He saw the blank pages and those with no
classified data that were marked 'UNCLASSIFIED' in a total document whose contents and most pages were marked 'SECRET//REL TO USA, AUS, CAN, GBR, AND NZL//X1'
I've seen US civilians get confused by that practice, no matter how logical it is... :wry:
If you are sufficiently high
in the government hierarchy, there is no penalty for releasing classified info - unless you are Scooter Libby and lie about it to the FBI.:rolleyes: When I was a junior officer assigned to the Army's current intel shop, I would often roll my eyes when reading Joe Alsop's column in the Washington Post where I would see half of a SECRET NOFORN cable that I had read yesterday! Clearly, the Administration was leaking classified - we used to jokingly ask who Alsop had lunch with. I would also often see - several days (or weeks) later - in the press stuff that I had seen in classified form. Note that the original messages were still classified but the information had moved into the open source literature.
Later in my career, I saw classification from the other side - that is plans that were classified TS but once executed should have been UNCLAS but somebody forgot to declassify - in other cases they were declassified. So, one issue here is proper classification or its lack. Another is the appropriate response to Adminsitration leaking of only part of the story - is this disinformation? A third, is declassification - what and when? Our system has problems with all of these. IMHO many of those problems could be addressed simply by using some "common sense" and people doing the jobs they are paid to do. Unfortunately "common sense" is uncommon; people don't always do their jobs; and other people want to play the system for their own political ends.
Cheers
JohnT
Geriatric Abuse, Part MCXIV...
Belated response to Cavguy post # 8
The following is a good basic summary of the relevant law, which will be well-known to most regulars here.
Quote:
CRS RS21900
Updated August 5, 2004
The Protection of Classified Information: The Legal Framework
Nathan Brooks, Legislative Attorney, American Law Division
.....
Criminal Penalties.
Generally, federal law prescribes a prison sentence of no more than a year and/or a $1,000 fine for officers and employees of the federal government who knowingly remove classified material without the authority to do so and with the intention of keeping that material at an unauthorized location. [39]
Stiffer penalties – fines of up to $10,000 and imprisonment for up to ten years – attach when a federal employee transmits classified information to anyone that employee has reason to believe is an agent of a foreign government. [40]
Fines and a ten-year prison terms also await anyone, government employee or not, who publishes, makes available to an unauthorized person, or otherwise uses to the United States’ detriment classified information regarding the codes, cryptography, and communications intelligence utilized by the United States or a foreign government. [41]
[39] 18 U.S.C. § 1924. Agencies often require employees to sign non-disclosure agreements prior to obtaining access to classified information, the validity of which was upheld by the Supreme Court in Snepp v. United States, 444 U.S. 507 (1980).
[40] 50 U.S.C. § 783.
[41] 18 U.S.C. § 798. This provision is part of the Espionage Act (codified at 18 U.S.C. §§ 792 - 799), which generally protects against the unauthorized transmission of a much broader category of “national defense” information, prescribing fines and a prison term of up to ten years.
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/....security4.pdf
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1. The mildest penalty (1 yr max) under 18 U.S.C. § 1924 (note [39] in report) is clear as to the officer or employee. The statute is here.
The issues become murkier as we go down the chain of transmission, which could involve a number of people before it reaches the Web or media outlets. The possibility of using a conspiracy charge against others in the chain becomes less likely the further removed from the original source.
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2. The upgraded penalty (10 yr max) under 50 U.S.C. § 783 (note [40] in report) was part of the Cold War Communist Control package. The relevant subpart is here.
Quote:
TITLE 50 > CHAPTER 23 > SUBCHAPTER I
SUBCHAPTER I—CONTROL OF SUBVERSIVE ACTIVITIES
§ 781. Repealed.]
§ 782. Repealed.]
§ 783. Offenses
§§ 784, 785. Repealed.]
§§ 786, 787. Repealed.]
§§ 788 to 795. Repealed.]
§ 796. Effect of subchapter on other criminal laws
§ 797. Penalty for violation of security regulations and orders
§ 798. Repealed.]
Many sections have been repealed; but 783, 796 and 797 are still viable.
The guts of the statute is "... to communicate in any manner or by any means, to any other person whom such officer or employee knows or has reason to believe to be an agent or representative of any foreign government, any information of a kind which shall have been classified ...."
The limitation here is transmission to a foreign government agent or representative. So, if Cavguy transmits classified to JMM, this statute does not apply. Honest, I'm not an agent of the Finnish consulate.
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3. The more general statute (also 10 yr max in most cases; death or life in others) is the Espionage Act (note [41] in report), which goes back to WWI. The relevant subpart is here.
Quote:
TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 37—ESPIONAGE AND CENSORSHIP
[§ 791. Repealed.]
§ 792. Harboring or concealing persons
§ 793. Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information
§ 794. Gathering or delivering defense information to aid foreign government
§ 795. Photographing and sketching defense installations
§ 796. Use of aircraft for photographing defense installations
§ 797. Publication and sale of photographs of defense installations
§ 798. Disclosure of classified information
§ 798A. Temporary extension of section 794
§ 799. Violation of regulations of National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Prosecutions can generally be brought under 793 and/or 794, with a number of specific crimes (photos, sketches, etc.) in other sections. 798 is not of general application to classified information - it applies to codes, etc.
The usual problem in these cases is establishing a specific intent to injure national security.
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4. These specific charges (all three chapters could apply in a given case) can be combined with the general conspiracy statute, 18 USC § 371. Conspiracy to commit offense or to defraud United States, which is here.
For an example of multiple charges, see the proffer in the AIPAC case (the facts underlying Larry Franklin's guilty plea), which is here.
Litigation under the Espionage Act gets complicated (e.g., the Rosenberg case), but more currently the slew of pleadings filed in the AIPAC case, which are here.
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These statutes are badly in need of a complete revamping. Basically, we have the equivalent of a WWI tank to which parts have been added and subtracted in every subsequent armed conflict. Since each administration and Congress has its own take on the problem, a rational classified information policy seems unlikely.
PS: Cavguy - the Pentagon Papers case could have been prosecuted successfully; except that prosecution led to some shady stuff which the Nixon administration did not want to disclose. Sort of a Mexican standoff.
