A federal court of appeals this week affirmed that 21 photographs depicting abusive treatment of detainees by U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan must be disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act. “The public interest in disclosure of these photographs is strong,” the Second Circuit panel concluded in a September 22 ruling (pdf) in favor […]
In a rare judicial rebuff to the Office of Vice President Dick Cheney, a federal court issued a preliminary injunction (pdf) requiring the preservation of Vice Presidential records over the objections of Administration attorneys. A lawsuit brought by Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington (CREW) along with historians and others alleged that the Office […]
The use of thousands of private security contractors in Iraq represents a quantitatively new feature of U.S. military operations, but relatively little has been publicly disclosed about the contractual arrangements involved. The war in Iraq “is apparently the first time that the United States has depended so extensively on contractors to provide security in a […]
The structure, development and ramifications of growing U.S. Department of Defense foreign assistance activities are described in a major new report from the Congressional Research Service. See “The Department of Defense Role in Foreign Assistance: Background, Major Issues, and Options for Congress” (pdf), August 25, 2008. Other noteworthy new reports from CRS that have not […]
Al Qaeda is “imploding,” a State Department counterterrorism official told the Associated Press last week, as a result of growing opposition in the Muslim world. The implication that al Qaeda’s demise may be imminent is almost certainly incorrect. But what is true is that “a severe intellectual conflict has emerged” within the jihadist movement, said […]
In 1997, acting on intelligence that a Hizballah cell was preparing to blow up the American embassy in Asuncion, Paraguay, a U.S. special forces team reportedly flew to the scene in several giant transport planes where it arrested the conspirators and prevented the attack. If that episode happened as described (and it cannot readily be […]
CNN and AFP are reporting that the Shabaab, a militant wing of a Somali insurgent group, the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), has threatened to treat “as an enemy combatant” any plane that attempts to land at Mogadishu Airport. According to AFP, the threat, which was posted on the Internet, was confirmed by Shabaab leader Mukhtar […]
“There is altogether too much discussion about the deliverables that OSINT [open source intelligence] can produce,” said Jennifer Sims, a former State Department intelligence official, at a DNI conference on open source intelligence last week. Open source intelligence refers to intelligence that is derived from unclassified, legally accessible information sources. But the fact that the […]
New legislation would require the Attorney General to report to Congress whenever the Department of Justice issues a legal opinion indicating that the executive branch is not bound by an existing legal statute. The bill, introduced September 16 in the Senate by Senators Russ Feingold and Dianne Feinstein, responds to the Bush Administration’s use of […]
As the Justice Department prepares to issue new guidelines for FBI national security investigations, a more complete version of the current guidelines that were issued in 2003 has recently surfaced (pdf). Although the redacted guidelines released in 2003 are still posted on the Justice Department web site (pdf), some of the redactions in that document […]
At a House Committee on Foreign Affairs meeting 9 September 08 members of Congress discussed what the U.S. response should be to Russia’s aggressive actions in Georgia last month. Most members of the Committee acknowledged that some sort of response was necessary to voice U.S. concerns about the possibility of a more aggressive Russian foreign […]
The next President could achieve a systematic reduction in government secrecy by directing each agency that classifies information to conduct a detailed public review of its classification policies with the objective of reducing secrecy to the essential minimum and declassifying everything that does not meet the standard for classification. Modeled on the Fundamental Classification Policy […]