FAS | Intelligence | News | 2003 ||

February 2003 Intelligence News

• DoD Briefing on Draft Military Commission Instruction, news briefing, February 28. "Today we are publishing a draft document that spells out some of the crimes that military commissions may try."
• DoD Releases Draft Military Commission Instruction, news release, February 28. "The Department of Defense today released a draft military commission instruction entitled 'Crimes and Elements for Trials by Military Commission.' This instruction lists and defines certain violations of the laws of war and other offenses triable by military commission."
• Justice Dept Statement on Congressional Oversight of FISA, press release, February 25. "The report unfairly criticizes the Department of Justice for an alleged lack of responsiveness."
• Colin Powell: U.S. "Not Proud" of 1973 Covert Action in Chile, interview with Black Entertainment Television, February 20. "We now have a more accountable way of handling such matters..."
• Statement of the Attorney General on the Indictment of Sami Al-Arian, et al, press briefing, February 20. "The detailed, 50 count indictment charges the eight defendants with operating a racketeering enterprise from 1984 until the present that supported numerous violent terrorist activities associated with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad."
• Members of Palestinian Islamic Jihad Arrested, Indicted in Florida, Justice Department press release, February 20.
• Attorney General Statement on the Conviction of Brian Patrick Regan, press release, February 20. "Brian Regan's attempts to sell our national security were a direct violation of his repeated oaths to protect and defend the United States of America, its Constitution and its national security secrets."
• Strategies for Securing Cyberspace and Protection of Infrastructure Released Statement by the President, White House release, February 14. "These strategies will help us protect America from those who would do us harm, whether through physical destruction or by attacking our infrastructures through cyberspace."
• President Bush Releases National Strategy for Combating Terrorism, White House release, February 14. "This strategy outlines the effort our nation is making to win the war against global terror."
• President Speaks at FBI on New Terrorist Threat Integration Center, White House release, February 14. "The goal is to develop a comprehensive picture of terrorist activity."
• Strengthening Intelligence to Better Protect America, White House fact sheet, February 14. On the new Terrorist Threat Information Center (TTIC).
• Senator Edwards Proposes Homeland Intelligence Agency, press release, February 13. "Senator John Edwards on Thursday introduced legislation to create a Homeland Intelligence Agency to replace FBI units that failed to uncover the September 11 terrorists and still cannot find suspected al Qaeda operatives in the United States."
• Total Information Awareness (TIA) Update, Defense Dept press release, February 7. "The Department of Defense will establish two boards to provide oversight of the Total Information Awareness Project, the program designed to develop tools to track terrorists. The two boards, an internal oversight board and an outside advisory committee, will work with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), as it continues its research."
• UK Government 'intelligence' report on Iraq revealed as plagiarism, press release, February 6. "The British government's latest report on Iraq's non-compliance with weapons inspections, which claims to draw on 'intelligence material', has been revealed as a wholesale plagiarism of three old and publicly-available articles, one of them by a graduate student in California. The compiler did not even clean up the typos or standardize the spelling."
• Telling Secrets: Not Just What, but How by Dana Priest, Washington Post, February 6. "Never had the U.S. government disclosed as much sensitive, recent intelligence as Secretary of State Colin L. Powell did yesterday when he released surreptitiously intercepted calls between Iraqi officials and information supplied by Iraqi informants apparently close to Saddam Hussein."
• Spy in the sky good enough for most experts on the ground by Stuart Miller, The Guardian, February 6. "Last night, satellite imaging and chemical weapons experts agreed that while the images might not have been as conclusive as the photographs that proved the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba in 1963, they offered compelling evidence of Iraq's failure to cooperate with the UN."
• Secretary Colin L. Powell's Briefing to the UN Security Council: Iraq - Failing to Disarm, text and imagery @globalsecurity.org, February 5.