In response to a request from the Department of Justice, the Senate yesterday authorized the Senate Intelligence Committee to cooperate with a pending investigation of an unauthorized disclosure of classified information.
“The Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, acting jointly, are authorized to provide to the United States Department of Justice, under appropriate security procedures, copies of Committee documents sought in connection with a pending investigation into the unauthorized disclosure of classified national security information, and former and current employees of the Committee are authorized to testify in proceedings arising out of that investigation,” according to Senate Resolution 600 that was passed yesterday.
The target of the leak investigation was not specified, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said it involved “someone not connected with the committee.”
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence recently released a copy of Intelligence Community Directive (ICD) Number 700 on “Protection of National Intelligence” (pdf), which was issued on September 21, 2007. Among other things, the Directive mandated the establishment of “fora for the identification and solution of issues affecting the protection of national intelligence and intelligence sources and methods.”
January saw us watching whether the government would fund science. February has been about how that funding will be distributed, regulated, and contested.
This rule gives agencies significantly more authority over certain career policy roles. Whether that authority improves accountability or creates new risks depends almost entirely on how agencies interrupt and apply it.
Our environmental system was built for 1970s-era pollution control, but today it needs stable, integrated, multi-level governance that can make tradeoffs, share and use evidence, and deliver infrastructure while demonstrating that improved trust and participation are essential to future progress.
Durable and legitimate climate action requires a government capable of clearly weighting, explaining, and managing cost tradeoffs to the widest away of audiences, which in turn requires strong technocratic competency.