Today's Headlines and Commentary

As everyone knows by now, the American ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens, was killed in Benghazi in a rocket attack on the consulate there---apparently over a controversial internet video mocking Prophet Muhammad. The New York Times has the details, CNN's Security Clearance blog has President Obama's remarks, and the Associated Press reports that a group of elite Marines are being sent to Libya to provide additonal security. CNN also reports that the U.S. is using surveillance drones to seek out the perpetrators of the attack. More on the death of Guantanamo Bay detainee Adnan Latif: Here is the Los Angeles Times , and here is the New York Times. Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn, authors of “An Enemy We Created: The Myth of the Taliban-Al Qaeda Merger in Afghanistan,” have an op-ed in the Times arguing that the designation of the Haqqani network as a foreign terrorist organization "gravely threatens the prospects for a political settlement, which is the only way out of the Afghan conflict." Lots more on the 11th anniversary of 9/11: Here is President Obama's speech at the Pentagon Memorial Service from the Council on Foreign Relations. Bruce Riedel of Brookings has this op-ed in the Daily Beast on the continuing threat from Al Qaeda over a decade later. John Avlon of the Daily Beast sat down with former FBI agent Ali Soufan to talk about all things terrorism, from the death of Osama bin Laden to Al Qaeda affiliates to the current War on Terror. And Bobby Ghosh of Time argues that eleven years later, jihad is no longer global:

[L]ook more closely, and you’ll see that these groups — whether Boko Haram in Nigeria or Al Shabaab in Somalia, the Pakistani Taliban or Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia — are fired not by the desire to strike at the U.S. but by much more local causes. Their activities are confined to a single country; occasionally, they stray across a border. Whatever their rhetoric, the target of their rage is, for the most part, other Muslims.

The AP tells us that Ayman al-Zawahri, Al Qaeda's chieftain, has finally confirmed that the group's second-in-command, Abu Yahya al-Libi, was killed by a drone strike in June. OpenTheGovernment.org has released its 2012 report about---you got it---government transparency. The report has some interesting data about the number of FOIA requests, the number of declassified decisions, the use of national security letters, and other things. John Cassidy of the New Yorker has this piece arguing that "[w]hichever party wins in November, the security state will continue to expand---we can be sure of that." Agence France Presse reports on the alleged phone interview that was released with Dr. Shakeel Afridi, in which he described being tortured by Pakistan's intelligence service. And guess who was responsible for an intrusion this summer at a U.S. storage facility for weapons-grade uranium. Terrorists? Nope. The Iranians? Nope. A.Q. Khan? Nope. How about an 82-year-old nun—wielding bread, a Bible, flowers and a bolt cutter? To find out more, check out today’s Moment of Nuclear-Insecurity Zen. For more interesting law and security-related articles, follow us on Twitter, visit the Georgetown Center on National Security and the Law’s Security Law Brief, Fordham Law’s Center on National Security’s Morning Brief, and Fordham Law’s Cyber Brief. Email us noteworthy articles we may have missed at wakeman.lawfare@gmail.com and singh.lawfare@gmail.com, and check out the Lawfare Events Calendar for upcoming national security events.