In preparation for the trial of Jeffrey A. Sterling, a former CIA employee who is accused of unauthorized disclosure of classified information, prosecutors this week wrote to the defendant’s attorney explaining how pre-trial interviews of potential witnesses in the case are to be conducted. First of all, “If you intend to discuss classified information during […]
The latest annual report to Congress (pdf) on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Program details the soaring costs and deferred production schedule associated with the program. The report, which has not been publicly released, outlines total program costs from last year as well as per-aircraft costs and planned annual spending rates. It’s “a useful primer […]
Updated below Forty years after they were famously leaked by Daniel Ellsberg in 1971, the Pentagon Papers will be officially released next month at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library. The National Archives announced this week that it “has identified, inventoried, and prepared for public access the Vietnam Task Force study, United States-Vietnam Relations 1945-1967, informally […]
An eye-opening report on corruption in the Afghan Central Bank that was issued last March by the Inspector General of the U.S. Agency for International Development was recently removed from the USAID web site after the Agency decided to classify some of its published contents. The now-classified IG report focused on the failure to discover […]
Several intelligence community initiatives to develop improved tools for data search, analysis and fusion were described in the latest report to Congress (pdf) from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on data mining. A new program called DataSphere is intended “to aid in the discovery of unknown terrorism relationships and the identification of […]
By every available measure, the level of domestic intelligence surveillance activity in 2010 increased from the year before, according to a new Justice Department report to Congress on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. “During calendar year 2010, the Government made 1,579 applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (hereinafter ‘FISC’) for authority to conduct electronic […]
The broad implications of the death of Osama bin Laden were discussed in a new report from the Congressional Research Service. The report does not contain any new factual information or much in the way of new analysis. Rather, it presents an account of the policy questions arising from bin Laden’s death that may warrant […]
Russia has 3,700-5,400 nonstrategic nuclear weapons, including the old dual-capable AS-4 Kitchen air-launched missile seen here under the wings of a Tu-22 Backfire bomber at an unknown airbase. All Russian nonstrategic warheads are in central storage. Image: web . By Hans M. Kristensen The latest Nuclear Notebook in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists with […]
The House Intelligence Committee this week called on the Director of National Intelligence to establish an automated insider threat detection program to deter and detect unauthorized access to, or use of, classified intelligence networks. “Incidents like the unauthorized disclosure of classified information by Wikileaks… show us that despite the tremendous progress made since 9/11 in […]
A retrospective tabulation of U.S. aid to Pakistan, up to and including the FY2012 budget request, was prepared in updated form yesterday by the Congressional Research Service. See “Direct Overt U.S. Aid and Military Reimbursements to Pakistan, FY2001-FY2012” (pdf), May 4, 2011.
In a news story today about the imminent arrival of the federal government’s debt limit (“Debt Ceiling Has Some Give, Until Roof Falls In” by Binyamin Appelbaum), the New York Times cited a Congressional Research Service report that was performed “in February” concerning the impact of the debt limit. But that report has been updated […]
The rise in national security secrecy in the first year of the Obama Administration was matched by a sharp increase in the financial costs of the classification system, according to a new report to the President (pdf). The estimated costs of the national security classification system grew by 15% last year to reach $10.17 billion, […]