Maybe there have been threads on this, and if so, I apologize for bringing it up again, but I’m unable to find much on it. I remember reading several times about documents that the government had classified as Top Secret or some other level, and after many years, these documents were cleared for public consumption. And it turned out that what had been considered Top Secret were some very innocuous and trivial things, things that made you wonder why they were classified in the first place. Can anyone point to an example of this in recent history? Thanks. (Fallout from watching Frontline).
I can’t think of a recent example, but remember that government will always error on the side of classifying something that may seen trivial and innocuous 50 years from now, versus releasing it and having to deal with the repercussions. The classifiers have absolutely no incentive to release something that may turn out to be not all that secret-worthy…
Back in the mid-70’s, I recall a photographer made a point; he was sitting in the gallery overlooking an international summit and pointed out that nobody batted an eye when his pro gear included a fairly long telephoto. He published a photo of the paper Kissinger was reading stamped “Top Secret” which was legible in the photograph but apparently was just a standard summary of the daily news.
not only do governments consistently classify almost everything, but sometimes they have to classify the whole box when only a few pages are critical.
In Charlie Savage’s book “Takeover,” he describes how after 9/11 the US government RE-classified information–including some press releases. I don’t think he gave a specific examples of the press releases though.
It’s mostly administrative convenience. Most of the (for example) Manhatten Project files were probably about payroll and requisitions and other innocuous stuff, but I bet they classified all of them anyway. Plus, even innocuous documents can require secrecy in certain contexts. A list of runway repairs at Rammstein AFB might appear pretty insignificant, but in 1982 it could have allowed the Soviet Union to estimate the readiness of US air defenses in Europe.
Payroll records could identify the number of employees, who they were (which leads to their qualifications), etc. The USA did not want it to be public knowledge they had hired almost every available physicist for a worksite in the remote desert.
Clifford Stoll, in his book The Cuckoo’s Egg, tells of visiting (IIRC) the CIA headquarters in Langley, VA. Left alone in an office and kind of impressed by the collection of assorted “Eyes Only” and “Top Secret”-style rubber stamps on the guy’s desk, he took a blank sheet of paper from his notebook and stamped one of each on it.
When he left, they confiscated that page: a blank piece of paper which just had a collection of “Secret” labels on it.
Rightly so.
I don’t think they want a pristine sample of such stamps out in the wild.
The business of intelligence work is one of aggregation. It’s not like the books where one guy uncovers the one key piece of intel through great personal risk, travel and violence. Intelligence heroes live an incredibly boring life in which they grind endlessly through piles of seemingly meaningless drivel while somehow keeping their brains from slipping into neutral and then suddenly make a connection between three or four ostensibly unrelated tidbits which just might add up to an OMG pattern.
Seriously, you don’t think personnel records are valuable? What if they include where a person used to work? Or hints as to the subject matter expertise that got him/her hired? What if they include who needed an advance on salary, or is behind on a IRA loan repayment? What if you also have the entry gate logs and can verify which five or six people are paid from that office but always seem to be working off-site?
As for post #7, you don’t think the exact look and color of the stamps used in that office are valuable? What if you were trying to enter some counter-intelligence and wanted to make sure it was taken as produced by trustworthy local officers? Wouldn’t printing it onto the right weight/color of paper with the right stamps help immensely in passing it off?
We can’t know what value it might have had at the time it was classified, and we can’t always know what might become useful to an enemy in the future. And the people who make those decisions know more than they can tell to you or me in justifying themselves.
They also sacrifice their peace of mind to carry and expend knowledge that believe me you don’t want to carry yourselves. So cut them some slack.
Having worked in classified environments in the past, I know as a fact that MOST classified documents contain nothing of importance. If a document is created on any system that also handles classified data, or inside a building that is classified, the document is automatically considered classified at that same level. It is possible to have a document scrutinized and declassified by your Information Assurance Manager (we occasionally had to do this in Afghanistan), it is a huge pain and you would need a good reason. Most documents just stay classified. They may or may not exist anymore, but I have made hundreds of classified emails titled “Smoke break?”
That’s some kind of uber-secret code. You can’t fool me! 
I get the joke: It was a blank piece of paper with “Secret” stamped on it.
But how was the security guard (or whoever confiscated it) supposed to know why it was stamped secret? Do you really want this person making judgment calls like that?
What if the paper was printed with security ink (a.k.a “invisible ink” – it’s a real thing)? What if a secret pattern was woven into the fibers or magnetic threads were embedded into it? What if it’s some experimental paper formulation or contains traces of radioactive materials? These things are not implausible in a building full of spies. Are you going to put a whole laboratory into the lobby of the building to examine one piece of paper or are you going to just tell the guard “If it says ‘secret’ it doesn’t leave the building”?
I remember hearing a story about the guys at Revell (or one of the other model houses) who were making a model of the SR-71. They had photos of it (unclassified), but the air force wouldn’t give them any dimensions. The designer called and asked if they could tell him the size of the tires. No, that’s classified. How about the wingspan? Classified. Tail height? Classified. Landing gear height? Classified.
Finally, the designer noticed that in the photo he had, the plane was parked on a cement pad, and the cement was divided into rectangles by expansion strips. So, he asked the guy at the air force if he could tell him the size of the expansion strip spacing. The guy went away for a while, and came back and said - “that’s not classified”, and gave him the dimensions.
Why? Do you suppose they are of specific and unique design?
The great majority of the time the collection method is what makes it classified.
Say you have a TOP SECRET collection platform like a fancy spy plane or satellite. If the enemy sees what you have collected and deduces how you collected it, they can take steps to negate that collection platform. That might mean billions of taxpayer dollars and years of effort down the tubes. It is not unusual for someone to say, “This collection platform is TS, so anything that comes out of it is TS, even if it is garbage.” That’s the mentality they have.
Or say your HUMINTer collects some trivial detail, but only a few have access to it… Then Snowden puts your IIR on Wikileaks or some such. They quickly narrow down who had access to the material and now not only the source but everyone around them is in peril. I find it astonishingly hypocritical that journalists, whose ethics demand they protect their sources, are so cavalier about protecting intelligence that could compromise a government source.
And thanks to people like Manning and Snowden (and Ames, and Hannsen, and Pollard…) over-classification and over-compartmentalization continue to run rampant. After seeing the damage these people have inflicted, I’m not even sure I can blame them for being overly cautious.
But it does get absurd sometimes. I one had an IT lady in my office to set up a network. She saw an empty folder with “SECRET” marked on it and told us it had to be secured. Never mind that there was nothing in the folder. And never mind that we were in an “open storage” facility where we were permitted to leave materials on our desks. She was certain that empty folder had to be secured. We told her to STFU and get back to setting up our computers. Needless to say, our network didn’t get turned on anytime soon.
Good points. Say you found out that a bunch of biochemists were hired at a mysterious-looking facility in Oregon. You do some digging and find out that 4/5 of those people have degrees from Michigan State, which is statistically unlikely and potentially of interest. You then do some digging and find out that academics at Michigan State have published a disproportionate number of biomedical articles on anthrax. Hmm, maybe that lab in Oregon is working on anthrax?
No. They are just the word “SECRET” or whatever in block letters. There is nothing unique or fancy about the stamp. Nowadays we just embed the classification on the Powerpoint slide or the header and footer of whatever document we’re working on and print it on the paper. Can’t remember the last time I saw someone actually use a stamp.
And then they start playing a game of, “They can’t know that we know.” So we have to keep it a secret just to prevent the adversary from finding out that we know their secret. If they know their operation has been revealed, they might change their tactics or move or something.
A lot of material classified top secret is compartmented. In addition to the Top Secret stamp, there is a codeword for each compartment. Thus, something cleared to access Top Secret FUBAR documents would not necessarily be cleared to access Top Secret SNAFU material. The codewords are themselves classified.
There was an incident where a photographer snapped a picture of Kissenger on the White House steps with a folder under his arm. The top edge of a paper in the folder could be seen, and the codeword was visible. They had to spend some enormous amount of money to change the codeword and re-stamp all documents in that compartment.
My favorite bit of declassified material is a pamphlet called: “Simple Sabotage Field Manual.” It was produced by the OSS for Allied sympathizers working in Germany. The best part is how to interfere with routine business by either doing easy things to destroy machinery or cars, but the true gem is the later sections on how to disrupt office work. Among the suggestions:
I love that the classified advice on how to be a saboteur in an office is… to act like you work in an office.
Link.