As Josh Gerstein reported, back in June, Jeffrey Sterling asked the government for details about which parts of James Risen’s account of Merlin are true and which are false. His lawyers argue that Sterling cannot be guilty of disseminating national defense information if what he disseminated–as the government claims–was actually not true. Now, at first [...]

The ACLU has just FOIAed the CIA and Director of National Intelligence for any information on Juan Cole. It asks for, e-mails, letters, faxes, or other correspondence, memoranda, contemporaneous notes of meetings or phone calls, reports or any other material relating to the gathering, collecting, copying, collating, generating or other use of information and material [...]

Goldman and Apuzzo have done good work on their story about the analyst who caught bin Laden, but the story is also an instructive primer on what didn’t work, to wit: torture.

A number of you have been asking for my intro of Russ Feingold last Thursday. Here it is. Now that I’ve had a chance to see it I realize I had a number of misstatements (and a number of places where I glossed necessary detail–I guess I speak like I blog, for better or worse).

James Risen reports that Glen Carle, a former CIA officer, says the Bush Administration was looking for dirt on Juan Cole in 2005. In one incident, Carle’s supervisor asked whether the CIA had anything on Cole. Mr. Carle said that sometime that year, he was approached by his supervisor, David Low, about Professor Cole. Mr. [...]

This exchange last Thursday between Senator Al Franken and FBI Director Robert Mueller was frustrating enough–Senator Franken’s questions were the only ones on civil liberties Mueller faced, and the Director seemed pretty miffed to be questioned on the subject in the first place. But I’m even more troubled by the exchange now that we’ve learned [...]

Some weeks back, I posted on a Disney ride that offers riders the opportunity to be “verbally accosted by a security droid.” Now, kids can play at being a TSA-worker themselves with a security wand: There’s nothing cooler than being a TSA agent for Homeland Security and now the Spy Gear Security Scanner lets kids [...]

Charlie Savage describes changes the FBI is making to its Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide. On its face, the changes he describes are downright bad. The changes allow FBI agents to: Make a database “assessment” search of a group or person “proactively” without making a record of that search Tail people during a “proactive” assessment [...]

As I noted the other day (and Josh Gerstein first reported), the government has chosen to withdraw two exhibits and redact discussion of a certain technology from another in the Thomas Drake case. Ellen Nakashima appears to reveal that those three documents were three of the five charged documents. According to people following the case, [...]

As part of Robert Mueller’s reconfirmation hearing, he stated–and then was repeatedly asked–what threats face our country. Here’s how he described these threats in his hearing statement: The FBI has never faced a more complex threat environment than it does today. Over the past year, we have seen an extraordinary array of national security and [...]