Gs4 Security: Invisible Ink

Friday 4 January 2013

Invisible Ink

Yesterday, the CIA issued a press release stating that the Agency “had declassified the United States Government’s six oldest classified documents.” The documents –dating from 1917 and 1918– described World War 1 “secret ink” recipes and instructions on how to open sealed letters covertly. CIA Director Leon Panetta credited the declassification of the 90-plus-year-old documents to “recent advancements in technology.” Hogwash. The documents were released because of a decade-long dogged fight by Freedom of Information Advocates who used Freedom Of Information Act requests, lawsuits, a Mandatory Declassification Review request, and finally, an appeal to the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel to pry the documents into the sunlight.Undeterred, in 2009 McClanahan and Zaid filed a Mandatory Review Request for the document’s release. The CIA ignored the MDR request for a year. At which point Zaid and McClanahan wisely used their legal right to appeal to ISCAP –the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel, which the NS Archive once called the “Secrecy Court of Last Resort.“ It’s my guess that ISCAP, which was led by the over-classification conscious Jay Bosanko, informed the CIA they were fighting a losing fight. It was at this point that the Agency decided it would release the docs and take credit, attempting to appear as champions of the public’s right to know, rather