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A New York Times editorial this past weekend comments on the findings of the 9/11 Commission's 10th anniversary report.
As Ben has discussed (here, here, here and here), John McCain inserted a provision in the NDAA that would put non-Americans arrested while planning or carrying out a terrorist attack under military custody, rather than being put inthe custody of civilian law enforcement. The Atlantic's Yochi Dreazan discusses this little-noticed provision.
Civil rights groups continue to campaign against the Obama adminstration's continuation of policies begun under the Bush administration. Ewan MacAskill at the Guardian has the story.
Reports came in over the weekend, according to the New York Times, that an insurgent leader and alleged former detainee at Guantanamo, was killed by a combined Afghan and coalition force. The leader was believed to be Sabar Lal (Sabar Lal Melma, who was released from Guantanamo in 2007 after spending five years at the prison), which NATO officials confirmed, according to the AP.
Elisabeth Bumiller of the Times writes about Michael Vickers, the under secretary for intelligence at the Pentagon. A former Green Beret and CIA operative, Vickers in a major character in the book Charlie Wilson's War and made his way back into government after attending a meeting on Iraq in 2006. He now plays a major role in the military's efforts to defeat al Qaeda.
Scott Shane at the Times reports on the Obama administration's first prosecution for leaking information to the media--the case of Shamai Leibowitz, who was sentenced last year for leaking secret transcripts of conversations caught on FBI wiretaps at the Israeli Embassy in Washington. Tim Mak at Politico reports on this story as well.
According to documents found in Tripoli, U.S. and British intelligence services worked closely with the Libyan intelligence services; the CIA and Qaddafi's intelligence organization collaborated in the rendition of terrorist suspects, including the rebel commander in Libya, Abdel-Hakim Belhaj, while MI6 provided intelligence on Libyan dissidants living in the UK to the regime. David Batty at the Guardian has the story, as does the AP (via Politico).
The only Dick Cheney review that really matters is available here (I'm sorry I missed this one last week).
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Raffaela Wakeman is a Senior Director at In-Q-Tel. She started her career at the Brookings Institution, where she spent five years conducting research on national security, election reform, and Congress. During this time she was also the Associate Editor of Lawfare. From there, Raffaela practiced law at the U.S. Department of Defense for four years, advising her clients on privacy and surveillance law, cybersecurity, and foreign liaison relationships. She departed DoD in 2019 to join the Majority Staff of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, where she oversaw the Intelligence Community’s science and technology portfolios, cybersecurity, and surveillance activities. She left HPSCI in May 2021 to join IQT.
Raffaela received her BS and MS in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2009 and her law degree from Georgetown University Law Center in 2015, where she was recognized for her commitment to public service with the Joyce Chiang Memorial Award. While at the Department of Defense, she was the inaugural recipient of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s General Counsel Award for exhibiting the highest standards of leadership, professional conduct, and integrity.
