Breaking: White House Ordered Ultrasecret System Upgraded to Prevent Leaks

[cynatnite]

The Trump White House upgraded the security of the National Security Council’s codeword system in the spring of 2018, according to two former Trump White House officials familiar with the matter, as part of an effort to ferret out and deter leaks.

The changes included a new log of who accessed specific documents in the NSC’s system — known as NICE or NSC Intelligence Collaboration Environment — and was designed in part to prevent leaks of records of the president’s phone calls with foreign leaders and find out the suspected leaker if transcripts were disclosed, one of the former officials said. Prior to the upgrade, officials could see only who had uploaded or downloaded material to the system but usually not who accessed which documents.

That highly classified system is being newly scrutinized in light of a whistleblower complaint alleging that national security officials used the system—meant for storing information classified at the highest level — to conceal politically embarrassing conversations, including a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on July 25 in which President Donald Trump urged Zelensky to investigate his political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden and his son.

If hiding politically embarrassing material, rather than protecting national security secrets, was the motive, experts and former officials said, it would be an abuse of the codeword system. While not necessarily an illegal act, it does run counter to an executive order signed by President Barack Obama in 2009 that says information can’t be classified to “conceal violations of law, inefficiency, or administrative error” or “prevent embarrassment to a person, organization, or agency.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/01/white-house-trump-leaks-code-015194