Today's Headlines and Commentary

The Politico reports that the army has disciplined 15 people over the WikiLeaks scandal, and at least one officer "was reduced in rank for dereliction of duty" after an "internal investigation into the decisions and failures that put Pvt. Bradley Manning in a position to download and leak thousands of classified military reports and diplomatic cables." In related news, the New York Times says State Department officials are "pretending" that the documents leaked by WikiLeaks are still classified. The Obama administration is unveiling a new strategy to combat homegrown terrorism, according to National Public Radio. This announcement comes a day after the House Homeland Security Committee and Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee held their first joint hearing on the threat of homegrown terrorism to military communities. The video and transcript of the hearing, which Raffaela mentioned yesterday, are available here, courtesy of C-SPAN. The House Homeland Security Committee also issued this report arguing that U.S. military personnel are increasingly being attacked on American soil. Guess who's funding hackers? Hint: they're calling them cyber-warriors. The Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has approved 13 hacking projects, says the Politico. From the department of not-so-secret CIA prisons comes this story from the AP about how the CIA's prison in Bucharest, Romania was "hidden in plain sight, a couple blocks off a major boulevard on a street lined with trees and homes, along busy train tracks." The New York Times has more on the U.S. drone that was shot down in Iran a few days ago. Ty Cobb at the Harvard National Security Journal has this piece providing more background on the issue. The AP informs us that Walli Mujahidh of L.A. will "plead guilty to multiple charges in federal court Thursday." The appropriately-named defendant was arrested in June of this year just as he was picking up machine guns to use in an attack with accomplice Khalid Abdul-Latif of Seattle. Turns out that Al Qaeda doesn't have as much game as it thought. According to AFP, William McCants, an analyst at the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA), testifying at the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, said:

Thankfully, the vast majority of youth who watch and read Al-Qaeda propaganda are either unaffected or choose not to act. . . . We don't have reason to believe that large numbers are being swayed by this propaganda, much less going the extra step and taking action.

Halil S., a German man accused of links to Al Qaeda, was arrested today in connection with three high-profile arrests made in April, says the Post. And from the Occupy Wall Street Movement, the hacker group Anonymous, and Lawfare's own Bobby Chesney comes today's Moment of Zen (at precisely minute 1:50):

For more interesting law and security-related articles, follow us on Twitter, and visit the Georgetown Center on National Security and the Law’s Security Law Brief as well as the Fordham Law Center on National Security’s Morning Brief. Feel free to email us noteworthy articles we may have missed at wakeman.lawfare@gmail.com and  singh.lawfare@gmail.com.