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Senators Press Holder to Declassify Key Facts about Patriot Act

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Salem-News.com - Nov. 19 (News Report) - We believe that the information we referenced in those paragraphs – specifically about the use of section 215 – is essential to understanding the full scope of the PATRIOT Act, which is about to be debated in Congress. As we said in June, if you have concerns about declassifying the specific language contained in our letter, we ask that you work with us to find language that conveys enough information to allow for an informed public debate on the PATRIOT Act’s reauthorization

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For Holder, much wrestling over decision

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Carrie Johnson - Nov. 13 (News Analysis) - what the nation's chief law enforcement officer did not lay bare for public consumption was the four months of deliberation, lobbying and tug of war inside his own Justice Department that preceded an announcement that will follow him into history.

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Obama administration seeks to block wiretap suit

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Associated Press - By Devlin Barrett - Oct. 31 (News Report) - The Justice Department invoked the state secrets privilege Friday to try to stop a lawsuit over Bush-era wiretapping -- the first time the Obama administration has done so under its new policy on such cases. Attorney General Eric Holder announced the decision in a California lawsuit challenging the warrantless wiretapping program begun after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

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Official resigns over Afghan war

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Karen DeYoung - Oct. 27 (Special Report) - A former Marine Corps captain with combat experience in Iraq, Hoh had also served in uniform at the Pentagon, and as a civilian in Iraq and at the State Department. By July, he was the senior U.S. civilian in Zabul province, a Taliban hotbed. But last

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Officials: Iran has second enrichment plant

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Michael D. Shear, Karen DeYoung - Sep. 25 (News Report) - President Obama and the leaders of France and Britain blasted Iran's construction of a previously unacknowledged uranium enrichment facility and demanded Friday that Tehran immediately fulfill its obligations under international law or risk the imposition of harsh new sanctions.

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Battle Looms Over the Patriot Act

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Charlie Savage - Sep. 20 (News Report) - As Congress prepares to consider extending provisions of the USA Patriot Act, civil liberties groups and Democratic lawmakers are gearing up to press for sweeping changes to surveillance laws.

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Sept. 11 Attacks Helped Shape Obama's Worldview

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Scott Wilson - Sep. 12 (News Report) - It was not hollow rhetoric. The attacks and the steps that the Bush administration took to prevent another one have defined the way Obama views the world and have influenced, more than any other event, his understanding of national security. That

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Are Post-Sept. 11 Airport Screens Just 'Security Theater’?

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

All Things Considered - By Brian Naylor - Sep. 11 (Special Report) - While the technology to screen passengers has become more advanced and the check-in lines a little shorter, the question of whether flying is terrorism-proof remains. The Transportation Security Administration touts its latest machinery, but critics call the screening process "security theater."

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How a Detainee Became An Asset

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - Aug. 30 (Special Report) - After enduring agency's harshest interrogation methods, self-described mastermind of 2001 terror plot becomes "preeminent source" on al-Qaeda.

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Abuse Issue Puts the C.I.A. and Justice Dept. at Odds

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Peter Baker, David Johnston, Mark Mazzetti - Aug. 28 (News Report) - With the appointment of a prosecutor to investigate detainee abuses, conflicts between the two agencies burst into view, threatening relations between two players on President Obama’s national security team.

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Holder's Decision To Probe CIA Hints At a New Dynamic

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Carrie Johnson, Anne E. Kornblut - Aug. 28 (News Analysis) - The back story to Monday's appointment of a career prosecutor to review CIA interrogation methods illustrates Holder's influence in the new administration and sheds light on the emerging and delicate relationship between the White House and the Justice Department. In this and other big battles, including the decision to release memos this year by Bush administration officials giving the green light to harsh interrogation tactics, Holder and his Justice Department have prevailed over strong objections from the CIA and the intelligence community. Holder hasn't won every one of those battles, but he has won many.

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CIA Documents Provide Little Cover for Cheney Claims

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Associated Press - Aug. 25 (News Report) - For months, former Vice President Dick Cheney has said that two documents prepared by the CIA, one from 2004 and the other from 2005, would refute critics of the Bush administration’s torture program. He told Fox’s Sean Hannity in April: “I haven’t

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C.I.A. Sought Blackwater’s Help in Plan to Kill Jihadists

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Mark Mazzetti - Aug. 20 (Investigative Report) - The Central Intelligence Agency hired contractors from Blackwater USA as part of a secret program to locate and assassinate top operatives of Al Qaeda, according to officials.

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Threat Assessment: When Protesters Bring Guns to Health-Care Town Halls

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Associated Press - By Mark Thompson - Aug. 19 (News Analysis) - The fact that protesters at President Obama's political events have begun showing up bearing arms may be disquieting, but it's perfectly legal — and the Secret Service, charged with protecting the President, insists that it is not unduly alarmed by the development. That's because while the Second Amendment guarantees Americans the right to carry guns, federal law also gives the Secret Service the right to keep gun-toting folks away from the President. ... But former Secret Service agent Joseph Petro thinks his former employer may be trying to put the best face on a bad situation. "The Secret Service is very concerned about this," says Petro, who spent 23 years as an agent, including four guarding President Reagan and his family. "It's hard enough to protect the President, and this is not helpful."

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Criminal investigation into CIA treatment of detainees expected

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Greg Miller, Josh Meyer - Aug. 09 (News Report) - U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. is poised to appoint a criminal prosecutor to investigate alleged CIA abuses committed during the interrogation of terrorism suspects, current and former U.S. government officials said. A senior Justice Department official said that Holder envisioned an inquiry that would be narrow in scope, focusing on "whether people went beyond the techniques that were authorized" in Bush administration memos that liberally interpreted anti-torture laws.

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White House Counsel's Job at Stake

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - By Evan Perez - Aug. 04 (News Report) - Obama administration officials are holding discussions that could result in White House counsel Gregory Craig leaving his post, following a rocky tenure, people familiar with the matter said.

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Details on presidential motorcades, safe house for First Family, leak via P2P

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Computerworld - By Jaikumar Vijayan - Jul. 29 (News) - Computerworld - Details about a U.S. Secret Service safe house for the First Family -- to be used in a national emergency -- were found to have leaked out on a LimeWire file-sharing network recently, members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee were told this morning.

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U.S. citizens wrongly detained, deported by ICE

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

San Francisco Chronicle - By Tyche Hendricks - Jul. 27 (News Report) - The son of a decorated Vietnam veteran, Hector Veloz is a U.S. citizen, but in 2007 immigration officials mistook him for an illegal immigrant and locked him in an Arizona prison for 13 months

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UAE Blackberry update was spyware

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

BBC News - By Ben Thompson - Jul. 21 (News Report) - A software update promoted by United Arab Emirates telecoms firm Etisalat appears to have been surveillance software.

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Government Hit Squads, Minus the Hits

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Scott Shane - Jul. 19 (News Analysis) - The movies make it look so easy: the sniper’s crosshairs on a terrorist’s forehead; the plastic explosive taped beneath a foreign spy’s car; the lethal potion slipped into a dictator’s morning coffee. So perhaps the biggest surprise about the Central Intelligence Agency’s furor du jour — the secret program, hidden from Congress, to kill the leaders of Al Qaeda — is not that there was such a program, which many Americans assumed. Nor is it that former Vice President Dick Cheney instructed the C.I.A. to keep the program from Congress. Mr. Cheney has never been accused of reckless openness about intelligence programs.

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Interviews Offer Look at Roles of CIA Contractors During Interrogations

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Joby Warrick, Peter Finn - Jul. 19 (News Report) - In April 2002, as the terrorism suspect known as Abu Zubaida lay in a Bangkok hospital bed, top U.S. counterterrorism officials gathered at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., for a series of meetings on an urgent problem: how to get him to talk. Put him in a cell filled with cadavers, was one suggestion, according to a former U.S. official with knowledge of the brainstorming sessions. Surround him with naked women, was another. Jolt him with electric shocks to the teeth, was a third.

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Spy Satellite Sea Ice Images Finally Made Public

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wired - By Alexis Madrigal - Jul. 17 (News Report) - Super high-resolution spy satellites have been imaging sea ice at the poles for the last decade on behalf of earth scientists. But the images has been kept from the public and nearly all scientists, too. Over the last ten years, a tiny group of

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Report Says Wiretaps Got Too Little Legal Review

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Eric Lichtbau, James Risen - Jul. 11 (News Report) - The federal report also says that the effectiveness of the warrantless surveillance program approved by President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11 attacks was unclear.

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Report: Too few officials knew of surveillance

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Associated Press - By Pamela Hess - Jul. 11 (News Report) - Not enough relevant officials were aware of the size and depth of an unprecedented surveillance program started under President George W. Bush, let alone signed off on it, a team of federal inspectors general found.

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Panetta Orders Probe of Secret Spy Program

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By Mark Hosenball, Michael Isikoff - Jul. 09 (News Report) - CIA director Leon Panetta has ordered an internal inquiry into the agency's handling of a contentious and still highly-classified intelligence program that has caused a heated dispute between the CIA and Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee.

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