U.S. defense intelligence agencies should aim to “eliminate” the capabilities of opponents to operate effectively against the United States from outer space or cyber space, according to a new Pentagon strategy for defense intelligence (pdf). Defense intelligence shall “eliminate any advantage held by our adversaries to operate from and within the space and cyber domains,” […]
Intergovernmental contacts between North Korean and Syrian officials during the last two years were scrutinized by the DNI Open Source Center (pdf), but even in retrospect the available record presents no indication of joint work on a secret nuclear facility destroyed by Israel last September (large pdf). “A review of available North Korean and Syrian […]
Compared to all the excitement created by the US-Indian nuclear trade deal, the Russian equivalent, submitted last week, created barely a ripple [caution: big file to download]. While FAS strongly opposes the US-Indian nuclear trade agreement, the Russian case is much more complex. There are reasons to oppose the Russian deal and reasons to support […]
U.S. intelligence employees who are collecting open source intelligence online should do more to ensure that they are not identified as intelligence personnel, the House Armed Services Committee said in its new report on the 2009 Defense Authorization Act. Failure to conceal the identity of open source intelligence collectors could conceivably lead to spoofing, disinformation […]
The ODNI Open Source Center has imposed some rather ferocious controls on its unclassified products in order to shield them from public access. Even when its publications are not copyrighted, they are to be “treated as copyrighted” and in any case they “must not be disseminated to the public.” The following notice was recently posted […]
Noteworthy new reports from the Congressional Research Service that have not been made readily available to the public include the following (all pdf). “Defense Contracting in Iraq: Issues and Options for Congress,” updated May 6, 2008. “The National Security Council: An Organizational Assessment,” updated April 21, 2008. “Homeland Security Department: FY2009 Request for Appropriations,” May […]
The new National Cyber Security Initiative that is intended to reduce the vulnerability of government information networks and to devise an information warfare doctrine is so highly classified that it is undermining the deterrent value of the project, the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) said in a new report. “It is difficult to conceive how […]
The Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) rejected several legislative proposals submitted by the Department of Defense that would have increased the Department’s secrecy authority. One proposal would have granted the Defense Intelligence Agency an extension of its “operational files” exemption from the Freedom of Information Act, which expired at the end of 2007. Such an […]
A 2006 Department of Defense directive on Information Operations (pdf), which had previously been withheld as “For Official Use Only,” was released last week in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the Federation of American Scientists. The directive, issued by the Under Secretary of Defense (Intelligence), assigns baseline responsibilities for the conduct […]
The Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) at the Department of Justice has been pondering the peculiar status of the Office of Vice President for decades, and has recently released a collection of more than a dozen OLC opinions regarding the Vice President, dating back to the Eisenhower Administration. “The Vice President, of course, occupies a […]
More than 50 launch pads for nuclear ballistic missiles have been identified scattered across a 2,000 square kilometer (772 square miles) area of central China, according to analysis of satellite images. Click image for full size. Also download GoogleEarth KMZ file. . By Hans M. Kristensen Analysis of new commercial satellite photos has identified an […]
The laboratory director of the National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center (NBACC), Dr. Patrick Fitch, said yesterday that research at the laboratory will not “create threats in order to study them”. This statement is a welcome change from previous presentations about the lab’s mission. The controversy about the research goals of the NBACC emerged after […]