CNN is reporting that Curt Weldon, the ethically and legally challenged former Congressman with ties to Manucher Ghorbanifar, has gone to Libya to try to negotiate with Muammar Qaddafi. In a NYT op-ed, Weldon makes the case for why he’s the guy to persuade Qaddafi to step aside. Seven years later I am back in [...]

DDay reported on OCC’s attempt to preempt a foreclosure settlement on Monday. Today, Yves Smith has a long post giving the consent decrees the banks are trying to roll out in lieu of a real foreclosure settlement the disdain they deserve. Wow, the Obama administration has openly negotiated against itself on behalf of the banks. [...]

At first, when I read this story describing how Hamid Karzai’s government is insisting that a bunch of security contractors pay back taxes before he’ll recertify them to work in Afghanistan, I though it was just out of a desire to get rid of contractors. The Afghan government issued its unexpected tax demand last month, [...]

Yesterday, the Center for Public Integrity revealed the contents of a secret FBI memo treating a top ABC journalist–who turned out to be Christopher Isham (currently CBS’ DC bureau chief)–as a confidential source for a claim that Iraq’s intelligence service had helped Timothy McVeigh bomb the Murrah Federal Building. Isham claims he alerted the FBI [...]

As I have posted several times, the response to WikiLeaks has ignored one entity that bears some responsibility for the leaks: DOD’s IT. Back in 2008, someone introduced malware to DOD’s computer systems. In response, DOD announced it would no longer allow the use of removable media in DOD networks. Yet that is precisely how [...]

One of the most intriguing details of the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed indictment is this entry: 126. On or about July 23, 2001, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, KHALID SHEIKH MOHAMMED applied for a U.S.-entry visa, using the name “Abdulrahman A.A. Al-Ghamdi,” which application was denied. That’s interesting for a number of reasons. Such a reference doesn’t [...]

I’ve written two posts on the software that Bradley Manning is alleged to have loaded onto SIPRNet (here, here). Wired has now gotten a little more detail about what the software was: DOD says it was some kind of data mining software, though they won’t say of what kind. Wired goes on to suggest that [...]

As Eric Holder said, he had the December 14, 2009 indictment of KSM and the other 9/11 defendants unsealed. Here is the indictment. Page 3: Note in their description of why al Qaeda targeted the US, they make no mention of Palestinians, even though they were mentioned explicitly in the Fatwa? Page 3: Note the [...]

There was something I appreciated about the Holder press conference capitulating on trying the 9/11 defendants in civilian trials. He didn’t try to spin it as a good idea. Not only did he reiterate his judgment that trying KSM in a civilian trial was the right decision, he also noted that it’s not clear whether [...]

Holder: I stand by decision that best venue for prosecution civilian court. Had developed plans for dealing with classified evidence. “Members of Congress have intervened.” Decisions about who, where, to prosecute have always been made by members of Executive Branch. Yet they’ve taken one of the nation’s most tested counter-terrorism tools off the table. We [...]