9/11 commission

The 10-member commission appointed by Congress to investigate the causes of the nation’s financial meltdown holds its first meeting this morning. But with momentum for stronger regulation of Wall Street slowing and New York emerging as the center of bailout accountability, the commission may have to forgo Washington’s traditional deliberative instinct in order to succeed.
One [...]

Oh, Washington Post editorial board. When Steve Coll left the paper, did he take all his voluminous historical memory about U.S. policy to Afghanistan between the Soviet invasion and 9/11 with him? Because in your editorial today about Afghanistan, arguing against restricting the mission, you write:
But the problem with the critics’ argument is that, while [...]

The Church and Pike committees of the 1970s exposed CIA lawlessness; created modern legal and congressional intelligence oversight structures; and cleaved the CIA’s history into before and after periods.

Following up on Spencer’s post, I must point out the absurdity of the opening of John Yoo’s op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal.
It was instantly clear after Sept. 11, 2001, that our security agencies knew little about al Qaeda’s inner workings, could not detect its operatives’ entry into the country, nor predict where it might [...]

This is your horrible, dystopian future: John Yoo, the former Office of Legal Counsel official who had a hand in crafting the Bush administration’s detentions, interrogations and warrantless surveillance abuses, writes endless and endlessly misleading defenses of himself. Some people die because of Yoo’s cavalier relationship with the law — about 100, actually — and [...]

T.I. has prudent advice for conflict mediation. Marc Ambinder reports that the dispute over whether CIA Director Leon Panetta or Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair should have the authority to appoint and remove intelligence chiefs in foreign stations — historically a CIA prerogative — is going to Vice President Joe Biden for a resolution. [...]

Via Andrew Sullivan, Marc Ambinder gives the Obama administration’s rationale for opposing a truth commission on torture:
In the [Obama administration's] view, a commission would expose secrets without any means of determining whether they’re properly protected or not, and they’ve been warned that the nation’s spy services would simply cease to function effectively if they’re forced [...]