The Nunes Memo Was Originally Classified as TOP SECRET/NOFORN

[MineralMan]

That designation indicates that no foreign person should view it, even if that person otherwise has Top Secret clearance. It's a designation designed to prevent people from other countries from figuring out that the source of the information involves foreign sources or that classified information involving foreign countries is part of the document.

It is a huge leap to go from that compartmentalized classification to UNCLASSIFIED status. It's not done, frankly, within the intelligence services. Ever. That the White House just completely declassified such a document is more or less unprecedented.

TOP SECRET/NOFORN is a compartmentalized classification. It's supposed to be more secure than just TOP SECRET.

Trump has done something with this that is going to damage his relationships with the intelligence community, even more than it has already been damaged.

Note: Long ago in a former life, I dealt with this kind of stuff daily.

[Eliot Rosewater]

1. Well my friend, the investigation will be shuttered by Tuesday.

Last edited Fri Feb 2, 2018, 05:23 PM - Edit history (2)

And all we can hope for is a free election, but I doubt it.

GOP committed treason today, joined with Putin and attacked us.

But we wont do anything about it.


(because we CANT do anything about it because NOSE HOLDERS made sure we couldnt) FUCK

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

7. It will hurt the relationships within the executive branch

and demoralize the FBI and make its work more difficult. However, as a public controversy it will blow over. In fact, I think it's an exploding cigar for the Trumpists and will cause them more trouble in the long run.

[pandr32]

30. OMGawd I love it

"It's an exploding cigar" nails it an so many of the extreme distraction attempts that have been previously overhyped. Now I can see Trump and many of his clowns sucking on big fake Cubans that blow up in their faces in my mind's eye.
Good one!

[dchill]

40. I'd prefer an exploding suppository...

but that's not a meme yet.

[lagomorph777]

43. Love it!!

[bearsfootball516]

27. I guarantee you that on Tuesday, the investigation will still be going.

[dchill]

41. I'ma hold you to that!

[nocalflea]

38. Why the rush for the exits ?

The investigation continues.

[Eliot Rosewater]

39. For me it is about the people, many progressives too, who SLAMMED Hillary day and night

and put us in this place to begin with.

I am very angry with them and so I am going to be pessimistic because you see NONE Of this had to happen but people had to whine and HOLD their NOSES!

[nocalflea]

42. Cheer up, Hillary won the popular vote by 3 million.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

2. I've read that the British intelligence services are also unhappy.

I haven't had a chance to read the memo itself yet so I don't know what's in it that affects them. But if that's the case, 45 might not get his golden carriage ride from the Queen.

[MineralMan]

6. No doubt. The intelligence services from other countries

will also see this declassification as a warning sign. It's going to interfere with cooperation, I have no doubt.

[gratuitous]

18. Or, other countries will deliberately feed us disinformation

It's a subtle game, this spy stuff. But if some country really wants to fuck up another country's intelligence, the United States is looking like a useful conduit for getting false information out in the public sphere.

Well done, President Trump.

[woundedkarma]

36. wish we knew where it really came from

If that's the case it continues to improve Putin's position which seems to be separate all the countries of the west.

But what happens when we replace trump... we'll be severely weakened but it should be clear to anyone who distances themselves (other countries intelligence services) that once we have a non-putin puppet things should get back to normal.

[SHRED]

3. Link?

[MineralMan]

4. You can find a working link to the memo here:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100210178860

[NightWatcher]

5. Secret Squirrel Society Member here too. The NOFORN is huge and a crime for trump

[MineralMan]

9. Yes. It is typically used when we don't want

other intelligence agencies from other countries to see material. For example, if our intelligence community is gathering intelligence on a nation we have an intelligence sharing agreement with, NOFORN is designed to keep that from being revealed.

It's not one of the higher levels of coded compartmentalization, but it's an important one within our own intelligence community. Other codewords have other significance. NOFORN is pretty universally understood and is widely known. I won't even mention any of the others, many of which I dealt with long ago in the late 1960s. That shit's still classified.

[Orsino]

34. Like, when we don't want them to see...

...how cartoonishly terrible our Congresscritters can be at national security stuff.

[HipChick]

12. Secret Squirrel Society Member 2...NOFORN class

good grief.

[MineralMan]

14. Yup. And they didn't even use a wide Sharpie to

redact it. I really don't get this, to tell you the truth. It seems almost deliberate to let the original classification be read.

Shocking!

[MelissaB]

8. Off to the Greatest.

[MineralMan]

10. Further, the original classification wasn't completely redacted,

and can be easily read in this PDF file. Clumsy. Deliberate?

[Orsino]

11. There is nothing Trump won't burn down just to save his ass.

Or just to get even.

[SunSeeker]

37. Yep. nt

[tblue37]

45. OR to get attention. nt

[OliverQ]

13. What in this is so blatantly top secret?

Nothing stands out to me that's super classified.

[MineralMan]

15. Sources. Methods. FISA.

That's the stuff that made it TOP SECRET/NOFORN.

To a large degree, what is revealed is probably already known, but it's very rare for a recent, active document with that classification to be downgraded to UNCLASSIFIED. Almost unheard-of, actually.

[OliverQ]

19. Got ya. Seems pretty bland and not all that shocking.

Mostly stuff most people already knew from public reports.

[MineralMan]

21. Yes. For people who aren't involved, it's pretty

white bread looking. However, we aren't in the business. I don't know what might have been revealed in that memo that could be potentially harmful. That doesn't mean that there's nothing like that in there, though.

I will grant you that many things are over-classified. The intelligence community always puts the highest applicable classification on things, just for safety's sake. It isn't the actual information that is in question, really, but the classification, itself.

While the President does have the authority to declassify whatever he wants, there is an expectation that he will follow the rules and check carefully before doing so with whatever agency generated the material. Trump doesn't bother with that, and certainly doesn't understand classification protocols, either.

[unblock]

16. not really unprecedented. remember when donnie pissed off israeli intelligence

by blowing their cover to russians *in the oval office*?

i don't think i ever heard the classification level of whatever beans he spilled, but surely it was at least top secret/noforn.

[MineralMan]

17. Well, Trump certainly has no respect for classified information.

That's clear.

[HipChick]

22. Saw a story yesterday where they said, Trump had disclosed more to the Russians than what was

reported...Have to see if I find the story..

[unblock]

24. oh i have no doubt in the least.

no way they didn't talk about ways to profit or further help each other.

[Kentonio]

20. Bizarre that it had this tag

There's nothing in it that wasn't already covered in far more detail in the public sphere. Your point about the sharpie is a good one. Does Nunes have the authority to classify documents at this level himself?

[MineralMan]

23. That's possibly true. All of the information might have been already

widely known. But, the protocols need to be followed, because, well, protocols.

As for Nunes, I have no idea what his authority is. Anything related to FISA is probably automatically classified as TOP SECRET. The NOFORN compartmentalization codeword would apply to anything having to do with any other country's intelligence community or information regarding another country.

Normally, though, the redaction of a codeword compartmentalized TOP SECRET document would be complete, not just lined through. But, hey, this is Congress. What do they know?

[Kentonio]

25. So quite possibly..

The intention may have been to make people go 'omg, this is so super secret it must be true!!'?

[MineralMan]

26. That could be, I suppose.

I guarantee it's causing cringes in the intelligence community, though. Those folks take all that classification stuff very seriously. They're funny that way.

I've been out of the business for almost 50 years now, but I doubt that serious nature has changed much.

[unblock]

28. information being in the public sphere has nothing to do with it.

information being public in no way declassifies it. if it's classified, people who are authorized to know are still barred from repeating it or confirming it, even if "everybody knows".

yes, sometimes it can seem silly at times, especially because declassification normally takes a long time to catch up to common knowledge.

i once had access to classified information, and i could have gone to jail had i said things i knew to be true even before i had such access. there's a lot of stuff in tom clancy novels or in jane's magazines, or even in the regular media, that's classified.

people who aren't in that world are free to talk about it all they like. people in that world can go to prison for saying the same thing.

[MineralMan]

31. Good points. In addition, while information may be circulating publicly,

revealing classified information can confirm that information, which is otherwise unconfirmed. In addition, publicly know information is generally not complete, and details in classified documents can be what is important.

A lot of what I was doing back in the late 60s has become publicly known, and I have read a lot of it. However, there is still a lot that is not publicly known, and that is still classified. So, I still don't talk about my work back then. People know that I was a Russian linguist/analyst and that I was stationed in Turkey. What they can infer from that is fine, since that's information on my DD Form 214. Beyond that, I don't talk about what I was doing there in any detail. As far as I know, it's all still classified.

[unblock]

32. yeah that's the catch. i can only legitimately learn of a declassification from classified sources.

as i no longer have clearance, it's essentially impossible for me to legitimately be informed that the information i once knew has actually been declassified.

fortunately, in my case, the vast majority of the classified information i had access to was the depth of the ocean at specific points. i wrote unclassified software to analyze and present that information and information derived from it (hunt for red october on steroids). so none of that classified information really ever went directly into my brain, i just had access to it. no one would ever think to torture me to learn the depth of the ocean at some particular location, because i'd never be able to pull out such a number.

[orangecrush]

29. Thank you, Mineral Man.

You are spot on with this.

[Vinca]

33. Good luck to Congress trying to get access to secrets again.

[Pepsidog]

35. Lord knows what Secrets the Gossip Monger in Chief has told others.

Trump is an incorrigible gossip and I suspect has spilled many top secret items with his gossip crew. Please someone wake me up from this nightmare!!

[keithbvadu2]

44. Designations?

Designations?

https://www.scribd.com/document/349261099/2016-Cert-FISC-Memo-Opin-Order-Apr-2017-4

TOP SECRET/SI/ORCON/NOFORN

TOP SECRET - understood

SI - Is SI a newer version of SCI?

ORCON: Originator controls dissemination and/or release of the document.

NOFORN: Distribution to non-US citizens is prohibited, regardless of their clearance or access permissions (NO FOReign National access allowed)

[MineralMan]

46. I'm not sure of the SI designation, actually.

On edit: SI is Signals Intelligence. SCI is still used for Sensitive Compartmented Information

I don't remember it. It has been almost 50 years since I was involved with intelligence. No doubt things have changed. But NOFORN has not.

There are references all over the internet to the basic Classification designations.

[moondust]

47. SI

has been around for at least 45 years.

ETA: Special Intelligence is a term for communications intercepts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitive_Compartmented_Information

[SergeStorms]

48. TOP SECRET/NOFORN?

Putin doesn't need to see it, he helped write it!

[keithbvadu2]

49. So sensitive that it should not be allowed in the hands of foreign gov'ts.

So sensitive that it should not be allowed in the hands of foreign gov'ts.

But it can be disseminated to the entire world for partisan political reasons.