Cave quid dicis, quando, et cui.

The Pakistani physician who helped American agents find Osama bin Laden has been convicted by a Pakistani court of treason: A Pakistani doctor who helped the CIA find Osama Bin Laden has been sentenced to 33 years in jail, officials say. Shakil Afridi was charged with treason for running a fake vaccination programme to gather [...]

Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the only man ever convicted in the terrorist attack that took down Pan Am Flight 103, has died in Libya: BENGHAZI, Libya — Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence officer who was the only person ever convicted in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, died Sunday nearly three years after he was released from [...]

House Republicans yesterday rejected an effort to limit the authority of the President, military, and law enforcement to indefinitely detain terror suspects captured on United States soil: In two votes Friday morning, the House backed the president’s powers to indefinitely detain terror suspects captured on U.S. soil. Lawmakers rejected an amendment that would have barred [...]

It’s another round of security theater: Seems no one is immune from the tender mercies of the TSA pat-down. First, we learned that Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was subjected to a handsy search. And now we learn of the latest high-profile search-ee: former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. [...]

Reports are coming out this afternoon of an attempted reenactment of December 2009′s “underwear bomb” incident that was thwarted by the CIA: The CIA foiled a plot by al-Qaida’s affiliate in Yemen to bomb a U.S.-bound airliner around the one-year anniversary of the killing of its former leader Osama bin Laden, The Associated Press reported. [...]

Five suspects have been arrested in a plot to blow up a Cleveland bridge.

The Atlantic’s Max Fisher reflects on “What America Can Learn From Norway’s Anders Breivik Trial.”

No doubt, it helps when the people you are fighting against are exceedingly stupid: Sometimes, capturing a Taliban commander requires vast resources and complex operations. Last week in eastern Afghanistan, it hinged on an insurgent’s “improbable stupidity,” as one U.S. official put it. Mohammad Ashan, a mid-level Taliban commander in Paktika province, strolled toward a [...]

A member of the British House of Lords has been suspended after apparently offering a bounty for the capture of President Obama and/or former President Bush: A Labour peer was suspended last night after allegedly claiming he would put up a £10million bounty for the capture of Barack Obama. Lord Ahmed of Rotherham is reported [...]

Via the BBC:  Abu Hamza US extradition backed by European Court The European Court of Human Rights has backed the extradition of Abu Hamza and four other terror suspects from the UK to the US. The Strasbourg court held there would be no violation of human rights for those facing life and solitary confinement in [...]

A profile of the chief of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center.

David Ignatius reports in The Washington Post today that intelligence uncovered from the May 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden indicates that the al Qaeda leader had instructed his organization to find a way to kill the President of the United States: Before his death, Osama bin Laden boldly commanded his network to organize [...]

Today, the #stopkony hashtag is trending on Twitter. Here’s why.

Attorney General Eric Holder offered a somewhat alarming defense of the Administration’s policy on targeted killings.

Earlier this week  Federal agents arrest Amine El Khalifi; he allegedly planned to bomb Capitol: For more than a year, Amine El Khalifi, of Alexandria, considered attacking targets including a synagogue, an Alexandria building with military offices and a Washington restaurant frequented by military officials, authorities said. When arrested a few blocks from the Capitol [...]

The BBC is reporting on a leaked NATO report claiming that elements of Pakistani intelligence are directly aiding the Taliban in Afghanistan even as the U.S.-led NATO forces are fighting them: The Taliban in Afghanistan are being directly assisted by Pakistani security services, according to a secret Nato report seen by the BBC. The leaked [...]

Once again, Ron Paul showed last night why he could never win the Republican nomination.

As part of the blowback from the accidental deaths of two dozen Pakistani soldiers in a NATO helicopter raid, the U.S. is leaving a base in Pakistan used in drone operations: In another sign of deteriorating relations with Pakistan, the United States is vacating an air base used to launch American drones in response to [...]

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 authorizes the President the authority to indefinitely detain persons, even American citizens arrested on American soil, without trial because they allegedly support the enemy.

The most disturbing part of Saturday’s debate came when most of the GOP candidates endorsed torture.

Karim Sadjapour writes about a wargaming scenario he recently participated in with a group of former U.S. officials and experts on Israel and Iran to try to play out how an Israeli strike on Iran might go. Sadjapour was on the Iranian team and, as he relates, it didn’t turn out well for anyone: Iran’s [...]

An attack against Iran’s nuclear weapons research facility won’t be an easy thing.

The CIA’s drone war in Pakistan has gotten so out of hand that the Pentagon and State Department are reigning it in.

The U.S. drone war in Yemen has taken out another victim: A wave of CIA drone strikes targeting al-Qaeda figures in Yemen is stoking widespread anger there that U.S. policy is cruel and misguided, prioritizing counterterrorism over a genuine solution to the country’s raging political crisis. Politics has never been a concern to Sam al-Homiganyi [...]

The TSA is deploying VIPR units to weigh stations and bus stations in TN.

Yesterday before the Republican debate, Herman Cain made a misstep that once again displayed out far out of his depth he is when it comes to foreign policy. It came in an interview with Wolf Blitzer in response to a question about the release of Israeli solider Galid Shalit in a prisoner exchange: BLITZER: Imagine [...]

What’s the logic behind Iran’s alleged plot to commit terrorist attacks inside the United States?

The Justice Department claims to have disrupted a major Iranian-backed terrorist attack in the United States.

We’re learning more about the Obama Administration’s decision to kill Anwar al-Awlaki

This exchange between White House Press Secretary Jay Carney and ABC’s Jake Tapper lays out pretty starkly the Administration’s position on the President’s authority to order assassinations of American citizens without due process of law: video platformvideo managementvideo solutionsvideo player There’s something fundamentally wrong here, I think. Even if you accept the idea that al-Awlaki [...]

Giving the President the unchecked power to kill American citizens raises some serious red flags.

When the FBI essentially creates a terrorist in order to arrest him, have we really accomplished anything?

My latest for The Atlantic, “The Thorniest Question: When Can a President Order an American Killed?” has been posted.

Anwar al-Awlaki, a major al Qaeda leader and American citizen, has been killed in Yemem–almost certainly by an American Predator drone. BBC (“Islamist cleric Anwar Awlaki ‘killed in Yemen’“): The US-born radical Islamist cleric and suspected al-Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki has been killed in Yemen, the country’s defence ministry reported. US administration officials confirmed the [...]

Rezwan Ferdaus, an American Muslim, has been charged with a major terrorist plot against his country.

Earlier this month I took note of a report of a number of Russian made surface-to-air missiles that were missing from a weapons cache in Libya. It now appears that the problem is much worse than that: U.S. officials had once thought there was little chance that terrorists could get their hands on many of [...]

The relationship between the United States and Pakistan seems destined to head into bad waters after yesterday’s accusation by outgoing Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen that the terrorist group that attacked the U.S. Embassy in Kabul was backed by elements of Pakistan’s intelligence service: WASHINGTON — The nation’s top military official said Thursday that [...]

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 [...]

The FBI has been using some odd materials to train its counterterrorism agents.

Paul Krugman chose to mark the the 10th anniversary of September 11th with an odd blog post.

Not every 10th anniversary of a horrible surprise attack has been treated the same.

Was it wrong for the NFL to schedule its opening Sunday on the anniversary of the September 11th attacks?

The short-lived national unity spawned by the attacks of a decade ago was re-kindled for a few hours as former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush joined with Vice President Joe Biden to honor Flight 93.

Measuring our progress a decade after the 9/11 attacks

Measuring our progress a decade after the 9/11 attacks

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 [...]

Killing’s our business and business is good.

Are colleges teaching the right lessons about the 9/11 attacks?