A private researcher investigating the history of the U.S. biological weapons program at the National Archives recently came up empty.
“She asked for the files for Fort Detrick from 1946 to 1956, and was brought 16 cartons,” recounted Milton Leitenberg of the University of Maryland. “However, every single file in every one of the 16 cartons had been removed, and replaced with a page dated post-2002, saying that the item had been withdrawn.”
The Fort Detrick records were removed from public access “after the Bush administration ordered agencies to withhold anything that might aid terrorists,” reported Scott Shane, then of the Baltimore Sun, in an August 1, 2004 Sun story on Fort Detrick’s Special Operations Division.
Meanwhile, the record of a congressional hearing that was held last year on biological terrorism has just been published.
See “Engineering Bio-Terror Agents: Lessons from the Offensive U.S. and Soviet Biological Weapons Programs,” House Committee on Homeland Security, July 13, 2005.
After a year-long delay, this April, EPA released the latest air toxics data, which only included raw air data downloads. This year, for the first time in nearly 25 years, the air toxics data did not include cancer risk estimates.
In the current environment of declining trust and magnifying strategic competition, banning debris-creating tests is a concrete step towards stability that favors interests of all states seeking to conduct space activities.
Often negotiations between data center developers and local officials are conducted behind closed doors, protected by NDAs. How can we have an informed debate, when we don’t know what’s on the table?
As federal data policy nerds, the question we get asked all the time is “How much data has the current administration terminated?”