The United States has used its armed forces hundreds of times in conflicts abroad, even though it has only engaged in eleven declared wars throughout its history. A newly updated tabulation of U.S. military actions has been prepared by the Congressional Research Service, up to and including the October 14, 2015 deployment of 90 U.S. […]
Mordechai Vanunu, who revealed aspects of Israel’s nuclear weapons program to the press three decades ago and served a lengthy prison term as a result, is again entangled with Israeli legal authorities over the contents of a recent TV interview. See “Nuclear Whistle-blower Vanunu Arrested Over Channel 2 Interview,” Haaretz, September 10. Vanunu should be […]
Updated below The Government Accountability Office this week quietly published a list of titles of its restricted reports that have not been publicly released because they contain classified information or controlled unclassified information. A new link to “Restricted Products” appears at the bottom of the GAO homepage (under Reports & Testimonies). “This list is intended […]
New and updated reports from the Congressional Research Service include the following. The Internet of Things: Frequently Asked Questions, October 13, 2015 Colombian Peace Talks Breakthrough: A Possible End-Game?, CRS Insight, October 13, 2015 Officers May Be Liable for Assuming an Automatic Hot Pursuit No Knock Exception, CRS Legal Sidebar, October 15, 2015 Sentence Reform […]
Ideally, arms control agreements that are well-conceived and faithfully implemented will foster international stability and build confidence between nations. But things don’t always work out that way, and arms control itself can become a cause for suspicion and conflict. “Can you say anything about how Russia, in this venue, is using their Open Skies flights […]
The Department of Defense needs to take several steps in order to avoid “strategic surprise” by an adversary over the coming decade, according to a new study from the Defense Science Board, a Pentagon advisory body. Among those steps, “Counterintelligence must be enhanced with urgency.” See DSB Summer Study Report on Strategic Surprise, July 2015. […]
In 2010, then-Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair convened a panel to review the November 2009 Fort Hood shooting committed by Army Maj. Nidal Hasan and the Christmas Day bombing attempt by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab aboard Northwest Flight 253. A redacted version of the resulting panel report was finally declassified and released this week. […]
In response to public inquiries about the location of nuclear weapons, Department of Defense officials are normally supposed to respond: “It is U.S. policy to neither confirm nor deny the presence or absence of nuclear weapons at any general or specific location.” Remarkably, “This response must be provided even when such location is thought to […]
This week the Department of Energy posted the first declassification guidance for nuclear weapons-related information, known as the Tolman Committee reports, prepared in 1945-46. The Tolman reports were an early and influential effort to conceptualize the role of declassification of atomic energy information and the procedures for implementing it. Though the reports themselves were declassified in the […]
The number of people in the Department of Defense holding security clearances for access to classified information declined by 100,000 in the first six months of FY2015. There are now 3.8 million DoD employees and contractors with security clearances, down from 3.9 million earlier in the year, and a steep 17.4% drop from 4.6 million […]
If protesters are arrested for disrupting the proceedings of the U.S. Supreme Court through angry speech, is that a violation of their First Amendment rights? The question was analyzed by the Congressional Research Service. See Haranguing in the Court, CRS Legal Sidebar, October 6, 2015. Other new and updated products of the Congressional Research Service […]
By Hans M. Kristensen The number of U.S. strategic warheads counted as “deployed” under the New START Treaty has dropped below the treaty’s limit of 1,550 warheads for the first time since the treaty entered into force in February 2011 – a reduction of 263 warheads over four and a half years. Russia, by contrast, […]