In a slight but welcome incremental reform, reports to Congress from the Department of Defense are to be posted online, according to a provision in the pending FY 2014 defense authorization act.

Up to now, such reports were to be made available to the public “upon request” (10 USC 122a). But under section 181 of the FY 2014 defense authorization bill, as agreed to by House and Senate conferees, the reports would have to be posted on a “publicly accessible Internet website” whether they were requested or not (h/t: FCNL).

The online publication requirement would not apply to DoD reports that contained classified or proprietary information, or that are otherwise exempt from disclosure under FOIA.

In a January 21, 2009 memorandum to agency heads, the newly inaugurated President Obama directed that “agencies should take affirmative steps to make information public. They should not wait for specific requests from the public. All agencies should use modern technology to inform citizens about what is known and done by their Government. Disclosure should be timely.” But agencies implemented this directive unevenly and incompletely.

The latest edition of U.S. joint military doctrine on counterinsurgency states that while working to defeat and contain insurgency, efforts should also be made to “address its root causes.”

Newly added doctrinal language “articulates that US counterinsurgency efforts should provide incentives to the host-nation government to undertake reforms that address the root causes of the insurgency.”

The latest revision also emphasizes the importance of gaining and retaining “US public support” for counterinsurgency programs.

“US public opinion should be considered as part of the OE [operational environment], just as the indigenous population opinion is essential to the COIN [counterinsurgency] effort, because USG COIN efforts must prove worthwhile to the US public,” the newly added language states. See Joint Publication 3-24, Counterinsurgency, November 22, 2013.

The previous edition from 2009 may be found here. (Joint Publication 3-24 on Counterinsurgency is not to be confused with the 2006 Army Field Manual 3-24 associated with David Petraeus that bears the same title.)

To its harshest critics, counterinsurgency doctrine, though “marketed as a sophisticated and humane alternative to conventional combat,” is a failure and a farce.

“What purports to be a thinking man’s approach to war actually gives policy makers license to stop thinking,” wrote Andrew J. Bacevich in a scorching piece in The Chronicle of Higher Education, September 9, 2013.  “COIN offers technique devoid of larger purpose” and “when put to the test, counterinsurgency doesn’t work all that well,” he wrote.

Foreign investment in the United States “dropped sharply in 2012,” according to a newly updated report from the Congressional Research Service, and in 2013 it could fall by another 10%.  See Foreign Direct Investment in the United States: An Economic Analysis, December 11, 2013.

Other new and updated CRS reports obtained by Secrecy News include the following.

U.S. Direct Investment Abroad: Trends and Current Issues, December 11, 2013

Campaign Contribution Limits: Selected Questions About McCutcheon and Policy Issues for Congress, December 12, 2013

Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act: Annual Fee on Health Insurers, December 12, 2013

The Paris Club and International Debt Relief, December 11, 2013

Medicaid Coverage of Long-Term Services and Supports, December 5, 2013

Interim Agreement on Iran’s Nuclear Program, December 11, 2013

New and updated reports from the Congressional Research Service that Congress has withheld from online public distribution include the following.

Child Labor in America: History, Policy, and Legislative Issues, November 18, 2013

Internet Domain Names: Background and Policy Issues, December 5, 2013

Federal Research and Development Funding: FY2013, December 5, 2013

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting: Federal Funding and Issues, December 6, 2013

School Construction and Renovation: A Review of Federal Programs, December 6, 2013

Majority Cloture for Nominations: Implications and the “Nuclear” Proceedings, December 6, 2013

Proposals to Eliminate Public Financing of Presidential Campaigns, December 9, 2013

Expiration and Extension of the 2008 Farm Bill, December 9, 2013

Reauthorization of SNAP and Other Nutrition Programs in the Next Farm Bill: Issues for the 113th Congress, December 10, 2013

Public Health Service Agencies: Overview and Funding, November 12, 2013

U.S. Foreign-Trade Zones: Background and Issues for Congress, November 12, 2013

International Food Aid: U.S. and Other Donor Contributions, November 12, 2013

Immigration Legislation and Issues in the 113th Congress, November 20, 2013

South Africa: Politics, Economy, and U.S. Relations, December 6, 2013

The New START Treaty: Central Limits and Key Provisions, December 5, 2013

The National Reconnaissance Office, which builds and operates U.S. intelligence satellites, has just released the unclassified portions of its FY 2014 Congressional Budget Justification, a detailed account of its budget request for the current year.

Although more than 90% of the 534-page document (dated April 2013) was withheld from public release under the Freedom of Information Act, some substantive material was approved for public disclosure, providing a rare glimpse of agency operations, future plans and self-perceptions.  Some examples:

*    NRO says it recently achieved an “88 percent reduction in collection-to-analyst dissemination timelines,” facilitating the rapid dissemination of time-sensitive data.

*    The 2014 budget request “represents the biggest restructure of the NRO portfolio in a decade.”

*    The NRO research agenda includes “patterns of life.” This refers to the “ability to take advantage of massive data sets, multiple data sources, and high-speed machine processing to identify patterns without a priori knowledge or pattern definition… to detect, characterize, and identify elusive targets.”

*    Other research objectives include development of technologies for “collecting previously unknown or unobservable phenomena and improving collection of known phenomena; providing persistent surveillance; reducing satellite vulnerability; … innovative adaptation of video game and IT technologies…” and more.

*    “A primary responsibility of the NRO is ensuring that the entire NRO [satellite] constellation is replenished efficiently and in time to guarantee mission success.”

*    The NRO’s implementation of the Intelligence Community Information Technology Enterprise (IC ITE), an effort to establish a common IC-wide IT architecture, is discussed at some length. “The DNI’s IC ITE architecture paves the way for a fundamental shift toward operating as an IC Enterprise that uses common, secure, shared capabilities and services.”

*    With respect to security, NRO employs “automated insider threat detection tools, analyzes collected data in conjunction with disparate data sources to produce investigative leads, [and] performs assessments to rule out malicious activity occurring on NRO networks.”  NRO counterintelligence activities “concentrate on insider threat, traditional, and asymmetric methodologies.”

The National Reconnaissance Office has an annual budget of approximately $10 billion ($10.4 billion in FY 2012), according to classified budget documents obtained by the Washington Post. It employs around 975 people.

“I am proud to report that all of our major system acquisition programs are green– meeting or beating all performance, costs and schedule goals,” said Betty Sapp, director of the National Reconnaissance Office, at a March 2013 hearing. “Additionally, for the fourth year in a row, the NRO received a clean audit opinion on our financial statements,” an unprecedented feat in the U.S. intelligence community, which has largely eluded financial accountability.

“Over the coming years, the NRO will incorporate revolutionary new technologies into our architecture that will provide enhanced support to the warfighter while also improving the resiliency of our systems,” Director Sapp testified.

U.S. military doctrine extends to religious aspects of combat operations and the role of chaplains as spiritual advisers. A new update to that doctrine “clarifies the chaplain’s advisement role in the targeting process to ensure the focus is on the ethical, moral, and religious dimensions.”

As noncombatants and “ministers of religion,” chaplains have protected status under the laws of war.

Accordingly, “chaplains must not engage directly or indirectly in combatant duties; will not conduct activities that compromise their noncombatant status; must not function as intelligence collectors or propose combat target selection; and will not advise on including or excluding specific structures on the no-strike list or target list. Advisement will focus on the ethical, moral, and religious dimensions of the targeting process.”

See Religious Affairs in Joint Operations, Joint Publication 1-05, Joint Chiefs of Staff, November 20, 2013.

In a new Open Government National Action Plan that was released today, the White House affirmed its support for open government values, and set an agenda for the remainder of the current Administration.

“The new plan includes a wide range of actions the Administration will take over the next two years, including commitments that build upon past successes as well as several new initiatives,” the Plan stated. “The Administration will work with the public and civil society organizations to implement each of these commitments over the next two years.”

With respect to national security secrecy, the Plan includes a new commitment to “transform the security classification system” based on the principle that “classification must… be kept to the minimum required to meet national security needs….”

Towards that end, a new interagency Classification Review Committee is being established with White House leadership to evaluate proposals for classification reform, and to coordinate their implementation throughout the executive branch.  The creation of such a body was the primary recommendation of the Public Interest Declassification Board last year, and it was strongly endorsed by public interest groups.

Both because of its interagency character and especially due to its White House leadership, the new Committee has the potential to overcome the autonomous classification practices of individual agencies that have contributed to the explosive growth in secrecy.

Positive results are naturally not guaranteed.  The Administration has not embraced an explicit theory of how overclassification occurs, or even how overclassification is to be defined, and therefore it is not yet well-equipped to address the problem.

The new Plan notes that in June of this year President Obama directed the Intelligence Community to declassify and make public “as much information as possible” about intelligence surveillance programs. But in an optimally functioning classification system, the President’s directive would have been redundant and unnecessary; the system would already be declassifying as much information as possible.

Of course, the existing classification system is not functioning optimally. That is the problem.  So either the President needs to issue individualized directives to all agencies on every conceivable classified topic to “declassify as much as possible,” or else the new White House interagency Committee needs to find alternate means to effectively communicate the same imperative.

“The Obama Administration remains fully committed to building a 21st-Century Open Government and fundamentally improving the relationship between citizens and government,” the new Plan said.

Not everyone has gotten that message, though.  The Central Intelligence Agency is determined to cut off public access to foreign news reports and translations gathered through its Open Source Center (formerly the Foreign Broadcast Information Service) and marketed to subscribers through the NTIS World News Connection. At the end of this month, this legendary resource will cease to be available to the public after more than half a century. (“CIA Halts Public Access to Open Source Service,” Secrecy News, October 8).

A CIA official suggested that anyone who is interested in foreign news can “use the internet” instead.

In a new report to Congress, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence identified the seven external advisory committees that currently support and advise the DNI.

Ordinarily, government advisory committees that include non-governmental members are subject to open meeting requirements under the Federal Advisory Committee Act. It mandates that “the Congress and the public should be kept informed with respect to the number, purpose, membership, activities, and cost of advisory committees.” The Act was intended to provide a check on the government’s many advisory committees, which have sometimes played an influential role in the formulation of public policy.

But the Act also provides that committees established by the DNI may be exempted from public reporting requirements, as are all of the intelligence-related Committees listed in the new report. The report was released by ODNI under the Freedom of Information Act, with the names of all committee members redacted.  In numerous cases, however, committee members have identified themselves in their own online bios.

The current DNI advisory committees are:

1. Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Senior Advisory Group (SAG) which is supposed “to provide external perspective to the DNI on policy, industry best practices, technology breakthroughs, and best-in-class solutions relevant to current intelligence issues.” SAG members include Jane Harman, Joanne Isham, and Paul Kaminski.

2. National Counterterrorism Center Director’s Advisory Board (NCTC DAB) advises NCTC on counterterrorism policy and technology.  Members include Jared Cohen and Michael Leiter.

3. National Counterproliferation Center (NCPC) Senior Counterproliferation Partners Advisory Board (SCPAB) advises the Center on “a variety of issues facing the Counterproliferation community” including assessments of significant intelligence events and guidance on interacting with military commands.

4. Homeland Security and Law Enforcement Partners Board (HS/LE PB) provides perspectives on the intelligence needs and equities of State, Local and Tribal partners.

5. Advanced Technology Board provides “linkages between the Intelligence Community and the scientific community” as well as “early notice of developments in science that might affect the Intelligence Community.” Members include Robert Fein.

6. Financial Sector Advisory Board (FSAB) provides “insights on information sources, developments, and other areas expected to improve the Intelligence Community’s ability to produce actionable intelligence in the financial arena.” Current members include Bob Rose of Thomson Reuters (who also sits on the NCTC Director’s Advisory Board).

7. Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies is the advisory group established at the direction of the President in response to the controversy generated by the Snowden disclosures. The Review Group members, disclosed by the White House but redacted by ODNI, are Richard Clarke, Michael Morell, Geoffrey Stone, Cass Sunstein, and Peter Swire.

DNI Clapper stated in 2012 that he had “reduced the number of advisory boards to the DNI as part of an efficiency review.”  Among the defunct advisory groups was the Intelligence Science Board, which produced an important study of the science of interrogation practices that became public in January 2007.

New or updated reports from the Congressional Research Service that Congress has withheld from online public distribution include the following.

Keystone XL Pipeline Project: Key Issues, December 2, 2013

Mountaintop Mining: Background on Current Controversies, December 2, 2013

Burma’s Political Prisoners and U.S. Sanctions, December 2, 2013

Latin America and the Caribbean: Fact Sheet on Leaders and Elections, December 3, 2013

The 2013 Cybersecurity Executive Order: Overview and Considerations for Congress, November 8, 2013

The structure and functions of the Defense Warning Network were outlined in a new directive issued yesterday by the Department of Defense.

The mission of the Defense Warning Network is to provide notice “of potential threats posed by adversaries, political and economic instability, failed or failing states, and any other emerging challenges that could affect the United States or its interests worldwide.”  See The Defense Warning Network, DoD Directive 3115.16, December 5, 2013.

New and updated reports from the Congressional Research Service that Congress has withheld from online public distribution include the following.

Veterans and Homelessness, November 29, 2013

Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda): U.S. and International Response to Philippines Disaster, November 25, 2013

Afghanistan: Politics, Elections, and Government Performance, November 22, 2013

Legislative Actions to Repeal, Defund, or Delay the Affordable Care Act, November 22, 2013

Federal Public Transportation Program: An Overview, December 2, 2013

Medicaid Disproportionate Share Hospital Payments, December 2, 2013

Energy Policy: 113th Congress Issues, November 29, 2013

Taiwan: Major U.S. Arms Sales Since 1990, November 27, 2013

Geoengineering: Governance and Technology Policy, November 26, 2013

The Berry Amendment: Requiring Defense Procurement To Come From Domestic Sources, November 26, 2013

Past Government Shutdowns: Key Resources, November 25, 2013

How Measures Are Brought to the Senate Floor: A Brief Introduction, November 25, 2013

Invoking Cloture in the Senate, November 25, 2013

Legislative Branch: FY2014 Appropriations, November 25, 2013

Members’ Representational Allowance: History and Usage, November 25, 2013, November 25, 2013

Presidential Appointee Positions Requiring Senate Confirmation and Committees Handling Nominations, November 25, 2013

Senate Consideration of Presidential Nominations: Committee and Floor Procedure, November 25, 2013

The President would have to prepare a written plan for responding to the possibility of an unauthorized disclosure of any CIA covert action program, according to a provision adopted last month by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

The requirement was introduced by Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) and was adopted by voice vote in the pending FY 2014 Intelligence Authorization Act (section 307).

The measure represents an implicit acknowledgment that the secrecy of CIA covert action today cannot be assured or blithely assumed, particularly when compartmented intelligence programs are regularly reported in the press.

Covert action by definition is a CIA activity that is intended to be deniable and unattributable to the U.S. government.  Covert action is considered to be an option when public disclosure of the operation would render it unfeasible, diminish its utility, or generate adverse consequences for the United States.

The history of CIA covert action, which remains obscure in large part, includes some notable successes, such as the clandestine support of Poland’s Solidarity movement. But the record also includes terrifying failures, like the overthrow of Guatemala’s leadership in 1954, which inaugurated decades of violent oppression in that country.

Analysts and former intelligence officials (such as Greg Treverton, Roy Godson, and Loch Johnson) have long argued that covert action should never be undertaken without a degree of confidence that the American public would support it if it were known.

The Schakowsky provision would effectively force such consideration of public reaction by requiring officials to anticipate and plan for the unintended disclosure of each covert action program.

Although her amendment was adopted by the House Intelligence Committee without objection, Rep. Schakowsky ended up opposing the Committee markup of the FY2014 intelligence bill.  As explained in the Minority Views appended to the Committee report, she objected to the bill’s failure to ban so-called “signature strikes,” referring to the targeted killing of unknown persons based on their suspicious behavior, or signature.

Another proposal favored by Rep. Schakowsky but not adopted by the Committee would have required “an independent alternative analysis prior to striking a U.S. person.”