Steven Aftergood linked to this colloquy on the PATRIOT Act which reveals a lot about Ron Wyden and Mark Udall’s efforts to force the government to admit how it’s suveilling Americans. The colloquy basically puts not just the agreement, but the circumstances that went into the agreement, into the Congressional record. After some Senatorial blathering [...]

In this post, I noted that John McCain seemed to be talking about Hassan Ghul when he spoke of a detainee who gave up key information on Osama bin Laden’s courier without being tortured. It’s the other detail I find even more interesting: that info on Abu Ahmed’s real role and his real relationship with [...]

I don’t really know precisely what days in March 2003 the CIA’s contractors waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed a total of 183 times. But I thought about the rough timing when Dafna Linzer tweeted about this Steven Aftergood post, noting the report in the Senate Intelligence Committee’s review of what they did last Congress said they [...]

A year and a half ago, I warned that if you bought certain beauty supplies–hydrogen peroxide and acetone–you might be a terrorism suspect. I’m going to make a wildarsed guess and suggest that the Federal Government is doing a nationwide search to find out everyone who is buying large amounts of certain kinds of beauty [...]

As I noted in my last post, DiFi is accusing the intelligence community of having missed the potential volatility of Middle Eastern unrest because they’ve been paying too little attention to social media. So I decided to check the WikiLeaks State cables to see whether DiFi’s complaint bears out. Obviously, this is a totally insufficient [...]

That’s the question NSC spokesperson Tommy Vietor used yesterday to deflect Senate Intelligence Committee concerns that the Administration was taken by surprise by the events in Egypt. Did anyone in the world know in advance that a fruit vendor in Tunisia was going to light himself on fire and start a revolution? No. But for [...]

Congratulations to Steven Aftergood, whose persistent efforts to get the government to reveal the topline intelligence budget have finally paid off. Yesterday, the government officially announced that it spent $80.1 billion on intelligence in the last year, up 7% in just the last year and 100% since 9/11. The government announced Thursday that it had [...]

As DDay noted, it looks like we’ll finally have an intelligence authorization bill. The bill is a partial win for Speaker Pelosi, as it makes full briefing to the Intelligence Committees within six months of the start of a program the default (though the Administration can still avoid doing so if it provides written rationale). [...]

You all know I’m a big fan of the work Tim Shorrock has done to track the dangers of the privatization of the intelligence industrial complex. Today, he kicks off an ongoing relationship with the Daily Beast–so now we can read at the Daily Beast what the WaPo will cover in two years in warmed-over [...]

So after a last minute dance with three Republican holds, James Clapper is poised to be confirmed as Director of National Intelligence. As I noted before, this means someone most Senators either have or have had concerns about will be approved by big numbers to head our intelligence community. But the more important story about [...]