A note from Steven Aftergood on SAPs: "special access programs," which are the most secret of secret government programs. The most highly secret are the so-called "Unacknowledged SAPs": their existence will be denied even to other secret agents working on related programs, unless they have been specifically authorized to know about them. -- SAPs are great favorites of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, as Seymour Hersh detailed in his recent article in the May 24 New Yorker, entitled "The Gray Zone"...
DOD UPDATES SPECIAL ACCESS PROGRAM SECURITY
By Steven Aftergood
Secrecy News
July 2, 2004
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/index.html
The apparatus of government secrecy takes on its most concentrated form in
classified programs known as "special access programs" (SAPs). Security policy
for SAPs has recently been updated by the Pentagon.
There are three types of SAPs within the military: acquisition programs,
intelligence programs, and operations and support programs.
Furthermore, according to DoD policy, these SAPs fall into two categories,
Acknowledged and Unacknowledged. "An Acknowledged SAP is a program which may be
openly recognized or known; however, specifics are classified within that SAP.
The existence of an Unacknowledged SAP or an unacknowledged portion of an
Acknowledged program, will not be made known to any person not authorized for
this information."
As suggested in the previous sentence, there can be SAPs within SAPs,
creating concentric circles of ever-increasing secrecy.
By their nature, SAPs are a challenge to external oversight. From time to
time the authority to create and conduct a SAP is abused, as in the 1987-1991
unacknowledged SAP named Timber Wind that was later exposed and found by
officials to be over-classified.
The new DoD policy on SAPs was circulated in a March 30 letter from Deputy
Under Secretary of Defense (Counterintelligence and Security) Carol A. Haave.
"Current circumstances indicate an urgent need to circulate this guidance
throughout DoD as soon as possible," she wrote. See her letter of transmittal
here:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/library/nispom_dod_overprint_rev1_cov.pdf
The new guidance itself is contained in the "Department of Defense Overprint
to the National Industrial Security Program Operating Manual (NISPOM)
Supplement," Revision 1, April 2004. A copy was obtained by Secrecy News and is
posted here (3.2 MB PDF file, 219 pages):
http://www.fas.org/sgp/library/nispom_dod_overprint_rev1.pdf
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