The intense and occasionally hyperbolic controversy that erupted in the late 1990s over alleged theft of U.S. nuclear weapons secrets by the People’s Republic of China is revisited in a newly updated report from the Congressional Research Service. See “China: Suspected Acquisition of U.S. Nuclear Weapon Secrets,” updated February 1, 2006. Coincidentally, a Chinese newspaper […]
The Exon-Florio Act of 1988, which permits the President to block foreign takeover of certain types of U.S. companies on national security grounds, has been in the news lately in connection with the proposed acquisition of six U.S. ports by Dubai Ports World. Some useful background on that statute is provided by the Congressional Research […]
The judge who presides over the prosecution of two former officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) for allegedly mishandling classified information has rejected a request from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press to present an amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) brief on the profound constitutional concerns raised by the […]
Parade Magazine, the Sunday supplement that is inserted into newspapers all over the country, turned its attention last week from celebrity romance and dieting tips to the problem of government secrecy. “Concerns about overclassification cut across ideological and party lines,” according to Parade. “Besides alienating Americans from their government, the result is that many debates […]
A new Zogby poll came out today. What is getting coverage in a New York Times article is that 72% of U.S. soldiers in Iraq believe we should substantially withdraw sooner rather than later. Perhaps this isn’t surprising, I have been to Iraq, and I would want to come home, too. But what did surprise […]
FAS has just released our internet resource for biosecurity policy, bioterrorism information, and biodefense research. The site includes an interactive map that provides the locations of both operational and planned laboratories in the U.S. The organizations linked on the site present a wide array of perspectives on what actions individual scientists, research institutions, science journals, […]
Anyone can purchase a copy of the 1958 Department of Defense “Emergency Plans Book,” an early cold war description of response planning for a nuclear attack on the United States. It is available for sale through Amazon.com and elsewhere under the somewhat lurid title “The Doomsday Scenario” (Motorbooks International, 2002). But don’t look for it […]
Confronted by a government that seems intent on erecting unnecessary new barriers to public access, members of the public are not entirely without resources to oppose such barriers, and even to overcome them. “Decrying secrecy, citizen groups fight back” is the thrilling headline of a story by reporter Aliya Sternstein in Federal Computer Week today […]
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has updated and revised its policy on “sensitive but unclassified” (SBU) information, the increasingly common twilight category of information that is neither classified nor publicly released. “Marking information SBU does not automatically qualify it for a public release exemption,” the CDC policy observes. (There is no “SBU […]
A new review of Russian nuclear forces published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists says that the Kremlin appears to be attempting to reassert its nuclear strength after years of decline in order to underscore Russia’s status as a powerful nation. Large-scale exercises have been reinstated and modernizations of nuclear forces continue with reports […]
Responding to a February 21 New York Times story indicating that thousands of declassified documents had been reclassified by executive branch agencies and removed from public access in questionable circumstances, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) announced yesterday that an official investigation into the matter was underway. An audit is being conducted by the […]
Could the National Security Archive be prosecuted under the Espionage Act for publishing historical documents that U.S. intelligence agencies now say are classified? Could Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice be detained for continuing to publish historical intelligence records on the State Department web site that the CIA has flagged as classified? Could thousands of historians […]