On October 23, President Bush named former CIA information officer Herbert Briick to the Public Interest Declassification Board, and also reappointed former CIA general counsel Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker. The Board will hold its next public meeting at the National Archives on Friday, October 31, where it will discuss how to identify and prioritize “historically valuable” information for declassification. For details on attendance see this October 14 Federal Register notice (pdf).
What is intelligence? Kristan J. Wheaton, a professor of intelligence studies at Mercyhurst College, invites readers to indicate their understanding of the term and its implications in a brief online survey.
The question of whether the United States needs a new domestic intelligence service that is independent of law enforcement was examined by Greg Treverton of the RAND Corporation in a new report for Congress entitled “Reorganizing U.S. Domestic Intelligence.”
Josh Gerstein, late of the New York Sun, has done some of the best reporting around on the AIPAC case involving unauthorized dissemination of classified information. In a new blog posting, he updates readers on the latest developments in the case in advance of a pre-trial appeal hearing on October 29.
On July 16, 2008, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing entitled “How the Administration’s Failed Detainee Policies Have Hurt the Fight Against Terrorism: Putting the Fight Against Terrorism on Sound Legal Foundations.” The record of that hearing was recently published and is available here.
The new alignment signals a clear shift in priorities: offices dedicated to clean energy and energy efficiency have been renamed, consolidated, or eliminated, while new divisions elevate hydrocarbons, fusion, and a combined Office of AI & Quantum.
We came out of the longest shutdown in history and we are all worse for it. Who won the shutdown fight? It doesn’t matter – Americans lost. And there is a chance we run it all back again in a few short months.
Promising examples of progress are emerging from the Boston metropolitan area that show the power of partnership between researchers, government officials, practitioners, and community-based organizations.
Americans trade stocks instantly, but spend 13 hours on tax forms. They send cash by text, but wait weeks for IRS responses. The nation’s revenue collector ranks dead last in citizen satisfaction. The problem isn’t just paperwork — it’s how the government builds.