The potential benefits and limitations of using unmanned aerial vehicles for homeland security applications were considered by the Congressional Research Service in yet another updated report. See “Homeland Security: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Border Surveillance,” July 8, 2010. The same set of issues was examined in a newly published master’s thesis on “Integrating Department of […]
Newly declassified transcripts of closed hearings and executive sessions of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1968 were published by the Committee yesterday. The transcripts include an extended inquiry into the official version of 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Incident, which led to the escalation of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, and which became the […]
Project Bioshield, a program that was created by the Bush Administration in 2004 to foster development of new drugs to respond to a potential bioterrorism attack, now faces significant budget cuts from Congress with the acquiescence of the Obama Administration. Supporters of the program argue that the reductions to Project Bioshield are shortsighted and dangerously […]
By Hans M. Kristensen The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has sent Congress the FY 2011 Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan (SSMP) with new information about what the administration plans to spend on maintaining and modernizing nuclear weapons and facilities over the next 15-20 years. FAS and UCS got hold of the unclassified sections of […]
“I have grown increasingly concerned that we have become too lax, disorganized, and, in some cases, flat-out sloppy in the way we engage with the press,” said Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, explaining why he had issued new guidance to regulate Pentagon interactions with the news media. The new guidance (pdf), issued on July […]
In the planning of military operations, the U.S. Army is giving new emphasis to the environmental impact of its activities. “Environmental considerations need to be integrated into the conduct of operations at all levels of command,” according to a recent Army field manual (pdf). “Planners must consider the effect environmental considerations have and how they […]
The Obama White House has threatened to veto a pending intelligence bill if it includes a provision that would authorize the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to perform audits of intelligence programs at the request of Congress. But a Department of Defense Directive issued last week explicitly allows for GAO access to highly classified special access […]
The intersection of science and national security in the 20th century produced many peculiar phenomena, some of which are illuminated in a new biography of physicist Hugh Everett III (1930-1982). Everett is best known, if at all, as the originator of the “many worlds” interpretation of quantum mechanics. Roughly, this theory holds that whenever a […]
The Journal of Defense Research (JDR) was a classified publication sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to encourage dissemination of classified research on topics of military or national security interest. It began publication in 1969, replacing the former Journal of Missile Defense Research. Many years later, most of the Journal’s contents still seem […]
Congress has forbidden the Congressional Research Service to make its publications directly available to the public, so it is left to others to do so. New CRS reports obtained by Secrecy News include the following (all pdf). “Intelligence Reform After Five Years: The Role of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI),” June 22, 2010. “Questioning […]
The National Reconnaissance Office — the U.S. spy satellite agency — “brings unique core capabilities to bear in support of national security objectives by acquiring and operating the most capable set of satellite intelligence collection platforms ever built.” So begins the text of the newly released and redacted FY2010 NRO budget justification book (pdf). A […]
A new assessment of internal Pakistani affairs and U.S.-Pakistan relations was prepared by the Congressional Research Service in “Pakistan: Key Current Issues and Developments” (pdf), June 1, 2010. An Inspector General Report on the FBI’s use of so-called “exigent letters” was examined in an April 14, 2010 hearing of the House Judiciary Committee that has […]