The Defense Department is teeing up a new policy that aims to limit the disclosure of information about roadside bombs -- including military defenses and vulnerabilities -- in order to "deny enemies easy access to critical intelligence," according to a draft of the policy.  

A draft memo prepared for Gordon England, the deputy defense secretary, would impose strict limits on all exchanges of information on improvised explosive devices and efforts to defeat them. This includes a mandate that all requests for information from journalists regarding IED threats and IED defeat efforts be routed through public affairs offices, according to a copy of the memo.

The policy would also require entire new discipline on exchanging information related to IED efforts across the government, academia and industry.  

“Preserving information security is a critical component to winning this war and protecting the lives of our service members,” states the draft memo. “We must protect sensitive information and deny our enemies easy access to critical intelligence.”

Prepared by the office of Montgomery Meigs, a retired Army general who serves as director of the Defense Department's Joint IED Defeat Organization, the draft memo notes, “The enemies we face are adaptive and innovative and they glean substantial information from open sources.

“Individual pieces of information, though possibly insignificant taken alone, when aggregated provide robust information about our capabilities and weaknesses,” the memo continues.

President Bush, in a speech today at George Washington University that highlighted a range of Defense Department efforts to thwart IEDs, underscored the need to withhold select details of the government's efforts to defeat roadside bombs.

“The enemy can use even the smallest details to overcome our defenses,” Bush said. “We cannot let the enemy know how we're working to defeat them.”

Pentagon officials say they have strong evidence showing that adversaries in Iraq scour open sources, including press reports and private and professional technological forums, to acquire new understandings of U.S. military operations and practices.

Bush, for example, cited how enemy forces recently used a newspaper article that discussed a new counter-IED technology and within five days posted on the Internet a guide to defeating the device.

Pentagon sources said the story in question was a Feb. 12 Los Angeles Times item on the Joint IED Neutralizer, which noted the “remote-controlled device blows up roadside bombs with a directed electrical charge.”

That description of the technology appeared well before the Times story in numerous open sources, including the report accompanying the defense appropriations supplemental spending bill last May.

“News coverage of this topic has provided a rich source of information for the enemy, and we inadvertently contribute to our enemies' collection efforts through our responses to media interest,” states the draft memo.

The document includes “key messages approved for general use,” including: “The IED threat and its defeat is a top priority for DOD” and “DOD is making a significant investment (both in money and people) to defeat IEDs.”

The policy calls on military officials to use the “utmost care” in keeping information about effective U.S. defenses and vulnerabilities out of open sources, including academic and research papers.

The new policy also targets industry information.

“Unclassified documents such as requests for proposal and responses to them must not include sensitive information,” states the draft memo. “Such information should never be posted on non-secure web sites.”

The draft policy also identifies a category of “specifically protected information” prohibited from release in open sources, including: knowledge of specific enemy IED tactics, techniques and procedures as well as U.S. military analyses of enemy capabilities or vulnerabilities; the weaknesses of U.S. equipment, technology and organization; specific exploitation tactics, techniques and procedures; and information about vehicles or equipment damaged by an IED or IED components.  

Steven Aftergood, who directs the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy, said the Pentagon may have legitimate grounds for withholding IED-related information to protect forces.

“However, you cannot do that without paying a price,” Aftergood said. “And the price you pay is to exclude the participation of uncleared personnel in industry and academia who may have something valuable to offer in meeting this threat.”