Online Journal of Politics and Foreign Affairs
Not surprisingly, the Commander of the Military District of Washington has chosen to accept the findings of a preliminary hearing held last year, and ordered that Pfc. Bradley Manning face a General Court Martial for the charges that he stole hundreds of thousands of pages of classified documents which eventually ended up in the hands [...]
Not surprisingly, it looks like Pfc. Bradley Manning is headed for a court martial related to the allegations that he improperly accessed, copied and transferred classified information that later ended up in the hands of Wikileaks: WASHINGTON — The military officer who presided over an evidentiary hearing on charges against Pfc. Bradley Manning, accused of [...]
Apparently, people who work for the government are surfing the World Wide Web.
The US intelligence community has more information at its disposal than ever. Unfortunately, it can’t efficiently process it and make the necessary connections.
How can we know what happens next in North Korea when we didn’t even know Kim Jong-il had died?
The Christian Science Monitor is out with a story that Iranian engineers are claiming that they were actually able to electronically take control of the RQ-170 drone captured last week: Iran guided the CIA’s “lost” stealth drone to an intact landing inside hostile territory by exploiting a navigational weakness long-known to the US military, according [...]
While unfortunate, the loss of an RQ-170 drone over Iran may not be the intelligence disaster some make it out to be.
An attack against Iran’s nuclear weapons research facility won’t be an easy thing.
DEVELOPING STORY: In a well-marked building in McLean, Virginia, hundreds of CIA analysts are reading newspapers and watching cable news networks for information that might be helpful in assessing terrorist networks. Often, sources tell OTB, this information is pieced together in order to then kill people in faraway countries using drones. Additionally, as a wildly [...]
The CIA’s drone war in Pakistan has gotten so out of hand that the Pentagon and State Department are reigning it in.
It’s time for another round of speculation about Iran and its nuclear program.
Mike Flynn, the 2-star who blasted military intelligence, is now the 3-star charged with fixing military intelligence.
We’re learning more about the Obama Administration’s decision to kill Anwar al-Awlaki
Just last week I wrote about the investigative work that Danger Room’s Spencer Ackerman had done in discovering the FBI’s use of bizarre anti-Muslim propaganda in some of its advanced counter-terrorism training programs. Yesterday, the FBI issued this statement: The FBI is currently conducting a comprehensive review of all training and reference materials that relate [...]
Last month, we learned that the Central Intelligence Agency has spent the last ten years aiding the New York City Police Department in anti-terror efforts, with no small degree of controversy. Now, The New York Times reports that the CIA has launched an internal investigation of its involvement with the NYPD: WASHINGTON — The Central [...]
Late breaking today is news that Federal officials are looking into possible threats of terror attacks tied to the tenth anniversary of the September 11th attacks: A “specific, credible” threat has emerged surrounding the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, U.S. officials said Thursday. But they emphasized that there was a great deal [...]
Flashback: When David Petraeus was simply known as “Peaches” & was a member of the “French Club”
The collapse of the Libyan government has led to the discovery of a treasure trove of documents, including evidence of close cooperation between the CIA and Libyan Intelligence in the rendition and torture of suspected al Qaeda members: Documents found at the abandoned office of Libya’s former spymaster appear to provide new details of the [...]
Understanding why your enemy hates you seems to be an important thing, but some people would rather believe in caricatures.
Via The Navy Times comes news that General David Petraeus will bring his military career to an end prior to stepping up to head the Central Intelligence Agency: David Petraeus, America’s best-known general and the wartime model of a soldier-scholar-statesman, is retiring as arguably the most consequential Army leader of his generation. Petraeus is bidding [...]
Is the NYPD becoming too much like the CIA?
The New Yorker has a great piece out today by Nicholas Schmidle detailing the behind the scenes details of the mission that ended the life of Osama bin Laden: The Americans hurried toward the bedroom door. The first SEAL pushed it open. Two of bin Laden’s wives had placed themselves in front of him. Amal [...]
Danger Room’s Spencer Ackerman reports on an alleged secret CIA interrogation facility somewhere in the former Soviet Union.
An ex-CIA agent says that someone in the Bush White House tried to use the agency to “discredit” Iraq War critic Juan Cole.
As James Joyner noted in the days after the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, the helicopter that was disabled and had to be destroyed in bin Laden’s compound was a previously secret stealth helicopter that the U.S. military had never revealed before. In the aftermath of the raid there was concern over what Pakistan [...]
Rick Santorum, may have made the dumbest comment of the Presidential campaign so far: Here’s Santorum: HH: Now your former colleague, John McCain, said look, there’s no record, there’s no evidence here that these methods actually led to the capture or the killing of bin Laden. Do you disagree with that? Or do you think [...]
John McCain thoroughly dismantles the argument that Osama bin Laden’s capture vindicates the use of so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques.”
Why would David Petraeus take the thankless job of running the CIA?
One U.S. Senator wants to bring elements of the TSA’s security theater to America’s rail system.
Count John McCain among those who are skeptical about the role waterboarding played in finding Osama bin Laden: Sen. John McCain denounced “advanced interrogation” methods like waterboarding Wednesday amid a growing debate over its effectiveness reopened by the killing of Osama bin Laden. McCain told reporters leaving an intelligence briefing for senators by CIA director [...]
The defense of torture as an extreme measure for extraordinary circumstances has evolved.tortu
The debate over “enhanced interrogations” has been renewed by the bin Laden mission, but whether it “worked” or not isn’t the question.
There’s been some question since Sunday of the role that waterboarding or other forms of “enhanced interrogation” may have played in obtaining the information that eventually led to the location of Osama Bin Laden. In that regard, I give you the words of Donald Rumsfeld himself: Asked if harsh interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay played [...]
The myth that the U.S. armed and trained Osama bin Laden in the early 80′s is rearing its ugly head again.
Interesting: Could Osama bin Laden have been found faster if the CIA had followed the advice of ecosystem geographers from the University of California, Los Angeles? Probably not, but the predictions of UCLA geographer Thomas Gillespie, who, along with colleague John Agnew and a class of undergraduates, authored a 2009 paper predicting the terrorist’s whereabouts, [...]
In addition to taking out the leader of al Qaeda, Sunday’s raid in Pakistan apparently yielded a treasure trove of intelligence: The assault force of Navy SEALs snatched a trove of computer drives and disks during their weekend raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound, yielding what a U.S. official called “the mother lode of intelligence.” [...]
Bin Laden spent the last half-decade in a compound where his only contact with the outside world was a few couriers.
CIA director Panetta to take over Pentagon; Petraeus to be nominated for CIA
Suspected Wikileaks leaker will be moved out of the Brig at Quantico Marine Base where he’s been staying for nearly a year now: WASHINGTON — The Army private suspected of giving classified data to WikiLeaks is being moved to a state-of-the-art facility at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, where Pentagon officials said more extensive mental, emotional [...]
The CIA has declassified the last six documents from the World War One era.
Pfc. Bradley Manning is being treated worse than a Prisoner Of War, and he hasn’t been convicted of a crime yet.
Pfc. Bradley Manning faces twenty-two new charges, including one that could put him before a firing squad, but investigators still can’t prove any direct links between him and Wikileaks.
The last time we heard from Anna Chapman, the femme fatale member of last year’s odd Russian spy ring, she was back in Moscow and pursuing a career in modeling. Now, it seems she’s jumping into the political arena: Anna Chapman, the failed spy, is to run for the Russian parliament in December as a [...]
