Buried inside hundreds of pages of heavily redacted court documents from the case of a man accused of being one of al Qaeda’s chief recruiters, is evidence that the terrorist group has launched successful cyberattacks, including one against government computers in Israel. This was the first public confirmation that the terrorist group has mounted...
Posts Tagged ‘ National Security ’
A Change for U.S. Nuclear Strategy
Hans Kristensen heads the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, a group founded by some of the scientists who built the first atomic bomb in 1945. FAS keeps a running public tally of the world’s nuclear arsenals. All told, nine nations now have a combined total of more than 22,000 nuclear...
Guantánamo Detainees Released Amid Debate Over Closing the Prison
Closing the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, was one of the first promises made by President Obama, but that promise has proved one of the most difficult to make good on. As the White House continues to haggle with Congress over how and where to try terrorist suspects, the Department of Justice is quietly...
Debating the Morality of Torture
The Rev. Richard Killmer’s message is as unambiguous as the banners he distributes to the nation’s churches. Simple white letters set on a field of black in a simple sentence: Torture is wrong. Yet despite its apparent innocuousness, that message is a surprisingly tough sell to a nation that remains in profound conflict over...
Former CIA Operative Sees Terrorism Vulnerabilities
Charles Faddis spent years thinking like a terrorist when he worked for the CIA, looking for vulnerabilities in other nations’ infrastructure and learning how to exploit them. Now a private consultant, he writes in his most recent book, Willful Neglect: The Dangerous Illusion of Homeland Security, that the country is surprisingly vulnerable to a...
Terrorist Suspect JihadJane Shatters the Stereotype
Terrorism cases since 9/11 have ranged from the criminally mundane to the James Bond-ishly exotic—but few have been as puzzling as the story of Colleen LaRose, a 46-year-old Pennsylvania woman who used the screen name JihadJane. LaRose was indicted by a federal court last week on charges relating to the planned murder of a...