The U.S. State Department’s official Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series had another disappointing year in 2009 with only two softcopy volumes published to date, including one released last week on “Global Issues, 1973-1976.” The FRUS series is supposed to provide “comprehensive documentation of the major foreign policy decisions and actions of the […]
An Israeli-American attorney who worked for the FBI as a translator pled guilty yesterday to unlawfully disclosing five classified FBI documents to an unidentified blogger last April, who then published information from the documents on his blog, the Justice Department announced. In a signed plea agreement, Shamai Leibowitz stipulated that he had “knowingly and willfully […]
After a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) manual containing “sensitive security information” was inadvertently disclosed on a government website, it was reposted on several non-governmental websites where it remains freely available. Asked what TSA intends to do about that, Acting TSA Administrator Gale D. Rossides told Congress that her agency does not have the legal authority […]
A Taliban video distributed last month documented the purported seizure of an abandoned U.S. military base by Taliban forces in a remote province of Afghanistan. The 7-minute video was analyzed in a recent report (pdf) from the DNI Open Source Center. The video “glorifies the Taliban victory by highlighting the group’s triumphant entry into the […]
Our article “A Technical Evaluation of the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant” published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists on November 23 and its technical appendix, an Issue Brief, “Calculating the Capacity of Fordow”, published on the FAS website, have sparked quite a discussion among the small community that follows the technical details of Iran’s […]
The government should replace the more than 100 different control markings that are now used to limit the distribution of sensitive but unclassified (SBU) information and should establish a single “controlled unclassified information” (CUI) policy for all such information in government, according to an interagency task force report (pdf) that was released by the Obama […]
Noteworthy new congressional reports and hearing volumes include the following: “Report on Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act of 2009,” Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Report No. 111-101, December 3, 2009. “Report on the USA PATRIOT Act Sunset Extension Act of 2009,” Senate Judiciary Committee report 111-92, October 28, 2009. “National Industrial Security Program: Addressing […]
The U.S. intelligence community is not exempt from the requirements of the Obama Administration’s December 8 Open Government Directive, and agency officials are now trying to figure out how to comply with it. “As you can imagine, there is some scrambling going on,” one official said. “I think it’s a good sign.” See “Open government […]
The Congressional Research Service, which performs policy research and analysis for Congress, is “not a happy place these days,” said a CRS staffer. The staffer was referring to the fact that a respected CRS division chief, Morris Davis, had been abruptly fired from his position for publicly expressing some of his private opinions. (“CRS Fires […]
The Obama Administration is expected to provide some new insight this week into its emerging policy on “controlled unclassified information” (CUI), referring to unclassified information that is withheld from disclosure for reasons of law or regulation. Because of the indiscriminate use of such controls, information is often withheld unnecessarily from the public and information sharing […]
The Obama Administration’s new open government policy has begun to elicit a response from executive branch agencies. The Department of Defense, the Department of Justice, and other agencies issued news releases yesterday outlining the initial steps they are taking to fulfill the December 8 White House Open Government Directive (pdf). The White House Office of […]
The inadvertent disclosure of a “sensitive” Transportation Security Administration manual on procedures for screening airline passengers has prompted renewed interest in legal remedies and penalties that may be available to the government to minimize the impact of such unauthorized disclosures. In a letter (pdf) to the Department of Homeland Security yesterday, several Republican lawmakers asked: […]