On a recent trip to Tucson, Arizona I visited the Titan Missile Museum, something I recommend for all FAS blog readers who might be in the area. The tour was great. You get to visit the silo and the launch control area. They even have a decommissioned Titan missile in the silo. All very impressive. […]
(Updated below) Public disclosure of intelligence budget data would be required under a provision of the 2007 Intelligence Authorization Act that was reported (pdf) by the Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday and disclosed today. The total amounts authorized and appropriated for the National Intelligence Program would be publicly disclosed each year starting in 2007, the Senate […]
For the third year in a row the Office of Vice President Dick Cheney has refused to disclose data on its classification and declassification activity, in an apparent violation of an executive order issued by President Bush. “The Office of the Vice President (OVP), the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), and the Homeland Security […]
The Information Security Oversight Office reported a nine percent drop in overall classification activity in its new annual report for FY 2005 (pdf). Total classification activity (including “original” and “derivative” classification) dropped from the record high 2004 level of 15.6 million classification actions to 14.2 million, almost identical to the 2003 level. “ISOO views the […]
The Pentagon yesterday released its annual warning of the growing Chinese military threat. This year’s version continues the refrain from previous years and reiterates the conclusion from the recent Quadrennial Defense Review that China now is seen as the top large-scale military threat to the United States. The signs of a Chinese threat are all […]
District Judge Roger Vinson of the Northern District of Florida this month became the newest member of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court. Judge Vinson was named by the Chief Justice of the United States to a seven year term on the FISA Court, effective May 4. He replaces Judge Michael J. Davis, whose […]
The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence announced (pdf) that it will hold a hearing on Friday May 26 on “the Media’s Role and Responsibilities in Leaks of Classified Information.” There is no legislation on leaks currently before the Committee, and there are no governmental witnesses testifying at the hearing. In an invited statement for […]
“On 12 November 2002, Osama Binladen issued a public statement which specifically targeted Canada for the first time for its collaboration with the United States in attempting to dismantle Al Qaida,” a 2002 Canadian intelligence report (pdf) noted. With that statement in mind, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) conducted classified studies on the terrorist […]
The state secrets privilege has been invoked by the Bush Administration with greater frequency than ever before in American history in a wide range of lawsuits that the government says would threaten national security if allowed to proceed. In virtually every case, the use of the privilege leads to dismissal of the lawsuit and forecloses […]
When workers at the secret Groom Lake (“Area 51”) aircraft test facility in Nevada filed a lawsuit in the early 1990s alleging that they had been injured by fumes from open-pit burning of chemical waste associated with stealth aircraft development, the government blocked the lawsuit by insisting that all information regarding the chemical waste was […]
The Department of Defense budget request for 2007 includes about $30.1 billion in classified or “black” spending, according to a new analysis by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. “In real (inflation-adjusted) terms the $30.1 billion FY 2007 request includes more classified acquisition funding than any other defense budget since FY 1988, near the […]
Pressure to adopt “sensitive but unclassified” control markings on information that does not qualify for classification is growing, along with opposition to such controls, among some academic researchers who study terrorism-related topics. See “Scientific Openness: Should Academics Self-Censor Their Findings on Terrorism?” by Yudhijit Bhattacharjee, Science, May 19. “The secrecy that has become such a […]