President Obama just acknowledged that the government messed up in not passing along information intelligence agents had about Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old Nigerian accused of trying to blow up a Northwest Airlines plane on Christmas Day.
While we already knew that Abdulmutallab’s father, a retired More…
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 More…
In the days after the 2008 election, I fretted over the inclusion of a former senior CIA official named Jami Miscik on the Obama transition team’s intelligence desk. Why? This is why:
Miscik, you see, was head of intelligence analysis during the 2002 turmoil over Iraq’s non-existent weapons of
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 More…
Wow.
Senior defense and intelligence officials said Iranian-backed insurgents intercepted the video feeds by taking advantage of an unprotected communications link in some of the remotely flown planes’ systems. Shiite fighters in Iraq used software programs such as SkyGrabber — available for as little as $25.95 on the Internet —
Marc Ambinder has a seriously detailed curtain-raiser on a turf war that’s roiled the intelligence community for months. Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence, and Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, have clashed over who controls the top U.S. intelligence officer in various foreign countries. But More…
A statement released by Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas), the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence:
“Due to the high visibility of the issues surrounding the tragic event at Fort Hood, the President has instructed the National Security Council to assume control of all informational briefings. The NSC
Just released by the White House press office, a memorandum from President Obama. His top intelligence/counterterrorism/homeland security adviser at the White House, former CIA official John Brennan, will direct an investigation that will wrap up at the end of the month to determine what U.S. intelligence knew about “warning signs” More…
Check out Rachel Maddow going hard on Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.) for publicly revealing that the U.S. intelligence community is intercepting the communications of al-Qaeda-sympathetic cleric Anwar Aulaqi, a former U.S. preacher now in Yemen whom Fort Hood murder suspect Nidal Malik Hasan apparently contacted before the shooting.
Last month, on a conference call with reporters, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair stated that the total budget for U.S. intelligence activities — an unsurprisingly murky total; and until recently a classified one — is $75 billion. As I later clarified, Blair meant the total for both More…
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