Former State Department China expert Donald Keyser last week firmly disputed allegations that he had engaged in espionage on behalf of Taiwanese intelligence. “Mr. Keyser denies that he was ever an agent of Taiwan’s intelligence agency,” his attorneys said in a statement. They further denied that he had failed to comply with the terms of […]
A 2002 report (pdf) prepared by the CIA Counterterrorist Center discusses how terrorists recruit members in prisons such as Guantanamo Bay. “Terrorists groups, including al-Qa’ida, use incarcerated members to recruit and train new members, and in some cases run terrorist organizations and manage or facilitate terrorist attacks.” The classified CIA report was previously published on […]
“Operations security” (OPSEC) refers to the practice of identifying and controlling information that could be exploited by a hostile observer to discern intelligence about U.S. operations. “OPSEC is a methodology that denies critical information to an adversary,” according to a new Defense Department publication (pdf) on the subject. “Unlike security programs that seek to protect […]
Many U.S. intelligence agencies as well as the congressional intelligence oversight committees hire their senior staff from a predictable, somewhat in-grown pool of personnel, which frequently includes those who have previously worked in the intelligence field since they can be immediately cleared. But the Office of the Director of National Intelligence seems to be casting […]
The tiny Western European nation of Andorra has become the latest country to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. On July 12, it became the 134th country to do so, according to a news release today from the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization in Vienna. On the same day, Armenia became the 133rd country to […]
There have been some legislative developments on the India-US nuclear deal. The results are not what I would like to have seen but I suppose it could have been worse. On 27 June, the House International Relations Committee approved their version of the bill 37 to 5. On 29 June the Senate Foreign Relations Committee […]
The need to improve the dissemination of terrorism-related information was among the preeminent policy lessons of September 11. Yet five years later, “systematic, trusted information sharing remains more of an aspiration than a reality,” according to a new task force report from the Markle Foundation. The report proposes a new conceptual framework for authorizing and […]
A new Congressional Research Service report provides a resume of the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program that was recently described in news stories. See “Treasury’s Terrorist Finance Program’s Access to Information Held by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT)” (pdf), July 7, 2006. News reports on the program elicited furious criticism of the New […]
The Congressional Budget Office has prepared a new account (pdf) of U.S. spending in Iraq in response to a request from Rep. John Spratt (D-SC). “The Congress has appropriated $432 billion for military operations and other activities related to the war on terrorism since September 2001. According to CBO’s estimates, from the time U.S. forces […]
Donald Keyser, who had been a respected State Department expert on China, pled guilty last year to illegally removing classified documents from the State Department, making false statements to the FBI, and concealing his relationship with a Taiwanese intelligence officer. Now the government says that he is failing to fulfill the terms of his plea […]
“Don’t use your left hand for contact with others,” advises the U.S. Marine Corps in a new edition of the Iraq Culture Smart Card (very large pdf) which is distributed to military personnel in Iraq. “It is considered unclean.” It seems late in the day for such niceties. Amid the daily brutality of the Iraq […]
In a significant policy reversal, the Department of Defense last week formally directed that the humane treatment requirements of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions shall henceforth be applied to all prisoners and detainees in DoD custody (as first reported by the Financial Times). See this July 7 memorandum (pdf) from Deputy Secretary of […]