A Critique of the Codeword Compartment method of information security in the Federal Government

"We know that secrecy by its very nature may affect the personality of its practitioners. This is true of all forms of secrecy from the primitive secret society to the codeword compartment. The latter is a heightened form of secrecy that resembles the former in many ways. It has the aura of a secret society. It has its initiation, its oaths, its esoteric phrases, its sequestered areas, and its secrets within secrets. And in place of passwords and hand signs, there are letter designations on badges. There are in-groups and out-groups. No wonder, then, if the codeword compartment has unintended psychological effects.
For many, the badge with its distinctive letters has become a status symbol, and for some of them the symbol has fused with careerism. Others, equating knowledge with power, have become collectors of clearances. They have lost sight of need-to-know. The effect on those without access to a compartment is sometimes adverse. They may wonder if their loyalty is being measured against those admitted to the compartment. The aggressive analyst who considers it a point of honor to know everything going on in his field may take exclusion as a challenge to outwit the codeword compartment. He feels free to probe and to exploit to the hilt his personal contacts. In this sense, compartmentation tends to subvert the formal channels of communication. Whether aggressive or not, the analyst who knows he is not privy to compartmented information on a particular subject will often be more diffident in expressing his views. And if his interlocutor retorts: "You don't have all the clearances," his diffidence may increase.

There are also other more general effects. Some are so impressed with the trappings of codeword information that they come to consider it more accurate than other information not confirmed by COMINT or photography.8 Others see codewords as an attention-getting device, pyramiding them on publications to assure the customer that all sources have been tapped, thus contributing to overclassification and overcompartmentation. Some components of the Intelligence Community--NSA is often accused of this--compartment information according to its substantive importance rather than its intrinsic sensitivity. Those admitted to codeword compartments frequently believe they have been granted a certified need-to-know for everything within the compartment. Still, codewords do deter: few would have the temerity to take codeword material home, few even among those who take home other types of classified material. On balance, however, the psychological side effects of the codeword compartment seem to diminish rather than enhance security."