President Obama and Gen. Stanley McChrystal began their decisive one-on-one talk in the Oval Office at 9:51 a.m., according to ABC’s Jake Tapper. Whether or not McChrystal loses his command, all signs point to Obama sticking with his current Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy. If so, that means that operational and More…
Vice President Biden will probably have the last laugh now that Gen. Stanley McChrystal is returning to Washington to learn his fate as commanding general in Afghanistan after insulting his civilian bosses and colleagues to Rolling Stone reporter Michael Hastings. No matter what happens to McChrystal, the article strengthens More…
Speaking at the Center for a New American Security’s annual Washington policy conference, Michele Flournoy, the undersecretary of defense for policy (and CNAS co-founder), made some news: The Obama administration is taking a new look at just why it is that the U.S. faces a challenge from terrorism.
“We are More…
“We will destroy al-Qaeda.”
That’s how John Brennan capped his presentation Wednesday morning on counterterrorism’s role in the forthcoming National Security Strategy, and the often intense White House senior counterterrorism adviser smiled a bit as he said it. His exploration of the administration’s pathway for getting there was mostly familiar. More…
Yesterday we broke the story of how Philip Mudd, the well-respected FBI/CIA al-Qaeda and terrorism analyst, quietly retired from government service. Today the New America Foundation, a D.C. think-tank, announces that Mudd will be joining its team as “a senior research fellow specializing in the Middle East and counterterrorism.”
I spent my morning attending the fifth birthday of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the management organization dedicated to marshaling the 16 intelligence agencies toward a coherent, unified goal. Surrounded by the heads of all those agencies, retired Adm. Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence, gave More…
The New York Times runs a very good piece about the strained, tentative and sub rosa relationship between the Obama administration and American Muslim organizations. There’s an insightful bit about how meetings between Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security, and U.S. Muslim groups contributed to her department’s repeal More…
Eric Holder stepped into the Dirksen building this morning an embattled man facing Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee fiercely critical of his desire to try Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and the other 9/11 conspirators in federal court. He left three hours later having defused some of his critics; conceding More…
In 15 minutes it gets underway: Attorney General Eric Holder’s first big round of testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee since the right began raising doubts about trying Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and the other 9/11 conspirators in civilian courts. Holder will probably want the hearing to focus on other Justice-related More…
Man, Dan Benjamin, the State Department’s counterterrorism chief, sure picked an unlucky day to deliver a speech defending the Obama administration’s counterterrorism record to the International Peace Institute in New York:
Finally, our approach recognizes that our counterterrorism efforts can best
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