Some recent reports of the Congressional Research Service that have not been made readily available to the public include the following (all pdf). “Science and Technology Policy: Issues for the 109th Congress,” updated September 1, 2006. “Navy Ship Names: Background For Congress,” updated September 1, 2006. “Legal Developments in International Civil Aviation,” updated August 25, […]
A decision to trim a tree in the Korean demilitarized zone in 1976 escalated into a threat to use nuclear weapons. After a fatal skirmish between U.S. and North Korean border guards, U.S. forces in the region were placed on heightened alert (DEFCON 3) and nuclear forces were deployed to signal preparations for an attack […]
David T. Lykken, a psychologist who did pioneering research and public education on the limits and abuses of polygraph testing, died last week at age 78. With exceptional clarity he demonstrated that the polygraph is not a “lie detector” but simply a recorder of physiological responses to verbal stimuli. And, he explained, there is no […]
When the U.S. Army established a password-protected internet portal called Army Knowledge Online a few years ago, it swallowed up untold thousands of unclassified records that had previously been publicly available on the world wide web, and then ceased to be. One such item was the Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin (MIPB), a quarterly Army journal […]
Commercial vendors will happily sell you almost any Congressional Research Service report issued in the last decade, making CRS secrecy profitable for some but otherwise pointless. Yet Congress has stubbornly told the CRS not to make its reports directly available to the taxpaying public, who have already paid for them once. Some recent CRS reports […]
The Arms Sales Monitoring Project has obtained, via the Freedom of Information Act, a copy of the Defense Department’s contribution to the annual “Section 655” report* on U.S. arms transfers and military assistance. The report contains data on the five main U.S. security assistance programs: the Direct Commercial Sales Program (administered by the State Department), […]
Earlier this month, The Department of Homeland Security added two new sections to the Ready.gov website, one for people with disabilities and another for seniors. However, when you take a close look at them, you will notice that all they have done is shuffled the information they already had on the site onto two new […]
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-KS) has endorsed a proposal to task the Public Interest Declassification Board (PIDB) to review the recent Intelligence Committee reports on pre-war intelligence to determine if they were properly declassified. He acted in response to harsh criticism from Senate Democrats alleging that the Bush Administration had abused its classification […]
The use of secret U.S. prison facilities abroad, first reported by Dana Priest in the Washington Post in November 2005, has since been confirmed by President Bush and has become the focus of controversy in the U.S. and elsewhere. A new report (pdf) from the Congressional Research Service synthesizes what is now publicly known about […]
The Senate Judiciary Committee set the stage for further congressional debate over warrantless electronic surveillance by reporting out competing bills that are mutually contradictory. A bill (S. 2453) sponsored by Committee Chairman Arlen Specter would sharply diminish judicial oversight of intelligence surveillance under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and expand unilateral presidential authority. On the […]
The House of Representatives approved a bill to establish a publicly searchable database of federally-funded grants and contracts. The Senate adopted the measure last week, and the White House indicated that the President would sign it. “This bill would require the Office of Management and Budget to create a Web site listing all grant awards […]
Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), the Senate Minority Leader, proposed an amendment that would require the declassification of certain classified portions of a Senate Intelligence Committee report regarding pre-war intelligence on Iraq. Sen. Ron Wyden and Sen. Carl Levin charged last week that portions of the controversial report had been withheld from public disclosure in order […]