FAS

CRS Reports Are Still Out of Bounds

08.07.08 | 1 min read | Text by Steven Aftergood

When a military judge ruled last month that Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden, could be tried for war crimes, the first footnote in his July 14 opinion (pdf) was to a Congressional Research Service report. (Hamdan was convicted yesterday for material support of terrorism.)

But Military Judge Keith J. Allred, lacking an official source for the CRS analysis by Jennifer K. Elsea (with which he ultimately differed), provided a link instead (see footnote 1 on page 3) to a copy of the document on the Federation of American Scientists web site.

By doing so, the Judge simultaneously highlighted the centrality of such CRS analyses to public discourse and the strange fact that these official documents are still not approved for direct release to the public.

Perhaps he also implicitly affirmed that FAS and other public interest publishers of CRS collections are helping to compensate for that continuing policy defect by providing the online access to CRS reports that Congress has denied.

publications
See all publications
Emerging Technology
day one project
Policy Memo
The Medicare Advance Healthcare Directive Enrollment (MAHDE) Initiative: Supporting Advance Care Planning for Older Medicare Beneficiaries

At least 40% of Medicare beneficiaries do not have a documented AHCD. In the absence of one, medical professionals may perform major and costly interventions unknowingly against a patient’s wishes. 

12.02.24 | 14 min read
read more
Emerging Technology
day one project
Policy Memo
Driving Equitable Healthcare Innovations through an AI for Medicaid (AIM) Initiative

AI has transformative potential in the public health space, but innovation driven primarily by the private sector today may be exacerbating existing disparities by training models.

12.02.24 | 6 min read
read more
Emerging Technology
day one project
Policy Memo
Strategies to Accelerate and Expand Access to the U.S. Innovation Economy

With targeted policy interventions, we can efficiently and effectively support the U.S. innovation economy through the translation of breakthrough scientific research from the lab to the market.

11.27.24 | 16 min read
read more
Government Capacity
day one project
Policy Memo
Collaborative Intelligence: Harnessing Crowd Forecasting for National Security

Crowd forecasting methods offer a systematic approach to quantifying the U.S. intelligence community’s uncertainty about the future and predicting the impact of interventions, allowing decision-makers to strategize effectively and allocate resources by outlining risks and tradeoffs in a legible format.

11.27.24 | 5 min read
read more