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The Department of Defense Faces Strategic Obstacles in Stemming Disclosures

• Media leaks have many causes but few feasible and effective solutions.
• There is a longstanding organizational culture in DoD that treats leaking classified information to the media as nearly risk-free, which suggests to some that the behavior is acceptable.
• To be fully effective, remedies must address the full range of security, classification, and particularly UD-related behavior, and establish an end-to-end accountability process from initial UD identification through the imposition of effective penalties for violations.

Tactical Obstacles Also Exist

• Successfully addressing the unauthorized disclosures problem requires carefully calibrating the focus of current efforts and prioritizing the most serious UDs for action.
• The current plan focuses mostly on identification and reporting, but these activities must be complemented by other, equally significant tasks, such as assigning responsibility and ownership for acting on the reported disclosure and seeing the action through all the needed steps to bring it to closure.
• The language and guidance addressing UDs in DoD directives and manuals is often unclear, inconsistent, or ambiguous, and requires clarification,
• It is important to identify steps where security can act before leaks occur, as well as determining where new measures could improve the security clearance vetting process.
• The lack of metrics to track results, the sensitivity of counterintelligence investigations, insufficient authority of UD PIT members within their own components, and insufficient outreach to non-DoD elements all require correctives to improve implementation effectiveness.

In 2012, the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence established the Unauthorized Disclosures Program Implementation Team to prevent and deter the unauthorized disclosures of classified information by all Department of Defense personnel through the implementation of the UD Strategic Plan. RAND was asked to help monitor and assess the potential for effectiveness of this new initiative. Researchers determined that the UD PIT's implementation of the UD Strategic Plan has made important and discernible progress toward its main objectives, but the advances are partial, fragile, and may be impermanent, facing strategic and tactical obstacles. RAND offered 22 recommendations, including ways to sustain and expand the effort, a continued emphasis on top-down support, establishing metrics, improving accountability, and prioritizing responses.

• Chapter One

  Introduction

• Chapter Two

  Observations on UD PIT Effectiveness

• Chapter Three

  Recommendations

• Appendix A

  Thresholds for Taking Legal Action Against Leakers

• Appendix B

  Leaks Questions and Responses