Famously Secretive Intel Community Charters Council to Promote Transparency

In a move that will outlive the Obama administration, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence last week signed a charter for its new Intelligence Community Transparency Council tasked with “ensuring that transparency becomes a comprehensive and sustainable practice within the Intelligence Community.”

The charter, signed April 5 by ODNI Director James Clapper, is the fulfillment of a two-year process involving creation of principles and an implementation plan that assembles representatives from each of the 17 intelligence agencies in the community.

The new council will meet at least six times a year to help ensure that the “public has information that clearly represents the mission, authorities and oversight mechanisms that direct and guide the intelligence community, as appropriate, while underscoring that all transparency efforts protect intelligence sources, methods, and activities consistent with counterintelligence principles.”

The body will make recommendations to intel community leaders on transparency initiatives and practices, while coordinating their implementation. Members will serve terms of at least two years to the council, chaired by the Intel Community’s transparency officer. The charter lasts for five years.

The council is a response to President Obama’s 2009 pledge to boost transparency. As Clapper said in a speech last fall, “We believe transparency is worth the cost. Because if the American people don’t understand what we are doing, why it’s important and how we’re protecting their privacy and civil liberties, we will lose their confidence and that will affect our ability to perform our mission – which ultimately serves them.”

The notion of intelligence transparency “once would have been considered an oxymoron,” commented Steven Aftergood in his secrecy blog for the Federation of American Scientists. “As an inward-looking body that mostly meets behind closed doors, the Intelligence Transparency Council seems to be an internal forum for grappling with questions of increased disclosure, rather than an obvious public relations ploy.”