Foreign Visits of Ranking US Military Personnel
Since about April of 2012 I have been working on with Joe Wright and James Honaker attempting to track down the foreign visits of ranking members of the US military. Positions we are seeking information on include the Secretary of Defense, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the JCS, the Vice Chairman of the JCS, the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps Chief of Staff, the commanders of the nine Unified Combatant Commands, and the Secretaries of the Army, Navy, and Air Force.
To date I have submitted eleven Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for information on eight of the nine Unified Combatant Commanders and the Secretaries of the Army, Navy, and Air Force. As it turns out, the US military does not keep good records. We have received responses to nearly all of our requests but have gathered comparatively little data.
Dataset: US Military Visits Abroad
The above dataset contains 377 visits by only some of the US officials mentioned above. Feel free to explore the data further, but note there are serious temporal, spatial, and other biases.
We have also been applying various search methods to secondary sources, specifically news sources. What I have discovered, perhaps unsurprisingly, is that the US Secretary of Defense can be successfully tracked using news reports but lower ranking members are more difficult to follow. Perhaps we turn to Twitter feeds next?
To date I have submitted eleven Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for information on eight of the nine Unified Combatant Commanders and the Secretaries of the Army, Navy, and Air Force. As it turns out, the US military does not keep good records. We have received responses to nearly all of our requests but have gathered comparatively little data.
Dataset: US Military Visits Abroad
The above dataset contains 377 visits by only some of the US officials mentioned above. Feel free to explore the data further, but note there are serious temporal, spatial, and other biases.
We have also been applying various search methods to secondary sources, specifically news sources. What I have discovered, perhaps unsurprisingly, is that the US Secretary of Defense can be successfully tracked using news reports but lower ranking members are more difficult to follow. Perhaps we turn to Twitter feeds next?
