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From the Blogs
Kiriakou Pleads Guilty in Leak Case:
On October 23, former CIA officer John Kiriakou pled guilty to one
count of disclosure of information identifying a covert agent, a
violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. Under the terms
of a plea agreement, the parties agreed that a prison term of 30 months
would be “the appropriate sentence in this case.” Other charges
against him, including several counts under the Espionage Act, were
dismissed. Steven Aftergood writes that by foregoing a trial, Mr.
Kiriakou loses an opportunity to try and persuade a jury that
his motives were benign, and that the harm to national security
resulting from his disclosure was negligible and insignificant.
Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board Invite Public Input:
The long-dormant Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB)
announced that it will hold its first public meeting next week and it
invited members of the public to provide input to help shape the Board’s
near-term agenda. The PCLOB was created in response to a recommendation
of the 9/11 Commission that “there should be a board within the
executive branch to oversee… the commitment the government makes to
defend our civil liberties.”
Duck and Cover- Two Bits on the Risk from Nuclear Attacks:
Dr. Y reflects on the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis and
current nuclear threats to the United States and the impact of mass
fires (what used to be called a firestorm) from a nuclear attack in a
new post on the ScienceWonk Blog.
An Updated Catalog of Army Weapon Systems:
Secrecy News has obtained a copy of the 2013 edition of the U.S. Army's
annual Weapon Systems Handbook, which is filled with updated
information on dozens of weapon systems, the military contractors who
produce them, and the foreign countries that purchase them.
"Negative Reciprocity" Emerges in the Security Clearance System:
In the world of security clearances for access to classified
information, the term “reciprocity” is used to indicate that one
executive branch agency should ordinarily recognize and accept a
security clearance that has been granted by another executive branch
agency. So possessing a clearance from one agency should simplify the
process of access approval at another agency. But the opposite is not
supposed to be true. If an agency refuses for some reason to recognize
the clearance granted by
another agency, that refusal is not supposed to incur loss of clearance
in the original agency.
Intelligence Imagery Set to be Disclosed in 2013:
Intelligence community officials
say that a massive quantity of historical intelligence satellite
imagery from the KH-9 HEXAGON program is being declassified and will be
made public in a series of releases that are scheduled over the coming
year. In January 2011, DNI James R. Clapper formally declared that the
KH-9 HEXAGON program was obsolete, and that declassification review of
all program imagery should therefore commence. KH-9 HEXAGON
was operational from 1971 to 1984.
Cuban Missile Crisis- Nuclear Order of Battle:
At the peak of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the United States had some
3,500 nuclear weapons ready to use on command, while the Soviet Union
had perhaps 300-500. The Cuban Missile Crisis order of battle of useable
weapons represented only a small portion of the total inventories of
nuclear warheads the United States and Russia possessed at the time.
Illustrating its enormous numerical nuclear superiority, the U.S.
nuclear stockpile in 1962 included more than 25,500 warheads (mostly for
battlefield weapons). The Soviet Union had about
3,350.
Court Orders FBI to Release Withheld Information:
As often happens, the Federal Bureau of Investigation invoked national
security a few years ago to justify withholding certain information from
a Freedom of Information Act requester named Deirdre McKiernan Hetzler.
But as rarely happens, a court last month critically assessed the FBI
national security claim and ordered the Bureau to release some of the
withheld information. Ms. Hetzler, acting pro se (i.e. without an
attorney), had requested records concerning her deceased father, who had
once been the subject of an FBI
investigation. The FBI provided her with some records but withheld
others, stating that they remained classified in order to protect an
intelligence activity.
Historian Anna K. Nelson, RIP:
Steven
Aftergood remembers Professor Anna K. Nelson, a tenacious and effective
advocate for improved public access to national security records who
passed away last month. Among many other posts, she served as a
presidentially-appointed member of the JFK Assassination Records Review
Board, which was tasked to oversee the declassification of records
concerning the assassination of President Kennedy. Because of the
perseverance of Dr. Nelson and her colleagues, that Board was uniquely
productive in overcoming longstanding barriers to declassification,
particularly those pertaining to intelligence agency records.
Federal Support for Academic Research and More from CRS:
Secrecy News has obtained recently released CRS reports on topics such
as the nuclear fuel cycle, navy warfare and counterterrorism operations,
Chinese naval modernization and Libya transition and U.S. policy.
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