Secrecy News: Chinese Missile Program; DoD Web Policies
Secrecy News: Chinese Missile
Program; DoD Web Policies
About
Secrecy News
SECRECY NEWS is an email publication of
the Federation of American Scientists (FAS)
Project on Government Secrecy. It provides
informal coverage of new developments in secrecy,
security and intelligence policies, as well
as links to new acquisitions on the Federation
of American Scientists web site. It
is published 2 to 3 times a week, or as events
warrant. Secrecy
News Article Index
The People's Republic of China has both the incentive and the
capability to develop and deploy countermeasures to U.S. missile
defense systems, according to a newly disclosed 1995 study
performed for the U.S. Ballistic Missile Defense Organization
(BMDO).
"Because the development of BMD systems by both Russia and the
United States threatens China's ballistic missile strategy of
retaliatory deterrence based on small-scale deployment, China
has a clear requirement for countermeasures to missile
defenses," the study found.
The study was prepared for BMDO by the Defense Intelligence
Agency, according to a former intelligence community official.
It provides a fairly comprehensive unclassified account of the
history and scope of China's ballistic missile programs.
"It gives a true and accurate, though not necessarily complete,
snapshot of what DIA thought about PRC missile stuff at the
time," the former official said. In other words, "what's in the
unclassified document may not be everything DIA knew, but it's
neither knowingly wrong nor misleading-by-omission."
A copy of the document, marked "for official use only" (and
missing page 19), was obtained by Secrecy News.
See "Country
Profiles: China," BMDO Countermeasure Integration Program, April
1995 (1.3 MB PDF file).
REPORTERS ASK RUMSFELD TO REVISE WEB POLICY
The National Press Club (NPC) has written to Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld to protest a Pentagon policy which would impose
sharp limits on web publication policy that go far beyond the
normal legal restrictions.
NPC President Tammy Lytle cited a December 5 memorandum from the
DoD Inspector General (IG) that would prohibit online
publication of any information that has not been specifically
approved for public release, or that is deemed to be of
questionable value to the general public.
The IG memorandum was first reported by Defense Week (see SN,
12/19/03).
"The classification process and exemptions to the Freedom of Information
Act already enable the government to withhold sensitive information
when necessary," Ms.
Lytle wrote to Secretary Rumsfeld on January 5. "There is no need
for individual agencies to add their own restrictions, especially
when they are so broadly worded as to likely become susceptible to
abuse."
While the DoD Inspector General memo is the latest to endorse such
far-ranging limits on web publication, they actually originate in
a 1998 Defense Department web policy which is available
here.
