FAS Roundup: November 3, 2015

The 2015 Summer/Fall edition of the Public Interest Report is available for viewing on fas.org.

Scientist Spotlight
 

This new installment features prominent FAS-affiliated scientists and engineers. Dr. Bethany Goldblum is a member of the research faculty at UC Berkeley's Department of Nuclear Engineering  and is currently focusing her studies on nuclear security science. Read the full Q&A here. 
 

From the Blogs

Army Doctrine on Protection of Civilians: For moral, legal, and tactical reasons, it is U.S. Army policy to protect civilians during military operations, a newly updated Army publication explains. And yet sometimes that policy will fail.

Advisory Committee Meetings Often Closed, and More from CRS: The 1972 Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), one of the “open government” laws, generally mandates that federal advisory committee meetings be held openly, except under certain specified circumstances. But over the past ten years, the number of closed meetings has actually increased, a new analysis by the Congressional Research Service found.

ODNI Issues Transparency Implementation Plan: The Office of the Director of National Intelligence yesterday released a transparency implementation plan that establishes guidelines for increasing public disclosure of information by and about U.S. intelligence agencies.

Open Source Center (OSC) Becomes Open Source Enterprise (OSE): The DNI Open Source Center has been redesignated the Open Source Enterprise and incorporated in CIA’s new Directorate of Digital Innovation. The Open Source Center, established in 2005, was tasked to collect and analyze open source information of intelligence value across all media – – print, broadcast and online. The OSC was the successor to the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), which gathered and translated world news coverage and other open source information for half a century.

Electing the Speaker of the House, and More from CRS: Procedures for electing a new Speaker of the House of Representatives are outlined in a new report from the Congressional Research Service. See Electing the Speaker of the House of Representatives: Frequently Asked Questions, October 23, 2015.

On Foreign Disclosure of U.S. Intelligence: Classified U.S. intelligence information may be shared with foreign recipients when it is advantageous to the U.S. to do so and when it is not otherwise prohibited by law, according to a directive that was publicly released last week by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

At CRS, Confidentiality is an End in Itself: The ability of Congressional Research Service analysts to support congressional deliberations is substantially enabled by (if not entirely predicated on) the confidentiality with which requests from individual Members of Congress and the CRS responses to those requests are handled. A new CRS policy statement embraces the “fundamental core value” of confidentiality. But then CRS ratchets it up to the point of absurdity.

 

FAS in the News

• Oct 30: Politico, The publicly funded reports you can't read 
• Oct 29: Washington Post, Trying to crack open Congress's confidential think tank after a century of secrecy
• Oct 28: Politico, How the Army's $3 billion spy blimp went from boondoggle to laughingstock
• Oct 28: World Affairs, US Upgrade Security at Nuclear Bases Near Syria
• Oct 28: Federal Register, Final Rule on Historical Research in the Files of the Office of the Secretary of Defense
• Oct 28: ValueWalk, U.S. Underestimates Power Of China-Russia Alliance
• Oct 28: The Daily Caller, Has Being A Skilled Liar Become A Qualification For High Office?
• Oct 27: Politico Under the Radar, Clapper's transparency plan for intelligence community grinds forward
• Oct 27: review of The Red Web by Sally McGrance, LA Review of Books, This Is Not a Phone Conversation
• Oct 26: Government Executive, Leaked CRS Memo Rekindles Debate on Protecting Lawmaker Confidentiality
• Oct 25: The National Interest, Get Ready, America: Here Comes China's Ballistic Missile Defenses