During calendar year 2008, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approved 2,083 applications for authority to conduct electronic surveillance and physical search of suspected foreign intelligence and terrorist targets under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, according to a new annual report to Congress (pdf) from the Justice Department. The Court made substantive modifications to two applications […]
The late Kenneth C. Bass, who helped draft the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 and who was the first Counsel for Intelligence Policy at the Justice Department, later became a critic of its implementation and a proponent of remedial measures. In a 1994 congressional hearing, he urged lawmakers to introduce elements of an adversarial […]
Although the Department of Energy is not one of the agencies that performs intelligence surveillance or physical search under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, it does occasionally play a role in providing analytical support to other agencies such as the FBI that do conduct FISA surveillance. A recent DOE Inspector General report (pdf) noted four […]
The development of Bush Administration policies on the treatment of suspected terrorist detainees was probed yesterday at a Senate Judiciary Committee subcommittee hearing, which also led to the release of two primary source documents reflecting internal Bush Administration deliberations. Former State Department Counselor Philip Zelikow described his efforts in 2005-6 to advance a standard that […]
A new Air Force instruction (pdf) describes the use of unvouchered “intelligence contingency funds” which may be spent by the Secretary of the Air Force “for any purpose” in support of the Air Force intelligence mission. Such funds may be expended, for example, to pay for “plaques, mementos, etc.” to be presented “as gifts or […]
The leadership of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is portrayed in a new chart (pdf) prepared by the DNI Open Source Center (OSC). The chart includes the names, photographs and titles of dozens of senior North Korean officials, and also presents an illustrated family tree of supreme leader Kim Jong Il. Like most other […]
A new government-wide policy on “controlled unclassified information” (CUI) is still more than a year away from implementation, but not because of any lack of attention or interest. To the contrary, it is the subject of rather intensive policy deliberation, officials say, and is not “languishing” as Secrecy News stated on May 11. CUI refers […]
Noteworthy new additions to the literature of U.S. Army Field Manuals include the following (all pdf). “Security Force Assistance,” FM 3-07.1, May 2009 (on support to foreign security forces). “Legal Support to the Operational Army,” FM 1-04, April 2009 (including detainee and stability operations, but excluding the law of armed conflict). “Visual Information Operations,” FM […]
A new report from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee discusses what is known about Iran’s potential for developing nuclear weapons, as well as what is suspected or imagined. “There is no sign that Iran’s leaders have ordered up a bomb,” the report notes. “But unclassified interviews… make clear that Iran has moved closer to completing […]
A federal court last week rejected most of the objections raised by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to publication of a 500-page manuscript critical of the FBI counterterrorism program that was written by retired FBI Special Agent Robert G. Wright. The manuscript had been submitted for pre-publication review in October 2001. “This is a sad […]
Three and a half years have passed since President Bush called for the establishment of a standardized government-wide format for the handling of “controlled unclassified information” (CUI) that would replace the dozens of different, incompatible controls on what had been known as “Sensitive But Unclassified” (SBU) information. More than a year has passed since President […]
The CIA Historical Review Panel, an advisory group which is composed of academic historians and political scientists, provides the CIA with recommendations on its declassification policies and priorities. The role of the Panel was described lately by its chairman, Prof. Robert Jervis, in the latest issue of Passport (pdf, at pp. 10-13), the newsletter of […]