The Citizen’s Guide to Spookspeak

As the trial of Oliver North unfolds, the American public will hear an awful lot about the risks and advantages of keeping and divulging secrets. Since much of the testimony will be in crypto-jargon, these few notes may be helpful to the uninitiated.

First, what is a national-security secret? Answer: Anything that a State or Defense Department junior officer says is one. Of course, a senior officer has to approve classification, but you can be sure that he’ll be very careful about taking risks with what, according to his subordinate, might help the enemy.

Classifications range from the barely covered (Limited Official Use, or LOU) to Top Secret and even above that, the names for which are themselves strictly protected. In addition, there are instructions on limiting the number of copies that are passed around in Washington and at posts abroad. Thus, there is Exclusive Distribution (EXDIS) of only a few hundred copies or No Distribution (NODIS) of only a few dozen. Above that there are Eyes Only and other specially devised captions that allow only a half dozen or so pairs of eyes in each office to have a peek.

Reducing the number of officially distributed copies meant, in State Department offices I worked in, an over-working of the photocopying machine just to maintain morale. Nothing so deeply offends and enrages an officer as being prevented from reading a sensitive message.

Second question: Why are some things classified and others not? Answer: There are four categories of classified material, three of which may be openly discussed and one that is always hidden and denied.

1-- To protect “sources and methods.” This phrase can cover all manner of devices and doings involved in the collection of intelligence. The gamut runs from information on spy satellites to old-fashioned humans, from bribes paid to three-martini lunches enjoyed. This category really does contain sensitive matter. Our national safety can be placed in jeopardy by leaks of technical data, and the lives of espionage personnel can be endangered by exposure. If North is, in fact, a patriot, don’t expect him to let drop anything in this category. People give their lives to protect this kind of information; he would gladly suffer a short prison term if that were the price of silence on sources and methods.

2-- Aid to the enemy. Plans or data that would assist the Soviets, Cubans, Nicaraguans or the like are surely not going to be the subject of any casual remarks by a Marine officer.

3-- Embarrassment to friends and allies. Will North re-expose the connections that Saudi Arabia, Israel, Honduras and others had to the Iran-Contra affair? If he does, the argument goes, they may never trust us again with secrets or stealthy cooperation. Indeed, they might not--except for the fact that the American press, Congress and the executive branch have been leaking this kind of embarrassing stuff about them for years. If any government hasn’t learned by now that the United States can’t be trusted to keep a secret for long, that regime isn’t smart enough for us to associate with.

Violations in this category grew with the rise in investigative journalism. When the Pentagon Papers were published, the State Department sent an urgent cable to embassies worldwide asking for an assessment of the damage to our foreign relations from this huge leak of secrets; would others still confide in us? I replied from an embassy in a tiny island country that no one there had ever been able to keep a secret for longer than 30 minutes, so the islanders would think our indiscretion perfectly natural. Other, more sophisticated nations are more easily embarrassed, but the hurt rarely lasts very long.

3-- Embarrassment to the United States. This category requires careful sorting. On the one hand, there is the kind of exposure that occurred when the “students” who seized our embassy in Tehran begangan to publish every document they could piece together. Much of it was harmless, but the accumulated evidence impressed deeply suspicious Iranians, enabling the hostage-holders to upgrade themselves from mere kidnapers to destroyers of a nest of spies. As defenders of the nation’s security, they were able to justify the crisis for many more months than it might have lasted.

On the other hand, I recall an “eyes only” cable that Ambassador Chester Bowles sent from New Delhi in the 1960s for Secretary Dean Rusk and a handful of others describing India with his most personal insights on a range of issues. Two months later the text appeared, almost verbatim, in Harper’s magazine. Not a peep was heard from India.

If, after the Iran-Contra hearings, North has something to say in this category, let’s hear it at the trial rather than wait for the magazine articles or lecture circuit.

4-- Self-promotion. Though it’s never admitted, classification is used to elevate the importance of the writer or officer involved. I once worked for a senior official who insisted that his every utterance was EXDIS, at a minimum. It is precisely the higher reaches of classification, however, that are read by the outsiders who manage to get their hands on sensitive cables and then, if maliciously inclined, leak the contents. During the Iranian revolution, when the front page of the New York Times should have been classified daily because of the leaks it presented, I found that the most secure way to communicate sensitive information to our embassy in Tehran was in an unclassified message. Not one ever reached the press because no one with any “corridor smarts” would stoop to read a message that wasn’t even LOU.