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From the Blogs
Putting Declassified Records to Good Use: The
culmination of the declassification process is when the records are
finally examined by an interested reader and their contents are absorbed
into the body of public knowledge. Declassification of government
records can be a tedious bureaucratic process. But at its most
successful, it can also be an electrifying, revelatory source of
fundamental new insights. Steven Aftergood writes about new initiatives
being used by historians, computer scientists and researchers to analyze
these records.
First Pictures of B61-12 Show New Military Capability: The
U.S. government has published the first images of the Air Force’s new
B61-12 nuclear bomb, showing the new guided tail kit that will provide
new military capabilities in violation of the Nuclear Posture Review.
The tail kit will increase the accuracy of the bomb and enable it to be
used against targets that today require bombs with higher yields. The
new weapons will be deployed to Europe, replacing nearly 200 non-guided
B61 bombs in Belgium, Germany, Italy, Turkey and the
Netherlands.
Inspector General Blasts NRO Secrecy Practices: The
National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the agency that builds and
operates U.S. intelligence satellites, frequently makes mistakes when it
classifies national security information, according to an assessment
performed last year by the NRO Inspector General. The report said, "From
the classified documents we reviewed at NRO headquarters, 114 of 134
documents contained classification errors." The IG report was performed
in response to the “Reducing Over-Classification Act of 2010,” which
required the Inspectors General of all agencies that classify
information to evaluate their classification programs.
Options for US Nuclear Weapon Pit Production:
A new CRS report examines the infrastructure for producing the
plutonium “pits” that are used in U.S. nuclear weapons, and the
feasibility of sharply increasing the rate of pit production. The CRS
report does not deal with whether or why that is a sensible goal, but
instead probes deeply into how it could possibly be achieved. In recent
years, U.S. pit production has not exceeded 11 pits per year.
Kakehashi Trip Report #5:
In the fifth of a series of postings by Fellow for Emerging Technology
Michael Edward Walsh on his participation in the Japan Foundation’s
Kakehashi Visit for Young Public Intellectuals, Walsh writes about his
meeting with members of the Japanese Shipowners Association and the
growing maritime security threat posed by Somali pirates and other
terrorists to international commercial maritime shipping.
U.S. Military Casualty Statistics and More from CRS: Secrecy
News has obtained recently released CRS reports on topics such as U.S.
military casualty statistics, current issues in Ukraine and countering
violent extremism in the United States.
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