The Pentagon yesterday released its annual warning of the growing Chinese military threat. This year’s version continues the refrain from previous years and reiterates the conclusion from the recent Quadrennial Defense Review that China now is seen as the top large-scale military threat to the United States. The signs of a Chinese threat are all […]
District Judge Roger Vinson of the Northern District of Florida this month became the newest member of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court. Judge Vinson was named by the Chief Justice of the United States to a seven year term on the FISA Court, effective May 4. He replaces Judge Michael J. Davis, whose […]
The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence announced (pdf) that it will hold a hearing on Friday May 26 on “the Media’s Role and Responsibilities in Leaks of Classified Information.” There is no legislation on leaks currently before the Committee, and there are no governmental witnesses testifying at the hearing. In an invited statement for […]
“On 12 November 2002, Osama Binladen issued a public statement which specifically targeted Canada for the first time for its collaboration with the United States in attempting to dismantle Al Qaida,” a 2002 Canadian intelligence report (pdf) noted. With that statement in mind, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) conducted classified studies on the terrorist […]
The state secrets privilege has been invoked by the Bush Administration with greater frequency than ever before in American history in a wide range of lawsuits that the government says would threaten national security if allowed to proceed. In virtually every case, the use of the privilege leads to dismissal of the lawsuit and forecloses […]
When workers at the secret Groom Lake (“Area 51”) aircraft test facility in Nevada filed a lawsuit in the early 1990s alleging that they had been injured by fumes from open-pit burning of chemical waste associated with stealth aircraft development, the government blocked the lawsuit by insisting that all information regarding the chemical waste was […]
The Department of Defense budget request for 2007 includes about $30.1 billion in classified or “black” spending, according to a new analysis by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. “In real (inflation-adjusted) terms the $30.1 billion FY 2007 request includes more classified acquisition funding than any other defense budget since FY 1988, near the […]
Pressure to adopt “sensitive but unclassified” control markings on information that does not qualify for classification is growing, along with opposition to such controls, among some academic researchers who study terrorism-related topics. See “Scientific Openness: Should Academics Self-Censor Their Findings on Terrorism?” by Yudhijit Bhattacharjee, Science, May 19. “The secrecy that has become such a […]
In an unusually informative new report to Congress, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) advised that he “is making substantial progress in the implementation of the [Intelligence Reform Act of 2004]. The DNI outlined the actions he has taken to integrate the U.S. intelligence bureaucracy and alluded in passing to several new initiatives he has […]
“I do think we overclassify, and I think it’s because we got bad habits,” said Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the nominee to be the new Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. See the full transcript of his May 18 confirmation hearing before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence here (pdf).
Several noteworthy new reports of the Congressional Research Service obtained by Secrecy News that are not otherwise readily available in the public domain include the following. “Nuclear Command and Control: Current Programs and Issues” (pdf), May 3, 2006. “Iraqi Civilian, Police, and Security Forces Casualty Estimates” (pdf), May 8, 2006. “Social Unrest in China” (pdf), […]
The military subculture that pursues the development of fabulous, physically impossible weapons concepts at taxpayer expense is the subject of a new book by defense reporter Sharon Weinberger called “Imaginary Weapons.” Weinberger introduces the hafnium bomb, a hypothetical weapon that would supposedly harness the energy released from a nuclear transition within a hafnium isomer. It […]