Calls are coming in for President-elect Obama to take quick and decisive action on interrogation and detention of terrorist suspects.

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 […]

I attended a dinner last night sponsored by the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, and Don Kerr, the principal deputy director for national intelligence, was the guest speaker. The ODNI has a transcript of Kerr’s remarks. I was struck by a few remarks. First, Kerr talked about a recent two-week trip to Latin America. He […]

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 […]

Beginning in February 2001, almost seven months before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the government’s top electronic eavesdropping organization, the National Security Agency, asked a major U.S. telecommunications carrier for information about its customers and the flow of electronic traffic across its network, according to sources familiar with the request. The carrier, Qwest Communications, refused, believing […]

As Democrats and Republicans debate legislation that would alter 30-year-old limits on intrusive electronic and physical searches by the government, the secretive 11-member court that oversees surveillance of foreign-intelligence targets in the United States finds itself in the middle of a very public power struggle.Regardless of where law and policy makers fall on the question, […]

Mike Wertheimer may be the most dangerous man in U.S. intelligence. You would probably never guess it, judging from his lengthy and opaque title — assistant deputy director of national intelligence for analytic transformation and technology. A perfect testament to the well-worn bureaucratic tradition of offering little insight by tossing around a lot of words. […]

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 go on vacation… Congress and the administration have been busy bees the past week, haggling over modifications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The new law effectively legalizes much of what the National Security Agency has been doing since 9/11 under the so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program. Intelligence […]