Documents in the News

These are the CIA reports that have been in the news lately [see the below article]. The CIA link for the “Family Jewels” report can be found here. The report itself is 700+ pages.

Also released was the CAESAR-POLO-ESAU papers which consist of 147 documents and 11,000 pages of in-depth analysis and research from 1953 to 1973. The CAESAR and POLO papers studied Soviet and Chinese leadership hierarchies respectively, and the ESAU papers were developed by by analysts to inform CIA assessments on Sino-Soviet relations. These can be found here.

The agency for Health and human Services (HHS), The Department of Education, and the U.S. Department of Justice have released a report entitled “Report to the President on Issues Raised by the Virginia Tech Tragedy.” The report finds that educators, mental-health officials, and law-enforcement officers often do not share information about troubled students because they are confused by what they can disclose under complex and overlapping privacy laws. The report calls on the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services to issue guidelines clarifying how colleges, police departments, and social-service agencies can share information legally under current federal laws governing student records. The federal agencies should study whether the laws should be changed to balance students’ privacy with safety concerns, the report said. State officials also should review state limits on the exchange of information to see if they need to be better explained or altered. The full report can be found here