The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference is Underway in New York By Hans M. Kristensen I gave two talks at the review conference of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, both on non-strategic nuclear weapons. The first was an FAS/BASIC panel on May 10 on Prospects for a shift in NATO’s nuclear posture. The second was a panel organized […]
Last week, prosecutors in the case of Thomas A. Drake, the former NSA official who is charged with unlawfully retaining classified information that he allegedly disclosed to a reporter, asked the court to hold a pre-trial conference on the use of the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA) in that case. CIPA was passed by Congress […]
New reports on nuclear policy prepared by the Congressional Research Service that have not been made readily available to the public include the following (all pdf). “The New START Treaty: Central Limits and Key Provisions,” May 3, 2010. “2010 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference: Key Issues and Implications,” May 3, 2010. “Securing Nuclear Materials: The […]
Officials of the Environmental Protection Agency intentionally stopped keeping records concerning potentially hazardous landfills in New Mexico in order to circumvent the disclosure requirements of the Freedom of Information Act. They also marked unclassified records as “confidential” in order to restrict their dissemination, a report (pdf) from the EPA Inspector General found. One EPA official […]
The latest volume of the official “Foreign Relations of the United States” (FRUS) series was published by the State Department yesterday on the topic of Korea, 1969-1972. It covers U.S. relations with the Republic of Korea as well as disputes with North Korea during the Nixon Administration. Remarkably, declassification of the 489-page FRUS volume (pdf) […]
Leaders of more than a dozen public interest organizations and professional societies wrote to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to applaud two recent achievements in nuclear weapons transparency: the publication of the Nuclear Posture Review Report for the first time in unclassified format and the disclosure of the size of the U.S. nuclear stockpile. “We […]
The Obama administration has declassified the history and size of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, a long-held national secret. Click image to get the fact sheet. By Hans M. Kristensen The Obama administration has formally disclosed the size of the Defense Department’s stockpile of nuclear weapons: 5,113 warheads as of September 30, 2009. For a […]
by Alicia Godsberg Today marked the opening of the 8th Review Conference to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons at the United Nations. The general debate began today and will continue through Thursday, with an NGO presentation to the delegates this Friday to end the week. Today’s plenary provided a few revelations from […]
Updated below In an historic step, the U.S. Government will formally reveal the number of nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal. Until now, the shifting size of the nuclear arsenal had only been declassified from 1945 up to 1961. Current stockpile figures were the subject of more or less informed speculation. The pending disclosure was […]
A federal court ruled (pdf) last year that the Department of Energy was obliged to disclose certain records concerning the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) in Idaho after they were requested under the Freedom of Information Act by a public interest group, Keep Yellowstone Nuclear Free. The court said that the exemptions to the FOIA claimed […]
The Chief Justice of the United States has appointed Judge Martin L.C. Feldman of the Eastern District of Louisiana to a seven-year term on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, effective May 19, 2010. He replaces Judge George P. Kazen, whose term on the Court ends this month. Judge Feldman’s appointment to the FISA Court has […]
The pending prosecution of former National Security Agency official Thomas A. Drake, who was alleged to be a source of classified information in a series of newspaper articles about the NSA, will present “novel” legal issues for the court to consider, prosecutors and defense attorneys said in a joint motion last week. “The indictment raises […]