A new U.S. Air Force Instruction (pdf) establishes a safety program for directed energy weapons (DEW) in view of the fact that “DEW systems create unique hazards that are different from conventional and nuclear weapons.”

“Potential DEW systems covered by this instruction include, but are not limited to, high-energy lasers, weaponized microwave and millimeter wave beams, explosive-driven electromagnetic pulse devices, acoustic weapons, laser induced plasma channel systems, non-lethal directed energy devices, and atomic-scale and subatomic particle beam weapons.”

See Air Force Instruction 91-401, Directed Energy Weapon Safety, September 29, 2008.

Update: Sharon Weinberger at Danger Room volunteered to be on the receiving end of a directed energy weapon known as the Active Denial System and she lived to tell the tale, and more besides, here.

Another new U.S. Air Force Instruction (pdf) describes the Air Force role in joint DoD-DOE nuclear weapons development, production, refurbishment, and retirement activities.

“Although the DoD and DOE co-manage nuclear weapons through all system life cycle phases, each has specific responsibilities,” the Instruction explains.

“The DOE through the NNSA is responsible for designing, developing, building, sustaining, and dismantling all nuclear warheads. The DoD through the service component is responsible for developing the requirements and specifications for nuclear warhead operational characteristics; the environments in which the warhead must perform or remain safe; the determination of design acceptability; and the military requirements for warhead quantities.”

See Joint Air Force-National Nuclear Security Administration (AF-NNSA) Nuclear Weapons Life Cycle Management, AF Instruction 63-103, September 24, 2008.

A newly revised Pentagon instruction (pdf) updates Freedom of Information Act policy regarding requests submitted to the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“A classified document containing unclassified information may not be denied in total under exemption 1 [of the Freedom of Information Act, which exempts properly classified information] unless the unclassified information, when taken in aggregate, would reveal classified information.”

Furthermore, the instruction says, “It is OSD policy that OSD and JS Components shall promote the public trust by making the maximum amount of information available to the public on the operation and activities of the Department of Defense, consistent with the Department’s responsibility to ensure national security.”

See Office of the Secretary of Defense and Joint Staff (JS) Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Program, Administrative Instruction No. 108, September 29, 2008.

A newly reissued Department of Defense directive (pdf) explicitly prohibits several of the more controversial interrogation techniques that have previously been practiced against suspected enemy combatants.

So, for example, the new directive states that “Use of SERE [Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape] techniques against a person in the custody or effective control of the Department of Defense or detained in a DoD facility is prohibited.” Waterboarding, in which a sensation of drowning is induced, is one such SERE technique.

In another new prohibition, the directive states that “No dog shall be used as part of an interrogation approach or to harass, intimidate, threaten, or coerce a detainee for interrogation purposes.”

Yet another new prohibition limits the role of psychologists advising interrogators: “Behavioral science consultants may not be used to determine detainee phobias for the purpose of exploitation during the interrogation process.”

The new directive states that it simply “codifies existing DoD policies.” The restrictions noted above, however, did not appear in the prior edition of this directive (pdf), dated 2005.

See “DoD Intelligence Interrogations, Detainee Debriefings, and Tactical Questioning,” DoD Directive 3115.09, October 9, 2008.

At first glance, several provisions in a newly reissued Defense Department Instruction seem to offer a surprisingly forthcoming public disclosure policy to curb the steadily increasing secrecy of recent years. But on closer inspection, that is probably not the case.

“Declassification of information shall receive equal attention with classification so that information remains classified only as long as required by national security considerations,” according to DoD Instruction 5200.01, entitled “DoD Information Security Program and Protection of Sensitive Compartmented Information” (pdf),October 9, 2008.

This DoD requirement that declassification and classification should receive “equal attention” does not appear anywhere in the President’sexecutive order on classification or in its implementing directive which allow agencies to prioritize declassification as they see fit.

Similarly, the new DoD Instruction dictates that “The volume of classified national security information and CUI [controlled unclassified information], in whatever format or media, shall be reduced to the minimum necessary to meet operational requirements.”

No such policy on reducing the volume of secret information to the minimum is specified in the executive order or in the President’s May 2008 policy on controlled unclassified information.

On second glance, however, it turns out that both of these requirements have been on the books at the Pentagon for over a decade (except for the reference to the new CUI category) in the previous version of DoD Directive 5200.01, even as secrecy has grown by leaps and bounds. In other words, these provisions have proved to be mere rhetorical gestures that do not actually constrain official secrecy policy.

DNA samples of thousands of suspected terrorists from Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere have been collected and preserved in a little-known U.S. government database that is intended for forensic intelligence and counterterrorism purposes.

As of 2005, seven thousand detainee samples had been processed into the Joint Federal Agencies Antiterrorism DNA Database. Ten thousand more were “inbound” at that time from Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a public presentation. See “The Department of Defense DNA Registry and the U.S. Government Accounting Mission” (pdf) by Brion C. Smith, August 2005 (at page 14).

The Joint Federal Agencies Antiterrorism DNA Database working group is comprised of representatives of the Department of Defense, the FBI and the U.S. intelligence community.

Disclosure of DNA and other medical information for intelligence purposes is explicitly authorized by government regulations.

“Under U.S. and international law, there is no absolute confidentiality of medical information for any person, including detainees,” according to the new DoD directive 3115.09 (pdf) on intelligence interrogation. “Medical information may be released for all lawful purposes… including release for any lawful intelligence or national security-related purpose.”

Update: See, relatedly, this new report from the Government Accountability Office, which curiously refrains from mentioning the term “DNA”: DOD Can Establish More Guidance for Biometrics Collection and Explore Broader Data Sharing (pdf), GAO-09-49, October 2008.

Kidnapping and other forms of terrorist violence have developed into a significant form of asymmetric conflict, according to a new U.S. Army manual (pdf) that describes the theory and practice of kidnapping with numerous case studies from recent years.

“This document promotes an improved understanding of terrorist objectives, motivation, and behaviors in the conduct of kidnapping,” the 168 page manual states.

See “Kidnapping and Terror in the Contemporary Operational Environment,” U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command Intelligence Support Activity, 15 September 2008.

The manual on kidnapping is the sixth supplement to “A Military Guide to Terrorism in the Twenty-First Century,” an Army instructional series, portions of which are labeled “for official use only.” A copy of the set was obtained by Secrecy News.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence today released a series of policy documents governing security clearances and access to classified information for intelligence community employees.

Intelligence Community Directive 704 (pdf) and five accompanying policy guidance documents set forth policy on security clearance background investigations, adjudicative guidelines, clearance revocation and appeal processes, reciprocal acceptance of security clearances, and more.

Intelligence Community Policy Guidance 704.5 (pdf) identifies “Scattered Castles” as a comprehensive database of IC security clearance authorizations, which can be used to verify clearances.

With minor technical changes, the new directive and accompanying guidance appear to closely replicate the previous policy under Director of Central Intelligence Directive 6/4.

See ICD 704 and the supporting guidance, along with other IC Directives, here.

Kutztown University, midway between Reading and Allentown, Pennsylvania, has never looked so good. Or at least not like this. The University campus was featured in the first publicly released half-meter, color satellite image produced by the GeoEye-1 satellite, launched on September 6.

“We do find the initial target selection amusing,” the author of the intelligence blog Kent’s Imperative wrote today, “and we are sure that there is a backstory there somewhere waiting to be told. There is something about small, out of the way Pennsylvania colleges and the intelligence community, isn’t there?”

There may be, but “This image captures what is in fact the very first location the satellite saw when we opened the camera door and started imaging,” said Brad Peterson, GeoEye vice president of operations.

The GeoEye-1 satellite will provide imagery for national intelligence agencies and, beginning later this fall, for commercial sale.

“Though the satellite collects imagery at 0.41-meter ground resolution, due to U.S. licensing restrictions, commercial customers will only get access to imagery that has been processed to half-meter ground resolution,” according to an October 8 GeoEye news release.

A new policy seeks to promote sharing of terrorism-related information throughout the government by making information sharing an explicit factor in employee performance appraisals.

“We have taken a critical step toward ensuring that information sharing becomes ingrained in the way the federal government operates,” said Amb. Thomas McNamara, the ODNI Information Security Environment program manager, in an October 6 news release.

The policy (pdf) is particularly noteworthy as an effort to re-engineer the federal bureaucracy in favor of information sharing by creating new incentives that reward the desired actions.

Can it really be that easy? Can the bureaucracy effectively be reprogrammed by installing a suitable set of rewards? And in particular, could a similar policy be adopted that advances open government by designating appropriate public disclosure as a criterion for evaluating employee performance?

It would be extremely interesting to try, but there are reasons for skepticism.

For one thing, the new policy on information sharing emerges from and reinforces an existing consensus in favor of increased sharing; it doesn’t create that consensus. And no similar consensus exists in the current Administration in favor of increased public disclosure of information.

Furthermore, information sharing, as the term is used by officials, is nearly the opposite of public disclosure. Information sharing is predicated on the fact that what is to be shared is not to be made generally available to all comers. If it were openly available, it wouldn’t have to be “shared.”

Finally, the new policy has unfolded at an excruciatingly slow pace that doesn’t bode well for similar efforts. Incredibly, it has been almost three years since the President himself ordered agencies (in a December 16, 2005 memorandum) to adopt the new performance evaluation element for information sharing, and it may take years more before the newly announced policy is fully implemented in practice.

Meanwhile, information sharing is something of a policy phantom that has “had virtually no operational impact,” according to one particularly unfavorable assessment presented in testimony to Congress last month.

“Those of us willing to honestly address this issue will conclude that ‘information sharing’ has no clearly understood meaning, is poorly managed, and has been made overly complicated,” said former U.S. Attorney John McKay in September 24 testimony (pdf) before the House Homeland Security Committee.

“From a national perspective, there is no concept of success, no agreed-upon jurisdiction, no designated authority, no effective leadership. And despite the large sums of money being spent over the past decade and many, many promises, there remains no consensus on the way to proceed,” he said.

In an extraordinary rebuff to Bush Administration detention policy, a federal court yesterday ordered (pdf) that 17 Chinese Uighur detainees held in Guantanamo Bay shall be released into the United States because there is no lawful basis for their continued detention. The government immediately filed a motion to stay the ruling [update: the stay was granted].

Judge Ricardo M. Urbina said in effect that the Administration’s claim of exclusive jurisdiction over the matter was un-American.

“The unilateral carte blanche authority the political branches purportedly wield over the Uighurs is not in keeping with our system of governance,” Judge Urbina said at an October 7 hearing (pdf). “Because our system of checks and balances is designed to preserve the fundamental right of liberty, the Court grants the [Uighur] Petitioners’ motion for release into the United States.”

Judge Urbina ordinarily has a healthy respect for executive branch authority. “[You are] not the DCI,” he once told me, explaining why my views on the need for intelligence budget disclosure had no legal significance. But he also reluctantly became the first federal judge ever to order the CIA against its will to disclose an annual intelligence budget figure (for Fiscal Year 1963), after it was shown that the information was already in the public domain (“Judge Orders CIA to Disclose 1963 Budget,” Secrecy News, 04/05/05).

Uighur detainees at Guantanamo prison were interrogated by Chinese government agents working in collaboration with U.S. military interrogators, who deprived them of sleep the night before by waking them up every 15 minutes in a treatment called the “frequent flyer program.” That practice was noted in a recently updated report from the Congressional Research Service, citing June 2008 testimony from Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine. See “U.S.-China Counterterrorism Cooperation: Issues for U.S. Policy” (pdf), updated September 11, 2008.

The House Intelligence Committee critically reviewed the U.S. intelligence satellite program in a rare unclassified report on the subject. See “Report on Challenges and Recommendations for United States Overhead Architecture,” House Intelligence Committee, House Report 110-914, October 3, 2008.

“All counterterrorism programs that collect and mine data should be evaluated for their effectiveness and privacy impacts,” according to a new report on data mining from the National Academy of Sciences.

A new doctrinal publication from the Joint Chiefs of Staff considers “Meteorological and Oceanographic Operations” (pdf), Joint Publication 3-59, September 24, 2008.

A somewhat older Army Field Manual addresses nuclear warfighting in “Nuclear Operations” (pdf), U.S. Army Field Manual 100-30, October 29, 1996.