New and updated reports from the Congressional Research Service that Congress has withheld from online public distribution include the following. Bitcoin: Questions, Answers, and Analysis of Legal Issues, December 20, 2013 The Crisis in South Sudan, December 27, 2013 Increasing the Efficiency of Existing Coal-Fired Power Plants, December 20, 2013 Spectrum Policy: Provisions in the […]
The Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series is the official documentary record of U.S. foreign policy published by the U.S. Department of State. The origins, development and continuing evolution of the FRUS series are explored in a massive new history prepared by the State Department Office of the Historian. See “Toward ‘Thorough, Accurate […]
After a declassification review that lasted nearly twenty years, the history of CIA covert action in the Congo from 1960 to 1968 was finally published last week by the State Department, filling an awkward gap in the historical record. “In August 1960, the U.S. Government launched a covert political program in the Congo lasting almost […]
More than a dozen professional societies and public interest groups wrote to the Director of National Intelligence last week to ask him to preserve public access to foreign news reports gathered, translated and published by the Open Source Center and marketed to subscribers through the NTIS World News Connection. The CIA, which manages the Open […]
Updated below The report of a White House advisory group on intelligence surveillance said that reducing undue secrecy was one of its main objectives. “A central goal of our recommendations is to increase transparency and to decrease unnecessary secrecy, in order to enhance both accountability and public trust,” the report of the President’s Review Group […]
Because the Intelligence Community utilizes commercial products including those that may be manufactured abroad, it could be vulnerable to threat or compromise through its supply chain. Intelligence Community Directive 731 issued by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper on December 7 establishes IC policy on “Supply Chain Risk Management.” “Many IC mission-critical products, materials, and […]
Newly updated reports from the Congressional Research Service obtained by Secrecy News include the following. China’s Economic Rise: History, Trends, Challenges, and Implications for the United States, December 17, 2013 Iraq: Politics, Governance, and Human Rights, December 17, 2013 Child Support: An Overview of Census Bureau Data on Recipients, December 16, 2013 Nanotechnology: A Policy […]
DC District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle yesterday ordered the Obama Administration to release a copy of an unclassified presidential directive, and she said the attempt to withhold it represented an improper exercise of “secret law.” The Obama White House has a “limitless” view of its authority to withhold presidential communications from the public, she wrote, […]
New and updated reports from the Congressional Research Service that have been withheld by Congress from online public distribution include the following. Defense: FY2014 Authorization and Appropriations, December 16, 2013 Rare Earth Elements: The Global Supply Chain, December 16, 2013 China-U.S. Trade Issues, December 16, 2013 Samantar v. Yousef: The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act and […]
In order to restore public trust, the U.S. intelligence community ought to be “aggressive” about reducing classification, former intelligence officials said last week. Secrecy “is an enormous problem,” said Michael Leiter, who directed the National Counterterrorism Center from 2007 to 2011. “I hope the DNI is very aggressive about moving towards less classification and more […]
In a slight but welcome incremental reform, reports to Congress from the Department of Defense are to be posted online, according to a provision in the pending FY 2014 defense authorization act. Up to now, such reports were to be made available to the public “upon request” (10 USC 122a). But under section 181 of […]
The latest edition of U.S. joint military doctrine on counterinsurgency states that while working to defeat and contain insurgency, efforts should also be made to “address its root causes.” Newly added doctrinal language “articulates that US counterinsurgency efforts should provide incentives to the host-nation government to undertake reforms that address the root causes of the […]