N.287 dated 9 May 1996
page 2

The Best U.S. Intelligence Web Site

The best Internet site on the American intelligence community is undoubtedly one run by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) which has been fighting a long battle to declassify secrets that no longer need to be kept in the Cold War's aftermath (Pr oject on Government Secrecy-PGS) and to encourage an overhaul of intelligence services (Intelligence Reform Project-IRP). The site (http//:www.fas.org/) offers a lot of striking documents and pictures. In their pages, Ste ven Aftergood and John Pike, leading figures in PGS and IRP, show satellite images (with resolutions from 10 to 1 meter) of the main buildings housing American intelligence agencies as well as pictures of the same premises and maps indicating their exact location.

When the Brown commission published its report on reforms in American intelligence on March 1 it recommended that the community's budget not be disclosed. By cross-checking several documents and using reverse engineering methods, FAS published a relativel y precise estimate of what is effectively the community's budget of around $28 billion (a detailed analysis with maps and tables is available on http://www.fas.org/irp/commission/budget.htm). Pres ident Bill Clinton indirectly paid tribute to that effort on April 23 by suggesting that Congress adopt a bill to make the budget public.

Drawing on open sources, Pike also drew up a first directory of 160 companies that work for American intelligence (http://www.fas.org/irp/contract/index.html). The directory is constantly updated on the web. Re cently, FAS persuaded John Deutch to make the Director of Central Intelligence's report for 1994 public and published it in March on its site (http://www.fas.org/irp/cia94.htm)

In addition, Aftergood publishes a newsletter entitled Secrecy & Government Bulletin (SG&B) every month. Now in its fifth year, the publication has produced a number of major scoops ever since it revealed the existence of an on-going Special Access Pro gram for the first time in 1991. Named Timber Wind, the project to build a nuclear-powered engine for a rocket was finally scrapped. SG&B is currently financed by the Rockefeller Family Fund, the CS Fund and several other donors. But it is seeking fresh f unding in order to continue its work.