The National Reconnaissance Office, the U.S. intelligence agency that builds and operates spy satellites, has released a redacted version of its declassification guide (pdf) for review of historical records that also provides a unique overview of the agency.
Although the primary purpose of the document is to assist official reviewers in the declassification process, it also serves as an authoritative compendium of declassified data regarding the NRO, which was established in 1961 and publicly acknowledged in 1992.
From organizational history to satellite programs to agency products and capabilities, the declassification guide itemizes the various “facts” in each category that are now declassified.
Valuable appendices identify key individual participants in the National Reconnaissance Program and provide a glossary of code words. Excerpting at random:
“The term ‘Area 58’ [may be released] when limited to the context of a very general association with the NRO, intelligence activities, imagery intelligence, or satellite reconnaissance but not revealing any geographic location information.”
“EVEN STEVEN” is “the code word associated with 29 U-2 flights in 1970 that overflew the Suez Canal ceasefire zone between Israel and Egypt.”
“ECI” stands for “Exceptionally Controlled Information,” which is “an NSA administrative COMINT flag.”
The document was declassified and released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from researcher Michael Ravnitzky, who kindly provided a copy to Secrecy News.
See “National Reconnaissance Office Review and Redaction Guide for Automatic Declassification of 25-Year-Old Information,” 2006 edition (165 pages, 6.5 MB PDF file).
The bootcamp brought more than two dozen next-generation open-source practitioners from across the United States to Washington DC, where they participated in interactive modules, group discussions, and hands-on sleuthing.
Fourteen teams from ten U.S. states have been selected as the Stage 2 awardees in the Civic Innovation Challenge (CIVIC), a national competition that helps communities turn emerging research into ready-to-implement solutions.
The Fix Our Forests Act provides an opportunity to speed up the planning and implementation of wildfire risk reduction projects on federal lands while expanding collaborative tools to bring more partners into this vital work.
Public health insurance programs, especially Medicaid, Medicare, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), are more likely to cover populations at increased risk from extreme heat, including low-income individuals, people with chronic illnesses, older adults, disabled adults, and children.