Thomas Joscelyn

Negotiating with terrorists won’t bring peace to Afghanistan.

The Taliban, which knows the U.S. is desperate to leave, just attacked a meeting between Afghan officials and the top U.S. military commander.

Jalaluddin Haqqani is dead. The terror network he created lives on.

And widely misunderstood.

A year after President Trump announced his Afghan policy, the Taliban are closer to victory than we are.

Twenty years ago today al Qaeda bombed two U.S. embassies and killed 224 people. Iran helped them do it.

A misbegotten ‘ceasefire’ in Afghanistan.

Horrific images from the aftermath of a suspected chemical weapons attack in Syria are once again circulating online. The scene of this gassing is the eastern Ghouta suburb of Damascus. Both the location and the timing of this apparent war crime are symbolically important. And while the immediate…

Russia, Iran, and North Korea all play a role in the Syrian regime's chemical attacks on its own people.

The White House declared on April 4 that the "military mission to eradicate ISIS in Syria is coming to a rapid end, with ISIS being almost completely destroyed." While the United States is "committed to eliminating the small ISIS presence in Syria that our forces have not already eradicated," the…

On January 19, the Pentagon released its new National Defense Strategy. The second paragraph of the 14-page declassified summary painted a dire picture. “Today, we are emerging from a period of strategic atrophy, aware that our competitive military advantage has been eroding,” the Defense…

The Islamic State's smattering of remaining strongholds in Iraq and Syria are under siege. At the height of the self-declared caliphate’s power in mid-2014, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s men controlled large swaths of both countries. Today, the jihadists hold only a few towns straddling the Iraqi-Syrian…

More than 16 years after the September 11, 2001, hijackings, America remains at war with jihadist groups around the globe. From South Asia through the heart of the Middle East and into West Africa, American forces are battling terrorist organizations that seek to control territory while threatening…

In a primetime speech Monday night, President Trump offered his plan for the war in Afghanistan. The president did not articulate his new war strategy in full, and it is doubtful that the modest troop increase will lead to “victory,” which the president said is his goal.

In a primetime speech Monday evening, President Trump is expected to announce the deployment of several thousand more American troops to Afghanistan. We doubt this will be enough to win the war, but it is better than the alternatives offered to the president. A complete withdrawal would have been…

The Islamic State (ISIS) quickly claimed responsibility for the van attack in the popular Las Ramblas area of Barcelona on Thursday. At least 13 people were killed, and dozens more wounded, when a terrorist drove the vehicle into pedestrians. Amaq News Agency, the group’s propaganda arm, declared…

The war in Afghanistan is nearly 16 years old. It is the longest in our nation’s history. Many Americans wonder why our soldiers are still there. This widespread frustration is shared by our commander in chief. The Trump administration has not yet announced its plans for Afghanistan in large part…

The war in Afghanistan is nearly 16 years old. It is the longest in our nation’s history. Many Americans wonder why our soldiers are still there. This widespread frustration is shared by our commander in chief. The Trump administration has not yet announced its plans for Afghanistan in large part…

Earlier this year, President Donald Trump was shown a disturbing video of Syrian rebels beheading a child near the city of Aleppo. It had caused a minor stir in the press as the fighters belonged to the Nour al-Din al-Zenki Movement, a group that had been supported by the CIA as part of its rebel…

A suicide bomber detonated a vehicle packed with explosives near the German Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, at 8:22 local time this morning. The death toll has steadily risen in the hours since. The Afghan government says that at least 90 people were killed and 400 more wounded, according to the…

Donald Trump is fond of claiming that his predecessor mismanaged America's role in the world. "And I have to just say that the world is a mess. I inherited a mess," the president noted during a joint press conference with King Abdullah of Jordan in the Rose Garden on April 5. "Whether it's the…

The investigation into the Manchester Arena bombing quickly turned to the possibility that the bomber, 22-year-old Salman Abedi, had accomplices. "I think it's very clear that this is a network that we are investigating," Chief Constable Ian Hopkins of the Manchester Police told reporters on…

On Monday evening, a terrorist blew himself up in the foyer of Manchester Arena as the audience was filing out of an Ariana Grande concert. At least 22 people were killed and 59 wounded in the blast. British authorities have identified Salman Abedi, a 22-year-old whose parents are from Libya, as…

On Thursday night, the U.S. opened a third air campaign in Syria, targeting Bashar al-Assad's air force. The U.S. has been bombing the Islamic State and select al Qaeda targets in Syria since 2014. But the Syrian regime, which is responsible for most of the civilian casualties in the country, was…

It has been a tumultuous start for President Donald Trump's National Security Council, to put it gently. General Michael Flynn was forced to resign as national security adviser less than a month into the new administration, amid controversy over his contacts with a Russian ambassador. It is clear…

It has been a tumultuous start for President Donald Trump's National Security Council, to put it gently. General Michael Flynn was forced to resign as national security adviser less than a month into the new administration, amid controversy over his contacts with a Russian ambassador. It is clear…

It has been a tumultuous start for President Donald Trump’s National Security Council, to put it gently. General Michael Flynn was forced to resign as national security adviser less than a month into the new administration, amid controversy over his contacts with a Russian ambassador. It is clear…

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released 98 additional items from Osama bin Laden's compound today. If the ODNI has its way, then these files will be the last the American people see for some time. The accompanying announcement is titled, "Closing the Book on bin Laden:…

A set of memos alleging disturbing ties between President-elect Donald Trump and Russian officials has set off yet another media firestorm concerning Russia's putative role in the 2016 presidential election. Many people have had copies of the memos for some time, but the documents were published…

At approximately 9:35 a.m. on Saturday, September 17, a garbage can exploded along the route of the Seaside Semper Five Marine Corps Charity 5K Race in Seaside Park, New Jersey. Fortunately, no one was injured. The event's organizers later cited a delay, caused by registration problems and a…

At approximately 9:35 a.m. on Saturday, September 17, a garbage can exploded along the route of the Seaside Semper Five Marine Corps Charity 5K Race in Seaside Park, New Jersey. Fortunately, no one was injured. The event’s organizers later cited a delay, caused by registration problems and a…

Fifteen years after the September 11, 2001, hijackings, the al Qaeda threat is growing. Al Qaeda has the capacity to attempt a mass casualty attack inside the U.S. and Europe today.

The Defense Department has transferred 15 detainees—12 Yemenis and 3 Afghan citizens—from Guantanamo to the United Arab Emirates. The Pentagon's web page says nothing about the risks the detainees pose beyond the fact that the transfers supposedly "took place consistent with appropriate security…

Ayatollah Khamenei, the "Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution," commemorated the end of Ramadan with a lengthy anti-American, antisemitic screed. Khamenei has repeatedly accused the West and Israel, rather than Muslim-majority forces, of sponsoring violence in the region, and the title of his…

The system was blinking red for months prior to the June 12 terrorist attack in Orlando. Since early 2015, the FBI has repeatedly warned the American public that the threat of violent attacks is growing and that there are too many potential terrorists to track. Then Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old…

During a press conference Tuesday, President Obama said the terrorist responsible for the massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando was inspired by propaganda produced by the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL).

After each jihadist attack in the West, our society rehearses the same ritualistic debate over what the terrorists' motivations really are. It is true that "radicalization," as it is often described, is a complex process. The men who become terrorists may have psychological or other issues that…

Secretary of State John Kerry praised the Republic of Senegal today “for offering humanitarian resettlement to" two now former Guantanamo detainees. As was the case when the administration transferred detainees to Uruguay in late 2014 and Ghana earlier this year, the Guantanamo jihadists are being…

The Amaq News Agency, a propaganda arm of the Islamic State (or ISIS), has claimed responsibility for today's attacks in Brussels. The claim is hardly surprising: The Islamic State has had Belgium in its crosshairs since at least 2014.

The Washington Post claims that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has “gained an apparent ally…in her fight to limit the political damage from her growing email controversy."

On December 6, Barack Obama addressed the nation from the Oval Office for just the third time in his tenure. The president sought to reassure the American people that he has a strategy for defeating ISIL (the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), just days after supporters of the self-declared…

Secretary of State John Kerry believes that al Qaeda’s “top leadership” has been “neutralize[d]” as “an effective force.” He made the claim while discussing the administration’s strategy, or lack thereof, for combating the Islamic State (ISIS), which is al Qaeda’s jihadist rival. Kerry believes…

In May, the London Review of Books published a 10,000-word exposé by veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh on the killing of Osama bin Laden. It was widely read online, receiving “more than two million page-views,” according to an editor’s note inserted at the bottom. While Hersh’s account…

For years, the British government and a network of anti-Guantanamo activists have agitated for the release of Shaker Aamer. Now their wish was finally granted. Aamer has been released from Guantanamo. He is receiving a hero’s welcome in the UK, where much of the media has treated him as an innocent…

Hugh Hewitt’s interview with Donald Trump has received a fair amount of attention, mainly because Trump didn’t know the answers to some of Hewitt’s supposed “gotcha” questions.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has released its latest statistics on the number of former Guantanamo detainees who are either confirmed or suspected of returning to the fight. As expected, there has been a slight increase in the number of ex-detainees who have rejoined…

On July 21, the Pentagon announced that Muhsin al-Fadhli, an al Qaeda operative who had been wanted for more than a decade, was killed in an airstrike in Syria earlier in the month. Fadhli has been dead at least once before. In September 2014, the United States launched airstrikes against his…

On Monday, the Pentagon announced that Ali Ani al Harzi was killed in a U.S. airstrike in Mosul, Iraq. For those who have followed the public reporting on the September 11, 2012, Benghazi attack  closely, al Harzi’s name will ring a bell. He was one of the first suspects to be publicly identified…

President Obama has long known that the real decision maker in Iran is Ayatollah Khamenei, the so-called supreme leader. While other Iranian officials have negotiated with Western powers over the mullahs’ nuclear program, Khamenei’s opinion is the only one that really counts. It is for this reason…

During a terror trial in Brooklyn last month, federal prosecutors entered into evidence several files recovered in Osama bin Laden’s compound. The documents, consisting mainly of letters to and from bin Laden during the last year of his life, gained more and more attention over the weeks that…

In his annual statement marking the Persian new year, President Obama said he believes that Iran and the U.S. “should be able” to resolve the dispute over the mullahs’ nuclear program “peacefully, with diplomacy.”

Not long after his inauguration in January 2009, President Barack Obama penned a letter to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran. As a presidential candidate, Obama had promised to conduct “tough, direct diplomacy” with the Iranians. And Obama figured, correctly, that all diplomatic…

This week, prosecutors in New York introduced eight documents recovered in Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan as evidence in the trial of a terrorism suspect. The U.S. government accuses Abid Naseer of taking part in al Qaeda’s scheme to attack targets in Europe and New York City. And…

In response to the Islamic State’s horrific burning of a pilot, the Jordanian government has released from prison one of the most influential al Qaeda-allied ideologues in the world. Sound strange? It is.

The Islamic State, a self-proclaimed “caliphate” that rules over large portions of Iraq and Syria, has released a video showing a Jordanian pilot, Mu’adh al Kasasibah, being burned alive. He is shown standing and praying in the middle of a cage as a fighter sets fire to him. The video is horrific,…

CNN’s Barbara Starr reports that the U.S. military and intelligence community thinks that one member of the so-called Taliban Five “has attempted to return to militant activity from his current location in Qatar.” Officials aren’t saying which one of the five Taliban leaders, who were held at…

Two gunmen entered the Corinthia Hotel in Tripoli Tuesday morning. When their shooting rampage was over, at least ten people had been killed. For jihadists in Libya, the hotel was an inviting target. Foreign diplomats, Western tourists and officials from Libya’s rival governments are known to…

Alberto Nisman, the special prosecutor who had been investigating the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center (the AMIA building) in Argentina, has been found dead in his Buenos Aires apartment. Nisman was famous in intelligence and law enforcement circles for amassing evidence that implicates…

The jihadists responsible for the most successful terrorist attack in France in decades hunted down cartoonists. They did not target a significant historical landmark, such as the Eiffel Tower, or any well-known French politicians. They did not seek to maximize civilian casualties in a suicide…

Ex-Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg is back in the news this week. On Sunday, CNN’s Fareed Zakaria interviewed Begg to get his perspective on the recently released report, written by Democrats on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, concerning the CIA’s controversial interrogation program.…

An ex-Guantanamo detainee based in northern Pakistan is leading an effort to recruit jihadists for the Islamic State, an al Qaeda offshoot that controls large portions of Iraq and Syria.

The Wall Street Journal’s Jay Solomon and Carol E. Lee published an important scoop yesterday. President Obama “secretly wrote to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the middle of last month and described a shared interest in fighting Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria.” The…

The Justice Department has released a new, superseding indictment in the government’s case against Ahmed Abu Khatallah, the only suspect held by the U.S. in connection with the September 11, 2012, terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya.

On Tuesday, September 23, the U.S. government announced that a new bombing campaign was under way in Syria. The Obama administration had been building the case for airstrikes for weeks. The president and his surrogates repeatedly highlighted the threat posed by the Islamic State (often called the…

The U.S. launched airstrikes in Syria for the first time overnight. Much of the public discourse in the weeks leading up to the bombings focused on the Islamic State, a former branch of al Qaeda that has captured a significant amount territory across both Iraq and Syria. But the bombings are not…

During a press conference on August 28, Barack Obama had a rare moment of candor. “We don’t have a strategy yet,” the president said in response to a question about the prospect of using military force against the Islamic State in Syria. Obama’s declaration drew widespread criticism, as the Islamic…

President Obama is set to discuss his plan for confronting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in a primetime speech this evening. According to press reports, the president is ready to authorize the use of military strikes against the group in Syria. Thus far, American military action…

Earlier today, the news broke that Peter Theo Curtis, an American who had been held hostage in Syria since 2012, has been released by his captors. Coming just days after another American hostage, James Foley, was brutally beheaded by the Islamic State, Curtis’s freedom brings a sense of relief. 

The Islamic State, an al Qaeda offshoot, has released a grisly video of one of its fighters beheading a man who appears to be James Foley, an American journalist who was kidnapped in Syria on Thanksgiving Day 2012. The images from the video are horrifying, as they are intended to be. The Islamic…

On June 29, 2011, John Brennan, who was then a senior adviser to the president and is currently the CIA director, explained the Obama administration’s counterterrorism strategy.  

A key figure in the security failures surrounding the September 11, 2012, terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya is fighting alongside members of Ansar al Sharia, which is one of the terrorist groups responsible for the assault on the U.S. mission and annex that night.

One of the five senior Taliban leaders transferred to Qatar in exchange for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl played a key role in al Qaeda’s plans leading up to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Mohammad Fazl, who served as the Taliban’s army chief of staff and deputy defense minister prior to his…

President Barack Obama and his advisers have long sought to release the five most dangerous Taliban commanders held in U.S. custody at Guantánamo. Bipartisan opposition scuttled a possible deal in 2012 because of a consensus that the “Taliban Five,” as they’ve come to be known, posed too great a…

There is a concerted push to sanitize the records of four of the five Taliban leaders transferred from Guantanamo to Qatar. But before delving into some of the specifics, let us recount the basic facts.

Mullah Omar, the head of the Taliban, doesn’t make statements often. Omar is so reclusive that some have even speculated that he is either dead, or otherwise incapacitated in Pakistan. But on Sunday the Taliban released a statement attributed to Omar, who declared the release of the top five…

The Obama administration announced today that Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who has been held by the Taliban for several years, has been freed from his captors. Reading the stories of his newfound freedom it is impossible not to feel joy for Bergdahl and his family. NBC News reports that Bergdahl held up a…

When Hillary Clinton tweeted her support for the more than 200 Nigerian girls held by the extremist group Boko Haram, she probably did not expect that her tenure as secretary of state would soon be critically examined by the press through the lens of that very same mass kidnapping. But examined it…

Forty-one recently declassified State Department documents obtained by Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, have reignited the controversy over the September 11, 2012, terrorist attack in Ben-ghazi, Libya. One document in particular, an email authored by Ben Rhodes, a deputy national…

The State Department released its annual Country Reports on Terrorism yesterday. And once again the U.S. government has highlighted al Qaeda’s relationship with the Iranian regime. While the Iranians hold some al Qaeda members under house arrest, others are allowed to operate. And these terrorists,…

A video of a large al Qaeda gathering in Yemen has raised eyebrows in the press. Nasir al Wuhayshi, the head of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), as well as general manager of al Qaeda’s global network, can be heard saying to a crowd of more than 100: "We must eliminate the cross. ... The…

Former CIA deputy director Mike Morell, who also served a stint as acting director of Langley, is testifying before House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence today. The hearing focuses on the Obama administration’s response to the September 11, 2012, terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya.

On Wednesday, the House Homeland Security Committee released a report summarizing its investigation into the April 15, 2013, terrorist attack at the Boston Marathon. Among the report’s key findings: Nearly one year after twin backpack bombs killed three people and wounded more than 260 others, U.S.…

Ex-Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg was arrested earlier today as part of raid conducted by counterterrorism officials in the UK. Begg has spent most of his time living in the UK following his release from Guantanamo in 2005. He is one of the most prolific anti-Guantanamo advocates.

In the summer of 2008, Barack Obama, senator and presidential candidate, toured the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq. Obama had endeared himself to the antiwar left by denouncing President Bush’s decision to topple Saddam Hussein and repeatedly claiming that the war in Iraq had diverted resources…

The Senate Intelligence Committee has now released its declassified review of the intelligence surrounding the September 11, 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya. The bottom line is this: Multiple parts of al Qaeda’s international terrorist network were involved.

The State Department today designated three Ansar al Sharia organizations, as well as three of their leaders, as terrorist entities. The State Department reports that Ansar al Sharia in Derna was “involved” in the September 11, 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi. Former Guantanamo detainee Sufian…

Less than two weeks ago, on December 28, David Kirkpatrick of the New York Times trumpeted the results of his investigation into the attacks on U.S. government facilities in Benghazi, writing that there was “no evidence that al Qaeda or other international terrorists had any role in the assault.”…

The Washington Post reports that U.S. officials suspect Sufian Ben Qumu, an ex-Guantanamo detainee, “played a role in the attack on the American compound in Benghazi, Libya, and are planning to designate the group he leads as a foreign terrorism organization.” Ben Qumu is based in Derna, Libya and…

During an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, New York Times reporter David Kirkpatrick was asked about the connections between Muhammad Jamal’s network and the Benghazi attack.

Blake Hounshell of Politico takes a look at the latest back and forth over Benghazi sparked by David Kirkpatrick’s 7,000-plus word piece for the New York Times.

David D. Kirkpatrick of the New York Times has published a lengthy account of the September 11, 2012, terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya. While much in Kirkpatrick’s report is not new, the piece is receiving a considerable amount of attention because of this sweeping conclusion: “Months of…

The second line of the new nuclear deal with Iran is curious, to say the least: “Iran reaffirms that under no circumstances will Iran ever seek or develop any nuclear weapons.”

The State Department announced today that Boko Haram, a prolific terrorist and insurgency group based in Nigeria, has been added to the U.S. government’s list of designated terrorist entities. Ansaru, a Boko Haram “splinter” group, was also added to the designation list. Boko Haram has targeted…

During an appearance on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday, Congressman Mike Rogers, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said that al Qaeda has changed the way it communicates in light of Edward Snowden’s leaks. Rogers said of Snowden (emphasis added):

The head of the Pakistani Taliban, Hakimullah Mehsud, was killed in an American drone strike in northern Pakistan late last week. Mehsud can now be added to an impressive list of senior terrorists killed in the U.S. drone war. But how effective are such decapitation strikes?

During a press conference on July 26, Tunisian interior minister Lotfi Ben Jeddou listed the suspected terrorists thought to be responsible for two high-profile assassinations in his country. Among the names was one Ali Harzi—the same name as one of the chief suspects in the September 11, 2012,…

Twin raids in Libya and Somalia this weekend demonstrate that America’s fight against al Qaeda continues in jihadist hotspots around the globe. And the raid in Libya shows, once again, that al Qaeda’s “core” members are pushing the terrorist organization’s agenda far from Pakistan.

An interesting thing happened when McClatchy newspaper’s Tim Johnson went looking for two former Guantanamo detainees in El Salvador. He discovered they had left the country. A State Department spokesman says the U.S. government is aware of their departure, but “will not comment on the specifics of…

The U.S. government’s decision to shutter more than 20 diplomatic facilities earlier this month was based on intelligence showing that al Qaeda emir Ayman al Zawahiri was in contact with multiple subordinates. And that intelligence undermines a widely-held assumption: Many have argued that…

In a newly released video, Ayman al Zawahiri, confederate and successor of Osama bin Laden, vows to free al Qaeda’s “imprisoned brothers” at Guantánamo. Seeking to capitalize on the controversy over the U.S. government’s force-feeding of some detainees, Zawahiri says the ongoing hunger strike…

The U.S. State Department announced today that it has designated a terrorist who has fought for the Taliban since the late 1990s and continues to support al Qaeda. Bahawal Khan is the leader of the Commander Nazir Group (CNG), which is “behind numerous attacks against international forces in…

INTERPOL issued a “global security alert advising increased vigilance for terrorist activity” on Saturday. While the U.S. government has warned of al Qaeda’s terrorist plotting against embassies and consulates, ordering 22 diplomatic facilities closed over the weekend, INTERPOL is alarmed by al…

On Friday, the State Department announced that 21 diplomatic facilities (now updated to 22), from North Africa through the Middle East and into South Asia, are to be closed this weekend in response to an al Qaeda threat. The State Department’s travel alert warned of “terrorist attacks…possibly…

More than ten months after the September 11, 2012, terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, Ansar al Sharia is even more entrenched in Libyan society. Members of Ansar al Sharia in Benghazi were reportedly part of the al Qaeda-linked jihadist coalition that killed four Americans, including a U.S.…

Al Qaeda’s jailbreaks have been an all too common occurrence in the post-9/11 world. And they have directly fueled the fight. Chances are the massive jailbreak in Iraq this week will cause significant problems for the U.S. and its allies down the road. History tells us as much. There are numerous…

Prosecutors in Army Pfc. Bradley Manning’s case have introduced an intriguing piece of evidence: Osama bin Laden’s documents, or at least a description of them. The Associated Press reports (emphasis added):

Shortly after opening its political office in Doha, Qatar earlier this week, the Taliban floated the idea of exchanging U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who has been in captivity since 2009, for the top five Taliban leaders in U.S. custody at Guantanamo. The offer, which has been a longstanding…

The Obama administration announced on Tuesday that it was moving forward with its attempt to negotiate with the Taliban, which has opened a long-awaited political office in Doha, Qatar. The Taliban released a statement trumpeting its new political front. Within hours, Afghan president Hamid Karzai…

During his speech at the National Defense University on May 23, President Obama sought to reassure Americans that they are “safer” because of the administration’s “efforts” to fight terrorism. The controversy over the administration’s handling of the September 11, 2012, terrorist attack in…

During his counterterrorism speech on Thursday, President Obama defended the use of drones by saying the following:

After nearly two days of editing, then CIA director David Petraeus was sent the revised Benghazi talking points on September 15, 2012. He was less than impressed, to put it mildly.

The Obama administration’s editing of the Benghazi talking points not only obscured what really happened in Libya on September 11, 2012, it also confused the events of earlier that day in Cairo, Egypt. The editing process specifically removed any hint that “jihadists” were encouraged to “break…

The Egyptian interior ministry announced Saturday that an al Qaeda plot against a Western embassy and other targets had been disrupted. Two suspected terrorists are being held for questioning and a third is under house arrest.

Nearly eight months after terrorists killed a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans in Benghazi, Libya, the Obama administration still has not explained who, exactly, was responsible.

CNN’s headline this morning reads, “Boston suspect: It was just us.” The headline links to an article that begins by explaining that the “surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings has told investigators that his older brother, not any international terrorist group, masterminded the deadly…

There is still much we don’t know about the Boston Marathon bombers. It will take time to piece together a more complete picture of their backgrounds. But the investigation has taken an important turn since late last week, as U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism officials are delving into their…

Top U.S. intelligence officials revealed new details about the exploitation of Osama bin Laden’s extensive archive during a House Intelligence Committee hearing on Thursday. The officials revealed that at least several hundred intelligence reports have been generated based on an analysis of bin…

During the House Intelligence Committee hearing today on “Worldwide Threats,” Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper said that he has recently had conversations about releasing more of the documents captured in Osama bin Laden’s compound. More of the documents should be released,…

The House Intelligence Committee will be holding a hearing on “Worldwide Threats” today. The most senior U.S. intelligence officials are scheduled to testify.

Al Qaeda’s presence inside Syria is now so significant that the terrorist organization has decided it is no longer worthwhile to pretend otherwise. Previously, al Qaeda operated under a thinly veiled alternative identity – the Al Nusrah Front.

During a speech at the Woodrow Wilson Center on April 30, 2012, John Brennan, President Obama’s nominee to head the CIA, discussed “The Ethics and Efficacy of the U.S. President’s Counterterrorism Strategy.” Brennan explained that President Obama has “pledged to share as much information with the…

John Brennan, President Obama’s nominee to head to the CIA, is scheduled to appear before a closed-door hearing held by the Senate Intelligence Committee tomorrow. Interested senators should take the opportunity to ask Brennan about an Egyptian who is connected to both al Qaeda and the September…

Ahead of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s testimony today concerning the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, the New York Times has published an account that is potentially very important. The Times reports:

President Obama’s nominee for CIA director, John Brennan, has been one of the president’s closest advisers over the last four years. So it should come as no surprise that Obama wants him to run Langley. And Brennan’s boosters lay out a compelling case.

It should come as no surprise that a notorious jihadist named Mokhtar Belmokhtar is suspected of ordering the raid on a BP oil field in eastern Algeria and the subsequent kidnapping of dozens. Belmokhtar has been at this game for a while. His career shows that jihadist ideology and criminality can…

What actually happened in Egypt and Libya on September 11, 2012? The story from the U.S. government has changed many times in an effort to craft a narrative that causes as little damage as possible to the Obama administration. Now the administration seems to have settled on something approaching a…

The Accountability Review Board’s investigation into the September 11, 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi says much about the deteriorating security situation surrounding the U.S. consulate beforehand. The report also documents the State Department’s mishandling of that increasingly perilous…

Earlier this week, the State Department designated the al Nusrah Front in Syria as an “alias” for al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). The head of AQI, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi al Husseini al Qurshi (a.k.a. Abu Du'a), “is in control of both AQI and al Nusrah.” The designation says a lot about our knowledge, or lack…

The Egyptian government has nabbed a major terrorist tied to the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, according to the Wall Street Journal. And that terrorist has direct, longstanding ties to al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri.

This past weekend, Congressman Mike Rogers, who is chairman of the House intelligence committee, said that the talking points used to explain what happened in Benghazi, Libya on Sept. 11, 2012 were changed by political appointees in the Obama administration. Rogers pointed specifically to the…

During an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Congressman Mike Rogers, who is the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, accused political appointees in the intelligence community of spinning the September 11 terrorist attack in Benghazi.

The Washington Post reports that “the CIA and other intelligence analysts have settled on what amounts to a hybrid view” of September 11, 2012, “suggesting that the Cairo protest sparked militants in Libya, who quickly mobilized an assault on U.S. facilities in Benghazi.” 

On October 24, Egyptian officials raided an apartment in Nasr City, a neighborhood in Cairo, suspected of housing a terrorist cell with ties to the September 11 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya. A firefight ensued and one of the suspected terrorists was killed. An Egyptian police official…

Rifai Ahmed Taha Musa, one of Egypt’s most notorious al Qaeda-linked terrorists, attended the U.S. embassy protest in Cairo on September 11. Musa was just one of several al Qaeda-affiliated jihadists who was present at the rally, imploring followers to punish those who produced the anti-Islam film…

The Benghazi story continues to evolve. CNN reports that multiple al Qaeda franchises, and others with al Qaeda links, are suspected of taking part in the September 11, 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate.

On September 11, 2012, the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, was assaulted by dozens of terrorists. U.S. ambassador John Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed. The attack followed an al Qaeda-inspired protest in front of the U.S. embassy in Cairo that same day. And in the days…

Ahead of what is sure to be a contentious presidential debate focusing on foreign policy on Monday, anonymous “intelligence officials” have decided to update the Benghazi story. “No evidence found of Al Qaeda role in Libya attack,” a Los Angeles Times headline reads. A Washington Post headline…

During a conference call Tuesday evening, two State Department officials briefed reporters on the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012. Obama administration officials had insisted that the violence was a result of a “spontaneous” protest against an…

Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal reported that fighters “linked to” an Egyptian terrorist named Muhammad Jamal Abu Ahmad took part in the September 11, 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.  Ahmad was freed in 2011, after the fall of Hosni Mubarak’s regime. The WSJ’s…

On and around September 11, 2012, al Qaeda attacked multiple American assets around the world. The attack that has received the most attention is the deadly attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. But the U.S.…

Omar Khadr has been sent from Guantanamo to Canada, after returning from the jihad in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Khadr is slated to stay in custody for the time being. It is difficult to think of a more mythologized figure in the post-9/11 war on terror. For the worldwide left, Khadr has become a…

At Foreign Policy’s The Cable, Josh Rogin provides an update on reports connecting a former Guantanamo detainee named Sufyan Ben Qumu to the September 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Rep. Adam Smith, the Democrats’ ranking member on the House Armed Services Committee, said today…

On September 11, seemingly spontaneous protests erupted in Libya and Egypt over the online trailer for an anti-Islam video that almost no one in the West had heard of. The protests quickly became violent, ending in the deaths of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three of his fellow Americans in…

A central tenet of President Obama’s foreign policy platform is that al Qaeda is “on the path to defeat.” The death of Osama bin Laden, drone strikes in northern Pakistan and elsewhere, the Arab Spring, and Obama’s more conciliatory approach to the Muslim world have all supposedly come together to…

FOX News reported Wednesday night that a former Guantanamo detainee named Sufyan ben Qumu has been tied to the September 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya that killed four Americans. While the details of Qumu’s alleged involvement remain to be confirmed, it isn’t surprising that…

The Obama administration has conceded that the attack that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in Libya on September 11 was, in fact, an act of terrorism. And intelligence officials suspect that al Qaeda’s affiliate, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), orchestrated…

The investigation into the exact circumstances that brought us the twin attacks on U.S. diplomats in Egypt and Libya remains ongoing. Much remains uncertain. But a few new press accounts provide clues that are worth noting. And those clues point to a possible motive for the anti-American rallies…

During the assault on the U.S. embassy in Egypt, demonstrators reportedly chanted “Obama! Obama! We are all Osama!” They yelled this obvious reference to Osama bin Laden as an al Qaeda-style flag was hoisted and the American flag brought down. At least one of the protesters at the anti-American…

Eleven years after the most devastating terrorist attack in history, some in America pretend that the threat of jihad or Islamist terrorism has waned to such an extent that it is no longer a priority.

During his acceptance speech last night, President Obama claimed, “I promised to refocus on the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11, and we have.”

In the fall of 2011, the Obama administration revealed that American officials had discovered an Iranian terrorist plot against Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the U.S. Working through a local emissary, Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officers planned to hire members of a Mexican drug cartel…

The presidential candidates should listen to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta when he reminds us that there is still a war being fought in Afghanistan. And we should remember what Panetta’s predecessor, Robert Gates, had to say about Afghanistan in 2010, too.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama famously said that the U.S. should negotiate with Iran without any preconditions. Obama’s notion of diplomacy with the mullahs was widely ridiculed at the time, including by his then rival for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton. More than…

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Iranian government is expanding its ties to the Taliban and even allowing Mullah Omar’s organization to set up an office in eastern Iran. The arrangement works as follows:

The State Department released its annual Country Reports on Terrorism on Tuesday. Once again, the U.S. government has deemed Iran the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. The Iranian regime’s sponsorship of terrorism includes troubling relationships with al Qaeda (“AQ”) and the Taliban.

In the wake of the November 5, 2009 Fort Hood shootings, Steve Hayes and I wrote about the FBI’s and Defense Department’s many failures with respect to Major Nidal Malik Hasan. Part of the piece focused on Hasan’s emails to al Qaeda cleric Anwar al Awlaki, which had not been made public at the…

In a web video released Monday, the Obama campaign celebrated the withdrawal of American forces from Iraq. “As your commander in chief, and on behalf of a grateful nation, I'm proud to finally say these two words, and I know your families agree - welcome home. Welcome home," Obama says in a clip…

On Wednesday, July 18, a bomb killed at least three top officials from Bashar al Assad’s crumbling regime. Among them was Assef Shawkat, the deputy defense minister and former head of Syrian military intelligence. Different accounts of how Shawkat and the others were killed have been offered to the…

In a report to Congress authored in April, and posted online earlier this week by Bloomberg News, the Defense Department has once again accused Iran of supporting the Taliban. The unclassified assessment, which is titled “Annual Report on Military Power of Iran,” makes it clear that the U.S.…

In a rousing speech in Tahrir Square on Friday, Egypt’s new president, Mohamed Morsi, told the crowd that he will work to free Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, aka the “Blind Sheikh.” Rahman is currently serving a life sentence in a U.S. prison for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and a…

This past weekend the Christian Science Monitor reported that Stuxnet, the original computer virus detected in the American-led cyber war against Iran’s nuclear program, was set to deactivate on June 24. That just so happens to be “seven years to the day after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad…

News channel France 24 hosted a panel Monday night to discuss Egypt’s first civilian president, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi. One of the guests on the panel, via satellite from Cairo, was Nader Amram, a member of the Freedom & Justice Party’s foreign relations committee. (The Freedom &…

Either the Iranian regime is lying or Egypt’s new president, Mohammed Morsi, gave an interview that will raise some eyebrows.

Writing at the Daily Beast, Eli Lake has the scoop on a ridiculous attempt at diplomacy with the new Egyptian parliament. One member of an Egyptian delegation visiting Washington this week was a man named Hani Nour Eldin. He is also a member of Gamaa Islamiya (Islamic Group, or “IG”), a designated…

Pakistani officials have reportedly captured Naamen Meziche, an al Qaeda operative with an extensive dossier. Meziche plays a significant role in an article (“Al Qaeda’s Network in Iran”) that I co-authored with my colleague Benjamin Weinthal earlier this year. Reading through the articles…

At the Washington Free Beacon, Bill Gertz has a piece about Jose Rodriguez, the former chief of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center. Rodriguez warns that the CIA is “out of the business” of interrogating senior al Qaeda terrorists and this will eventually lead to a hole in America’s counterterrorism…

During a trip to Afghanistan last week, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta chastised Pakistan for its ongoing support for the Haqqani Network – an insurgency organization that is closely tied to al Qaeda. The Haqqani Network has long been a proxy of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate…

David Sanger’s piece in the New York Times earlier this month (“Obama Order Sped Up Wave of Cyberattacks Against Iran”) has garnered widespread attention. The piece provides granular details about a top secret effort to undermine Iran’s nuclear program using cyberweapons, including the Stuxnet…

It is easy to see why double agents are the source of inspiration for many spy novels and movies. The intrigue involved, including a potentially violent end to their spy games, gives writers low-hanging fruit to pluck. But art frequently mirrors real life when it comes to double agents. Especially…

On April 18, just days after a U.S.-led coalition wrapped up the first round of renewed nuclear negotiations with Iran, the Republic of Azerbaijan made an announcement. In a statement released online, Azerbaijan’s Ministry of National Security said it had “conducted large-scale special operations”…

We have been anxiously awaiting the release of the documents captured in Osama bin Laden’s Abbottabad, Pakistan compound. According to informed U.S. intelligence officials, thousands of documents were captured in bin Laden’s lair, as was video and other types of media.

Jose Rodriguez, the former head of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center and National Clandestine Service, has made quite a splash in the past couple of days. Building on arguments in his new book, Hard Measures, Rodriguez has dealt with all of the most controversial aspects of the CIA’s response to…

Osama bin Laden was killed by an elite group of Navy Seals one year ago this week. And bin Laden’s files, a massive trove captured in his Abbottabad, Pakistan safe house, have been the subject of various articles since. Now, the Obama administration has reportedly decided to release “some” of the…

Some in the Obama administration are desperate to jumpstart peace negotiations with the Taliban in advance of NATO’s summit in Chicago next month.

The Department of Defense announced on Thursday that two Guantanamo detainees had been transferred to El Salvador. The DoD did not name them in its press release, but the New York Times identified the men as two Uighurs (Muslims from western China): Abdul Razak and Ahmed Mohamed. 

A key feature of the negotiations with the Iranians over their nuclear program is doublespeak. To be more precise, you’ll notice that Iranian officials offer different accounts of what they are--and are not--willing to consider. Moreover, the meaning behind their words is often left obscure. 

The Obama administration set forth its demands of Iran in advance of this past weekend’s negotiations over the Iranian nuclear program. The New York Times reported on April 7 (emphasis added):

On Sunday, insurgents launched a series of coordinated attacks on Western embassies in Kabul, as well as other targets throughout Afghanistan. Afghanistan’s interior minister, Bismillah Khan Mohammadi, said that at least two detained terrorists – one captured in Kabul, the other in Jalalabad – have…

In today’s Wall Street Journal, Steve Hayes notes what will be missing in this weekend’s attempted negotiations with Iran: a serious discussion of Iran’s broad sponsorship of terrorism, particularly against American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Last week, foreign press outlets ran a story that deserves to receive a lot more attention in America. Documents captured in Osama bin Laden’s Abbottabad, Pakistan compound reportedly show that the terror master helped plan the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India.

Writing at BuzzFeed, my colleague James Kirchick informs readers that famed New Yorker journalist Seymour Hersh once opined that the assassination of President John F. Kennedy “might have been some justice.” Kennedy had plotted to assassinate Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. So, in Hersh’s view, it is…

Ambassador Ryan Crocker, the State Department’s man in Kabul, is clearly concerned about a premature drawdown of American and Western forces from Afghanistan.

The Obama administration’s attempt at peace talks with the Taliban has been fraught with problems. Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported on another: Qatar.

French officials have identified the gunman responsible for the deaths of seven people, including three children and a rabbi at a Jewish school in Toulouse, as a French-Algerian named Mohammad Merah. As with other terrorist attacks, there was early confusion in the press reporting about the…

The 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear weapons program lives on in the imagination of some government officials. At the end of a lengthy piece by James Risen in the New York Times this past weekend an anonymous official claims: “That assessment holds up really well.”

The Obama administration’s fantasyland attempt at talks with the Taliban took another significant blow on Thursday. In a statement released online, Mullah Omar’s organization announced that it “has decided to suspend all talks with Americans taking place in Qatar from today onwards until the…

During the 2008 presidential campaign, then senator Barack Obama said his future administration would enter into talks with Iran and other rogue regimes “without preconditions.” Obama’s approach was widely criticized at the time, including by his chief Democratic rival Senator Hillary Rodham…

Perhaps someday we will learn the real extent of Osama bin Laden’s support network inside Pakistan. A truly independent investigation would begin with bin Laden’s ties to various Pakistani military and intelligence officials in the 1980s and walk forward from there. Or, if one prefers,…

In “Politician-in-Chief,” Steve Hayes writes about President Obama’s frustration with, as Hayes puts it, Republican “criticism of the difficult decisions he is facing as president on matters of war and peace.” In particular, Obama claims that his Republican challengers are simply politicizing the…

How bad is the press’s reporting on Guantanamo? Many examples come to mind, but the most recent one is this Associated Press article by Kimberly Dozier.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has released new summary statistics on the recidivism of former Guantanamo detainees. 167 ex-Gitmo detainees are now either “confirmed” or “suspected” of reengaging in “terrorist or insurgent activities” after their release, according to…

This morning, there was a curious report originating with the Egyptian state press, and then repeated throughout the Western media, that Saif al Adel, a longtime al Qaeda bigwig, had flown from Pakistan to Egypt to turn himself in. The report didn't make much sense, mainly because it offered no…

During a hearing on Thursday, Democratic senator Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, publicly doubted the Obama administration’s decision to consider transferring five senior Taliban leaders from Guantanamo to Qatar.

Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper called the relationship between Iran and al Qaeda a “shotgun marriage” during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Thursday. “Iran has harbored al Qaeda leaders, facilitators, but under house arrest conditions,” Clapper said.

Members of British intelligence are concerned about the possibility of Iran and al Qaeda teaming up in a plot against the West, perhaps in a joint attack against the 2012 Olympic Games in London.  Their concerns were first voiced in a piece by Sky News on Wednesday and then in other follow-up…

During an interview with NBC’s Matt Lauer shortly before the Super Bowl on February 5, President Obama was asked about Iran’s nuclear weapons program and the possibility of an Israeli airstrike. “I don’t think that Israel has made a decision on what they need to do,” Obama said. “I think they, like…

Several years ago, I was having drinks at an Irish bar with an intelligence official. (Al Qaeda is always best discussed while drinking Guinness.) He had brought with him several pages of publicly available statements made by leaders within Shabaab, a terrorist-insurgency organization that now…

The killing of Osama bin Laden was a monumental tactical success in the war against al Qaeda. For millions, bin Laden had come to symbolize American weakness. His mere existence was a reminder that the United States, for all its military might and economic dominance, could not bring to justice a…

There is controversy at Guantanamo over a policy that allows authorities to review attorney-client communications. The Associated Press reports on one reason this policy was implemented in the first place: 

The Obama administration is continuing to pursue peace talks with the Taliban, even as the Taliban openly rejects the goals of those talks. 

Ten years ago this week, the U.S. government opened the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba detention facility. And three years ago this month, shortly after his inauguration, President Barack Obama ordered Guantanamo shuttered within one year. For a variety of reasons, Gitmo remains open, with approximately 171…

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta’s comments concerning Iran’s nuclear program have caused quite a stir. In an interview aired on Monday, CBS News’s Scott Pelley asked, “So are you saying that Iran can have a nuclear weapon in 2012?”

The Obama administration is still pursuing negotiations with the Taliban, even if it doubts a viable negotiating partner sits across the table. And, as part of this ad hoc diplomatic effort, the administration is considering the transfer of Taliban members held at Guantanamo back to Afghanistan.…

In a little noticed ruling on Monday, November 28, a Washington, D.C. district court found that both Iran and Sudan were culpable for al Qaeda’s 1998 embassy bombings. As is typical in state sponsorship of terrorism cases, neither Iran nor Sudan answered the plaintiffs’ accusations. But in a…

In order to fool the U.S. intelligence community when it comes to a nuclear weapons program, all a rogue regime has to do is change the name of the government agency housing it. Although that may sound ludicrous, it is one way to read the IAEA’s newly released report on Iran’s nuclear program.

The trial by military commission of top al Qaeda operative Abd al Rahim al Nashiri is set to commence today at Guantanamo. Nashiri’s time in U.S. detention has been controversial because he was one of only three senior terrorists waterboarded by the CIA. Nashiri was subjected to other so-called…

President Obama’s announcement that U.S. military forces will be withdrawn from Iraq by the end of the year has been accompanied by a renewed wave of terrorist attacks. In particular, Ansar al Islam (AAI), an al Qaeda-affiliated organization, has claimed responsibility for a series of recent deadly…

Here is what Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had to say during an interview with NBC’s Today Show about the Iranian plot to kill Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the U.S.

Yesterday, I noted that the criminal complaint filed in the case of an Iranian plot to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the U.S. includes references to what appear to be senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF) commanders. These IRGC-QF personalities were unnamed in the…

The Obama administration has accused members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) of plotting to kill Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the U.S. And, according to press reports, the putative assassination plot was just one of multiple planned attacks, including possible attacks on Saudi and…

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has released a martyrdom statement for Anwar al Awlaki, the al Qaeda cleric who was killed in a U.S. drone strike last month. AQAP claims – like many critics of the strike – that slaying Awlaki violated American law because the U.S. government “did not prove…

Anwar al Awlaki has reportedly been killed in an airstrike in Yemen, bringing an end to the life of one of al Qaeda’s most effective recruiters. Awlaki had an especially strong appeal in the West, where an unknown (but surely significant) number of recruits joined al Qaeda’s jihad after viewing his…

During congressional testimony on Thursday, Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, accused the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency of sponsoring terrorist attacks on an American embassy and coalition forces. The allegations, while startling, are hardly…

During a joint hearing of the Senate and House intelligence committees yesterday, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testified that the recidivism rate for former Guantanamo detainees has risen to an estimated 27 percent. The total number of “confirmed” and “suspected” recidivists,…

Al Qaeda has released a tape commemorating the 10th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. According to the invaluable SITE Intelligence Group, the tape includes a speech given by Osama bin Laden that appears to be the same one found in the terror master’s Abbottabad, Pakistan…

WikiLeaks has long claimed that it is taking measures to protect the men and women whose identities may be exposed in leaked documents for the first time. These people include spies, sources, and the like who never thought their names would appear on the Internet in a leaked State Department…

There has been no shortage of articles written from the perspective of the Guantanamo detainees’ lawyers and advocates. The result, more often than not, is a wildly inaccurate picture. A CNN.com piece (“Ten years on, Kuwaiti inmates fear indefinite Guantanamo detention”) published by Jenifer Fenton…

In a column for the Washington Post, David Ignatius discusses the cache of documents captured in Osama bin Laden’s safe house. Ignatius writes:

As Muammar Qaddafi’s reign of terror presumably comes to an end (or comes close to an end), there is one part of his regime worth saving: the Libyan intelligence service’s files. Tyrants tend to be diligent record keepers, with vast bureaucracies recording every noteworthy misdeed. This is…

One of the most widely publicized controversies in Australia this week involves former Guantanamo detainee David Hicks. Hicks pled guilty to providing material support for terrorism before a military commission at Gitmo as part of a plea bargain and was repatriated to Australia shortly thereafter…

In a stunning development on Thursday, the U.S. Treasury Department accused the Iranian government of sponsoring al Qaeda. Treasury designated six al Qaeda terrorists and reported that they are working for a network headquartered in Iran. This al Qaeda network is “headed by Ezedin Abdel Aziz…

American counterterrorism officials have long worried about the possibility of a “lone wolf” jihadist committing a terrorist attack. Such individuals, inspired by ideology alone, can come out of nowhere. And if they are truly unconnected to the international terrorist network then they can be…

Shortly after news of the terrorist attacks in Norway broke, online jihadist forums considered credible began claiming responsibility. Those claims were a big part of the early media coverage. But now, the press is reporting that officials have arrested a Norwegian man named Anders Behring Breivik…

UPDATE: The initial media reporting on the terrorist attack in Oslo focused on possible connections to jihadist terrorist groups. This story was updated the same day, see here, to reflect new information about the terrorist responsible. It was also updated that same dayhere. Another updated story…

On Saturday, Benjamin Wittes and Robert Chesney published another response at the Lawfare Blog to questions I think Matthew Olsen, who has been nominated for the position of National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) director, should be asked at his forthcoming Senate confirmation hearing. Wittes and…

My suggestion that Matthew Olsen answer questions about his work on the Guantanamo Review Task Force during his Senate confirmation hearing has clearly struck a nerve at the Lawfare Blog. There are two posts replying to my original piece – one by Benjamin Wittes and another by Robert Chesney.

On July 1, President Obama announced that he was nominating Matthew Olsen for the position of National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) director. Olsen has served in a number of national security-related government positions, including as the head of Obama’s Guantanamo Review Task Force.

Speaking in Iraq, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta reportedly told U.S. troops: “The reason you guys are here is because on 9/11 the United States got attacked. And 3,000 Americans — 3,000 not just Americans, 3,000 human beings, innocent human beings — got killed because of al-Qaeda. And we’ve been…

The New York Times has published a remarkable article on the murder of Pakistani journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad. It is not the story’s central allegation that makes the piece remarkable – it is all too believable that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate had Shahzad killed. The…

Joe Biden finally won an argument. President Obama’s decision to draw down U.S. forces in Afghanistan seems to move American policy toward Biden’s long-held view that the U.S. military should narrow its approach to a selective, counter-terrorism-focused mission. In this view, targeted raids, like…

June was the deadliest month in Iraq for U.S. forces in more than two years, with 15 servicemen killed. Jay Solomon of the Wall Street Journal explains why: “The U.S. has attributed all the attacks to Shiite militias it says are [sic] are trained by the [Iranian] Revolutionary Guards, rather than…

At the end of a Washington Post op-ed criticizing John McCain for labeling Republicans who oppose intervention in the Libyan war “isolationists,” George Will writes (emphasis added):

Syed Saleem Shahzad was a rare journalist. His reporting on the Taliban, al Qaeda, and other heads of the jihadist hydra based in Pakistan was always essential reading. He never wavered, as far as I can tell, in giving readers as complete a picture as he could. Oftentimes, that meant Shahzad…

Reuters has published its account of the hunt for Osama bin Laden. Like other versions of the story that have come out, this one says that the key information about the courier who unwittingly led authorities to bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound came from Hassan Ghul – an al Qaeda operative who was…

A recently leaked threat assessment prepared at Guantanamo draws into question the Obama administration’s analysis of a detainee who was transferred to Yemen shortly before all future transfers to the unstable nation were suspended.

In the aftermath of Osama bin Laden’s death, the Washington Post ran a four-part series by men and women who had their “lives shattered and transformed by” the terror master. One of the contributors was especially curious: former Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg.

In an interview with President Obama on Sunday night’s 60 Minutes, Steve Kroft asked:

Yet another version of how U.S. intelligence officials identified Osama bin Laden’s courier has been published. Again, we need confirmation from intelligence officials to determine which details are true. It is not at all clear at this point how this went down.

The exact identity of Osama bin Laden’s courier, who unwittingly led to his boss’s demise, remains to be confirmed, but CNN reports that it was a Kuwaiti known as Abu Ahmad al Kuwaiti. If that’s true, then obviously it wasn’t the courier mentioned in the leaked Gitmo file written for Abu Faraj al…

A recently leaked Guantanamo file names Osama bin Laden’s “designated courier.” The file, which summarizes the available intelligence on top al Qaeda operative Abu Faraj al Libbi, reads: 

A lot of parties inside the American government, from President Obama on down, will rightly claim credit for the demise of Osama bin Laden. But one party, in particular, deserves mention because its members have been repeatedly demonized in the press: the Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO). 

There are two competing versions of former Guantanamo detainee Sami al Hajj’s story. The first, which has long been endorsed by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and many other journalists/activists, portrays Hajj as an innocent Al Jazeera journalist who was wrongly swept up in the…

Predicting which Guantanamo detainees will, or will not, become a recidivist is a tricky business. The U.S. government – under both the Bush and Obama administrations – has transferred “high risk” detainees to third countries. In some cases, “high risk” detainees who have been transferred have not,…

A two-page assessment of Guantanamo detainee Omar Khadr is among the newly leaked WikiLeaks files. Khadr, of course, killed American serviceman Christopher Speer during a shootout in Afghanistan. His many advocates have turned him into something of a false martyr, however, claiming that Khadr is…

A former Guantanamo detainee “was identified as an Iraqi intelligence officer who relocated to Afghanistan (AF) in 1998 where he served as a senior Taliban Intelligence Directorate officer in Mazar-E-Sharif,” according to a recently leaked assessment written by American intelligence analysts. The…

Late last year, Guantanamo detainee Omar Khadr agreed to a plea deal that will require him to serve a maximum of eight years, with just one of those years in Cuba. Khadr is then set to be returned to Canada – his family’s adopted home, which they left for the Taliban and al Qaeda’s Afghanistan…

On Monday, the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal filed by five Uighur detainees held at Guantanamo. A D.C. District Court granted the Uighur detainees their freedom inside the U.S. A D.C. Circuit Court ruling overturned the District Court’s decision. And so the Uighurs attempted to appeal…

In its editorial denouncing the Obama administration’s decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his 9/11 co-conspirators before a military tribunal, instead of a federal court, the New York Times writes:

Yesterday, the House Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations held a hearing on “Guantanamo Detainee Transfer Policy and Recidivism.” None of the witnesses claimed that Guantanamo is a major recruiting tool for al Qaeda. That omission is refreshing.

Newsweek’s Sami Yousafzai and Ron Moreau have published a list of the “12 of the most-hunted insurgent commanders on the front lines” in Afghanistan. The list is made up “of lesser-known lieutenants who include some of the insurgency’s most important and aggressive operatives.” But one of the…

Late last month I asked, who will interrogate top al Qaeda terrorist Umar Patek? Patek, who was captured in Pakistan, is wanted for his role in the 2002 Bali bombings, among other attacks and plots. He is easily one of the most important international terrorists captured in the past few years.…

If Guantanamo were really one of al Qaeda’s principal recruiting tools, as President Obama and members of his administration have repeatedly claimed, then the facility would probably be referenced regularly in the terror group’s propaganda. It is not. Instead, other themes dominate Osama bin…

An American intelligence official based in South Asia recently told me, “It has been a long time since we captured a senior al Qaeda leader.” His point was transparent: Without detaining and interrogating terrorists who know what is going on inside the clandestine al Qaeda network, American…

The Los Angeles Times reports:

Nowhere has the Obama administration been more reluctant to embrace the revolutions sweeping through the Middle East than in Yemen. This is, in part, understandable.

Judicial Watch, a conservative foundation that seeks to improve government transparency, has obtained two important Guantanamo-related documents from the Department of Defense via a Freedom of Information Act request. One of the documents is a draft presentation dated February 4, 2004. Reading…

Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi just can’t accept the fact that anyone other than al Qaeda wants him gone. CNN reports:

In August 2010, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued the U.S. government on behalf of al Qaeda cleric Anwar al Awlaki. The two organizations questioned the government’s right to put Awlaki on a “kill list” and argued that the “government’s…

In an editorial published yesterday (“A Right Without a Remedy”), the New York Times complained that the D.C. Circuit Court “has dramatically restricted” the Supreme Court’s Boumediene ruling, which granted Guantanamo detainees the right to petition federal courts for their habeas corpus rights.…

It is not surprising to see Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi use any and all means, including the most savage violence, to hold onto power. Qaddafi is, after all, a terrorist.

Ben Farmer of The Daily Telegraph (UK) reports that Afghan president Hamid Karzai’s peace council is going to send a delegation to Guantanamo. The council is requesting the release of about 20 Taliban commanders and leaders held there. There is no official indication, as of yet, that the Obama…

PressTV:

Writing for the Daily Beast, Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer and adviser to the Obama administration, argues that the U.S. can coexist with a Muslim Brotherhood-dominated Egypt. The Obama administration “should not be afraid of the Muslim Brotherhood,” Riedel writes. “Living with it won’t be…

State Department spokesman P. J. Crowley wrote the following on his Twitter page early this morning:

For the second time in less than a year, former British prime minister Tony Blair testified before the Iraq Inquiry today. The Inquiry is investigating the circumstances that led up to the Iraq war and its aftermath. For the second time, Blair warned of collusion between Iran and al Qaeda.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) released the fourth edition of its Inspire magazine online in recent days. As with the previous three editions, the PDF publication is a combination of deadly serious threats and the comical, with American street slang mixed with jihadist ideology. For…

Tuesday morning, NBC News broadcast an interview with Saad Iqbal Madni, a former Guantanamo detainee. Madni’s story is an old one and there is no real “news” here. The New York Times published basically the same story more than two years ago. (You can read my analysis of the Times piece here.)

Here is a new myth about Guantanamo. The attorneys for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange claim that if Assange is extradited to Sweden he may end up detained in Cuba. The Guardian (UK) reports:

On Thursday, the Department of Defense announced the transfer of an Algerian named Saiid Farhi from Guantanamo to his home country. The second line of the DoD’s press release reads: “Farhi was ordered released by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Nov. 19, 2009.” What the DoD’s…

On Saudi television last week, a former Guantanamo detainee named Jabir al Fayfi claimed that he and his fellow Saudi detainees were radicalized during their time in American custody. According to a write-up on alriyadh.com, al Fayfi claimed “that the weakness of religious knowledge among the Saudi…

Little did Director of National Intelligence James Clapper know that when he and two of his Obama administration colleagues sat down to discuss the terror threat with ABC’s Diane Sawyer earlier this month that his appearance would be the source of controversy. As has been widely reported, Clapper…

During a press conference on December 22, President Obama was asked about the difficulties his administration has encountered in trying to close Guantanamo. The president explained (emphasis added):

Earlier this month, Al Jazeera broadcast a lengthy interview with Walid Muhammad Hajj, who was detained at Guantanamo for several years until he was transferred to his native Sudan in 2008. (MEMRI has provided an excerpt of the interview here.)

In the middle of a February 28, 2008 State Department cable released by WikiLeaks, we find this sentence:

Via Sam Stein at the Huffington Post (“Obama Administration Pushes Back On Report That Gitmo Recidivism Has ‘Soared’”), an anonymous Obama administration official has offered a reply (of sorts) to my piece on the DNI’s latest assessment of Guantanamo recidivism. It is odd that anyone in the Obama…

150 former Guantanamo detainees are either “confirmed or suspected of reengaging in terrorist or insurgent activities,” according to a new intelligence assessment released by the Director of National Intelligence’s office on Tuesday. In total, 598 detainees have been transferred out of U.S. custody…

A State Department cable released by WikiLeaks earlier this week contains a stunning new detail about the relationship between Iran and al Qaeda. The Saudis have privately complained to the Obama administration that Iran harbors a dangerous network of al Qaeda operatives who are targeting the…

A cable released by WikiLeaks that is available on the New York Times’s web site underscores the difficulties that both the Bush and Obama administrations have had in transferring war on terror detainees to Afghan custody. The cable, which originated at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul on August 6, 2009,…

It is one thing if a left-wing human rights organization like Amnesty International cannot tell the difference between a jihadist and a legitimate political dissident. It is quite another if the U.S. State Department suffers from the same intellectual confusion. One diplomatic cable released by…

The press has highlighted several documents from the latest WikiLeaks cache that deal with the Obama administration’s attempts to close Guantanamo. The administration can’t close Gitmo without transferring a large number of the remaining detainees to other countries. But its efforts in this vein…

“By prosecuting Ahmed Ghailani in federal court,” Attorney General Eric Holder said in a May 21, 2009, statement, “we will ensure that he finally answers for his alleged role in the bombing of our embassies in Tanzania and Kenya.” “This administration,” Holder continued, “is committed to keeping…

The world is once again anticipating a massive leak of classified documents by WikiLeaks. The U.S. State Department is so concerned that it has published a letter addressed to the head of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, and his attorney, arguing that publication of the documents will “risk the lives of…

Will the Obama administration cave to international pressure and transfer a Guantanamo detainee it has previously found too dangerous to release?

In response to the Ghailani verdict, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) issued the following statement (emphasis added):

A New York jury delivered a stunning verdict Wednesday. Ahmed Ghailani, an al Qaeda terrorist who conspired to blow up American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, was acquitted of more than 280 charges, including one count of murder for each of the 224 people killed in the simultaneous…

Is the British government preparing to make one of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s alleged co-conspirators a millionaire? The Washington Post reports on the British payouts to former Gitmo detainees as part of an out-of-court lawsuit settlement:

The UK government has decided to award seven former Guantanamo detainees millions of dollars in an out-of-court settlement, according to multiple press accounts. Why? The ex-Gitmo detainees claim that British authorities knew they were being tortured during their detention by the U.S. and other…

“Don’t consult with anyone in fighting the Americans; fighting the devil doesn’t require consultation or prayers or seeking divine guidance.”

In a propaganda tape released last week, entitled, “Who Will Avenge the Scientist Aafia Siddiqui,” Ayman al Zawahiri called on Pakistanis to “take the only available path, that of jihad ... which will liberate Aafia Siddiqui.” The woman lionized by Zawahiri is not a real person, but instead an…

In the past couple of days we’ve learned more about the intelligence that allowed Western authorities to neutralize the threat posed by two bombs shipped from Yemen via cargo plane. (Other bombs may still be in play, according to press accounts, but that is not a certainty.)

The appearance of Yusuf Islam (formerly known as Cat Stevens) at Jon Stewart’s “Rally to Restore Sanity” has sparked controversy. At Hot Air, Allahpundit explains why. You can also read these two articles by Nick Cohen in Standpoint magazine (UK) for background on the matter. The gist of the issue…

We are still learning the details of the terrorist plot to send explosives into the U.S. from Yemen via cargo plane, so it is too early to make a definitive assessment. However, we have enough information to make some preliminary observations and ask some fundamental questions.

This morning, Omar Khadr pled guilty before a military commission to conspiring with al Qaeda and throwing the grenade that killed an American medic in Afghanistan. The guilty plea was reportedly part of an agreement that will allow Khadr to spend less time behind bars. The details of the agreement…

Early Friday evening I received a link, via email, to this story at ABC News’s website by Russell Goldman and Luis Martinez. The opening sentences read (emphasis added): 

A few weeks ago, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula released the second edition of its online magazine, Inspire. As with the first edition, Inspire seeks to garner new recruits in the West who are willing to carry out acts of jihad. Much of the publication is devoted to wooing would-be terrorists…

Today is the tenth anniversary of al Qaeda’s October 12, 2000 attack on the USS Cole. Three thoughts come immediately to mind.

A judge's reason for excluding damning testimony against al Qaeda terrorist Ahmed Ghailani makes no sense.

Congress's Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade held a hearing yesterday to discuss the U.S. strategy, or lack thereof, for dealing with the proliferation of jihadist web sites. In addition to dozens of sites that are explicitly dedicated to spreading jihadist ideology, al Qaeda…

In a campaign speech on July 14, 2007, Senator Barack Obama railed against the Iraq war and President Bush’s obstinate refusal to end it. “We cannot win a war against the terrorists if we’re on the wrong battlefield,” Obama said. In another speech a few weeks later, he said, “The president would…

In his op-ed for the Washington Post this morning, David Ignatius writes (emphasis added):

The must-read piece on terrorism this week comes from Philip Shenon, writing at The Daily Beast. Shenon writes about a cache of intelligence documents stored at the National Security Agency (NSA) that received a cursory review by the 9/11 Commission because they were only discovered shortly before…

The New York Times reports that a federal appeals court has shot down a lawsuit against Jeppesen Dataplan Inc., a Boeing subsidiary that reportedly arranged flights for the CIA as part of the Agency’s extraordinary rendition program. The suit was brought by the ACLU and five former detainees. But…

Ever since the September 11 attacks, some in counterterrorism and intelligence circles have tried to define al Qaeda narrowly, thereby limiting the scope of the organization’s threat. We’ve seen this in the recent debate over the number of al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan, for instance. CIA…

The Sunday Times (UK) reported yesterday, based on Taliban sources, that the Iranians are paying bounties to the Taliban to kill American soldiers. (The Times's account is behind a pay wall, but summaries of the story can be found elsewhere in the press.) We learn that the going rate is $1,000 per…

Fred Lucas of CNSNews.com has published an interesting story regarding the Defense Intelligence Agency’s (DIA) response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for documents pertaining to its Guantanamo recidivism studies. CNSNews.com’s reporting is worth your read, but most of the…

When Ghaleb Nassar al Bihani traveled to Afghanistan to fight alongside al Qaeda and the Taliban, he probably never imagined that he would be captured and his detention would be turned into a legal fight over what role, if any, international law plays in restricting the president of the United…

The news out of Canada is that authorities have broken up a terrorist cell that had more than 50 electronic circuit boards that could be used in improvised explosive devices (IEDs). The details of the plot are still a bit cloudy, but Canadian authorities were quick to point out that the plotters…

The Obama administration has delayed the trial by military commission of Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, the mastermind of the USS Cole attack, according to the Washington Post. The Defense Department denies this, saying in a statement that prosecutors “are actively investigating the case against Mr.…

As part of his defense before a military commission at Guantanamo, Omar Khadr’s attorneys filed a motion claiming that his confessions were the product of torture. Khadr made incriminating statements (including that he killed an American serviceman) only after he was subjected to various…

Al Qaeda really wants to kill Prince Muhammad Bin Naif Bin Abdul Aziz, who is the Saudi deputy interior minister and oversees the Kingdom’s counterterrorism efforts. According to the Saudi Gazette, al Qaeda has tried to kill the prince four times since 2004.

Omar Khadr’s trial before a military commission at Guantanamo has reportedly been delayed once again. This time, Khadr’s attorney has suffered some illness and the trial has been put on hold for thirty days, according to Agence France-Presse.

The New York Times has published an article by Jeremy Peters, who whines about the military’s media tours at Guantanamo Bay. (Note: I was on such a tour in December 2009.) This (news?) piece begins with a bit of snark: “Welcome to Guantánamo Bay, where your tour guide will never leave your side but…

On Monday, German authorities announced that they closed down the Taiba mosque in Hamburg. The mosque achieved infamy as home to several of the 9/11 plotters under its previous name -- Al Quds.

President Obama’s Gitmo problem (that is, his inability to shut the facility down, even though he wanted to do so in just one year) is in many ways a Yemen problem. The Yemeni detainees accounted for roughly 40 percent of the Gitmo population when Obama took office. But his administration has…

The State Department has finally released its Country Reports on Terrorism for 2009. Foggy Bottom’s analysis, which details terrorist events in the previous calendar year, was supposed to be provided to Congress by April 30. But this year the report was not published until August. So, we are just…

Senate Republicans have blocked a vote on President Obama’s nominee to fill the Director of National Intelligence spot, James Clapper. Why? They want more transparency from the most transparent administration in history.

When WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange announced the massive leak of more than 90,000 classified documents, he claimed that he was exposing “thousands” of possible American war crimes. The documents show nothing of the sort. Some of the documents do detail the brutality of war, and the unsurprising…

One of the more interesting aspects of the WikiLeaks document dump is the persistence of intelligence reports indicating collusion between al Qaeda, al Qaeda-affiliated parties, and Iran. By itself, this should not be surprising. The 9/11 Commission, Clinton-era federal prosecutors, and many others…

It will take some time to comb through the massive document dump that WikiLeaks unleashed last night. Thus far, a database available on the WikiLeaks website includes almost 77,000 documents. There are reportedly upwards of 15,000 more on the way. What we’ve seen thus far is not really…

How many Gitmo detainees traveled to Afghanistan to find a wife? A fair number, if you accept their cover stories at face value, something only a fool would do.

Yesterday’s confirmation hearing for Lt. Gen. James Clapper, who is poised to take over as the new director of National Intelligence, highlighted a fundamental challenge facing America’s intelligence community (IC). How much, and in what ways, should the sprawling intelligence bureaucracy be…

Late last Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to block the transfer of a Guantanamo detainee named Farhi Saeed Bin Mohammed to his home country of Algeria. Mohammed claims that he will be tortured or killed if he is returned to Algeria. The Obama administration argued that his fears are…

On Tuesday, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stinging rebuke to a district court that granted a Guantanamo detainee’s habeas petition last year.  The detainee in question is Mohammed al-Adahi, a Yemeni whom District Judge Gladys Kessler ordered freed in August 2009.

Last week, British Prime Minister David Cameron announced that his government has agreed to investigate torture allegations made by former Guantanamo detainees. The inquiry is expected to last one year. And, according to Cameron, it will look into claims that British officials knew of “improper…

Last week, the details of the plot to bomb New York City subways in 2009 expanded dramatically. We learned that the NYC plot was connected to two others, in the UK and Norway, and that all three can be traced back to senior al Qaeda leadership in northern Pakistan. The reporting on the Norway…

Two noteworthy stories dealing with Gitmo detainee transfers came out of Europe this week. The first comes from Spain, where the daily newspaper El Mundo reports that Spanish intelligence authorities are worried about the risks posed by transferred detainees.

Judging by some of the headlines, you’d think that the Gitmo detainee who pled guilty before a military commission today was merely a chef for Osama bin Laden.  A BBC headline reads: “Bin Laden chef pleads guilty at Guantanamo Bay trial.” Another headline, from Reuters, is in the same vein: “Bin…

In September 2009, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke sat down for an interview with PBS for a Frontline documentary titled “Obama’s War.” Holbrooke discussed Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Obama administration’s approach to diplomacy in the region. His answers, viewed in hindsight, reveal just how much…

The New York Times has now published its take on the Guantanamo Review Task Force’s final report. (See here and here for the back story.) Of the 240 detainees held at Gitmo on Obama’s first day, and subject to the Task Force’s review (two detainees were not), the Times writes:

Al Qaeda cleric Anwar al Awlaki described both the Fort Hood Shooter and the Christmas Day bomber as his “students” in a tape released this weekend, according to press reports. This is not surprising – the evidence tying Awlaki to both terrorists has continued to mount. But Awlaki’s comments…

At National Review Online, Michael Anton has the definitive analysis of the costs of containing Iran. There is, of course, much debate concerning what to do about Iran and the regime's pursuit of nuclear weapons. The policy proposals most frequently debated by wonks are: (1) sanctions, (2) military…

According to the Wall Street Journal, a district judge has ordered Mohamedou Slahi – a known al Qaeda recruiter who worked for Osama bin Laden – freed from Guantanamo. The Journal’s account does not explain the judge’s reasoning and the decision was not immediately available online. But the…

John Schwartz of the New York Times has published a piece on the reaction of some conservatives to an ad by Keep America Safe asking for the DOJ to identify government lawyers who previously represented or advocated on behalf of terrorists. The Times, of course, was eager to highlight dissent…

As the controversy heats up over the DOJ lawyers who once represented, or advocated on behalf of, al Qaeda and Taliban members, it is worth taking a quick look at their body of work.

As the controversy over the DOJ lawyers who once represented, or advocated on behalf of, al Qaeda and Taliban members heats up, it is worth taking a quick look at their body of work.

The Huffington Post has published a piece explaining how awful it supposedly is that Marc Thiessen, author of Courting Disaster (full disclosure: I reviewed a draft at Thiessen’s request), has been hired by the Washington Post to write a column.  The Huffington Post’s chief witness against Thiessen…

Amnesty International is at a crossroads. One path leads to a continued relationship with an admitted jihadist. The other is guided by an Amnesty official who has been outspoken in her criticism of Amnesty’s relationship with the jihadist.

On Sunday, the New York Times published what Power Line’s Scott Johnson rightly calls a hagiographic profile of Attorney General Eric Holder in the context of his decision to bring 9/11 co-conspirators to New York to stand trial. That decision has come under unrelenting criticism, of course. But…

President Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, is once again drawing criticism. This time, Brennan’s remarks concerning the Pentagon’s latest Gitmo recidivism study have come under scrutiny. 

During an interview on MSNBC Thursday morning, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs defended the Obama administration’s handling of Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Gibbs argued that the administration was right to treat Abdulmutallab as a criminal defendant, instead of as an…

The Obama administration says that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (UFA), the failed Christmas Day bomber, is now cooperating with investigators after weeks of silence. Assuming that’s true, then authorities should be able to get answers to the following questions:

Attorney General Eric Holder has sent a letter defending the decision to charge Abdulmutallab as a criminal and read him his Miranda rights. This paragraph stuck out immediately: 

Jake Tapper of ABC News has obtained a copy of a letter John Brennan, the assistant to President Obama for homeland security and counterterrorism, sent to congressional leaders Monday night. Brennan defends the administration’s efforts to close Guantanamo in the letter. While conceding that the…

As Stephen F. Hayes has thoroughly documented, there is much U.S. officials should be asking Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab about. Abdulmutallab was mirandized shortly after his arrest, however, and decided to stop talking. He has provided, at most, limited cooperation since then,…

Last week, the Pentagon released the results of its investigation into the November 5 Fort Hood shooting (Protecting the Force: Lessons from Fort Hood). There is a large, publicly available body of evidence demonstrating that Defense Department personnel missed many warning signs in the years…

The Obama administration has reportedly transferred two Algerians from Guantanamo to their native country. Given the allegations levied against them at Gitmo, it is likely that the two are in Algerian custody. There is no transparency with respect to detainee transfers. So, we do not know how the…

In a controversial move, the Obama administration has decided to lift Tariq Ramadan’s ban from the United States. Who is Tariq Ramadan? By birth, he is the grandson of Hassan al Banna – the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). By word and deed, he is today a leading member of the European branch…

Last Tuesday, President Obama updated the American people on the progress of the “security reviews” he had ordered administration officials to perform in the wake of “the failed attack on Christmas Day.” The president spoke of the “corrective actions” that would be taken so that another bomber with…

In a piece today, the New York Times follows the thread of evidence connecting former Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg and failed Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (emphasis added):

BBC reporter Peter Taylor recently interviewed former Guantanamo detainee Mohammed al Awfi in Saudi Arabia. Al Awfi is one of the 11 former Gitmo detainees who was included on the Saudi Kingdom’s most wanted list in early 2009. After participating in the Saudi rehabilitation program, and feigning a…

In my piece Al Qaeda’s Trojan Horse, I pointed to several reports coming out of the British press connecting Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (UFA) to former Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg and Begg’s organization, Cage Prisoners. The British press first noted that Begg and one of…

Press reports indicate that the latest Pentagon assessment of recidivists who were once held at Guantanamo “shows about one in five detainees released” have returned to terrorism. That, of course, is a recidivism rate of “about” 20 percent. Although these same press accounts do not note the total…

With respect to closing the Guantanamo detention facility, President Obama said the following on Tuesday:

In my piece last week ("Al Qaeda's Trojan Horse"), I wrote about Mozzam Begg, a former Gitmo detainee, and his ties to Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab ("UFA").

The American and British embassies in Yemen have been closed reportedly in response to an al Qaeda threat. The Associated Press reports: 

In a video address discussing the failed Christmas Day terrorist attack, President Obama said this:

CBS news correspondent Bob Orr spoke with Harry Smith on Wednesday. Here is part of their exchange (emphasis added): Smith: We are starting to learn a lot more about this radical imam, Awlaki, who is actually born in the United States. Tell us. 

Orr: It's actually frightening, Harry. U.S.…

An intriguing name has surfaced in the worldwide investigation into Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's life. That name is Moazzam Begg, and it is a name that is well known to those left-wing journalists and human rights lawyers who take everything former Gitmo detainees say at face…

Press reports have hinted at it for several days, but now the media has just come out and reported it: The same al Qaeda cleric who advised the Fort Hood shooter also counseled Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab - the Christmas Day bomber.   Here is Victor Morton in the Washington Times: The Nigerian…

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has now claimed responsibility for the Christmas Day terrorist attack on a Detroit-bound airliner. This is yet another indication, on top of the would-be bomber's own admissions and other evidence linking him to al Qaeda operatives in Yemen, that al Qaeda…

Less than two weeks after the Fort Hood shooting, a man who was identified as Anwar al Awlaki spoke through an intermediary with the Washington Post. Awlaki, of course, has been tied to Major Nidal Malik Hasan. Numerous published reports have cited Awlaki's emails with Hasan in the months prior to…

On CNN this morning, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said that prior to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day, "the system worked." As recounted by Politico's Jonathan Martin, she then added that there was "no suggestion that…

We are still in the early hours of the investigation into an attempted terrorist attack on a Detroit-bound flight leaving Amsterdam. So, any analysis at this point is by definition preliminary. Be that as it may, here are some initial observations and questions. The first question that will be…

From the Washington Post: Yemeni forces killed at least 30 suspected militants in an air strike early Thursday morning on an alleged al-Qaeda hide-out in southeastern Yemen, the second such assault in the past week, according to Yemeni security and government sources. The strike appeared to target…

Another important note about the Obama administration's transfer of Gitmo detainee Abdullahi Sudi Arale to Somaliland: In June 2007, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman called Arale a "high-value detainee." That phrase was reserved for less than twenty detainees. As far as I know, the U.S. has never…

On June 6, 2007, the Department of Defense announced the transfer of Abdullahi Sudi Arale (also known as Ismail Mahmoud Muhammad) to the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. At the time, the U.S. military released a brief press release saying that Arale's capture "exemplifies the genuine…

In a letter to President Obama Friday, Congressman Frank Wolf (R-VA) called on the Obama administration to release the DIA's latest study on freed Guantanamo detainees who have returned to terrorism. In addition to objecting to the transfer of six Yemeni detainees from Guantanamo to their native…

Over at the Corner, Andy McCarthy points out that Louay Safi, a top official at the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), has been brought into Fort Hood to teach our troops about Islam. There's just one problem. As McCarthy and others have reminded us, ISNA has a variety of disturbing ties to…

Over at the Corner, Andy McCarthy points out that Louay Safi, a top official at the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), has been brought into Fort Hood to teach our troops about Islam. There's just one problem. As McCarthy and others have reminded us, ISNA has a variety of disturbing ties to…

According to press accounts, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates told a Senate hearing today that the Obama administration has identified 116 Guantanamo detainees (out of the remaining 211) who can be transferred. That's an incredibly high number - much higher than the numbers that were reported…

Two contradictory narratives explaining Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan's money transfers to Pakistan have emerged in the press. At this point, we know that in the months leading up to the Fort Hood shooting, Major Hasan wired a significant amount of money to Pakistan (it is not clear precisely how much).…

Scott Fenstermaker is an attorney who has performed various legal services for one of the five 9/11 conspirators who will be put on trial in New York, as well as other al Qaeda terrorists. Fenstermaker says he is concerned with protecting the "rule of law" and defending the constitutional…

ghailani.jpg Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani

In my piece yesterday, I noted that the ACLU released a video earlier this month that features former Gitmo detainee Moazzam Begg. Begg made news earlier this year when he became the front man for a video game in which players could pretend to be Gitmo detainees capable of shooting their way out of…

Attorney General Eric Holder confirmed to the Senate Judiciary Committee this morning that Gitmo will not be closed by the initial January 2010 deadline. Holder's comments follow President Obama's earlier announcement that the deadline will be missed. There are, according to published accounts,…

"I'll talk to you guys after I get to New York and see my lawyer."

"I'll talk to you guys after I get to New York and see my lawyer." That, according to former Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet, is what September 11 planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) said when he was captured in March 2003. But of course the Bush administration did not grant KSM his…

First, Anwar al Awlaki's web site was taken offline. (Some press accounts suggest that the al Qaeda cleric took it down; others raise the possibility that it was hacked.) Now, Awlaki's Facebook page has been taken down too. Earlier today, we noted that there was a post dated December 14, 2008 from…

The NEFA Foundation has uncovered another message from Anwar al Awlaki's now defunct web site in which he calls upon Muslims to fight any army that serves the "interests of the enemies." This includes America's military, and any army of any state (Muslim or otherwise) that does not serve Awlaki's…

The latest award for the most absurd headline dealing with the Fort Hood attack has to go to the Financial Times for: "Anti-Muslim bias eyed in Fort Hood Attack." The byline is attributed to Harvey Morris, who writes: As America agonises over what motivated Major Nidal Malik Hasan, who is accused…

Anwar al Awlaki's official web site is still down this morning. Awlaki was the spiritual advisor for at least two of the 9/11 hijackers and probably a third before Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Fort Hood Shooter, contacted Awlaki between "10 to 20 times" beginning in December of 2008. Intriguingly,…

The FBI and other federal authorities are reportedly still trying to figure out Maj. Nidal M. Hasan's motive for opening fire at Fort Hood. Let's take a look at Hasan's June 2007 50-slide presentation to senior Army doctors to see if we can unravel this mystery. According to the Washington Post,…

Look at which web site is down this morning: Anwar al Awlaki's. The post praising the Fort Hood Shooter's killing spree is down too. Was it the unwanted spike in traffic that forced the al Qaeda cleric to take down his site? Or, is it just a technical glitch? Or, is there "interference" from…

On Monday, ABC News first reported that Fort Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan had reached out to al Qaeda associates prior to his attack. There were good reasons to speculate that one of these al Qaeda figures is Anwar al Awlaki -- an al Qaeda recruiter who acted as a "spiritual advisor" to two…

Earlier today, ABC News reported that Fort Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan had reached out to al Qaeda associates prior to his attack. There were good reasons to speculate that one of these al Qaeda figures is Anwar al Awlaki -- an al Qaeda recruiter who acted as a "spiritual advisor" to two of…

Substantive red flags have surfaced in the ongoing investigation of Fort Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan. This includes details that go well beyond his radical Islamist and anti-American beliefs. The most disturbing threads of evidence link Hasan to a prominent al Qaeda recruiter named Anwar al…

Over at the Corner, Marc Thiessen points out that recently released excerpts of the CIA's Inspector General Report on the CIA's detention and interrogation program further undermine former FBI agent Ali Soufan's story. Soufan, you will recall, is the former FBI agent who claims that the enhanced…

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a plea from Uighurs detained at Guantanamo who are challenging their detention and seeking the right to be released in the U.S. The chain of legal events is as follows. Last year, a federal appeals court determined that 17 Uighurs were not properly detained at…

On Friday, October 9, the Obama administration announced the transfer of a Kuwaiti named Khaled al Mutairi, who had been held at Guantanamo for nearly eight years, to his home country. In its announcement of al Mutairi's transfer, the Justice Department cited District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly's…

On Friday, October 9, the Obama administration announced the transfer of a Kuwaiti named Khaled al Mutairi, who had been held at Guantanamo for nearly eight years, to his home country. In its announcement of al Mutairi's transfer, the Justice Department cited District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly's…

On October 1, the House voted - by a count of 258 to 163 - in favor of a non-binding resolution that would prevent the Obama administration from transferring Guantanamo detainees to the U.S. for any reason. The politics behind the vote were fairly simple. The idea of bringing detainees here is…

The Washington Post has a revealing look at the problems the Obama administration is facing in trying to find a home for at least some of the 97 Yemeni detainees held at Guantanamo. The administration wants to send some, perhaps most, of them to Saudi Arabia for rehabilitation, but the Saudis don't…

Nashiri.jpg Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri

In a Washington Post op-ed, Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, argues that Afghanistan does not matter as much as General McChrystal and our military leaders think. Haass says Afghanistan is not a "war of necessity," but a "war of choice." His reasoning does not…

CBS News reports (emphasis added): A soldier from 7th Group Special Forces finds rocket propelled grenades in a hard-core Taliban village that he knows from experience, are made in Iran. "Like right here, it says 82 mm "h-e" lot 02 slash 87," the solider said. "The Iranians pretty much copy all of…

Following up on earlier reports, it turns out that the Democrats have in fact decided to allow the transfer of Gitmo detainees to the U.S. to face trial. The Washington Post reports: Key Democratic lawmakers agreed Wednesday to allow detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to be transferred to the…

From the Associated Press: President Obama's troubled plan to close the prison for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has cleared a key obstacle in Congress. Congressional negotiators unveiled a compromise Wednesday that would continue allowing Guantanamo Bay prisoners to be transferred to…

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has reportedly told prosecutors in Manhattan that the Obama administration will not seek the death penalty for Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, an al Qaeda terrorist who is accused of participating in the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. Earlier this year,…

Ambassador John Negroponte, who served as the first Director of National Intelligence (DNI) from 2005 to 2007, was on FOX News early this afternoon. He pegged the prospects of talks with Iran working at "less than 50-50." Negroponte insisted that he doesn't think Iran ever gave up its pursuit of…

In the wake of the last week's revelation that Iran has a clandestine facility designed to enrich uranium for nuclear bombs, the New York Times has an interesting look at the ongoing debate between American and her allies over Iran's nuclear program. Behind their show of unity about Iran's…

Today, the Washington Post's Del Quentin Wilber tells the heart-tugging story of two Uighur detainees held at Guantanamo. The two detainees, Bahtiyar Mahnut and Arkin Mahmud, are brothers who are held at Gitmo, according to the Post, for no good reason. The brothers, along with other Uighur…

John McCormack points to this piece in the New York Times, which says that former Secretary of State Colin Powell, Senator John Kerry and Senator Jack Reed are the three people outside of the administration "considered by White House aides to be most influential in" the current debate over how to…

In November of 2007, the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) drafted a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran's nuclear program. In its publicly released "Key Judgments," the IC concluded: "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program." A footnote at…

In light of this morning's revelation about a secret Iranian uranium enrichment plant, it is worth recalling Iran's mocking response to the Obama administration's request for negotiations. The Iranians said that they wanted to talk about: Promoting the universality of NPT [the Non-Proliferation…

It is looking more and more like Najibullah Zazi, the Afghan immigrant recently arrested on terrorism-related charges, had intended to unleash a July 7-style attack in New York. Today, the Justice Department announced that Zazi has been indicted on charges alleging he was: "committed to detonating…

The McChrystal Report on Iran's hand in Afghanistan (emphasis added): Iran plays an ambiguous role in Afghanistan, providing developmental assistance and political support to [Government of Afghanistan] while the Iranian Qods Force is reportedly training fighters for certain Taliban groups and…

There are at least three aspects of the ongoing investigation into suspected al Qaeda-affiliated terrorists in Colorado and New York that are especially troubling. First, Najibullah Zazi, the Afghan immigrant at the heart of the case, has reportedly admitted that he was trained in an al Qaeda…

The New York Times reports: As President Obama welcomes world leaders to the United States this week, he has gone a long way toward meeting his goal of restoring the country's international standing. Foreign counterparts flock to meet with him, and polls show that people in many countries feel much…

Earlier, I wondered what intelligence the Obama administration was relying upon to justify its decision to cancel the deployment of land-based missile defense systems in Eastern Europe. The press has sniffed out a partial answer. The Obama administration is relying upon a National Intelligence…

During a press briefing on Thursday, President Obama explained his administration's decision to cancel the deployment of land-based missile defense systems in Eastern Europe this way: "…we have updated our intelligence assessment of Iran's missile programs, which emphasizes the threat posed by…

Early Monday morning, law enforcement authorities raided three apartments in the Queens borough of New York City. The apartments housed a number of Afghan men who were allegedly engaged in suspicious activity. Thus far, the FBI and NYPD are saying that they did not uncover any explosives or other…

Four of the Uighurs detained at Guantanamo are reportedly going to be transferred to Palau, a tiny island nation in the South Pacific. That leaves nine Uighurs who the Obama administration still has to relocate. Resolving the Uighurs' cases was supposed to be easy, but it hasn't turned out that…

If you haven't yet read the document that is reportedly Iran's response to the Obama administration's request for negotiations, you should. At a time when Iran is arming the Taliban in Afghanistan, waging proxy war against America and her allies in Iraq, waging proxy war against Israel, harboring…

As I explained in my piece yesterday, Peter Bergen, a CNN commentator and senior fellow at the New America Foundation, does not believe the intelligence Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) gave up on al Qaeda's sleeper agents was all that important. The facts and evidence, as accumulated by American…

Secrecy News, a publication of the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), has posted a transcript of a televised interview Pakistani nuclear scientist AQ Khan recently gave. Khan was asked about Iran's nuclear program (emphasis added): [Interviewer] What about Iran? [Khan] Iran was interested in…

You would think the identification and arrest of sleeper agents working for al Qaeda mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), and operating on U.S. soil in 2003, is a success story our intelligence and law enforcement agencies can rightly trumpet, no? Not according to Peter Bergen, who is a senior…

In an op-ed for Sunday's New York Times, former FBI special agent Ali Soufan wrote: Supporters of the enhanced interrogation techniques have jumped from claim to claim about their usefulness. They have asserted, for example, that harsh treatment led Mr. Mohammed to reveal the plot to attack the…

On March 1, 2003, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), the principal planner of the September 11 attacks, was captured in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. U.S. interrogators quickly went about the business of getting him to talk, and for good reasons. KSM's operatives were already here, inside America, planning…

Even some military lawyers will argue anything on behalf of their clients, including senior al Qaeda terrorists. From the Miami Herald: Pentagon defense lawyers this week appealed the war crimes conviction of Osama bin Laden's media secretary at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, on free speech grounds. They…

On March 20, 2003, the FBI released a "Be on the Lookout" alert for Adnan G. El Shukrijumah (aka Jafar al Tayyar, or Jafar "the Pilot"). In the days that followed, press outlets reported some of the details on el Shukrijumah's suspicious career. El Shukrijumah had lived in the U.S. for years, and…

In late August, the Obama administration transferred two Syrian detainees from the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay to Portugal. Judging by the few press accounts about the transfer, no one seems to have batted an eyelash at the decision. That is curious because at least one of the two, Moammar…

Newsweek's Mark Hosenball says the Inspector General's report and other recently-released documents pertaining to Bush-era interrogations of top al Qaeda operatives do not show that waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs) "actually worked." Hosenball concedes that the…

David Ignatius's Washington Post column on the release of the Inspector General's Report and other documents strikes some of the right notes, but his conclusion is far off the mark. Ignatius writes: One of the most chilling documents released this week was one that Vice President Cheney had…

Yesterday, the Obama administration's Special Task Force on Interrogations and Transfer Policies announced that future interrogations would be conducted in accordance with the Army Field Manual, and only the Army Field Manual. From the Task Force (emphasis added): "After extensively consulting with…

As I discussed in my piece, The Zubaydah Dossier, there is no question that Abu Zubaydah was a top al Qaeda terrorist with detailed knowledge of al Qaeda's plotting. Despite a wealth of evidence in this regard, however, some still insist that Zubaydah was not really all that important. This is…

Over at the Corner, Andy McCarthy points to this Politico story about a recent order by a D.C. District Court giving Gitmo detainee Abdul Raheem Ghulam Rabbani the right to ask 9/11 planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) some questions about Rabbani's role in al Qaeda. The details of how these…

The Obama administration is keen on highlighting the progress it is making in closing down Gitmo. Naturally, it could count on the Washington Post ("Administration Makes Progress on Resettling Detainees") to do its PR. The Post's account gives us a good sense of how the administration sees things…

The Obama administration is, according to the Washington Post, still discussing the possibility of sending at least some (it is not clear how many) of the 98 Yemeni detainees held at Gitmo to Saudi Arabia. The administration has previously floated the idea of having the Yemenis reeducated in the…

From the Miami Herald:

In the most recent habeas decision handed down by a D.C. District Court judge, the court ruled that Gitmo detainee Adham Mohammed Ali Awad is properly held in U.S. custody.

A delegation of U.S. Senators, led by Senator John McCain, is in Yemen today to reportedly discuss the Yemeni citizens detained at Gitmo, among other topics. When it comes to closing down the detention facility, the Yemeni detainees pose one of the Obama administration's most difficult challenges.…

During the early hours of March 28, 2002, elite teams from the Pakistani and American counterterrorism forces stormed more than a dozen locations throughout Pakistan. Their target was one of the most wanted men on the planet--the al Qaeda commander Abu Zubaydah. For weeks, America's intelligence…

The BBC's interview with Rabiah Hutchinson, the ex-wife of top al Qaeda operative Mustafa Hamid (aka Abu Walid al Misri), provides a fascinating look into the mind of a western woman who became a jihadist ideologue. Rabiah Hutchinson used to be known as Robyn Hutchinson until she was swayed by…

The Scottish government is reportedly considering releasing Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, the convicted terrorist responsible for placing a bomb aboard Pan Am 103 on December 21, 1988. That bomb killed all 259 passengers on the plane, as well as 11 civilians on the ground when the plane…

On Wednesday, a D.C. District Court judge ruled that the U.S. government should "take all necessary and appropriate diplomatic steps to facilitate the release" of a Guantanamo detainee named Khaled al Mutayri. Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly's full opinion remains classified, so it is not possible to…

Will the Obama administration release Guantanamo detainee Mohammed Jawad, thereby pleasing the ACLU crowd? Or, is it going to move forward with a criminal prosecution, as the DOJ has suggested? Here is the background, in brief. Jawad is accused of throwing a hand grenade at a vehicle carrying two…

Mamoun Darkazanli -- the subject of tonight's The Wanted on NBC (9 pm) -- is probably one of the most interesting terrorists in the al Qaeda network. In addition to the financial assistance he provided the al Qaeda's Hamburg cell for the 9/11 attacks, Darkazanli compiled one of the more intriguing…

Around Thanksgiving time last year, the FBI and NYPD suddenly warned of a terrorist threat against the commuter rail lines in the New York metro area. Security was stepped up. There was the usual round of reporting on whether or not the threat was legitimate. And then the story died. That is, the…

One of the most controversial cases in Gitmo's history is coming to a head. According to the New York Times, a federal judge has given the Obama administration's DOJ until today to decide if it is going to continue to defend the detention of Mohamed Jawad during Jawad's habeas corpus hearing.

As Bill Roggio reports, U.S intelligence officials believe that Saad bin Laden, Osama's son, may have been killed in an American air strike earlier this year. If true, and we still await final confirmation either way, then this is a major kill. And press reports drawing into question Saad's…

The Obama administration's detention policy task force released its preliminary report last night. The report falls well short of providing a comprehensive strategy for detaining and trying terrorists and suspected terrorists captured abroad. For example, the report's authors say they would prefer…

The Obama administration's detention policy task force released its preliminary report last night. The report falls well short of providing a comprehensive strategy for detaining and trying terrorists and suspected terrorists captured abroad. For example, the report's authors say they would prefer…

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Obama administration is considering creating a new special interrogation team for handling high-value terrorists. The team is reportedly the brainchild of Obama's Task Force on Interrogation and Transfer Policies and would draw in specialists…

Last week, a large number of FBI memos written after interviews and "casual conversations"--that's how the FBI described them--with Saddam Hussein were released to the public. The press is, predictably, hyping the memos as evidence that the FBI extracted valuable intelligence from Saddam through…

Editor's note: The following is Thomas Joscelyn's response to this letter from Rep. Dana Rohrabacher. Let's be clear about the extreme position Congressman Dana Rohrabacher has taken here: Al Qaeda-trained terrorists pose no threat to the American people. This is obviously a disturbing stance -…

In recent weeks, European nations have come forward to say they are considering taking, or will take, some Gitmo detainees. Since January, Europe has only accepted a handful of detainees under special circumstances. The Obama administration wants Europe to take more, but the European nations have…

A few days ago, Jennifer Rubin, writing at Pajamas Media, wondered: "Why is the Justice Department Cozying Up to Islamic Radicals?" Rubin obtained a copy of an email seeking volunteers at the DOJ to represent the department in its booth at the Islamic Society of North America's convention. ISNA is…

In an interview broadcast on CBS's The Early Show Monday morning, President Obama was asked about his administration's response to the protests in Iran. "The last thing that I want to do is to have the United States be a foil for those forces inside Iran who would love nothing better than to make…

There have been two pieces of Palau and Uighur-related news since yesterday. The first was a New York Times op-ed by Stuart Beck, the South Pacific island of Palau's representative to the United Nations. The second comes from the Wall Street Journal, which reports that at least some of the 13…

In a performance that may be remembered for years to come, Ayatollah Khamenei put on a show at this morning's prayers. The ayatollah said that not only were the elections legitimate, but that the "street challenge is not acceptable." He all but threatened Mousavi directly, saying: "I call on all to…

Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) has some bizarre notions about "Uighur Nationalism" and the Uighur detainees held at Guantanamo. In a statement released Tuesday, Rohrabacher accused "some pundits in the Republican Party," including Newt Gingrich, of being duped by Chinese intelligence.…

From the Washington Times, W on Gitmo: "I told you I'm not going to criticize my successor," he said. "I'll just tell you that there are people at Gitmo that will kill American people at a drop of a hat and I don't believe that persuasion isn't going to work. Therapy isn't going to cause terrorists…

Today, the Washington Post has yet another piece claiming that Abu Zubaydah, a top al Qaeda terrorist captured in March 2002, was not really all that important. I say "yet another piece" because this is just the latest article in a long string of reporting by various outlets, including the Post,…

On Sunday night, CNN ran part of an interview with a Uighur named Khalil Abdul Nasser. Until just a few days ago, Nasser was detained at Guantanamo. Nasser's transfer to Bermuda, along with three of his fellow Uighurs, has caused a storm of controversy on the tiny resort island. So, Nasser wanted…

An email from one of Radio Farda's contacts in Tehran: I talked to a few students in Tehran (Monday morning Tehran time). They confirmed that the attack on their dormitory was brutal, destructive, and the authorities may have taken as many as 100 students with them. In Tehran, one faculty told me,…

A few days ago, before the Iranian presidential elections, the political head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Yadollah Javani, issued an unambiguous warning to Mousavi and his supporters. Javani compared Mousavi's campaign to Czechoslovakia's "velvet revolution" and the 1989…

Is Palau waffling on its decision to take in Uighur detainees held at Gitmo? Here is what Palau's President was saying just a few days ago: Palau's President Johnson Toribiong, in a statement seen by AFP Wednesday, said he agreed to a U.S. request to "temporarily" resettle the men as a…

The Associated Press won a landmark Freedom of Information Act request that led to the release of thousands of pages of documents created at Guantanamo. The files were released in early 2006. Therefore, the press organization has had some time -- more than three years -- to process the documents.…

Early Friday evening, the Obama administration announced the transfer of Ahmed Zuhair and two other native Saudis into the custody of the Saudi Kingdom. The Department of Justice's press release did not say why Zuhair was transferred. But, then again, there is much missing from the DOJ's off-hours…

This past week, the Obama administration announced the transfer of four ethnic Uighurs from the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay to Bermuda. The South Pacific island nation of Palau has agreed to take a number of the remaining Uighurs, possibly all of them, as well. Thus, all seventeen of the…

The special relationship between the U.S. and UK has taken some hits in recent months, at least in terms of public perception. And now it appears that the UK is not too happy that Bermuda, which is an overseas territory within its sovereignty, has agreed to the Obama administration's request to…

ETIM-video-1.JPG A Uighur terrorist from a videotape

The New York Times account of the Obama administration's deal with Palau, which has agreed to take some or all of the 17 Uighurs detained at Gitmo, contains one interesting observation and one significant oversight. The interesting observation is this: "But the United States had not been able to…

It looks like the Obama administration has finally found a home for the 17 Uighurs detained at Gitmo. According to the Associated Press, the small Pacific Island of Palau is reportedly taking some or all of the 17 Uighurs in exchange for $200 million. If true, this raises a few obvious observations…

Over at the Corner, Andy McCarthy notes that the trial of Ahmed Ghailani, the first Gitmo detainee transferred to the U.S. for criminal proceedings, should be a slam dunk. Some of Ghailani's co-conspirators have already been convicted for their roles in the August 1998 embassy bombings. And there…

While it was good news that the British software company T-Enterprise decided to kill "Rendition: Guantanamo", a video game that would have served as al Qaeda propaganda, the real story was never about the T-Enterprise or even Xbox's producer, Microsoft. This story is about former Guantanamo inmate…

A Yemeni detainee committed suicide at Guantanamo earlier this week. Muhammad Ahmad Abdallah Salih became the fifth Gitmo prisoner to kill himself since the detention facility opened. Some of the detainees' advocates are already reacting much as they have in the past. The LA Times quotes the Center…

The central argument put forth in defense of the 17 Uighurs detained at Gitmo is that their principal enemy is China, not the U.S. This defense ignores a host of troubling facts including that: (a) all of the Uighur detainees are members or associates of the ETIM/TIP (a U.S. and UN designated al…

A trailer for "Rendition: Guantanamo," the video game starring al Qaeda suspect Moazzam Begg that I wrote about here, can be found on YouTube. Note how the producers say the detainee is being used for "illegal scientific experiments" at Guantanamo -- of course, such experiments never happened. This…

Former "war on terror" detainees have played a large role in shaping perceptions of U.S. detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere. One of the more popular former detainees is Moazzam Begg, who writes columns about the supposed horrors of America's detention policies and regularly…

In his speech today, President Obama surrounded himself with images of the law. In a hall housing the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, the president clearly sought to portray himself as one who was protecting America's legal heritage after almost eight years of "fear" and…

On February 2, a Department of Defense spokesman told THE WEEKLY STANDARD that a Pentagon report documenting the recidivism of some former Guantanamo detainees would be released imminently. The report was coming so soon that we were told to check defenselink.mil for it that afternoon.

There appears to be a growing fissure between senior politicans on the Hill and the Pentagon when it comes to closing Gitmo. Yesterday, Senate Majority Harry Reid said that he did not want detainees released or even imprisoned in the U.S. The Senate has decided not to fund the Obama…

Today, the Pentagon said the U.S. is on schedule to close Gitmo by January 2010. According to AFP, DOD spokesman Geoff Morrell said, "I see nothing to indicate that that date is at all in jeopardy." Morrell added, "As far as I can tell, everything remains on track for action to be taken with regard…

Lawrence Wilkerson is having trouble keeping his story straight. And on Rachel Maddow's show last night, his story fell completely apart.

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In his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today, President Obama said the following: "If there is a linkage between Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, I personally believe it actually runs the other way, to the extent that we can make peace… between the…

Are the editors of the New York Times aware that the World Trade Center towers were, in fact, in lower Manhattan? On its face it is an absurd question, but when you read their editorial this morning you have to wonder. The Times worries that President Obama is making responsible decisions with…

Larry Wilkerson, via Spencer Ackerman at The Washington Independent, tries to respond to my criticism of his new story alleging that Vice President Cheney authorized waterboarding in order to generate phony intelligence connecting Saddam's regime to al Qaeda. Wilkerson's response does nothing to…

Lawrence Wilkerson, the former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, has a new story out claiming that the Bush administration authorized the Egyptians to waterboard top al Qaeda camp commander Ibn al Shaykh al Libi in order to generate phony intelligence connecting Iraq and al Qaeda.…

In press conference this morning, Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused the CIA of "misleading" Congress concerning the use of enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs), especially waterboarding. Pelosi was briefed on the techniques by the CIA in early September 2002, but says "the only mention of…

The Associated Press reports that Congress is going to appropriate $50 million for the closing of Gitmo, as requested by the Obama administration. But, the money comes with a catch. A bill by Senate Democrats would fund the closure of the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but it would block the…

During the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing today, the conversation turned to the closing of Gitmo. Philip Zelikow, the director of the 9/11 Commission and former Bush administration lawyer, said there is a "broad spectrum" of detainees held at Gitmo, "many of whom do not show large signs of…

This morning, the Senate Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing named "What Went Wrong: Torture and the Office of Legal Counsel in the Bush Administration." As you might guess from the title, the hearing is slated to be a decidedly one-side political charade, and not a serious discussion of the…

Hundreds of lawyers have flocked to serve the cause of detainees held at Gitmo. They often present themselves as merely concerned citizens fighting against a government (the Bush administration) that was seeking to destroy the U.S. Constitution by imprisoning terrorists and suspected terrorists…

The Washington Post refers to Abu Zubaydah, a top al Qaeda operative, as an "alleged al-Qaeda operative" and as a "terrorism suspect." How is it that almost eight years after the September 11 attacks a major U.S. newspaper is still referring to Zubaydah in a such a manner? Is it merely ignorance?…

The Obama administration is reportedly set to announce the release onto U.S. soil of at least some of the 17 Uighur detainees currently being held at Gitmo. All 17 are members or associates of the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Party (ETIP), a designated terrorist organization with ties to al Qaeda. The…

The NEFA Foundation has released a translation of the latest statement by the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Party (ETIP), which is formerly known as the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM). What is the ETIP/ETIM? It is a UN and U.S. designated terrorist organization allied with al Qaeda. The…

Ali Saleh Khalah al Marri, an al Qaeda sleeper agent who returned to the U.S. on September 10, 2001, has agreed to a plea bargain with federal prosecutors. Al Marri was held as an enemy combatant by the Bush administration (the only one held in the continental U.S.) since 2003, and then the Obama…

The State Department released its annual report on terrorism yesterday, its first under the Obama administration. As usual, Iran loomed large as "the most active state sponsor of terrorism." And, once again, the report presents some inconvenient truths for those who insist that the Shiites of Iran…

There have been at least two noteworthy pieces of Gitmo-closing news in the past 24 hours. First, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates told the Senate Appropriations Committee today that as many as 50 to 100 Gitmo detainees cannot be tried but are too dangerous to be released. The implication being…

Both the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times are reporting that the Obama administration may be preparing to release as many as seven Uighur Gitmo detainees into the U.S. The LA Times reports that the release plan is being considered despite the objections of the Department of Homeland Security.…

The New York Times has an interesting update on the Yemeni detainees at Gitmo today. It turns out that the Obama administration took a second look at Yemen and did not like what it saw. Thus, for the time being, it looks like the Yemeni detainees will not be returned to their native country, which…

Yesterday, Jed Babbin at HumanEvents.com reported that there is some tension within the Obama administration over how to handle the seventeen Uighur detainees held at Gitmo. Reportedly, the inter-agency review team President Obama authorized has concluded that the Uighurs are too dangerous to…

The Obama administration's attempts to get various European nations to take dozens of Guantanamo detainees continue to be met with uneven results. Austria has now joined several other European nations, including the Czech Republic, in declining to take any Guantanamo detainees at all. "If the…

The U.S. Justice Department has decided to release another detainee from Guantanamo, a Yemeni named Ayman Saeed Abdullah Batarfi. It is not entirely clear why Batarfi has been cleared for release. But we can be reasonably sure, based on Batarfi's own freely given testimony, that he was no innocent…

Over at NRO, Andy McCarthy points to this piece in Friday's New York Times. The piece reports on the unification of the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban factions, which have always been (in reality) allied in various ways, to fight American forces in Afghanistan. Some Taliban fighters cited in the…

On a day when President Obama announced his administration's strategy (which has many merits) for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Admiral Mike Mullen reminds us of one of America's most daunting challenges: the Pakistani intelligence services' relationship with al Qaeda and the Taliban. In an interview…

Here, from the Associated Press, is a partial account of DNI Dennis Blair's first press conference today (emphasis mine): During his news conference, Blair also said the Obama administration is still wrestling with what to do with the remaining 240 detainees at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, which…

Yesterday, Attorney General Holder said that some of the current Guantanamo detainees may be released in the United States. Press reports indicate that Holder and the Obama administration are considering releasing some or all of the Uighur detainees at Guantanamo onto U.S. soil. That would be a…

After 9/11, few would have predicted that the American homeland would not be struck again in short order. Indeed, the more we learn about al Qaeda's designs the more we understand that was the terrorist organization's intent. Al Qaeda operatives had already been dispatched to U.S. soil for…

Last week, a D.C. district court dismissed a lawsuit brought on behalf of a Guantánamo detainee named Ghassan Abdullah al Sharbi. The 34 year-old Saudi told the court that he did not want to proceed with the case, which was originally brought by al Sharbi's father to challenge his son's detention.…

Today, Navy Admiral James Stavridis, head of U.S. Southern Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Iran is increasing its activity in Latin America. According to Reuters, Stavridis said: "We have seen…an increase in a wide level of activity by the Iranian government in this…

As Steve Hayes and I have reported (see here, for example), the Obama administration is in the process of deciding what to do with the approximately 97 Yemeni detainees being held at Guantanamo.** The administration was initially considering repatriating a "majority" of the Yemenis to their home…

For years, European officials have been calling for the Guantanamo detention facility to be closed. When President Obama ordered the facility shuttered during his first week in office, many of these same officials applauded. Here was EU Justice Commissioner Jacques Barrot on President Obama's…

On Tuesday, March 10, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lieutenant General Michael Maples, gave his agency's annual threat assessment to the Senate Armed Services Committee. The analysis contains the usual mixed bag of smart and not-so-smart observations. In the latter category, we…

The Associated Press is reporting that the Obama administration is prepared to name "veteran diplomat Daniel Fried" as the "special envoy to oversee the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp." Since announcing that Guantanamo would be closed by early 2010, President Obama has not said much…

NBC's Chuck Todd highlights this quote from Vice President Joe Biden at NATO's headquarters this week: "Well, let me just say -- and to paraphrase Secretary Holbrooke, our Special Envoy, and I agree with his assessment after numerous visits to the region and throughout the country -- 5 percent of…

In a post today, Martin Kramer offers more examples of Chas Freeman's analytical incompetence. Kramer quotes Freeman as saying the following in June of 2002 (emphasis added): I'm a very practical man, and my concern is simply this: that there are movements, like Hamas, like Hezbollah, that in…

This past week, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown found himself answering questions about a terrorist suspect held at the detention facility in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The detainee, Binyam Mohamed, has become something of a martyr in Brown's nation. Daily press reports recount the horrible torture…

A former detainee at Guantanamo who went on to become a field commander for al Qaeda in Yemen has reportedly turned himself into the Yemeni government and been repatriated to Saudi Arabia. The former Guantanamo detainee is named Abu al Hareth Muhammad al Oufi. Al Oufi was captured in 2001, taken…

Compare and contrast the following two takes on Iran's role in Afghanistan. (1) Richard Holbrooke: "It is absolutely clear that Iran plays an important role in Afghanistan," Holbrooke said on Tolo TV, a private Afghan television network. "They have a legitimate role to play in this region, as do…

As if there were not enough reasons to be worried about what is going on inside Yemen, the Yemeni government has decided to release more than 170 al Qaeda suspects. Reportedly, 95 of them have been released already. This news comes at an inauspicious time. As Steve Hayes and I discussed in a recent…

Pakistan's High Court freed nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan from house arrest yesterday. The move is certainly controversial as Khan was the point man for a massive nuclear proliferation ring. Khan first came onto the radar of Western intelligence agencies in the late 1970s. But little was done to stop…

Asharq Al Awsat, a newspaper that is controlled by the Saudi royal family, published a report today claiming that al Qaeda is using Iran as a "base of operations" for attacks inside the Saudi Kingdom as well as Jordan. The allegations are consistent with other evidence--including that found in the…

Over the past several weeks, the Canadian press has reported that at least six detainees currently held at Guantanamo are interested in seeking refugee status north of America's border. But the Canadian government should be wary of accepting them. Canadian officials should carefully evaluate their…

In the past 24 hours, more evidence of former Guantanamo detainees rejoining their terrorist friends has resurfaced. Saudi Arabia released a list of 85 most wanted terrorists. The list includes 11 former Guantanamo detainees who were placed in Saudi Arabia's rehabilitation program, but the rehab…

More than 100 Saudis have been repatriated to Saudi Arabia from Guantánamo. The United States has trusted the Saudis to rehabilitate these former detainees and make sure they do not return to the battlefield. But the New York Times has now reported disturbing new evidence that the Saudi program is…

AS ONE OF HIS FIRST acts as president, Barack Obama ordered his new cabinet to review the case of Ali Saleh Khalah al Marri, the only "enemy combatant" held in the continental United States. On Thursday, January 22, President Obama ordered his executive branch to undertake "a prompt and thorough…

On Wednesday, Bob Woodward of the Washington Post reported a bit of old news that was dressed up as something new. Susan Crawford, the convening authority of military commissions, said that Mohammed al-Qahtani (the would-be 20th hijacker on September 11) was tortured while in U.S. custody and that…

Human rights groups are actively lobbying President-elect Obama and his team to drop the charges against Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen who is charged with killing an American soldier in Afghanistan in 2002. On Monday, Canadian Senator Romeo Dallaire was in Washington pleading for Khadr to be sent…

As the President-elect's administration weighs what to do with the detainees remaining at Guantánamo, the pressure is mounting from advocacy groups. For years, some organizations have taken an extreme approach, telling the detainees' stories in the most favorable manner possible -- ignoring…

Ayman al Zawahiri, al Qaeda's number two, has released a new video discussing, among other items, the conflict in Gaza. Laura Mansfield has posted two excerpts from the video here. In the first excerpt, Zawahiri says: Be strong and persist in the way of Jihad. The whole Muslim ummah is united with…

The majority of the media's coverage of Guantánamo has been decidedly one-sided. Consider, as the latest example, the New York Times's account of Muhammad Saad Iqbal's story, which was published on Tuesday ("An Ex-Detainee of the U.S. Describes a 6-Year Ordeal"). Iqbal was a detainee at Guantánamo…

Alan Rogers of USA Today captures one of the central dilemmas facing the new Obama administration here: President-elect Barack Obama vowed on the campaign trail to shut down the terrorist detention center at Guantánamo Bay. But he never said what he would do with the prisoners there. What to do…

During a recent interview on ABC News, Vice President Dick Cheney said the following with respect to waterboarding senior al Qaeda terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM): "There was a period of time there, three or four years ago, when about half of everything we knew about al Qaeda came from that…

Just two days after the gunmen's siege in Mumbai ended, Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari went on CNN's Larry King Live to plead his case. Even before the Indian authorities had brought the rampage to an end, they were laying blame on their neighbor to the north. And Zardari wanted the world to…

The government of Malaysia made a curious announcement this week: Yazid Sufaat, a known al Qaeda operative, and four other alleged terrorists have been released from jail. It is not clear why Malaysian authorities thought it was time to set them free. Malaysia's home minister, Syed Hamid Albar,…

On Sunday, November 16, CBS News's 60 Minutes broadcast the first interview with President-elect Barack Obama. The exchange touched on a wide range of topics, from Obama's distaste for college football's computerized selection of a national champion to his plans for changing course in economic and…

In some ways, today's terrorist attacks in Mumbai (Bombay), India are unremarkable. India has been repeatedly attacked in recent years. Pakistani and Kashmiri based terrorist groups, as well as so-called homegrown terrorists, kill up to hundreds every year. But if the early reports are correct,…

Over at the Corner, Jay Nordlinger says that actress Vanessa Redgrave and one of her ilk read verses from "Poems from Guantánamo," a volume written by Gitmo detainees, after a performance of her one woman show last night. Nordlinger says he didn't stick around for the reading (which is…

MUCH HAS BEEN WRITTEN about Salim Hamdan, an admitted driver for Osama bin Laden who was convicted on charges of supporting al Qaeda by a military jury at Guantanamo Bay earlier this week. Said Boujaadia, the suspected terrorist who was captured with Hamdan in Afghanistan in late 2001, has received…

In the wake of the Supreme Court's Boumediene decision earlier this month, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has now decided that the Bush administration was wrong to label Gitmo detainee Huzaifa Parhat an "enemy combatant." The Court of Appeals decided that…

It looks like some British government officials can't keep a secret, or at least can't hold onto secret documents. An embarrassing new story has emerged out of the UK. A "senior intelligence official in the Cabinet office," who has since been suspended, apparently left copies of top secret…

THE SENATE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE has once again released a report claiming that the Bush administration hyped prewar intelligence. The so-called Phase Two report is supposed to investigate the Bush administration's handling of prewar intelligence. In reality, the report is little more than yet…

Willful Blindness

DAFYDD AT BIG LIZARDS has all sorts of bad things to say about my review of Andrew McCarthy's excellent new book, Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad. I will avoid addressing the snarky insults in Dafydd's post and stick to his attempts at substantive criticism. First, he claims that I…

John Hinderaker at Power Line writes, "…our principal news media outlets have fabricated an alternative reality around the Iraq war by simply misreporting the facts." That's true, especially with regards to Saddam's terror ties. And, as Power Line has noted on a number of occasions, the media has…

Iran isn't working with al Qaeda in Iraq? Tell that to some of al Qaeda's opposition. The NEFA Foundation has provided a transcript of an interview with a commander from "Hamas in Iraq," an insurgency group that was formerly a faction of the 1920 Revolution Brigades: Q: "Is there any evidence of…

As Steve Hayes and I have previously discussed, the new IPP study documents the relationship between Saddam Hussein's regime and Ayman al Zawahiri's Egyptian Islamic Jihad ("EIJ"). It is worth reproducing the language from the IPP study in this regard once again: "Saddam supported groups that…

With the ongoing imbroglio over Senator McCain's comments linking Iran and al Qaeda, it is worth reviewing what Saddam's own files have to say about Iran's support for al Qaeda. Not only do Saddam's Intelligence files confirm that his regime had a significant relationship with al Qaeda, but they…

Accompanying the IPP report were four volumes of backup materials. In all, the five total volumes contain more than 2,000 pages of documents, translations and other related materials, which are collectively housed in the so-called Harmony Database. The database contains a massive warehouse of…

Some bloggers are jumping all over Senator John McCain for his supposed "gaffe" today. According to The Trail, a blog over at the Washington Post, McCain said that Iranian operatives were "taking al-Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back." He elaborated by saying it was "common…

As discussed in my first post in this series, Saddam tasked his minions with hunting Americans throughout the Muslim world and especially in Somalia in 1993. The Iraqi Intelligence Service identified eleven groups with which it had relations and that were capable of carrying out the mission. One of…

(Note: Over the next few days, I will be blogging about documents captured in post-Saddam Iraq. Some of these documents were analyzed in a new study written for the military by the Institute for Defense Analyses. That report is part of the Iraqi Perspectives Project and is titled, Saddam and…

When the 9-11 Commission's final report was published in July 2004, some in the press were quick to trumpet one line in the report that appeared to dispense with the issue of Saddam's ties to al Qaeda. The Commission reported on a number of contacts between the two sides, but ultimately concluded:…

Over at the New York Sun Eli Lake has an excellent write-up on the new military report, which (contrary to what many press outlets are reporting) details Saddam's extensive ties to regional and global terrorist groups, including al Qaeda. I'm sure we will be following up with more commentary in the…

Why is Iran going after al Qaeda's enemies in Iraq? A few days ago, Iraqi spymaster Mohammed Abdullah Shahwani accused Iran of trying to sabotage al Qaeda's opposition. "We have information confirming that Iranian secret services have sent agents to sabotage the Sahwa [i.e. the "Awakening"]…

Late Tuesday night in Damascus, Imad Mugniyah, senior terrorist of Hezbollah, was killed in a car bomb explosion. It was a fitting death for a founding father of Islamic terrorism, a man who himself had built many bombs. If you had not heard of Mugniyah before, there is a good reason. Terror…

Matthew Levitt and Michael Jacobson of the Washington Institute recently visited Bahrain, where the government has recently convicted five men on terrorism charges including "receiving explosives and weapons training, engaging in terrorism overseas, and terrorism financing targeting 'friendly…

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Secretary of Defense Robert Gates laid out the case for a continued NATO role in Afghanistan during a speech in Germany this past Sunday. Highlighting the gravity of the terrorist threat against Europe, Gates listed a number of terrorist plots that have been foiled in recent years and asked the…

As many recognize, the latest NIE on Iran's nuclear weapons program directly contradicts what the U.S. Intelligence Community was saying just two years previously. And it appears that this about-face was very recent. How recent? Consider that on July 11, 2007, roughly four or so months prior to the…

In a NIE just two years ago, the U.S. Intelligence Community ("IC") concluded: "[We] assess with high confidence that Iran currently is determined to develop nuclear weapons despite its international obligations and international pressure, but we do not assess that Iran is immovable." However, the…

The story dominating the news cycle right now is the public release of "Key Judgments" from an NIE on Iran's nuclear program. In particular, the first sentence of the NIE is drawing the press's intention: "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons…

As predicted, the latest purported bin Laden tape blames American foreign policy (that is, his conspiratorial notion of America's foreign policy) for al Qaeda's terror. The Associated Press has reported translations of excerpts of the tape, which were broadcast on Al-Jazeera. Bin Laden says he was…

Press reports indicate that a new tape from Osama bin Laden is about to be released. This account from Adnkronos International (AKI) provides an interesting detail about how the video will be distributed: A new al-Qaeda video containing Osama Bin Laden's latest message "must be posted to Western…

WAS THE MARCH 11, 2004, attack on Madrid's commuter trains an al Qaeda operation? More than three years after 191 civilians were killed and almost two thousand more injured by ten backpack bombs planted by Islamic radicals, the answer to such a simple question remains clouded. Just this past…

Over at his new blog "connecting the dots," Gabriel Schoenfeld--who is always a "must read" when it comes to intelligence matters--is discussing Kenneth Timmerman's new book, Shadow Warriors. I have not yet read Timmerman's book, but Schoenfeld is discussing one of Timmerman's claims that I have…

According to the New York Sun and the Washington Post, the UN Secretary General has published a report linking an al Qaeda affiliate in Lebanon, Fatah al-Islam, to Syrian intelligence. Fatah al-Islam has engaged in heavy fighting with Lebanese forces at times, but under constant pressure seems to…

PBS aired a new FRONTLINE documentary this past Tuesday titled "Showdown With Iran." The documentary was produced with the intent of highlighting the source of tensions between the U.S. and Iran since 9/11, but it fell well short of providing an accurate portrait for a variety of reasons. At one…

The Treasury Department announced today that it had designated three Saudi nationals as Specially Designated Global Terrorists ("SDGTs"). All three are accused of providing funds to al Qaeda's affiliate in the Philippines, the Abu Sayyaf Group ("ASG"). The first, Abdul Rahim Al-Talhi, is described…

The web is buzzing with news this morning that the latest video of Osama bin Laden was possibly leaked by someone inside the U.S. intelligence community to the media. That leak reportedly led al Qaeda to shut down a hole in its Internet infrastructure, called "Obelisk," thereby closing a fruitful…

IN THE LATEST EDITION of the New Yorker, Seymour Hersh returns to one of his favorite themes: The Bush administration is preparing for war with Iran. Well, that is, may be preparing for war with Iran.

From Jim Landers of the Dallas Morning News we learn that the Kurds are worried about Iran's ongoing relationship wiith Ansar al-Islam, an al Qaeda affiliate in Iraq. Note, in particular, what the mayor of one Iraqi city had to say about Iran's support for Ansar al-Islam: "From time to time Iran…

Is there a more confused issue in the public discourse than the matter of Iraq's ties to al Qaeda prior to the March 2003 invasion? I doubt it. At an ABC News blog, Jake Tapper claims that Senator Barack Obama was right to call out (in a speech he gave yesterday) Senator Hillary Clinton for saying…

As part of its ongoing propaganda war, al Qaeda's leaders are once again flooding the airwaves. Both Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri reportedly cover a lot of ground in their two new recently released tapes. Importantly, they have once again declared war on President Musharraf and his…

News that Osama bin Laden is planning on releasing a new video tape this coming September 11, has set off much speculation. I will wait to see what comes of it before commenting further, since there is a lot of uncertainty over what exactly the tape will consist of and whether or not it is…

The "Key Judgments" section of a new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), titled "Prospects for Iraq's Stability: Some Security Progress but Political Reconciliation Elusive," was released today. I am generally skeptical about the merits of NIE's since it is often not clear what their judgments…

From adnkronosinternational (AKI) we learn that the Iraqi Baathists, led by Saddam's former righthand man Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, have decided to "disown al-Qaeda." It is in an interesting development in the insurgency since Saddam's Baathists have fought alongside al Qaeda since the beginning of…

The leading Democratic presidential contenders have voiced a new conventional wisdom in recent weeks: The war in Iraq has little or nothing to do with defeating al Qaeda. Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have embraced this view, as has the New York Times. It is dangerously wrong. At the…

In today's New York Times, under the headline "Bush Distorts Qaeda Links, Critics Assert," the paper itself greatly distorts the evidence concerning al Qaeda's presence in Iraq. The paper paints a picture of al Qaeda in Iraq is, in important ways, highly misleading. Here are several reasons why as…

In a piece for the Wall Street Journal last year, AEI scholar and WEEKLY STANDARD contributor Michael Rubin argued that Iran was trying to turn Iraq into a new Lebanon. Rubin explained: While journalists concentrate on the daily blood, Iraqis describe a larger pattern which U.S. officials have…

MEMRI has posted a translation of an interview with Osama bin Laden's former bodyguard, Nasser Al-Bahri. He confirms what we already knew; theological differences do not preclude cooperation between the Sunni al Qaeda and Shiite Iran. Al-Bahri explains (emphasis added): UBL_BG.jpg Nasser Al-Bahri,…

One of the more interesting parts of George Tenet's new book is his discussion of al Qaeda's attempts to acquire a nuclear weapon and other weapons of mass destruction. It has long been known that al Qaeda seeks the capability to inflict mass casualties with a WMD attack. But Tenet offers new…

In his new book, George Tenet refers to two members of Egyptian Islamic Jihad who were operating out of Baghdad for much of 2002. Tenet explains: More al-Qa'ida operatives would follow, including Thirwat Shihata and Yussef Dardiri, two Egyptians assessed by a senior al-Qa'ida detainee to be among…

GEORGE TENET'S JUST released book, At the Center of the Storm, has created quite a stir. Over the past few days, a myriad of news accounts have referenced various snippets of the former director of Central Intelligence's self-serving collection of remembrances. But here is something you probably…

LAST WEEK, the Washington Post ("Hussein's Prewar Ties To Al-Qaeda Discounted") covered the latest round in Senator Levin's ongoing struggle to prove that the connection between Iraq and al Qaeda was nothing more than a fiction. Levin has been at this game for a while, and this time the Post's…

IN THE WAKE OF the New York Times's November surprise, the government's release of documents captured in Iraq has come to a grinding halt. For more than one week now, the site that had published files from Saddam's archives has been offline. Unfortunately, there is a good chance that the document…

TWO SENIOR AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE OFFICIALS met with India's foreign secretary last week. While the meeting received scant attention in the States, it was big news in India. According to Indian press accounts, the role Pakistan's intelligence service (the ISI) played in the July 11, 2006 Mumbai…

"The Intelligence Community has strong indications that Bin Laden intends to conduct or sponsor attacks inside the United States." -Classified document signed by President Clinton in December 1998 YESTERDAY, in the wake of President Clinton's interview on Fox News, Senator Hillary Clinton defended…

TIMED FOR THE FIFTH ANNIVERSARY of September 11, Ayman al-Zawahiri released a video tape calling for another round attacks. The tape includes at least two important items that should not be overlooked.

ON APRIL 23, 2006 Tyler Drumheller shared what was billed as a bombshell with 60 Minutes viewers. In a segment called "A Spy Speaks Out," the 26-year veteran of the CIA claimed that the Bush administration ignored intelligence collected from a well-placed source inside Saddam's regime because it…

ONCE AGAIN headlines from media outlets around the country declare "No Saddam, al-Qaeda link." This time the news cycle is being fed by the release of two reports by the Senate Intelligence Committee, both of which purport to investigate the uses of prewar intelligence. The first of these two…

IN THE COMING DAYS we will learn the details of the foiled, massive airline bomb plot. But early reports indicate that there are important similarities with the July 7, 2005 London bombings and the Pakistani terror network which orchestrated that attack.

THE LATEST ZAWAHIRI TAPE, his tenth in the last year, will leave some al Qaeda watchers perplexed. In it, Zawahiri refers to his "brothers" in Lebanon and Gaza and links their war with Israel to al Qaeda's jihad against the West. "The shells and rockets ripping apart Muslim bodies in Gaza and…

NOW THAT ABU MUSAB AL ZARQAWI IS DEAD, perhaps the American press can also lay to rest the biggest myth about the mass murderer: that he had nothing to do with Saddam's regime prior to the war. It is not clear where this claim originated, but it is widely accepted. In the cover story for this…

THIS PAST WEEK, Osama bin Laden released yet another audiotape--his third in the past year. As before, bin Laden focuses on events in the United States, namely, the sentencing of al Qaeda operative Zacarias Moussaoui, the only terrorist to be convicted in a U.S. court for involvement in the…

THE MEDIA has been quick to lionize Mary McCarthy, the recently fired 61-year-old CIA analyst who allegedly leaked classified information to the Washington Post's Dana Priest. According to several recent accounts, it is not clear what information McCarthy was accused of leaking. But on Sunday, the…

IN A NEW YORK TIMES OP-ED this past Sunday, former National Security Council staffers Richard Clarke and Steven Simon lamented the possibility of a military strike on Iran. They warned, "a conflict with Iran could be even more damaging to our interests than the current struggle in Iraq has been."

FOR MORE THAN FOUR YEARS NOW, critics of the Bush administration have warned that the U.S. detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, is fueling the Muslim street's hatred of America. The purportedly unwarranted detention of hundreds of Muslims, coupled with the allegedly unjustified invasion of…

SADDAM'S ULTRA-LOYAL Fedayeen martyrs were ordered to carry out bombings and assassinations in London, Iran, and "self ruled areas" of Iraq in May 1999, according to a newly released Iraqi intelligence document. One such operation, codenamed "Tamooz Mubarak" or "Blessed July," was apparently…

Iran secretly agreed to assist the Taliban in its war against U.S. forces in October 2001, according to the transcript of a high-level Taliban official's tribunal session at Guatanamo Bay, Cuba. The seven-page transcript, as well as thousands of pages of similar documents, was released by the…

IT IS NO SECRET that the Bush administration and the old guard at the CIA have not, in many instances, seen eye to eye over the last several years. Leaks and anonymously-sourced complaints from agency officials have dominated above-the-fold news stories. The rancorous bureaucrats at the agency have…

THE REVELATION that Saddam Hussein's Iraq trained thousands of Islamic terrorists has important ramifications for European counterterrorism efforts. According to officials, one of the groups trained in Iraq prior to the war was al Qaeda's Algerian affiliate, the Algerian Salafist Group for Call and…

BY NOW it is no secret that the timing of James Risen's December 16 bombshell concerning the NSA's eavesdropping program coincided neatly with the publication of his new book, State of War: The Secret History of the C.I.A. and the Bush Administration. As a veteran reporter covering the U.S.…

IN THE CIA's continuing campaign against the Bush administration, the agency has found the leaking of classified information to be a potent weapon. This is especially true with regard to the spinning of intelligence connecting Saddam's Iraq and bin Laden's al Qaeda. Consider, for example, the case…

IN THE AFTERMATH of September 11, more than several former national security and intelligence officials fashioned new careers as critics of the Bush administration's war on terror. Among the more prominent of these former officials is Daniel Benjamin, who worked for the National Security Council…

WHEN MICHAEL SCHEUER, the first head of the CIA's bin Laden unit, first emerged into public view almost a year ago, it was a curiosity how he could appear in the media--time after time--claiming that there was no evidence of a relationship between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and al Qaeda. It was curious…

EVEN BEFORE THE INDICTMENT of Lewis "Scooter" Libby last week, many in the mainstream media had already settled on a simple storyline. Valerie Plame's identity was blown, the story goes, by administration officials seeking retribution against her husband, Joseph Wilson. Wilson is often portrayed as…

ON SEPTEMBER 24 the International Atomic Energy Agency passed a resolution that, in part, called on Iran "to observe fully its commitments and to return to the negotiating process that has made good progress in the last two years." The resolution is just the latest chapter in the ongoing dispute…

LATE LAST MONTH an Algerian-born terrorist named Ahmed Ressam received a commuted sentence of 22 years (prosecutors had recommended 35 years) in prison for his role in planning to blow up the Los Angeles airport. His sentence infuriated many since his involvement in the plot against LAX was…

Read The Pope of Terrorism, Part I

"America incarnates the devil for Muslims. When I say Muslims, I mean all the Muslims in the world." --Hassan al-Turabi, Saddam Hussein's close ally, Osama bin Laden's friend and one-time benefactor, as quoted in an interview with the Associated Press (1997) WHEN SECRETARY OF STATE CONDOLEEZZA RICE…

"The British and the American people loudly declared their support for their leaders decision to attack Iraq. It is the duty of Muslims to confront, fight, and kill them." -Osama bin Laden, as quoted in various press accounts, December 26, 1998 "Oh sons of Arabs and the Arab Gulf, rebel against the…

"Onward to victory! Fatherland or death! We will win!"

IN THE POLITICIZED DEBATE over the former Iraqi regime's relationship with al Qaeda, no politician has been a more vocal naysayer than Senator Carl Levin. For almost two years the Democratic senator from Michigan has attempted to discredit the notion that the two could have worked together in any…

A STUNNING REVELATION buzzed throughout Italy last week. According to two Italian newspapers, German government officials had found proof that the Soviet Union ordered the May 13, 1981 assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II. The recently discovered documents--which are mainly correspondences…

EARLIER THIS MONTH, hundreds of prominent politicians, experts and powerbrokers from around the globe convened in Madrid for the International Summit on Democracy, Terrorism and Security. A more eclectic yet influential gathering of people would be difficult to imagine. The participants' list…

A CURIOUS CAST OF CHARACTERS has made its way to Moscow in recent months. Since November of last year, leaders from Iran, Syria, and Venezuela have all paid visits. Each has sought military and economic assistance from the Russian Bear; none of them has been turned down. Russia's conspicuous choice…

MICHAEL SCHEUER has uncovered "the most successful covert action program in the history of man." Or, at least that's what he told an audience at Council on Foreign Relations in New York City on February 3. The CIA's former bin Laden-hunter-turned-public-persona is the widely cited author of a…

ON NOVEMBER 14, 60 Minutes aired a segment with Michael Scheuer, who made headlines after resigning from the CIA to pursue his second career as a critic of the war on terror and the war in Iraq. Scheuer was the head of the CIA's bin Laden unit (codenamed "Alec") from 1996 to 1999. With the…

ON SUNDAY'S Meet The Press Tim Russert asked his guest, Michael Scheuer, to respond to questions concerning his first book from 2002, Through Our Enemies' Eyes. In it, as I pointed out in an earlier article, Scheuer cites numerous pieces of evidence that substantiate the Bush administration's claim…