Hearing of House Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats, and International Relations: Emerging Threats: Overclassfication and....

HEARING OF HOUSE SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY, EMERGING THREATS, AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: EMERGING THREATS: OVERCLASSFICATION AND PSEUDO-CLASSIFICATION

March 2, 2005

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Mr. Turner. Federalism and Census. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for your leadership on this issue, and for your assistance in my continuing on this subcommittee. This obviously is a very important issue. Just this week I believe we had a reminder of the issue of classification when we were all receiving information from our news media about the possible communication between Osama bin Ladin and Moussaoui, and looking to possible potential attacks on the United States. I think we all heard, as we looked at the news, and read the news accounts, that we were informed that the Homeland Security Department issued a classified bulletin to officials over the weekend about the intelligence, which spokesman Brian--I'm not even going to guess at that one--described as credible but not specific. The indulgence was obtained over the past several weeks, officials said.

Clearly, we've gotten to the point where we have become desensitized to what is either classified or not. One of the dangers of overclassification is that people no longer handle the information sensitively. In this instance, within I believe a day or two of it being issued, it's national news on CNN and all of our newspapers, which of course means that our adversaries, in addition to our friends, are reading it.

This is an important hearing that you are holding, in that it will assist us in identifying what really is important and needs to be protected information and hopefully assist us in keeping it classified and confidential.

Thank you.

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