2. Each agency of the Executive branch that originates or handles classified information shall adopt internal procedures to govern the reporting and investigation of unauthorized disclosures of such information. Such procedures shall at a minimum provide that: a. All such disclosures that the agency considers to be seriously damaging to its mission and responsibilities shall be evaluated to ascertain the nature of the information disclosed and the extent to which it had been disseminated. b. The agency shall conduct a preliminary internal investigation prior to or concurrently with seeking investigative assistance from other agencies. c. The agency shall maintain records of disclosures so evaluated and investigated. d. Agencies in the possession of classified information originating with another agency shall cooperate with the originating agency by conducting internal investigations of the unauthorized disclosure of such information. Persons determined by the agency to have knowingly made such disclosures or to have refused cooperation with investigations of such unauthorized disclosures will be denied further access to classified information and subjected to other administrative sanctions as appropriate. 3. Unauthorized disclosures of classified information shall be reported to the Department of Justice and the Information Security Oversight Office, as required by statute and Executive orders. The Department of Justice shall continue to review reported unauthorized disclosures of classified information to determine whether FBI investigation is warranted. Interested departments and agencies shall be consulted in developing criteria for evaluating such matters and in determining which cases should receive investigative priority. The FBI is authorized to investigate such matters as constitute potential violations of federal criminal law, even though administrative sanctions may be sought instead of criminal prosecution. 4. Nothing in this directive is intended to modify or preclude interagency agreements between FBI and other criminal investigative agencies regarding their responsibility for conducting investigations within their own agencies or departments. 5. The Office of Personnel Management and all departments and agencies with employees having access to classified information are directed to revise existing regulations and policies, as necessary, so that employees may be required to submit to polygraph examinations, when appropriate, in the course of investigations of unauthorized disclosures of classified information. As a minimum, such regulations shall permit an agency to decide that appropriate adverse consequences will follow an employee's refusal to cooperate with a polygraph examination that is limited in scope to the circumstances of the unauthorized disclosure under investigation. Agency regulations may provide that only the head of the agency, or his delegate, is empowered to-order- an-employee to submit_to_a polygraph examination. Results of polygraph examinations should not be relied upon to the exclusion of other information obtained during investigations. 6. The Attorney General, in consultation with the Director, Office of Personnel Management, is requested to establish an interdepartmental group to study the federal personnel security program and recommend appropriate revisions in existing Executive orders, regulations, and guidelines. -no public briefings or access to its premises is allowed-its mission was first discussed openly in the 1975 hearings of the Senate Select Committee to Study Government Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activiues. Various aspects of the agency's responsibilitics also have been touched upon in a handful of depositions filed by the agency in Federal courts, several recent executive orders and a few aging documents found in the towering stacks of the National Archives. According to these sources, the N.S.A. has two broad goals, one offensive, ane defensive. First, the agency aggressively monitors international com munications links searching for "foreign intelligence," intercepting electronic messages as well as signals generated by radar or missile launchings Second, the agency prevents foreign penetration of com munications haks carrying in formation bearing on "national recurity." According to an unpublished analysis by the House Govern ment Operations Commuttee. the N.S.A. may have employed 120,000 people in 1976 when armed-services personnel The Senate select committee's study of the N.S.A., one of the most extensive inde pendent examinations ever made of the agency, was initi ated in the wake of Watergate and the disclosure of other abuses by Federal intelligence agencies. During the course of the investigation, Its chairman, Senator Frank Church, repeatedly emphasized lus belief that the N.S.A's intelligence-gathering activities were essential to the nation's security. He also stressed that the equip ment used to watch the Rus sians could just as easily "monitor the private communications of Americans." If such forces were ever turned against the country's communications system. Senator Church said, "no American would have any privacy left... There would be no place to hide." 32 deed included Americans who were merely stating their political beliefs. The agency first became involved to this more questionate kind of surveillance in the early 1980's when either Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy or the F.B.1. asked it to moni tor all telephone calls be tween the United States and Cuba. This list of international calls was significantly enlarged during the Johnson Administrtion as Federal authorities became concerned that foreign governments might try to influence American civil-rights leaders. The N.S.A. gradually developed a "watch list" of Americans that included those speaking out against the Vietnam War. nary citizens. When it ap❘ gathered, the N.S.A. between peared that Congress might tearn about the esvendropping, the surveillance haled The Senate Intelligence committee also discovered a second illegal surveillance program, under which the N.S.A., and its military predecessors, examined most of the telegramos entering or loaving the country between 1915 and 1975. The program was abruptly balted in May 1975, a date coinciding with the Senate committee's first expression of interest in it. age technology has outpaced 1052 and 1974 developed files the law. The secrecy that has an approximately 75,000 surrounded much of the Americans, some of whom NSA's activities and the undoubtedly threatened the lack of Congressional everantion's security. However, sight bave prevented, in the the agency also developed past, bringing statutes in line Eles on civil-rights and anti-with the N.S.A.'s capabilities. war activists, Congressmen and other citizens who law fully questioned Government dicies. For at least 13 of the 21 years the agency was building these files, the C.I.A had access to them and used the data in its Operation Chase, another computerized and legal tracking system set up Curing the Vietnam War. At its peak, the Chaos files had references to mare than 300,000 Americans. Several months after the hearing, the Senate intelligence couvaittee issued a report that expresser great concern about both the N.S.A's activities and the ailure of Congress and the Haderal courts to compre bend them. "The watch-list The records obtained by the committee indicate that from the project's earliest stages. both Government officials and corporate executives un derstood that the surveillance flatly violated a Federal law According to the subes against intercepting or & quent investigation by the vulging telegrams. Certainly, Senase intelligence commit. they were aware that such intee, a total of 1,200 Americans terception violated the were targeted by the N.S.A. Fourth Amendment, guaran between 1207 and 1973 be teeing against unreasonable cause of their political activi searches and seizures, which ties. The subjects-chosen also holds that a court war-activities and the sophisti by the F.B.1., the Secret Serv. rant can be issued only when ice, the C.L.A. and the De there is probable cause to be fense Lutelligence Agency-lieve a crime has been comIncluded members of radical groups, celebrities and ordi mited. Using the information thus cated capabilities that they highlight present some of the most crucial privacy issue DOW Incing this nation," the committee warned. "Space. Neither the courts mor Com greas have dealt with the interception of com mications using the NSA'S highly sensitive and complex technology." The committee recommended that Congress approve specific legislation spelling out the precise obligations and limitations of the agency. ᄆ single source of intellignace today." The logic of the cold war also dictated that intelligence include not only secret blue prints for the latest weapon or infiltrating the enemy's reaks with spies, but also early signs that a blight had hit China's rice crop, indica tions that a new oil field had been located in a remote cor ner of Russia and analysts of radio traffic at an important Soviet-bloc airport. The already expensive appetite of American Intellagence analysts was further sharpened by technical ad vances that were occurring. not entirely by chance, at the same time. The technology in With the end of World War question was the digital com II and be start of the cold puter, the waxairous tool dili war, the value of effective in gently developed by Ameri telligence remained high. In can scientists working for 1862, a special Presidential such companies as 1.A.M committee recommended the the RCA Corporation and establishment of the N.S.A.. Sperry Rand, and covertly replacing the four separate underwritten in a major way surveillance agencies within by the N.S.A. The computers the Defense Department, ability to acquire, organise, concluding that a unified ef- store and retrieve huge fort was essential because amounts of data was an es electronic surveillance of in-sential factor leading to the ternational communications agency's enlarged definition "ranks as our most important of intelligence. |