The Public Interest Declassification Board was established by Congress in 2000 “to promote the fullest possible public access to a thorough, accurate, and reliable documentary record of significant United States national security decisions.” (FY 2001 Intelligence Authorization Act, Section 703). Six years later, it has still done no such thing. In its first practical test, […]
After having spent the last several years sending diplomats to Teheran to try to persuade Iran not to develop nuclear weapons, the British government announced Monday that it plans to renew its own nuclear arsenal. If approved by the parliament, Monday’s decision means that the United Kingdom will extend its nuclear deterrent beyond 2050, essentially […]
A Florida company called Space Propulsion Systems, Inc. announced this week that it had successfully petitioned the U.S. Government to lift secrecy orders that had been imposed on two of its rocket propellant concepts. Under the Invention Secrecy Act of 1951, the government may restrict the publication and dissemination of information about new inventions if […]
A new Government Accountability Office study (pdf) warns darkly that the Departments of State and Commerce are not doing enough to police university research to ensure that export control violations are not occurring on campus. State and Commerce “have not fully assessed the potential for transfers of export-controlled information to foreign nationals in the course […]
In another sign of shifting ground in the post-election Congress, Senators Arlen Specter and Patrick Leahy yesterday introduced the “Habeas Corpus Restoration Act of 2006,” which would reinstate federal court jurisdiction over Guantanamo detainees and other suspected enemy combatants. The bill would repeal two provisions of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 enacted in September […]
U.S. Air Force doctrine on space operations is elaborated in a new publication. See “Space Operations” (pdf), Air Force Doctrine Document AFDD 2-2, November 27, 2006. The threat posed by debris in Earth orbit is the subject of a recent Master’s Thesis, which provides a convenient introduction to the subject and a review of recent […]
Recent publications of the Congressional Research Service include the following (all pdf). “Taiwan: Major U.S. Arms Sales Since 1990,” updated November 9, 2006. “Panama: Political and Economic Conditions and U.S. Relations,” updated November 16, 2006. “Thailand: Background and U.S. Relations,” updated October 2, 2006. “Iraqi Police and Security Forces Casualty Estimates,” November 16, 2006.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is conducting an annual survey of intelligence community employees to lay a foundation for future reforms of personnel practices. The survey (pdf) asks IC employees to evaluate a range of issues from workplace environment and job satisfaction (“How satisfied are you with the policies and practices of […]
In what may be a harbinger of new rigor in Congressional oversight, four Democratic members of Congress told the Environmental Protection Agency to cease and desist (pdf) from closing public document libraries and dispersing or destroying their contents unless and until EPA obtains specific approval from Congress. Public interest groups including the Union of Concerned […]
A federal judge ordered (pdf) the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency to respond within 30 days to a Freedom of Information Act request from reporter Joshua Gerstein for a copy of records regarding unauthorized disclosures of classified information (“leaks”). Gerstein, a reporter with the New York Sun, had requested all “criminal referrals” […]
A newly updated Department of Defense Instruction sets forth Pentagon policy on interactions with the Government Accountability Office, the congressional investigative agency. “It is DoD policy that the Department of Defense cooperate fully with the GAO and respond constructively to, and take appropriate corrective actions on the basis of, GAO reports,” the new Instruction (pdf) […]
“The USSR is publicly discussing an ambitious array of manned and unmanned space missions … planned over the next quarter century,” the CIA’s Foreign Broadcast Information Service reported in a 1987 internal assessment (pdf). “Recent items in the Soviet press and scientific literature… have provided new details on Soviet space plans from the present through […]