Pakistan’s military describes its new short-range nuclear NASR missile as a “shoot and scoot…quick response system.” Image: ISPR . […]
An expanded role for the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in oversight of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) may soon become a reality as the result of an official directive that requires intelligence agencies to work with auditors from the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress. “It is IC policy to cooperate with the Comptroller General, […]
An insightful account of the pending prosecution under the Espionage Act of former National Security Agency official Thomas A. Drake appears this week in The New Yorker. Author Jane Mayer delves deeply into the origins of the case stemming from Drake’s critical view of NSA management and surveillance practices. She explores the unfolding consequences of […]
Secrecy News provides original reporting on national security secrecy policy, and offers direct public access to government records of public policy significance that are otherwise hard to obtain. It is part of a larger Federation of American Scientists project to reduce government secrecy, to help build responsive and accountable government institutions, and to engage the […]
The government is seeking to limit the disclosure of unclassified information as well as classified information about the National Security Agency at the upcoming trial of former NSA official Thomas A. Drake, who is accused of unlawful retention of classified documents that were allegedly provided to a reporter. Under the provisions (pdf) of the Classified […]
In preparation for the trial of Jeffrey A. Sterling, a former CIA employee who is accused of unauthorized disclosure of classified information, prosecutors this week wrote to the defendant’s attorney explaining how pre-trial interviews of potential witnesses in the case are to be conducted. First of all, “If you intend to discuss classified information during […]
The latest annual report to Congress (pdf) on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Program details the soaring costs and deferred production schedule associated with the program. The report, which has not been publicly released, outlines total program costs from last year as well as per-aircraft costs and planned annual spending rates. It’s “a useful primer […]
Updated below Forty years after they were famously leaked by Daniel Ellsberg in 1971, the Pentagon Papers will be officially released next month at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library. The National Archives announced this week that it “has identified, inventoried, and prepared for public access the Vietnam Task Force study, United States-Vietnam Relations 1945-1967, informally […]
An eye-opening report on corruption in the Afghan Central Bank that was issued last March by the Inspector General of the U.S. Agency for International Development was recently removed from the USAID web site after the Agency decided to classify some of its published contents. The now-classified IG report focused on the failure to discover […]
Several intelligence community initiatives to develop improved tools for data search, analysis and fusion were described in the latest report to Congress (pdf) from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on data mining. A new program called DataSphere is intended “to aid in the discovery of unknown terrorism relationships and the identification of […]
By every available measure, the level of domestic intelligence surveillance activity in 2010 increased from the year before, according to a new Justice Department report to Congress on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. “During calendar year 2010, the Government made 1,579 applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (hereinafter ‘FISC’) for authority to conduct electronic […]
The broad implications of the death of Osama bin Laden were discussed in a new report from the Congressional Research Service. The report does not contain any new factual information or much in the way of new analysis. Rather, it presents an account of the policy questions arising from bin Laden’s death that may warrant […]