George Mason University is a public research university in Fairfax County,Virginia. The university was originally founded in 1949 as a Northern Virginia regional branch of the University of Virginia. Named after Founding Father of the United States George Mason in 1959,it became an independent university in 1972. The school has since grown into the largest public university in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
The Harvard Law Review is a law review published by an independent student group at Harvard Law School. According to the Journal Citation Reports,the Harvard Law Review's 2015 impact factor of 4.979 placed the journal first out of 143 journals in the category "Law". It is published monthly from November through June,with the November issue dedicated to covering the previous year's term of the Supreme Court of the United States. The journal also publishes the online-only Harvard Law Review Forum,a rolling journal of scholarly responses to the main journal's content. The law review is one of three honors societies at the law school,along with the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau and the Board of Student Advisors. Students who are selected for more than one of these three organizations may only join one.
The state secrets privilege is an evidentiary rule created by United States legal precedent. Application of the privilege results in exclusion of evidence from a legal case based solely on affidavits submitted by the government stating that court proceedings might disclose sensitive information which might endanger national security. United States v. Reynolds,which involved alleged military secrets,was the first case that saw formal recognition of the privilege.
Project MINARET was a domestic espionage project operated by the National Security Agency (NSA),which,after intercepting electronic communications that contained the names of predesignated US citizens,passed them to other government law enforcement and intelligence organizations. Intercepted messages were disseminated to the FBI,CIA,Secret Service,Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD),and the Department of Defense. The project was a sister project to Project SHAMROCK.
Project SHAMROCK was the sister project to Project MINARET,an espionage exercise started in August 1945. Project MINARET involved the accumulation of all telegraphic data that entered or exited the United States. The Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA) and its successor,the National Security Agency (NSA),were given direct access to daily microfilm copies of all incoming,outgoing,and transiting telegrams via the Western Union and its associates RCA and ITT. NSA did the operational interception,and,if there was information that would be of interest to other intelligence agencies,the material was passed to them. Intercepted messages were disseminated to the FBI,CIA,Secret Service,Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD),and the Department of Defense. No court authorized the operation and there were no warrants.
NSA warrantless surveillance —also commonly referred to as "warrantless-wiretapping" or "-wiretaps" —was the surveillance of persons within the United States,including U.S. citizens,during the collection of notionally foreign intelligence by the National Security Agency (NSA) as part of the Terrorist Surveillance Program. In late 2001,the NSA was authorized to monitor,without obtaining a FISA warrant,phone calls,Internet activities,text messages and other forms of communication involving any party believed by the NSA to be outside the U.S.,even if the other end of the communication lays within the U.S.
John L. Helgerson is a retired career intelligence officer who spent 38 years at the Central Intelligence Agency,his final role was CIA Inspector General from 2002 until his retirement in 2009. He was responsible for investigating CIA interrogations of terror suspects,and compiled a report critical of agency practices in 2005 which was released in 2009 by the Obama administration.
Michael Vincent Hayden is a retired United States Air Force four-star general and former Director of the National Security Agency,Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence,and Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. He also serves as a professor at the George Mason University - Schar School of Policy and Government. Hayden currently co-chairs the Bipartisan Policy Center's Electric Grid Cyber Security Initiative. In 2017,Hayden became a national security analyst for CNN.
MAINWAY is a database maintained by the United States' National Security Agency (NSA) containing metadata for hundreds of billions of telephone calls made through the largest telephone carriers in the United States,including AT&T,Verizon,and T-Mobile.
ThinThread was an intelligence gathering project by the United States National Security Agency (NSA) conducted throughout the 1990s. The program involved wiretapping and sophisticated analysis of the resulting data. The program was discontinued three weeks before the September 11,2001 attacks due to the changes in priorities and the consolidation of U.S. intelligence authority.
The "Family Jewels" is the name of a set of reports detailing illegal,inappropriate and otherwise sensitive activities conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency from 1959 to 1973. William Colby,the CIA director who received the reports,dubbed them the "skeletons in the CIA's closet". Most of the documents were released on June 25,2007,after more than three decades of secrecy. The non-governmental National Security Archive filed a request for the documents under the Freedom of Information Act fifteen years before their release.
Michael Joseph Morell is an American former career intelligence analyst. He served as the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 2010 to 2013 and twice as its acting director,first in 2011 and then from 2012 to 2013. He also serves as a professor at the George Mason University - Schar School of Policy and Government.
The Public Interest Declassification Board (PIDB) is an advisory committee established by the United States Congress with the official mandate of promoting the fullest possible public access to a thorough,accurate,and reliable documentary record of significant U.S. national security decisions and activities. The Board is composed of nine individuals:five appointed by the President of the United States and one each appointed by the Speaker of the House,House Minority Leader,Senate Majority Leader,and Senate Minority Leader. Appointees must be U.S. citizens preeminent in the fields of history,national security,foreign policy,intelligence policy,social science,law,or archives.
The Schar School of Policy and Government - SSPG,is the public policy school of George Mason University,a public research university in the Commonwealth of Virginia near Washington,D.C. Established as Northern Virginia's first public policy school with locations in Arlington and Fairfax County,the school's political science curriculum has a professional education and applied emphasis on public administration and national security at both the undergraduate and graduate levels,in addition to a traditional liberal arts education,while also maintaining an active role within all five major subfields of political science known as political philosophy,political methodology,comparative politics,international relations,public policy and public administration.
Matthew Glen Olsen is an American attorney who has served as the Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division since 2021. He is the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center.
The CIA publishes organizational charts of its agency. Here are a few examples.
The President's Surveillance Program (PSP) is a collection of secret intelligence activities authorized by the President of the United States George W. Bush after the September 11 attacks in 2001 as part of the War on Terrorism. Information collected under this program was protected within a Sensitive Compartmented Information security compartment codenamed STELLARWIND.
Stuart Malawer is an international trade lawyer,and distinguished service professor of law at George Mason University's Schar School of Policy and Government. He was a founding faculty member of both the Antonin Scalia Law School and Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University.
Rajesh "Raj" De is an American lawyer and former U.S. government official who later became the managing partner for the Washington,D.C.,office of the law firm Mayer Brown. During the presidency of Barack Obama,he served in three significant government roles—as Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Policy,as White House Staff Secretary,and finally as general counsel of the U.S. National Security Agency.
The Michael V. Hayden Center for Intelligence,Policy,and International Security is a think tank in Arlington,Virginia focused on the intelligence community including topics related to intelligence studies education,intelligence analysis techniques,and the operations of intelligence agencies,as well as public policy and international relations related to national security,international security,and foreign policy through shared experiences of senior intelligence service leaders,military officers,elected officials,journalists,academics,and other civilian scholars. It is housed within the Schar School of Policy and Government but also cooperates with the Antonin Scalia Law School’s National Security Institute in conducting research around legal issues pertaining to national security;both of which are affiliated with George Mason University.
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