Noteworthy new reports from the Congressional Research Service that have not been made available online until now include the following (all pdf).

“Supreme Court Appellate Jurisdiction Over Military Court Cases,” October 6, 2008.

“Presidential Succession: Perspectives, Contemporary Analysis, and 110th Congress Proposed Legislation,” October 3, 2008.

“Defense: FY2009 Authorization and Appropriations,” updated September 29, 2008.

“Homeland Security Department: FY2009 Appropriations,” updated September 25, 2008.

“The Global Nuclear Detection Architecture: Issues for Congress,” updated September 23, 2008.

“Operation Iraqi Freedom: Strategies, Approaches, Results, and Issues for Congress,” updated September 22, 2008.

In Israel, “newspaper headlines are often about future events rather than past events.”

That peculiar assertion is presented by the DNI Open Source Center (OSC) in a new report on Israeli news media (pdf). The new report provides descriptive accounts of many major and minor Israeli news outlets, noting their ownership, circulation, political orientation and other distinguishing characteristics.

The OSC report also considers sensitive topics such as military censorship (which it says is “rarely exercised”), ethnocentricity in media accounts, stereotypical treatment of immigrants, and the impact of the internet.

Like most other OSC products, the new report has not been approved for public release by the Central Intelligence Agency, which manages the OSC. But the report is unclassified, is not copyrighted, and does not constitute an input into strategic decisionmaking. Therefore the refusal of the CIA to release it does not command respect. A copy was obtained by Secrecy News.

See Hebrew- and English-Language Media Guide, Open Source Center, September 16, 2008

At its best, Israeli journalism can be very good indeed and can justify the attention of non-Israelis as well. Today in Haaretz, one story considers the growing financial crisis from the perspective of homeless people in Washington, DC. Another story looks at the limits of Israeli nuclear deterrence, with a citation to a classified 1999 report from the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency.

The OSC statement that Israeli news headlines often refer to future events (which recalls an old Twilight Zone episode) was not immediately confirmed by a review of today’s headlines.

Update: A related article on “The Evolution of Israeli Media” appears in The Middle East Review of International Affairs, September 2008.

“Intentional leaks of intelligence are a violation of law, may result in irrevocable damage to national security, and will not be tolerated,” according to a 2002 directive from the Director of Central Intelligence (pdf) that was itself leaked.

The directive largely reiterates longstanding policy, though perhaps with increased vigor. It states twice that leaks will not be “tolerated” and twice more that intelligence agencies will take “aggressive” measures to combat leaks.

The document notably advises intelligence officials not to prepare a damage assessment of a leak whenever there is a prospect of criminal prosecution against the leaker, implicitly suggesting that an accurate damage assessment might not always favor the prosecution.

The unclassified directive was obtained and published last week by Wikileaks.org, a website that publishes confidential and controlled documents of various types.

See Unauthorized Disclosures, Security Violations, and Other Compromises of Intelligence Information, Director of Central Intelligence Directive 6/8, December 9, 2002

Last August, a Freedom of Information Act request for a copy of all such unclassified DCI Directives was denied on appeal by Delores M Nelson of the CIA Agency Release Panel. In her denial letter (pdf), she strangely cited FOIA exemption (b)(1), among others, indicating that although they are unclassified, the requested Directives are at the same time “properly classified.” Neither the law of non-contradiction nor the Freedom of Information Act is effectively enforced at CIA.

A selection of unclassified DCI Directives (which are gradually being superseded by DNI Intelligence Community Directives) can nevertheless be found here. Thanks to Jeffrey T. Richelson of the National Security Archive for an updated list of DCI Directive titles.

An Army field manual (large pdf) published today updates military policy on “stability operations,” referring to the use of military and other instruments of national power “to maintain or reestablish a safe and secure environment, provide essential governmental services, emergency infrastructure reconstruction, and humanitarian relief.”

The new manual “represents a milestone in Army doctrine,” grandly writes Lt. General William B. Caldwell IV. “It is a roadmap from conflict to peace, a practical guidebook for adaptive, creative leadership at a critical time in our history.”

“The manual captures the key lessons of our past, including the hard-won experiences gained through seven years of conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq,” according to a blogger from the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center.

“But this doctrine looks beyond the here and now to address a likely future where threats to our national security emerge from regional conflicts arising from increased competition for scarce natural resources, teeming urban populations with rising popular expectations, unrestrained technological diffusion, and a global economy struggling to overcome the strain of the American financial crisis, meet mounting demands from emerging markets, and extend foreign development aid into third world countries.”

See Stability Operations, U.S. Army Field Manual 3-07, October 6, 2008. The new manual was previewed in the Washington Post on October 5.

In a newly released series of instructions, the Chief of Naval Operations has directed Navy classifiers to give greater attention to the possible need to classify compilations of unclassified information.

According to executive branch classification policy, compilations of information may be classified even when all of their component parts are unclassified.

Thus, the executive order on classification states (EO 13292, at section 1.7e): “Compilations of items of information that are individually unclassified may be classified if the compiled information reveals an additional association or relationship that: (1) meets the standards for classification under this order; and (2) is not otherwise revealed in the individual items of information.”

Now, U.S. Navy classifiers have been told to “consider classification by compilation when updating SCGs [security classification guides] due to the large volume of data transmitted and stored on unclassified and classified Department of the Navy (DON) networks and websites.”

That language appears in each of a dozen Chief of Naval Operations Instructions issued on July 21, 2008 dealing with Navy security classification guides. The Instructions list the titles of many dozens of Navy classification guides on topics ranging from undersea warfare (pdf) to intelligence cover and deception (pdf).

Classification by compilation is a disputed area and a policy that lends itself to misuse since it involves even greater subjective factors than ordinary classification.

A careful but critical account of the subject prepared in 1991 for the Department of Energy is “Classification of Compilations of Information” (pdf) by Arvin S. Quist, June 1991.

“A steady stream of intelligence failures in the 1990s occurred in every facet of CIA activity, from intelligence collection to analysis to counterintelligence to covert action,” writes John Diamond in a new book on “The CIA and the Culture of Failure.”

This is of course well-trodden ground, and the author himself reported many of the underlying episodes for the Associated Press, Chicago Tribune and USA Today.

But Diamond probes beneath the familiar surface of events in an effort to understand the dynamics at work, and to show how individual intelligence failures interacted cumulatively and dialectically to yield the CIA of today.

“The events of the 1990s both stemmed from and led to a steady erosion of intelligence capability, contributing to a series of intelligence lapses and alleged lapses and to a consequent decline of confidence in the intelligence community that left the CIA critically weakened,” he concludes. “These processes fed off and fueled one another, leading to a fatal cycle of error, criticism, overcorrection, distraction, and politicization.”

Diamond writes without identifiable animus towards the CIA, and gives due weight to the agency’s defenders and the critics of its critics. Even on well-rehearsed topics such as the CIA’s failure to anticipate the collapse of the Soviet Union, he adds significant nuance and avoids cliche.

See “The CIA and the Culture of Failure: U.S. Intelligence from the End of the Cold War to the Invasion of Iraq” by John Diamond, Stanford University Press, September 2008.

“FBI Prevents Agents from Telling ‘Truth’ About 9/11 on PBS” by Jeff Stein, Spy Talk, CQ Politics, October 1.

“Former CIA Director Porter Goss’s Dusty Foggo Problem” by Laura Rozen, Mother Jones blog, October 1.

“China Report Urges Missile Shield” by Bill Gertz, Washington Times, October 1, with a copy of the draft report from the International Security Advisory Board obtained by Mr. Gertz here (pdf).

Security controls on information and intellectual property claims are increasingly restricting public access to the most useful information, according to Nobel laureate Robert B. Laughlin, who will address the Cato Institute on October 10.

A blistering critique of U.S. counterintelligence capabilities was authored by Michelle Van Cleave, the former National Counterintelligence Executive, in a case study prepared for the Project on National Security Reform. See Chapter 2 (pdf page 74) of this document (pdf).

“Fundamental Elements of the Counterintelligence Discipline” (pdf), published by the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive and the ODNI in January 2006, is available here.

The CIA’s Office of General Counsel is profiled in a new paper (pdf) by former CIA assistant general counsel John Radsan, published in the Journal of National Security Law and Policy.

The missions and functions of the oddly named “U.S. Army Nuclear and Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction Agency” (formerly the Army Nuclear and Chemical Agency) are described in the new Army Regulation 10-16 (pdf), September 24, 2008.

“Exploring the U.S. Africa Command and a New Strategic Relationship with Africa” is the title of an August 2007 Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing that has just been published.

The Congressional Research Service discussed “Africa Command: U.S. Strategic Interests and the Role of the U.S. Military in Africa” (pdf) in a report that was updated August 22, 2008.

The Senate Judiciary Committee has authorized the issuance of a subpoena for a copy of opinions of the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel (OLC).

OLC opinions interpret the law for executive branch agencies. Controversially, they have been used to sanction official departures from existing legal norms in domestic surveillance, prisoner interrogation, and other areas. They have also frequently been withheld from most members of Congress (though they have reportedly been provided to the intelligence committees in many cases).

“During this administration, OLC has been misused to provide legal justifications for misguided policies,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Judiciary Committee. “That advice has been deeply flawed, sloppy, and flat out wrong but it has been permitted to happen because secrecy has prevented our oversight.”

“Unjustified secrecy continues to prevent the review by this Committee that would provide a check and some control on how the administration is interpreting the law that is Congress’s constitutional responsibility to write. That obsessive secrecy even prevents us from knowing the subject matter on which OLC has written opinions,” Sen. Leahy said.

The secrecy of OLC decisions, as well as interrogation policy, the role of signing statements and many other questions were explored in detailed questions submitted to Michael B. Mukasey following his confirmation hearing last October. The full record of that hearing (with the Attorney General’s answers in the PDF version) has now been published.

Secret OLC opinions, along with overclassification generally, and a litany of other problematic practices were explored by Sen. Russ Feingold in a hearing last week on “Restoring the Rule of Law.” Senator Feingold summarized the findings and recommendations of that hearing in a floor statement yesterday.

Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI) this week defended the current structure of congressional oversight of intelligence, and specifically rejected a proposal by Sen. Christopher Bond (R-MO) to establish a subcommittee on intelligence within the Senate Appropriations Committee (described in Secrecy News, Sept. 12).

Sen. Bond’s proposal, according to Sen. Inouye, would have the undesirable effect of reducing the number of Senators and staff who are engaged in intelligence oversight. “It would put all decisionmaking into fewer hands,” he said.

In making his argument, Senator Inouye also provided some fresh insight into current intelligence oversight arrangements in the Intelligence and Appropriations Committees.

“I would point out that the Intelligence Committee has one professional staff member on the majority staff who reviews the budget for the National Reconnaissance Office; so do we [on the Appropriations Committee]. The Intelligence Committee has one professional staff member on the majority staff who reviews the budget for the National Security Agency; so do we.”

Sen. Inouye also obliquely discussed an intelligence satellite program advocated by Sen. Bond but rejected by the Appropriations Committee.

The history of congressional oversight of intelligence and specifically the CIA was recently explored in depth by L. Britt Snider in “The Agency and the Hill: CIA’s Relationship with Congress, 1946-2004” (pdf), CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence, 2008.

Reviewing the book in the latest issue of Studies in Intelligence, bibliophile and intelligence expert Hayden B. Peake wrote that “It will be the principal reference book on the topic for the foreseeable future.” But surprisingly, the Snider book has minimal discussion of intelligence budget disclosure, one of the perennial themes in congressional oversight, and it does not even mention the official declassification of the intelligence budget in 1997 and 1998. David M. Barrett’s “The CIA and Congress,” cited by Snider, also has additional material not found in the Snider book for the early years of the Agency.

The African Republic of Burundi this week ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty which prohibits all nuclear explosions. A total of 145 nations have now ratified the Treaty, according to a news release from the CTBT Organization.

Detailed background on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty is available from the Congressional Research Service in a report updated September 18 (pdf) that has not previously been made available online.

Yale Law School will hold a conference September 27 on “Governing After 2008,” examining a range of national policy issues and possible new directions for the next Administration. I will be speaking on secrecy and accountability. Stop by if you’re in the neighborhood.