The Center for National Security Studies

Mission and History

The Center for National Security Studies, a non-governmental advocacy and research organization, was founded in 1974 to work for control of the FBI and CIA and to prevent violations of civil liberties in the United States. The Center is the only non-profit human rights and civil liberties organization whose core mission is to prevent claims of national security from eroding civil liberties or constitutional procedures.

A central challenge for democratic societies is to maintain national security while enhancing individual freedoms. The defense of civil liberties and constitutional procedures in the face of claims of national security is a never-ending task that requires constant vigilance and public awareness. The Center for National Security Studies plays that role as the only institution devoted solely to this constitutional watchdog function.

The Center works to:

* strengthen the public right of access to government information;

* combat excessive government secrecy;

* assure effective oversight of intelligence agencies;

* protect the right of political dissent;

* prevent illegal government surveillance;

* protect the due process rights of those jailed by the government;

* assure the constitutional exercise of war powers; and

* protect the free exchange of ideas and information across international borders.

The Center leverages its influence by working with coalitions of traditional civil liberties and human rights groups, historians, journalists, scientists, and civil rights and immigration groups, providing them with legal and policy experience and expertise.

Since 1993, the Center has also worked internationally to assist human rights organizations and government officials in establishing oversight and accountability of intelligence agencies in emerging democracies throughout the world.

Since the terrible attacks of September 11, the Center has played a leading role in the fight to preserve individual rights and to oppose the many national security initiatives that threaten civil liberties and human rights without advancing national security interests. The Center is guided by the conviction that our national security can and must be protected without undermining the fundamental rights of individuals guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. In its work on matters ranging from national security surveillance to intelligence oversight, the Center begins with the premise that both national security interests and civil liberties protections must be taken seriously and that by doing so, solutions to apparent conflicts can often be found without compromising either. The Center brings unique expertise to the defense of civil liberties and human rights because of its ability to analyze and evaluate the national security concerns at stake, as well as the threats to basic rights.

Accomplishments, 1974 - 2001

The Center achieved important successes in the years before September 11. Its activities made policy-makers more aware that it is possible to meet legitimate national security concerns without diminishing civil liberties or constitutional procedures, and made government officials more sensitive to the civil liberties implications of their actions and to the need to find a means to accomplish their objectives that also protects individual freedoms.

The Center achieved landmark victories such as:

· Outlining the secrecy reforms that were incorporated in the 1995 Clinton Executive Order on classification of national security information;

· Organizing the “End the Cold War at Home” campaign that identified and overturned civil liberty restrictions left over from the Cold War;

· Ensuring basic civil liberty protections and multiple layers of review in government procedures for foreign intelligence wiretapping;

· Defeating the Bush I administration’s attempt in the Supreme Court to overturn Congress’s right to intelligence information and a similar Clinton administration effort seven years later and suing the CIA to force the historic release of the intelligence budgets for 1997 and 1998 (as well as successfully litigating over twenty-five years for the release of thousands of other government documents that would otherwise be secret today);;

· Leading the “Free Trade in Ideas” campaign that repealed ideological visa exclusions and the bans on information exchange included in U.S. trade embargoes;

· Restoring basic privacy and due process rights in security clearance investigations by the U.S. government; and

· Stopping the enactment in 2001 of an “Official Secrets Act” criminalizing public disclosures of government information.

The influence of the Center and its philosophy has been reflected in a number of proposals that have become law, including:

· the Intelligence Oversight Act of 1980, which requires the Executive to notify Congress of covert activities, and its revision in 1991 following the Iran-Contra scandal;

· the Classified Information Procedures Act, establishing rules for the use of classified information in criminal trials and making possible the indictment of former government officials who violate the Constitution;

· reforms to the immigration laws removing ideological barriers to entry;

· the President Kennedy Assassination Records Act of 1992, setting stringent standards for the withholding from the public of secret government documents; and

· the Berman Amendment of 1988 and the Free Trade in Ideas Act of 1994, prohibiting restrictions on the free flow of information.

The Center has sued the CIA and the FBI numerous times both to enforce individual rights such as for illegally keeping files on citizens and to force the disclosure of important documents. It has written numerous Supreme Court briefs on national security issues, including freedom of information and separation of powers. It has challenged in court the President's power to go to war without advance Congressional approval and illegal government surveillance. It has defended government officials prosecuted for leaking information to the public and represented individuals seeking to exercise their constitutional rights to travel to Cuba.

The Center has frequently testified before the United States Congress, including the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, on issues ranging from secrecy and classification of national security information, to government surveillance and congressional access to intelligence information, to the constitutional right to travel.

From 1995 to 2001, Center Director Kate Martin jointly directed with Andrzej Rzeplinski of the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights in Warsaw a project in 12 former communist countries of Europe to promote the adoption of new legal frameworks for the restructuring of intelligence services in those countries and a new public understanding about the appropriate role of secret services in a democracy. The project had human rights activists as partners in each of the twelve countries. It held a historic conference in Warsaw in 1995, wrote new laws while stopping bad laws, wrote reports on necessary reforms, and published a newsletter.

The Center has also worked with NGO’s and government officials in Latin America on oversight of intelligence agencies, including a project in Guatemala to implement the intelligence reforms promised in the peace accords that ended the civil war in that country.

With the approval of an international Advisory Board and all of its national partners in Eastern Europe, the Center published a unique “Statement of Principles of Oversight and Accountability of Security Services in a Constitutional Democracy.” These Principles were translated and published in many languages, including Russian, Spanish, Polish and Albanian. Drawing upon the Center’s work in the United States, the Principles outline the legal protections necessary to ensure that security services do not threaten democracy or human rights. They were used by the Council of Europe to promote guidelines for accountability of internal security services.

Over the years, the Center has published numerous articles, some of which include:

· “Transparency and Accountability of Police Forces, Security Services and Intelligence Services,” chapter on the United States pub. By Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (ch. 9, page 146) (2004).

· Kate Martin, “Civil Liberties and National Security on the Internet,” in The Information Age Anthology, part II: National Security Implications of the Information Age (National Defense University Press, 2000);

· Kate Martin and Paul Hoffman, “Safeguarding Liberty: National Security, Freedom of Expression and Access to Information: United States of America,” in Secrecy and Liberty, ed. Coliver, et al. (Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1999);

· Kate Martin, “The Right to a Fair Trial in The United States When Official Secrets are Involved,” (1998).

· “Security Services in Civil Society: Oversight and Accountability,” CNSS Report (1995) (published in English and Russian in Washington and Warsaw);

· Morton H. Halperin and Gary M. Stern, eds., The U.S. Constitution and the Power to Go to War, Historical and Current Perspectives (Greenwood Press, 1994);

· “Ending the Cold War at Home,” CNSS Report (1991);

· Joel M. Gora, David Goldberg, Gary M. Stern and Morton H. Halperin, The Right to Protest (Southern Illinois University Press, 1991);

· Litigation Under the Federal Freedom of Information Act and Privacy Act (published yearly by CNSS until 1993);

· “Lawful Wars, Restoring Congress’ Role in the Overt and Covert Use of Force,” CNSS Report (1988);

· “The FBI’s Misguided Probe of CISPES,” CNSS Report (1988);

· “Covert Operations and the Democratic Process: The Implications of the Iran/Contra Affair,” CNSS Report (1987);

· “Free Trade in Ideas: A Constitutional Imperative,” CNSS Report (1984);

· Jay Peterzell, Reagan’s Secret Wars (1983);

· “The Consequences of ‘Pre-publication Review’: A Case Study of CIA Censorship of ‘The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence,’” CNSS Report, 1983;

· Morton H. Halperin and Daniel Hoffman, Freedom vs. National Security (Chelsea House, 1977);

· Morton H. Halperin and Daniel Hoffman, Top Secret: National Security and The Right to Know (Simon & Schuster, 1977);

· Morton H. Halperin, Jerry Berman, Robert Borosage and Christine Marwick, The Lawless State (Penguin Books, 1976).

From 1978 to 1994, the Center was a project associated with the American Civil Liberties Union and the Fund for Peace.