The DNI Open Source Center produced a report this month profiling Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., China’s largest telecommunications company. See “Huawei Annual Report Details Directors, Supervisory Board for First Time,” October 5, 2011. The report is based primarily on Huawei’s own website, which released new details earlier this year about the company’s management team. “The release of […]
Ali Vaez and Charles Ferguson co-authored a report analyzing options for establishing an enhanced safeguards system for the Iranian nuclear program.
FAS joined 48 organizations in signing a letter to United States Representatives asking them to cosign Representative Markey’s letter to members of the Super Committee. Markey’s letter urges Super Committee members to increase U.S. security by reducing spending on outdated and unaffordable nuclear weapons programs. Additionally, this support letter offers specific suggestions to Congress on […]
Last Friday, White House officials made at least two public references to Presidential Policy Directives (PPDs). PPD 1 was cited in a new executive order on computer security and PPD 8 was cited in a White House blog posting on disaster preparedness. Each Directive is a significant expression of national policy. Neither one is classified. […]
Inevitably and predictably, the U.S. Government has moved to systematically increase the monitoring of classified computer networks and to tighten the safeguarding of classified information in response to the indiscriminate publication of classified records by WikiLeaks. An executive order issued on October 7 does not define the new security policies. Instead, it establishes new mechanisms […]
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission reported in July that it is “retiring” classification guides on three topical areas as a result of the ongoing Fundamental Classification Guidance Review. The cancelled classification guides pertain to “national security information concerning nuclear materials and facilities”; “assessing nuclear threat messages”; and “information dealing with the release and dispersion of radioactive […]
Reporting on intelligence can be a challenge even for an experienced national security reporter, observed Dana Priest in her book “Top Secret America” (co-authored with William Arkin). “Having traveled the world with the military, I just didn’t understand why I was failing to progress with [reporting on] the CIA,” she wrote (p. 19). “Maybe I […]
Mahmoud M. Hegab was a well-regarded budget analyst at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) until last year when his Top Secret/SCI security clearance was abruptly revoked. Among the issues precipitating his loss of clearance were the fact that his newlywed wife had graduated from an Islamic school, that she had participated in an anti-war protest, […]
By Darren Ruch, 1st Lt, MA ANG USAF* In 1991, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the United States was armed with a stockpile of over 18,300 nuclear weapons.[1] Since then, the US Air Force (USAF) has conducted a range of military operations while maintaining a nuclear deterrence […]
Former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling, who is accused of leaking classified information to reporter James Risen, should not be permitted to argue at trial later this month that he was unfairly singled out for prosecution, government attorneys urged in an October 4 motion. “The Court should bar the defendant [Sterling] from presenting any evidence, argument […]
“The Soldier’s Guide,” which is something like the U.S. Army equivalent of the Boy Scout Handbook, was updated last month. The 436 page Guide is filled with instruction and lore about life in the U.S. Army. It covers Army history, traditions, and professional development. In places the text limps. Thus, “The Army’s core values are […]
. Back in the late-1970s, U.S. nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarines suddenly started conducting port visits to South Korea. For a few years the boomers arrived at a steady rate, almost every month, sometimes 2-3 visits per month. Then, in 1981, the visits stopped and the boomers haven’t been back since. At the time the […]