A burn bag is a security bag that holds sensitive or classified documents which are to be destroyed by fire or

pulping Pulp is a lignocellulosic fibrous material prepared by chemically or mechanically separating cellulose fibers from wood, fiber crops, waste paper, or rags. Mixed with water and other chemical or plant-based additives, pulp is the major raw mat ...

after a certain period of time. The most common usage of burn bags is by government institutions, in the destruction of

classified Classified may refer to: General *Classified information, material that a government body deems to be sensitive *Classified advertising or "classifieds" Music *Classified (rapper) (born 1977), Canadian rapper * The Classified, a 1980s American ro ...

materials. Burn bags are designed to facilitate the destruction process by not requiring the removal of the items to be destroyed beforehand and by indicating if the items require special procedures. Destruction via burn bags is considered superior to shredding, because shredded documents may be reconstructed. After the capture of the United States

embassy A diplomatic mission or foreign mission is a group of people from a state or organization present in another state to represent the sending state or organization officially in the receiving or host state. In practice, the phrase usually den ...

Tehran Tehran (; fa, تهران ) is the largest city in Tehran Province and the capital of Iran. With a population of around 9 million in the city and around 16 million in the larger metropolitan area of Greater Tehran, Tehran is the most popul ...

during the

Iran hostage crisis On November 4, 1979, 52 United States diplomats and citizens were held hostage after a group of militarized Iranian college students belonging to the Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line, who supported the Iranian Revolution, took over ...

, shredded documents were turned over for painstaking manual reconstruction, which revealed to Iran some U.S. operations, including spies.

Usage

In government institutions

Burn bags are generally associated with US governmental organizations like the

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

and

NSA The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collec ...

, 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 Classified information is material that a government body deems to be sensitive information that must be protected. Access is restricted by law or regulation to particular groups of people with the necessary security clearance and need to kn ...

, Secret,

Classified Classified may refer to: General *Classified information, material that a government body deems to be sensitive *Classified advertising or "classifieds" Music *Classified (rapper) (born 1977), Canadian rapper * The Classified, a 1980s American ro ...

, or other similar nature. Burn bags are mostly used to satisfy destruction of articles pursuant under

Executive Order 12958 Executive Order 12958 created new standards for the process of identifying and protecting classified information, and led to an unprecedented effort to declassify millions of pages from the U.S. diplomatic and national security history. In 1995, Un ...

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
1.4 (e) Scientific, technological or economic matters relating to national security;
1.4 (f) United States Government programs for safeguarding nuclear materials or facilities;
1.4 (g) Vulnerabilities or capabilities of systems, installations, projects or plan relating to the national security; or,
1.4 (h) weapons of mass destruction

The order was subsequently replaced by

Executive Order 13526 Executive Order 13526 was issued on December 29, 2009, by United States President Barack Obama.

. Due to environmental concerns and the high value of

recycled paper The recycling of paper is the process by which waste paper is turned into new paper products. It has a number of important benefits: It saves waste paper from occupying homes of people and producing methane as it breaks down. Because paper fib ...

, institutions that generate large amounts of classified material tend to securely desensitize their data in disintegrators with a 3/32" NSA/DOD approved top-secret screen. Even though the moniker "burn bag" is still very popular, rarely within the United States is classified material incinerated. Overseas military outposts and

diplomatic mission A diplomatic mission or foreign mission is a group of people from a state or organization present in another state to represent the sending state or organization officially in the receiving or host state. In practice, the phrase usually den ...

s frequently have emergency disposal procedures in place for the rapid burning of classified materials. These often include special burn bags with built-in

thermite Thermite () is a pyrotechnic composition of metal powder and metal oxide. When ignited by heat or chemical reaction, thermite undergoes an exothermic reduction-oxidation (redox) reaction. Most varieties are not explosive, but can create brie ...

charges.

Haz-mat usage

The term "burn bag" can also refer to bags that contain

haz-mat Dangerous goods, abbreviated DG, are substances that when transported are a risk to health, safety, property or the environment. Certain dangerous goods that pose risks even when not being transported are known as hazardous materials ( syllab ...

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 Identity theft occurs when someone uses another person's personal identifying information, like their name, identifying number, or credit card number, without their permission, to commit fraud or other crimes. The term ''identity theft'' was c ...

and

corporate espionage Industrial espionage, economic espionage, corporate spying, or corporate espionage is a form of espionage conducted for commercial purposes instead of purely national security. While political espionage is conducted or orchestrated by governmen ...

, some services have started to offer destruction by burning instead of disposal into

landfill A landfill site, also known as a tip, dump, rubbish dump, garbage dump, or dumping ground, is a site for the disposal of waste materials. Landfill is the oldest and most common form of waste disposal, although the systematic burial of the wast ...

s. The

waste-to-energy Waste-to-energy (WtE) or energy-from-waste (EfW) is the process of generating energy in the form of electricity and/or heat from the primary treatment of waste, or the processing of waste into a fuel source. WtE is a form of energy recovery. Mo ...

industry often offers a "secure disposal" service to allow businesses to use the waste-to-energy plants' municipal waste incineration units for sensitive material disposal. Services range from a basic drop-off at the facility to actually having a witness to the incineration process and issuance of a certificate of destruction.

In popular culture

* A burn bag is used prominently in the movie ''

Spy Game ''Spy Game'' is a 2001 American action thriller film directed by Tony Scott and starring Robert Redford and Brad Pitt. The film grossed $62 million in the United States and $143 million worldwide on a $115 million budget, and received mostly ...

''. In it, the character Nathan Muir uses a burn bag to hide—and subsequently destroy—documents he was keeping from the CIA pertaining to his protégé, Tom Bishop. *A similar document destruction system (''sans'' burn bags) called the "

memory hole A memory hole is any mechanism for the deliberate alteration or disappearance of inconvenient or embarrassing documents, photographs, transcripts or other records, such as from a website or other archive, particularly as part of an attempt to giv ...

" is used in the Ministry of Truth (

Newspeak Newspeak is the fictional language of Oceania, a totalitarian superstate that is the setting of the 1949 dystopian novel ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'', by George Orwell. In the novel, the Party created Newspeak to meet the ideological requirements ...

: ''Minitrue'') in the

George Orwell Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to totalit ...

novel ''

Nineteen Eighty-Four ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' (also stylised as ''1984'') is a dystopian social science fiction novel and cautionary tale written by the English writer George Orwell. It was published on 8 June 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell's ninth and fina ...

''. *Burn bags are featured in the works of many military and espionage authors. The works of

Tom Clancy Thomas Leo Clancy Jr. (April 12, 1947 – October 1, 2013) was an American novelist. He is best known for his technically detailed espionage and military-science storylines set during and after the Cold War. Seventeen of his novels have b ...

and

W. E. B. Griffin William Edmund Butterworth III (November 10, 1929 – February 12, 2019), better known by his pen name W. E. B. Griffin, was an American writer of military and detective fiction with 59 novels in seven series published under that name. Twenty-one ...

feature them prominently. * In an episode of ''

The West Wing ''The West Wing'' is an American serial political drama television series created by Aaron Sorkin that was originally broadcast on NBC from September 22, 1999, to May 14, 2006. The series is set primarily in the West Wing of the White Hous ...

'' ("

Let Bartlet Be Bartlet "Let Bartlet Be Bartlet" is the 19th episode of ''The West Wing'' and first aired on NBC on April 26, 2000. In the episode, a White House insider writes a memo that attacks President Bartlet for his ineffectiveness in making bold decisions due to h ...

"), Josh asks Mandy if she's ever heard of a burn bag relating to a memo which is critical of the President. *The July 5, 2007 installment of the

Garry Trudeau Garretson Beekman Trudeau (born July 21, 1948) is an American cartoonist, best known for creating the ''Doonesbury'' comic strip. Trudeau is also the creator and executive producer of the Amazon Studios political comedy series '' Alpha House' ...

Doonesbury ''Doonesbury'' is a comic strip by American cartoonist Garry Trudeau that chronicles the adventures and lives of an array of characters of various ages, professions, and backgrounds, from the President of the United States to the title character, ...

" comic refers to Vice President

Dick Cheney Richard Bruce Cheney ( ; born January 30, 1941) is an American politician and businessman who served as the 46th vice president of the United States from 2001 to 2009 under President George W. Bush. He is currently the oldest living former ...

burn-bagging lawyers who have written secret legal opinions. * In the movie ''

American Made (film) ''American Made'' is a 2017 American action comedy film directed by Doug Liman, written by Gary Spinelli, and starring Tom Cruise, Domhnall Gleeson, Sarah Wright, Alejandro Edda, Mauricio Mejía, Caleb Landry Jones, and Jesse Plemons. It is i ...

'', a burn bag is used by C.I.A. employees to disassociate any connection with the main protagonist,

Barry Seal Adler Berriman "Barry" Seal (July 16, 1939 – February 19, 1986) was an American commercial airline pilot who became a major drug smuggler for the Medellín Cartel. When Seal was convicted of smuggling charges, he became an informant for the Dru ...

. *In the Showtime series ''Billions'' season two finale "Ball in Hand", Bobby Axelrod uses a burn up box instead of a burn bag to destroy evidence of his involvement in

securities fraud Securities fraud, also known as stock fraud and investment fraud, is a deceptive practice in the stock or commodities markets that induces investors to make purchase or sale decisions on the basis of false information, frequently resulting in lo ...

. * In the 2012 movie

Argo In Greek mythology the ''Argo'' (; in Greek: ) was a ship built with the help of the gods that Jason and the Argonauts sailed from Iolcos to Colchis to retrieve the Golden Fleece. The ship has gone on to be used as a motif in a variety of ...

, about the

, the Americans in their embassy in Iran tried to burn their embassy documents in a furnace but it malfunctioned and they had to use a

paper shredder A paper shredder is a mechanical device used to cut sheets of paper into either strips or fine particles. Government organizations, businesses, and private individuals use shredders to destroy private, confidential, or otherwise sensitive docum ...

References

Notes

Sources

Government sites
Department of Energy Office of Administration Headquarters Waste Disposal ProgramNOAA Office of Security Education Refresher Briefing
( Microsoft Office PowerPoint Presentation
HTML version
Non-government sites
Everything2 definition
{{DEFAULTSORT:Burn Bag Bags Classified information Waste collection