In what may be a major reversal of course, the Bush administration may yet submit to the rule of law regarding its illegal NSA domestic spying program. The AP is reporting that Attorney General Gonzales notified Senate Judiciary Committee leaders Pat Leahy (D-VT) and Arlen Specter (R-PA) that the Justice Department will once again submit […]

In the Washington Post this New Year's Day, former counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke has a compelling op-ed piece ("While You Were At War...") on the dangerous and rising opportunity costs of the Bush administration's Iraq fixation. In a nutshell, Clarke argues that while President Bush and the U.S. national security apparatus have been focused like […]

On Monday, Democrats began to pay the price for the ongoing feud between Californians Nancy Pelosi and Jane Harman. In one of the first tests of her leadership, Speaker Pelosi bypassed Harman in favor of Texan Silvestre Reyes to head the House Intelligence Committee. Sadly Reyes, like candidate George W. Bush before him, failed his […]

With this weekend's upcoming mockumentary "The Path to 9/11," Disney and ABC are breaking dangerous new ground in the conservative propaganda war. Even as the ABC network follows in the footsteps of Mel Gibson and The Passion of the Christ in "mobilizing the base," ABC News on Sunday declared Robert Greenwald's new documentary "Iraq for […]

This week's revelations surrounding the UK terror plot targeting U.S. bound airliners once again focused attention on the phenomenon of "homegrown terrorism." As with last year's 7/7 "Underground Bombers," the Heathrow suspects are virtually all British residents, with most UK citizens and many second-generation Pakistani immigrants. And just as in the aftermath of last November's […]

For most watchers of the CIA, the return of Steven Kappes to Langley as the agency's number 2 man is a welcome development. Fluent in Farsi and Russian, the 23-year veteran of the clandestine service can bring a renewed focus on the CIA's core intelligence-gathering mission. Unfortunately, Kappes' return almost certainly signals the resumption of […]

In a bizarre Washington Post op-ed ("Surveillance We Can Live With") pitching his ill-conceived NSA eavesdropping compromise, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-PA) shows all of the hallmarks of a man in the throes of severe cognitive dissonance. While essentially pronouncing the illegality of George Bush's illegal domestic surveillance program, he cannot bring himself […]

Back in May, Perrspectives described how inquiries by both the FCC and the DOJ into illegal domestic surveillance by the Bush NSA had been blocked. With Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' testimony today before the Senate Judiciary Committee, we have a much clearer picture as to why. In a nutshell, President Bush personally insisted that the […]

The New York Times reported Tuesday that the CIA has shut down its Bin Laden unit late last year. The unit, called "Alec Station," had been in place for over a decade to hunt down Osama Bin Laden and his leading Al Qaeda lieutenants. As I wrote in January, President Bush's on-again, off-again emphasis on […]

The Supreme Court's ruling today in the Hamdan case wasn't merely a defeat for the Bush administration's system of military tribunals for the detainees at Guantanamo Bay. As ThinkProgress describes, the majority's explicit rejection of broad presidential powers claimed by the White House to be inherent in the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military […]