Here’s my take on why President Obama fired Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, and why the president should consider getting rid of the spy post altogether.

C-SPAN has been re-airing my book talk from the International Spy Museum in Washington. This was on February 18, publication day for The Watchers.

Here’s a departure from all the talk of surveillance and book tours. I was at a breakfast yesterday morning with Harold Koh, the State Department’s legal adviser, and had a chance to ask him where he stands on the use of unmmanned drones to kill suspected terrorists. I wrote a lenghty piece about this issue [...]

The New York Times review is in today’s paper. Eric Lichtblau, no stranger to the opaque world of surveillance, gave it strong praise:

“it uses smart technical analysis and crisp writing to put the reader inside the room with the watchers and to help better understand the mind-set that gave rise to the modern surveillance state.”

“At its best ‘The Watchers’ provides an insightful glimpse into how Washington works and how ideas are marketed and sold in the back rooms of power, whether the product being peddled is widgets or a radical model for intelligence gathering.”

The cover story of today’s National Journal features a narrative about an unidentified hacker (or perhaps hackers) who compromised the computers of eight members of Congress and seven committees in the House of Representatives. Some members publicly blame China for the incident, and one calls it a case of “overseas espionage.” The story shows how [...]

In today’s National Journal, I have a story about the incoming Obama administration’s plans for the White House Homeland Security Council. The president-elect’s team is considering changes that could dramatically enhance the influence of the president’s national security adviser, giving him a primary role in shaping disaster management and counter-terrorism policy within the United States.

Senior officials are making their case that the two Mikes–McConnell and Hayden–should stay at the helm of the intelligence community.

National Journal has obtained a letter from intelligence director Mike McConnell, offering some new details on how the transition of the intelligence services will proceed. It looks like officials will be working more closely with team Obama than past incoming administrations. And until recently, it appears that the Vice President Elect, Joe Biden, opted not [...]

Somewhere on the fifth floor of an immense federal office building in downtown Washington is a filing cabinet, or perhaps a computer hard drive, that holds a set of documents that the next president and his lawyers will want to read very, very carefully. Read the story here in National Journal.

In the old days, everyone was linked to a lug nut, and Jim Kallstrom liked it that way. It was 1985, a simpler time for a cop like Kallstrom, who was in charge of setting telephone wiretaps on suspected drug dealers and mobsters for the FBI’s New York City field office. In New York, Kallstrom’s [...]