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Ontario, CA, 8/11/2006 HOMENEWSSPORTSBUSINESSOPINIONSENTERTAINMENTHEALTHT RAVELINFOCLASSIFIED ADS







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Article Launched: 08/11/2006 12:00:00 AM PDT

Classified documents more about covering flaws
By Sara A. Carter, Staff Writer



Countless government documents are classified as confidential each year. The announced rationale usually being that public access to such information could compromise a government operation or the people involved in it, or could reveal secrets that would be exploited by the United States' enemies.
Yet the number of documents potentially so volatile is limited, at best. Most government correspondence, classified or no, deals far less with national security and intelligence concerns than with policies and practices -- some of which reveal deep flaws in how the government conducts its business.

No better examples can be found than the confidential documents publicized over the past year and half by the Daily Bulletin as part of the Beyond Borders series of stories about immigration. The newspaper has received and published numerous confidential Department of Homeland Security documents from anonymous sources seeking to share information they believe is vital to the public interest.

The documents have included revelations that Border Patrol agents were targets of assassination by Mexican gangs; that the Mexican military had crossed the U.S. border without permission more than 200 times since 1996; and that Department of Homeland Security officials were tipping the Mexican government to the whereabouts of U.S. civilian illegal immigrant groups like the Minutemen.

Though the documents were not meant for public consumption, both the Daily Bulletin and sources for the documents -- who have not been identified by the newspaper -- believe disclosing the information sheds needed light on Department of Homeland Security and Bush administration policies.

"Well, the DHS is different from other federal agencies, not so much in its mission but in its size," said Terry Francke, general counsel for Californians Aware, a First Amendment advocacy group. "It's the largest agglomeration of previously independent departments and offices in this country's history. There is a hideously large amount of information behind that department's walls.

"The bigger the bureaucracy, the more vulnerable it is to fraud, waste and abuse."

On May 11, 2004, the Department of Homeland Security issued a management directive dictating that employees not share information with the media or any public person. Employees caught sharing information are to be reprimanded by the agency, according to the directive.

"It was a policy of fear that the Department instilled in its employees," said TJ Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, who responded to many of the confidential Border Patrol alerts published in the past year. "I understand national security information regarding ongoing investigations needs to remain classified, but much of what they are trying to suppress is nowhere near that level of detail."

"The whole objective of this administration is to intimidate people with this code of silence," he added. "The average law enforcement agent is scared to death to talk to anyone about these policies."

The DHS policy document, ‘Safeguarding Sensitive but Unclassified Documents,' allowed any employee within the department to classify any piece of information as FOUO --For Official Use Only.

"Any DHS employee, detailee, or contractor can designate information falling within one or more of the categories cited in section 6, paragraph C, as FOUO," the DHS document states. "Officials occupying supervisory or managerial positions are authorized to designate other information not listed above and originating under their jurisdiction, as FOUO."

Publishing the truth then becomes a serious challenge, as sources willing to leak the information must know reporters willing to protect them, Bonner added.

As recently as Thursday, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, in response to the foiled terror attacks in England, told federal agents not to leak any information about the ongoing investigations into the incident.

"... We have a very serious investigation that is proceeding in the United Kingdom," Gonzalez said. "And we want to be very, very careful as we try to inform and educate the American public about saying too much that might in any way jeopardize that investigation or a subsequent prosecution."

Michael Maxwell, former director of the Office of Security and Investigations of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS), said that many times information that should be made public is kept secret under the cloak of national security.

Maxwell, who has testified before Congress numerous times this year and offered documentation revealing national security failures in his organization, said that the shroud of secrecy is a disservice to the public.

"You always have to strike a balance between protecting the public and safeguarding national security information," Maxwell said. "If you release certain sensitive information, it could damage national security. But at the same time you can't go overboard and hold on to information that should be legitimately released into the public realm.

"There's a difference between national security and public safety," he added. "What the Attorney General said (Thursday) was a reminder to agents and others not to release national security info to the press, despite the fact that the public is crying for information that they feel would enhance public safety. "

According to several anonymous sources who have provided information to the Daily Bulletin in the past, Department of Homeland Security officials and the Bush administration have been kept a tight lid on what they consider to be confidential information. Although some information is considered classified, other information that exposes the government's failures in protecting the country should not be held to those same standards, Maxwell said.

Over the past year, the Daily Bulletin has obtained information ranging from internal Border Patrol alerts and memoranda to confidential information regarding border security. One document disclosed the number of times the Mexican military has crossed into the United States, and included a map of the incursions drawn up the President's National Drug Control Policy.

The DHS document -- which showed more than 200 incursions in the past 10 years -- came to light in January, at about the same time men dressed in Mexican military uniforms had an armed standoff with sheriff's deputies in Hudspeth County, Texas. The two events combined to garner massive national media attention.

Other DHS documents leaked to the Daily Bulletin about Southwest border security issues revealed terrorist threats to law enforcement officials, dangers to public safety and evidence of Mexican narcotics syndicates.

Many of those memoranda and other documents would have been impossible to obtain had it not been for concerned government employees who chose to leak the information and reveal the data.

In January, after publication of the documents revealing the Mexican military incursions, and that those incursions usually were related to narcotics trafficking, members of the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security sent letters to Mexican and U.S. officials requesting information regarding the media reports. Among the officials receiving the letters were Carlos de Icaza, Mexican ambassador to the U.S.; Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; and Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff.

Once the stories were published, the evidence and information obtained in the documents prompted congressional leaders to hold numerous hearings on border security, and led to several changes in legislation over the past year.

A story published in June by the Daily Bulletin that exposed U.S. Border Patrol officials sharing information with the Mexican government on the location of civilian border watch groups led to the House of Representatives passing an amendment preventing taxpayer money from going to provide "a foreign government information relating to the activities of an organized civilian volunteer group."

It is imperative that information is shared with the public and that congressional leaders know how appropriated money is being used, Francke said.

"There are scores and scores of mishaps and misappropriations that are likely to occur almost on a daily basis because the scale of an operation like the DHS," Francke said. "Not letting people speak on fraud, waste and abuse isn't going to affect the national security of this nation, but it will affect the way these government organizations operate."


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"The whole objective of this administration is to intimidate people with this code of silence," he added. "The average law enforcement agent is scared to death to talk to anyone about these policies."

I can understand the need for being careful re homeland security but we know our borders aren't secured - it works both ways.

Wish I could be a fly on the wall inside a border patrol agency.

This Bush administration is a nightmare!