The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
COURT LIFTS GAG ORDER ON FORMER SECRECY CZAR A federal judge this week granted permission to J. William Leonard, the former director of the Information Security Oversight Office, to discuss three documents that were at issue in the trial of former National Security Agency official Thomas Drake. Mr. Leonard, an expert witness for the Drake …
CRS REVIEWS LEGALITY OF TARGETED KILLING OF SUSPECTED TERRORISTS The legality of targeted killing of suspected terrorists, including U.S. citizens, was examined in a memorandum prepared for members of Congress by the Congressional Research Service. The U.S. practice of targeted killing raises complex legal issues because it cuts across several overlapping legal domains. To the …
DOD SECURITY POLICY IS INCOHERENT AND UNMANAGEABLE, IG SAYS “DoD security policy is fragmented, redundant, and inconsistent,” according to a new report from the Department of Defense Inspector General. This is not a new development, the report noted, but one that has persisted despite decades of criticism. There are at least 43 distinct DoD security …
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FUNDAMENTAL REVIEW LEADS TO SOME REDUCTIONS IN SECRECY The classification guides that function as the framework for national security secrecy underwent a substantial overhaul during the past two years. As a result of the Fundamental Classification Guidance Review, a large fraction of existing classification guidance has been eliminated, and at least some existing categories of …
A CONVENTION TO AMEND THE CONSTITUTION, AND MORE FROM CRS Article V of the U.S. Constitution prescribes two ways by which the Constitution can be amended: Either Congress may propose amendments for ratification by the states, or else a majority of state legislatures may ask Congress to call a convention for considering amendments. A new …
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NEW ARMY DOCTRINE ON “INFORMATION COLLECTION” An Army field manual published last week explains the Army’s conduct of information collection activities in military operations. “In this manual, the term ‘information collection’ is introduced as the Army’s replacement for ‘intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance’ (also known as ISR),” the manual says. “This publication clarifies how the Army …
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SECRET SYSTEMS CLUTTER THE ELECTROMAGNETIC SPECTRUM The difficulty that the military has in allocating the efficient use of the electromagnetic spectrum for military operations is aggravated by the fact that some of those uses — involving intelligence platforms and sensors — are secret even from military planners themselves, a new Pentagon doctrinal publication notes. “Coordination …
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