Experts Question Efficacy of Profiling

The enhanced screening of airline passengers from the Muslim world in the aftermath of the failed terrorist attack on Northwest Airlines flight 253 has set off a shockwave of disappointment from supporters of President Obama and surprise from security experts. Few believe, based on experience, that de facto profiling is More…

What Would the Obama of the Nobel Speech Say of the Obama of the New Flight Profiling?

I owe it to a press release for the Center for Constitutional Rights for pointing this out to me, but think back to the halcyon days of early December 2009, when President Obama accepted his Nobel Peace Prize with the following admonition:

We lose ourselves when we compromise

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Holt Blasts Cheney on Terrorism

If former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, former CIA Director Mike Hayden and White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan weren’t enough, here comes Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.), chairman of the House’s intelligence oversight board, to blast former Vice President Dick Cheney for not “understand[ing] the difference between talking tough More…

‘Most PSP Leads Were Determined Not to Have Any Connection to Terrorism’

The Bush administration called its warrantless surveillance efforts “very, very important to protect the national security of this country,” in the words of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in 2005. Today’s inspectors general report on the President’s Surveillance Program doesn’t really substantiate that assessment. “[M]ost PSP leads were determined More…

Long-Awaited Warrantless Surveillance Report Finally Released

Last year, the Democratic Congress enthusiastically acquiesced to President George W. Bush’s insistence on carving out individualized suspicion and other privacy protections from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The Democrats did so to preempt the charge of being weak on national security from the presidential campaign — didn’t work More…

CIA Inspector General’s Report on Torture to Be Released?

Greg Sargent mines a Washington Post piece to discover that the Obama administration is looking to declassify a 2004 CIA inspector general’s report that laid out grave doubts about the agency’s “enhanced interrogation” program. Background on the value of that report — referred to numerous times in the More…

Three Excedrin Later, I Still Can’t Understand Mike Hayden’s Argument Against Releasing Torture Memos

The Obama administration is apparently going to release the 2005-era Office of Legal Counsel memoranda about what torture techniques the CIA could employ. Keep hitting refresh here. MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell had former CIA Director Mike Hayden on to make the case against disclosure of the memos, and for the More…