More Classification Games

Nico at TP links to this story about the Senate’s thus far unsuccessful attempt to declassify two of SSCI’s reports on WMD. The basic story is that the White House is trying to prevent an effort, supported by both our too-genteel SSCI Chair Jay Rockefeller and by the partisan Pat Roberts, to declassify last fall’s Phase II SSCI reports, the one that compared pre-war assessments and the one that showed the influence of Chalabi and the INC. Now, most of the declassifications must be really simple moves. But the White House is almost certainly most interested in the "declassification" of a bunch of things that were classified in the reports contrary to normal guidance on classification (which makes this a perfect report for an appeals board). One of these, significantly, was "classified" at the direction of OVP.

So here’s some detail on what they’re preventing you from reading:

The Still-Classified Information

If you look at the pre-war assessment report, for example, the only things redacted are:

• One December 2002 detail on centrifuges
• Details about two papers assessing the IAEA support (or not) on centrifuges
• A large paragraph presumably about the IAEA centrifuge report
• A paragraph about the follow-up assessments of the Mobile Bioweapons Labs
• Half a paragraph about UAV claims
• A few details about Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi (mostly protecing a foreign intelligence service; the corresponding info in the conclusion is also redacted)
• What appears to be a reference to Major Harith’s story appearing in Vanity Fair (a magazine name is redacted)
• Thee paragraphs relating to presidential (or vice-presidential) use of the Atta-in-Prague canard between January and March 2003
• Another paragraph on Atta
• A summary of how badly the NIE predicted ties between Al Qaeda and Iraq (with corresponding info in the conclusions)

Out of 150 pages, only about 4 pages redacted. And most of the substantive redactions pertain to BushCo claims of a tie between Al Qaeda and Iraq.