Recent Congressional Actions and Publications
Senators Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham said they would do their utmost to block the release under the Freedom of Information Act of photographs documenting the abuse of detainees held in U.S. custody. “Such a release would be tantamount to a death sentence to some who are serving our nation in the most dangerous and difficult spots like Iraq and Afghanistan,” they said, urging passage of an amendment to exempt any such photographs from the FOIA.
Rep. Jane Harman introduced legislation to terminate the National Applications Office, the DHS organization that would employ intelligence satellite imagery for homeland security and domestic law enforcement purposes. DHS has failed to provide a legal framework and justification for the program, she said, and therefore “Operation of the NAO in its current state poses serious constitutional questions and threatens to violate the privacy of Americans and their civil liberties.”
Senator Russ Feingold and several colleagues in both parties introduced a resolution that would strengthen the Senate Intelligence Committee by giving it the power to appropriate as well as authorize funds for intelligence. The move is needed, the resolution said, “to provide vigilant legislative oversight over the intelligence activities of the United States to ensure that such activities are in conformity with the Constitution and laws of the United States.”
The record of a July 2006 hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee entitled “Hamdan v. Rumsfeld: Establishing a Constitutional Process” (pdf) was published in April 2009, with supplementary material for the record.
Another Senate Judiciary Committee hearing volume from a June 2006 hearing on “The Use of Presidential Signing Statements” (pdf) was also published in April 2009.
The FAS Nuclear Notebook is one of the most widely sourced reference materials worldwide for reliable information about the status of nuclear weapons, and has been published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists since 1987.. The Nuclear Notebook is researched and written by the staff of the Federation of American Scientists’ Nuclear Information Project: Director Hans […]
On 14 April 2023, the Belarusian Ministry of Defence released a short video of a Su-25 pilot explaining his new role in delivering “special [nuclear] munitions” following his training in Russia. The features seen in the video, as well as several other open-source clues, suggest that Lida Air Base––located only 40 kilometers from the Lithuanian border and the […]
A photo in a Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) student briefing from 2022 shows four people inspecting what appears to be a damaged B61 nuclear bomb.
In early-February 2023, the Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) had informed Congress that China now has more launchers for Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) than the United States. The report is the latest in a serious of revelations over the past four years about China’s growing nuclear weapons arsenal and the deepening […]