Some 2.4 million persons currently hold security clearances for authorized access to classified information, according to a recent Government Accountability Office report (pdf) to the House Intelligence Committee, citing an estimate from the security clearance Joint Reform Team. This figure does not include “some of those with clearances who work in areas of national intelligence,” […]
Some noteworthy, newly published congressional hearing volumes on intelligence policy and related topics include the following (mostly pdf). “Attorney General Guidelines for FBI Criminal Investigations, National Security Investigations, and the Collection of Foreign Intelligence,” Senate Intelligence Committee, September 23, 2008. “Nomination of Michael Leiter to be Director, National Counterterrorism Center,” Senate Intelligence Committee, May 6, […]
In 2005, the National Security Agency released a partially declassified (pdf) 1952 history of communications intelligence prior to Pearl Harbor with several passages censored. But this month, the NSA released the complete text (pdf) of the document after the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel (ISCAP) determined that there was no justification for continued classification of […]
A new report from the Congressional Research Service examines the government’s use of “grand challenges” or monetary prizes to provide incentives for technological advancement. In quite a few cases, such incentives have inspired or accelerated new technology breakthroughs — in lightweight power supplies and autonomous unmanned vehicles, for example. In other cases, the proffered prizes […]
Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) has suggested that the time may have come to undertake a comprehensive review of U.S. intelligence agency activities and operations on the scale of the 1976 Church Committee investigation. See “Holt Calls for Next Church Committee on CIA” by Spencer Ackerman, The Washington Independent, July 27, 2009. The corrosive tendency of […]
The Senate version of the FY2010 intelligence authorization bill (pdf) would require the President to disclose the aggregate amount requested for intelligence each year when the coming year’s budget request is submitted to Congress. Currently, only the total appropriation for the National Intelligence Program is disclosed — not the request — and not before the […]
North Korea has renewed its planning for the likely succession of leadership from the ailing Kim Jong Il to his youngest son Kim Cho’ng-un (or Kim Jong Un), according to a deeply researched assessment by the DNI Open Source Center (OSC). “Pyongyang last autumn reinvigorated a nuanced propaganda campaign that it apparently began eight years […]
“Government must operate through public laws and regulations” and not through “secret law,” a federal appellate court declared in a decision last month. When our government attempts to do otherwise, the court said, it is emulating “totalitarian regimes.” The new ruling (pdf) overturned the conviction of a defendant who had been found guilty of exporting […]
The transcripts of Nixon White House tape recordings that are published in the State Department’s official Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series are merely “interpretations,” not official records, the State Department acknowledged in the latest FRUS volume that was released this month. As such, those transcripts are susceptible to revision and correction. “Readers […]
The latest volume of the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series, the official record of U.S. foreign policy, reflects events that took place from 1969 to 1972, or nearly forty years ago. This represents a continuing violation of a 1991 statute which requires the Secretary of State to publish FRUS “not more than […]
Deliveries of arms through the Defense Department’s Foreign Military Sales (FMS) Program decreased by nearly a billion dollars in fiscal year 2008, according to the most recent edition of the Annual Military Assistance Report. The report, which is often referred to as the “Section 655 Report” after the section in the Foreign Assistance Act that […]
Retirement of the W62 warhead will be completed in 2009. By Hans M. Kristensen The U.S. State Department has confirmed the estimate made by FAS on this blog in February that the United States had already reached the limit of 2,200 operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads set by the 2002 Moscow Treaty. The confirmation occurred […]