Issue 2

Secrecy and Society issue #2 is finally published. Among the articles included in the issue is my article on the Psychological Strategy Board.

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As I delve more fully into the history of the Psychological Strategy Board through the CIA’s CREST system, I’m amazed at the richness of historical documents and especially how they provide a snapshot of post-WWII ideology. One document in particular titled Preliminary Staff Meeting National Psychological Strategy Board (NPSB) is a record of a May 8, 1951 meeting with “General W. B. Smith, General Magruder, Admiral Stevens, Assistant Secretary Barrett, Mr. Allan Dulles, Mr. Frank Wisner, Mr. Philip Davidson, Mr. Max Millikan, and Mr. H. A. Winston, Recorder.” Among the topics discussed at the meeting was the purpose and mission of the new Psychological Board, covert and overt psychological warfare, NSC 10/2, the VOA (Voice of America), World Bank loans and the State Department.

Around page 3 (count when scrolling as there aren’t assigned page numbers), Allen Dulles asks General Walter B. Smith to recount the “lie detector story he told yesterday,”

General Smith: We had a man who refused to take the lie detector test. They told him that his chief took it, Smith took it, Dulles took it, and that he ought to take it. Still he objected. Finally he said, ‘Well, if you force me to, I’ll tell you why I don’t want to take it.’

Fast forward, the gist of Smith’s story is the “man” didn’t want to be subjected to a polygraph as he had cheated on his wife during the war and might be asked about being faithful. What follows is a revealing statement from Gen. Smith regarding sex, loyalty, and security that ends with a question:

In these cases I have only one question: that we get these name checks. You would be surprised at the number of elderly gentlemen who come to work for the Government and whose lady visitors slip away from the house early in the morning. The only question is, are there any homosexuals involved? (p.4)

The minutes reflect no response to Gen. Smith’s question, but instead shift to the business of locating a (pro forma) director of the fledgling PSB:

Assume: First, the director is a front. You can get planning and operations in the absence of a director. (p.5)

 

Ah, to be a fly on the wall.

Japanese-American Internment

Today is the somber anniversary of Executive Order 9066  (February 19, 1942) that led to the institutionalized, forced roundup (“mass migration” as mentioned in the film below) and detention of Japanese-American citizens. Marking the 75th anniversary, Russ Kick @ Memory Hole 2 created an accessible list from NARA records of the approximately 104,000 individuals sent to internment camps.

 

 

In honor of these individuals, I post a work begun in library school during the reparations and redress movement titled The Desert Years: An Annotated Bibliography of Japanese-American lnternment in Arizona and the United States during World War ll. The foreword is written by my mother-in-law Monica Itoi Sone, whose name appears on the roster with her siblings, parents, and future husband.

The Desert Years is mentioned in an online exhibition [Wayback Machine] on internment camps in Arizona, but this is the first time the bibliography appears in digital format. I scanned two versions of the bibliography from a tightly bound issue and hope it serves as a memory tool.

The Desert Years (color scan) | The Desert Years (black/white scan)

Integrity of Info / Fact Checking / “Fake News”

With the election results now in, what is termed “fake news”  is big news lately. The Washington Post recently posted a guide titled The Fact Checker’s Guide for Detecting Fake News. Poynter has a guide; HuffPo has a cheat sheet too. Consortium News weighed in on the matter, and so did OpEd News. Facebook now has assistance from Snopes, FactCheck.org, Politifact, ABC News, and AP to “make reporting hoaxes easier and disrupt the financial incentives of fake news spammers.”  This focus is fine and good, but what are we really talking about when we discuss fake news?

From where I sit as a former academic librarian, now college instructor and scholar, “fake news” has been with us a very long time in the guise of propaganda and its various forms, even seeping into the territory of information warfare and conspiracy theory building (see my Lexicon  and Goldman & Maret for definitions). Moreover, fake news is deeply intertwined with critical/analytical thinking and types of literacy (critical media literacy, data literacy, global critical media literacy, information, media-information literacy, news literacy, and research literacy). More importantly, librarians and teachers have been consistently – actively – involved in teaching literacies at the ground level from public libraries, academic libraries through the educational system  for decades. 

There’s oodles to say on the subject of news fakery, such as how specific literacies intersect and mesh with critical thinking skills and analytical reasoning, as well as  the long scholarly history of  fields and disciplines involved in confronting “fake news” (albeit using a different term and concept), such as journalism, media ecology, sociology (critical information studies, sociology of knowledge, social constructivism). Here I bracket a deeper discussion to share a few things from a course I recently taught at the School of Information, San Jose State University titled titled INFO 281-14, Integrity of Information.

Below I share a few notes from the first week of the course and a checklist I developed with the brave students who took the course with me the first time out; perhaps this info will shift thinking away from “fake” to more serious and significant issues on what I think of as conditions of information.

_____________

Abbreviated first week notes:

U.S. federal agencies first began using the concept of integrity with information quality and security with the 1995 Paperwork Reduction Act, P.L. 104-13, often referred to as the PRA. Described, but not defined in Sec. 3504 (B) of the PRA as “the integrity, objectivity, impartiality, utility, and confidentiality of information collected for statistical purposes,” by its association with these adjectives, integrity of information has a link to the roots of integrity as complete, whole, perhaps trustworthy information. In a new book titled Intelligence and Information Policy for National Security: Key Terms and Concepts that I co-edited with Dr. Jan Goldman, I included several uses of the information integrity/integrity of information concept (II). Below I briefly share these definitions so you can get a feel for how integrity is related to accuracy and credibility of information.

First, the Office of Management and Budget (2001) or OMB, while it does not define integrity, describes its features and associates the II concept with information quality throughout the life cycle of information.¹ OMB directed federal agencies to develop guidelines and principles on information quality:

It is crucial that information Federal agencies disseminate meets these guidelines. In this respect, the fact that the Internet enables agencies to communicate information quickly and easily to a wide audience not only offers great benefits to society, but also increases the potential harm that can result from the dissemination of information that does not meet basic information quality guidelines.

Secondly, the U.S. Department of Defense Center for Development of Security Excellence (2012) took the step of defining II as

The state that exists when information is unchanged from its source and has not been accidentally or intentionally modified, altered, or destroyed.

We can further enlarge our view of II through the remarks of Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper (2015) in the Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community. You might have seen Director Clapper’s statements in the news:

In the future, however, we might also see more cyber operations that will change or manipulate electronic information in order to compromise its integrity (i.e., accuracy and reliability) instead of deleting it or disrupting access. (p.3)

Successful cyber operations targeting the integrity of information would need to overcome any institutionalized checks and balances designed to prevent the manipulation of data, for example, market monitoring and clearing functions in the financial sector. (p.4)

Note that Clapper’s comments associate information integrity/integrity of information with accuracy, manipulation, and reliability. Clapper’s highlighting of these features suggests that information, especially in the online sphere, can be altered as to become disinformation, lies, misinformation, and/or propaganda; in other words, information is tampered with in order to present a specific perspective and to actively influence and/or mislead the reader by either omitting important details or flat out manipulating them.

Notes

1 OMB (2000) defines the information life cycle as “the stages through which information passes, typically characterized as creation or collection, processing, dissemination, use, storage, and disposition.”

References

Center for Development of Security Excellence. (2012). Glossary of security terms and definitions. U.S. Department of Defense, November 2012. Retrieved from http://www.cdse.edu/documents/cdse/Glossary_Handbook.pdf

Clapper, J.R. (2015).Statement for the record: Worldwide threat assessment of the US intelligence community.Office of the Director of National Intelligence, February 26. Senate Armed Services Committee. Retrieved from http://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Unclassified_2015_ATA_SFR_-_SASC_FINAL.pdf

Office of Management and Budget. (2001). Guidelines for ensuring and maximizing the quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of Information disseminated by federal agencies. Retrieved from https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/fedreg_final_information_quality_guidelines/

 

Here’s a copy of a research checklist I developed out of the course: Process_checklist

Insect Cyborgs & HI-MEMS/MAVS/NAVS

Under the Freedom of Information Act, in July 2015 I requested the following information from DARPA:

DARPA’s role in the development and application of Hybrid Insect Microelectromechanical Systems and microelectromechanical (HI-MEMS) systems. My request also includes release of records on the following subjects:

• Bioelectronic neuromuscular interfaces for insect cyborg flight control
• The Controlled Biological and Biomimetic Systems Program
• Insect-based MAVS/NAVS (Micro and Nano Air Vehicles)
• Insect cyborgs
• Microfluidic control of insect locomotor activity
• Radio-frequency system for neural flight control
• The use of Hybrid Insect Microelectromechanical Systems and microelectromechanical (MEMS) specifically related to bees

DARPA released 88 pages, including one report by Amit Lal titled “ Microsystems, Scaling, and Integration” found in DTIC.  Page 70 of the .pdf contains the header “Key Experiments in 1940s,” which is suggestive of a deepening interest – perhaps even by ARPA, the predecessor of DARPA – in creating “technology to reliably integrate microsystems payloads on insects to enable insect cyborgs” (p. 68).  Reading these documents can’t help but bring up those perennial ethical questions regarding human use and exploitation of animals in war, combat, and surveillance. Here’s the 88 page doc released under FOIA: 15-f-1559-case-documents.

Below is a short bib of materials that helped me grasp the finer points of this Promethean technology; I also included several items that sparked my interest in cyborgs and domination a while back, such as Donna Haraway’s complex work and Chris Hables Gray Cyborg Citizen (Chris was a member of my doc committee). Also included is a brand spanking new article by Hutson on the subject of insect cyborgs.

I’ll leave readers with a quote from Adam Dodd (2014) that sums up the current reality of projects involving HI-MEMS:

DARPA has no problem calling a cyborg a cyborg; indeed, the agency is not known for downplaying its own science fictional aspirations — quite the opposite, DARPA’S use of the term anchors my own: I am not discussing the cyborg as a material abstraction, as “a condensed figuration of both material reality and feminist/popular imagination… as an entry point into the contemporary turn to ontological issues within feminist theory and technoscience studies” (Âsberg, 2010, p. 1), though such discussions are not without utility. I am discussing, critiquing, and indeed reporting on, the cyborg as a material entity that exists in the here and now. (p. 162)

 

A Short Bib

Alberts, David, and Papp, Daniel S. (eds.). (2001). Information Age Anthology: The Information Age Military. Volume III. Center for Advanced Concepts and Technology, Advanced Concepts, Technologies, and Information Strategies Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University: Washington, DC. http://www.dodccrp.org/files/Alberts_Anthology_III.pdf

Armstrong, Robert, Drapeau, Mark D., Loeb, Cheryl A., and Valdes, James J. (eds.). (2010). Bio-Inspired Innovation and National Security. Center for Technology and National Security Policy, National Defense University Press: Washington, DC. http://ctnsp.dodlive.mil/files/2010/10/Bio-Inspired-Innovation.pdf 

Chung, Aram J., and David Erickson. (2008). Microfluidic Control of Insect Locomotor Activity. In Proceedings of IMECE 2008 ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition, October 31-November 6, 2008, Boston  (pp. 949-952).  (google scholar)

Delaney, Lois. (2011). Military Applications of Apiculture: The (Other) Nature of War. Masters of Military Studies Research Paper, Marine Corps University. ADA600636. https://publicaccess.dtic.mil/psm/api/service/search/search?site=default_collection&q=ADA600636#

Dodd, Adam. (2014). The Trouble with Insect Cyborgs. Society & Animals 22, no. 2: 153-173. (google scholar)

Gray, Chris Hables. (2000). Cyborg Citizen: Politics in the Posthuman Age. New York: Routledge.

Hundley, Richard O., and Eugene C. Gritton. (1994). Future Technology-Driven Revolutions in Military Operations. Results of a Workshop. RAND-DB-110-ARPA. https://publicaccess.dtic.mil/psm/api/service/search/search?site=tr_all&q=a285478#

Hutson, Matthew. (2016, November). Even Bugs Will Be Bugged. The Atlantic. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/11/even-bugs-will-be-bugged/501113/

Kick, Russ. (2016, August 22). The Navy’s Remote-Controlled Sharks. The Memory Hole 2. http://thememoryhole2.org/blog/remote-controlled-sharks

Kladitis, Paul E. (2010). How Small Is Too Small? Technology into 2035. Wright  Flyer Paper No. 46. Air University, Air Command and Staff College, Maxwell AFB. https://publicaccess.dtic.mil/psm/api/service/search/search?site=default_collection&q=ADA604247#

Lal, Amit. Microsystems, Scaling, and Integration (Briefing charts). (2007). DARPA Microsystems Technology Symposium, San Jose, California on March 5-7. ADA 503730. (Included in the above FOIA release and DTIC).

U.S. Department of Defense. (2007). Unmanned Systems Roadmap 2007-2032. ADA475002.  https://publicaccess.dtic.mil/psm/api/service/search/search?site=default_collection&q=ADA475002#

Update

Black Mirror 3 (BM3) ep. 6 titled “Hated in the Nation” is pure synchronicity in terms of my FOIA post. The opening segment of this episode is a chilling announcement of extinction of the Siberian Crane, but also showed the dystopian replacement for honeybees: ATIs or autonomous cyborg bees, who replicate, create hives, and operate in the natural world via pattern recognition. The solar-fueled bees were activated “for the second summer” to pollinate in BM3’s futuretechnoworld. In a twist I didn’t see coming, the cyborg bees are dual use technology (tech that has civilian as well as military and/or national security applications). You can read more about the episode 6 at Thrillist as well as catch a glimpse at the cyborg pollinators. It’s important to note that a DARPA document included in the FOIA release (if I’m interpreting the doc correctly) excluded bees as “insects too unpredictable (temperature, wind, humidity, mating, feeding, etc.)” (p.56) .

See the 2016 interview with Eye in the Sky director Gavin Hood on the use of nano hummingbirds and the micro RPA/M.A.V. (Microaerial Vehicle) beetle depicted in the film.

As bee populations dwindle, robot bees may pick up some of their pollination slack (Khan, Los Angeles Times 2017): “Scientists in Japan say they’ve managed to turn an unassuming drone into a remote-controlled pollinator by attaching horsehairs coated with a special, sticky gel to its underbelly.”

And now the bee drone prototype.
Photo of the “robotic flower pollinator”courtesy of CNN (2/15/2017).

 

 

Plus the DARPA is “hacking” insects with virus DNA (Matt Reynolds in Wired, October 4, 2018), the “rise of the robot pollinators” on The Salt (March 3, 2017), &  DARPA’s “Microscale Bio-mimetic Robust Artificial Intelligence Networks,” or μBRAIN (January 4, 2019).

And now, insect drones.

New Book

With Jan Goldman, I edited Intelligence and Information Policy for National Security Key Terms and Concepts (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016). The front cover is a photo of President Harry S. Truman and members of the National Security Council on August 19, 1948.

 

“Sanitized” CAIB

While searching the CIA’s CREST database at College Park,  I retrieved a “sanitized” copy of Covert Action Information Bulletin, or CAIB (summer 1982 #17). CAIB was first published in 1978, with a title change with #43 to Covert Action Quarterly. Both iterations of the periodical included articles by many well-known journalists and activists. The subject of #17 is “US Fakes Data in Chemical War,” which examined the moratorium on chemical weapons and public concern (and secrecy) with biological warfare during the Nixon administration. The editors write that, “biological warfare is a crime against humanity, and the U.S. government insists it is not engaged in it. The evidence we present refutes those denials.”

The point of this post is not to dismiss the important forensic research published by CAIB/CAQ contributors, or foster debate regarding the parapolitcs of one of its founders, former CIA officer Philip Agee. What I find fascinating is that CIA would “sanitize” and approve for release material that is open source, a publication that had subscribers, could be copied, widely distributed – and held by public and academic libraries.* Nothing appears redacted within the fifty-two page issue, so not sure what “sanitized” for release actually means. This seems almost a failure of the security classification system in terms of cloaking embarrassing or contrary information.

As far as I can tell, a .pdf of #17 isn’t on the Web. Here it is: 17_CAIB fakedata

________________

* A few years after the Church Committee hearings, two years before the CIA Information Act of 1984, and a good three years before CIA v Sims. It was the Reagan years of EO 12356.

Weather Mod / Geoengineering Secrecy

Approximately a year ago, I used W. R. Derrick Sewell’s article “Weather and Climate Control” as a basis for a Freedom of Information Act request. In his article, Dr. Sewell cites a table that outlines planned and estimated funding for weather modification projects by federal agency. According to Interdepartmental Committee for Atmospheric Science (ICAS) data cited by Sewell, the Bureau of Reclamation (Department of the Interior) and National Science Foundation received the largest amount of funding during the years 1966-1973 with the Department of Defense third in line (Sewell, 1973, p. 34).

Using this information, I requested “any and all records regarding the historic use of weather modification, climate modification, geoengineering, and environmental and geophysical warfare operations and programs” from these and other agencies. In the request, I also asked for records on Project Foggy Cloud, Project Overseed, Project Skyfire, the Santa Barbara Project, GLOMEX, BOMEX, NORPAX, Pop Eye, Blue Nile, Intermediary, and Compatriot. This FOIA is an example of a new state of being I call FOIA futility.

Agencies responded to requests as follows:

Air Force: Forwarded from DIA, the National & Air Space Intelligence Center (NASIC) responded:

A classification review was conducted with the utmost diligence to determine if the record you requested may be released in whole or in part. After reviewing the document it has been determined that some information can be released, but the FOIA requires that other portions be withheld because of classification and personal privacy interests. Listed below are the exemptions that apply to the requested document: United States Code, Title 5, Section 552(bxl);  Executive Order 13526; united states Code, Title 5, Section s52(bx3), l0 u.s.C. 424. Section f.a(c); and United States Code, Title 5, Section 552(bX6).

NASIC released one document, heavily marked and not dated. The markings are fascinating reading as is the section on “low-tech” weather mod: NASIC_weathermod_FOIA

CIA: Forwarded from DIA, the CIA responded they

Reviewed the material and determined it is currently and properly classified and must be denied in its entirety on the basis of FOIA exemptions (bXl) and (bX3). Exemption (b)(3) pertains to information exempt from disclosure by statute. The relevant statute is the Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949, 50 U.S.C. 4039, as amended, Section 6, which exempts from the disclosure requirement information pertaining to the organization and functions,-including those related to the protection of intelligence sources and methods.

DARPA: Released Climatic Reconstruction: A Synopsis of Methods and Data authored by N.A Frazier (August 3, 1971). The report discusses the Advanced Research Project Agency’s Nile Blue project.

Department of the Interior referred me to the Weather Modification and Atmospheric Research Reports, 1952 – 1993 (Record Group 115: Records of the Bureau of Reclamation, 1889 – 2008). DOI also sent the following enclosure, which upon review has little to do with my request: BOR-2013-00110.

DIA fowarded the request to the Air Force, CIA, NSA, and “other government agencies”:

A search of DIA’s systems of records located four documents (17 pages) responsive to the subject of your request. All documents have been referred to other government agencies for their review and direct response to you as they did not originate with DIA.

NSA (DIA referred) found:

The responsive document has been reviewed by this Agency as required by the FOIA and has been found to be currently and properly classified in accordance with Executive Order 13526. This document meets the criteria for classification as set forth in Subparagraph (c) of Section 1.4 and remains classified TOP SECRET as provided in Section I.2 of Executive Order 13526. The document is classified because its disclosure could reasonably be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security. Because the document is currently and properly classified, it is exempt from disclosure pursuant to the first exemption of the FOIA (5 U.S.C. Section 552(bX1)).

I did not contact OGIS for assistance with the requests or file appeals with these agencies.

Notes

1. Dr. Sewell cites the table as originating in the following document: Interdepartmental Committee for Atmospheric Science. (1971). A national program for accelerating progress in weather modification, Report 15a. PB 203793, ICAS Report 15a. Springfield, VA: National Technical Information Service.

2. See the Convention on the prohibition of military or any other hostile use of environmental modification techniques (December 10, 1976). Article 1 states “each State Party to this Convention undertakes not to engage in military or any other hostile use of environmental modification techniques having widespread, long-lasting or severe effects as the means of destruction, damage or injury to any other State Party.”

3. Project Censored’s (2016). “Most comprehensive” assessment yet warns against geoengineering risks, VIN (Validated Independent News).

4. In his address at the Conference on Terrorism, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and U.S. Strategy (University of Georgia, Athens, GA, April 28, 1997), former Sec. of Defense William D. Cohen’s mentions “eco-terrorism” through manipulation of the climate.

5. See Christine Shearer, Mick West, Ken Caldeira, and Steven J Davis. (2016). Quantifying expert consensus against the existence of a secret, large-scale atmospheric spraying program. Environmental Research Letters, 11(8). doi: 10.1088/1748-9326/11/8/084011

6. A review of the literature indicates additional terms to include in FOIA requests are: global dimming / greenhouse gas removal / laser technologies / solar dimming / solar geoengineering / solar radiation management / stratospheric aerosol injection / stratospheric atmospheric injection / stratospheric solar geoengineering / stratospheric sulfur injection / stratospheric sulphate aerosols

References 

Baum, Seth. (2019). Is stratospheric geoengineering worth the risk?  Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, April 1.

Earth’s Future. (2017). Special section on geoengineering. March.

Gertner, J. (2017, April 18). Is it O.K. to tinker with the environment to fight climate change? The New York Times.

Keutsch Research Group, Harvard University. (n.d.). Stratospheric controlled perturbation experiment (SCoPEx).

Lukacs, G. (2017, March 27). Trump presidency “opens door” to planet-hacking geoengineer experiments (and response). The Guardian.

National Science Foundation. (1965). Weather and climate modification: Report of the Special Commission on Weather Modification. NSF 66-3. https://www.nsf.gov/nsb/publications/1965/nsb1265.pdf

Pierrehumbert R. T. (2017). The trouble with geoengineers “hacking the planet.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, June 23.

Sewell, W. R. (1973). Climate and weather control. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 216(1), 30-41.

Stover, Sawn. (2019). “Silver buckshot” isn’t enough to fix the climate. Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, April 1.

Temple, J. (2017). Harvard scientists moving ahead on plans for atmospheric geoengineering experiments. Technology Review, March 24.

Wood, G. (2009).  Re-engineering the earth,  The Atlantic. July-August.

 

Addendum / CREST

With the CIA’s CREST database now full [mostly] text, the sky’s limit in terms of archival research. Below are several docs I discovered while browsing in the platform:

1952? ~ Research from Germany of “basic physics research which can be applied to meteorology and weather modification. The experiments were performed in physics laboratories but they could be applied to the natural atmosphere with essentially the same conclusions.”

October 7, 1965 ~ An interesting memo with numerous attachments from CIA’s Chief, Astro-Geophysics Branch, GSD/SI to Chief, General Sciences Division/Si (sorry, didn’t have time to do the research for names during this time period). The memo discusses the importance of the World Weather Watch system, but it is the strongly worded attachment from the Weather Services of the Environmental Science Services Administration that calls for “a vigorous national program to exploit the possibilities of weather modification should now be mounted” that is of relevance to building a history of weather modification. The memo also includes as chart of federal support for weather modification by agency 1959-1967 from the Federal Council for Science and Technology.

August 1, 1972 ~ Memo titled “International Aspects of Weather Modification” written by the NSC Under Secretaries Committee (USC) to several the Director CIA, Chairman, Joint Chiefs, and other national security figures. The memo outlines the USC’s responsibility in the “field of weather modification: continuing review of the international aspects of weather modification generally and of U.S. activities affecting other countries or outside U.S. territory;  instituting and overseeing implementation of appropriate guidelines for such U.S. activities; and reviewing any requests from other countries for assistance in weather modification activity.” The memo also discusses Nixon NSDM 165 “International Aspects of Weather Modification” (May 1972).

BioLab Secrecy & Sunshine

In response to last week’s news regarding the Army’s Dugway Proving Ground  inadvertently distributing live samples of anthrax to labs in nine states, USA Today (May 28) is running a special investigation into biolabs. The report is authored by Alison Young and Nick Penzenstadler. Through their investigation, Young and and Penzenstadler found that

Oversight of biological research labs is fragmented, often secretive and largely self-policing, the investigation found. And even when research facilities commit the most egregious safety or security breaches — as more than 100 labs have — federal regulators keep their names secret.

Of particular concern are mishaps occurring at institutions working with the world’s most dangerous pathogens in biosafety level 3 and 4 labs — the two highest levels of containment that have proliferated since the 9/11 terror attacks in 2001. Yet there is no publicly available list of these labs, and the scope of their research and safety records are largely unknown to most state health departments charged with responding to disease outbreaks. Even the federal government doesn’t know where they all are, the Government Accountability Office has warned for years.

In the early days of the Web, the Sunshine Project, which ceased operations in 2008, was the watchdog source for information on the nation’s labs. Remnants of their Web pages may still be found at the Wayback Machine. Sunshine created one of the first maps available on the Web of facilities dotting the U.S.  Sunshine’s online archive of Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC) meeting minutes obtained under FOIA are still live. In 2004, Sunshine published  an eight-month survey of 390 IBC committees across the United States titled Mandate for Failure The State of Institutional Biosafety Committees in an Age of Biological Weapons Research (here’s a copy).

What the USA Today investigation identifies is a continuing lack of publicity and transparency regarding the biolabs and that oversight remains problematic. Moreover, questions regarding compliance with the 1975 Biological Weapons Convention.

Update

Chadwick, Lauren.(2016, March 26). Bio-threat Protections Inadequate. Center for Public Integrity.

U.S. Government Accountability Office. (2015, June 25). Chemical and Biological Defense:Designated Entity Needed to Identify, Align, and Manage DOD’s Infrastructure. GAO-15-257 (Contains maps).

U.S. Government Accountability Office. (2016, September 23). High-Containment Laboratories: Actions Needed to Mitigate Risk of Potential Exposure and Release of Dangerous Pathogens. http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-16-871T

U.S. Government Accountability Office. (2016, August 30). High-Containment Laboratories: Improved Oversight of Dangerous Pathogens Needed to Mitigate Risk.  http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-16-642

U.S. Government Accountability Office. List of GAO reports on BSLs (2007-2015) and High-Containment Labs.

Smith, R. Jeffrey, and Malone, Patrick. (2016, September 23). Deadly Pathogens Repeatedly Dispatched by U.S. Labs to Unsecure Sites. https://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/09/23/20252/deadly-pathogens-repeatedly-dispatched-us-labs-unsecure-sites

Young, Alison.(2016, July 1).  Hundreds of Safety Incidents with Bioterror Germs Reported by Secretive Labs. USA Today.