Congressional Research Reports

We now have access to the full-text Congressional Research Service ("CRS") Reports starting in 1916 through LexisNexis Congressional (campus authentication required). CRS is the research arm of the Library of Congress and they write reports at the request of Congress. These reports deal with everything from environmental issues, such as global warming, to foreign relations. These reports are not available online from the CRS because while these are not classified they can only be released to the public by members of congress, generally this is done through a request from a constituent. For those of you without campus authentication, check out our subject guide which links to a variety of free sources of these reports.

U.S. Coast Guard Memo on Port Security

As has been discussed in the media (see an article in today's Washington Post) the sale of operations at six U.S. ports to United Arab Emirates owned Dubai Ports World is undergoing review. The reviewing agency that conducted the initial review is the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States. They have a variety of documents on the Dubai Ports World transaction, such as a history of the initial review. FindLaw has a copy of a U.S. Coast Guard memo discussing intelligence gaps that they felt were not meet.

While House report on Katrina response

The White House report on the federal government's flawed response to Hurricane Katrina was released today by Frances Fragos Townsend, the homeland security adviser to President Bush. Citing too much reliance on the insufficient resources and poor management of the Department of Homeland Security, the report calls for the Departments of Defense, Housing and Urban Development, Justice, and Health and Human Services to assume greater roles in responding to terrorist attacks and natural disasters. http://www.whitehouse.gov/reports/katrina-lessons-learned/

Government classifying documents

As reported in the New York Times article, "U.S. Reclassifies Many Documents in Secret Review," some government agencies have been searching documents sent to the National Archives and reclassifying previously publicly available material. The independent group, National Security Archive, has been monitoring this reclassification and has put some of the withdrawn documents up on their web site. If you are interested in declassified government documents, check out our subject guide, which has links to many freely available sources. We also subscribe to two databases that contain declassified documents, the Declassified Documents Reference Service and the Digital National Security Archive, these databases are only accessible to people affiliated with CU-Boulder.

Peacekeeping: Cost Comparison of Actual UN and Hypothetical U.S. Operations in Haiti

The Government Accountability Office, at the request of Congress, conducts research on how the government spends taxpayer dollars. They just released an report comparing how much it would cost the U.S. versus the UN to run a peacekeeping mission in Haiti. The full 32-page report shows that it would cost the U.S. almost twice as much as the UN to run the current mission in Haiti. For a quick overview of the report, see the 1-page summary.