We shed light on the dark realm of the Department Of Defense's often misunderstood classified apparatus in this comprehensive explainer.

To a lot of people, terms like "black budget," or "black projects," inspire dark imagery of government figures operating in contrast to the principles of a free and open society. Indeed, with tens of billions set aside every year for classified Pentagon programs and operations, it would be reckless of the public not to be willing to question that which they pay for, but lack the privilege of knowing anything about. 

Inherently enigmatic and often grossly misunderstood, The War Zone set out to shed light on the obscure processes that are involved in maintaining the highly intricate ecosystem that works to guard the Pentagon’s most closely held secrets. 

Special Access Programs—A Hidden World Most Will Never See

For the better part of the last twenty-five years, the manner in which the U.S. government safeguards and restricts access of highly classified information is through a set of compartmentalization protocols termed "Special Access Programs." Thanks to the government's love affair with condensing words, most people are likely familiar with this formalized system of security's acronym—"SAP."

For most of us stuck on the outside trying to get an idea of what’s inside, the term "Special Access Program" is often misunderstood as being itself a classification level. In truth, SAPs are merely a set of security protocols limiting access of sensitive information to only authorized and necessary individuals. Cue the cliché, "That information is need to know, and you don't have a need to know!” 

Now, before one can gain a real appreciation for how Special Access Programs operate, like any scholar of history will tell you, "To understand the present, one must first appreciate the past."

Top Secret cover sheet circa 1967. CIA

How National Security Information Is Classified

The early origins of Special Access Programs can be traced to March 22, 1940, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8381, creating for the first time, three security designations for America's most crucial information—restricted, confidential, and secret. 

In the ensuing years, various presidential executive orders have tweaked how the government designates classified information. The current levels of classification are confidential, secret, and top secret. The determining factor for how information is classified depends on how much damage an unauthorized disclosure would reasonably be expected to cause.  

• Top Secret: “Exceptionally grave damage to national security.” 
• Secret: “Serious damage to national security.” 
• Confidential: "Damage to national security.” 

Important to note, established through the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, the Department of Energy (DOE) uses two differing equivalent levels of security clearance. 

• Q-Clearance: Equivalent to a Top-Secret level clearance. 
• L-Clearance: Equivalent to a Secret level clearance. 

For clarity’s sake, at times misrepresented by the entertainment industry, a “Yankee White clearance” is not an actual security clearance. “Yankee White” is an administrative nickname for the background check performed for persons who will work within close proximity to the President or Vice President. According to Department of Defense instructions, to obtain a Yankee White clearance one must pass the same Single Scope Background Investigation (SSBI) necessary for a top secret clearance, and establish “unquestionable loyalty to the United States.”

Within the world of SAPs, a program can involve information from any one of these official classification levels. Further adding to the confusion, in many cases, a single Special Access Program will contain multiple components, each with differing classification levels.

The Dubious Origins Of Special Access Programs

The incredulous mystique surrounding SAPs likely comes from the unofficial, ad hoc nature of their origins. In 1953, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower issued Executive order 10501, he eliminated classification authority from 28 government entities, limiting only departments and agencies of the executive branch the ability to classify materials. More importantly, President Eisenhower's directive removed the previously approved "restricted" designation. 

President Dwight D. Eisenhower in the Oval Office. Eisenhower Library

Up to this point, “restricted" classifications functioned as a means of limiting certain information from people who may indeed have held an active security clearance, however, they didn’t have a "need to know.” 

In light of being given a formal order by the Commander and Chief, some departments within the Pentagon weren't all that keen on being unable to limit access to their secrets. In response, many agencies began to unofficially use "special access.” Albeit, with no official authority, these informal "special access" classifications would allow for the continuance of closely guarded, tight-knit programs, to be hidden within the government. 

Now, it's hard to argue that the flagrant rejection of national directives wasn't a recipe for disaster waiting to happen. In fact, it's likely no coincidence some of the darkest times in government secrecy went on during these unofficial "special access" years. For example, the CIA's infamous Project MKULtra began in 1953 and remained active until 1973. Coincidently, 1973 was the same year that during an oversight hearing, a report by the Committee on Government Operations brought to light that dozens of unauthorized "special access, distribution, control labels, stamps, or markings" were being used, by "many executive agencies having classification authority and dozens of other agencies who do not possess such authority." 

In all fairness, by the time of their discovery, the precedent of unofficial special access programs was primarily a moot point. Either intentionally or by ironic happenstance, three months prior to five men being caught breaking into the Democratic party headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington D.C., on March 8, 1972, President Richard Nixon signed Executive order 11652, legitimatizing and establishing the overall framework for what would eventually become the "Special Access Program" of today. 

President Nixon in the Oval Office. National Archives

Still not thoroughly having worked the kinks out, according to the Center for Development of Security Excellence’s (CDSE) Special Access Programs Training Course, from the early 1970s to 1980s, SAPs—referenced even within the government as "black programs,”—were almost exclusively restricted to safeguarding DoD acquisition programs. In fact, the existence of "black programs” wasn't publicly known until the mid-1980s, when the controversial "Project Yellow Fruit" unceremoniously thrust government secrecy programs in the limelight. 

More on "Project Yellow Fruit" to come. 

By the mid-1990s, these enigmatic workshops shed the "black program" moniker, opting to go by the more contemporarily familiar "Special Access Program." In addition to the more dexterously sleek title, intelligence, operations, and support programs were added to the SAP repertoire, establishing the Special Access Program regime we've come to know today. 

Armed with some history on SAP's, let’s take a look at how they operate. 

Enter the Bureaucratic Jungle of SAPs

When considering the term "special access program," typically, people envision one of the three categories that go on within the Department of Defense, as outlined by DoD 5205.07. Acquisition, intelligence, and operations and support. Breaking these categories down to gain a sense of what they entail:

• Acquisition SAPs: Programs that involve research, development, testing, modification, evaluation or procurement of new technologies. (According to the CDSE, Acquisition SAPs make up 75-80% of all DoD SAPs) 
• Intelligence SAPs: Planning and execution of, especially sensitive, intelligence or counter-intelligence operations. 
• Operations and Support SAPs: Planning, implementation, and support of sensitive military activities.  

It's important to note, though the DoD's three main categories are the most well-known, Special Access Programs are inherently just a procedure within the government. In fact, there are many other categories of SAPs that go on outside the DoD. For example, the Secret Service's Presidential travel support detail is technically a SAP. Additionally, within the intelligence services, these similar sets of protocols are termed, "Sensitive Compartmented Information” (SCI) and not "Special Access Programs." 

Additionally, separate from an objective category, all special access programs fall under one of two distinctive protection levels—"acknowledged" and "unacknowledged."  

• Acknowledged SAPs - Programs that's existence and purpose can be openly recognized. With Acknowledged SAPs, typically only intimate details, such as technologies, materials or techniques are kept secret. Funding for Acknowledged SAPs is mostly unclassified and can be readily seen in the government's fiscal budget. 

With its existence well known, yet its inner details still remaining mysterious, Northrop Grumman’s B-21 Raider is an excellent example of an Acknowledged Special Access Program actively going on today. 

On the other end of the spectrum, serving as the inspiration for much spy fiction or conspiracy theories of secret space forces, there is the “Unacknowledged” SAP.

• Unacknowledged SAPs or “USAPs”: The shy sibling of the SAP family. When a SAP is designated as "unacknowledged" not only is a program's purpose carefully guarded, as the name implies, USAPs mere existence may be denied to everyone but a spare few who aren't a part of the program. Given their shadowy presence, it should come as no surprise, the funding for unacknowledged SAPs is either classified or is intentionally hidden within the Federal budget. 

An example of an Unacknowledged SAP would be the RQ-170 before it was officially disclosed to the public. 

In rare instances, when information is considered to be of the most extremely sensitive in nature, the Secretary of Defense can formally exempt a program from federal reporting requirements and establish the pinnacle of the secrecy—the "Waived Unacknowledged SAP.”

Due to their ultra-secretive nature, Unacknowledged or Waived-Unacknowledged SAPs, serve as fertile breeding grounds for conspiracies of hidden crashed UFO technology or veiled government "carve-outs" whereby the general public's benefit is an afterthought. In truth, USAPs or Waived USAPs, like anything else that lacks accessibly verifiable fact, is likely very mythicized. With that said, like any good myth, there’s some truth and historical precedent that give legitimate reasons to be concerned with these deeply hidden programs. 

With that in mind, let's take a quick journey back to the not-to-distant past. To a time that shows Special Access Programs have, and can, operate in a manner opposed to public interest. 

“Yellow Fruit," The Rogue SAP The Government Wants To Forget

In 1983, an arbitrary internal audit turned up enormous inconsistencies in an unacknowledged, covert SAP being run out of the newly formed Special Operations Division of the DoD. Code named, "Yellow Fruit," the program was established to provide additional operational security and counter-intelligence assistance for missions in Central American. Yellow Fruit was a genuine "deep cover" USAP, with the program's director, former Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Lt. Col. Dale Duncan outwardly appearing to have "retired" from the Army to start a private consulting firm called Business Security International. 

The discovery of financial discrepancies in Yellow Fruit sparked a formal investigation by the FBI. The inquiry into Yellow Fruit would result in Lt. Col. Duncan, Special Operation Division Commander Lt. Col. James E. Longhofer, and several other members of SOD being court-martialed for a hodgepodge of varying crimes. In addition, many never-fully proven allegations, such as millions of stolen dollars hidden in Swiss bank accounts, set-ups of other U.S. military officials with prostitutes and hidden cameras, and even ties to the Iran-Contra affair, still loom over Yellow Fruit. 

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