ON BENGHAZI
James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, did not change the talking points on Benghazi that U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice used on several talk shows days after the Sept. 11 attack. "It was not Director Clapper who personally modified the talking points," ODNI Spokesman Shawn Turner told The Cable. "The reporter who originally wrote that does not cover the IC [intelligence community] so she thought that since Clapper heads the IC, it would be OK to say he modified the talking points." Turner was referring to this Nov. 20 CBS report, which has since been revised to say that the changes, which included removing references to al Qaeda and terrorism, were made at the Office of the DNI but not necessarily by Clapper himself. The report now states that the talking points were passed from the CIA to ODNI, where some edits were made, and then on to the FBI, where further edits were made.
ON THE FIGHT
Adm. Dennis C. Blair, former Director of National Intelligence, tried to make the case for breaking up the CIA during his tenure but didn’t get very far. Blair said the idea—which he still advocates—would be to split the CIA into separate clandestine human intelligence collection (HUMINT), analytical, and paramilitary components. He said the agency has been tilting inappropriately toward the latter approach.
Billy Waugh walks you through the basic tenets of close-target reconnaissance.
In New York, rounding up “the usual suspects” in terrorism cases nowadays may well refer to the defense lawyers. As Islamic terrorists from around the world are brought to Federal District Court in Manhattan or Brooklyn to face prosecution, an extraordinary outgrowth has been a deepening pool of lawyers qualified to represent them. It is a peculiar niche of defense work, requiring skills not always taught in law school. These lawyers often must obtain government security clearances, and become adept at navigating the laws involving classified information and foreign intelligence searches. They often travel overseas to interview witnesses and a client’s family members. “Not only do you have the substantive law and the procedural law, but you have the whole cultural orientation,” said Anthony L. Ricco, who has represented a series of terrorism defendants over the past two decades.
CyberCity has all the makings of a regular town. There’s a bank, a hospital and a power plant. A train station operates near a water tower. The coffee shop offers free WiFi. But only certain people can get in: government hackers preparing for battles in cyberspace. The town is a virtual place that exists only on computer networks run by a New Jersey-based security firm working under contract with the U.S. Air Force. Computers simulate communications and operations, including e-mail, heating systems, a railroad and an online social networking site, dubbed FaceSpace. Think of it as something like the mock desert towns that were constructed at military facilities to help American soldiers train for the war in Iraq. But here, the soldier-hackers from the Air Force and other branches of the military will practice attacking and defending the computers and networks that run the theoretical town. In one scenario, they will attempt to take control of a speeding train containing weapons of mass destruction.
ON THE FORCE
The Pentagon says it plans to tell the White House within weeks how many American troops military leaders believe will be needed in Afghanistan after 2014 to train local forces and continue to target al-Qaida. With NATO’s formal combat role set to end in just over two years, the United States — along with its NATO allies and the Afghan government — is keen to define a postwar presence well in advance, avoiding the precipitous pullout and security problems that came with the end of the Iraq War.
ON SECRECY – OR LACK THEREOF
Red-faced Nassau County officials are investigating how confidential police documents — which contained arrest records, social security numbers, and information about undercover officers — was tossed from windows as confetti during Thursday’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in Midtown. Paradegoers at the annual event were stunned when the poorly-shredded documents landed on city streets, with the sensitive information still clearly visible despite being cut into strips. Among the information that could be easily seen included details of Mitt Romney’s motorcade during a visit to Long Island, arrest records, and the identities, social security numbers and birth dates of Nassau County police detectives — some of whom appear to be undercover cops, the station reported.
The making of Zero Dark Thirty, which opens on Dec. 19 in a few theaters before expanding in January, was an operation nearly as complex and secretive as the one that took down bin Laden. Some industry analysts, inferring that the movie was all about the May 1, 2011, SEAL Team 6 raid that killed the al-Qaeda leader, wondered why a woman had the leading role. (The raid consumes just the final fifth of the movie.) The clandestine nature of the enterprise also stoked sepulchral suspicions, both on the right and the center-left, that ZDT would be a mash note to Barack Obama, who gave the go-ahead for the raid, while George W. Bush proclaimed in 2004 that “I really just don’t spend that much time on [bin Laden]” and Mitt Romney in 2007 said it was “not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person.”
When a cellphone is reported stolen in New York, the Police Department routinely subpoenas the phone’s call records, from the day of the theft onward. The logic is simple: If a thief uses the phone, a list of incoming and outgoing calls could lead to the suspect. But in the process, the Police Department has quietly amassed a trove of telephone logs, all obtained without a court order, that could conceivably be used for any investigative purpose. The call records from the stolen cellphones are integrated into a database known as the Enterprise Case Management System, according to Police Department documents from the detective bureau. Each phone number is hyperlinked, enabling detectives to cross-reference it against phone numbers in other files. The subpoenas not only cover the records of the thief’s calls, but also encompass calls to and from the victim on the day of the theft. In some cases the records can include calls made to and from a victim’s new cellphone, if the stolen phone’s number has been transferred, three detectives said in interviews.
Few countries have tighter restrictions on women’s freedoms than Saudi Arabia: Saudi women are barred from traveling, working or attending school without permission from a father, husband or other male guardian. They’re also unable to vote, though they’ve been promised that will change in 2015 for local elections. And now, their husbands will receive a text message when they move about throughout the Kingdom.
Robert Caruso is a veteran of the United States Navy, and has worked for the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, Business Transformation Agency and the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
