From the release:

Fox News and Mercury Radio Arts, Glenn Beck’s production company, are proud to announce that they will work together to develop and produce a variety of television projects for air on the Fox News Channel as well as content for other platforms including Fox News’ digital properties. Glenn intends to transition off of his daily program, the third highest rated in all of cable news, later this year.

Roger Ailes, Chairman and CEO of Fox News said, “Glenn Beck is a powerful communicator, a creative entrepreneur and a true success by anybody’s standards. I look forward to continuing to work with him. ”??Glenn Beck said: “I truly believe that America owes a lot to Roger Ailes and Fox News. I cannot repay Roger for the lessons I’ve learned and will continue to learn from him and I look forward to starting this new phase of our partnership.”

Beck’s dropping ratings still wow. His show pulled in roughly 3 million viewers per day at its height and dropped to a still breathtaking 2 million in January. Beck’s signature emotive style tied to trademark right-wing conspiracy speculation and a popularizer’s loose hand at history had grown even more pronounced in recent weeks, giving media fact checkers more material than usual to work through.

Beck struggled for days to persuade with a sweeping theory about how the populist democratic uprisings in the Middle East would end in a caliphate-communist world takeover.

This week, against the backdrop of the battle over collective bargaining in Wisconsin, he used the occasion of the anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr to try to pull the historic figure away from the cause of labor.

King was killed in Memphis where he had come to rally support for sanitary public works employees represented by the local chapter of the national municipal employees union. The workers had been on strike for two weeks and sought higher wages and better treatment from management. King had long tied the cause of racial justice to the cause of labor rights.

“Negroes are almost entirely a working people…. Our needs are identical with labor’s needs: decent wages, fair working conditions, livable housing, old-age security, health and welfare measures, conditions in which families can grow, have education for their children and respect in the community,” he said in a 1961 speech to the AFL CIO.

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Hat tip for a second time this morning to Weigel and to the Crooks and Liars.

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“Now, President Bush got a lot of grief from a lot of different angles for the Afghanistan War and the Iraq War,” Paul said. “But you know what? In both instances, he came to Congress and Congress at least voted on it before we went.”

President Obama sets a terrible precedent with committing to military involvement in Libya, Paul said, and went on to assert the President cares more about the United Nations than Congress.

Even though Congress did vote on military action, many people remain critical of Bush for not asking for a formal Congressional declaration of war. One of the most critical voices of Bush’s handling of the wars in the Middle East has been Sen. Paul’s father, U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas). In January, at the beginning of the current session of Congress, Congressman Paul entered evidence of alleged war crimes Bush was responsible for into Congressional Record via a speech on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Ron Paul’s supporters heckled Vice-President Dick Cheney and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld at the 2011 Conservative Political Action Conference, calling them “war criminals.”

Bush had to defend himself against Congressman Paul’s consistent criticism of the Bush administration’s foreign policy, as Paul called for a non-interventionist approach. Paul was one of six Republicans to vote against the Iraq Resolution and consistently said both wars were illegal partly because Congress never declared war.

Sen. Paul was speaking at the Iowa GOP‘s “Night of the Rising Stars” event Saturday. The Senator said the most important vote Congress ever takes is whether or not to send armed forces to war, and pledged to fight against it in the coming weeks.

He also told a story about the former owner of his congressional desk, Henry Clay, who was known as the “Great Compromiser.” Paul said there were some deeply held beliefs Congressmen should never compromise on, such as slavery, on which Clay did broker compromises.

“Now some would say the issues we deal with today have no moral equivalency today as slavery,” Paul said. “But I would say that when we think about things, there are questions we should ask. Can a civilization long endure that doesn’t respect life? Will we be judged at some point in time on whether we stood up and said that the law and the land should respect the unborn?”

That remark earned Paul’s most extended round of applause of the night.

He said the country was facing fast approaching a “day of reckoning,” to reach the point when the U.S. can no longer pay its bills and destroy its currency as a result of the deficit and the debt owed to other countries.

Paul pledged deep cuts in the federal budget. He said while Congress debates cuts near $32 billion, people in his home district tell him cutting $500 billion would be “a good start.”

U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) introduced Paul and said he’d like to see spending levels back to 2008 numbers, although the federal deficit grew under Bush.

Paul also took a shot at U.S. Sen Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) as he opened his speech, describing a debate he had on the floor of the Senate with him.

He said he told Harkin there could be more investment in infrastructure and education if people didn’t have to pay “Chicago union scale wages” in Iowa or Kentucky, to which he said Harkin told him, “You can’t have any kind of quality products made unless they’re made by union workers.” The crowd groaned, and Paul said you would have to throw out 95 percent of the products you consume if Harkin’s statement was true.

Paul didn’t make any references to his own speculation of a White House run, but said Iowans needed to find the right Republican to run in 2012. Senator Paul will return in the summer for a Faith & Freedom Coalition event, alongside other potential 2012 candidates.

The software would allow military personnel to “control up to 10 separate identities based all over the world,” each with “a convincing background, history and supporting details,” reports The Guardian.

Guardian reporters explain how the program would work:

“Centcom spokesman Commander Bill Speaks said: “The technology supports classified blogging activities on foreign-language websites to enable Centcom to counter violent extremist and enemy propaganda outside the US.”

He said none of the interventions would be in English, as it would be unlawful to “address US audiences” with such technology, and any English-language use of social media by Centcom was always clearly attributed. The languages in which the interventions are conducted include Arabic, Farsi, Urdu and Pashto.

Once developed, the software could allow US service personnel, working around the clock in one location, to respond to emerging online conversations with any number of co-ordinated Facebook messages, blogposts, tweets, retweets, chatroom posts and other interventions. Details of the contract suggest this location would be MacDill air force base near Tampa, Florida, home of US Special Operations Command.”

The story includes a link to the actual text of the contract between Centcom and Ntrepid, available online via the Freedom of Information Act. It unambiguously details how the software would generate fake personas and conceal their actual origins.

The new program is part of Centcom’s ongoing Operation Earnest Voice (OEV), a $200 million operation aimed at countering the online presence of extremist groups like Al Qaeda. General David Petraeus, who once headed up Centcom, made a statement to the Senate Armed Forces Committee a year ago yesterday in which he argued that OEV ensured that the U.S. armed forces would always be “first with the truth.”

What might this mean in practice? Mazzetti:

General Petraeus’s September order is focused on intelligence gathering — by American troops, foreign businesspeople, academics or others — to identify militants and provide “persistent situational awareness,” while forging ties to local indigenous groups.

Petraeus’ spokesman declined comment. But if that’s faithfully reported, it sounds a lot like uniformed personnel could assume civilian cover for intelligence purposes. And that carries the non-trivial risk of unaffiliated businesspeople or academics or journalists or tourists in the Middle East or South Asia being presumed to be spies — and, hence, targets — by local security forces or extremists. Foreign allied governments in the region might also not like the U.S. sponsoring “local indigenous groups” that might destabilize their countries or threaten their rule.

President Obama meeting with Michael Leiter, center right, and other intelligence officials at the National Counterterrorism Center in October (UPPA/ZUMApress.com)

President Obama is scheduled to meet on Tuesday afternoon with 20 of his security advisers to receive the results of two inquiries into how Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab snuck a bomb onto Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day. One of those advisers is Michael Leiter, the Bush-appointed director of the National Counterterrorism Center, a hub created after 9/11 for the intelligence community’s voluminous data about terrorist plots and ambitions. While NCTC, as it’s known, has taken much criticism in the media over the past two weeks for failing to flag Abdulmutallab as a threat, NCTC has so far evaded criticism over a structural problem it still faces five years after its creation: of the 300 analysts working at the center, fewer than a dozen focus full-time on the Middle East.

[Security1] According to NCTC veterans, the NCTC’s Middle East Branch consists of eight to nine analysts at any given time. Those analysts are responsible for integrating and analyzing millions of pieces of fragmentary data relevant to terrorism in the Middle East provided by partner intelligence agencies like the CIA and the National Security Agency. They disseminate their synthesis throughout the intelligence community and into the law-enforcement and policymaking worlds, to ensure officials perceive previously hidden connections that might reveal the next al-Qaeda plot and act accordingly. And they’re responsible for analysis of a region central to the organization: Saudi Arabia, birthplace of Osama bin Laden and ancestral home of most 9/11 hijackers; Iraq, rocked by years of war and occupation; the restive Levant, Israel and the Palestinian territories, a decades-long hotbed of extremism; and Yemen, where the Nigeria-born Abdulmutallab received his explosive device from a growing al-Qaeda presence.

“There’s limited manpower and finite resources,” said a former NCTC analyst who, like several colleagues in the intelligence community, described the state of the Middle East Branch on condition of anonymity. Longstanding and government-wide shortfalls in language resources afflict the branch as well, the analyst said: “Very few people speak Arabic, and very few have ever been to the region.”

An individual familiar with NCTC’s current operations did not dispute the number of Middle East Branch analysts. But the individual said focusing on the number was misleading, because NCTC can shift analysts around from across the center to surge attention and resources to deal with an emerging problem. “There might be eight or nine people that are deemed those particular experts, but across the Center, there’s a heck of a lot more that can be drawn upon,” the individual said, citing more-experienced supervisors and additional NCTC branches and groups working on related issues that can contribute as needed.

But several NCTC veterans, none of whom would agree to be identified because of their ongoing involvement with the intelligence community, discussed chronic shortfalls of manpower at the agency. One NCTC veteran described a single analyst — “yes, singular,” a different former NCTC analyst emphasized — who until recently was responsible for analysis of terrorism on the entire Arabian Peninsula, apparently during the time when al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has emerged as what Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday termed a “global threat.”

A different U.S. intelligence official pushed back on the importance of that seeming shortfall. “Yemen has been an area of significant focus by this organization and others around the government,” the intelligence official said. Pointing to the eight or nine analysts on the Branch is “wholly misleading,” because others in NCTC work on aspects of terrorism analysis for al-Qaeda not specifically related to Yemen or the Middle East that assist understanding al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. But the official continued, “Now, there may be one primary person who’s looking at a particular area or has particular expertise or is a regional expert or is a country expert, OK, let’s say that’s ‘The Person.’ But with all that’s been going on in that country” — a reference to U.S. intelligence-assisted strikes on the terrorist organization — “it is totally wrong to think that there is just one person that’s watching Yemen.”

Since passengers and crew aboard Northwest Flight 253 prevented Abdulmutallab from detonating a device hidden in his underwear, overwhelming media and political attention has focused on how NCTC synthesized fragmentary bits of data acquired about Abdulmutallab and the organization that outfitted him, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the Yemen-based franchise of the terrorist network. The most specific piece of information NCTC received came from officials at the U.S. embassy in Abuja, Nigeria, after the would-be bomber’s father told embassy staff on Nov. 19 that Abdulmutallab might be an extremist. An interagency process led by NCTC determined that the information did not meet an agreed-upon standard of “specific derogatory information leading to reasonable suspicion” necessary to place Abdulmutallab on a terrorist database maintained by the FBI, a precursor to placement on the no-fly list. Frustrated intelligence officials have wondered what they were really supposed to do with those data fragments, and have expressed bitterness over becoming a media scapegoat — and having other government departments blame them for the Christmas Day near-attack.

John Brennan, Obama’s senior White House counterterrorism adviser and the first director of NCTC, said on ABC’s “This Week” that a positive sign in the Abdulmutallab case was that unlike before 9/11, there was “no evidence whatsoever” that the various intelligence agencies with information on Abdulmutallab or al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula were “reluctant to share” with each other. The trouble, Brennan said — and will likely report to Obama on Tuesday afternoon — was that “there are millions upon millions of bits of data that come in on a regular basis. What we need to do is make sure the system is robust enough that we can bring that information to the surface that really is a threat concern.”

Yet some experts question NCTC’s organizational configuration for such synthesis. Staffing the Middle East Branch with eight or nine full-time analysts is “a baffling management decision” said Steven Aftergood, an intelligence-policy analyst with the Federation of American Scientists. “Other than South Asia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, what is more important than the Middle East from a counterterrorism point of view? Where are the other several hundred [NCTC] analysts focused?”

Much of NCTC remains outside public view. Its budget is classified, a component of the budget allocated to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence — which is also not publicly disclosed.

NCTC veterans described a situation where the requirements of preventing terrorist attacks outweighed the resources provided to NCTC. “The sheer volume of intel is amazing,” one said. “The word ‘jihad’ is on the Internet every single day, it’s like [several] billion hits. And there’s no way you can track every email or cellphone conversation.”

Compounding the challenge is the questionable experience of many NCTC analysts, about 60 percent of whom are on loan from other intelligence organizations on two-year rotations. One of the former NCTC analysts described eager and dedicated colleagues being assigned to areas of expertise they did not come to NCTC possessing; as well as analysts reassigned from their areas of focus to assist with the latest crisis.

“You’re assigned to Yemen? Great, but you don’t know who the players are, what the [country's] resources are, and you don’t know where al-Qaeda fits into the whole process,” the former analyst said. Analysts will often be asked to be brought up to speed by their colleagues or predecessors. The two-year rotations are meant to encourage a culture of intelligence sharing within the 16 intelligence agencies of the U.S. government. Some intelligence professionals believe that those rotations ultimately give CIA or Defense Department analysts a broader perspective about an intelligence question. Others lament that their acquired expertise rotates back from NCTC to their partner agencies. “The nature of this organization is that people leave their jobs every two years,” the ex-NCTC analyst said.

The center’s hundreds of analysts are organized into units looking at extremist groups, various regions of the world where they operate, and questions about the groups’ capabilities and intentions. “There’s staffing that’s re-prioritized all the time. None of this is set in stone,” said a U.S. intelligence official. “People are put on particular groups and task forces that examine issues closely as they emerge. The numbers themselves are not really telling you the story of how much can be put against a particular issue or topic or threat that’s emerging.”

But with Brennan talking about an accelerated need to “bring [terrorism] information together so when a father comes in with information and we have intelligence, we can map that,” some in the intelligence community are concerned that the already overtaxed NCTC will be asked to synthesize even more fragmentary data from its contributing intelligence agencies. “What you’ll end up doing is opening up the firehose to full blast,” said one. “They’re barely able to handle what they have right now.” Indeed, Marc Ambinder of the Atlantic reported Tuesday that before the attempted Christmas attack, Leiter and the NCTC’s leadership were preparing for 2010 budget cuts. The U.S. intelligence official who defended NCTC added, “Clearly, if people believe more resources have to be applied against something, it’ll be identified” for Congress to approve, although the official said that conclusion was premature.

Aftergood, however, questioned whether NCTC’s performance merited giving the center additional funding or manpower. “There’s a tendency to say if organization fails in its mission we should give it more resources, and if it succeeds in mission we should give it more resources,” he said. “There are some other questions we need to examine first, such as: is this organization properly structured to accomplish its mission? Maybe there’s an explanation for the surprisingly small allocation of Mideast analysts, but it’s not at all obvious.”

President Barack Obama’s speech on June 4, 2009 failed to advance the promotion of human rights in the Muslim world, Human Rights Watch said today. In a much-anticipated address, Obama spoke bluntly about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but kept to generalities when it came to the pressing need for human rights and democratic reforms in the region.

“If Obama wanted to tackle the issues that cause Muslim ill-will toward the US, he should have taken on the region’s repressive regimes, many of them US-backed, including his hosts,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Egypt and others will interpret his bland generalities as a signal they have nothing to fear from their friends in Washington.”

Speaking before 2,500 invited guests at Cairo University, Obama addressed democracy as a major source of tension between the United States and Islam around the world. His choice of Cairo for this much-anticipated speech was controversial because of Egypt’s record of stifling the opposition, holding tainted elections, and imprisoning dissidents.

Only by 8:09 p.m., the group appeared to soft-peddle that message in a release entitled “Obama Mid-East Speech Supports Rights, Democracy: But U.S. Message Needs Stronger Message for Repressive Regional Allies”:

President Barack Obama’s much-anticipated June 4, 2009, speech to the Muslim world avoided confronting authoritarian governments directly, but sent a welcome message that Washington would not let the prospect of empowering Islamist parties deter it from supporting democracy in the region, Human Rights Watch said today.

Speaking before 2,500 invited guests at Cairo University, Obama said the issue of democracy and human rights was a major source of tension between the United States and Islam around the world, in part because of the Bush administration’s use of democratic rhetoric to justify the war in Iraq. He pledged, however, that the United States would continue to support human rights and democratic principles in the region.

“For the US to regain credibility, it will have to follow through even when voters in the Middle East elect governments Washington doesn’t like,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “If Obama wants to tackle the issues that cause Muslim ill-will toward the United States, he should take on the region’s repressive regimes, many of them US-backed – including his hosts.”

Whitson’s comments, at least, are consistent between the two releases.

Ahmadinejad has discredited himself in the eyes of many Iranians. They are looking for change they can believe in. This is the target audience for Obama this Thursday. He needs to reach out to the democratic forces in that country and remind them that America is their ally.

To be able to say to the Iranian people that an American hand is outstretched to them if they’re willing to show that their corrupt leadership — which has remained relatively obstinate while official American attitudes to Iran are changing –  doesn’t speak for them would be a great thing. It would be arrogant and deluded to believe that U.S. posture to Iran would be determinative of an Iranian election. But the Obama administration can help remove a demagogic pretext for repression, and that’s part of what tomorrow’s Cairo speech is about.

That’s the whole post.

My first guess was Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), who visited the West Bank in January 2006. But why stop there? In March 2005, a so-called CODEL traveled to Iraq, Jordan, Israel Lebanon and Egypt. On the trip were Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Darrel Issa (R- Calif.), George Miller (D-Calif.), Edward Markey (D-Mass.), Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.), James McGovern (D- Mass.), and Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.).

Those weren’t the only ones. Another March 2005 CODEL featured members taking a survey of Mideast democratization efforts. On that trip: Rep. David Dreier (R-Calif.), Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.),  Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.), Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.), Rep. Ander Crenshaw (R-Fla.), and then-Rep. E. Clay Shaw (R-Fla.). They went to the Palestinian territories, Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Cyprus and two other countries I didn’t immediately identify.

Let’s continue. January 2006: a congressional delegation goes to Europe, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Middle East enough? That one had then-Rep. Jon Porter (R-Nev.), Rep. Michael Fitzpatrick (R-Penn.), Rep. Madeleine Bordallo (D-Guam), Rep. Dave Weldon (R-Fla.), Rep. Melissa Hart (R-Penn.), Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.), Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich.) and Rep. Kenny Hulshof (R-Mo.).

Then there was a December 2006 senatorial CODEL to Iraq, Israel, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Sens. John Thune (R-S.D.), John McCain (R-Ariz.), Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) brought back photos.

So that’s 27 members of Congress who could have been illegally surveilled by the NSA. I’m sure I’m missing some CODELs, so point them out in comments if you see them. But the broader point is that there’s no obvious reason at the moment why any of these members’ trips couldn’t have put them in contact with “persons of interest” to the National Security Agency and the Bush administration, thereby making them prima facie targets of a wideranging surveillance program.

But for Freeman’s detractors, a loss might still be a win. As Sullivan and others have documented, the controversy over Freeman is fundamentally a question of his views on Israel. Barring a bad report from the inspector general, Chas Freeman will survive and serve. But only because his appointment doesn’t require Senate confirmation. Few, however, will want to follow where he led. Freeman’s career will likely top out at Director of the NIC. That’s not a bad summit by any means. But for ambitious foreign policy thinkers who might one day aspire to serve in a confirmed capacity, the lesson is clear: Israel is off-limits.

If anything, this doesn’t go far enough.

It’s not just that Freeman is bloodied or that the NIC is the final stop in his career. It’s that now every time the NIC issues a report on god-knows-what — but particularly China or the Middle East — Freeman’s critics will opt to say Aha! The nefarious influence of Chas Freeman! or What can you expect with Chas Freeman in charge or some other-such dodge. That’s hardly his fault, but it’s the way these things go. Indeed, the smarter strategy for Freeman’s critics should be to ensure a weakened Freeman remains in charge of the NIC, so they can be spared having to grapple with a difficult analysis of, say, the prospects of a grand bargain with Iran or what would happen to U.S. interests in the Middle East if there isn’t an independent Palestinian state in ten years.  (By the way, National Intelligence Estimates on these topics would be written by the NIC officer for the Near East, not Freeman. But still.)