Burn bag

[
thumb|right|200pix|US Fish and Wildlife Service employees putting protective gear into a burn bag for disposal.]

A burn bag is the informal name given to a container (usually a paper bag or some other waste receptacle) that holds sensitive or classified documents which are to be destroyed by fire or pulping after a certain period of time. The most common usage of burn bags is by government institutions, in the destruction of materials deemed Top Secret or Classified.

Burn bags are considered superior to shredding, because shredded documents may be reconstructed. After the capture of the United States embassy in Tehran during the Iran hostage crisis, shredded documents were turned over for painstaking manual reconstruction, which revealed to Iran some US operations including spies. [A picture of one such reassembled document can be seen at [http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/publications/iran/irdoc.html] ] Today, scanners and computers can reconstruct shredded documents very quickly.

Usage

In government institutions

Burn bags are generally associated with governmental organizations like the CIA and NSA, due to the classified nature of their work. Most other governmental organizations have some form of burn bag system to destroy documents deemed of a Top Secret, Secret, Classified, or other similar nature.

Burn bags are mostly used to satisfy destruction of articles pursuant under Executive Order 12958 section 1.4, in part:

Classified information must fall under one of the following categories: 1.4 (a) Military plans, weapons systems, or operations; 1.4 (b) Foreign government information; 1.4 (c) Intelligence activities, sources or methods or cryptology; 1.4 (d) Foreign relations or foreign activities of the United States including confidential sources; 1.4 (e) Scientific, technological or economic matters relating to the national security; 1.4 (f) United States Government programs for safeguarding nuclear materials or facilities; or 1.4 (g) Vulnerabilities or capabilities of systems, installations, projects or plan relating to the national security. 1.4 (h) weapons of mass destruction"

The order was subsequently revised under Executive Order 13292.

Due to environmental concerns and high value of recycled paper, institutions that generate large amounts of classified material tend to securely dispose of their paper in pulping vats to be remade into low quality paper products.

Overseas military outposts and Diplomatic missions frequently have emergency disposal procedures in place for the rapid burning of classified materials. These often include special burn bags with built-in thermite charges.

Haz-Mat Usage

Burn bags can also refer to bags that contain Haz-Mat protective gear after inspection of sources deemed hazardous.

In private businesses

Document Destruction Companies have rarely used burning in disposing of documents, mainly opting to shred material before disposal. However, due to the possibility that shredded material can be reconstructed, and recent increases in identity theft and corporate espionage, some services have started to offer destruction by burning instead of disposal into landfills.

In pop culture

* Burn bags are used prominently in the movie "Spy Game". Nathan Muir uses the bag not to destroy documents, but to covertly smuggle documents critical to his plans.

*A similar document destruction system ("sans" burn bags) called the "memory hole" is used in the Ministry of Truth (Newspeak: "Minitrue") in the George Orwell novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four".

*Burn Bags are featured in the works of many military and espionage authors. The works of Tom Clancy and W.E.B. Griffin feature them prominently.
*The July 5, 2007 installment of the Gary Trudeau "Doonesbury" comic refers to Vice President Dick Cheney burn-bagging lawyers who have written secret legal opinions.

References

Inline

Government sites

* [http://www.administration.doe.gov/ofcadm/WasteDisposal.htm Department of Energy Office of Administration |Headquarters Waste Disposal Program]
* [http://www.wasc.noaa.gov/wrso/briefings/NSI_revised03.ppt NOAA Office of Security Education Refresher Briefing] (Microsoft Office PowerPoint Presentation) [http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:WjGa7emUN28J:www.wasc.noaa.gov/wrso/briefings/NSI_revised03.ppt+Burn+Bag&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=18&client=firefox-a HTML version]

Non-government sites

* [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/1998/07/01/AR2005112200823.html Nixon Logs Burn to Ashes]
* [http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=955168 Everything2 definition]