Secrecy News on Hearings & Military Executions...

A TALLY OF UNPUBLISHED CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS

Almost every day that Congress is in session, multiple committeeshold hearings. But not every hearing, not even every importanthearing, finds it way into print.The U.S. Congressional Bibliographies project at North CarolinaState University has tallied the numbers of hearings held by eachSenate committee from 1993-2001, and reported the percentage ofhearings that have been published by the Government PrintingOffice.

Thus, only 38% of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearingsin 2001, many of which involved confirmation hearings of Bushappointees, have been published.

Unpublished hearings also addressed topics such as anthrax exposure(Appropriations), aviation competition (Commerce), "club" drugs(Narcotics), E-911 compliance (Commerce), internet privacy(Commerce), unsolicited commercial e-mail (Commerce), and veteransprograms (VA), observed NCSU Social Science Reference LibrarianJohn A. McGeachy.See Statistical Reports of Printed Hearings on this page: http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/congbibs/senate/

ARMY UPDATES REGULATION ON MILITARY EXECUTIONS

The U.S. Army this week issued a newly updated regulation onmilitary executions. The move may portend a resumption of capital punishment in the military after a hiatus of more than 40 years.

"Only the President of the United States can approve and order the execution of a death sentence," the regulation states. Death is by lethal injection.

A copy of the new regulation was obtained by Secrecy News.

See U.S. Army Regulation 190-55, "U.S. Army Corrections System:Procedures for Military Executions," January 17, 2006:

http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/r190_55.pdf

The last time that the Army performed a military execution was inApril 1961. It involved an Army Private who was convicted of rapeand attempted murder. 135 people have been executed by the Army since 1916, according to the Death Penalty Information Center (www.deathpenaltyinfo.org).

Half a dozen military inmates are on death row at Fort Leavenworth,Kansas, and by last May two of them had nearly exhausted their final appeals, according to the Houston Chronicle ("U.S. MilitaryExecutions Draw Closer" by Andrew Tilghman, May 1, 2005).

Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by theFederation of American Scientists.

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