FAS | Government Secrecy ||| Index | Search | Join FAS

Secrecy and Security News

Newer News: June 2000

May 2000

• Secrets and spies: "Echelon" Divides US and Europe by Thomas Catan, Financial Times, May 31. "A surveillance system that intercepts communications has become the latest focus of dispute between the US and Europe."
• Access Denied by William Matthews, Federal Computer Week, May 29. "Prompted by fears that easy access to information is putting Americans at risk, agencies and Congress are tightening controls over federal Internet sites. Federal Webmasters who once enthusiastically posted information now anxiously take some of it down."
• The 'Top Secret' at CIA: Its Own Budget by Justin Brown, Christian Science Monitor, May 26. "With Soviet threat gone, agency and critic spar over spending and disclosure issues."
• Classified Threat List Published on the Web, press release from "American Investigator," May 24. "The classified document contains the 'National Security List' of countries that are considered hostile to US interests and are engaged in 'espionage' against the U.S."
• National Archives Plans to Declassify Japanese War Records, press release, May 23. "The Nazi War Criminal Records Interagency Working Group (IWG) announced today that it will take steps toward the declassification of records related to Japanese war crimes committed during World War II."
• House Rejects Intelligence Budget Disclosure, floor debate on an amendment to the FY2001 Intelligence Authorization Act, May 22.
• Star Wars Critic Alleges Abuse of Classification Authority, letter to White House Chief of Staff John Podesta from MIT Professor Theodore Postol, May 19. "I therefore conclude that Mr. Englander is most likely attempting to illegally use the security and classification system to hide waste, fraud, and abuse by his agency, the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization."
• Congress Limits Defense Declassification Spending, from the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2001, section 1035, approved in the House May 17.
• Secret CIA Document Spelled Out Intelligence Failures by Pamela Hess, United Press International, May 15. "The CIA's new annual report to Congress says the accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in May 1999 was "a painful wake-up call." What the report does not say is CIA Director George Tenet himself had sounded the alarm a full two months before the bombing."
• National Science Board Issues Statement on Need for Open Communication and Access, May 15. "Rather than contribute to more effective security, policies that restrict ... open communication and exchanges squander human talent and deny American science and engineering the benefits of openness and excellence."
• Deep Security Flaws Seen At State Department by Christopher Marquis, New York Times, May 11. "The State Department suffers from a systemic failure to protect secrets that is longstanding and far broader than the recent series of lapses."
• 1999: The year of the Web for the CIA by Dan Verton, Federal Computer Week, May 10. "The intelligence community spent much of 1999 developing new World Wide Web-based tools that are transforming the way spies find and share information."
• Data-rich spy center on the drawing board by Dan Verton, Federal Computer Week, May 8. "'As a practical matter, it has proven difficult to either reform or abolish the CIA,' Aftergood said. 'The logical alternative may be to simply create an entirely new agency'."
• Agents of Art, Washington Post Bookworld, letter to the editor, May 7. "The CIA continues to exercise a malign influence on scholarship by imposing selective and unnecessarily restrictive controls on access to its archives, especially by independent scholars and members of the public."

Older News: April 2000

FAS | Government Secrecy ||| Index | Search | Join FAS

http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2000/05/index.html
Maintained by Steven Aftergood