Recent reports of the Congressional Research Service that have not been made readily available to the public include the following (all pdf).

“U.N. Convention Against Torture (CAT): Overview and Application to Interrogation Techniques,” updated January 12, 2007.

“Zimbabwe: Current Issues,” updated June 21, 2007.

“Haiti: Developments and U.S. Policy Since 1991 and Current Congressional Concerns,” updated June 21, 2007.

“Japan’s Currency Intervention: Policy Issues,” updated July 13, 2007.

“Kosovo and U.S. Policy: Background and Current Issues,” updated July 3, 2007.

“Kosovo’s Future Status and U.S. Policy,” updated July 12, 2007.

“Federal Crime Control: Background, Legislation, and Issues,” updated June 12, 2007.

“Sea-Based Ballistic Missile Defense — Background and Issues for Congress,” updated June 26, 2007.

Republican Congressman Dave Reichert (R-WA) is interested in developing legislation to streamline the classification system and to eliminate abuses, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

Reichert uses personal experience as a benchmark for how overzealous classification can gum up the works and deny important information to those who need it. While investigating the Green River Killer as King County sheriff, Reichert worked closely with a variety of federal agencies and especially the FBI.

In one instance, he and an FBI agent jointly interviewed a witness. Later, Reichert asked the FBI for a copy of its report on the interrogation to compare it with his own account to see if there was anything he missed.

The request was denied because the report was classified, Reichert said in an interview.

“There’s a fear by federal agencies that if they let too much out, it could cause problems,” Reichert said. The irony, he and others say, is that indiscriminately classifying material as secret weakens security because it makes it harder to discern the truly important from those undeserving documents given the status.

Reichert hopes to develop legislation to streamline and simplify the system to lessen the abuses and to make it easier for government officials at all levels, and especially law enforcement, to be able to share information.

See “Government is overzealous with secrecy, Reichert says” by Charles Pope, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, July 26.

A major new report (pdf) from the Congressional Research Service provides a detailed account of Congress’s contempt power, including the use of contempt proceedings to coerce compliance with congressional demands for information or testimony and to punish non-compliance.

“This report examines the source of the contempt power, reviews the historical development of the early case law, outlines the statutory and common law basis for Congress’s contempt power, and analyzes the procedures associated with each of the three different types of contempt proceedings. In addition, the report discusses limitations both nonconstitutional and constitutionally based on the power.”

The 68-page report also examines the Justice Department position that “Congress cannot, as a matter of statutory or constitutional law, invoke either its inherent contempt authority or the criminal contempt of Congress procedures against an executive branch official acting on instructions by the President to assert executive privilege in response to a congressional subpoena.”

See “Congress’s Contempt Power: Law, History, Practice, and Procedure,” July 24, 2007.

Recently updated reports of the Congressional Research Service that have not been made readily available to the public include these (all pdf).

“Supreme Court Appointment Process: Roles of the President, Judiciary Committee, and Senate,” updated June 25, 2007.

“U.S.-Japan Economic Relations: Significance, Prospects, and Policy Options,” updated July 9, 2007.

“Navy Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) Program: Oversight Issues and Options for Congress,” updated June 11, 2007.

“U.S. Army and Marine Corps Equipment Requirements: Background and Issues for Congress,” updated June 15, 2007.

“Pakistan: Significant Recent Events, March 26 – June 21, 2007,” July 6, 2007.

“Ballistic Missile Defense: Historical Overview,” updated July 9, 2007.

The U.S. Senate is placing increased emphasis on exposing corruption and profiteering in military contracting in Iraq.

Last week, Sen. James Webb (D-VA) introduced a bill with twenty co-sponsors that would establish a Commission on Wartime Contracting to investigate fraud and abuse in government contracts, including intelligence contracts, in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom.

“We are outsourcing this war in ways we’ve never seen,” said Sen. Webb. “Defrauding the government of millions of taxpayer dollars should not be considered ‘the cost of doing business’.”

There are now more contractors (180,000) than military personnel (156, 247) in Iraq, according to a July 18 news release from Sen. Webb. A list of companies contracted in support of Operations Iraqi and Enduring Freedom does not exist, it said. Nor has information on how much the government is paying contractors been made available.

The Senate Judiciary Committee recently held a hearing on “war profiteering,” the record of which has just been published. See “Combating War Profiteering: Are We Doing Enough to Investigate and Prosecute Contracting Fraud and Abuse in Iraq?,” March 20, 2007.

The U.S. Navy has issued its first security policy (pdf) for protection of “biological select agents and toxins” (BSAT) at Navy facilities, a move that may signify heightened Navy interest in research involving these lethal materials.

Select agents are substances designated by the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture that “present a high bioterrorism risk to national security and have the greatest potential for adverse public health impact with mass casualties of humans and/or animals or that pose a severe threat to plant health or to plant products.” A few dozen particular biological agents and toxins have been so designated (pdf), including ebola and smallpox viruses, botulinum, etc.

There are currently two Navy facilities in the United States that have possession of select agents and toxins, according to the new policy: Naval Surface War Center (NSWC) Dahlgren and the Navy Medical Research Center.

“The Navy may increase the number of facilities in the future, and other Navy facilities may gain access or possession of BSAT due to non-routine events,” the document states.

The Navy policy implements a 2004 Department of Defense Directive (pdf) on protecting biological select agents, and a 2006 Instruction (pdf) from the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence.

See “Minimum Security Standards for Safeguarding Biological Select Agents and Toxins (BSAT),” Chief of Naval Operations OPNAV Instruction 5530.16, July 20, 2007.

Recently updated reports of the Congressional Research Service on nuclear weapons-related topics include these (all pdf):

“Nuclear Warheads: The Reliable Replacement Warhead Program and the Life Extension Program,” updated July 16, 2007.

“Nuclear Weapons: The Reliable Replacement Warhead Program,” updated July 13, 2007.

“Nuclear Weapons: Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty,” updated July 12, 2007.

“Nonproliferation and Threat Reduction Assistance: U.S. Programs in the Former Soviet Union,” updated February 23, 2007.

“North Korea’s Nuclear Weapons Development and Diplomacy,” updated July 2, 2007.

The 1982 U.S. Army medical manual for special forces presented in Secrecy News yesterday is dangerously misleading and it should not be used in practice, one expert in military medicine warned.

“That manual (pdf) is a relic of sentimental and historical interest only, advocating treatments that, if used by today’s medics, would result in disciplinary measures,” wrote Dr. Warner Anderson, a U.S. Army Colonel (ret.) and former associate dean of the Special Warfare Medical Group.

“The manual you reference is of great historical importance in illustrating the advances made in SOF medicine in the past 25 years. But it no more reflects current SOF practice than a 25 year-old Merck Manual reflects current Family Practice. In 2007, it is merely a curiosity.”

“Readers who use some of the tips and remedies could potentially cause harm to themselves or their patients.”

“I wish you would inform my fellow Secrecy News readers of these issues, correcting any false impressions,” Dr. Anderson wrote.

A completely revised Special Operations Forces Medical Handbook was published in 2001. A second edition of that Handbook is now in preparation, said Gay Thompson, managing editor of the Handbook.

A new publication of the Joint Chiefs of Staff presents U.S. military doctrine on “homeland defense” (pdf).

“It provides information on command and control, interagency and multinational coordination, and operations required to defeat external threats to, and aggression against, the homeland.”

See “Homeland Defense,” Joint Publication 3-27, July 12, 2007.

The document further extends the unfortunate use of the term “homeland” to refer to the United States, a relatively recent coinage that became prevalent in the George W. Bush Administration.

Not only does the word “homeland” have unhappy echoes of the Germanic “Heimat” and the cult of land and soil, it is also a misnomer in a nation of immigrants.

Moreover, “homeland” is defined by the military exclusively in terms of geography: It is “the physical region that includes the continental United States, Alaska, Hawaii, United States territories and possessions, and surrounding territorial waters and airspace.”

This means that actions to defend the Constitution and the political institutions of American democracy are by definition excluded from “homeland defense.”

For the Joint Chiefs, constitutional liberties are subordinate to, and contingent upon, physical security:

“To preserve the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution, the Nation must have a homeland that is secure from threats and violence, especially terrorism.” (page I-1).

Sen. Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign has put forward an agenda to increase transparency in government that includes “publishing budgets for every government agency.”

This appears to be a roundabout way of endorsing disclosure of intelligence agency budgets, since the budgets of all other agencies are already published.

The Clinton campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment or elaboration on the proposal.

Intelligence budget secrecy is perhaps the preeminent and most enduring example of overclassification, i.e. classification that is not justified by a valid national security concern.

A proposal to declassify the aggregate figure for the National Intelligence Program, comprised of over a dozen individual agency intelligence budgets, is pending in the Senate version of the FY 2008 Intelligence Authorization Act (S. 1538 [pdf]).

The 9/11 Commission went further and said “the overall amounts of money being appropriated for national intelligence and to its component agencies should no longer be kept secret.” (Final Report, p. 416).

The Clinton campaign appears to have adopted this bipartisan Commission recommendation for release of component agency budget information. The Bush Administration opposes any disclosure (pdf) of any intelligence budget data, even the aggregate figure.

Recent reports of the Congressional Research Service on Middle East-related topics, obtained by Secrecy News without CRS authorization, include the following.

“U.S. Foreign Assistance to the Middle East: Historical Background, Recent Trends, and the FY2008 Request,” updated July 3, 2007.

“Libya: Background and U.S. Relations,” updated June 19, 2007.

“U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel,” updated April 25, 2007.

“Lebanon,” updated July 11, 2007.

“The Iran Sanctions Act (ISA),” updated July 9, 2007.

“Iran’s Influence in Iraq,” updated July 9, 2007.

More publicly unreleased reports from the Congressional Research Service on various topics of interest to some include these (all pdf).

“Journalists’ Privilege to Withhold Information in Judicial and Other Proceedings: State Shield Statutes,” updated June 27, 2007.

“Federal Sentencing Guidelines: Background, Legal Analysis, and Policy Options,” updated June 30, 2007.

“Critical Infrastructure: The National Asset Database,” updated July 16, 2007.

“Chemical Facility Security: Regulation and Issues for Congress,” updated June 21, 2007.

“Pipeline Safety and Security: Federal Programs,” updated July 11, 2007.