The organization and management of U.S. Air Force space activities from pre-launch to post-operational disposal are described in a new AF Space Command Instruction (pdf) on “satellite operations.”

“The objective of satellite disposal is to reduce the potential for spacecraft collisions and frequency interference, to mitigate the creation of additional space debris and to open orbital slots to newer SVs [satellite vehicles].”

“Therefore, de-orbiting or removing a non-mission capable satellite from its operational orbit and placing it into an established disposal region is of paramount importance.”

See “Satellite Operations,” U.S. Air Force Space Command Instruction 10-1204, 1 June 2006.

Some random reports of the Congressional Research Service that are not otherwise readily available in the public domain include the following:

“Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Education Issues and Legislative Options” (pdf), May 22, 2006.

“Australia: Background and U.S. Relations” (pdf), April 20, 2006.

“China’s Impact on the U.S. Automotive Industry” (pdf), April 4, 2006.

“The Congressional Charter of the American National Red Cross: Overview, History, and Analysis” (pdf), March 15, 2006.

An interagency report on proposals to streamline controls on so-called “sensitive but unclassified” (SBU) information is due to be presented to the White House this month.

Efforts to promote information sharing among government agencies and others involved in homeland security have been stymied by the growing use of over sixty different types of access controls on unclassified information, such as For Official Use Only, Law Enforcement Sensitive, Limited Official Use, and many more. Such controls are often poorly defined and mutually incompatible.

Last December 16, the White House initiated an ongoing review that began with preparation of an inventory of all of the various SBU access controls used in the federal government, which was completed in March. The next step was to formulate recommendations for standardizing SBU policies related to terrorism, homeland security and law enforcement, which are now due.

See Guideline 3, “Standardize Procedures for Sensitive But Unclassified Information,” in the December 16 White House memo.

As of last week, a report to the President on those recommendations was awaiting the signatures of the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security.

The pending report sets forth principles upon which SBU policy should be based, but stops short of the crucial task of defining exactly how those principles ought to be implemented, government officials said.

One of those principles is that each type of control on unclassified information should have a uniform, public and government-wide definition so that it is employed the same way by all agencies. That is not the case today.

The proposed principles include provisions for oversight of how SBU controls are used, officials told Secrecy News.

They also include a proposed moratorium on the creation of new SBU categories.

The new report to the President has not been released. But a 2005 report prepared for the Department of Homeland Security provides one detailed perspective on the complexity of the information sharing problem and some options for addressing it.

See “Information Sharing and Collaboration Business Plan,” Institute for Defense Analyses, June 2005 (205 pages, 1.5 MB PDF).

Some agencies treat oversight of their programs as a burden or a threat to be avoided or evaded. But that is a shortsighted view.

The paradox of oversight is that when properly performed it actually serves the interests of the overseen program by building confidence in its legitimacy and integrity.

Perhaps with that in mind, U.S. Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey recently issued a memo (pdf) to senior Army leaders stressing the importance of effective oversight, especially when it comes to classified “sensitive” activities.

“I expect my oversight team to have an informed understanding of the Army’s conduct of, or support to, sensitive activities,” Secretary Harvey wrote.

“Sensitive activities may include intelligence activities and military operations, organizational relationships or processes, and technological capabilities or vulnerabilities.”

See “Oversight of Sensitive Activities,” May 18, 2006.

“The National Security Agency is committed to declassifying national security information as instructed in Executive Order 12958, as amended,” the NSA declared in a 2005 declassification plan (pdf).

“The Agency will use all available resources to successfully accomplish the provisions of the E.O. within the required time.”

See “NSA Declassification Plan for Executive Order 12958, as Amended,” January 13, 2005 (obtained by Michael Ravnitzky).

“The fact that the U.S. Army and Navy mounted a [World War II] effort called Project BOURBON against certain Soviet cryptosystems can be released,” according to a newly disclosed 2001 NSA notice on declassification policy.

“Most details beyond this statement, as well as the cooperation with the British in this effort, remain classified.”

See selected NSA declassification guidance (pdf), released June 2006.

Other agency declassification plans, including newly posted plans of the Army and Navy, may be found here.

“Is New York City adequately prepared for a ‘dirty bomb’ attack?” asked John Sudnik, a deputy chief at the New York Fire Department in a recent master’s thesis (pdf) on the prospects of a terrorist incident involving a radiological weapon.

In response to this question, the author provided an assessment of the threat, the consequences of an attack, and the possibilities of mitigating such consequences.

See “‘Dirty Bomb’ Attack: Assessing New York City’s Level of Preparedness from a First Responder’s Perspective” by John Sudnik, Naval Postgraduate School, March 2006.

“Why does The Washington Post willingly publish ‘classified’ information affecting national security?” wrote former Post editor Robert G. Kaiser in a Sunday Outlook piece.

“Should Post journalists and others who reveal the government’s secrets be subject to criminal prosecution for doing so? These questions, raised with new urgency of late, deserve careful answers.”

He proposed some thoughtful answers in “Public Secrets,” Washington Post, June 11.

U.S. Navy Admiral (ret.) William O. Studeman was appointed this week by Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-IL) to serve on the Public Interest Declassification Board.

Adm. Studeman is a former Deputy Director of Central Intelligence and a former Director of the National Security Agency. As a member of the Board, he is now supposed to represent the public interest in declassification of government records.

Adm. Studeman is currently vice president and deputy general manager for intelligence and information superiority at Northrop Grumman Mission Systems.

He is the eighth member of the nine-person Board named to date. The Board is chaired by former CIA Inspector General L. Britt Snider.

The Public Interest Declassification Board advises the President on declassification policies and priorities. The Board will hold a public meeting on June 23 at the National Archives.

Tactics, techniques and procedures that military forces should use to avoid contamination from an attack involving chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) weapons are set forth in a recent military manual (large pdf).

“The possibility that an adversary will use CBRN weapons against the United States and its allies continues to increase daily,” the manual states.

“If these weapons are used, our forces must be ready to implement the principles of CBRN defense [including] contamination avoidance, protection, and decontamination.”

“Executed at all levels and coupled with an effective retaliatory response, these fundamentals will increase the likelihood of a US victory.”

See “Multiservice Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures for Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Contamination Avoidance,” U.S. Army, Marine Corps, Navy, and Air Force, February 2006 (13.5 MB PDF).

“There has been a long-running controversy about the fate of certain U.S. prisoners of war (POWs) and servicemembers missing in action (MIAs) as a result of various U.S. military operations,” a newly updated Congressional Research Service (CRS) report (pdf) on the subject begins.

“While few people familiar with the issue feel that any Americans are still being held against their will in communist countries associated with the Cold War, more feel that some may have been so held in the past in the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, or North Vietnam,” according to the CRS author.

There is currently one U.S. Army soldier who is listed as a Prisoner of War following his capture by Iraqi insurgents on April 9, 2004.

See “POWs and MIAs: Status and Accounting Issues,” June 1, 2006.

Some other recent CRS reports obtained by Secrecy News that are not readily available in the public domain include the following:

“Federal Emergency Management and Homeland Security Organization: Historical Developments and Legislative Options” (pdf), updated June 1, 2006.

“Military Airlift: C-17 Aircraft Program” (pdf), updated May 30, 2006.

“F/A-22 Raptor” (pdf), updated May 24, 2006.

Some 27,000 pages of Central Intelligence Agency records regarding operational relationships between the CIA and former Nazis following World War II were disclosed yesterday at the National Archives.

The release was announced by the Interagency Working Group (IWG) on Nazi War Crimes, which was created by a 1998 law. The IWG, which has previously overseen the declassification of eight million war crimes-related records, is chaired by former Information Security Oversight Office Director Steven Garfinkel.

The latest release almost failed to occur due to CIA recalcitrance.

“In 2002, the CIA declared that it was no longer going to follow the criteria observed since 1999 for all the participating agencies in the IWG declassification project [and that] henceforth it would produce files relating only to individuals whom we could prove had personally engaged in war crimes,” recalled IWG member Richard Ben-Veniste (pdf).

“For 18 months the IWG tried to persuade CIA that its unilateral redefinition of its obligation was erroneous and unacceptable,” he said.

This obstacle was eventually overcome thanks to the intervention of the sponsors of the original legislation — Senators Mike DeWine (R-OH) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) — and the effective support of Porter Goss, who had just become the new CIA Director.

CIA spokesman Stanley Moskowitz said (pdf) the Agency was now committed to full disclosure regarding the historical record of CIA’s connections to Nazis.

He said that when the declassification process is completed at the end of this year, “we will have withheld nothing of substance.”

(Mr. Moskowitz himself was once the object of unwanted disclosure when, to the dismay of Agency officials, he was publicly identified as the CIA station chief in Tel Aviv. See “CIA Station Chief in Israel Unmasked,” Secrecy & Government Bulletin, Issue 75, November 1998.)

“The relevance of today’s disclosures [on Nazi war crimes] to the issues this Nation faces today is striking,” suggested IWG member Thomas H. Baer (pdf).

The question the documents raise, he said, is: “To what extent, and under what circumstances, can our Government rely upon intelligence supplied by mass murderers and those complicit in their crimes?”

Initial assessments of the new disclosures were prepared by four historians for the Interagency Working Group, each of which includes several of the newly declassified documents. See:

“New Information on Cold War CIA Stay-Behind Operations in Germany and on the Adolf Eichmann Case” (pdf) by Timothy Naftali, University of Virginia.

“Gustav Hilger: From Hitler’s Foreign Office to CIA Consultant” (pdf) by Robert Wolfe, former archivist at the U.S. National Archives.

“Tscherim Soobzokov” (pdf) by Richard Breitman, American University.

“CIA Files Relating to Heinz Felfe, SS Officer and KGB Spy” (pdf) by Norman J.W. Goda, Ohio University.

For more information, consult the Interagency Working Group on Nazi War Crimes.

“The Defense Department’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) is one of three aircraft programs at the center of current debate over tactical aviation, the others being the Air Force F-22A fighter and the Navy F/A-18E/F fighter/attack plane,” explains a newly updated Congressional Research Service (CRS) report.

“The JSF program is a major issue in Congress because of concerns about its cost and budgetary impact, effects on the defense industrial base, and implications for U.S. national security in the early 21st century.”

Each of those matters is explored by CRS in “F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) Program: Background, Status, and Issues” (pdf), updated June 2, 2006.

See also “Proposed Termination of Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) F136 Alternate Engine” (pdf), April 13, 2006.

Congress does not permit direct public access to products of the Congressional Research Service.