New and updated reports from the Congressional Research Service that Congress has not made publicly available include the following. Hydraulic Fracturing: Selected Legal Issues, July 16, 2013 An Overview of Unconventional Oil and Natural Gas: Resources and Federal Actions, July 15, 2013 Legislative Branch: FY2014 Appropriations, July 16, 2013 The President’s Budget Request: Overview and […]
A national policy on “insider threats” was developed by the Obama Administration in order to protect against actions by government employees who would harm the security of the nation. But under the rubric of insider threats, the policy subsumes the seemingly disparate acts of spies, terrorists, and those who leak classified information. The insider threat […]
A new report from the Congressional Research Service provides a detailed review of the Defense Production Act of 1950, which “confers upon the President a broad set of authorities to influence domestic industry in the interest of national defense.” “The authorities can be used across the federal government to shape the domestic industrial base so […]
In response to an October 2012 presidential directive on “protecting whistleblowers with access to classified information,” the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy have produced their implementing policies. These would generally prohibit retaliation against individuals who make “protected disclosures” of information to an authorized recipient. The intelligence community may be retreating from its […]
If one is looking for a copy of a Presidential Policy Directive issued by President Obama, the last place to turn is the White House website. In most cases, the Obama White House does not disclose presidential directives even when they are unclassified. The Obama Administration has issued more than 20 Presidential Policy Directives (PPDs), […]
It may be easier for litigants to mount a constitutional challenge to intelligence surveillance programs that gather U.S. data such as telephone and internet metadata now that those programs have been documented through leaks of classified records. Or, says a new report from the Congressional Research Service, it may not be. Unlike previous cases, “the […]
By Hans M. Kristensen The U.S. Air Force National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC) has published its long-awaited update to the Ballistic and Cruise Missile Threat report, one of the few remaining public (yet sanitized) U.S. intelligence assessment of the world nuclear (and other) forces. Previous years’ reports have been reviewed and made available […]
A new report from the Congressional Research Service summarizes for Congress what is publicly known about the two National Security Agency surveillance programs that were disclosed by Edward Snowden and reported last month by The Guardian and The Washington Post. “Since these programs were publicly disclosed over the course of two days in June, there […]
The inspector general of each executive branch agency that classifies national security information is required to produce an evaluation of the agency’s classification program by the end of September, pursuant to the Reducing Over-classification Act of 2010. The goal of the reviews is to identify policies and procedures “that may be contributing to persistent misclassification […]
A long-running personnel dispute at the Congressional Research Service offers up conflicting visions of the proper role of the congressional support agency, which provides policy and legal analysis to Congress. In 2009, then-CRS Director Daniel Mulhollan fired then-CRS Division Chief Col. Morris Davis, a former Guantanamo prosecutor, after Davis publicly criticized the military commission process […]
The recent test-launch of a modified Russian ballistic missile has nuclear arms reduction opponents up in arms with claims that Russia is fielding a new missile in violation of arms control agreements and that the United States therefore should not pursue further reductions of nuclear forces. The fact that the Russian name of the modified […]
Government programs to declassify national security information are not meeting public expectations, the needs of historians, or even the requirements of law, said the State Department’s Historical Advisory Committee (HAC) in a report last week. A 1991 statute mandated that the State Department publish the documentary record of U.S. foreign policy (known as Foreign Relations […]