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Secrecy and Security News

Newer News: November 2007

October 2007

• U.S. spent $43.5B on intel in 2007 by Richard Willing, USA Today, October 31. "Federal spending on most intelligence programs totaled $43.5 billion this year, up more than 50% from a decade ago, according to figures released Tuesday by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence."
• U.S. intelligence tab: $43.5 billion in 2007 by Pamela Hess, Associated Press, October 31. "The U.S. government spent $43.5 billion on intelligence in fiscal 2007, according to the first official disclosure of such spending under a new law implementing recommendations of the Sept. 11 Commission."
• U.S. reluctantly reveals spy budget by Greg Miller, Los Angeles Times, October 31. "Forced by law to reveal how much the nation spends on its spy agencies, the Bush administration disclosed Tuesday that the country's intelligence budget was $43.5 billion last year, an increase of about 50% since the Sept. 11 attacks."
• Spy budget, at $43.5 billion, is no secret now by Randall Mikkelsen, Reuters, October 30. "The Bush administration said it had spent $43.5 billion on spying in fiscal 2007, as it bowed on Tuesday to a law ordering disclosure of a figure the government has kept secret for most of the past 60 years."
• Cost of U.S. spying efforts released by Steve Henn, Marketplace, October 30. "For the first time in almost a decade the federal government has pulled back the curtain on the American intelligence budget."
• 2007 Spying Said to Cost $50 Billion by Walter Pincus, Washington Post, October 30. "The director of national intelligence will disclose today that national intelligence activities amounting to roughly 80 percent of all U.S. intelligence spending for the year cost more than $40 billion, according to sources on Capitol Hill and inside the administration."
• DNI Releases Budget Figure for National Intelligence Program, news release, October 30. "The aggregate amount appropriated to the NIP for fiscal year 2007 was $43.5 billion."
• Spies Do a Huge Volume of Work in Invisible Ink by Scott Shane, New York Times, October 28. "Nothing expresses American ambivalence about government secrecy as vividly as the old Washington craft of redaction, the selective removal of passages from once-secret papers or books by spies. It is the bureaucratic equivalent of lingerie, covering the very parts you most want to see."
• Spy Chief Makes it Harder to Declassify NIEs, Washington Post (AP), October 27. "National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell has reversed the recent practice of declassifying and releasing summaries of national intelligence estimates, a top intelligence official said yesterday."
• Watercoolered: The CIA's Double Secret Probation by Laura Rozen, Mother Jones, October 25. "Valerie Plame was just the latest woman to run up against Langley's Kafkaesque workplace culture."
• DNI to disclose total intelligence budget, United Press International, October 23. "The director of national intelligence says the total size of the current classified U.S. intelligence budget will be disclosed for the first time within a week."
• Spy chief to disclose secret: U.S. intel spending by Siobhan Gorman, The Swamp, October 22. "The nation’s spy chief will soon divulge one of the government’s most tightly-held secrets: the size of the national intelligence budget."
• Archivist of the United States Names Leonard as Senior Counselor, NARA news release, October 22. "Bill Leonard is the gold standard of information specialists in the Federal government, maintaining at all times a balanced and judicious perspective on the complex issues confronted by the National Archives," Professor Weinstein said.
• Papers? I Don’t See Any Papers by Michael Isikoff, Newsweek, October 29. "He says he's 'pro-disclosure,' but Bill Clinton has kept Hillary's White House files under wraps."
• Bush's legal club: 'state secrets' by Nat Hentoff, Washington Times, October 22. This is the first of two columns on the Bush administration's abuse of the "state's secrets" doctrine.
• The Nuclear Bombshell That Never Went Off by Jeff Stein, CQ Homeland Security, October 19. "For his candor, and despite the backing of some top intelligence officials, Richard Barlow was stripped of his Top Secret/Codeword clearances and hounded out of the Pentagon."
• Over 5000 US patents are now state secrets, New Scientist, 18 October. "It's equivalent to blacking out five Thomas Edisons from history. Over 5000 patents in the US have now been decreed too sensitive to be made public, five times the number once held by America's most celebrated inventor."
• Poll:Most Oppose Immunity For Phone Companies Selling Info To US, CNN Money.com, October 16. "A majority of likely voters in the U.S. oppose giving immunity to telephone companies who sold customer information to the government, according to a survey released Tuesday by the American Civil Liberties Union."
• State Dept Press Briefing on Anti-Corruption Efforts in Iraq, October 16. "We do not believe that accusations that the Department of State has been concealing information, preventing information from being disclosed to the Congress, which has every right to inquire about these subjects, is accurate."
• White House Opposes Reporters Privilege Bill, Statement of Administration Policy, October 16. "The legislation would make it extremely difficult to prosecute cases involving leaks of classified information and would hamper efforts to investigate and prosecute other serious crimes."
• U.S. Slaps "Secret" Tag on Private Patents by Ken Schachter, Red Herring, October 11. "Federal agencies imposed 'John Doe' gag orders on 53 new patent applications in fiscal 2007, bringing the total to 5,002, according to documents acquired by a government secrecy tracker."
• Marine took files as part of spy ring by Rick Rogers, San Diego Union-Tribune, October 6. "Marine Gunnery Sgt. Gary Maziarz said patriotism motivated him to join a spy ring, smuggle secret files from Camp Pendleton and give them to law enforcement officers for anti-terrorism work in Southern California."
• The Most Important Future Military Technologies by Sharon Weinberger, Discover, October. "According to Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, a frequent critic of government secrecy, it would be hard in today’s world—though not impossible—to hide such a large classified program as a hypersonic aircraft."
• Appeals Court Issues Injunction Against Intrusive Background Investigations at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, news release, October 5. "The Court ruled that NASA could not require Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientists and engineers holding non-sensitive positions to sign waivers of their privacy rights. If the Court had not issued this injunction, thousands of scientists would have had to choose between waiving their privacy rights and keeping their jobs."
• President Clinton Complains Of Delays in Opening His Records by Josh Gerstein, New York Sun, October 4. "More than 50 requests for public access to records from President Clinton's White House have been cleared for release by archivists and are in a sort of presidential limbo, awaiting review."
• Bush's Free-Speech Radical by Jack Shafer, Slate, October 1. "Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates adores the press, and he doesn't care who knows it. Well, he's a tad more direct than that--Gates adores the press, and he wants everybody to know it."
• Commercial Satellite Imaging Closing In on Military Capabilities by Eleanor Stables, CQ Homeland Security, September 30. "The Department of Homeland Security will delay a program to expand domestic satellite surveillance to answer lawmakers’ questions regarding the program’s impact on civil liberties and privacy."

Older News: September 2007

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