Background The following is the “President’s Intelligence Checklist” for February 1, 1962. Although previously released, The Black Vault filed a Mandatory Declassification Review request for it to be re-reviewed, and redactions lifted. Only one line was newly released, but it serves as an example that this was not a waste. The revealed line shows a document that can be sought after via FOIA. Document Archive The President’s Intelligence Checklist | February 1, 1962 [11 Pages, 2.6MB]
Author: John Greenewald
Background From the document below: “This reconstruction of Agency involvement in plans to assassinate Fidel Castro is at best an imperfect history. Because of the extreme sensitivity of the operations being discussed or attempted, as a matter of principle no official records were kept of planning, of approvals, or of implementation. The few written records that do exist are either largely tangential to the main events or were put on paper from memory years afterward.” In July of 2016, The Black Vault filed a Mandatory Declassification Review (MDR) request for this record. Although previously released, it was heavily redacted. The…
Background On December 16, 2020, the Department of Justice unsealed the indictment charging Cholo Abdi Abdullah. You can find their announcement archived below, along with the indictment. Department of Justice Press Release The Department of Justice announced the unsealing of an indictment charging Cholo Abdi Abdullah with six counts of terrorism-related offenses arising from his activities as an operative of the foreign terrorist organization al Shabaab, including conspiring to hijack aircraft in order to conduct a 9/11-style attack in the United States. Abdullah was arrested in July 2019 in the Philippines on local charges, and was subsequently transferred on Dec.…
The following was a press release by the U.S. Air Force on December 16, 2020. Signaling a major leap forward for national defense in the digital age, the Air Force flew with artificial intelligence as a working aircrew member onboard a military aircraft for the first time Dec. 15. The AI algorithm, known as ARTUµ, flew with the pilot, U.S. Air Force Maj. “Vudu”, on a U-2 Dragon Lady assigned to the 9th Reconnaissance Wing at Beale Air Force Base. Air Combat Command’s U-2 Federal Laboratory researchers developed ARTUµ and trained it to execute specific in-flight tasks that otherwise would be done by the…
Background Studies in Intelligence is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal on intelligence that is published by the Center for the Study of Intelligence, a group within the United States Central Intelligence Agency. It contains both classified and unclassified articles on the methodology and history of the field of intelligence gathering. Document Archive Studies in Intelligence, Volume 2, Number 3, 1958 [133 Pages, 45MB]