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From: Greg Sandow <GSANDOW@prodigy.net>
Date: Mon, 16 Dec 1996 22:05:31 -0500
Fwd Date: Wed, 18 Dec 1996 00:52:27 -0500
Subject: Ellsberg on 'Secrets'

Ed Stewart did us all a service by recommending the Paul McGinnis
website on military secrecy.

I was browsing there, and found -- among other interesting and
impressive documents -- testimony Daniel Ellsberg gave before Congress
in 1973. Ellsberg, of course, was the foreign policy official who leaked
the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam war. Two years later, there were
congressional hearings on military secrecy, and he was asked to tell
what he knew.

Here are some excerpts. I imagine many of us will find them fascinating,
since they provide first-hand testimony about how baroque and
compartmentalized US government secrets really are. They don't prove
anything about UFOs, of course -- I think I should stress that, before
anyone (including me) jumps to any conclusions. Interestingly, though, I
had to edit the text a little. I had to remove annotations from someone
who <did> draw pro-MJ-12 conclusions from Ellsberg's testimony, and
inserted them at the relevant points. It's a shame, really...Ellsberg's
words are strong enough not to need interpretation by anybody.

Greg Sandow


Excerpts follow:

Perhaps I could cut through it best by just relating to you some advice
I gave to a man who entered Government 4 years ago, and I might as well
name him -- Henry Kissinger -- someone I had known academically or
professionally for 10 years. It seemed to me it was appropriate to pass
on some thoughts to him in advance and perhaps inoculate him against the
transformation that I feared was going to come over this person. It was
appropriate to do it to this person because I felt he was going to be
initiated into the most esoteric and sinister parts of this system. He
was not only going to have a top secret but perhaps a score or two
score, for all I know, of the clearances higher than top secret of which
I had held an even dozen when I worked as special assistant to the
Assistant Secretary of Defense.

...in December of 1968 in the Hotel Pierre...I said to him, 'You are
about to get 10,15, or 20 clearances of a sort that you never knew
existed. Their very names are classified.' Code words that identify them
on pieces of paper are classified. They are referred to by the first
letters of their codewords; they are never to be photographed. That
applies only to the lowest of these clearances to which I refer.
Secretary McNamara had at least a few more. I wouldn't suggest how many
each person had in the Defense Dept. Persons in the White House could
have many more in the NSA and CIA and many places I didn't deal with.

    **********

If you had worked all your life with top secret material in the Pentagon
for Assistant Secretaries, unless you were one of the elect, you would
not be aware that there are entire rooms in the Pentagon with safe doors
outside, with a guardian, with a computer list up to date hourly and
daily as to who is admitted in that room, and unless you know the
codeword and are on that list, you cannot enter that room or know of its
existence. It will have a very nondescript door in the hall that will
not suggest what is inside. You can go in that room and discover
yourself in something like the reading room of the New York Public
Library, not a closet, not a safe, but a room with charts, with library
shelves of material, no word of which you were previously aware existed.
You did not know how it was gotten. You did not know the President had
this kind of information at all. Of course, the effect of that is very
euphoric at first. You go around and take things off the shelves and
begin reading and imagine you are about to learn all the answers, that
Godlike knowledge is now available to you. Now, you can be introduced
into one of those rooms and still have no idea that there exist still
other rooms with other sources of information, other access lists just
as large and just as secret. I would say it is not until you have four
or five such clearances, that the next level is revealed to you. Then
you become aware that there is no limit to this; that these clearances
can be generated very quickly in a day or two; and such types of
information can be segregated -- I am not saying only from the public or
Congress, but even from other people who have two or three other
clearances -- very effectively.

Once you have a dozen, from then on, you live in the knowledge there
must be others you don't have. Could there be clearances the President
doesn't know about? Of course, certainly, without any doubt....Could it,
however, be withheld from him? The answer is 'Yes,' and even by close
associates. Top Secret, you have heard in testimony, top secret is
accessible to 400,000 to 500,000 people....Comint clearance is far more
secret, far more sensitive. Members of Congress or their staffs...can't
be trusted, but ... 120,000 sergeants, warrant officers, generals and
Cabinet secretaries [can]. The next clearance above that cuts way down
to about 14,000 to 20,000. What I am saying is that the world of secrets
is lived in by a very large number of people, though a very small part
of our our electorate and only one branch of our Government. Henry
Kissinger lives in a much smaller world, a world that for some pieces of
information might be inhabited only by a couple of people. ...one White
House staffer told me...'I wonder if Henry realizes there were certain
things known only to him, the President, and the Army General Staff....'
But I am saying, as many as 100,000 or 400,000, nevertheless keep
secrets very well because of this apparatus of conspiracy, special
channels, special couriers for each clearance. The couriers for one
clearance do not know the existence of the other ones. Special
briefings, special access lists, special libraries, each separate, the
apparatus of an espionage ring; a Government that consists of cells but
with the President at the top. Certainly when I say there are clearances
that the President may not know of, I say that only to make a point. The
more important point is, the President does know virtually all of
this....

   *********

The entire document (with the pro-MJ-12 annotations!) can be found at
ftp://members.aol.com/paulmcg/files/ellsberg-on-secrecy.

Or you can follow the link from the McGinnis site, at
http://www.frogi.org/secrecy.html