The U.S. Army yesterday issued a revised and updated safety policy for microbiology and biomedical laboratories. The new policy “prescribes the technical safety requirements for the use, handling, transportation, transfer, storage, and disposal of infectious agents and toxins (IAT) rated at biosafety level 2 (BSL–2) and above.” It applies to “all U.S. Army activities and […]
The Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA) was enacted in 1980 to provide a mechanism for handling classified information that was likely to arise in criminal trials. The Act provided for the identification of such information, provisions for establishing its relevance and admissibility, and for introducing unclassified substitutions that could be openly discussed at trial. The […]
New reports from the Congressional Research Service obtained by Secrecy News include the following (all pdf): “Sending Mail to Members of the Armed Forces at Reduced or Free Postage: An Overview,” April 27, 2009. “State, Foreign Operations Appropriations: A Guide to Component Accounts,” March 30, 2009. “Foreign Operations Appropriations: General Provisions,” April 30, 2009. “Taiwan-U.S. […]
It is possible to discern potentially significant patterns in terrorist activity through an analysis of geospatial intelligence information concerning terrorist incidents, the DNI Open Source Center (OSC) says. A recent OSC study of terrorism in Afghanistan (large PDF) illustrates the growing sophistication of geointelligence analysis tools. By analyzing parameters such as location, timing, frequency, lethality […]
“Tactics in Counterinsurgency” (pdf), a new U.S. Army Field Manual, expands upon the Counterinsurgency doctrine of the best-selling December 2006 manual (pdf) on that subject. The new manual was previously circulated in an interim, draft form and then abruptly withdrawn from public access. (“‘Tactics in Insurgency’ Again Online,” Secrecy News, April 6, 2009). Now it […]
Algeria is one of the Middle Eastern North African nations that has the scientific and technological capacity to develop nuclear weapons if legal, political and other barriers to nuclear weapons proliferation decline and lose their efficacy. “Algeria has the expertise and the means to produce nuclear weapons” should it decide to do so, said independent […]
To the shock and bewilderment of those who knew him, Christopher Bolkcom, a distinguished analyst at the Congressional Research Service, died suddenly May 1 at age 46. Twenty years ago, Christopher was a research assistant working for John Pike here at FAS. He quickly went on to become a national expert on military aviation and […]
Prosecutors today filed a motion for dismissal (pdf) of the controversial case against two former employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, who were charged under the Espionage Act with unlawful receipt and transmission of classified information. “The landscape of this case has changed significantly since it was […]
Last January 30, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz disclosed a secret Israeli government database on settlements in the occupied West Bank, and posted the Hebrew text (pdf) of the database on their website. Last month, the ODNI Open Source Center completed an English translation of the 200-page document. Secrecy News obtained a copy of the translation […]
The government’s use of the state secrets doctrine to shut down litigation on certain sensitive national security topics could be sharply curtailed by a new federal appeals court ruling (pdf). The ruling came in a lawsuit brought by the ACLU against a company called Jeppesen DataPlan and filed on behalf of several plaintiffs who said […]
There is practically a universal consensus that the national security classification system has become dysfunctional and counterproductive. (Just what to do about it remains up in the air–more on that shortly). That consensus was articulated again earlier this month in a speech by Joan Dempsey, formerly a senior Pentagon intelligence official, a Deputy Director of […]
The U.S. Army last year blocked online public access to the Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin (MIPB), an Army intelligence journal, and moved the publication archive to the password-protected “Intelligence Knowledge Network.” (“Army Blocks Public Access to Intel Journal,” Secrecy News, March 31, 2009). But in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the […]