an intel person in the UK. The UK recipient wasn't impressed by the
offering, since he'd just seen the photo published.
The case was important since it was the first time someone has been
successfully convicted for releasing Secret information as opposed to Top
Secret information. While there *is* an inclination to assume that
espionage and/or treason == disclosure of classified information, it's not
ironclad as far as courts go. After all, that would violate separation of
powers, since the executive branch could in theory mark anything Top
Secret. I know that the counterintel people traditionally feel more
comfortable chasing someone that has disclosed TS information since there's
less ambiguity regarding its true value to national security. (BTW see the
NSA web site's Venona collection for some good if dated examples of TS
codewords).
Regarding John Young's comments about sharing data among countries, imagine
the headaches involved in running a state of the art multinational military
operation -- lots of US intel is considered "US only" which means it can't
be shared with coalition partners. So we can do certain types of plainning
and data sharing among our own troops, but not with other coalition forces
and commanders. A diplomatic minefield, eh? During the Gulf War, for
example, Israel wanted ballistic missile warnings and we didn't want to
share those particular satellite feeds.
And if you're really interested in the background, see Sen. Daniel Patrick
Moynahan's book "Secrecy." Or go looking for the report of the Senate
commission that studied governmental secrecy -- it used to be on line and
the "real meat" to Moynahan's book is printed as the report's appendix.
Sorry I don't have the URL, but Moynahan was the commission chair. It's
probably linked to his homepage.
Rick.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
