The outgoing head of the Bush Administration Office of Legal Counsel took the time to issue an opinion (pdf) last week stating that a forty-year-old memorandum issued by President Lyndon B. Johnson limiting use of polygraph tests is not binding on executive branch agencies today. The Johnson memorandum had stated that in order “to prevent […]
When it upheld the constitutionality of warrantless intelligence surveillance under certain very particular circumstances in a ruling (pdf) that was disclosed last week, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review was acting on an incomplete factual record that may have skewed its decision, according to Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI). “It is my view that the […]
The Russian Shkval torpedo was tested for Iranian naval officials in 2004 and the resulting data were described in several newly disclosed Persian-language documents. Iran’s own Hoot torpedo is evidently derived from the Shkval. Both are high-speed, supercavitating anti-ship missiles. Some of the newly disclosed Iranian documents, which include Shkval technical specifications and test performance […]
The President of the United States has broad and essentially unfettered authority to issue pardons for offenses against the United States, a new Congressional Research Service report on the subject explains. “It also appears that a pardon may be revoked at any time prior to acceptance or delivery” of the warrant of pardon, according to […]
The National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), a component of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, may obtain access to federal databases containing non-terrorism-related information in order to acquire information needed for authorized counterterrorism purposes, pursuant to a recent memorandum of agreement (pdf) between the Director of National Intelligence and the Attorney General. “NCTC will […]
“At a time where we would expect to find increasing stability in the [national security classification] program, we are instead finding failure with the implementation of basic requirements,” wrote William J. Bosanko, director of the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO), in the latest ISOO annual report to the President (pdf). Out of more than 1,000 […]
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence today denied a request to release the size of the 2006 National Intelligence Program budget. The size of the 2007 budget (pdf) for the National Intelligence Program has been formally declassified and released ($43.5 billion). And so has the figure for the 2008 budget ($47.5 billion). But […]
Though many Americans might not realize it, “The United States is an Arctic nation,” President Bush declared this week, “with varied and compelling interests in that region.” U.S. policy towards the Arctic region, which includes a portion of Alaska, was vigorously formulated in what is likely to be the Bush Administration’s last National Security Presidential […]
In a revealing conflict of views between outgoing and incoming Justice Department officials, Attorney General Michael Mukasey recently told Congress that a proposal that was conceived by Prof. Dawn Johnsen to require expanded reporting to Congress concerning Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) opinions is unconstitutional. Prof. Johnsen has been designated by President-elect Obama […]
The second report from the Schlesinger Task Force goes beyond fixing nuclear problems to promoting new nuclear weapons. By Hans M. Kristensen For nuclear weapon advocates, the Minot incident in August 2007, where the Air Force lost track of six nuclear-armed cruise missiles for 36 hours, was a gift sent from heaven. No other event […]
Most U.S. Government spending on nuclear weapons-related programs is unclassified. But it is functionally secret since such spending is widely dispersed across many programs in several agencies and it is not formally tracked or reported. A new study prepared for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace estimated that the cost of U.S. nuclear weapons and […]
“In May 1974, the U.S. government received its first serious nuclear threat,” recalls author Jeffrey T. Richelson. “A letter demanding that $200,00 be left at a particular location arrived at the FBI. Failure to comply, it claimed, would result in the [detonation] of a nuclear bomb somewhere in Boston.” The threat was soon exposed as […]