Updated below This week marks one full year since publication of the latest print volume of the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series, the official documentary record of U.S. foreign policy which dates back to the Abraham Lincoln Administration. Publication of FRUS is required by law (Public Law 102-138) and is supposed to […]
Open government advocates hailed the passage of procedural amendments to the Freedom of Information Act that are intended to improve government responsiveness to FOIA requests and to strengthen the hand of requesters. The OPEN Government Act, which cleared both the Senate and the House over the past week, “becomes the first major reform to the […]
Speaking of classification reform, Rep. Jane Harman and 13 Democratic colleagues this week introduced “The Reducing Over-Classification Act of 2007.” The legislation focuses on the Department of Homeland Security and aims to make the Department a model of judicious information policy by curtailing classification and other restrictions on disclosure. “The goal is simple: make the […]
In October, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a riveting hearing with Jack Goldsmith, the former head of the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel. The record of that hearing has just been published. As was widely reported at the time, Mr. Goldsmith challenged the legality of certain aspects of the President’s warrantless surveillance program and […]
The U.S. Army has issued a new field manual (pdf) on the use of National Guard units known as “civil support teams” (CST) to respond to domestic terrorist or other incidents involving weapons of mass destruction. “The mission of the WMD-CST is to support civil authorities at domestic CBRNE [chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and high-yield […]
To begin the day the NBSB listened to presentations from each of the members of the Public Health Emergency Medical Countermeasures Enterprise (PHEMCE). The Enterprise is coordinated within HHS by the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response and includes the NIH, CDC, FDA and BARDA. PHEMCE’s role in HHS is to coordinate the research, development, […]
Noteworthy new reports from the Congressional Research Service obtained by Secrecy News include the following (all pdf). “China’s Space Program: Options for U.S.-China Cooperation,” December 14, 2007. “U.S.-China Military Contacts: Issues for Congress,” updated December 12, 2007. “Iran: U.S. Concerns and Policy Responses,” updated December 5, 2007. “Iraq and Al Qaeda,” updated December 7, 2007. […]
The W62 is the only nuclear warhead that has been publicly identified for elimination under the Bush administration’s secret nuclear stockpile reduction plan. By Hans M. Kristensen The While House announced earlier today that the President had “approved a significant reduction in the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile to take effect by the end of 2007.” […]
The National Biodefense Science Board (NBSB) began their inaugural meeting yesterday in Washington DC. The board, made up of 13 voting members and 21 non-voting ex officio representatives, was created as part of the 2006 Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act. The NBSB was chartered with the task of providing expert advice to the Department of […]
Several defense intelligence agencies will withhold unclassified information about their contracts from a new public database of government spending. The new database at USAspending.gov is intended to provide increased transparency regarding most government contracts. But when it comes to intelligence spending, there will actually be a net loss of public information because categories of intelligence […]
The U.S. intelligence community is reverting to old patterns of cold war secrecy, warned the former Chairman of the National Intelligence Council (NIC), to the detriment of U.S. intelligence. “The reality that I see is an Intelligence Community that is retreating into greater secrecy and old cultural habits, even in the short time since I […]
The National Archives says it is exploring new methods to accelerate the disclosure of records at Presidential libraries. Archivists “decided to undertake an in-house study in the spring of 2007 to review ways to achieve faster processing of Presidential records,” stated Emily Robison, acting director of the Clinton Presidential Library, in an October 2 declaration […]