Mark Hosenball reports that no one checks the visas of U.S.-bound air travelers until they’re in the air. On the one hand, checking visas alone won’t necessarily keep a dangerous person out of the country. There wasn’t a single problem with Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s visa before he boarded Northwest More…
The State Department released a revised civilian strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan today. And it’s really more of a summary of what’s been going on as much as it is a document about where strategy goes from here. Seriously, if you read this piece and this piece More…
Just out from State Department press chief P.J. Crowley:
The Secretary of State has designated al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) under Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, as amended (INA). The Secretary also designated AQAP and its two top leaders Nasir
It’s a question that rarely gets asked: from where does the Obama administration locate the legal authority to launch missiles from the CIA’s unmanned drones into Pakistani (and, this week, Afghan) territory? The ACLU wants to know.
The civil liberties group today filed a Freedom of Information Act request More…
One of the more sensational aspects of the Northwest Airlines Flight 253 review is that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s name was inconsistently spelled by State Department officials after the would-be bomber’s father informed officials at the U.S. Embassy in Abuja about his son’s increasing radicalism. According to the White House review More…
While the State Department is fending off questions about why it didn’t revoke Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s visa and points fingers at the National Counterterrorism Center, it’s worth noting that the FBI last year was told, following an in-depth audit by its inspector general, that it More…
In his press briefing yesterday, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly took a beating over the fact that department bureaucrats didn’t revoke Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s visa to enter the United States. Kelly, in something of a defensive crouch, said that it was the responsibility of an interagency effort run by More…
Finally, some explanation for the State Department’s role in not invalidating Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s visa. Recall that after CBS reported State had two opportunities last month to revoke the visa, after Abdulmutallab’s father told officials in the U.S. embassy in Abuja that he was alarmingly radicalized, Newsweek’s Mark Hosenball More…
InsideDefense has a good story about a bureaucratic change pushed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates to resolve a recurrent problem between his department and Foggy Bottom. In a memo called “Shared Responsibility, Pooled Resources,” Gates is proposing to revamp how the U.S. trains foreign partner militaries (“section 1206,” legally speaking) More…
For the past year, the neoconservative conception of democracy promotion and human rights — hollow elections; wars waged under the pretext of do-gooderism; speeches rather than actions — have been embraced uncritically by major media to measure President Obama and find him wanting. Today at Georgetown University, Secretary of More…
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