Tuesday Afternoon Federal Newscast

NASA’s new rocket arrived at the launching pad Tuesday for a test flight next week that comes at a time when the future of the country’s spaceflight program is up in the air. It marks the first time in 34 years that a rocket other than the space shuttle has stood at Launch Pad 39-B. NASA modified the pad for the new rocket, which is supposed to eventually carry astronauts to the moon. But, of course, the White House may scrap those plans. A panel of aerospace experts that provided President Obama with a list of possible exploration options is issuing its final report later this week.

Federal contractors should expect fewer opportunities from the Defense Department over the next decade and should shift their focus to applying military technologies to other sectors, including homeland security. And, vendors also should look at the civilian market for any growth in federal spending over the next five years. Those are among the high-level conclusions from TechAmerica based on interviews with agencies, Congress and other policy and budget experts. TechAmerica predicts DoD spending on IT will drop to $609 billion by the year 2020 from $664 billion in 2010. Though, they estimate that non-DoD spending on IT will increase to $52.4 billion by 2015 from $44.5 billion. Other predictions: the departments of Justice will see 6.6 percent growth, Health and Human Services…6.2 percent; and Treasury…5.1 percent). Those are among the agencies expected to increase the most, the association predicts.

A former colleague of that scientist – who allegedly tried to sell classified secrets to Israel – says he worked on the Reagan administration’s Star Wars missile shield program. Scott Hubbard says the scientist arrested in an FBI sting, Stewart David Nozette, was primarily a technical defense expert working on the Reagan-era effort formally named the Strategic Defense Initiative. Hubbard is a professor of aerospace at Stanford University who worked for 20 years at NASA. Hubbard said Nozette worked on the Star Wars project at the Energy Department’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. At Energy, Nozette held a special security clearance equivalent to the Defense Department’s top secret and “critical nuclear weapon design information” clearances. Nozette more recently developed the Clementine bi-static radar experiment that is credited with discovering water on the south pole of the moon.

Lithuania must properly investigate allegations it hosted a secret CIA prison for al Qaeda and, if true, take responsibility for its actions, the president said on Tuesday. U.S. ABC news reported in August that Lithuania was the third European country after Poland and Romania to have provided the CIA with facilities for detaining, and possibly interrogating, suspects. President Dalia Grybauskaite, who is in charge of foreign and defence policy and tends to be outspoken, said an investigation by parliament, which found no jail, had been only a formality. She said she had suspicions the jail did exist and that the international community thought this too, without giving details why. She also said a request had been sent to the United States for cooperation in a probe. ABC News has said a secret CIA prison operated near Vilnius airport from early 2004 to late 2005 and that CIA planes flew into Lithuania with top level al Qaeda suspects.
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