One new feature of the intelligence budgeting process is the mandatory public disclosure of “earmarks” — funds that are specifically requested by an individual member of Congress and designated for a particular program.

The disclosures shed at least a few photons worth of new light on the deliberately obscure intelligence budget.

More than two dozen earmarks, from the $500,000 for a “Behavior Pattern Training Recognition Program” requested by Rep. Ed Pastor (D-AZ) to the $23 million for the National Drug Intelligence Center requested by Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), are itemized in the printed (or PDF) version of the House Intelligence Committee report on the FY 2008 Intelligence Authorization Act (pdf) (at pp. 50-51).

“Arms Control and Nonproliferation Technologies” (ACNT) was the name of a now-defunct Department of Energy journal that sought to inform policy makers about the capacities and limitations of arms control-related technologies.

At its best, ACNT provided a foundation for clear thinking about arms control and an intelligible introduction to the technologies involved.

It has been referenced in various studies performed by the National Academy of Sciences and others, but has become hard to find. The journal ceased publication in 2001, when its budget became a casualty of post-9/11 spending priorities and “suddenly arms control wasn’t fashionable any more,” a DOE official told Secrecy News.

It was deleted from the website of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (where it was produced) in 2005.

Secrecy News has recovered all extant issues of Arms Control and Nonproliferation Technologies from multiple sources and assembled them in an online archive on the Federation of American Scientists web site here.

In reporting on our unauthorized reproduction of Army publications, as noted yesterday, Gabriel Schoenfeld wrote an article entitled “Put Steven Aftergood in the Brig.”

He was way out of line, wrote Robert S. Norris of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

“Let’s get our prisons straight. A Brig is a ship’s or Navy/Marine prison and to my knowledge Aftergood has not angered the Navy to that point yet.”

“As for the Army, the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas is a more logical place. But since Aftergood is a civilian he is not eligible for incarceration there either.”

“As he has done nothing wrong it looks as though he must remain free.”

U.S. intelligence recently undertook a “significant” covert action without notifying Congress, as required by law, the House Intelligence Committee disclosed in a new report on the 2008 intelligence authorization bill.

“The Committee was dismayed at a recent incident wherein the Intelligence Community failed to inform the Congress of a significant covert action activity. This failure to notify Congress constitutes a violation of the National Security Act of 1947.”

“Despite agency explanations that the failure was inadvertent, the Committee is deeply troubled over the fact that such an oversight could occur, whether intentionally or inadvertently.”

“The Committee firmly believes that scrupulous transparency between the Intelligence Community and this Committee is an absolute necessity on matters related to covert action.”

In response to this lapse, the Committee adopted a provision in its authorization bill that would require the CIA Inspector General to audit each covert action program at least once every three years.

The pending bill is “the single largest intelligence authorization bill ever written by the Committee,” according to a May 2 news release (pdf).

The new intelligence authorization report describes new reporting requirements on the role of contractors in U.S. intelligence, Member concerns regarding intelligence policy in Iraq and domestic surveillance, defects in intelligence acquisition programs, and the evolution of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

“The recent 100-day agenda released by the DNI contained a great deal of bureaucratic verbiage but failed to articulate a clear and compelling plan for addressing chronic problems plaguing the Intelligence Community, such as deficiencies in foreign language capability, lack of diversity, information-sharing impediments, overclassification, and the lack of common security clearance practices,” the report said.

The bill does not include changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act sought by the Administration.

“Before the Committee will support any change to existing law, it is essential that the President provide some measure of assurance that were he to sign a bill modifying FISA into law, he would agree to be bound by it,” the report stated.

In minority views appended to the report, Republican members criticized the Committee endorsement of an intelligence role in assessing the impact of global warming, and other Committee judgments.

See Report on the Intelligence Authorization Act for FY 2008, House Report 110-131, May 7.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is sponsoring a public conference on open source intelligence in Washington, DC on July 16-17.

“The conference will raise awareness about open source and encourage information sharing among the Intelligence Community and its partners in academia, think tanks, private industry, and with federal, state, local and tribal entities and international partners.”

“The two-day conference will host participants from local, national, and international organizations from both the public and private sector.”

“The conference is free and open to the public.”

“There will be free food,” added organizer Theresa Sciacchetano seductively.

In an interview with the Associated Press, the director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency warned that under certain circumstances the government might seek to restrict the dissemination of commercial satellite imagery. See “Curbs on satellite photos may be needed” by Katherine Shrader, Associated Press, May 8.

A 2005 satellite image shows what appear to be launchers for the Shaheen 2 medium-range ballistic missile at Pakistan’s National Defense Complex near Islamabad. The image is analyzed by Hans Kristensen on the FAS Strategic Security Blog.

A new publication from the Joint Chiefs of Staff presents military doctrine on joint interdiction operations (pdf).

“Interdiction operations are actions to divert, disrupt, delay, or destroy an enemy’s surface capabilities before they can be used effectively against friendly forces, or to otherwise achieve objectives.”

“In support of law enforcement, interdiction includes activities conducted to divert, disrupt, delay, intercept, board, detain, or destroy, as appropriate, vessels, vehicles, aircraft, people and cargo. Interdiction also can be used to prevent an enemy from achieving a variety of objectives affecting the US populace, economy, or national interests.”

See “Joint Interdiction,” Joint Publication 3-03, 3 May 2007.

Some recently updated reports from the Congressional Research Service now available on the Federation of American Scientists web site include the following (all pdf).

“Stem Cell Research: Federal Research Funding and Oversight,” updated April 18, 2007.

“Israeli-Arab Negotiations: Background, Conflicts, and U.S. Policy,” updated April 10, 2007.

“Nuclear Weapons: Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty,” updated April 4, 2007.

“U.S. Strategic Nuclear Forces: Background, Developments, and Issues,” updated April 3, 2007.

U.S. Army intelligence has published a new field manual (pdf) on how to structure an opposing force (OPFOR) for U.S. military training purposes.

“As a training tool, the OPFOR must be a challenging, uncooperative sparring partner capable of stressing any or all warfighting functions and mission-essential tasks of the U.S. force,” the manual states. See “Opposing Force Organization Guide,” FM 7-100.4, May 2007.

“Put Steven Aftergood in the Brig” is the eye-catching title of what is actually a rather sympathetic blog entry from Commentary Magazine’s Gabriel Schoenfeld on the recent dust-up between the Army and the Federation of American Scientists over our practice of publishing certain Army documents.

Army Threatens Critic Over Blog Policy was Justin Rood’s take at ABC News’ The Blotter.

A U.S. Army official told the Federation of American Scientists that Army documents on the FAS web site had been published by FAS “illegally” and must be removed.

“There are only 5 Official Army Publications Sites,” wrote Cheryl Clark of the U.S. Army Publications Directorate in a May 4 email message. “You are not one of them.”

“You can link to our publications, but you cannot host them,” she wrote.

Furthermore, she indicated, a recent Army Regulation on “Operations Security” (first published by Wired News and mirrored on the FAS site) was “not intended for Public release.”

“Please remove this publication immediately or further action will be taken,” Ms. Clark warned.

“I have considered your request that we remove Army publications from the Federation of American Scientists web site,” I responded today. “I have decided not to comply.”

By law the Army cannot copyright its publications, the response explained. Nor is FAS, a non-governmental organization, subject to internal Army regulations on information policy.

“Accordingly, our publications are not illegal nor in violation of any applicable regulation.”

To eliminate potential confusion, we added a disclaimer to our Army doctrine web page indicating that the FAS collection of Army records is not an official Army source, and directing readers to several such official sites.

The recent evolution of Army operations security (OPSEC) policy can be traced from the 1995 regulation (pdf) on the subject to the 2005 revision (pdf) to the latest iteration of April 2007 (pdf).

In response to reporting by Noah Shachtman of Wired News and the Danger Room blog, the Army issued a Fact Sheet (pdf) on May 2 asserting that Army OPSEC policy on military blogging was unchanged.

The U.S. Army issued an updated regulation (pdf) governing its conduct of intelligence activities, including domestic surveillance policy and practice. The new regulation makes several technical changes and rescinds the “For Official Use Only” status of the prior edition.

See “U.S. Army Intelligence Activities,” Army Regulation 381-10, May 3, 2007.

For comparison, the prior edition, dated 22 November 2005, may be found here (pdf).