“The Government has invoked the state secrets privilege sparingly and appropriately,” the Department of Justice said in a 2011 report to Congress that was released this week. The 8 page report describes the features of the internal process for determining whether to assert the state secrets privilege in a particular case, including the standards and […]
The House of Representatives roused itself yesterday to name a post office in upstate New York after CIA officer Gregg Wenzel, who died in a car accident in Ethiopia in 2003 while under cover. “When a man has given his life, as Gregg David Wenzel did, to protect our American liberties, honoring him through the […]
“The Soviet Union has developed a doctrine of ‘maskirovka’ which calls for the use of camouflage, concealment and deception (CC&D) in defense-related programs and in the conduct of military operations,” wrote President Ronald Reagan in the recently declassified 1983 National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 108. “Several recent discoveries reveal that the Soviet maskirovka program has […]
The number of people who held security clearances for access to classified information increased last year to a new reported high of more than 4.8 million persons as of October 1, 2011, a new intelligence community report to Congress said. Last year’s annual report, the first official count of security cleared personnel, had indicated that […]
On Friday, the National Security Agency released a declassified email message entitled “What a Wonderful Success” that had been used as the basis for a felony count against former NSA official Thomas Drake in 2010, who was charged with unlawful retention of classified information, including that message. Although all of the felony counts against Mr. […]
Certain types of classified information pertaining to nuclear weapons are going to be downgraded or declassified, the Department of State indicated in a newly disclosed report. “Over the past fiscal year, the Department [of State] has been actively working with the Departments of Energy and of Defense to identify information that had previously been classified […]
After the Department of Defense issued a statement last week saying that it would “monitor all major, national level reporting” for evidence of unauthorized disclosures of classified information, Pentagon reporters wrote to the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to ask whether such monitoring extended to surveillance of the […]
New reports from the Congressional Research Service that have not been made otherwise available to the public include these. Climate Change and Existing Law: A Survey of Legal Issues Past, Present, and Future, July 2, 2012 (published July 19) A Brief Overview of Actions Taken by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) in Its First […]
The latest report from the National Declassification Center features notable improvements in interagency collaboration in declassifying records, along with increased efficiency and steadily growing productivity. Even so, the declassification program will almost certainly miss its presidentially-mandated goal of eliminating the backlog of 25 year old records awaiting declassification by December 2013. The new NDC report […]
Following a closed House Armed Services Committee hearing on leaks yesterday, the Department of Defense issued a statement outlining its multi-pronged effort to deter, detect and punish unauthorized disclosures of classified information. “The Department of Defense has taken a comprehensive approach to address the issue of national security leaks,” the statement said. “Personnel in all […]
Both as a matter of humanitarian principle and as sound military strategy, U.S. military forces should strive to minimize civilian casualties in military operations, according to new U.S. Army doctrine published on Wednesday. “In their efforts to defeat enemies, Army units and their partners must ensure that they are not creating even more adversaries in […]
The first new legislative initiative to combat leaks of classified information is a bill called the Deterring Public Disclosure of Covert Actions Act of 2012, which was introduced July 10 by Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC). “This act will ensure that those who disclose or talk about covert actions by the United States will no longer […]