At a House Judiciary Subcommittee hearing today, witnesses discussed the feasibility and advisability of legislating reforms to the state secrets privilege. The state secrets privilege has been used by the executive branch to block discovery in civil litigation when the government believes that there is an unacceptable risk of disclosure of sensitive national security secrets. […]
Newly updated reports from the Congressional Research Service that have not been made readily available to the public include the following (all pdf). “China’s Currency: Economic Issues and Options for U.S. Trade Policy,” updated January 9, 2008. “Afghanistan: Post-War Governance, Security, and U.S. Policy,” updated January 14, 2008. “Future of the Balkans and U.S. Policy […]
At a press briefing on Wednesday, John Rood, the Acting Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, fielded questions about the Bush Administration’s new Export Control Directive – the latest attempt to reduce delays and inefficiencies in the State Department’s export control system. If implemented properly, some of the proposals could help […]
The Senate Intelligence Committee proposal to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which is under consideration on the Senate floor today, “does not contain adequate protections to guard against the kind of Executive abuse that occurred with the [Terrorist Surveillance Program] and related programs,” according to a new Senate Judiciary Committee report. “Congress is […]
The U.S. Air Force last week issued revised procedures (pdf) for securely maintaining and transporting nuclear weapons. The move follows an incident last August in which crewmen at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota mistook missiles armed with nuclear weapons for unarmed missiles and flew them across the country without authorization. Though the Minot […]
A rising tide of criticism of the use of the state secrets privilege to derail litigation against the government has yielded new legislation introduced in the Senate to define the privilege and to limit its use. The state secrets privilege has been invoked with growing frequency to deflect claims of unlawful domestic surveillance, detention, and […]
There is a “great need” for legislation that will specifically prohibit and punish unauthorized disclosures of communication intelligence (COMINT), the U.S. military argued in a newly-released 1944 report (pdf). Such a law was in fact enacted in 1950. “Unauthorized disclosures… have jeopardized, on several occasions, the results of many years of arduous research and have […]
Tsien Hsue-shen, the 96-year-old architect of China’s ballistic missile program, was once a promising student of aeronautics in the United States, a protégé of Theodore von Kármán, and then a leading expert in the field, until he came under suspicion of espionage and was deported in September 1955. According to a declassified 1998 Defense Intelligence […]
“The CIA requires all current and former Agency employees and contractors, and others who are obligated by CIA secrecy agreement, to submit for prepublication review to the CIA’s Publications Review Board (PRB) all intelligence-related materials intended for publication or public dissemination,” according to a 2007 regulation (pdf) on the subject. The scope of the requirement, […]
Last week, Malaysia ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), bringing the total number of Treaty ratifications to 143, according to a CTBT Organization news release. Among Southeast Asian nations, “Cambodia, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam have now ratified the CTBT, whereas Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Myanmar and Thailand have […]
In a small step that could nevertheless have far-reaching consequences for government information policy, the Department of Defense is preparing to eliminate various markings such as “For Official Use Only” and “Limited Distribution” that regulate disclosure of unclassified documents and will replace them with a new standardized marking. The DoD move (pdf) anticipates near-term Presidential […]
The United States intervened to block South Korea from developing nuclear weapons in the 1970s, according to newly declassified Korean government documents. South Korea was seeking to acquire nuclear reactors from Canada and nuclear reprocessing technology from France in support of a weapons program, but U.S. pressure led to cancellation of the latter purchase. See […]