NEWS

The CIA wants to destroy thousands of internal emails covering spy operations and other activities

Proposal draws bipartisan fire from Congress, but agency officials say the criticism is overblown

                      

A CIA plan to erase tens of thousands of its internal emails — including those sent by virtually all covert and counterterrorism officers after they leave the agency — is drawing fire from Senate Intelligence Committee members concerned that it would wipe out key records of some of the agency's most controversial operations.

The agency proposal, which has been tentatively approved by the National Archives, "could allow for the destruction of crucial documentary evidence regarding the CIA's activities," Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein and ranking minority member Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., wrote in a letter to Margaret Hawkins, the director of records and management services at the archives. 

But agency officials quickly shot back, calling the committee's concerns grossly overblown and ill informed. They insist their proposal is completely in keeping with — and in some cases goes beyond — the email retention policies of other government agencies. "What we've proposed is a totally normal process," one agency official told Yahoo News.

The source of the controversy may be that the CIA, given its secret mission and rich history of clandestine operations, is not a normal agency. And its proposal to destroy internal emails comes amid mounting tensions between the CIA and its Senate oversight panel, stoked by continued bickering over an upcoming committee report — relying heavily on years-old internal CIA emails — that is sharply critical of the agency's use of waterboarding and other aggressive interrogation techniques against al-Qaida suspects in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks.

In this case, however, Chambliss — a conservative Republican who has sided with the CIA on the interrogation issue — joined with Feinstein in questioning the agency's proposed new email policy, which would allow for the destruction of email messages sent by all but a relatively small number of senior agency officials.

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"In our experience, email messages are essential to finding CIA records that may not exist in other so-called permanent records," the two senators wrote in their letter, a copy of which was also sent this week to CIA Director John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

The agency proposal was initiated as a response to a government-wide problem: how to preserve emails that constitute legitimate "federal records," loosely defined as dealing with the "public business" or the "functions, policies, decisions, procedures, and operations" of the government — all of which are required to be permanently retained under the law known as the Federal Records Act.

The CIA proposal, submitted to the National Archives last January but only made public in recent weeks, would replace what officials acknowledge is an imperfect and inconsistently followed current policy that directs agency officials, on their own initiative, to "print and preserve" emails that might constitute federal records.

Under the new proposal, only the emails of 22 senior agency officials would be permanently retained; all others, including all covert officers except the director of the National Clandestine Service, could be deleted three years after the employees leave the CIA "or when no longer needed, whichever is sooner," according to a copy of the agency's plan.

Agency officials said that proposal is more rigorous than that of the FBI, which allows for the deletion of agents' emails one year after they leave the bureau. And, they note, the National Archives tentatively endorsed their proposal after an archives official concluded that "it is unlikely that permanent records will be found" in the destroyed emails that are not duplicated in other agency files.

"The CIA's proposal is to preserve more records than required by law and preserve more records than many other agencies," agency spokesman Ryan Trapani wrote in an email response to the Feinstein-Chambliss letter. 

But the plan has sparked criticism from watchdog groups and historians who note the agency's track record of destroying potentially embarrassing material: In 2007, it was disclosed that agency officials had destroyed hundreds of hours of videotapes documenting the waterboarding of two high-value detainees. The disclosure prompted a criminal investigation by the Justice Department as well as a separate National Archives probe into whether the agency had violated the Federal Records Act. Neither inquiry led to any federal charges.

The CIA has a history of destroying records "that are embarrassing" and "disclose mistakes" or "reflect poorly on the conduct of the CIA," said Tim Weiner, the author of "Legacy of Ashes, a history of the CIA," in comments filed with the National Archives by Open the Government, a watchdog group that is seeking to block the CIA proposal. He noted that during the Iran-Contra Affair, for example, those involved "fed so many records into the shredder that they jammed the shredder."

"It cannot be left to the CIA to determine what is a record of historical significance," Weiner

The deadline for comments on the CIA proposal expired this week — and Feinstein and Chambliss weren't the only senators to weigh in. Three other Democrats on the intelligence committee — Ron Wyden of Oregon, Mark Udall of Colorado and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico — sent their own letter raising concerns and asking the National Archives to more closely review the agency's proposal.
 

Brazilian great Pele responding well to treatment

SAO PAULO — A Brazilian hospital says soccer great Pele isn't showing signs of the urinary tract infection that prompted his hospitalization this week.

 The Albert Einstein hospital says the 74-year-old Pele is improving, but remains in an intensive care unit and is undergoing kidney treatment.
The hospital's statement Saturday said there has been "no change" in the antibiotic treatment being administered to the three-time World Cup champion and "all blood and urine cultures have returned negative."
The hospital said Pele, who only has one kidney, is "lucid, talking and stable" in terms of blood pressure and the respiratory system.
Regarded by many as the greatest player of all time, Pele underwent surgery to remove kidney stones on Nov. 13. He was hospitalized again on Monday after being diagnosed with the infection.

 

West Ham 1-0 Newcastle: Hammers see off 10-man Magpies

 

Aaron Cresswell scored the decisive goal as West Ham saw off Newcastle United 1-0 at Upton Park. In Saturday's meeting of two of the Premier League's form sides, Newcastle was searching for its seventh straight triumph in all competitions,Yet it was undone by a West Ham team that has now picked up 13 points from its last five home games, with left back Cresswell proving the matchwinner,The 24-year-old – who joined West Ham from Championship side Ipswich Town in July – settled the encounter with a close-range strike in the 56th minute as Alan Pardew's defense was breached for the first time this month,In a game of few clear-cut opportunities, Newcastle could not find the goalscoring touch and its frustration was compounded when midfielder Moussa Sissoko was sent off for picking up two yellow cards in less than a minute,West Ham's sixth league win of the campaign sees it leapfrog Newcastle in the tableThe visitors made a bright start to proceedings and went close inside the first three minutes as the in-form Ayoze Perez shot wide of the far post following good work down the right from Yoan Gouffran,Stewart Downing returned from injury for West Ham as one of three changes by Sam Allardyce and was the first to test Newcastle goalkeeper Rob Elliot, who was named in the starting XI – along with Gouffran and captain Cheick Tiote – due to a twisted ankle sustained by first-choice shot-stopper Tim Krul in training,Perez was the most dangerous player on the pitch in a dour first half and provided another example of his attacking threat by cleverly flicking into the side netting after a near-post cross from Sammy Ameobi, who then curled wastefully wide in the 44th minute,Elliot could do nothing to prevent Cresswell from putting West Ham ahead,The left back capitalized on some sloppy Newcastle defending, latching on to a mis-hit shot from Cheikhou Kouyate and slotting into the bottom-left corner from close range.
  

icrosoft has managed a feat seldom seen in software -- it's reversed years of sometimes-sharp decline in Internet Explorer's user share and revived interest in the browser it bundles with Windows.
Web analytics company Net Applications, which tracks browser use by monitoring unique visitors to customers' websites, said Internet Explorer (IE) ended June with a 58.5% user share, up 6.5 percentage points from its record low of December 2011.
That increase represented a 13% gain in IE's user share from the trough two and a half years ago.
It's unusual for an application to get a second chance after it's been in long decline, especially when the program has lost as much ground as did IE: At the start of 2005, nearly 9 out of every 10 online users ran IE.
But first Mozilla's Firefox, which debuted as version 1.0 in November 2004, then Google's Chrome, a rival that launched in September 2008, stole large chunks of user share from IE as Microsoft let development stagnate. IE flirted with ceding its majority position in December 2011 -- at the time Computerworld rashly predicted that would happen within months -- when it hit a low of 51.9%, but the browser stepped back from the brink.
Since IE's low point, Microsoft has released IE10 (in October 2012) and IE11 (October 2013). But it was March 2009's IE9, some believe, that made the turnaround possible. "IE9 was a superb browser and was only improved by IE10, essentially closing the gap with the fast-moving Chrome and Firefox efforts," said IDC analysts Al Hilwa in an interview 18 months ago.
More than 55% of those running IE used IE9, IE10 or IE11 in June.
IE had some tough years -- 2008 and 2009, in particular, followed closely by 2011 -- but unlike most software that has edged toward the grave, it recovered, if only by a fraction of what it had lost.
Most just-as-famous software couldn't duplicate that deed. Lotus 1-2-3, for example, was the premier business program in the mid-80s. But the spreadsheet fell into steady decline the next decade under assault from Microsoft's Excel, and didn't survive. Last year, IBM, which acquired Lotus in 1995, announced it was killing the brand, and would drop support of all Lotus-labeled products, including IBM Lotus 123 Millennium Edition V, in September 2014.
But IE regained about three percentage points in user share each of the years 2012 and 2013, and has added another half a point in the first half of 2014. The slower growth this year, on pace for a one percentage point increase, may indicate that IE's recovery is nearing an end.
The revival was on the desktop, where Windows, even as it's threatened by slumping PC sales and an onslaught of smartphones and tablets, remains king with a user share of 91.5%. When mobile is added to the mix, however, IE faces a more precarious future.
Eighteen months ago, when Computerworld first reported on the browser's comeback, IE on mobile accounted for a puny 1% of smartphone and tablet browser user share. Since then, IE has doubled its share to an almost-as-anemic 2%.
Few statistics better illustrate Microsoft's failure on mobile.
- See more at: http://www.itnews.com/applications/80984/microsofts-ie-steps-back-brink-irrelevance#sthash.6bx1LOd9.dpuf