For the first time, each executive branch agency that classifies information will be required to perform “a comprehensive review” of its internal classification guides to validate them and “to identify classified information that no longer requires protection and can be declassified.” The new requirement is one of the most potentially significant features of an Executive […]
There has been almost no criticism of the new Obama Executive Order on national security classification, which itself is kind of troubling. For a full-throated denunciation, one has to turn to the outer periphery of Newsmax.com, which argues that declassification of historical editions of the President’s Daily Brief “will render impotent one of the intelligence […]
A five-month long investigation by the Government Accountability Office determined that the inadvertent publication of a 267 page document describing U.S. civilian nuclear research facilities caused no damage to national security and did not require any remedial security measures at the cited facilities. Yet surprisingly, even though its publication had no adverse consequences at all, […]
A new draft executive order on national security classification and declassification policy is expected to be presented to President Obama this week for his personal resolution of issues which remain in dispute among policymakers and affected agencies, especially intelligence agencies. This marks the first time since the first Bush Administration, nearly two decades ago, that […]
The U.S. State Department’s official Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series had another disappointing year in 2009 with only two softcopy volumes published to date, including one released last week on “Global Issues, 1973-1976.” The FRUS series is supposed to provide “comprehensive documentation of the major foreign policy decisions and actions of the […]
An Israeli-American attorney who worked for the FBI as a translator pled guilty yesterday to unlawfully disclosing five classified FBI documents to an unidentified blogger last April, who then published information from the documents on his blog, the Justice Department announced. In a signed plea agreement, Shamai Leibowitz stipulated that he had “knowingly and willfully […]
After a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) manual containing “sensitive security information” was inadvertently disclosed on a government website, it was reposted on several non-governmental websites where it remains freely available. Asked what TSA intends to do about that, Acting TSA Administrator Gale D. Rossides told Congress that her agency does not have the legal authority […]
A Taliban video distributed last month documented the purported seizure of an abandoned U.S. military base by Taliban forces in a remote province of Afghanistan. The 7-minute video was analyzed in a recent report (pdf) from the DNI Open Source Center. The video “glorifies the Taliban victory by highlighting the group’s triumphant entry into the […]
Our article “A Technical Evaluation of the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant” published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists on November 23 and its technical appendix, an Issue Brief, “Calculating the Capacity of Fordow”, published on the FAS website, have sparked quite a discussion among the small community that follows the technical details of Iran’s […]
The government should replace the more than 100 different control markings that are now used to limit the distribution of sensitive but unclassified (SBU) information and should establish a single “controlled unclassified information” (CUI) policy for all such information in government, according to an interagency task force report (pdf) that was released by the Obama […]
Noteworthy new congressional reports and hearing volumes include the following: “Report on Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act of 2009,” Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Report No. 111-101, December 3, 2009. “Report on the USA PATRIOT Act Sunset Extension Act of 2009,” Senate Judiciary Committee report 111-92, October 28, 2009. “National Industrial Security Program: Addressing […]
The U.S. intelligence community is not exempt from the requirements of the Obama Administration’s December 8 Open Government Directive, and agency officials are now trying to figure out how to comply with it. “As you can imagine, there is some scrambling going on,” one official said. “I think it’s a good sign.” See “Open government […]