Steven Aftergood

Last updated

Steven Aftergood is a critic of U.S. government secrecy policy. He directs the Federation of American Scientists project on Government Secrecy and is the author of the Federation publication Secrecy News . [1]

Contents

Life and career

Aftergood has a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles and has published research in solid-state physics. [2]

In 1991, Aftergood exposed the classified Project Timberwind, an unacknowledged U.S. Department of Defense special access program to develop a nuclear thermal rocket. That episode led the Federation of American Scientists to initiate an ongoing research project on government secrecy, led by Aftergood. [3]

Controversies

Intelligence budget disclosure

Aftergood was the plaintiff in a 1997 Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Central Intelligence Agency which led to the declassification and publication of the U.S. government's total intelligence budget ($26.6 billion in 1997) for the first time in fifty years. [4]

In 2006, Aftergood won a FOIA lawsuit against the National Reconnaissance Office to release unclassified budget records. [5]

Preserving CIA email

A Central Intelligence Agency proposal in 2014 to eliminate the email records of all but 22 senior Agency officials was derailed after a reference to the move was spotted by Aftergood, triggering a critical reaction in Congress and elsewhere. [6] The proposal was formally withdrawn by the Agency in 2016. [7]

Reducing nuclear weapons secrecy

As part of an effort by the Federation of American Scientists to reduce secrecy surrounding nuclear weapons, Aftergood acquired and posted a 2019 Joint Chiefs of Staff publication on Nuclear Operations. The document describes a potential role for such weapons in U.S. warfighting plans. [8] [9]

Promoting access to government information

Aftergood maintained several widely-used collections of government documents. These include Presidential national security directives, [10] US military doctrinal publications, [11] applications of the state secrets privilege, [12] uses of the Invention Secrecy Act, [13] Congressional Research Service reports, [14] and studies performed by the JASON science advisory panel. [15]

Awards

Aftergood’s work on government secrecy policy has been recognized with the Pioneer Award from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, [16] the James Madison Award from the American Library Association, [17] the Public Access to Government Information Award from the American Association of Law Libraries, [18] and the Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award from the Playboy Foundation. [19]

Selected publications

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Federation of American Scientists</span> American think tank

The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) is an American nonprofit global policy think tank with the stated intent of using science and scientific analysis to attempt to make the world more secure. FAS was founded in 1946 by scientists, including some who worked on the Manhattan Project, to develop the first atomic bombs. The Federation of American Scientists states that it aims to reduce the amount of nuclear weapons that are in use, and prevent nuclear and radiological terrorism. It says it aims to present high standards for nuclear energy's safety and security, illuminate government secrecy practices, as well as track and eliminate the global illicit trade of conventional, nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">United States Intelligence Community</span> Collective term for US federal intelligence and security agencies

The United States Intelligence Community (IC) is a group of separate U.S. federal government intelligence agencies and subordinate organizations that work both separately and collectively to conduct intelligence activities which support the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States. Member organizations of the IC include intelligence agencies, military intelligence, and civilian intelligence and analysis offices within federal executive departments.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Intelligence Bureau (India)</span> Indian federal intelligence agency

The Intelligence Bureau (IB) is India's internal security and counterintelligence agency under the Ministry of Home Affairs. It was founded in 1887 as Central Special Branch, and is reputed to be the oldest such organisation in the world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National security directive</span> Instruction the President of the United States sends to defense and intelligence advisers

National security directives are presidential directives issued for the National Security Council (NSC). Starting with Harry Truman, every president since the founding of the National Security Council in 1947 has issued national security directives in one form or another, which have involved foreign, military and domestic policies. National security directives are generally highly classified and are available to the public only after "a great many years" have elapsed. Unlike executive orders, national security directives are usually directed only to the National Security Council and the most senior executive branch officials, and embody foreign and military policy-making guidance rather than specific instructions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Security Archive</span> Open government advocacy and investigative journalism nonprofit at George Washington University

The National Security Archive is a 501(c)(3) non-governmental, non-profit research and archival institution located on the campus of the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1985 to check rising government secrecy. The National Security Archive is an investigative journalism center, open government advocate, international affairs research institute, and the largest repository of declassified U.S. documents outside the federal government. The National Security Archive has spurred the declassification of more than 15 million pages of government documents by being the leading non-profit user of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), filing a total of more than 70,000 FOIA and declassification requests in its over 35+ years of history.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal</span> Award

The National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal (NIDSM) is a decoration awarded for service to the United States Intelligence Community. The decoration is awarded to any member or contributor to the National Intelligence Community, either civilian or military, who distinguishes themselves by meritorious actions to the betterment of national security in the United States of America, through sustained and selfless service of the highest order.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Open secret</span> Generally known but officially unacknowledged information

The phrase open secret refers to information that was originally intended to be confidential but has at some point been disclosed and is known to many people. Open secrets are secrets in the sense that they are excluded from formal or official discourse, but they are open in the sense that they are familiar and referred to in idioms and language games, though these often require explanation for outsiders.

The state secrets privilege is an evidentiary rule created by United States legal precedent. Application of the privilege results in exclusion of evidence from a legal case based solely on affidavits submitted by the government stating that court proceedings might disclose sensitive information which might endanger national security. United States v. Reynolds, which involved alleged military secrets, was the first case that saw formal recognition of the privilege.

The United States government classification system is established under Executive Order 13526, the latest in a long series of executive orders on the topic of classified information beginning in 1951. Issued by President Barack Obama in 2009, Executive Order 13526 replaced earlier executive orders on the topic and modified the regulations codified to 32 C.F.R. 2001. It lays out the system of classification, declassification, and handling of national security information generated by the U.S. government and its employees and contractors, as well as information received from other governments.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Risen</span> American journalist

James Risen is an American journalist for The Intercept. He previously worked for The New York Times and before that for Los Angeles Times. He has written or co-written many articles concerning U.S. government activities and is the author or co-author of two books about the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and a book about the American public debate about abortion. Risen is a Pulitzer Prize winner.

Special access programs (SAPs) in the U.S. Federal Government are security protocols that provide highly classified information with safeguards and access restrictions that exceed those for regular (collateral) classified information. SAPs can range from black projects to routine but especially-sensitive operations, such as COMSEC maintenance or presidential transportation support. In addition to collateral controls, a SAP may impose more stringent investigative or adjudicative requirements, specialized nondisclosure agreements, special terminology or markings, exclusion from standard contract investigations (carve-outs), and centralized billet systems. Within the Department of Defense, SAP is better known as "SAR" by the mandatory Special Access Required (SAR) markings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center</span> Israeli research center

The Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center is an Israeli nuclear installation located in the Negev desert, about thirteen kilometers south-east of the city of Dimona.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jeremy Stone</span> American scientist

Jeremy J. Stone was an American scientist who was president of the Federation of American Scientists from 1970 to 2000, where he led that organization's advocacy initiatives in arms control, human rights, and foreign policy. In 2000, he was succeeded as president by Henry Kelly. Stone continued his work at a new organization called Catalytic Diplomacy. Stone was the son of the journalist I. F. Stone.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence</span> US government agency

The Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence (OICI), also abbreviated IN, DOE-IN, DOE/IN, I&CI, or OIC, was established in 2006 by the merger of pre-existing Energy Department intelligence and security organizations. It is an office of the United States Department of Energy (DOE) responsible for all intelligence and counterintelligence activities throughout the DOE complex; due to this central role, OICI is designated DOE's Headquarters Intelligence. As a component of the United States Intelligence Community in addition to the Department of Energy, OICI reports to both the Director of National Intelligence and Secretary of Energy.

Secrecy is a 2008 documentary film directed by Harvard University professors Peter Galison and Robb Moss. According to its website, it "is a film about the vast, invisible world of government secrecy," and features interviews with a variety of people on all sides of the secrecy issue, including Steven Aftergood, Tom Blanton, James B. Bruce, Barton Gellman, Melissa Boyle Mahle, the plaintiffs in United States v. Reynolds (1953), Siegfried Hecker, Mike Levin, and Neal Katyal and Charles Swift.

Hans Møller Kristensen is director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists. He writes about nuclear weapons policy there; he is coauthor of the Nuclear Notebook column in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and the World Nuclear Forces appendix in Stockholm International Peace Research Institute's annual SIPRI Yearbook.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas A. Drake</span> Former NSA senior executive, military veteran, and whistleblower (born 1957)

Thomas Andrews Drake is a former senior executive of the National Security Agency (NSA), a decorated United States Air Force and United States Navy veteran, and a whistleblower. In 2010, the government alleged that Drake mishandled documents, one of the few such Espionage Act cases in U.S. history. Drake's defenders claim that he was instead being persecuted for challenging the Trailblazer Project. He is the 2011 recipient of the Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling and co-recipient of the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence (SAAII) award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jeffrey Alexander Sterling</span> American CIA officer and convict

Jeffrey Alexander Sterling is an American lawyer and former CIA employee who was arrested, charged, and convicted of violating the Espionage Act for revealing details about Operation Merlin to journalist James Risen. Sterling claimed he was prosecuted as punishment for filing a race discrimination lawsuit against the CIA. The case was based on what the judge called "very powerful circumstantial evidence." In May 2015, Sterling was sentenced to 3½ years in prison. In 2016 and 2017, he filed complaints and wrote letters regarding mistreatment, lack of medical treatment for life-threatening conditions, and false allegations against him by corrections officers leading to further punitive measures. He was released from prison in January 2018.

The Contingency Fund for Foreign Intercourse was a United States government "black budget" program established in 1790 to fund covert operations primarily directed against Europe. Three years later, it consumed 12% of the government's budget to help pay the ransoms of American hostages held by Barbary pirates. In 1846, it came under the scrutiny of Congress, but the government refused to provide details of the operation of the fund.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Open Source-Intelligence Agency</span> Proposed US government agency

The National Open Source-Intelligence Agency (NOSA) is a proposed 19th member of the United States Intelligence Community (IC) to be tasked with the collection and exploitation of open-source intelligence (OSINT). Creation of the agency would consolidate open source efforts from across the US government into a new functional manager for the open-source intelligence discipline, drawing resources from the Open Source Enterprise of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Open Source Integration Center (OSIC) of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, as well as other open source focused entities across the government.

References

  1. ↑ Dana Priest (November 26, 2003). "One Man Against Secrecy; Newsletter Editor Works to Limit Classified Information" (PDF). Washington Post.
  2. ↑ "Steven Aftergood". Federation of American Scientists.
  3. ↑ William J. Broad (April 3, 1991). "Secret Nuclear-Powered Rocket Being Developed for 'Star Wars'". New York Times.
  4. ↑ FAS Wins Lawsuit Against CIA on Intelligence Budget Disclosure, CIA Statement, 15 Oct. 1997.
  5. ↑ National Reconnaissance Office Yields to FAS Lawsuit, by Steven Aftergood, 21 Dec. 2006.
  6. ↑ David Welna (November 20, 2014). "The CIA Wants To Delete Old Email; Critics Say 'Not So Fast'". National Public Radio.
  7. ↑ "CIA Withdraws Email Destruction Proposal". Secrecy News. April 24, 2016.
  8. ↑ David Axe (June 20, 2019). "Oops: The Pentagon Just Revealed Its Nuclear Doctrine". The National Interest.
  9. ↑ Julian Borger (June 19, 2019). "Nuclear weapons: experts alarmed by new Pentagon 'war-fighting' doctrine". The Guardian.
  10. ↑ "Presidential directives and executive orders". via Federation of American Scientists.
  11. ↑ "Defense Department Intelligence and Security Doctrine, Directives and Instructions". via Federation of American Scientists.
  12. ↑ "The State Secrets Privilege: Selected Case Files". via Federation of American Scientists.
  13. ↑ "Invention Secrecy". via Federation of American Scientists.
  14. ↑ "Congressional Research Service reports". via Federation of American Scientists.
  15. ↑ "JASON Defense Advisory Panel Reports". via Federation of American Scientists.
  16. ↑ "Transparency Activist, Public Domain Scholar, Legal Blogger, and Imprisoned E-Voting Researcher Win Pioneer Awards". October 19, 2010.
  17. ↑ "Past Recipients of the James Madison Award".
  18. ↑ "Public Access to Government Information Award".
  19. ↑ "Past Winners and Judges of the Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Awards".
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.