The Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO) walks a fine line. On one hand, the ISOO is responsible for protecting our national secrets. On the other hand, the ISOO is responsible for providing access to information that’s in the public interest, that ensures the Government of the people is transparent to the people. The ISOO Vision strives toward “[a] Government whose information is properly shared, protected, and managed to serve the national interest” while promoting and preserving “[a]n informed American public that has trust in its Government.”
ISOO ROOTS
The ISOO was established back in 1978. In the seemingly ancient history of the Jimmy Carter Administration. Carter’s Executive Order 12065, “National Security Information,” is about how our Government will “balance the public’s interest in access to Government information with the need to protect certain national security information from disclosure . . . .” The executive order is all about information classification: who designates classification of particular information, requirements for the decision to classify, the duration of classification, and, naturally, all the rules for downgrading and declassifying information.
ISOO DIRECTOR
The Administrator of General Services is responsible for implementing Executive Order 12065, and the Executive Order directs that responsibility be delegated to what, in 1978, was the new Information Security Oversight Office with “a full-time Director appointed by the Administrator of General Services subject to approval by the President.”
The Director’s responsibilities are significant. For instance, working with the National Security Council, the Director reviews every agency’s implementation of the Order and, therefore, naturally has access to every agency’s information security programs (with some exceptions that can be appealed to the NSC). The Director has the authority to declassify information. The Director responds to “complaints and suggestions” about the Government’s implementation of the order—think Freedom of Information Act. In short, the Director has the ear of the President, oversight from the NSC, and the capacity to influence to a significant degree just how transparent our Government will finally be.
ENTER MARK BRADLEY
As significant as the Director’s responsibilities are, it’s surprising there wasn’t more fanfare about the appointment of former CIA man Mark A. Bradley to the post. Thanks to the Federation of American Scientists contributor Steven Aftergood, we didn’t miss what Aftergood describes as “what must be one of the very last national security-related posts to be filled in the Obama Administration . . . .”
Aftergood reports that “national security lawyer and former CIA officer Mark A. Bradley was named as the next director of the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO), which is responsible for oversight of the national security secrecy system government-wide.” For security professionals, that’s big news. For the American people—whether they know it or not—it’s big news. In Mark Bradley, the ISOO welcomes to the Director’s position one who has stood on both sides of classification arguments and, on occasion, as Aftergood points out, what may have been the wrong side of those arguments.
“Mr. Bradley is an intriguing choice for ISOO director,” writes Aftergood, “since he is one of a very small group of individuals who have engaged with government secrecy policy both as an outsider-critic and as an insider-defender.” Bradley has argued that the Government grossly overclassifies information. He also staunchly defended the NSA’s decision to classify telephone metadata, which Edward Snowden shortly after self-declassified for the world.
Because of Bradley’s diverse background as lawyer, national security expert, historian, author and archivist, he, “will bring multiple relevant dimensions of expertise to his new responsibilities at ISOO,” writes Aftergood.
Director Bradley takes his new desk as Director of the ISOO on Christmas Day.
