Rep. Walter B. Jones (R-NC) paid tribute to military intelligence officer Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer in a statement entered into the Congressional Record yesterday.
“Col. Shaffer’s storied career has been distinguished by his willingness and ability to work at the cutting edge of our nation’s intelligence community,” Rep. Jones said.
Though it was not mentioned by the Congressman, Shaffer is also the author of a book called “Operation Dark Heart,” which was memorably and ineffectively censored by the U.S. Government. The Pentagon purchased 10,000 copies of the original version of the book in order to destroy them, but then a small number of uncensored review copies became public anyway. (“Behind the Censorship of Operation Dark Heart,” Secrecy News, September 29, 2010)
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.
FAS is launching the Center for Regulatory Ingenuity (CRI) to build a new, transpartisan vision of government that works – that has the capacity to achieve ambitious goals while adeptly responding to people’s basic needs.