“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 […]
The government’s acquisition of telephone records of tens of millions of Americans, as reported last week in USA Today, raises a host of thorny legal issues. In a new report (pdf), the Congressional Research Service performed a preliminary assessment of those issues. “The factual information available in the public domain with respect to any such […]
The widespread use of “Sensitive But Unclassified” (SBU) control markings is a major impediment to information sharing inside and outside of the federal government, according to testimony (pdf) last week from Thomas E. McNamara, the program manager for the Information Sharing Environment, who reports to the Director of National Intelligence. “More than 60 different marking […]
As well established as the practice of intelligence analysis may be, researchers continue to ask elementary questions about what analysis is, how it is done, and how it can be done better. “Intelligence analysis involves a complex process of assessing the reliability of information from a wide variety of sources and combining seemingly unrelated events. […]