# Sensitive but unclassified

> **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou.
>
> Cite as: "Sensitive but unclassified," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/sensitive-but-unclassified/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*SBU — the intelligence community's name for what other agencies call controlled unclassified information. John Kiriakou stresses that it is a control and not a classification, gives gun-cleaning manuals and unreleased Commerce Department trade figures as examples, and warns that folding it under the Espionage Act would place an entire additional layer of federal employees — people with no clearances at all — inside the reach of the statute.*

- **Status:** A control, not a classification
- **Examples Kiriakou gives:** A gun-cleaning training manual; Commerce Department trade figures due in three days
- **Relation to sources and methods:** None
- **Risk he flags:** Bringing uncleared federal employees under [the Espionage Act](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/espionage-act)

**Sensitive but unclassified**, or SBU, is the intelligence community's term for the category other parts of government call controlled unclassified information. [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou)'s first point about it is definitional: *"it's not a classification, it's a control."*[1]

## What it covers

The examples he gives are deliberately mundane — *"a training manual for how to clean a gun,"* or *"the Department of Commerce's trade numbers that are going to come out in three days."* Such material *"has nothing to do with sources and methods. They may potentially, possibly cause a little bit of embarrassment if they were to leak, but they are not classified."*[1][2]

## The expansion he objects to

Kiriakou was responding to a proposal to bring controlled unclassified information inside insider-threat monitoring. His objection is about reach: *"to include information like that under [the Espionage Act](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/espionage-act) would be to add an entire layer of federal employees underneath the Espionage Act's auspices."*[2]

He works the example. Nobody at the Office of Personnel Management has access to classified information, or needs it, *"so everything that they do, because it's personnel-based, it's sensitive but unclassified."* A hard-working branch chief takes files home to finish and leaves them on the subway — *"what, you're going to be charged with espionage? Come on. This is really entering the realm of the absurd."*[3][4]

## See also

- [Espionage Act](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/espionage-act)
- [Classification compartments](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/classification-compartments)
- [Over Classification](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/over-classification)

## Sources

1. Every Official Everywhere With Classified Documents (2023-01-28), at 22:07. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWTHWRbcuyI&t=1327s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2023-01-28-kevin-gosztola-every-official-everywhere-with-classified-doc/
2. Every Official Everywhere With Classified Documents (2023-01-28), at 22:39. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWTHWRbcuyI&t=1359s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2023-01-28-kevin-gosztola-every-official-everywhere-with-classified-doc/
3. Every Official Everywhere With Classified Documents (2023-01-28), at 23:11. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWTHWRbcuyI&t=1391s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2023-01-28-kevin-gosztola-every-official-everywhere-with-classified-doc/
4. Every Official Everywhere With Classified Documents (2023-01-28), at 23:43. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWTHWRbcuyI&t=1423s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2023-01-28-kevin-gosztola-every-official-everywhere-with-classified-doc/

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From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/sensitive-but-unclassified/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt