U.S. News and World Report reported last January that at least three publications of the CIA’s Center for the Study of Intelligence, all critical of the Agency, had been withheld from the CIA web site (“A Tangled Web Woven,” by David E. Kaplan, U.S. News, January 30, 2006).
Now two of those disfavored publications are available on the Federation of American Scientists web site. The third will follow.
“Intelligence for a New Era in American Foreign Policy” (1.3 MB pdf) is the report of a conference convened by the Center for the Study of Intelligence, published in January 2004.
“Analytic Culture in the U.S. Intelligence Community: An Ethnographic Study” (8 MB pdf) is an interesting and unusual effort to assess intelligence analysis from an anthropological viewpoint, published in 2005.
It is a small irony of the Information Age that by attempting to selectively withhold these publications from the web, the CIA has practically guaranteed that more people will read them than would have otherwise done so.
But CIA seems to have little understanding of that fact, and the Agency’s efforts to suppress criticism are as relentless as they are self-defeating.
“The CIA has imposed new and tighter restrictions on the books, articles, and opinion pieces published by former employees who are still contractors with the intelligence agency,” writes Shane Harris.
See “Silencing the Squeaky Wheel” by Shane Harris, National Journal, April 27.
See also “Excessive Secrecy Hurting CIA Studies” by Shaun Waterman, UPI, April 27.
The public rarely sees the quiet, often messy work that goes into creating, passing, and implementing a major piece of legislation like the CHIPS and Science Act.
If this proposed rule were enacted it would have deleterious effects on government workers in general and federal researchers and scientists, specifically.
When we introduce “at-will” employment to government employees, we also introduce the potential for environments where people are more concerned about self-preservation than service to others.
There is no better time to re-invigorate America’s innovation edge by investing in R&D to create and capture “industries of the future,” re-shoring capital and expertise, and working closely with allies to expand our capabilities while safeguarding those technologies that are critical to our security.