The Washington Post took further note today of the potentially severe implications for the press of the controversial prosecution of two former officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). “The Bush administration said that journalists can be prosecuted under current espionage laws for receiving and publishing classified information but that such a step […]
Thinking the President might mention it in his State of the Union Address, I had put up on the FAS website a page on the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, which includes a plan to restart plutonium reprocessing in the United States after a thirty year hiatus. The President did not, in fact, mention the Global […]
The President has submitted a military budget of $440 billion dollars, with request for more than an additional hundred billion for the Iraq war expected later. It is finally time to say that the Pentagon budget has slipped its leash and is out of control. Not in the sense that the country is splashing money […]
Just after the FAS Strategic Security blog got going, I had to take a little time off for some surgery. Now I am back. Well most of me is back. My gallbladder is not back, but the rest of me is back. I understand that the ethos of the blog world is that everything must […]
U.S. military and intelligence agencies have assigned personnel to review and reclassify declassified historical records at the National Archives where they have withdrawn thousands of records from public access. The seven year old secret program was reported today on the front page of the New York Times. See “U.S. Reclassifies Many Documents in Secret Review” […]
The number of earmarks included in congressional appropriations bills, directing that money be spent in a particular and often self-interested way, has multiplied over the past decade, according to a study by the Congressional Research Service. The CRS study has been widely cited in the press, but has not been readily available online. Now it […]
With the creation of the Department of Homeland Security in 2002, the U.S. intelligence community gained its fifteenth member. Last week, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) became the sixteenth member. “This designation does not grant DEA new authorities, but it does formalize the long-standing relationship between the DEA and the IC,” according to a February […]
In its prosecution of two former officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Bush Administration is staking out new legal territory, arguing that it is a crime for a reporter or any other non-government employee who does not hold a security clearance to receive and communicate classified information. “The government respectfully submits […]
It is important to understand that there is no rigorous, consensual definition of what constitutes classified information. Instead, in a practical sense, classified information is whatever the executive branch says it is. (A minority of classified information, such as nuclear weapons design information, is specified and protected by statute. The remainder, the large majority, is […]
On February 16, Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Sen. Jay Rockefeller presented a proposal to investigate the National Security Agency warrantless surveillance program. A copy of Sen. Rockefeller’s motion, outlining the scope of the proposed investigation, is here. But Committee chairman Sen. Pat Roberts blocked a vote on the motion until March 7. “If, by […]
“Selectively applied, the declassification process can become political and sleazy,” according to an editorial in the Buffalo News. See “Cheney misuses expanded powers,” February 18. The spectrum of opinion and analysis on the Vice President’s declassification authority was surveyed in “Cheney’s Secret Powers” by Dan Froomkin, White House Briefing, February 17. “Another House Republican committee […]
On February 15th, Senator Edward Kennedy introduced S.2291, The <a href=”http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:s.02291:”Responsible Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act, which aims to expand compensation and clarify liability issues that will arise if untested vaccines and countermeasures need to be distributed in the event of a pandemic disease outbreak. The move is clearly designed to revise the sweeping […]