Between January and June 2011, the United Nations documented 1,462 civilian deaths in Afghanistan, which was a 15% increase over the same six months the year before. Anti-government forces, e.g. the Taliban, were responsible for 77% of the casualties and pro-government forces were responsible for 12%. (The remainder were indeterminate.) These and other casualty figures […]
By Katie Colten and Hans Kristensen [Modifed] Today, one of the largest weapons in the United States nuclear weapons arsenal, the B53, will be dismantled at the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas. Developed during the Cold War and deployed in 1962, this bomb weighs as much as a minivan and has an explosive yield of nine megatons, […]
For two weeks in October 1969, the Nixon Administration secretly placed U.S. nuclear forces on alert. At the time, the move was considered so sensitive that not even the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was briefed on its purpose. Still today, no conclusive explanation for the potentially destabilizing alert can be found. Even […]
At its best, the State Department’s Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series serves as a driver of declassification, propelling it farther and faster than it would otherwise go. But it’s not always at its best. In 1992, Congress enacted a law concerning FRUS that represented one of only a couple of continuing statutory […]
New START aggregate numbers have been published by the United States and Russia. . By Hans M. Kristensen The latest New START treaty aggregate numbers of strategic arms, which was quietly released by the State Department earlier last week, shows modest reductions and important changes in U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear forces. Most surprisingly, the […]
During fiscal year 2011, there were 143 new secrecy orders imposed on patent applications under the Invention Secrecy Act of 1951, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office reported this week. This represents an increase of 66% over the year before, and it is the highest number of new secrecy orders in a single year since […]
“The United States is the world’s largest candy consumer,” reported an article yesterday in the online Christian Post (“Halloween Treats Can Be Tricky for Parents,” October 19). And that may well be true. But the article went on to state that the U.S. spent “more than $8.8 billion on various sweets in 2009, according to […]
“I would be remiss if I did not express my concern over this Administration’s inexplicable failure to fully appoint and staff the privacy oversight board that we created as part of our 2004 act [on intelligence reform],” said Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) at a hearing last week. She was referring to the Privacy and Civil […]
The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) hired 600 to 700 new employees each year between 2005 and 2008, newly released budget documents indicate. Still, “the coming wave of retirement… presents significant risks that the program will lose valuable institutional knowledge and critical skills and capability.” These observations were presented in NGA’s annual budget justification materials for […]
U.S. intelligence agencies are anticipating budget reductions of billions of dollars, said Director of National Intelligence James Clapper yesterday. He said he had just submitted a draft budget to OMB (presumably for FY 2013) that involved “double digit” cuts to the intelligence budget over ten years. See “U.S. Spies Facing Tens of Billions in Budget […]
By Matt Schroeder As the trial against alleged arms dealer Viktor Bout gets underway, we thought the following documents from the case might be of interest: (1) Handwritten notes that Bout reportedly took during the meeting in Thailand. The notes include short-hand references to various weapons, including “AA” or anti-aircraft (believed to be a reference […]
Updated below A court ruling that interpreted the term “national defense information” expansively to include unclassified, non-governmental information could open the door to a new series of anti-leak prosecutions under the Espionage Act, warned a petition that was filed in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals this week. There is no statute that outlaws the mishandling of […]