Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal has doubled since 2004 and could double again in the next 10 years if the current trend continues, according to the latest Nuclear Notebook. Click on chart to download full size version. . By Hans M. Kristensen and Robert S. Norris The latest Nuclear Notebook on Pakistan’s nuclear forces is available on […]
In one of his trademark “snowflake” memoranda from 2005 that was made public this week, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stated flatly that the government secrecy system was a failure. “The United States Government is incapable of keeping a secret,” he wrote (pdf) on November 2, 2005. “If one accepts that, and I do, that […]
Last month, Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates issued a new DoD Directive (pdf) on the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the agency that builds, launches and operates U.S. intelligence satellites. The new directive, which is unclassified, cancels and replaces an earlier directive (pdf) from 1964, which was originally classified Top Secret. The new directive generally […]
Former National Security Agency official Thomas A. Drake, who pled guilty to a misdemeanor charge of exceeding the authorized use of a government computer, will ask a federal court to sentence him to one year probation with community service at a sentencing hearing on Friday, July 15. Mr. Drake, who is understood to have been […]
Former CIA officer Jeffrey A. Sterling, who is suspected of leaking classified information to New York Times reporter James Risen, this week asked a court to issue subpoenas (pdf) for staff and records of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The move is part of a defense strategy to show that it was Senate […]
An article in the Russian edition of Forbes magazine this week somewhat facetiously considered the tourism potential of Russia’s secretive and tightly secured closed cities. “In today’s Russia there are 42 closed administrative territorial entities — or ZATOs — surrounded by rows of barbed wire and guarded by armed patrols. They belong to the Ministry […]
In 2005, the U.S. Army issued a new field manual on the military use of dogs, which it said were being “employed in dynamic ways never before imagined.” The field manual was approved for public release and marked for unlimited distribution. See FM 3-19.17, “Military Working Dogs” (pdf), 6 July 2005. But in May 2011, […]
A proposed new rule published for comment by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) last week would establish updated new procedures for the declassification of historical records containing national security information. The proposed rule tracks fairly closely with President Obama’s December 2009 executive order 13526, and thus highlights some of the limitations of that […]
Government attorneys yesterday told a federal court that most of last year’s grand jury proceedings in which New York Times reporter James Risen was subpoenaed to testify should remain secret in the public interest. The grand jury subpoena against Risen was ultimately quashed in a November 30, 2010 order (pdf) that was unsealed last week. […]
Recent reports from the Congressional Research Service that have not been made readily available to the public include the following (all pdf). Enforcement of Congressional Rules of Conduct: An Historical Overview, June 14, 2011 Mandatory Spending Since 1962, June 15, 2011 Veterans and Homelessness, June 15, 2011 Iran Sanctions, June 22, 2011 Congressional Oversight Manual, […]
To admit the possibility of a “good leak” of classified information would undermine the entire classification system, government attorneys told a court (pdf) last week, and therefore it should not do so. The government’s statement was presented in a response to New York Times reporter James Risen’s June 21 motion to quash a subpoena to […]
The latest issue of the Journal of National Security Law & Policy (vol. 5, no. 1) presents several papers on secrecy, disclosure, and related topics by authors including David Kris, Louis Fisher, Geoffrey Stone and Stephen Vladeck, among others. Titles include “The Publication of National Security Information in the Digital Age,” “Burn After Viewing: The […]