The Department of Defense has abandoned plans to revise its Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations.

The draft revision became controversial when it was disclosed last year because of its unusually frank discussion of preemptive use of nuclear weapons.

The decision to cancel the revision was discovered by Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists. He described the move last week and provided relevant links in the new blog of the FAS Strategic Security Project.

UPDATE: Some of the backstory on the proposed draft nuclear doctrine, with related links, was presented by ArmsControlWonk last year.

A noteworthy article from the CIA’s Studies in Intelligence Journal, published in 1979 and declassified last year, describes the use of “remote medical diagnosis” for foreign intelligence purposes.

“Remote medical diagnosis is defined as the identification of the illnesses affecting a person without the benefit of a formal medical examination.”

The authors provide capsule accounts of CIA medical diagnoses of various world leaders, including French President Georges Pompidou, Algerian President Houari Boumediene, Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev, and Israeli Prime Minister Menahem Begin.

The technique, such as it is, is far from infallible, the authors note. Although Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir suffered from malignant lymphoma for more than 12 years, “We had been entirely unaware that she had this lethal disease.”

See “Remote Medical Diagnosis: Monitoring the health of Very Important Patients,” Studies in Intelligence, Spring 1979 (1.2 MB PDF file) (thanks to AT).

Congressional Research Service analyses of the Bush Administration’s domestic surveillance activity have been exceptionally influential, and their influence has been magnified by media coverage that has sometimes overstated the rather nuanced conclusions of CRS analysts.

But now the CRS may face a backlash from Republican leaders in Congress who apparently resent the agency’s high profile and independent judgment, and seek to rein it in.

There has probably never been a CRS report that was cited as frequently as the January 5, 2006 CRS memorandum which delicately concluded that the NSA surveillance operation “does not seem to be as well-grounded” as the Administration contends.

Another CRS memorandum on January 18 observed that since the NSA operation was not a “covert action,” the decision to limit congressional notification to eight members of Congress as is done in the case of covert actions “would appear to be inconsistent with the law.”

Though some would consider these findings tentative or even timid, their broad acceptance has enraged the President’s allies in Congress.

“CRS’s work on these matters has not been ‘free of partisan or other bias’,” wrote House Intelligence Committee chair Rep. Pete Hoekstra in a February 1 letter to CRS Director Daniel P. Mulhollan.

“I ask for immediate action on your part to ensure that CRS truly provides ‘comprehensive and reliable’ legislative research that is ‘free of partisan or other bias’.”

In his February 1 letter, Rep. Hoekstra specifically disputed the suggestion by CRS analyst Alfred Cumming in his January 18 memo that there was any legal obligation to inform all members of the intelligence committees of the NSA surveillance operation. “It is clear that such reporting is not mandated by the law,” he wrote.

By Rep. Hoekstra’s lights, the statute that limits congressional notification of covert action to eight members of Congress would be redundant or meaningless, since the President would have no obligation to inform other Members of the intelligence committees anyway.

But that has not been the conventional reading of the law, and Rep. Hoekstra’s interpretation has been contested by his Committee’s Ranking Member, Rep. Jane Harman.

“I would appreciate your assistance in ensuring that CRS refrain from speculating with respect to highly sensitive national security matters on which it has no authoritative knowledge,” Rep. Hoekstra thundered to CRS Director Mulhollan (whom he mistakenly referred to as Mulholland).

CRS analyst Cumming is a former staff director of the Senate Intelligence Committee with many years of experience in intelligence oversight. Rep. Hoekstra is a relative newcomer to the field.

Although U.S. intelligence is embroiled in public controversy over the NSA activity, the House Intelligence Committee under Chairman Hoekstra has had little to contribute to public understanding. He has held no public hearings, and has left it to Ranking Member Rep. Harman, to represent and articulate public concerns.

Rep. Hoekstra’s letter to CRS, which was first noted approvingly by the conservative web site Powerline, was copied to three congressional Republican leaders, but to no Democrats.

Since the January 5 CRS memo was published on the Federation of American Scientists web site on January 6, it has been downloaded thousands of times each day, and as many as forty thousand times in a single 24 hour period.

A major new report from the National Research Council warns of future
biological threats and urges increased attention to mechanisms for
prevention, detection, mitigation and response to the destructive
use of biological agents.

But secrecy is not one of those mechanisms, the report says.

“In general, restrictive regulations and the imposition of
constraints on the flow of information are not likely to reduce the
risks that advances in the life sciences will be utilized with
malevolent intent in the future.”

“In fact, they will make it more difficult for civil society to
protect itself against such threats and ultimately are likely to
weaken national and human security.”

“The Committee endorses and affirms policies and practices that, to
the maximum extent possible, promote the free and open exchange of
information in the life sciences,” the report’s first recommendation
states.

The report contains some valuable extended discussion of information
policy in the context of biosecurity (esp. pp. 163-171).

See this January 31 news release for “Globalization, Biosecurity, and
the Future of the Life Sciences.”

“The preeminent position that the United States has enjoyed in the life sciences has been dependent upon the flow of foreign scientific talent to its shores,” the National Research Council said in its new report on biosecurity (p. 159).

But onerous visa requirements and so-called “deemed export” restrictions on scientific communications could erode the contribution of foreign scientists to U.S. preeminence, the report warned.

A newly updated survey of foreign scientists and engineers and associated policy questions has been prepared by the Congressional Research Service. A copy was obtained by Secrecy News.

See “Foreign Science and Engineering Presence in U.S. Institutions and the Labor Force,” Congressional Research Service, updated January 3, 2006.

The possibility that Freedom of Information Act requesters can recover attorneys’ fees in FOIA lawsuits makes it easier to find attorneys to represent requesters on a contingency or pro bono basis.

Conversely, when new restrictions on the award of attorneys fees are put in place, as they have been in recent years, the availability of pro bono attorneys in FOIA cases has seemed to shrink accordingly.

FOIA reform legislation introduced last year by Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) would restore the previous standard which permitted recovery of attorneys’ fees whenever a requester’s lawsuit resulted in an agency decision to release the requested record.

The larger question of Attorneys’ Fees generally (not specifically in the FOIA context) is treated at length in a new report from the Congressional Research Service. A copy was obtained by Secrecy News.

See “Awards of Attorneys’ Fees by Federal Courts and Federal Agencies,” updated January 24, 2006.

The government failed to preserve certain official email messages generated by the Office of the Vice President and the Executive Office of the President in 2003 as required by law, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald revealed in a January 23 letter (pdf).

The contents and quantity of the missing email is unknown.

In another letter dated January 9 (pdf), Mr. Fitzgerald also disclosed that his Office has received redacted versions of the President’s Daily Brief (“a very discrete amount of material relating to PDBs”) concerning Valerie Plame Wilson or Amb. Joseph Wilson’s trip to Niger. Mr. Libby’s attorney had requested (pdf) all copies of the President’s Daily Brief “in its entirety” from May 2003 through March 2004.

These and several other interesting nuggets emerged in correspondence between the Special Prosecutor and attorneys for I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the former aide to Vice President Cheney who is being prosecuted for perjury in connection with the CIA Plame leak investigation. The correspondence was filed in DC District Court on January 31.

While it has apparently proved feasible to declassify portions of PDBs from 2 or 3 years ago, the Central Intelligence Agency still insists that 40 year old PDBs regarding the Vietnam War cannot possibly be declassified.

That dispute is the subject of an ongoing Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by UC Davis Professor Larry Berman. For background on the case see this National Security Archive update.

Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev nominated the crew of the ill-fated Soviet nuclear submarine K-19, which suffered a loss of coolant accident on July 4, 1961, for a Nobel Peace Prize this week.

“Through the courage of the heroic sailors, a reactor explosion and a consequent environmental catastrophe in the ocean were averted,” Mr. Gorbachev wrote.

“An explosion on board the K-19 could have been taken for a military provocation or even an attempt to launch a nuclear strike on the North American coast. An immediate response by the United States could have triggered a Third World War,” he wrote.

All information about the 1961 accident was kept secret in the USSR until 1990, he said.

See “Gorbachev Proposes Soviet Sub Crew for Nobel Peace Prize,” Interfax News Agency, translated by the DNI Open Source Center, Feburary 1, 2006.

Mr. Gorbachev’s statement (in Russian) may be found here.

The K-19 incident was recently the subject of a National Geographic feature film starring Harrison Ford called “K-19: The Widowmaker.”

Jeffrey Lewis of ArmsControlWonk has obtained a copy of the latest IAEA brief on Iran’s nuclear program, “Developments in the Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement in the Islamic Republic of Iran and Agency Verification of Iran’s Suspension of Enrichment-related and Reprocessing Activities.”

The amateur satellite spotters who monitor the orbiting network of classified reconnaissance satellites are profiled by Patrick Radden Keefe in “I Spy,” Wired Magazine, February 2006.

A new report from the Congressional Research Service takes a detailed look at proposals to significantly restructure the U.S. nuclear weapons complex.

The proposals, offered by a Department of Energy Task Force, include closure and consolidation of various nuclear facilities and production of a newly designed Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW).

“Some express concern that Task Force recommendations may be at odds with U.S. nuclear nonproliferation policy,” insofar as they envision the indefinite preservation of the existing nuclear weapons stockpile, the CRS report observes.

See “Nuclear Weapons Complex Reconfiguration: Analysis of an Energy Department Task Force Report,” February 1, 2006.

Military regulations offer wide latitude in the gathering of
domestic intelligence information.

“Contrary to popular belief, there is no absolute ban on [military]
intelligence components collecting U.S. person information,” according
to a 2001 Army intelligence memo.

What’s more, military intelligence agencies can provisionally
“receive” domestic intelligence information that they may not be
legally permitted to “collect.”

“MI [military intelligence] may receive information from anyone,
anytime.”

That point was stressed in the November 5, 2001 memo issued by Lt. Gen.
Robert W. Noonan, Jr., the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence.

DoD and Army regulations “allow collection about U.S. persons
reasonably believed to be engaged, or about to engage, in
International terrorist activities.”

“Remember, merely receiving information does not constitute
‘collection’ under AR [Army Regulation] 381-10; collection entails
receiving ‘for use’,” Gen. Noonan wrote.

“Army intelligence may always receive information, if only to
determine its intelligence value and whether it can be collected,
retained, or disseminated in accordance with governing policy.”

The distinction between “receiving” information (always permitted)
and “collecting” it (permitted only in certain circumstances)
appears to offer considerable leeway for domestic surveillance
activities under the existing legal framework.

This in turn makes it harder to understand why the NSA domestic
surveillance program departed from previous practice.

“It seems to me that there is enough ambiguity in the language that
with a bit of creativity in managing the US persons files there
would have been not too much trouble” applying existing rules to the
NSA program, said John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org, who pointed
Secrecy News to the 2001 Army memo.

See “Collecting Information on U.S. Persons,” Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, November 5, 2001.

Army Regulation 381-10, “U.S. Army Intelligence Activities,” was
reissued on November 22, 2005, but up to now it has not been
publicly disclosed.

However, the previous edition of AR 381-10, dated July 1, 1984 (and in effect
until December 22, 2005), is available here.

The intelligence reform legislation of 2004 abolished the position of Director of Central Intelligence, transferring many of its functions to the new Director of National Intelligence.

This raised a technical legal question as to whether the DCI who was serving at the time, Porter J. Goss, would need to be formally reappointed to the position of Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (DCIA).

The question was analyzed at length by the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) in a January 2005 memo that has just been released.

To cut to the chase, the OLC concluded “that when the Intelligence Reform Act takes effect the then-current DCI would not require a new appointment to serve as DCIA.”

See “Status of the Director of Central Intelligence Under the National Security Intelligence Reform Act of 2004,” Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel, January 12, 2005 (published January 23, 2006).