Noteworthy new reports from the Congressional Research Service that have not been made readily available to the public include the following (all pdf). “Terrorist Attacks on Commercial Airlines: Federal Criminal Prohibitions,” January 22, 2010. “Project BioShield: Authorities, Appropriations, Acquisitions, and Issues for Congress,” January 22, 2010. “Charitable Contributions for Haiti’s Earthquake Victims,” January 22, 2010. […]
Last year the Senate Judiciary Committee considered a proposal by Senator Patrick Leahy to establish a formal “commission of inquiry” that would investigate the conduct of the post-9/11 war on terrorism, including detention, rendition and interrogation policies. The record of a Senate hearing on the proposal was published earlier this month, but that seems to […]
Unmanned aerial systems (UASs) like the Predator drone, which are increasingly in demand for U.S. military missions in Afghanistan and elsewhere, involve challenges to mission control, according to a new Pentagon publication on joint air operations (pdf). “Recent operations have demonstrated that UASs can be critical to the success of dynamic targeting missions and prosecution […]
Katsuya Okada and Hillary Clinton met in September 2009. By Hans M. Kristensen The Japanese government has officially rejected claims made by some that Japan is opposed to the United States retiring the nuclear Tomahawk Land-Attack Missile (TLAM/N). The final report of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States from May […]
Noteworthy new reports from the Congressional Research Service that have not been made readily available to the public include the following (all pdf). “Earthquakes: Risk, Detection, Warning, and Research,” January 14, 2010. “Haiti Earthquake: Crisis and Response,” January 15, 2010. “U.S. Immigration Policy on Haitian Migrants,” January 15, 2010. “The Future of NASA: Space Policy […]
A federal court yesterday declined (pdf) to issue an injunction requiring the Congressional Research Service to immediately reinstate Col. Morris Davis, who was fired from CRS after publishing his personal opinions on the subject of military commissions. But DC District Judge Reggie Walton said that, based on the record so far, Davis’s claim that his […]
The Department of Defense has issued a new publication (pdf) to update and clarify its doctrine on “psychological operations.” Psychological operations, or PSYOP, are intended to “convey selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of foreign governments, organizations, groups, and individuals. The purpose of […]
Newly published congressional hearing volumes on national security-related topics include the following. “Nomination of Leon Panetta to be Director of Central Intelligence Agency,” Senate Intelligence Committee, February 5-6, 2009. “Nomination of David S. Kris to be Assistant Attorney General for National Security,” Senate Intelligence Committee, March 10, 2009. “Nomination of J. Patrick Rowan to be […]
Worlds seem to collide as I sat in a Chevy Chase synagogue last night waiting to hear Israeli Talmudist Adin Steinsaltz and the ACLU’s Art Spitzer discuss Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail. Former Bush Administration Pentagon official Douglas Feith, of all people, sat a few rows back. I was reading a 2006 book […]
A lawsuit (pdf) filed on behalf of a Jewish-American FBI agent whose security clearance was revoked based on unspecified charges states that his termination was an improper expression of FBI bias against American Jews, and complains that the agent was unconstitutionally denied a right to confront and rebut the claims against him. The case appears […]
A recent book written by two Israeli writers and published in translation (pdf) by the DNI Open Source Center (OSC) traces what the authors see as the decline of Israel’s political left. “The Left died the day the Six-Day War ended,” wrote Shmuel Hasfari and Eldad Yaniv. “Until 1967, the Left actually managed some impressive […]
New and updated reports from the Congressional Research Service obtained by Secrecy News include the following (all pdf). “U.S. Periods of War,” January 7, 2010. “Terrorist Watchlist Checks and Air Passenger Prescreening,” December 30, 2009. “Cluster Munitions: Background and Issues for Congress,” December 22, 2009. “Arms Sales: Congressional Review Process,” January 8, 2010. “Desalination: Status […]