For decades before Edward Snowden revealed the mass of secrets about National Security Agency activities, the most damaging revelations of American secrets probably came from Navy personnel, uniformed and civilian. These included the highly damaging revelations about U.S. military communications and the Navy’s Sound Surveillance System sold to the Soviets by John A. Walker and Jerry Whitworth; the sale to the Soviets of details of U.S. tapping of underwater cables by Ronald Pelton; and the sale of several thousand highly classified documents to the Israelis by Jonathan Pollard. And there were several others.
Subsequently, the Navy Department has been extremely careful about keeping secrets. Indeed, their efforts in many cases border on the absurd. For example, in the late 1950s the Navy acquired 12 P2V-3C Neptune aircraft for the carrier strike role. They were discarded within a few years—some 60 years ago. But when information was requested on the type of engines in the aircraft, that data was considered classified although the aircraft, their nuclear weapons—and engines—have been gone for many decades.
A security issue of international dimensions is the double standard for declassification of Cold War naval historical documents. In researching a forthcoming book on antisubmarine warfare, I came across the citation of a series of letters between Admiral Arleigh Burke, the Chief of Naval Operations from 1955 to 1961, and Admiral of the Fleet Louis Mountbatten, First Sea Lord of the Royal Navy (and Burke’s counterpart), discussing the potential role of nuclear depth charges in antisubmarine warfare.
The citations were contained in a 2001 book by Richard Moore, The Royal Navy and Nuclear Weapons, published in England. Moore’s study was based on a doctoral dissertation completed in the late 1990s. Inquiries to the U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command about the Burke-Mountbatten correspondence showed that many documents had been reviewed for release but not declassified—because they made general reference to use of nuclear weapons, including depth charges, without specific technical characteristics, making them fall under the heading in the Atomic Energy Act as “Formerly Restricted Data.”
Further investigation revealed that there are copies of the Burke-Mountbatten correspondence in the British National Archives and also the Mountbatten Papers collection at the University of Southampton. The British were working the “30-Year Rule” on declassification. Their classification reviewers apparently saw no reason to ask the U.S. Navy in the mid-1990s about declassifying a letter from the CNO to the First Sea Lord that was nearly 40 years old and contained no technical data.
But perhaps the most ridiculous effort to protect “secrets” is denying to the press the general arrangement plans/drawings for the Oliver Hazard Perry–class frigates. Despite Freedom of Information Act requests and several appeals, the request has been rejected. According to Javier L. Martinez, a associate counsel in the Naval Sea Systems Command, the plans/drawings were prohibited from public disclosure because they are technical data that “(1) would require an approval, authorization, or license for export under the Arms Control Export Act and (2) would disclose critical technology with military or space application.”
A few facts:
(1) The Perry-class frigates were designed in the early 1970s—40 years ago.
(2) The plans/drawings are either unclassified or confidential—if the latter, they certainly should have been downgraded and declassified over the 40-year period.
(3) Ships of this class have been transferred (with plans) to Bahrain, Egypt, Pakistan, Poland, and Turkey; additional ships of this design have been constructed for Australia, Spain, and Taiwan; all of those countries have been provided with plans for the ship. Additional foreign transfers are pending.
(4) The ten ships (including four in the Navy Reserve Force) of this class remaining in U.S. service will be discarded within a year.
(5) There are unofficial—but accurate—plans for the ships on several Internet sites.
Thus, the Navy is protecting the “secrets” of these outdated and disappearing ships from the Russians, Chinese, and terrorists. (Of course, the frigates’ dimensions, characteristics, weapons, sensors, and performance data are readily available in the reference books Ships and Aircraft of the U.S. Fleet and Combat Fleets of the World—both published by the Naval Institute Press.)
There are numerous other examples of the dated Navy Department policies regarding information that should no longer be classified. These practices also are in contrast to President Barack Obama’s statement shortly after his inauguration that his administration would stress openness and transparency.
While different laws, regulations, and rules apply to these different types of classification, all affect Navy matters. The Navy’s leadership should make a clear and positive statement regarding declassification. The new head of the Naval History and Heritage Command should initiate the action. To do less would continue to short-change the public and, indeed, the Navy itself of the valuable and important material found in the Navy’s history.