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This article reconstructs the bureaucratic and legal processes that culminated in the creation of the modern national security classification system in Executive Order No. 10,290, issued by Harry Truman in 1951. It argues that classification was shaped by processes of improvisation endogenous to the federal bureaucracy, which produced the problems of overclassification, definitional vagueness, and ambiguous constitutional status that have haunted the secrecy regime until the present. In so doing, it provides new insight into the development of the modern presidency, the national security state, and American democracy, and suggests possible paths to reform the contemporary pathologies of the classification system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to explore the relation between nuclear physics and secrecy in early Cold War Europe. After World War II, nuclear physics re-emerged from the Manhattan Project as a largely classified field. Over time, the boundary between secret and unclassified information set by the United States moved due to both political and scientific developments. This shifting boundary of secrecy is taken as a place to investigate power relations in the context of Cold War Science. The Netherlands and Norway are two countries with early nuclear programs that tried to move this boundary, in part by building a joint reactor in 1951. Whereas they requested classified information from the US in 1946, their programs developed to a point where the US made requests to classify nuclear information in Europe by 1960. Between 1954 and 1960, the joint reactor program became the site of a multilateral intelligence operation. Secrecy was used as an intelligence tool to spread nuclear disinformation to the Soviet Union. This history shows how (de)classification opened and closed windows of opportunity and sheds light on the effectiveness of classification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can states credibly communicate their intentions through covert policy tools, despite the absence of credibility-enhancing publicity? Most extant research suggests covert action and secrecy in general are uniquely uninformative and often used as an alternative to signaling. Yet episodes such as Richard Nixon's secret bombing of Cambodia suggest that leaders have used covert action to convey intentions and coerce adversaries. This article builds a theoretical framework for understanding signaling in the covert sphere, developing reasons why states find covert communication both intelligible (that is, the basic intended message is understandable) and credible (that is, the message is believable). We argue that two target audiences—local allies and strategic adversaries—tend to observe covert action and that the costs and risks incurred by initiating and expanding covert action credibly convey resolve. We assess our arguments empirically through careful process tracing of a set of nested covert interventions by Soviet and American leaders in conflicts in Angola and Afghanistan. Drawing on a trove of recently declassified material, we assess intentions and inferences related to covert signaling. We find that both strategic adversaries and local partners observed and drew inferences about resolve. Covert lethal aid programs thereby served as a credible indicator of resolve through three mechanisms we identify in the paper: sunk costs, counter-escalation risks, and domestic political risks. These findings have important implications for the study of coercive bargaining, secrecy, and reputation. They also shed light on an important policy tool contemporary policymakers will likely use, suggesting the kinds of effects covert action has and elucidating the basic interpretive framework needed to communicate messages with new methods like covert cyber attacks. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Three experiments demonstrate that in the context of U.S. foreign policy decision making, people infer informational quality from secrecy. In Experiment 1, people weighed secret information more heavily than public information when making recommendations about foreign political candidates. In Experiment 2, people judged information presented in documents ostensibly produced by the Department of State and the National Security Council as being of relatively higher quality when those documents were secret rather than public. Finally, in Experiment 3, people judged a National Security Council document as being of higher quality when presented as a secret document rather than a public document and evaluated others' decisions more favorably when those decisions were based on secret information. Discussion centers on the mediators, moderators, and broader implications of this secrecy heuristic in foreign policy contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Atomic energy developed from 1940 as a subject shrouded in secrecy. Identified successively as a crucial element in military strategy, national status and export aspirations, the research and development of atomic piles (nuclear chain-reactors) were nurtured at isolated installations. Like monastic orders, new national laboratories managed their specialist workers in occupational environments that were simultaneously cosseted and constrained, defining regional variants of a new state-managed discipline: reactor technology. This paper discusses the significance of security in defining the new subject in the USA, UK and Canada - wartime allies with similar political traditions distinct but trajectories in this field during the Cold War. The intellectual borders and content of the subject developed differently in each country, shaped under the umbrella of secrecy by disparate clusters of expertise, industrial traditions, and national goals. The nascent cadre was contained until the mid 1950s by classified publications and state-sponsored specialist courses. The early context of high security filtered its members and capped enduringly both their professional aspirations and public engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Continued secrecy surrounding signals intelligence during the Cold War has profoundly distorted the historical record, making a full and accurate military, diplomatic, and presidential history of the last half century impossible for now. Not only history, but the ongoing intelligence enterprise itself, would be better served by significantly greater openness. This article is adapted from the Schorreck Memorial Lecture in Cryptologic History, presented by the author at the National Cryptologic Museum, Ft. Meade, Maryland, 24 May 2010, and the National Security Agency, 26 May 2010. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the author's discussion in modifying the Classified Information Procedure Act (CIPA) in the U.S. He mentions that the U.S. justice system must settle the conflict between due process and secrecy in information. He cites several questions concerning classified information including the extent of intelligence agencies to fall within the duty of prosecutor for discoverable information, whether court should recognize the sensitivity of the information and whether the Congress should stop a trial to protect classified information.

The article explores developments surrounding government information policy and secrecy in the U.S. In the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1980, Congress gave OMB the authority for, and charged it with, a broad range of responsibilities related to information management. Amendments to the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) added a purpose to the Act to maximize the usefulness of information collected and disseminated by the Federal Government. Circular A-130 was revised in 1994 in a manner that makes informing the public an integral part of agency missions.

The article presents a perspective on the availability and secrecy of government information. It has been found out that many groups who watch what goes on in the information-availability world. In theory, American citizen would be able to request government information and have that information sent to him or her. However, what the information is will determine whether you get it. Furthermore, there is sometimes the runaround you receive before finding out that the report you want falls under one of the nine exception rules that the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) has established.

Talks about the secrecy of information categorized as classified in the U.S. Impact of the emerging digital transformation on the secrecy of information; Ways in which a document become classified; Mode in grappling the secrecy of information.

Summary: Herein, we consider an underlay cognitive radio network (CRN) where mobile secondary user wishes to transmit a confidential information to the secondary destination in the presence of an illegitimate eavesdropper which is trying to steal the classified message signal. The proposed scenario can be viable for a secondary safety task force working with a primary regiment, which wishes to transmit the confidential information to the commander while an eavesdropper is trying to intercept the classified information. In the analysis, two novel power allocation methods are considered by assuming perfect and limited feedback channels of the primary network, and for both methods, exact and asymptotic expressions of secrecy outage probability (SOP) are derived for N*Nakagami‐m fading channels which are used to model fading channels such as mobile‐to‐mobile/vehicle‐to‐vehicle communication systems where the nodes are moving into a rich scattering environment. We further verified our analytic results through Monte‐Carlo simulations. It is shown from the numerical results that the cascading degree of the channels has a worsening effect on the secrecy outage performance of the CRN systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Criticizes the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush for its penchant for secrecy. Justification of the Bush administration for classifying information; Importance of the war on terrorism in the secrecy of the Bush administration; Allegation that the federal government withhold information that are vital to the interests of the people.