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 […]
Some notable recent reports of the Congressional Research Service obtained by Secrecy News that are not otherwise readily available to the public include the following (all pdf). “Federal and State Quarantine and Isolation Authority,” updated August 16, 2006. “Declarations of War and Authorizations for the Use of Military Force: Historical Background and Legal Implications,” updated […]
The U.S. Navy announced today that the “Sea Shadow” (IX-529), an experimental naval craft, and the Hughes Mining Barge (HMB-1), which was originally developed as part of the CIA’s 1974 Project Jennifer to help raise a sunken Soviet submarine, are available for donation to a suitable museum or organization. “Ex-SEA SHADOW is contained inside HMB-1…. […]
Two partially declassified reports issued by the Senate Intelligence Committee last week that were critical of pre-war intelligence on Iraq remain significantly overclassified, according to Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), who said he would seek further disclosure. Furthermore, portions of the two Intelligence Committee reports that were withheld conceal “certain highly offensive activities” and “deeply disturbing […]
The Department of Energy has issued its twenty-second report to Congress (pdf) on inadvertent disclosures of classified nuclear weapons-related information in declassified files at the National Archives. The new report said that reviewers had found an additional 736 pages containing such classified information within the more than 465,000 pages of records that they recently reviewed. […]