Today's Headlines and Commentary

Reuters tells us that Noor Salman, the wife the shooter who killed 49 people in Orlando, knew about her husband, Omar Mateen’s, plans and may face criminal charges. Senator Angus King (I-ME), who was briefed by law enforcement agencies on the ongoing investigation as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, disclosed that Salman had “some knowledge” in the leadup to the attack. CNN adds that Salman accompanied her husband as he cased Disney World, the Pulse nightclub, and an entertainment and shopping complex.

Reuters also reminds us that for all the talk surrounding lone wolves in the days following the Orlando attack, Mateen remains an exception that proves the rule. According to a Reuters review of roughly 90 Islamic State cases that have been brought by the Justice Department since 2014, approximately three-quarters of those charged were part of a group of anywhere from two to more than 10 co-conspirators who met in person to discuss their plans. This revelation not only underscores the number of Americans who have become radicalized in recent years, but also the opportunities law enforcement and counterterrorism officials still have to capture and arrest would-be terrorists before they strike. FBI Director James Comey said in a December speech that the Bureau must utilize family and friends to help officials identify potentially radicalized individuals who may not have a visible online presence. “If they go out and interact with small groups of people, who sees them?,” he said. “Community members.”

Trevor Aaronson opines in the Intercept that the FBI is hamstrung not by limited surveillance powers or resources but rather a tendency by its leadership to juggle far too many cases simultaneously and close files if results aren’t unearthed quickly. He claims that Mateen may have fallen through the cracks because FBI agents were forced to close his investigation prematurely, according to the Bureau’s policies, and follow newer cases. The New York Times echoes Aaronson’s claim and adds that the Bureau receives so many tips from Americans, many of which lack value or are baseless, that agents expend a considerable amount of time and resources filtering out Americans who merely talk tough online from those who may take action.

Michael Birnbaum at the Washington Post reveals that French and Belgian counterterrorism officials have been on the alert after a group of “combatants” left Syria with the intention of carrying out attacks in Belgium and France. The disclosure comes on the heels of a lethal knife attack in France that left a police officer and his partner dead. France is already on heightened alert as the nation hosts the ongoing European Football Championships. French Prime Minister Manuel Valls claimed the fight with radical Islam could take decades: “Other innocent people will die. It is very hard to say. People can accuse me...of making society more fearful than it already is today with these events. But, unfortunately this is the reality. It will take a generation.” Valls’s prediction comes as Islamic State leaders prioritize act of domestic terrorism in the West over consolidating or expanding its so-called caliphate in Iraq and Syria. The Post’s Greg Miller has more on this change in strategy.

Rodi Said and Lisa Barrington report from near the Syrian city of Manbij that the U.S.-backed Syrian forces readying to liberate the city from the Islamic State’s clutches are also calling on the international community to assist civilians who will flee as the fighting intensifies. Sharfan Darwish of the SDF’s Manbij Military Council told Reuters that the group is unable to cover the needs of internally displaced civilian population. He added that no international humanitarian organization is presently working in northern Syria.

The Syrian Democratic Forces’ offensive in Manbij comes as the Iraqi and Syrian governments also mount assaults against the Islamic State elsewhere in the region. The Post recounts how the Iraqi army took a village south of Mosul, the largest city currently controlled by the Islamic State, on Tuesday. But the army, which took three months to seize the village of Nasr, is still not in a position to mount a siege of Mosul. The operation will require political coordination between the semi-autonomous Kurdish government in northern Iraq and Baghdad at a time when such collaboration is no small feat.

The Financial Times notes that Saudi Arabia and Iran are both convinced the United States has tilted against them in the wake of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Riyadh has grown frustrated as Shiite Iran’s influence in the region has grown since the United States’ invasion of Iraq in 2003. To KSA’s chagrin, President Barack Obama has repeatedly claimed that it is in the United States’ national interest for a new balance of power to emerge in the Middle East, whereby an equilibrium emerges between the primarily Sunni Gulf states and Iran. In Tehran, exasperation has replaced euphoria after the Iran deal. While international sanctions have been lifted, secondary sanctions unilaterally leveled by the U.S. Treasury Department among other actors have ensured Iran’s economy remains at standstill.

A Chinese observation ship tailed the U.S. aircraft carrier USS John Stennis as the ship joined warships from India and Japan for an annual series of joint exercises off the Japanese island of Okinawa dubbed Malabar. Beijing has long protested Malabar as a sign of aggressive U.S. intentions targeted at China, but this year’s exercises mark the first time Japan has joined the war games since 2007. Tokyo’s participation signals its deepening partnership with New Delhi as well as its concerns over China’s increasingly assertive maritime behavior in the Western Pacific and South China Seas. Malabar has long been the pillar of India’s military relationship with the United States, and maritime cooperation between the two nations will likely grow after the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s successful visit to Washington last week. Reuters has more on Malabar.

Reuters also signals the U.S. Navy’s intention to move ships from its Third Fleet to operate with the Japan-based Seventh Fleet. The San Diego-based Third Fleet already directed its Pacific Surface Action Group — which includes the guided missile destroyers USS Spruance and USS Momsen — to East Asia in April, but two naval officers told Reuters that more ships would be sent in the future. Greg Poling, the director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the reallocation was likely part of Obama’s plan to base 60 percent of the U.S. Navy’s assets in the Asia-Pacific as a form of balancing against Beijing’s rise. China has decried U.S. naval operations in the Pacific as counterproductive to broader regional stability and peace. Liu Xiaoming, the Chinese ambassador to Britain, said to Reuters, “I think before the Americans’ so-called ‘rebalancing in Asia-Pacific,’ the South China Sea was very quiet, very peaceful.”

The Journal’s Ben Otto and Chun Han Wong reveal how a joint-conference between the Chinese foreign minister and his counterparts from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations over territorial disputes in the South China Sea broke down on Tuesday after the two sides failed to agree on how to characterize the conference’s proceedings. The Journal details how ASEAN has also struggled to find an internal consensus on other important issues such as environmental protection and economic liberalization. As of the article’s release on Wednesday morning, ASEAN could not even unanimously agree to a statement amongst themselves. Instead, several ASEAN members released their own statements, each of which criticized Beijing’s territorial aggression to varying degrees. The Journal noted that ASEAN’s efforts at achieving solidarity are further frustrated by Beijing’s willingness to use its economic and diplomatic clout to divide the would-be alliance.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced in Brussels that 4,000 troops will be sent to Poland and the Baltic states. The declaration comes at a time when Russia has become increasingly defiant on the international stage and Russian troops began a visible series of drills to ensure its troops are ready to mobilize in the case of a sudden conflict. In Poland, dozens of NATO countries are participating in the largest round of military exercises since the end of the Cold War. The additional surge of troops — which will come from four nations including Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States — comes at the request of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Poland after Russia’s recent annexation of Crimea and its constant interventions in Ukraine. The move is indicative of Secretary of Defense Ash Carter’s new “NATO playbook,” which is meant to shift NATO’s posture from “reassurance” to “deterrence.”

Carter also said on Wednesday morning that NATO intends to keep all six of its bases in Afghanistan operational in 2017, according to the Journal. Prior to the announcement, it had been expected that NATO would only keep the bases in Kabul and Bagram open. The decision would enable the alliance to maintain its current level of training and support for Afghan security forces. But it also indicates that key Pentagon officials are holding out hope that Obama will maintain U.S. forces at current levels of roughly 9,800 troops. A severe cut in force numbers — the United States had been expected to roughly halve its footprint by the end of the year — would make it harder to sustain all six bases.

Munir Ahmed and Amir Shah write for the Post that the skirmish between Afghan and Pakistani soldiers on the border continued last night; one Afghan border guard was killed and five others wounded. Islamabad has sent more troops to the border as tensions continue to escalate between the two countries. The dispute stems from Afghanistan’s refusal to recognize the present boundary, the so-called Durand Line, as a legitimate international border and has called upon Pakistan to cease building a fence at the crossing. Islamabad has rejected this claim, citing the fence as a necessary measure to prevent illegal movement.

The Post combs through dozens of recently declassified CIA documents that provide disturbing new details of the Agency’s aggressive interrogation practices in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. The documents include comprehensive details about the CIA’s “black-site” prisons as well as the internal debate that played out within the Agency as employees sought to balance the possible intelligence benefits of the interrogation program with the misgivings many field officers expressed regarding the harsh treatment of suspects. The ACLU requested the documents, which were given to the Senate Intelligence Committee as part of the Senate’s multi-year probe of the Agency that culminated with a scathing public report in December 2014. The Hill adds to the Post’s revelations by noting that the CIA had considered asking the Department of Justice for an advance promise not to prosecute agents who engaged in brutal interrogation techniques in the early stages of its implementation.

Though the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act, which authorizes roughly $602 billion in base defense and war spending, passed the Senate yesterday, media attention has mostly focused on an amendment in the NDAA that requires all women to register for first time for the military draft. While the United States has not called a draft since the Vietnam War, the proposed shift is a recognition of the expanded opportunities women now have to serve in all combat roles in the U.S. armed forces. Hardline conservatives such as Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) have denounced the proposal as an example of political correctness run amok, but both the military and defense hawks such as Senator John McCain (R-AZ) support the measure as a logical extension of equality. Both the Times and Defense News has more.

Mohammed al Qahtani, a Saudi Arabian who was suspected of planning to participate in the 9/11 attacks as the 20th hijacker, is pushing for his release from Guantanamo Bay. The Post profiles Qahtani and cites his attorneys’ claim that his preexisting mental instability, combined with the harsh abuse he has experienced in Guantanamo, should favor his release. Saudi Arabia has already agreed to resettle Qahtani. But while his mental condition has made a trial impossible, Qahtani provided valuable information that confirmed his direct involvement in both al Qaeda and the planning of the 9/11 attacks. His petition comes at a time when Obama is looking to close the infamous U.S. prison before he leaves office in January. But with 80 detainees remaining in Cuba — and many of whom are, like Qahtani, in a vexing state of legal flux — top White House aides recently told Reuters that the administration does not intend to use an executive order to close the site. Without an executive order, Gregory Craig, Obama’s first White House counsel, said Obama would likely need Congress’s support to close Guantanamo: “I think the odds [of that] are probably challenging.”

ICYMI: Yesterday, on Lawfare

Laura Dean recounted a harrowing story of four gay and lesbian Iraqis who fled the country to escape the persecution and bigotry they experienced at the hands of their friends, colleagues, and relatives.

Ellen Scholl surveyed the world to identify how natural resources are shaping global geopolitics, from water scarcity in India to oil-inspired insurgencies in Nigeria.

Jamil Jaffer and Daniel Rosenthal urged policymakers to come together in the wake of the Orlando attacks and hammer out a well-reasoned set of policies that uphold the principles of privacy through strong encryption while allowing government actors a legal channel to accessing the communications of terrorists before the next strike is launched.

Email the Roundup Team noteworthy law and security-related articles to include, and follow us on Twitter and Facebook for additional commentary on these issues. Sign up to receive Lawfare in your inbox. Visit our Events Calendar to learn about upcoming national security events, and check out relevant job openings on our Job Board.