Notwithstanding official proclamations of a new era of transparency, public access to declassified historical records continues to be obstructed by procedural potholes, limited resources for processing records, competing priorities and, sometimes, bad faith. At the Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC), declassified files that used to be open to the public have been withdrawn indefinitely […]
The White House has threatened to veto the FY2010 intelligence bill if it amends the National Security Act to permit expanded notification of sensitive intelligence activities to more members of the intelligence committees, as the House Intelligence Committee proposed. However, based on the findings of a new report from the Congressional Research Service, the controversial […]
Other noteworthy new Congressional Research Service reports that have not previously been made available online include (both pdf): “Afghanistan: U.S. Foreign Assistance,” July 8, 2009. “Chemical Facility Security: Reauthorization, Policy Issues, and Options for Congress,” July 13, 2009.
Between September 2001 and February 2008, the Federal Bureau of Investigation initiated and closed the investigation of 85 reported leaks of classified intelligence information, “all of which concerned unauthorized disclosures of classified information to the media,” FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III told the Senate Intelligence Committee in a written response to questions (pdf) dated […]
by Alicia Godsberg There is cause for cautious optimism after Presidents Obama and Medvedev signed their START follow-on Joint Understanding in Moscow last Monday – the goal of completing a legally binding bilateral nuclear disarmament agreement with verification measures is preferable to letting START expire without an agreement or without one that keeps some sort […]
From the point of view of an al Qaida military leader, Western intelligence agents are now ubiquitous in the lands of Islam, and their operations have been extraordinarily effective. The Western spies are unfailingly lethal, leaving a trail of dead Islamist fighters behind them. Worst of all, they have managed to recruit innumerable Muslims to […]
The National Reconnaissance Office, which develops, launches and operates U.S. intelligence satellites, last week released most of the unclassified portions (pdf) of its Congressional Budget Justification Book for FY2009. While those unclassified portions are only a small fraction of the full budget document, they still provide a fresh glimpse or two of the agency and […]
A newly disclosed report from the JASON defense advisory panel may not excite the interest of anyone who is not a student of electrical engineering. It examines the distribution of electrical current flowing through a long, narrow conductive object. See “Current Spreading in Long Objects” (pdf), October 2008. Somewhat more interesting is the fact that […]
Last year, Congress directed intelligence agency Inspectors General to prepare an unclassified report on the Bush Administration’s warrantless surveillance program. That report has just been released. It traces the origins, implementation, and utilization of the Program, and discusses the legal questions surrounding its development. See Unclassified Report on the President’s Surveillance Program (pdf), Joint Inspector […]
A recently released report, U.S. Nuclear Deterrence in the 21st Century: Getting It Right, by the ad hoc New Deterrent Working Group with a forward by James Woolsey, is an interesting document. I believe this report is significant because it might typify the arguments that will be used against arms control treaties in the upcoming […]
The intelligence authorization bill that is pending in the House of Representatives would generally require all members of the intelligence committees to be briefed on covert actions, not just the so-called “Gang of Eight,” unless the Committee itself decided to limit such briefings. “The Committee understands well the need to protect intelligence information from unauthorized […]
The number of U.S. troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan in the decade following 9/11 is documented or projected in a detailed new report from the Congressional Research Service. “Using five DOD sources, this report describes, analyzes, and estimates the number of troops deployed for each war from the 9/11 attacks to FY2012 to help […]