Secrecy News: Enemy Combatants Report; Maverick Terrorists; Secretive Bush
Secrecy News: Enemy Combatants
Report; Maverick Terrorists; Secretive Bush
About
Secrecy News
SECRECY NEWS is an email publication of
the Federation of American Scientists (FAS)
Project on Government Secrecy. It provides
informal coverage of new developments in secrecy,
security and intelligence policies, as well
as links to new acquisitions on the Federation
of American Scientists web site. It
is published 2 to 3 times a week, or as events
warrant. Secrecy
News Article Index
A recent Congressional Research Service report provides additional
background to the current controversy over how to deal with
individuals such as Jose Padilla, who are American citizens but
are also deemed by the President to be "enemy combatants."
Direct public access to this report has not been authorized by
Congress.
THE THREAT OF THE UNALIGNED TERRORIST
"If you think the terrorist threat stems from organized groups, I
think you miss the problem we see today," emailed M.E. Bowman,
deputy general counsel of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in
response to a remark made in the previous issue of Secrecy News.
"The 9/11 hijackers were not an organization. Nor did they
associate themselves overtly with al Qaeda, which sponsored them.
And this proves the point!" Mr. Bowman wrote in a recent article.
"The larger threat is not al Qaeda, but the person who, while
otherwise leading a normal life somewhere in the world, decides to
become a terrorist."
The
basis for this judgment, and its implications, were explored in "Some-Time,
Part-Time and One-Time Terrorism" by M.E. Bowman, published in Intelligencer:
Journal of U.S. Intelligence Studies, a publication of the Association
of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO), Winter/Spring 2003.
A copy is posted
here, with the kind permission of AFIO.
GOVERNMENT SECRECY EXPANDS UNDER BUSH
"The [Bush] administration has been unusually successful keeping
its policy deliberations out of public view, and millions of
government documents -- including many historical records
previously available -- have been removed from the public
domain," observes Dana Milbank in the Washington Post today.
