Intelligence

On a conference call with reporters to release an unclassified version of the new National Intelligence Strategy, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair revealed an intelligence community budget that goes far over recent disclosures of its total. You’re spending $75 billion on intelligence, America.
“We really believe the American people deserve to know about their intelligence [...]

As Daphne has written this week, the residents of Standish, Mich., are starting to turn against a proposal to send terrorism detainees from Guantanamo Bay to their town’s prison, a proposal floated by the legislature and seconded by Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) to alleviate Standish’s economic woes.  David Munson, the owner of a tavern in [...]

Blink and you’ll miss this, from National Security Adviser Jim Jones’ “Meet The Press” appearance yesterday:
MR. GREGORY:  Is it still your belief that Osama bin Laden is in Pakistan?
GEN.  JONES:  That one’s a little bit more elusive.  We are still very much on the hunt.  We think that he’s still in that general region.  But [...]

The Church and Pike committees of the 1970s exposed CIA lawlessness; created modern legal and congressional intelligence oversight structures; and cleaved the CIA’s history into before and after periods.

To build on one aspect of Daphne’s post, there was an interesting debate during the July 7 Senate hearing on military commissions about the degree to which it was feasible to expect soldiers on the battlefields of Afghanistan to consider the courtroom admissibility of statements they extract from detainees they take. The general consensus was [...]

Because it’s 5 p.m. on a July Friday, the leaders of the Senate intelligence committee, Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Kit Bond (R-Mo.), have announced that the committee’s unanimously agreed on fiscal year 2010’s intelligence-funding authorization bill. (The full bill isn’t public yet.) Among its requirements is this curious provision, according to a bill summary:
Require the [...]

You knew it was coming.  Marcy Wheeler and Greg Sargent report that Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas), the chairman of the House intelligence committee, will open an investigation into the lack of disclosure to Congress of the CIA’s “significant actions” canceled by Director Leon Panetta — and as part of that inquiry, they’ll get into what [...]

So we don’t know exactly what “significant actions” CIA Director Leon Panetta has acknowledged to the House intelligence committee were not properly briefed to Congress. Marc Ambinder tries to sort through the possibilities but understandably has to go a bit meta because — well, because he, like the rest of us, doesn’t know, really.
Among the [...]

So much for the most-transparent-administration-ever stuff.  Remember the Democrats on the House intelligence committee’s effort to open briefings on covert intelligence programs to a broader pool of members of Congress than the so-called “Gang of Eight?” And that they pushed that change because those restricted briefings enabled the Bush administration to keep Congress in the [...]

T.I. has prudent advice for conflict mediation. Marc Ambinder reports that the dispute over whether CIA Director Leon Panetta or Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair should have the authority to appoint and remove intelligence chiefs in foreign stations — historically a CIA prerogative — is going to Vice President Joe Biden for a resolution. [...]