Open government advocates believe that intelligence budget disclosure is good public policy and may even be required by the Constitution’s statement and account clause. But what makes it potentially interesting to policymakers is that it would permit the intelligence budget to be directly appropriated, rather than being secretly funneled through the Pentagon budget as it […]
The Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, won plaudits for its contributions to intelligence oversight from Gen. James R. Clapper at his July 20 confirmation hearing to be the next Director of National Intelligence. But in the latest version of the intelligence authorization bill, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence yielded to […]
More than a trillion dollars has been appropriated since September 11, 2001 for U.S. military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. This makes the “war on terrorism” the most costly of any military engagement in U.S. history in absolute terms or, if correcting for inflation, the second most expensive U.S. military action after World War […]
The Department of Defense has more contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan than it has uniformed military personnel, another newly updated report from the Congressional Research Service reminds us. “The Department of Defense increasingly relies upon contractors to support operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, which has resulted in a DOD workforce that has 19% more contractor […]
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 […]