The Senate Judiciary Committee has authorized the issuance of a subpoena for a copy of opinions of the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). OLC opinions interpret the law for executive branch agencies. Controversially, they have been used to sanction official departures from existing legal norms in domestic surveillance, prisoner interrogation, and other areas. […]
Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI) this week defended the current structure of congressional oversight of intelligence, and specifically rejected a proposal by Sen. Christopher Bond (R-MO) to establish a subcommittee on intelligence within the Senate Appropriations Committee (described in Secrecy News, Sept. 12). Sen. Bond’s proposal, according to Sen. Inouye, would have the undesirable effect of […]
The African Republic of Burundi this week ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty which prohibits all nuclear explosions. A total of 145 nations have now ratified the Treaty, according to a news release from the CTBT Organization. Detailed background on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty is available from the Congressional Research Service in a report […]
Yale Law School will hold a conference September 27 on “Governing After 2008,” examining a range of national policy issues and possible new directions for the next Administration. I will be speaking on secrecy and accountability. Stop by if you’re in the neighborhood.
By Hans M. Kristensen The new nuclear policy paper National Security and Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century published quietly Tuesday by the Defense and Energy Departments embraces the “lead and hedge” strategy of the first Clinton administration for how US nuclear forces and policy should evolve in the future. Yet the “leading” is hard […]
A federal court of appeals this week affirmed that 21 photographs depicting abusive treatment of detainees by U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan must be disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act. “The public interest in disclosure of these photographs is strong,” the Second Circuit panel concluded in a September 22 ruling (pdf) in favor […]
In a rare judicial rebuff to the Office of Vice President Dick Cheney, a federal court issued a preliminary injunction (pdf) requiring the preservation of Vice Presidential records over the objections of Administration attorneys. A lawsuit brought by Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington (CREW) along with historians and others alleged that the Office […]
The use of thousands of private security contractors in Iraq represents a quantitatively new feature of U.S. military operations, but relatively little has been publicly disclosed about the contractual arrangements involved. The war in Iraq “is apparently the first time that the United States has depended so extensively on contractors to provide security in a […]
The structure, development and ramifications of growing U.S. Department of Defense foreign assistance activities are described in a major new report from the Congressional Research Service. See “The Department of Defense Role in Foreign Assistance: Background, Major Issues, and Options for Congress” (pdf), August 25, 2008. Other noteworthy new reports from CRS that have not […]
Al Qaeda is “imploding,” a State Department counterterrorism official told the Associated Press last week, as a result of growing opposition in the Muslim world. The implication that al Qaeda’s demise may be imminent is almost certainly incorrect. But what is true is that “a severe intellectual conflict has emerged” within the jihadist movement, said […]
In 1997, acting on intelligence that a Hizballah cell was preparing to blow up the American embassy in Asuncion, Paraguay, a U.S. special forces team reportedly flew to the scene in several giant transport planes where it arrested the conspirators and prevented the attack. If that episode happened as described (and it cannot readily be […]
CNN and AFP are reporting that the Shabaab, a militant wing of a Somali insurgent group, the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), has threatened to treat “as an enemy combatant” any plane that attempts to land at Mogadishu Airport. According to AFP, the threat, which was posted on the Internet, was confirmed by Shabaab leader Mukhtar […]