This week, I sat down with John Brennan, the current chairman of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance. Brennan, who was the first director of the National Counterterrorism Center, is now advising Sen. Barack Obama on intelligence and foreign policy. Brennan is also the president and chief executive officer of The Analysis Corporation, headquartered in […]

The Republican National Committee has a new ad warning that Harry Reid, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama are playing into terrorists’ hands by trying to block permanent changes to surveillance law. Not that Republicans haven’t been playing tough over this issue. They’ve also tried to assert that if the Protect America Act is allowed to […]

The No. 2 official at the Homeland Security Department, Deputy Secretary Michael Jackson, is leaving his post for financial reasons, he announced in an e-mail to colleagues today. Jackson has been at DHS since March 2005. He said he’ll leave next month. I interviewed Jackson in May about his efforts to prepare DHS for the […]

On the eve of the seventh anniversary of 9/11, I was privileged to join a panel of journalists and national security experts to discuss freedom of the press. The event was held at American University and broadcast on Washington’s local NPR station, WAMU.

Just when you thought it was safe to come back from vacation… At the same moment we learned Alberto Gonzales would step down as attorney general, that favorite Washington parlor game, “Replacement Pick,” kicked into high gear. Initial speculation focused on Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, a former prosecutor, federal judge, and senior Justice Department […]

Sens. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), and Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) have asked the Government Accountability Office for a detailed report on the case of Andrew Speaker, the Georgia man who was able to slip back into the United States, through Canada, even though federal health and security officials thought he was infected with an […]

Since the release of the new intelligence estimate on Al Qaeda Tuesday, the one that concluded the terrorist group has revitalized itself in the lawless hinterlands of Pakistan, intelligence analysts I talk to have been wondering why the administration chose to release the NIE now. Certainly the White House understood that its critics–and some of […]

My colleague at Government Executive magazine, Katherine McIntire Peters, has a good story about the exodus of senior officials in the Homeland Security Department’s upper ranks. Senior Homeland Security Department employees left their jobs over the past two years at rates significantly higher than the average for other Cabinet-level departments, according to a report released […]

There are no real surprises in the unclassified “key judgments” of a new National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism, out this morning. Most of the important assessments of the 16 intelligence agencies have already leaked out or were highlighted in other forums by senior officials in recent months. We judge the US Homeland will face a […]

I stumbled onto the terrorism enhancement story several months ago while reporting on another one: the National Security Agency’s terrorist surveillance program. I learned about a trial of so-called “eco-terrorists” in Eugene, Oregon, part of the FBI’s Operation Backfire against the Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front. After lawyers for the defendants for […]