Though it may sound like one hand clapping, an unmanned aircraft must have a pilot — just not on the plane. And someone has to worry what may happen if the pilot becomes incapacitated.

“Although the term ‘unmanned aircraft’ suggests the absence of human interaction, the human operator/pilot is still a critical element in the success of any unmanned aircraft operation,” according to a new study (pdf) from the Federal Aviation Administration. “For many UA systems, a contributing factor to a substantial proportion of accidents is human error.”

“Regarding the risk of pilot incapacitation, at least a few factors distinguish this risk from manned aircraft,” the study noted. Since the pilot is on the ground, the effects of changes in air pressure can be ignored. Also, many advanced UA systems have procedures for communications failures or “lost data link,” which is “functionally equivalent to pilot incapacitation.” The most advanced systems, such as Global Hawk, “will continue normal flight whether a pilot is present or not.”

The study therefore recommended adoption of a minimal medical certification for pilots, including a waiver process that would also permit handicapped persons to be certified. “This process gives individuals who might not be able to fly manned aircraft an opportunity to receive medical certification for flying an unmanned aircraft.”

See “Unmanned Aircraft Pilot Medical Certification Requirements,” Federal Aviation Administration, February 2007.

The ability of Congress to gain access to classified executive branch information, which is the enabling condition for legislative oversight of national security activities, will be discussed at a public forum on March 30.

“What options does Congress have when the executive branch refuses to provide the information it requests? When is it appropriate for Congress to make national security information available to the public and the press?”

These and related questions will be discussed in a keynote address by Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), who is now chair of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Intelligence.

Her talk will be followed by a panel discussion moderated by Mark Agrast of the Center for American Progress and featuring Eleanor Hill, former staff director of the congressional Joint Inquiry into 9/11; Suzanne Spaulding, former minority staff director of the House Intelligence Committee; Eric Lichtblau of the New York Times; and myself.

The event, which is open to the public, will be held at the Center for American Progress, which is co-sponsoring the program along with OpenTheGovernment.org.

A convenient analysis of the underlying issues was provided in “Congressional Access to Executive Branch Information: Legislative Tools” (pdf), Congressional Research Service, May 17, 2001.

Last year a federal court ruled (pdf) in favor of the Federation of American Scientists in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, finding that the National Reconnaissance Office had unlawfully withheld certain unclassified budget records from disclosure.

Although we won the lawsuit and finally got the records (pdf) this year, we were not entitled to recovery of attorneys’ fees, since we litigated the case without an attorney. Which makes sense. Instead, the government was obliged to reimburse our costs, particularly the $250 filing fee to bring the lawsuit. A check is supposed to be in the mail.

Anyway, the legal practices and procedures governing the award of attorneys’ fees in legal proceedings of all kinds are fairly complicated, with numerous exceptions and qualifications.

A newly updated report from the Congressional Research Service presents what seems to be a comprehensive treatment of the subject (in 123 pages). See “Awards of Attorneys’ Fees by Federal Courts and Federal Agencies” (pdf), updated March 1, 2007.

Some other noteworthy CRS products that are not readily available in other public collections include these.

“Intelligence Issues for Congress” (pdf), updated February 27, 2007.

“China-U.S. Aircraft Collision Incident of April 2001: Assessments and Policy Implications” (pdf), updated October 10, 2001.

In the last quarter, the Department of Energy (DOE) reviewed over 690,000 pages of publicly available records at the National Archives and found 590 pages containing classified nuclear weapons information that it said should not have been disclosed, according to a newly released report to Congress (pdf).

At Congressional direction, DOE has proceeded on the assumption that absolutely no disclosure of classified nuclear information is tolerable, no matter how old or obsolete it may be. This is a poor premise for security policy and it ensures that scarce resources will be diverted from their optimal use.

See the Twenty-Fourth Report to Congress on Inadvertent Disclosures of Restricted Data and Formerly Restricted Data, February 2007 (redacted version released March 2007).

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The U.S. Navy is seeking to expedite its technology development and acquisition practices to meet “urgent capability needs” arising from the “global war on terrorism.”

“The GWOT” — the expansive Bush Administration term for everything from the pursuit of al Qaeda to the attempted suppression of violent sectarian disputes in Iraq — “has generated rapidly evolving military needs that require responsive materiel solutions,” according to a new Navy Notice (pdf).

The March 8, 2007 Notice from the Secretary of the Navy specifies that the Naval Innovation Laboratory (NaIL), a virtual organization, “will bring together, on demand, multidisciplinary teams to develop and deliver rapid, innovative solutions to [an urgent capability need] and will …develop, integrate, test and deliver fieldable prototypes for use by the warfighter.”

See SECNAV Note 5000, “Rapid Development and Deployment Response to Urgent Global War on Terrorism Needs.”

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Recently published hearing records from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence include the following.

“Current and Projected National Security Threats to the United States,” February 2, 2006.

“Confirmation Hearing of Kenneth L. Wainstein to be Assistant Attorney General for National Security,” May 16, 2006.

“Confirmation Hearing of General Michael V. Hayden to be the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency,” May 18, 2006.

In what is being characterized by subordinates as an act of “managerial dementia,” the Director of the Congressional Research Service this week prohibited all public distribution of CRS products without prior approval from senior agency officials.

“I have concluded that prior approval should now be required at the division or office level before products are distributed to members of the public,” wrote CRS Director Daniel P. Mullohan in a memo to all CRS staff (pdf). “This policy is effective immediately.”

While CRS has long refused (with Congressional concurrence) to make its electronic database of reports available to the public online, it has still been possible for members of the press, other researchers, and other government officials to request specific reports from the congressional support agency.

But now, “to avoid inconsistencies and to increase accountability, CRS policy requires prior approval at the division level before products can be disseminated to non-congressionals,” Director Mullohan wrote.

The new policy demonstrates that “this is an organization in freefall,” according to one CRS analyst. “We are now indeed working for Captain Queeg.”

“We’re all sort of shaking,” another CRS staffer told Secrecy News. “I can’t do my work.”

“There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t talk to someone in another agency, another organization, or someone else outside of Congress and we share information,” the staffer said. “Now I can’t do that?”

A copy of the March 20 memorandum from Director Mullohan, entitled “Distribution of CRS Products to Non-Congressionals,” was obtained by Secrecy News.

It was also reported by Elizabeth Williamson in the Washington Post today.

None of the CRS personnel contacted by Secrecy News was able to explain exactly what prompted CRS Director Mulhollan to issue the policy memorandum this week.

While other parts of government strive to eliminate unnecessary obstacles to information sharing, the new CRS policy may be seen as an experiment in what happens when barriers to information sharing are arbitrarily increased. It probably won’t be good.

With some frequency, CRS analysts contact FAS with requests for information or documents. (A recent CRS report on Chinese naval modernization (pdf) reprinted a large excerpt of an analysis of Chinese submarine patrols by FAS analyst Hans Kristensen.) We haven’t been shy about requesting information or documents in return. And both sides seem to have benefitted.

“More important, Congress has benefitted,” a staffer said. But now such working relationships may be jeopardized.

Beginning in the mid-1950s, the U.S. Army conducted research involving thousands of human subjects on various chemical agents, including LSD, BZ and marijuana derivatives, to assess their utility for chemical warfare applications.

Now one of the leading participants in that enterprise, Dr. James S. Ketchum, has published a memoir entitled “Chemical Warfare: Secrets Almost Forgotten.”

“It is a detailed autobiographical reconstruction of the Edgewood Arsenal program of evaluating possible incapacitating agents in human volunteers (enlisted men) during the 1960s,” he told Secrecy News. “It reveals facts buried in restricted archives for many years and includes a voluminous appendix of research data acquired, much of which has not previously been released to the public.”

The self-published volume is a candid, not entirely flattering, sometimes morbidly amusing account of a little-documented aspect of Army research.

“I had early misgivings that my [manuscript] might raise some red flags in [the Army] Security Office, but was pleasantly surprised when none appeared,” he writes.

Among other things, Dr. Ketchum co-authored the chapter on incapacitating agents in the CBW volume of Textbook of Military Medicine.

“Definitely someone to take seriously,” a colleague of Secrecy News wrote. “Although I expect to disagree with much of his opinion, the historical information will be very useful, much of it not available elsewhere.”

Further background and book order information is available here.

Update, 6/5/19: An obituary for James Ketchum appeared in the Washington Post here.

“Classified research constitutes a much smaller portion of the U.S. biodefense program than many might suspect,” according to Gerald L. Epstein, a specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“Nevertheless, classified DHS biodefense research will constitute one of the most controversial parts of the U.S. biodefense program,” he observed in Congressional testimony (pdf) earlier this month.

“Even more so than in other areas of science, the biological sciences have enjoyed a tradition of openness and international collaboration–and this heavy presumption of openness should continue. Since disease continues to kill millions of people around the world each year, any restrictions on relevant scientific knowledge could have serious consequences,” he told a House Science Subcommittee.

“Yet the existence of hostile, witting adversaries that are determined to wreak devastation and that are known to be interested in biological weapons mandates that this openness not be absolute.”

In March 8 testimony (at pp. 6-8), Dr. Epstein presented his views on how to reconcile these conflicting imperatives.

The collaboratively written online encyclopedia Wikipedia, created in 2001, has steadily grown in popularity, credibility and influence to the point that it is now used and referenced in U.S. Government intelligence products.

A March 19 profile of Indian Congress Party Leader Rahul Gandhi prepared by the Open Source Center (OSC) of the Office of Director of National Intelligence is explicitly derived from “various internet sources including wikipedia.org.” A March 21 OSC profile of Rajnath Singh, president of India’s Bharatiya Janata Party, is likewise “sourced from wikipedia.org.”

An OSC report last year on the leader of the terrorist group Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Velupillai Prabhakaran, noted that he and his wife “have two children, a girl and a boy. According to wikipedia.com, the boy is named Charles Anthony and the girl, Duwaraha.”

The relatively new attentiveness of U.S. intelligence agencies to Wikipedia and other unorthodox sources (including fas.org) seems like a healthy development. Of course, like any source and moreso than some, Wikipedia cannot be used uncritically.

Last December, according to another OSC report, a participant in an online jihadist forum posted a message entitled “Why Don’t We Invade Wikipedia?” in which “he called on other participants to consider writing articles and adding items to the online Wikipedia encyclopedia…. and in this way, and through an Islamic lobby, apply pressure on the encyclopedia’s material.”

For various topics related to space physics, “Wikipedia was the most complete source of information” compared to other highly ranked web sites, according to an article in the American Geophysical Union’s Eos magazine (13 March 07) by Mark B. Moldwin, et al. But some Wikipedia entries on space physics, the authors found, also contained mistaken use of terminology, factual errors and omissions.

“Wikipedia lets anyone write or edit it, which of course makes it vulnerable to vandalism–as when a picture of the evil Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars briefly adorned the entry for the new Pope [Benedict],” notes Eric Rauchway in The New Republic Online (March 21).

The suggestion that it would be inherently inappropriate for presidential advisers to testify under oath before Congress regarding the firing of U.S. attorneys was swiftly batted down with numerous references to a 2004 Congressional Research Service report (pdf) on the subject.

CRS analyst Harold C. Relyea identified dozens of cases in which presidential advisers had been summoned to testify to Congress, and did so. See “Presidential Advisers’ Testimony Before Congressional Committees: A Brief Overview,” April 14, 2004.

The Office of Naval Intelligence has published an unclassified assessment of Chinese naval forces, which have been modernizing and growing in capability over the past decade. See “China’s Navy 2007” (pdf), March 2007. Update: The new ONI report was analyzed by Hans Kristensen of FAS over at the Strategic Security Blog.

The National Intelligence Council released an April 2006 “Annual Report to Congress on the Safety and Security of Russian Nuclear Facilities and Military Forces.”

U.S. Army space operations in the 2015-2024 timeframe are considered in a recent Concept Capability Plan from U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command. See “Space Operations: 2015-2024,” 15 November 2006 (pdf).

Military doctrine to support joint operations with foreign military forces is addressed in a new Joint Chiefs of Staff publication. See “Multinational Operations,” Joint Publication JP 3-16, 7 March 2007 (pdf).

The cost of post-9/11 U.S. military operations has now reached $510 billion, according to an updated estimate from the Congressional Research Service. See “The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on Terror Operations Since 9/11” (pdf), updated March 14, 2007.

Behind closed doors at the National Archives, an acrimonious debate has unfolded over whether and how to dispose of records generated by Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) at executive branch agencies.

What is at stake is the proper identification and preservation of historically significant government financial records, some of which have already been lost.

A proposed “General Records Schedule” (GRS) that would authorize the disposal and destruction of various CFO records is “fundamentally flawed,” wrote one Archives analyst last year.

“I really cannot say anything positive about this proposed GRS,” wrote another analyst, in internal comments. “It is flawed, troubling, and misleading.” It is “unimplementable” and “will lead to the destruction of permanent records.”

“This proposal is ill-considered, ill-conceived, and should be terminated with extreme prejudice,” said a third.

But another Archives official said the “extremely aggressive tone to the argument” shows that those critics’ judgment has been “clouded” because they were not consulted in advance.

As a general matter, no one doubts that the overwhelming majority of government records lack permanent historical value and are properly destroyed. What is at issue in this dispute is whether the proposed schedule for destruction of financial records properly recognizes the enduring value of some CFO records.

The functions of agency Chief Financial Officers “are not routine, administrative, housekeeping operations traditionally covered by a [General Records Schedule],” one internal NARA critic insisted. “Prima facie, it is doubtful that there should be a GRS for the office of Chief Financial Officer.”

But the proposal is nevertheless moving forward.

In a February 22 Federal Register notice, NARA announced the availability for public comment of a disposition schedule for CFO records. A copy is here (pdf).

As a result of the debate of the past several months, the revised proposal adds several new caveats. It acknowledges that some CFO records are permanent, not temporary, and that they must be preserved; it specifies that the proposed schedule would apply to certain types of CFO components and not to others; and it notes that some CFO records are already subject to existing schedules that take precedence over the new proposal.

Under the circumstances, then, the remaining question is whether the proposed schedule will provide increased clarity and flexibility, as intended, or whether it will generate new confusion and inadvertent loss of historically valuable records.

A cross-section of internal NARA comments on the proposed schedule as of September 2006, only some of which were resolved by the latest draft, is posted here (pdf).

Some basic financial records of the United States Government have already been lost to history.

“We are unable to locate a document containing, or a series of documents from which we may deduce, the aggregate U.S. intelligence budget figure for Fiscal Year 1947 [or Fiscal Year 1948],” wrote the CIA’s Kathryn I. Dyer in 2003 in response to a Federation of American Scientists lawsuit.