Could reconciliation work for the climate bill? Washington Post (blog) We must do everything in our power to stop Obama and his comrades from forcing us to swallow another job-killing, economy-killing, freedom-killing SCAM . … and more

The nuns, the bishops and health care (continued) Washington Post (blog) Dictator Obama is trampling on our Constitution to force us to swallow his Marxist Obamacare scam , which would destroy our health care, our economy, … and more

Transcript of Obama Speech on Health Care Waste and Fraud Main Justice Sometimes they're because nobody is bothering to check to see where the money is going and they're abused by scam artists and fly-by-night operations. … and more

Digging a bit deeper into the annual White House economic report , released yesterday, there’s this statement about the enormity of the nation’s jobs crisis. “[E]ven a quick return to job growth will not immediately eliminate employment problems, as it will take time to create the millions of new jobs needed to return to normal employment levels.” That part we knew. Job creation has been the lagging indicator in recessions stretching back two decades, and, as the Labor Department reported recently, the economy has shed 8.4 million jobs since this recession began 25 months ago. “This is an enormous hole we’re in,” Chad Stone, senior economist at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said recently. But the White House also offers this warning about the likely consequences of the long-term unemployment problem — an assessment rare in Washington for its brutal honesty. Many workers will have difficulty finding work for some time to come. Extended periods of high unemployment and low job creation rates mean that many displaced workers will exhaust their unemployment insurance benefits before jobs become available in large numbers. After months or even years of unemployment, most who exhaust their benefits will likely have used up whatever savings they had when they lost their jobs. Many will be forced to turn to public assistance—temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Supplemental Nutritional Assistance (formerly known as food stamps), or other similar programs—to make ends meet. The message is clear: For millions of Americans, this thing will get worse before it gets better. And there’s only so much that Washington can do.

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From the White House: a Bleak Picture for the Unemployed

Climate change a scam to curb global population, Utah legislator says Salt Lake Tribune Fact check » President Barack Obama has previously acknowledged that energy costs would “skyrocket,” although by how much ranges from an EPA … and more

Just out from U.S. Central Command about the three soldiers who died yesterday in a Pakistan bombing . According to the statement — reprinted in full after the jump — the soldiers were part of a civil affairs training team that had been invited into Pakistan by the government and were in the Northwest Frontier Province “to attend an inauguration ceremony at a girls school that had recently been renovated with U.S. humanitarian assistance money.” Three U.S. military members died of wounds suffered from an improvised explosive device today in the Lower Dir District of Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province, and two U.S. service members were wounded. The service members were assigned to the Office of the Defense Representative, Pakistan to conduct civil affairs-related training at the invitation of the Government of Pakistan. They were in Lower Dir to attend an inauguration ceremony at a girls school that had recently been renovated with U.S. humanitarian assistance money. “This attack demonstrates the terrorists’ lack of respect for life, and their willingness to use violence against women and children as a means for advancing their malign vision,” said Rear Adm. Hal Pittman, Director of Communication at U.S. Central Command. “The U.S. personnel were in Pakistan at the request of the Government of Pakistan to assist the Pakistanis with training in support of our long-standing partnership with Pakistan, and this horrific attack will not dissuade that partnership. We extend our sincere condolences to the families and loved ones of those innocent individuals who were killed or injured.” The names of the deceased are being withheld pending notification of next of kin and release by the Department of Defense. The names of the service members are announced through the U.S. Department of Defense Official Website at http://www.defense.gov. The announcements are made on the Website no earlier than 24 hours after notification of the service members’ primary next of kin. The wounded service members were evacuated for treatment.

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CENTCOM Issues Statement on Soldier Deaths in Pakistan

See this guy? Marine Corps Maj. Gen. David Heinz ? He’s the program manager for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, a program plagued by cost overruns. Robert Gates, the secretary of defense, just fired him. One reporter called it a “bombshell” in a still-ongoing press briefing. But Gates canceled the Air Force’s F-22 fighter jet in favor of making the JSF the replacement jet, as, among other reasons, it’s operable across both the Navy and the Air Force. But defense reformers have pointed to the JSF’s ballooning costs as similarly problematic. Gates just said that the program’s coming under fiscal control. But he said he couldn’t put the program back in order “without people being held accountable.” So says a defense secretary who two years ago fired the entire leadership of the Air Force over a nuclear weapons mishap. If there’s a theme to Gates’ tenure at the Pentagon, he said, it’s that “when things go wrong, people will be held accountable.” Unless I misunderstood Gates, Heinz’s deputy, Air Force Maj. Gen. C.D. Moore , will head up the F-35 program office for the time being. Update, 1:49 p.m. : I think I did misunderstand Gates. Pressed on who takes over the program, Gates demurred, saying an announcement is forthcoming. Update 2, 1:55 p.m .: Don’t miss Noah Shachtman’s detailed post on Gates’ JSF bombshell .

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Gates Fires the Head of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Program

Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have just begun their Pentagon budget and QDR press briefings. Here’s what they’re asking Congress to approve for the next year: $548.9 billion for the so-called base budget next year, excluding the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, which Gates said reflects “realism with regard to risk, realism with regard to resources” and “plausible real-world scenarios, potential threats and adversaries.” But if you read my QDR preview , you knew all that. “The wars we fight are seldom the wars we planned,” Gates said. So for next year’s war request, Gates wants $159.3 billion. But that’s not all: for the “extended surge,” he wants a $33 billion supplemental to pay for the extra 30,000 troops. That’s technically part of this year’s budget request. “I will be asking the Congress to enact the supplemental by the spring,” Gates said. That’s $741.2 billion to be spent on the Pentagon over the next year, if you’re counting. Compare that to last year’s total $663 billion request .

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Gates Wants $741.2 Billion for Defense This Year

Under a new policy announced today by CIA director Leon Panetta, an intelligence officer can’t be promoted to the agency’s highest rank — the Senior Intelligence Service — without a demonstrated proficiency in a foreign language. From a CIA release: While many senior Agency officers have tested proficient in a foreign language over the course of their careers, some have not kept their skills current. Under the new policy, promotions to SIS for most analysts and operations officers will be contingent on demonstrating foreign language competency. If an officer is promoted to SIS and does not meet the foreign language requirement within one year, he or she will return to their previous, lower grade. This is a powerful incentive to maintain and improve skills critical to the Agency’s global mission. Languages play a key role in the CIA’s work at all career levels. “The stricter requirement for SIS promotion,” said Panetta, “is meant to ensure that leadership on this vital initiative comes from the executive level. With an unwavering commitment from SIS officers—to both lead by example and to support language proficiency at all levels—we will reach not only our language goals, but our ultimate objective: an Agency that is better positioned to protect our nation in the years ahead.”

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Panetta Cracks Down on CIA Foreign-Language Deficiency

Apropos of my story today about the consistently-ballooning defense budget, Defense News has a leak of the Quadrennial Defense Review , the Pentagon’s big planning document that, among other things, is supposed to shape the budget. This is just a leak of a draft, and not the final document. But the document is entering its absolute final phase, as Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will be testifying about it and next year’s budget (they’re released simultaneously) before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday. As I wrote today, Gates sent strong signals last year that the QDR would signal what further big-ticket items would get reined in or cut altogether. And the draft suggests that Gates wasn’t playing around. Some bullet points: The FY11 budget build on FY10, providing additional attention to key lines of investment that are highlighted in the reports ■ Taking care of our troops and our people ■ Reforming how we buy and operate Rebalancing for: ■ The current fight ■ Plausible future challenges Now, you can’t tell from that what will be cut . The defense budget is always a fight between the immediate challenges of the present and what each military service envisions as the future of war and its relevance to it. Gates has said, repeatedly — and conspicuously last year when he chopped a bunch of programs —  that he’s sick of buying stuff for every conceivable challenge, no matter how hypothetical. But we need to wait and see how that cashes out. The draft’s intro says: QDR analyses centered on the following challenge areas: defending the United States and providing defense support to civil authorities, conducting irregular operations (including counterinsurgency, stability operations, and counter-terrorist operations), defeating adversaries armed with anti-access capabilities, countering weapons of mass destruction, and operating effectively in cyberspace. That paragraph strongly suggests — as does Gates’ entire tenure, really — that the Pentagon ought to be reoriented around immediate, manifested challenges.  (I guess you could argue that the “anti-access capabilities” thing is the exception; my ignorant speculation is that’s in there so the South Koreans and Japanese don’t think we’re ignoring North Korea.) But here’s the thing: the services are really good at arguing that their existing priorities are applicable to new circumstances. That’s how the F-22, a Cold War-era fighter aircraft, survived until Gates killed it last year. So we’ll have to see how exactly the budget measures up to the QDR construct. Does it rebrand old wine or does it smash some corked bottles? Luckily, Michele Flournoy, the undersecretary of defense for policy, will give a speech on Tuesday, before Gates and Mullen testify, on the QDR.

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Huge Defense Planning Document Leaks; What Does It Mean for the Budget?

The New York Times : For the first time, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has spoken out against plans to stage the trial of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, accused mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, at the federal courthouse in Lower Manhattan, joining a growing chorus of people who believe the epic trial will be too disruptive and expensive for the city. “It would be great if the federal government could find a site that didn’t cost a billion dollars, which using downtown will,” he told reporters on Wednesday. It’s an economic issue for Bloomberg, not a security issue.

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Bloomberg vs. the KSM Trial

At a luncheon held at the Heritage Foundation, Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) was cautiously open to the idea of a three-year non-defense discretionary spending freeze floated last night by the White House. “I never met a spending freeze I didn’t like,” said Pence. The first he’d heard of the concept, he said, came at a December 2009 meeting at the White House when Republicans suggested it. Rather than dismissing the idea as a political stunt, Pence was ready to take some ownership of it. “I’d welcome a sincere attempt at a spending freeze.” Pence also joked a bit about how the media covered conservatives. “The New York Times reported that there were a few thousand on the mall on 9/12,” said Pence. “Fox News reported that there were a billion.”

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Mike Pence: ‘I’ve Never Met a Spending Freeze I Didn’t Like’

If it doesn’t make any sense to you to spare defense programs from the spending freeze, pay attention to next Tuesday. At 8:30 a.m., Undersecretary of Defense Michele Flournoy heads to the Council on Foreign Relations to explain the results of the forthcoming Quadrennial Defense Review, the Pentagon’s master planning document that spells out defense priorities and guides its medium-term budgeting. In any QDR, you can read between the lines and find defense programs that don’t fit into the overall document’s vision of a prudent defense. Cutting those programs is a good test of an administration’s commitment to fighting Pentagon bloat. But only spend an hour with Flournoy! At 9:30 a.m., Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee about the next year’s defense budget. Watch to see if Gates and Mullen say that they’re using the QDR — as they’ve indicated in the past — to guide further defense cuts to wasteful programs. Also, I don’t see a link yet, but CNN’s Dana Bash tweets that Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) says that the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security should be included in the spending freeze.

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Feb. 2: Your Day of Defense Budget Reckoning

Senate Democrats are piecing together another stimulus bill designed to tackle the ongoing unemployment crisis, but if the reports coming out of Capitol Hill today are any indication, the package is likely to be much smaller than the jobs bill passed by the House last month. Indeed, The Washington Post indicates that upper-chamber Democrats are eyeing a proposal in the $80-billion range — roughly half of the spending in the House version. The Senate bill, the Post notes, “will be heavy on tax breaks designed to spur businesses to make new hires.” Also of note: Unlike the House bill, the Senate proposal excludes an extension of unemployment benefits. Instead, the UI extension “may move” separately, the Post reports.

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Report: No Unemployment Benefits Extension in Senate Jobs Bill

Rolf Mowatt-Larsen, a longtime intelligence official who works at the nexus of al-Qaeda and weapons of mass destruction, writes that al-Qaeda “has been far more sophisticated in its pursuit of weapons of mass destruction than is commonly believed.” And there’s no reason whatsoever to disbelieve him. But what ought to be pointed out is al-Qaeda’s capabilities, not just its aspirations. For one thing, al-Qaeda has failed for over a decade to acquire weapons of mass destruction. Mowatt-Larsen notes that al-Qaeda accordingly scaled back its ambitions to get nuclear weapons in favor of less-lethal but relatively easier to acquire bioweapons. But even that effort was dealt a setback by the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Instead, look at the pattern of recent al-Qaeda attacks or potentially al-Qaeda-inspired attacks. Lots of big-devastation conventional impact attacks in south Asia and the Middle East, with occasional forays into Europe and southeast Asia. In the United States, a failed attempt at conventional explosions of an aircraft — damaging if it would have succeeded, but it would have killed an order of magnitude fewer people than the sophisticated and complex attack on 9/11 to turn several planes into missiles and fly them into strategic targets. There’s an argument to be had over whether to put Nidal Malik Hasan’s attack on Fort Hood into the “al-Qaeda-inspired” category. If you do, you get a successful attack that killed 13 people and wounded 45, not dozens, let alone hundreds or the thousands killed on 9/11. Then you get a criminal claiming after the fact that his murder of a soldier outside a Little Rock recruiting office was connected to al-Qaeda. And failed efforts that were busted up before they reached fruition, as with Najibullah Zazi. All this is why in the just-published issue of a bulletin published by West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center , Martha Crenshaw, a terrorism scholar with the Center for International Security and Cooperation , concludes: Al-Qa`ida is declining, but it is still a dangerous organization. It is not a mass popular movement, but rather a complex, transnational, and multilayered organization with both clandestine and above-ground elements. It has proved durable and persistent. The determination of its leaders to attack the United States is undiminished and might strengthen as the organization is threatened, but another attack on the scale of 9/11 is unlikely. None of this is to say that vigilance against the prospect of an al-Qaeda WMD attack is unwarranted. But it is a call to put the chances of one into perspective.

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Sure, al-Qaeda Wants to Attack the U.S. With WMD …

The members of Congress addressing the annual March for Life are hitting a common theme — that the election in Massachusetts represented a watershed moment in anti-abortion politics, and that the health care bill is dead as a result. “We have won a battle by defeating Obamacare with the help of the voters of Massachusetts last Tuesday,” said Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), drawing a huge cheer from the crowd. “They’re going to hope you aren’t as involved in three or six months, and then they’ll come up with something just as bad as the bill that was defeated in the Massachusetts election.” “The socialized medicine bill was a serious threat to life,” said Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.), “and deliverance came from a strange quarter indeed–Massachusetts.” “Are we empowered by Massachusetts?” asked Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.).”Yes, yes, yes! Okay!” “You made the difference in ensuring an ill-fated and pro-abortion health care bill will not become the law of this land,” said Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) was possibly the most enthusiastic about the speciale election. “Thank you Massachusetts!” he said. “Thank you for helping us kill that anti-life bill! You delivered a teachable moment on Tuesday.”

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At March for Life, Jubilation Over Scott Brown

There’s a big international conference in London beginning next Thursday to harmonize allied civilian efforts in Afghanistan. One thing to expect out of it: new “Afghan-led integration measures” to bring insurgents into line with the government, according to British Foreign Secretary David Miliband. Miliband is before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee right now, outlining a few expectations for what the conference will produce. Some of it is vague: “coherence and clarity of the plan for Afghanistan” among the 70-odd foreign ministers expected to attend is the “biggest deliverable of all,” Miliband said. But Miliband set a specific expectation by saying a new mechanisms for persuading Afghan insurgents to come in from the cold were crucial for success, adding that he referred to “structures I hope that President Karzai will announce next Thursday.” It’ll be interesting to see what Karzai might outline. There is a longstanding political consensus on the need for integrating insurgents and reconciling with those fighters who have no ties to al-Qaeda. But the mechanisms in place to date have yielded only sporadic results. Another thing to expect from the conference: a new civilian counterpart to Gen. Stanley McChrystal.

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Karzai to Announce New Insurgent-Reconciliation Structure

Barely two hours after Togo West and Vernon Clark finished briefing the Senate Armed Services Committee on the results of their review of systemic Army challenges to identifying extremist threats within the service, here’s a statement about further action from Army Secretary John McHugh: “I have directed Gen. Carter Ham to conduct an accountability review to identify whether any personnel were responsible for failures or deficiencies in applying Army programs, policies, and procedures to the alleged assailant. Further, he will provide a recommendation as to whether disciplinary or adverse action is warranted by each finding, and if so, the nature of such disciplinary or adverse action and the basis for such recommendation. “In addition, I have requested that Gen. Ham provide me with any general observations he may have developed as a senior leader in our Army, and as a member of the Independent Panel, that he believes may be of help to the Army in charting a way ahead. “We are an Army that is grounded on disciplined and established standards. Leaders at every level are responsible for ensuring that our policies and regulations are followed and that appropriate action is taken if they are not. “We must use this incident as an opportunity to reinforce the basics of leader involvement with soldiers. It is this fabric that binds us together in war, and we must ensure that it is continuously strengthened.”

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Army Secretary McHugh on Fort Hood Review

Togo West and Vernon Clark, the co-chairmen of Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s Fort Hood commission, have been beaten up all morning in the Senate Armed Services Committee for not focusing exclusively on the threat of Islamic extremist radicalization within the military. Acrimony is all around. West tried to make the case that he and Clark have to take a comprehensive approach. “This is our one shot at it, Adm. Clark and I, to look at the indicators [of] religious extremism, whatever its source,” he said. Clark, a former chief of Naval operations, was blunter: ”Someone accused me of being politically correct. I don’t care.” Senators Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Susan Clark Collins (R-Maine) [sorry, long morning/fast typing] pleaded with the two of them to put out at least some specific guidelines for the military services to recognize the warning signs of Islamic extremism, noting that when West was Army secretary in the 1990s, he approved a pamphlet on precisely those signs for what was then a danger from white-supremacist infiltration. West and Clark said they took the point, but reluctantly. Enter panel chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.), who said such a “legitimate effort” needed to ensure that “Muslims be involved” in distinguishing the warning signs of Islamic extremism from the signs of legitimate religious expressing. “Excellent suggestion,” Lieberman replied, adding it would be a “real omission if Muslims weren’t involved.” Collins endorsed it as well. “What we are tolerant of, and proud of it, are other people’s religious views,” said Levin. And the hearing went into closed session from there.

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A Moment of Tense Consensus on Fort Hood, Islamic Extremism and Political Correctness

Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence, may think the interrogation of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab went haywire when the would-be bomber was Mirandized instead of being subject to the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group. But FBI Director Robert Mueller had a different take about the value of intelligence collected within the criminal justice system. In a hearing today before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), who’s also on the intelligence committee, had the following colloquy with Mueller: FEINGOLD: OK, thank you. Director Mueller, we’ve heard criticism this morning for the decision to try Abdulmutallab in federal court. And I’m, of course, a little mystified by this reaction, given the similarity of this case to the attempt by Richard Reid, who was prosecuted in federal court by the prior administration, now serving a life sentence. Some have argued the decision has compromised our ability to obtain useful intelligence. But as I understand it and as Senator Feinstein touched on, there are quite a few examples of people who have been charged with terrorism-related crimes in federal court and cooperated with the U.S. government. Do you see any reason to treat this case differently from the Richard Reid case? And has it been your experience that alleged terrorists charged with crimes in federal court often cooperate with the government and provide useful intelligence? MUELLER: Well, in direct answer to the question, we’ve had a number of cases in which through the process — the criminal justice process of the United States, individuals have decided to cooperate and provided tremendous intelligence. That is not to say that there may not be other ways of obtaining that intelligence. But, yes, in answer to your question, the criminal justice system has been a — a fount of intelligence in the years since September 11th.

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FBI Director Mueller Thinks You Can Get Good Intel From the Criminal Justice System

In their joint opening statement to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence, and Michael Leiter, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, squared up to a point I’ve been making for nearly a month about Northwest Flight 253 : Within the Intelligence Community we had strategic intelligence that al Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) had the intention of taking action against the United States prior to the failed attack on December 25th, but, we did not direct more resources against AQAP, nor insist that the watchlisting criteria be adjusted prior to the event . In addition, the Intelligence Community analysts who were working hard on immediate threats to Americans in Yemen did not understand the fragments of intelligence on what turned out later to be Mr. Abdulmutallab, so they did not push him onto the terrorist watchlist. How will the watchlisting standards change? And how will they change so as not to overwhelm intelligence analysts with data?

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Blair and Leiter: We Should’ve Changed the Watchlist Criteria

From the Naval blogger Raymond Pritchett, aka Galrahn, a stunning observation : The State Department told NBC news on Tuesday that  there are still 5,500 missing Americans in Haiti . What the article does not mention is that no Americans have been pulled out of rubble alive in 2 days, and the odds of finding more survivors is very low. Missing does not mean dead. There are still no fixed estimates how many people were killed in the earthquake, but the  UN is now saying they have already buried 50,000 bodies . That does not count the many thousands who died and are buried inside collapsed buildings. I have not seen any estimates of how many of the estimated 250,000 wounded in Haiti were American, but there were an estimated 45,000 Americans in Haiti at the time of the earthquake. For context, there have been  4,373 American citizens killed in the Iraq war , and  962 Americans kill in the Afghanistan War . I don’t really know what to add to this.

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Haiti Earthquake May Have Killed More Americans Than 9/11, Iraq or Afghanistan

John Brennan, the White House counterterrorism adviser, has completed his review of the November shootings at Fort Hood . The White House has just released a public version of his findings, all of which are about improving information sharing across the government — a stark contrast with Brennan’s Flight 253 review, which found that information sharing between the intelligence agencies was robust. “Communication protocols between DOD and the Department of Justice regarding disaffected individuals, in particular, need to be improved, and the policies governing information sharing and cooperation between the two departments on investigative matters require additional clarification and re-calibration,” the review states. The full declassified summary of the review is after the jump. Public Summary of the Inventory of Files Related to Fort Hood Shooting BACKGROUND On November 5, 2009, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, U.S. Army, entered the Army Base at Fort Hood, TX, and opened fire on a group of fellow soldiers.  Before he could be stopped by law enforcement officers, Hasan fatally shot 13 members of the U.S. Army and injured 32 others, most of them military personnel.  Hasan has been charged under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) with 13 specifications of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder. He is currently awaiting trial. Following the tragic shooting at Fort Hood, on November 6, 2009, the President convened a meeting of his national security team to discuss what was known to the Government about this incident.  During that meeting, upon learning what was known at the time about the shooting and the individual believed to be responsible, the President immediately directed an immediate inventory be conducted of all information in United States Government files that existed prior to November 5, 2009, relevant to the shooting and the alleged shooter, Major Nidal Malik Hasan.  In addition, the President directed that a review be initiated to determine how any such information was handled, shared, and acted upon within and across departments and agencies.  The relevant agencies and departments were directed to report their findings to the President by November 30.  Following is a summary of what was learned as a result of this inquiry, as well as the recommendations for improvements going forward. It is important to point out that this review is just one part of this story.  Two additional reviews are being conducted to determine whether additional lessons can be learned as to how the U.S. Government can better protect the American people, including our brave men and women in uniform.  First, the Secretary of Defense ordered an independent review of Department of Defense (DOD) policies and procedures to identify potential security threats within the military.  The initial findings of that review, which was conducted by former Admiral Vernon Clark and former Army Secretary Togo West, were made public today, January 15, 2010.  Second, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) asked Judge William Webster to conduct a broad review of the FBI’s handling of information relative to Major Hasan, including looking at laws and policies that govern the FBI’s actions. In the days and weeks following the shooting, all agencies and departments of the United States Government conducted a thorough search of their files to determine whether they were in possession of information about the shooting by Major Hasan.  The results of those searches were reported to the President on December 1 and have already been briefed to appropriate Members and Committees of Congress.  Because of the sensitivity of the information, and the concern that disclosure could jeopardize the ongoing criminal investigation and prosecution by the military, some of the information uncovered during those searches cannot be shared publicly at this time. FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS In addition to gathering the facts, the President ordered this review to determine whether there are ways in which the U.S. Government could enhance its ability to protect the American people.  We must always look critically at the events leading up to any tragic event like this in order to determine whether things should be done differently in the future.  To that end, the departments and agencies involved in this review took a careful look to see whether systemic changes could enhance their ability to keep Americans safe from violent attacks.  They have made several recommendations that have been endorsed by the President. · Processes and Protocols: Though information sharing between agencies and departments has improved dramatically since September 2001, there is still room for improvement in certain areas.  Communication protocols between DOD and the Department of Justice regarding disaffected individuals, in particular, need to be improved, and the policies governing information sharing and cooperation between the two departments on investigative matters require additional clarification and re-calibration. · Intelligence and Law Enforcement Analysis: A more thorough and layered analysis of certain information available to intelligence and law enforcement personnel must be conducted, along with ensuring the appropriate allocation of resources to accomplish that goal. · Information Technology: The United States Government must continue to enhance its information technology in order to better and more readily identify relevant data. · Training: The Joint Terrorism Task Forces should improve their personnel training, including of detailees from other departments and agencies, to ensure that those assigned are both adequately equipped and fully aware of all available tools to perform the critical tasks they are called upon to complete. This review was conducted on an accelerated timeline to identify issues of concern or potential vulnerabilities in our systems and to immediately take appropriate corrective measures.  The preliminary report was provided to the President weeks ago, and several steps have already been taken to implement the specific recommendations.  It is critical that we act quickly to put them into place to strengthen our ability to ensure the safety and security of the American people going forward, particularly those who serve in our Armed Forces.  However, as we have no doubt learned through our experience, taking these steps does not allow us to claim that the work is done.  This inventory and review, as well as the reviews taking place within DOD and the Intelligence Community, is part of an ongoing process to constantly evaluate and improve upon the tools and defenses we have in place to protect the American people against all forms of violence. ### Note: This summary reflects preliminary findings to facilitate immediate corrective action.  Neither the report nor its findings obviate the need for continued review and analysis to ensure that we have the fullest possible understanding of any systemic problems that need to be addressed to ensure that we do everything we can to prevent the sort of senseless violence that took place on November 5, 2009, from occurring again.  Note further that sensitive intelligence data was removed from this public report to protect sources and methods.

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White House Fort Hood Review: Better Info Sharing Needed

I had to staple my hands to my desk to prevent from facepalming after reading this account of a recent talk from Gen. George Casey , the Army chief of staff, about his 2010 priorities and now it’s hard to type: Restore balance to the Army: Casey discussed the need to return to the one year out, two years back rotation as OIF draws down. This is so absolutely positively not going to happen this year it’s bewildering. Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said that rebalancing so-called deployment-to-dwell time is on the backburner until at least 2012 . What in the world is Casey talking about? If he’s raising expectations that the deployment/dwell ratio is getting rebalanced this year, that’s not fair to his soldiers and their families.

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If Only Gen. Casey Were Chief of Staff of the Army or Something

Josh Rogin has a great piece about the differences between Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the independence and responsibilities of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Clinton wants to integrate USAID’s development missions with diplomatic and defense efforts, particularly in failing states or conflict areas. Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), the leaders of the Senate committee, worry that Clinton’s approach misunderstands the long-term nature of development work: It is also important to consider whether USAID’s growing national security mission is compatible with its development aims. For example, can USAID participate effectively in counterinsurgency and stabilization operations while maintaining a credible humanitarian presence, or do these functions demand a new approach altogether? There is justification for aid programs that have both short-term strategic value and long-term development objectives, but the line between these two goals is often blurred. At a minimum, foreign aid accounts need to be rationalized so that they support U.S. priorities and the missions of the agencies in which they are located. How to square the circle? Stuart Bowen’s proposal for a U.S. Office of Contingency Operations is one way. Bowen’s so-called USOCO would create an operational structure in crisis situations for integrating defense, diplomacy and development efforts, along with humanitarian relief, reconstruction, rule-of-law advisory and other elements of national power as necessary. That’s what Clinton wants. But it would leave USAID alone to focus on long-term development projects, as Kerry and Lugar want. Whether Bowen’s proposal will gain traction is a different story. He’s expected to present the USOCO idea to Congress in the coming weeks — probably on Jan. 30, when he presents his next quarterly report on Iraq reconstruction to lawmakers. (The idea recently won support from the respected diplomat Ryan Crocker .) Before he does, however, the various foreign-policy departments are expected to send Bowen their formal perspectives on the merits of USOCO in the next few days — including, naturally, State and USAID.

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Clinton v. Kerry on USAID — With Bowen to the Rescue?

It doesn’t appear so, according to Greg Jaffe’s preview of the Pentagon’s investigatio n: A high-level Pentagon inquiry into the Fort Hood shootings that left 13 people dead has concluded that the military should focus more resources on identifying service members who might pose a threat to their colleagues and outlines a series of steps the Pentagon should take to prevent future attacks, Pentagon officials said. According to Jaffe’s piece for The Washington Post, the report — expected to be released on Thursday — will recommend the Defense Department “to ensure that it fully staffs FBI-run Joint Terrorism Task Forces so that information collected by other government agencies about potential contacts between troops and terrorist groups is shared promptly with the Defense Department.” We’ll know more on Thursday, but it appears for now like Gen. George Casey’s call not to stigmatize American Muslim soldiers has been embraced by the panel, led by ex-Army Secretary Togo West and ret. Adm. Vern Clark. Good for them .

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No Profiling of Muslims in Fort Hood Recommendations?

They friend each other ! Mr. Neely, an Army veteran who spent six months at the prison in 2002, sent messages to one of the freed men, Shafiq Rasul, and was astonished when Mr. Rasul replied. Their exchanges sparked a face-to-face meeting, arranged by the BBC , which will be shown on Tuesday. Mr. Neely, who has served as the president of the Houston chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War, says his time at Guantánamo now haunts him, and has granted confessional-style interviews about the abuses he says he witnessed there. In a message to Mr. Rasul, Mr. Neely apologized for his role in the imprisonment. Gavin Lee, a BBC correspondent, learned about the Facebook messages from Mr. Rasul, who lives in Britain , and thought the situation was incredible. Mr. Lee tracked down Mr. Neely — on Facebook, naturally — and asked, “would you consider meeting face to face?” “He thought about it and he said, ‘I would love to,’ ” Mr. Lee recalled last week. “I would love to apologize in person.” This is happening tonight on BBC World News America.

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Just Your Typical Facebook Interaction Between GTMO Guards and Ex-Detainees

With all the necessary caveats about polling in Afghanistan, this new BBC poll finds a surprisingly robust acceptance among Afghans for the U.S. troop presence : Of more than 1,500 Afghans questioned, 70% said they believed Afghanistan was going in the right direction – a big jump from 40% a year ago. Of those questioned, 68% now back the presence of US troops in Afghanistan, compared with 63% a year ago. For Nato troops, including UK forces, support has risen from 59% to 62%. These are eye-opening numbers considering the results of the last BBC poll on Afghanistan , which the British news agency published in September. Back then, only 44 percent believed their country was on the right track. (A near-contemporaneous poll from the International Republican Institute pegged that right-track number at 62 percent.) While I can’t find an exact question in the previous poll about the presence of U.S. troops, only 47 percent had positive feelings about the United States in September. So perhaps the poll is an outlier. But if not, then Gen. McChrystal may have been on to something when he contended that the behavior of U.S. forces was more important than the presence of U.S. forces in terms of Afghan perceptions of occupation.

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Afghans Show Surprisingly Positive Feelings On ‘Extended Surge’

Vice Adm. Robert Harward arrived in Afghanistan this fall to take over detention operations for Gen. Stanley McChrystal. McChrystal’s explicit instructions for Harward’s portfolio were to transfer control of the prison at Bagram Air Field to Afghan control . On Saturday, that instruction took a big step forward : Afghan officials have agreed to take over the running of the US military prison at Bagram, which currently houses about 750 inmates, including around 30 foreign nationals. A so-called Memorandum of Understanding signed on Saturday could see the controversial facility handed over to Afghan control within months, officials said. The plan appears to be to transition Bagram first to the Afghan defense ministry and then to the justice ministry. But the shift also augurs something profound: it means that Bagram can’t serve as neo-Guantanamo, as some have suggested. Daphne Eviatar reported that the influential Center for American Progress floated a proposal in November to send Guantanamo detainees to Bagram as an interim step to closing the Cuban prison. But handing Bagram over to Afghan control effectively forecloses on that option.

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Afghans to Take Over Bagram Prison

Wow oh wow oh wow . Former Department of Justice official and torture memo author John Yoo will be on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Monday to promote his new book, according to the show’s website . Yoo is not a nincompoop like Jim Cramer . He knows what he’s getting into. Stewart is going to have to go hard. May I make a suggestion ?

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John Yoo Meets Jon Stewart

Apropos of White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan’s comment yesterday that al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula had made a new strategic decision to attack the U.S. homeland , Leah Farrall, an al-Qaeda expert and former terrorism adviser to the Australian federal police, says it’s nothing new. “I watched AQAP congeal online in early 02  and I have their founding documents, their guidelines, objectives and rules of conduct and lists of what detachments they formed–right down to the oath recruits were to take,” in case you were wondering about her credentials. She writes : I know that this is not the first time AQAP has tried to attack in N America. It’s not even the second time. Both of these earlier plots are mini case studies for the last section of my thesis. And with al Qaeda what is old inevitably becomes new again. By the way, both of the earlier plots would have been much much bigger than this–had they come to fruition. What this shows is that AQAP has still not reached the capacity it had in its earlier campaign, when it was allowed by its HQ to launch external attacks. If there’s a way of squaring her comments with Brennan’s, it’s that she points out the Saudi counterterrorism campaign in the middle of the decade “decimated” AQAP and the organization has been slowly getting back to where it was. So what’s new here, if anything? The only *new* thing here is the type of device used and reaction to the plot. But even in terms of  IED’s, AQAP has always been on the sharp end of the stick when it comes to innovation. That’s because it has a great core of IED engineers who cycle in and out of the organisation. Not particularly encouraging.

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Or Maybe al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula Is Pretty Weak

While the nation is distracted by wondering about the status of Colt McCoy’s shoulder, the Pentagon emailed out the following statement from spokesman Geoff Morrell: “Secretary Gates met with the President just before Christmas and gave him a commitment to stay on the job for AT LEAST another year. They agreed to revisit this issue again later this year, but for all intents and purposes their original agreement still stands: he serves at the pleasure of the President indefinitely and he is honored to do so, though he certainly looks forward to one day retiring to his family home in the Pacific Northwest.” One presumes Gates, a former A&M president, would add: Hook ‘Em.* *I asked two Texans with whom I am watching the BCS Championship if a Texas A&M president would indeed be pulling for Texas here. This is their call. Update: I am getting slaughtered on Twitter, and by at least one former Defense official, for suggesting anyone from A&M would root for Texas in anything ever. All right, fine! I had two sources on this! Of unquestionable Texan credentials! One of whom looked like he was going to cry after the Arenas interception! Like Ahmed Chalabi, I declare myself a hero in error.

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Pentagon: Gates Pledges to Stay at Least One More Year as SecDef

You’d think nothing could top Rudy Giuliani’s noun-verb-9/11ism , but, via Ben Smith , that’s because you don’t pay enough attention to Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.): “You are saying someone should be held accountable. Name one other specific recommendation the president could implement right now to fix this,” host George Stephanopoulos said to King. “I think one main thing would be to — just himself to use the word terrorism more often,” said King, the ranking Republican on the Homeland Security Committee. TERRORISM TERRORISM TERRORISM TERRORISM TERRORISM TERRORISM TERRORISM TERRORISM TERRORISM TERRORISM. You are now ten times safer than you were before you read this post.

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Every Time Someone Says ‘Terrorism,’ Peter King Gives An Angel Its Wings

A picture is emerging of Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, the Jordanian double agent who murdered seven CIA agents and Blackwater contractors in Khost Province last week after convincing U.S. and Jordanian intelligence that he was key to penetrating al-Qaeda on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. He’s an Internet enthusiast , apparently. But look at this New York Times observation : Mr. Balawi proved to be one of the oddest double agents in the history of espionage, choosing to kill his American contacts at their first meeting, rather than establish regular communication to glean what the C.I.A. did — and did not — know about Al Qaeda and then report back to the network’s leaders. An excellent point. I don’t think we have enough information to start speculating on that decision. But it raises the prospect that al-Qaeda might think it knows all it needs to know about U.S. intelligence operations in eastern Afghanistan. That would cut against the supposed freaked-out-ed-ness of al-Qaeda about the drone strikes in Pakistan. But like I said: not enough information to speculate. Update : Thanks to the magic of Twitter , I see this AP story , which ought to be huge: A former senior intelligence official says the double agent who killed seven CIA employees last week had provided information that led the CIA to kill a number of al-Qaida leaders. The former official says Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi had provided high-quality intelligence that established his credibility with Jordanian and U.S. intelligence. The former official says that information led to drone-launched missiles strikes. CBS News first reported al-Balawi’s connection to the missile strikes.

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Al-Qaeda’s Counterintelligence: Kill People & Blow Stuff Up

So says Capt. Matt Pottinger , one of the co-authors of Maj. Gen. Michael Flynn’s scathing assessment of intelligence operations in Afghanistan : “This is primarily about improving intelligence within the Department of Defense,” he said via e-mail “Our timing was independent of the tragic event in Khost Province,” he said, referring to the attack that killed the CIA officers. I’d encourage people to re-read Flynn’s paper for the Center for a New American Security and see if that’s always clear. It’s definitely an unusual paper, published just as, per the Los Angeles Times , Flynn is conducting precisely the overhaul his paper advocates. CNAS’s Tom Ricks sheds a bit of light on what’s going on: As I understand it, the paper was released through CNAS because Gen. Flynn wanted to reach beyond his own chain of command and his own community and talk to people such as commanders of deploying infantry units about what kind of intelligence they should be demanding.

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McChrystal Aide Did Not Mean to Call Out CIA

This is the beginning of an assessment written by Maj. Gen. Michael Flynn, the senior-most intelligence adviser to Gen. Stanley McChrystal, for the Center for a New American Security about intelligence and the Afghanistan war: Eight years into the war in Afghanistan, the U.S. intelligence community is only marginally relevant to the overall strategy. having focused the overwhelming majority of its collection efforts and analytical brainpower on insurgent groups, the vast intelligence apparatus is unable to answer fundamental questions about the environment in which U.S. and allied forces operate and the people they seek to persuade. Ignorant of local economics and landowners, hazy about who the powerbrokers are and how they might be influenced, incurious about the cor- relations between various development projects and the levels of cooperation among villagers, and disengaged from people in the best position to find answers — whether aid workers or Afghan soldiers — U.S. intelligence officers and analysts can do little but shrug in response to high level decision-makers seeking the knowledge, analysis, and information they need to wage a successful counterinsurgency. It actually gets more scathing from there. “Every level of the U.S. intelligence hierarchy” comes in for criticism. Flynn says that U.S. intelligence in Afghanistan “overemphasize[s] detailed information about the enemy at the expense of the political, economic, and cultural environment that supports it.” In other words, intelligence in Afghanistan is enemy-centric, when it needs to be population-centric, much like the military operations it supports. Flynn wants intelligence reports on “census data and patrol debriefs; minutes from shuras with local farmers and tribal leaders; after-action reports from civil affairs officers and Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs); polling data and atmospherics reports from psychological operations and female engagement teams; and translated summaries of radio broadcasts that influence local farmers, not to mention the field observations of Afghan soldiers, United Nations officials, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).” Instead, U.S. intelligence “seems much too mesmerized by the red of the Taliban’s cape.” Flynn, joined by co-authors Capt. Matt Pottinger and the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Paul D. Batchelor, writes: The intelligence community’s standard mode of operation is surprisingly passive about aggregating information that is not enemy-related and relaying it to decision-makers or fellow analysts further up the chain. It is a culture that is strangely oblivious of how little its analytical products, as they now exist, actually influence commanders. Flynn never specifically calls out the CIA. His paper says it’s talking about “the thousands of uniformed and civilian intelligence personnel serving with the Department of Defense and with joint inter-agency elements in Afghanistan,” and it focuses heavily on practical military intelligence issues. His key recommendations center on creating intelligence fusion centers around the regional commands run by NATO in Afghanistan. So, just to be totally clear: This is mostly about military intelligence. But this applies far beyond intelligence officers on a battalion’s staff: In a recent project ordered by the White House, analysts could barely scrape together enough information to formulate rudimentary assessments of pivotal Afghan districts. It is little wonder, then, that many decision-makers rely more upon newspapers than military intelligence to obtain “ground truth.” Whether or not Flynn and his co-authors make a strong argument, the paper comes just days after the CIA in Afghanistan suffered one of the greatest losses of life in the agency’s history .

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McChrystal Intelligence Adviser Strongly Criticizes U.S. Intelligence Community

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Too close to racial profiling, says Michael German, a former FBI counterterrorism agent who’s now the civil liberties organization’s national-security legal counsel. From a new statement: “We should be focusing on evidence-based, targeted and narrowly tailored investigations based on individualized suspicion, which would be both more consistent with our values and more effective than diverting resources to a system of mass suspicion,” said Michael German, national security policy counsel with the ACLU Washington Legislative Office and a former FBI agent. “Overbroad policies such as racial profiling and invasive body scanning for all travelers not only violate our rights and values, they also waste valuable resources and divert attention from real threats.” According to the ACLU, the government’s plan to subject citizens of certain countries to enhanced screenings is bad policy, because there is no way to predict the national origin of a terrorist and many terrorists have come from countries not on the list. For instance, the “shoe bomber” Richard Reid is a British citizen, as were four of the London subway bombers, and in 2005 a Belgian woman launched a suicide attack in Iraq. “Singling out travelers from a few specified countries for enhanced screening is essentially a pretext for racial profiling, which is ineffective, unconstitutional and violates American values. Empirical studies of terrorists show there is no terrorist profile, and using a profile that doesn’t reflect this reality will only divert resources by having government agents target innocent people,” said German. “Profiling can also be counterproductive by undermining community support for government counterterrorism efforts and creating an injustice that terrorists can exploit to justify further acts of terrorism.” Why, I made the Richard Reid point myself earlier today. Correction : An earlier version of this post misidentified German as ACLU national-security director. That’s Jameel Jaffer. Apologies to both individuals, and to you.

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ACLU Criticizes New TSA Rules

Rising Cases of Scam Mails THISDAY We note that the US President Barack Obama in appreciation of the menace recently appointed a cyber fraud chief to check hackers infiltrating into strategic …

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Rising Cases of Scam Mails – THISDAY

In his press briefing yesterday, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly took a beating over the fact that department bureaucrats didn’t revoke Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s visa to enter the United States. Kelly, in something of a defensive crouch, said that it was the responsibility of an interagency effort run by the National Counterterrorism Center to order the department to revoke the visa. I’ve contacted NCTC to solicit a response, but no luck yet. In the meantime, I’ve talked to people who’ve directly processed foreigners’ visas. Long story short: It’s even harder for State to revoke a visa than Kelly made it sound. First things first. Like Kelly said, State consular officers need to receive affirmative word from the interagency process that someone is a terror suspect or other security risk before it can revoke a visa on those grounds. Where State does have grounds to revoke a visa unilaterally is if officers catch visa recipients in a lie or violation, such as overstaying a visa’s duration. In those cases, which typically occur when someone reapplies for a visa, officers would have to present the recipient with evidence for why they were revoking his or her visa. Consular officers can tap into the so-called TIDE database of 550,000 names of people who the intelligence community suspects might cause the U.S. harm. But that occurs, typically, when an officer is issuing a visa in the first place. Officers don’t get pinged every time someone gets added to TIDE. Taken together, all that means in practice that State Department officers were not going to revoke Abdulmutallab’s visa. That visa was issued in June 2008, long before anyone had any suspicions about him, and good until June 2010. Making matters more complicated, Abdulmutallab got his visa in London, but it was U.S. embassy officials in Abuja who learned about the threat he posed after his father warned them in November. They entered him into TIDE. The issuing consular office might very well not have known about it. Absent a determination from NCTC that didn’t occur, no one in the State Department was going to yank the visa. And if some clever consular officers decided to skirt the rules, they would still have to alert Abdulmutallab to the revocation — and hope they didn’t tip him off to the fact that U.S. authorities were monitoring him. I don’t know exactly what the procedure is for the State Department to have known that the U.K. actually denied him a visa in May. Given that Abdulmutallab wasn’t a U.S. citizen, there may not have been a procedure mandating notification. The U.K. didn’t turn him down for terrorism suspicions; the Brits turned him down because his academic pretext for staying in Britain was dubious. None of this should be interpreted as an argument for the merits of the current system. It’s just an explanation of how the system currently works, and one that underscores the difficulty of changing it.

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State Department, for All Practical Purposes, Couldn’t Have Revoked Abdulmutallab’s Visa

The key question about how Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab retained his visa to enter the U.S. centers on the connection between the terror watchlist he was on and State Department visa procedures . Here I was, working on an explainer about precisely that connection, when Mark Hosenball beat me to it . And he did an absolutely amazing job. In a nutshell: Abdulmutallab got on something called the TIDE database after his father, Alhaji Mutallab, told U.S. officials at the embassy in Abuja, Nigeria about his budding extremism. That was last month. But Abdulmutallab already had a visa to enter the U.S. — one that was issued in June 2008 and valid until 2010. Hosenball picks up what happened after concerned embassy officials put Abdulmutallab’s name into a program called Viper that the State Department uses to track visa recipients: The VIPER entry based on Alhaji Mutallab’s warning to the Embassy included a notice that if or when Umar applied for an extension or renewal of his existing US visa, then the case should be thoroughly examined in light of the father’s concerns about the son, said the official. But this did not constitute an explicit instruction either that his current visa should be revoked or that any application for a fresh or extended visa should be denied. It is not clear whether the people who operated the TIDE data base were aware that Abdulmutallab had a valid US visa at the time the report on him from Abuja reached US intelligence. Two things to watch at the congressional hearings next month. First, the relationship between TIDE and VIPER. And second, the related issue of whether TIDE placement should automatically warrant the Homeland Security equivalent of an all-points bulletin. The danger there is that TIDE already has 550,000 names on it. Hosenball again: “You get a lot of info everyday,” said one official close to the process. “Some of it is bad. Someone cannot just go into the data base and then go onto a ‘no fly list.’“ For example, the official said, the TIDE data base contains the names of Irish Republican Army partisans who were involved in militant and possible violent activity in the past, but who are not regarded as any kind of threat to transportation today. There’s an understandable impulse to redress the Abdulmutallab failure by basically treating someone’s placement on TIDE as, essentially, probable cause. But it could actually be counterproductive, sending overtaxed intelligence and law enforcement officials off chasing false positives. Watch next month for how Homeland Security officials discuss this balance before angry members of Congress.

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Your Questions About Abdulmutallab’s Visa: Answered

The New York Times reports on a radio interview with U.K. Home Secretary Alan Johnson: Mr. Johnson said Mr. Abdulmutallab’s application to renew his student visa was rejected in May after officials determined that the academic course he had given as his reason for returning to Britain was bogus. He was then placed on the watch list, Mr. Johnson said, a procedure that would normally involve American authorities being informed of the action Britain had taken. So, uh, what happened to that U.S. visa?

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Brits Denied Visa Request for Abdulmutallab

How long before Glenn Beck calls Howard A. Schmidt a czar? Also, who is this guy, anyway? Mr. Schmidt is the chief executive officer of the Information Security Forum, a nonprofit computer security trade association based in London. He has served as chief information security officer at eBay and chief security officer at Microsoft. In the Bush administration, he was the vice chairman of the president’s Critical Infrastructure Protection Board and a special adviser for cyberspace security. He also served in the Air Force and the Army in computer security roles and led a computer forensics team for the Federal Bureau of Investigation at the National Drug Intelligence Center. With a background like that, Schmidt is clearly a dirty hippie out to steal your freedom.

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Meet the New Cybersecurity Boss

Times Online Health Care Bill: Fact Check on Obama's Statement Right Pundits Its all a scam to commit us to voting dem so the bottom doesnt fall out of everything. After this freaking fiasco I figure theres no way the country is … BREAKING NEWS – DID OBAMA JUST COMMIT HIGH TREASON? NELSON ANNOUNCES HE'LL … The Cypress Times Obama Calls for Senate to Avoid “Parliamentary Measures” Blocking Health Care … ABC News (blog) An abortion compromise that's fair Washington Post (blog) all 9,794 news articles

With fears of a new wave of domestic terrorism rising (even though those fears are statistically way out of proportion to the millions of American Muslims), The New York Times takes a look at something that really could contribute to it: fraying relations between American Muslim community leaders and the FBI . As much as certain members of Congress enjoy the politically cost-free demonization of the American Muslim community, FBI leaders don’t have that luxury, since they depend on close community relations in order to distinguish between real threats and overblown fears. Much like how the best counterinsurgency practices in Iraq and Afghanistan depend on enabling a community to basically police itself, American Muslim leaders will either be partners in the effort — or, if treated as a bunch of targets of suspicion themselves , through intensified surveillance and arm-twisting to inform, they could withhold cooperation to everyone’s detriment. The Times: The Queens imam arrested in September as investigators pursued the coffee vendor [Najibullah Zazi] was an informer who had helped authorities. Last month, federal prosecutors moved to seize several buildings across the country that house mosques, saying they were owned by a nonprofit group with links to Iran. As a rare federal investigation that has ensnared houses of worship, the case stoked apprehensions that the government sees Arab-Americans and Muslims as a people apart. Treat entire communities like an undifferentiated threat and they’ll react accordingly. Michael Rolince, a former FBI counterterrorism official who gets it, tells The Times: “There are some people in the bureau who believe, as I do, that the relationship with the Muslim community is crucial and must be developed with consistency,” Mr. Rolince said. “And there are those who don’t.” If the FBI really believes that this is a moment of heightened domestic-terrorism dangers, then this destructive behavior comes when the bureau can least afford it.

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Are You a Source or a Target?

Charlie Savage and Scott Shane have a great story today about U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies improperly spying on constitutionally protected activities of American citizens. Overcollection, as it’s euphemistically known in the intelligence business, has, unsurprisingly, occurred for years, despite official denials in the Bush administration. One American Muslim confab in March 2008, Savage and Shane report, became the subject of a Department of Homeland Security report. An internal review found the division producing the report “did not have any evidence the conference or the speakers promoted radical extremism or terrorist activity.” But there’s much more, as Marcy Wheeler hones in on . Check out this letter from George Tenet , then the director of the CIA, to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, shortly after the 2002 murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl by extremists in Pakistan. Tenet tells the group that Pearl was not a CIA asset or operative. But then he declines to issue a firm denial that the agency is not having its assets or operatives pose as journalists. “A blanket statement that we would never use journalistic cover would, I know, be preferable to the members of ASNE,” Tenet writes. “The kinds of people who kidnap and murder reporters like Daniel Pearl, however, are unlikely to believe a policy statement by the U.S. government no matter how firmly it is made.” So Tenet hides behind Omar Saeed Shaikh, Pearl’s most likely murderer. (Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s confession to killing Pearl is rather dubious .) As someone who occasionally reports from war zones, I don’t appreciate the non-denial denial of something that could endanger my life. It’s one thing to say that fanatics won’t believe the denial. It’s quite another not to issue it for that — alleged — reason.

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For the Record, I Am Not on the CIA Payroll

I suppose Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s heart is in the right place, but, um . NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on Wednesday the Western military bloc is seeking greater Russian assistance for international operations in Afghanistan. Speaking to reporters after talks with President Dmitry Medvedev, Rasmussen said he was inviting Russia to step up its assistance in Afghanistan, including by supplying helicopters, spare parts and fuel, and by training pilots. What could possibly go wrong here? The last time the Russians stepped up “its assistance” in Afghanistan, the Afghan people went on to enjoy the fruits of Russian generosity and prosperity. NATO is right to underscore an essential continuity. Rasmussen — seriously now — has rather uncritically embraced the Afghanistan war to date as NATO secretary-general , but this is a new plateau. He might need a quick history lesson before this goes forward.

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Next Up, U.S. to Reinvade Vietnam

Since the Supreme Court ruled last year that detainees at the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo have the right to habeas corpus — that is, the right to challenge their detention in court — hundreds of detainees have taken advantage, filing petitions in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. Today, The Washington Independent unveils a new feature that will track the outcomes of habeas corpus cases filed by Guantanamo Bay detainees who have challenged their indefinite detentions in the federal court system. The Gitmo Habeas Scoreboard is broken up into two sections: cases won by detainees — further divided between detainees who have been released and those still in custody — and cases won by the U.S. government. Using information compiled by Pro Publica and David Remes, legal director of Appeal for Justice, the accompanying charts feature background information on all 41 detainees whose cases have been decided to date, including the allegations against each detainee, the court’s reasoning in each decision, and the status of any appeals. As more cases are resolved, we’ll keep updating the chart. Of the 41 cases heard so far, detainees have won 32 of them. That means that in 32 out of 41 cases, the government was unable to present enough evidence, including classified evidence, to convince a federal court judge that it’s more likely than not that the detainee was a member or substantial supporter of al-Qaeda or the Taliban. ( Habeas cases are civil proceedings, where there is no need to establish guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt,” as in criminal trials.) Of the 32 cases the government has lost, it has appealed only two. Eight detainees who have lost their cases have appealed so far. Meanwhile, many of the prisoners who have won their petitions for habeas corpus are still imprisoned at Gitmo. Although the court in each case ordered the government to arrange for the detainee’s expeditious release, in some cases the government can’t or won’t send the prisoner back to where he came from. In some cases, that’s either because the detainee legitimately fears persecution at home, as in the case of the Uighurs. In others, it’s because, as with the prisoners from Yemen, the U.S. government doesn’t trust the detainee’s home government to keep him from joining up with local terror groups upon his return. As a result, of the 32 detainees who have won an order of release in a U.S. federal court, 11 remain in prison. For a full breakdown of all the cases, see the Gitmo Habeas Scoreboard here .

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Introducing TWI’s Gitmo Habeas Scoreboard

As a postscript to my Richard Holbrooke piece , a weird exchange came last night at Amb. Holbrooke’s appearance before the Council on Foreign Relations when a reporter for Voice of America asked if Holbrooke’s portfolio included helping Afghanistan and Pakistan resolve some lingering border disputes. “Are you talking about the Durand Line?” Holbrooke asked after the reporter rambled a bit. (The Durand Line is a colloquial term for the border, after the British imperialist who drew it.) Indeed, said the reporter. Holbrooke laughed and replied : You know, there’s a former ambassador — he may be here today — Ron Neumann. Is Ron here? Ron has suggested we work on the Durand Line, and I kind of looked into it because one of the big problems is that we’re talking about cross-border operations in an area where the border isn’t agreed on. But it is my reluctant conclusion we really cannot achieve much in that area right now. Most of the international boundaries in this incredible area of the world with the two largest countries — China and India plus Pakistan plus Afghanistan plus some of the former Soviet republics — most of those boundaries are not agreed on. It turned out Amb. Neumann wasn’t in the audience, so I emailed him to ask what he thought about Holbrooke shooting down what might be called Durand Reform. “I am grateful that he gave my idea a look,” Neumann replied. “I respect his judgment. Perhaps its time will come in the future.” So there’s that.

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In Case You Were Wondering, the U.S. Isn’t Going to Redraw the Afghanistan-Pakistan Border

In a rare win for the government in a Guantanamo Bay detainee case, a federal judge ruled Monday that it can continue to hold a 28-year-old Yemeni at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Musa’ab Al-Madhwani has been imprisoned at Guantanamo since October 2002. The government claims he was a member of al-Qaeda. On Monday, U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan agreed that the government had shown that it’s more likely than not that Madhwani was a member of the terrorist organization at the time. However, he added, Madhwani does not appear to be dangerous now, the judge added. “There is nothing in the record now that he poses any greater threat than those detainees who have already been released,” Judge Hogan said in court, according to the Washington Post, adding that Madhwani has been a model prisoner over the past seven years. The government’s case was based almost entirely on Madhwani’s own statements to interrogators and military officials. The government argued that Madhwani traveled to Pakistan, joined al-Qaeda, trained at an al-Qaeda camp, traveled with al-Qaeda members, and was involved in a firefight with Pakistani authorities before his arrest. Although Judge Hogan discounted the statements made to interrogators, saying they were “tainted by abusive interrogation techniques,” he did not believe the statements made to officials at military hearings were tainted. Military records reveal that Madhwani admitted to receiving firearms training at an al-Qaeda camp and once seeing al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

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U.S. Government Wins Gitmo Habeas Case; Score Is 31-9 in Favor of Detainees

Via USA Today , White House spokesman Dan Pfeiffer has denied that the administration is pressuring Senate Democrats to forge a deal with Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) on health care reform, as Politico reported earlier today. “The report is inaccurate,” he said in an email. “The White House is not pushing Sen. Reid in any direction. We are working hand in hand with the Senate leadership to work through the various issues and pass health reform as soon as possible.” Senate Democrats have called an emergency meeting at 5:30 this evening to brainstorm ways around the Lieberman hurdle.

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White House Denies Pushing Deal With Lieberman