-
This weekend's first big counterterrorism event, the capture of Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai, was carried out by Delta Force. Carlotta Gall has further details---supplied by al-Ruqai's son---over the at t...
-
The Pentagon has just announced the new DoD special envoy for Guantanamo closure: Paul Lewis.
Secretary Hagel Announces Appointment to Key Defense Post
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel today announced th...
-
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has issued its memorandum opinion in Hamad v. Gates, a challenge by a former Guantanamo detainee to his detention and treatment while in U.S. custody. It found that §22...
-
Courtesy of my office mate, Ross Tilchin, comes this Washington Post piece about a letter Adm. Bill McRaven, head of the U.S. Special Operations Command, wrote to one Walker Greentree, a 6-year old boy w...
-
A veteran administration official emailed me just now in response to my piece last night on congressional Republicans and the shutdown: "Nice Piece (on the shutdown)," the official writes. "You are right...
-
As information continues to emerge regarding the Baraawe raid, it is becoming increasingly clear that the operation was of a piece with, rather than a departure from, existing US policy. According to N...
-
The New York Times is reporting that the U.S.
-
Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel released the following letter and memorandum over the weekend concerning the implementation of the Pay Our Military Act, which was passed in the hours before the shutdown.
-
Nine or so months ago, following President Obama’s inaugural address assertion that a “decade of war is now ending,” which came on the heels of Jeh Johnson’s speech about the end of war against al Qaeda...
-
Over at Security States and The New Republic, I have another blog, entitled: "What Big Data Does, And Doesn't Know About Me." It tells the story of how I went digging into the data holdings that one big...
-
Details are still emerging on the two terror raids conducted by American commandos this weekend, giving the media plenty to compare and contrast. Peter Baker and David Sanger of the New York Times charac...
-
Last Wednesday, accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev filed a motion to vacate special administrative measures (SAMs) imposed on him and his attorneys. In his motion, Tsarnaev argues that the ...
-
Hilary Mantel is justly famous for Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies (Wolf Hall, Book 2
-
Imagine if the Democrats in 2007, having just regained control of the Congress, had decided to go to the mat against the Bush tax cuts. Imagine that they voted repeatedly to repeal them. They tried to de...
-
A little-noticed district court opinion has expanded---at least at the margins---the universe of national security materials subject to FOIA requests.
We missed this opinion when it came out back in Aug...
-
Yesterday's Special Operations Forces raid on an al-Shabaab facility in Baraawe, Somalia, and the near-simultaneous capture-and-rendition of an al Qaeda figure in Tripoli, raise a number of interesting l...
-
At the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing the other day on NSA programs, I talked a lot about the importance and centrality of compliance procedures. And I quoted a quip by NSA's compliance chief, Joh...
-
From The New York Times comes the second of the day's two breaking stories regarding recent and quite significant counterterrorism operations by the United States.
-
That's the news from the New York Times.
-
It is one of Cairo's rare windy fall days, and I am sitting with a group of friends, who are drinking juice and smoking shisha on multi-colored plastic chairs in an alley downtown. A poster of Nasser flu...
