Reports of the Congressional Research Service are predicated on the belief that readers in Congress or elsewhere care about the minutia of government policy. But if this was ever true, is it still the case today?

The members of CRS’s presumed target audience have not yet made up their minds about any number of issues, and they eagerly look forward to weighing the competing arguments pro and con. Are there such people?

To Congress, CRS reports must be treated as a controlled substance. CRS is literally prohibited from making them directly available to the public. If anybody were able to get their hands on them, who knows what might happen?

Let’s find out. New and updated reports from the Congressional Research Service that have been withheld from public distribution in the last few days include the following.

How Much Slack Remains in the Labor Market?, CRS Insight, August 5, 2016

Evolution of the Meaning of “Waters of the United States” in the Clean Water Act, August 8, 2016

Implementing Bills for Trade Agreements: Statutory Procedures Under Trade Promotion Authority, August 8, 2016

Clean Power Plan: Legal Background and Pending Litigation in West Virginia v. EPA, updated August 8, 2016

Overview of Funding Mechanisms in the Federal Budget Process, and Selected Examples, August 4, 2016

Automakers Seek to Align Fuel Economy and Greenhouse Gas Regulations, CRS Insight, August 8, 2016

Al Qaeda’s Syria Affiliate Declares Independence, CRS Insight, August 5, 2016

Trafficking in Persons and U.S. Foreign Policy Responses in the 114th Congress, August 5, 2016

Changes in the Arctic: Background and Issues for Congress, updated August 8, 2016

If someone lied to Congress under oath, how would criminal prosecution of such an offense be initiated?

The suggestion by some Republican members of Congress that Hillary Clinton may have perjured herself in testimony before Congress provided an occasion for the Congressional Research Service to review the relevant law.

“The constitutional separation of powers significantly limits Congress’s role in the enforcement of federal law,” CRS explained. “Because exercising both the power to make and enforce the law would be an apparent violation of the separation of powers, Congress may neither itself, nor through its officers, directly enforce federal law.”

However, “In limited circumstances, Congress has enacted referral procedures in an attempt to influence or participate in the process by which certain criminal provisions are enforced. The criminal contempt of Congress statute provides such an example.” See Prosecution of Criminal Offenses against Congress, CRS Legal Sidebar, July 26, 2016.

Other new and updated reports from the Congressional Research Service include the following.

Security Cooperation and the FY2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), CRS Insight, July 27, 2016

The Islamist Militant Threat in Bangladesh, CRS Insight, July 21, 2016

Federal Assistance for Victims of Terrorism or Mass Violence: In Brief, August 3, 2016

Turkey: Background and U.S. Relations in Brief, updated August 4, 2016

A New Aid Package for Israel, CRS Insight, August 4, 2016

An Apparent First in U.S. Law Enforcement Use of Unmanned Ground Vehicles, CRS Insight, July 26, 2016

Human Trafficking and Forced Labor: Trends in Import Restrictions, CRS Insight, July 29, 2016

2016 Rio Games: Anti-Doping Testing, CRS Insight, August 3, 2016

Fatal Balloon Accident Highlights Disagreement Between Safety Agencies, CRS Insight, August 4, 2016

Workers’ Compensation: Overview and Issues, August 3, 2016

Ukraine: Current Issues and U.S. Policy, updated August 3, 2016

Orlando Shooting Revives Debate over Restricting Blood Donations by Gay Men, CRS Insight, August 1, 2016

Zika Poses New Challenges for Blood Centers, CRS Insight, August 4, 2016

The Federal Circuit Rules on Trademarks Considered Offensive: May Affect Redskins Trademark Dispute, CRS Legal Sidebar, August 4, 2016

Issues affecting the safety and security of athletes and spectators at the 2016 Olympic Games, which begins August 5 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, were reviewed in a new report from the Congressional Research Service.

Concerns addressed in the CRS report include the Zika virus outbreak, domestic crime, the threat of terrorism, environmental hazards, and more. See The 2016 Olympic Games: Health, Security, Environmental, and Doping Issues, July 28, 2016.

Other new and updated reports from the Congressional Research Service include the following.

Supplemental Appropriations for Zika Response: The FY2016 Conference Agreement in Brief, July 14, 2016

The Department of Defense Acquisition Workforce: Background, Analysis, and Questions for Congress, July 29, 2016

FY2017 National Defense Authorization Act: Selected Military Personnel Issues, July 29, 2016

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP): Analysis of Economic Studies, June 30, 2016

State Challenges to Federal Enforcement of Immigration Law: From the Mid-1990s to the Present, updated August 1, 2016

Numerical Limits on Permanent Employment-Based Immigration: Analysis of the Per-country Ceilings, updated July 28, 2016

Federal Benefits and Services for People with Low Income: Overview of Spending Trends, FY2008-FY2015, July 29, 2016

Federal Student Loan Forgiveness and Loan Repayment Programs, updated July 28, 2016

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Budget: Fact Sheet, July 28, 2016

Police Shootings and Federal Support for Law Enforcement Safety, CRS Insight, July 19, 2016

Pakistan’s Nuclear Weapons, updated August 1, 2016

Turkey: Failed Coup and Implications for U.S. Policy, CRS Insight, July 19, 2016

U.S. Nuclear Weapons in Turkey, CRS Insight, August 2, 2016

The production of new national security secrets dropped precipitously in the last five years and remained at historically low levels last year, according to a new annual report released today by the Information Security Oversight Office.

There were 53,425 new secrets (“original classification decisions”) created by executive branch agencies in FY 2015. Though this represents a 14% increase from the all-time low achieved in FY 2014, it is still the second lowest number of original classification actions ever reported. Ten years earlier (2005), by contrast, there were more than 258,000 new secrets.

The new data appear to confirm that the national security classification system is undergoing a slow-motion process of transformation, involving continuing incremental reductions in classification activity and gradually increased disclosure.

Thus, the number of officials who are authorized to generate new national security secrets (“original classification authorities”) dropped to an all-time reported low of 2,199, the new ISOO report said.

Meanwhile, “derivative classification activity,” or the incorporation of existing secrets into new forms or products, dropped by 32%.

The number of pages declassified increased by 30% over the year before.

Of particular interest, the number of internal ”classification challenges” — in which government employees who are authorized holders of classified information themselves challenged the classification status or level of the information — reached an all-time high of 952 formal challenges in FY 2015. Of those, 411 (or 43%) were granted in whole or in part, ISOO reported. This internal challenge procedure has the potential to create an entire new dynamic of self-correction within the classification system.

See 2015 Report to the President, Information Security Oversight Office, transmitted by ISOO Acting Director William A. Cira, July 15, 2016.

Not all is well, however.

The cost of the national security secrecy system reached an all-time high of $17.44 billion in FY 2015, up 8% from the year before — a rate of growth that seems hard to sustain.

The average number of days to respond to a mandatory declassification request increased to 270 days, and the number of MDR requests that have gone unresolved for more than a year increased significantly to more than 14,000.

The use of the “declassify in ten years or less” instruction on newly classified documents dropped sharply down to 15%, making it harder to implement automatic declassification procedures in the future.

Overall, however, the good news — a reduced scope for secrecy and increased disclosure activity — seems to dominate. The sustained reductions in new classification activity are likely to be extended further with the implementation of the second Fundamental Classification Guidance Review that is now underway.

Interestingly, the impressive changes in national security classification policy over the past several years have occurred primarily at the agency level. The White House seems barely cognizant of those changes, and did not mention them at all in a recent description of the Obama Administration’s efforts “to drive openness and transparency in government.”

On July 26, President Obama issued Presidential Policy Directive (PPD) 41 on United States Cyber Incident Coordination.

Aside from the intrinsic interest of this document, it signifies an unexplained burst in the production of Presidential Policy Directives since the public release of PPD 30 in June 2015. Instead of the previous average of around 5 presidential directives issued per year, President Obama produced about ten PPDs in the past 12 months.

With one exception, even the subject matter of PPDs 31 through 40 is publicly unknown.

The exception is PPD 35 on United States Nuclear Weapons Command and Control, Safety, and Security, which was issued on December 8, 2015. PPD 35 was publicly referenced by the Department of Defense in the April 2016 DoD Instruction 5210.42 on DoD Nuclear Weapons Personnel Reliability Assurance.

PPD 35 presumably modifies and supersedes President GW Bush’s 2003 National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD) 28, which was identically entitled United States Nuclear Weapons Command and Control, Safety, and Security.

But since neither the text of NSPD 28 nor that of PPD 35 have been made public, the substance of any changes that were made to U.S. nuclear weapons policy by the later directive is not known.

An internal congressional edition of the 2015 annual report of the Congressional Research Service includes a helpful listing of the titles of all CRS reports and other products that were issued in 2015 (at pp. 47-124).

The availability of such a list makes it possible to identify and request specific reports whose existence would otherwise be unknown.

The public edition of the 2015 CRS annual report, which is posted on the Library of Congress website, excludes the list of new CRS products.

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The Department of Justice said last week that it received dozens of “crimes reports” concerning unauthorized disclosures of classified information each year for most of the past several years, although only 18 such referrals were made in 2015.

In a July 20 response to a Freedom of Information Act request, DOJ’s National Security Division provided the following data on the number of crimes reports — i.e., referrals of suspected violations of criminal law — involving leaks of classified information for each of the last seven Calendar Years (CY):

CY2009: 44
CY2010: 33
CY2011: 41
CY2012: 46
CY2013: 55
CY2014: 41
CY2015: 18

These data are generally indicative of the number of discrete leak episodes in each year.

Only a fraction of such leak referrals ever lead to an investigation, DOJ told Congress in 2010 and only a fraction of the investigations result in criminal prosecution.

“In most cases, the information included in the referral is not adequate to initiate an investigation. The most typical information gap is a failure to identify all those with authorized access to the information, which is the necessary starting point for any leak investigation.”

“When this information is sufficient to open an investigation, the FBI has been able to identify suspects in approximately 50% of these cases over the past 5 years [i.e. 2005-2009]. Even when a suspect is identified, though, prosecution is extremely rare,” DOJ said then.

A crimes report regarding a classified leak to the media is usually accompanied by a DOJ Media Leak Questionnaire, describing the nature of the unauthorized disclosure, its origin, accuracy, significance and scope of dissemination.

In the era of the mass leak, the number of individual leak episodes does not bear any correlation to the volume of classified material that has been disclosed. So the large Manning releases of 2010 and the Snowden releases of 2013 do not clearly stand out in the new DOJ tabulation. The number of leak referrals also does not provide an indication of the magnitude of damage to national security, if any, that resulted from the leaks.

While unauthorized disclosures of classified information are often prized by reporters as indispensable for independent national security journalism, they can be cause for trepidation among the government officials who have to manage their consequences.

The 1978 book Legend by Edward Jay Epstein “contained enough details to pinpoint [KGB officer Alexei] Kulak as an American agent,” wrote David E. Hoffman in his book The Billion Dollar Spy (Doubleday, 2015, p. 58). As a result, CIA had to immediately prepare an exfiltration plan to get its agent out of the Soviet Union. “If the KGB followed up on details in the book and arrested him, Kulak would certainly face charges of treason, punishable by death.” As things turned out, “Kulak was not discovered and later died of a heart attack” without having left his country. But due to the compromise of information about him, Hoffman wrote, “CIA had lost Kulak as an intelligence source.”

A 1995 New York Times story about “dirty assets” — i.e., intelligence sources who themselves have been involved in criminal activity — is said to have led to the death of another American agent (this could not be independently confirmed by Secrecy News). In response to pleas from government officials, “Some identifying details were omitted [by the New York Times], but way too many weren’t,” wrote former CIA acting general counsel John Rizzo in his memoir Company Man (Scribner, 2014, p. 151).

“It is the only leak I can remember that indisputably caused the death of a CIA source,” wrote Rizzo.

Update: We should not have repeated the unsupported allegation by John Rizzo that a New York Times story caused the death of a CIA source. The story, which dealt with an issue of current public debate, was carefully reported by the Times to exclude identifying details that might have placed individuals in danger. It was prepared with the active cooperation of Jeffrey H. Smith, then-CIA general counsel, who was himself quoted in the story. Under the circumstances, Rizzo’s accusation is outrageous and we were wrong to circulate it.

Second Update, 7/26/16:

Jeffrey H. Smith and John Rizzo responded via email:

We were dismayed to read your note yesterday apologizing for relying on John Rizzo’s book that a leak in the New York Times in 1995 led to the death of a human source of the CIA. Your apology said, accurately, that Jeff Smith had spoken to the Times but then concluded — without speaking to either of us — that because the article was “carefully reported” John Rizzo’s “accusation is outrageous”. Had you spoken to us, who actually know what happened, we would have told you that we stand by the passage in John’s book.

Third Update, 6/27/17:

A gripping interview with John Rizzo, Jeffrey Smith and Tim Weiner of the New York Times regarding the story of the CIA source was conducted by Malcolm Gladwell and broadcast on Revisionist History.

The Director of National Intelligence issued — and last week published — a pair of Intelligence Community Directives (here and here) that aim to improve the coordination of human intelligence collection for foreign intelligence and counterintelligence purposes.

The directives are intended “to ensure the deconfliction, coordination, and integration of intelligence activities,” including liaison with foreign intelligence services, in order “to significantly enhance the security of the nation by effectively and efficiently allocating resources.”

The basic idea seems to be to make sure that HUMINT collection agencies are not stepping on each other’s toes and that, to the contrary, they are actively assisting one another in their operations. The desired coordination “should not be pro forma,” the directives both said. “It should include the timely exchange by IC elements of pertinent and necessary information to facilitate operational success.”

See Coordination of Clandestine Human Source and Human-Enabled Foreign Intelligence Collection and Counterintelligence Activities Outside the United States, Intelligence Community Directive 310, June 27, 2016, and

Coordination of Clandestine Human Source and Human-Enabled Foreign Intelligence Collection and Counterintelligence Activities Inside the United States, Intelligence Community Directive 311, June 27, 2016.

The new Directives do not disclose any classified operations or intelligence methods. Yet they are revealing and interesting in several ways.

First, their public availability is a sign of the shifting boundaries of intelligence-related secrecy. The directives were prepared as unclassified documents and were made public on the ODNI website. By contrast, their precursor — Director of Central Intelligence Directive 5/1P on Espionage and Counterintelligence Activities Abroad(which is now rescinded) — was not publicly released.

Second, the new releases conform to and advance the DNI’s transparency policy, which promised to increase public disclosure of the IC’s “governance framework–the rules, authorities, compliance mechanisms, and oversight that guide its activities.” This is not the stuff of headlines (except in Secrecy News). There is nothing scandalous about the directives; to non-specialists, they may actually be kind of boring. But they are part of an ongoing adaptation to public expectations of greater intelligence transparency. They also represent a notable step away from “secret law,” i.e. the reliance on undisclosed mandates or internal regulations that are inaccessible to the public.

The directives, which feature lots of “if…, then…” clauses, show the emphatically rule-based character of much of intelligence policy. The directives were plainly written by lawyers. (A sample sentence: “For purposes of this Directive, the term ‘coordination’ is understood to encompass ‘deconfliction’ and ‘integration’.”). A human intelligence collector in the field may need a lawyer standing by to explain their full meaning and implications.

Apparently, though, this is nothing new.

When he joined the CIA in 1975, wrote former CIA attorney John Rizzo in his 2014 book Company Man, “I was struck by how much scope and impact CIA lawyers, even one as wet behind the ears as I was, had on the day-to-day mission of the Agency.”

The headquarters complex of the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) of the Russian Federation has expanded dramatically over the past decade, a review of open source imagery reveals.

Since 2007, several large new buildings have been added to SVR headquarters, increasing its floor space by a factor of two or more. Nearby parking capacity appears to have quadrupled, more or less.

The compilation of open source imagery was prepared by Allen Thomson. See Expansion of Russian Foreign Intelligence Service HQ (SVR; Former KGB First Main Directorate) Between 2007 and 2016, as of July 11, 2016.

Whether the expansion of SVR headquarters corresponds to changes in the Service’s mission, organizational structure or budget could not immediately be learned.

Russian journalist and author Andrei Soldatov, who runs the Agentura.ru website on Russian security services, noted that the expansion “coincides with the appointment of the current SVR director, Mikhail Fradkov, in 2007.” He recalled that when President Putin introduced Fradkov to Service personnel, he said that the SVR should endeavor to help Russian corporations abroad, perhaps indicating a new mission emphasis.

The great Library of Alexandria was renowned in antiquity as a repository of all accessible knowledge that aimed “to collect, if possible, all the books in the world” (according to the 2nd century BCE Letter of Aristeas). Until its destruction, perhaps at the hands of Julius Caesar, the Library reflected and helped to generate a transforming wave of inquiry and enlightenment throughout the ancient world.

Our own Library of Congress is today the largest library in the world and, at least notionally, it has comparably grand ambitions.

Its declared mission is “to develop qualitatively the Library’s universal collections, which document the history and further the creativity of the American people and which record and contribute to the advancement of civilization and knowledge throughout the world, and to acquire, organize, provide access to, maintain, secure, and preserve these collections.”

Yet the Library has been allowed to languish behind rapid changes in information technology and knowledge management.

Google Books, for example, which provides online access to millions of volumes in dozens of languages, has leapfrogged over the Library of Congress in significant respects.

The Library has the institutional potential to match and exceed that achievement, given the requisite resources and leadership, but it is in a precarious state.

“The next Librarian of Congress will lead an organization that has really had significant physical and technological limitations and is struggling to adapt to a new century,” said Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) at the recent confirmation hearing for Dr. Carla D. Hayden to be the Librarian of Congress. “Due to the historic shortage of storage space, the library has millions of items stored improperly and needs to find a better way to store them. There is risk of degradation of some of the collection.”

“In addition, recent information technology management challenges have raised questions about the Library’s ability to serve future generations as more and more collections need to be digitally collected, preserved and made available to the public,” he said.

Asked her views about allowing public access to reports of the Congressional Research Service, which is a component of the Library of Congress, Dr. Hayden said this was a decision for Congress to make.

“The extent to which CRS products are viewed, shared, used, or disseminated beyond the legislative branch are questions beyond the purview and mission of CRS. Ultimately, the questions are legislative. As Congress seeks to answer them, and if I am confirmed, I intend to play a constructive role in the process,” she said.

Update: On July 13 the Senate confirmed the nomination of Dr. Carla D. Hayden to be the 14th Librarian of Congress.

The July 8-9 NATO summit meeting in Warsaw, Poland, is previewed in a new report from the Congressional Research Service.

“Among other things, NATO leaders are expected to announce the rotational deployment of 4,000 troops to Poland and the three Baltic states, an expanded training mission for Iraqi soldiers, and additional NATO support for Afghanistan and Ukraine. NATO leaders will also assess member state progress in implementing defense spending and capabilities development commitments, a key U.S. priority. Finally, NATO is expected to formally invite Montenegro to become the 29th member of the alliance,” the report said.

The new report includes data on alliance defense spending and defense spending by individual NATO member states.  See NATO’s Warsaw Summit: In Brief, June 30, 2016.

Other new and updated reports from the Congressional Research Service include the following.

“Right-Sizing” the National Security Council Staff?, CRS Insight, June 30, 2016

Diversity, Inclusion, and Equal Opportunity in the Armed Services: Background and Issues for Congress, updated July 1, 2016

Sanctuary Jurisdictions and Criminal Aliens: In Brief, updated July 1, 2016

Brazil in Crisis, CRS Insight, updated July 6, 2016

State Voter Identification Requirements: Analysis, Legal Issues, and Policy Considerations, updated July 5, 2016

Derivatives: Introduction and Legislation in the 114th Congress, July 1, 2016

Overview of Health Insurance Exchanges, updated July 1, 2016

Military Benefits for Former Spouses: Legislation and Policy Issues, updated July 1, 2016

The Freedom of Information Act Turns Fifty & Is Revised, CRS Legal Sidebar, July 1, 2016

President Obama signed into law the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Improvement Act of 2016 yesterday.

The Act places a 25 year limit on the use of the deliberative process exemption, codifies a presumption of openness, and makes various procedural improvements in the FOIA. The Department of Justice summarized its understanding of the new law here.

The White House portrayed the law as consistent with its own record of promoting open government.

“I am very proud of all the work we’ve done to try to make government more open and responsive, but I know that people haven’t always been satisfied with the speed with which they’re getting responses and requests,” President Obama said at an Oval Office signing ceremony. “Hopefully this is going to help and be an important initiative for us to continue on the reform path.”

A White House fact sheet said that more would be done. “The Administration is taking a number of steps to further the progress made since 2009, ensuring that this Administration’s track record of openness is institutionalized throughout government and carries forward for years to come.”

But the new FOIA law explicitly provides no new resources for implementation. So in the face of rising and, in fact, unconstrained demand from some FOIA users, it is unclear how much improvement the FOIA Improvement Act can be expected to generate for the average requester.

“In honor of Congress’ passage of FOIA reform bill, I just submitted approx 700 new #FOIA requests to FBI,” tweeted FOIA campaigner Ryan Shapiro on June 14. He did not appear to be joking.