好英语网“绝密”还是秘密吗？泄密事件暴露美国情报安全漏洞
WASHINGTON — Why would a 21-year-old national guardsman be in a position with access to top secret documents to begin with?
华盛顿——为什么一名21岁的国民警卫队初级成员就能接触到绝密文件?
The dramatic arrest on Thursday of Jack Teixeira, an airman in an intelligence unit in the Massachusetts Air National Guard who federal authorities believe is linked to a leak of reams of classified documents, lays bare the sheer volume of people who have clearance to view a swath of national security documents that the government categorizes as top secret.
周四，马萨诸塞州空军国民警卫队情报部门的士兵杰克·特谢拉突然被捕，联邦当局认为他与大量机密文件的泄露有关，该事件暴露出涉密人员数量之多，他们都能够接触到大量被列为政府最高机密的国家安全文件。
警方封锁了通往杰克·特谢拉母亲住处的街道。五角大楼对于泄密者可能并非高层涉密人员感到不安。
From National Guard members on bases in Massachusetts to generals at NATO headquarters in Brussels to American bureaucrats all over the world, the “top secret” level of clearance gives bearers an extraordinary level of access. With it, they can see secure Pentagon and other intelligence sites, daily intelligence briefings, situation maps and detailed analyses of the state of the world as seen through the eyes of the American intelligence community.
从驻扎在马萨诸塞州基地的国民警卫队成员到布鲁塞尔北约总部的将军们，再到世界各地的美国官僚，“绝密”级别的权限赋予了持有者极大的访问权限。有了它，他们可以看到严加保密的五角大楼和其他情报部门的网站、每日情报简报、形势地图，以及美国情报界对世界局势的详细分析。
American service members with top-secret clearance include nearly all of the more than 600 or so generals in the various services. But that level of clearance also extends to some of their military aides, many colonels who work in the Pentagon, captains of Navy ships, a wide array of junior officers, and even, in the apparent case of Airman Teixeira, enlisted service members working in intelligence units.
拥有绝密权限的包括美国各军种600多名将军中的几乎所有人。但这个级别有时候也会扩大到他们的部分军事助手、五角大楼里的许多上校、海军舰艇见长、大量初级军官，甚至包括杰克·特谢拉这样在情报部门工作的应征军人。
Pentagon officials say the number of people with such access is in the thousands, if not tens of thousands. And just below them, those with “secret” clearance include nearly everyone else who works for the Pentagon or other national security agencies. There are military contractors and even analysts at think tanks who have some level of security clearance.
五角大楼官员表示，拥有这种访问权限的人即使不是数万，也有数千人。而涉密级别低于他们的，也就是那些拥有“秘密”权限者，包括为五角大楼和其他国家安全机构工作的几乎所有人。还有军事承包商，甚至智库的分析师都拥有一定的涉密许可。
The Pentagon will likely be dealing with the fallout from the leaking of scores of pages of sensitive material for months as, in the immediate term, Russian military planners pore over the leaked files for clues to their own compromised agencies. But the case raises broader questions about whether the term “top secret” is actually even secret, and whether national security agencies have allowed their sensitive material to drift too far afield.
五角大楼可能会在接下来的几个月里面对这次数十页敏感材料泄露的后果，因为短期内俄罗斯的军事策划人员会仔细研究泄露的文件，寻找线索查明出现了漏洞的机构。但此案引发的更大质疑是，“绝密”一词是否还能代表机密，以及国家安全机构是否对涉密权限的管理过于宽松。
“Clearly, too many people have access to too much top secret information” that they have no need to know, said Evelyn Farkas, the top Defense Department official for Russia and Ukraine during the Obama administration.
奥巴马政府时期负责俄罗斯和乌克兰事务的国防部高级官员伊芙琳·法卡斯说，“显然，有太多人接触到了太多的绝密信息”，而他们本来是没有必要了解这些信息的。
On Thursday, the Pentagon was reeling from the possibility that the leaker may have been far from the higher echelons of military intelligence and sensitive national security data.
周四，五角大楼对于泄密者可能远非一个可以接触军事情报和敏感国家安全数据的更高级别人士而深感震惊。
Instead of finding the leaker in the offices of the Joint Staff, where senior generals and officials put together many of the documents that were posted to a small online gaming chat group called Thug Shaker Central, officials found themselves raiding the home of Airman Teixeira.
这些文件被发布在一个名为Thug Shaker Central的小型网络游戏聊天群中，其中很多是在联合参谋长办公室里，由高级将领和官员们收集整理，然而官员们并不是在联合参谋长办公室找到泄密者，而是突袭了空军士兵特谢拉的家里。
“Each of us signs a nondisclosure agreement — anybody that has a security clearance,” Brig. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder, the Pentagon spokesman, said at a news conference. “So all indications are, again, this is a criminal act.”
“我们每个人都签署了一份保密协议——所有的涉密人员，”五角大楼发言人帕特里克·莱德准将在新闻发布会上说。 “所以各方面都表明，这又是一次犯罪行为。”
The arrest of Airman Teixeira, Ms. Farkas said, serves as a warning for what awaits those who mistreat classified information.
法卡斯表示，特谢拉的被捕是对滥用机密信息者的警告。
“They’re going to throw everything at him,” she said, “and that’s going to make it more important for the government to take action against others who think that they’re immune because of their senior positions.”
“他们不会放过他，”她说，“这将使政府更有必要采取行动对付那些认为自己身居高位，因而不会受到影响的人。”
A person convicted in such a leak could face extended prison time, officials said. Airman Teixeira was arrested under the Espionage Act, violations of which carry a penalty of up to 10 years in prison per count. Reality Winner, a former Air Force airman and an N.S.A. contractor convicted of leaking a classified document to the news media, received a five-year, three-month sentence. A Navy engineer, Jonathan Toebbe, who tried but failed to sell secrets to a foreign country that were classified at a lower “confidential” level, received a 19-year prison sentence last year. His wife, Diana Toebbe, received nearly 22 years in prison.
官员们表示，因此类泄密而被定罪的人可能会面临更长的监禁时间。特谢拉是根据《间谍法》被捕的，违反该法每项罪名最高可判处10年监禁。前空军飞行员和国家安全局承包商雇员蕾亚莉蒂·温纳因向新闻媒体泄露机密文件而被定罪，被判处五年零三个月徒刑。海军工程师乔纳森·托比曾试图向外国出售属于较低“保密”级别的机密，但未能成功，他去年被判处19年徒刑。他的妻子戴安娜·托比被判将近22年。
“This was a major security breach that cannot be allowed to happen again,” Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island and the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said in a statement. “Anyone with a security clearance who betrays their country by purposefully mishandling classified documents or disclosing classified materials must be held accountable.”
“这是一次重大的安全漏洞，不能再次发生了，”罗德岛州民主党参议员、军事委员会主席杰克·里德在一份声明中说。“任何拥有安全许可的人，如果蓄意不当处理机密文件或泄露机密材料，从而背叛国家，就必须被追究责任。”
Some military officials defended the practice of granting security clearances to service members regardless of their age; if someone is old enough to die for their country, they are old enough to be trusted with its secrets, they argued.
一些军官为不分年龄向服役人员授予安全许可的做法进行辩护；他们争辩说，如果一个人到了足以为国捐躯的年龄，那么此人同样也到了足以被信任，能够为国保守秘密的年龄。
“When you join the military, depending on your position, you may require a security clearance,” General Ryder said. “And if you are working in the intelligence community, and you require a security clearance, you’re going to go through the proper vetting. We entrust our members with a lot of responsibility at a very early age.”
“当你参军时，根据你的职位，你可能需要安全许可，”莱德将军说。“如果你在情报界工作，并且需要安全许可，你会需要经过适当的审查。在我们的成员非常年轻的时候，我们就将许多责任委任给他们。”
National security officials on Thursday said the episode underscored weaknesses and vulnerabilities in the clearance process despite changes made since the case of Edward J. Snowden, the former U.S. intelligence contractor who became one of the world’s most high-profile fugitives after he disclosed mass surveillance techniques to news organizations.
国家安全官员周四表示，这一事件凸显了授予安全许可过程中的弱点和漏洞，尽管自前美国情报承包商雇员爱德华·斯诺登案以来，已经实施了一些变革。斯诺登向新闻机构披露大规模监控技术后，成为了世界上最知名的逃犯之一。
“Those reforms clearly weren’t effective enough,” said Javed Ali, a former senior U.S. counterterrorism official who held intelligence roles at the F.B.I., the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Department of Homeland Security.
“显然，这些改革成效不够，”美国前高级反恐官员贾维德·阿里说，他曾在联邦调查局、国防情报局和国土安全局担任情报职务。
For instance, the top secret briefs are on government computers that reside in secure work areas known as SCIFs — Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities — where no one is allowed to bring in any electronic devices that could be used to take photographs or make video or audio recordings. Visitors to a slew of offices at the Pentagon must leave their cellphones, laptops and anything else that can be used to record or take photos in lockers in the hallway.
例如，存放绝密情报的政府电脑都被放置于所谓“SCIF”（敏感信息隔离设施）的安全工作区域，在这里，任何人都不允许携带可用于拍照、录像或录音的电子设备。五角大楼许多办公室的访客都必须将个人手机、笔记本电脑和一切可能被用于录制或拍照的物品存入大厅的储物柜。
To limit intelligence breaches after the Snowden case, senior officials put into place regulations limiting people’s ability to electronically access material in SCIFs.
斯诺登事件后，为了防止情报泄露，高级官员出台规定，限制了以电子方式获取材料的能力。
“The Snowden problem was preventing people from electronically siphoning out classified materials,” Mr. Ali said. “This person went the other direction, likely because of the post-Snowden measures.”
“斯诺登一案确实阻止了通过电子方式获取机密材料，”阿里说。“此人采用了另一种办法，很可能就是因为斯诺登事件后出台的措施。”
In this case, documents appear to have been printed out and removed from classified facilities, officials said, though much about how the materials ended up in the chat group is not yet known.
官员们表示，此案中的文件似乎是在打印后被带出机密设施。但目前还不清楚这些材料为何会出现在群聊之中。
It was unclear on Thursday what level of clearance Airman Teixeira had. But he was detailed to the 102nd Intelligence Wing of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, and it is possible that he had top secret clearance, one Defense official said on Thursday.
到周四，尚不清楚特谢拉获得了何种级别的许可。但一名国防部官员周四声称，特谢拉被派往马萨诸塞州空军国民警卫队第102情报部，有可能获得了绝密许可。
“There’s the obvious question of why someone in this relatively low rank and rather obscure corner of the military, namely the Massachusetts Air National Guard, could have access to not only some of the nation’s most critical secrets, but such an extraordinary array of them, which could have no possible bearing on his job,” said Glenn Gerstell, a former general counsel of the National Security Agency.
“显而易见的问题是，在马萨诸塞州空军国民警卫队这种级别相对较低、在军方也相当不起眼的部门，为什么有人不仅能接触到一些最重要的国家机密，还如此海量，而且这些机密与他的职责可能没有任何关系，”曾担任国家安全局总法律顾问的格伦·格斯特尔表示。
Mick Mulroy, a former C.I.A. officer and top Pentagon official, agreed: “This does bring up just how someone this junior would have access to some of our most sensitive intelligence and documents to brief our most senior officials,” he said. “This should give us pause as to who has access to this level of material and how and why we allow people to print such material.”
前中央情报局官员兼五角大楼高级官员米克·马尔罗伊认同这一观点：“这确实说明了问题，资历这么低的人是如何接触到这些要向最高层官员汇报的最为敏感的情报和文件，”他说。“谁能接触到这种级别的材料，以及我们为何允许这种材料被打印，这些都值得深思。”
Two major changes in how intelligence was handled in the past helped set the stage for the most recent leaks.
以往情报处理的两个重大变化为最近这次泄密事件埋下了伏笔。
After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, intelligence agencies began sharing material much more widely across the government. Then, after the failed intelligence assessment that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, intelligence agencies started sharing more about the sources of their information and their confidence in how reliable the material might be.
2001年的9·11恐怖袭击事件后，情报机构开始在政府内部更广泛地分享材料。后来，在伊拉克拥有大规模杀伤性武器的情报评估失败后，情报机构开始公布更多情报来源，及其对材料可信度的评估。
Mr. Gerstell said those changes were made for good reasons, but they have gone too far. Now access to some classified secrets is “just mind-numbingly broad,” he said.
格斯特尔称，改变的理由很充分，但有矫枉过正之嫌。他说，如今一些机密的公开范围之广“简直令人头疼”。
“We’ve gone so overboard and made it so convenient and easy for a wide range of people to have access precisely because we never want to be in a position of saying we could have prevented something, if only we had shared this information,” he said. “We have a principle of making information available only on a ‘need to know’ basis, but in practice we don’t really follow it.”
“我们做得太过头，让各种各样的人接触材料变得如此方便和容易，就因为我们永远不想处于这样的境地——觉得如果当初早点分享这些信息，本来是可以阻止某件事情发生的，”他说。“我们有一个原则，即仅在‘必需知晓’的基础上提供信息，但实际上，我们并没有真正遵守这个原则。”
American intelligence agencies have strict guidelines about who can access information, but the military has adopted a looser set of rules, that in effect allow anyone with a security clearance to get access to documents from an array of spy agencies.
美国情报机构对于何人可以接触信息有严格的指导方针，但军方规定更加宽松，实际上等于允许任何获得安全许可的人获取来自多方间谍机构的文件。
Mr. Gerstell said a “zero trust architecture is needed” for securing information. Under such a model, people could see the headline or title of a piece of intelligence but would need to have their credentials checked to view the details. That would allow better monitoring of who accesses information and how often.
格斯特尔表示，保护信息“需要一个零信任架构”。在这样的架构中，一份情报的标题或名称可以公开，但要查看细节必须先经过资质审查。这将有助于更好地监控谁访问了信息，以及访问频率如何。
Instead, under the current system, “once you’ve been cleared, you’re entitled to almost everything,” he said.
然而在目前的系统中，“一旦获得许可，你可以接触到几乎所有信息，”他说。
On Thursday, a few hours after Airman Teixeira was arrested, Kathleen Hicks, the deputy defense secretary, sent out a memorandum restating rules for handling classified material.
周四，在特谢拉被捕后不久，国防部副部长凯瑟琳·希克斯发出一份备忘录，重申了处理机密材料的规定。
“Personnel with access to classified information are trusted stewards of that information and the responsibility to safeguard classified information is a lifetime requirement for each individual granted a security clearance,” she wrote.
“能接触到机密信息的人员都是此类信息的可信任管理人，而保护机密信息是一切获得安全许可的个人的终身责任，”她写道。