President Obama couldn’t have been clearer about his take on the so-called war on drugs. In 2004, he called decades of get-tough law enforcement “an utter failure.” So it doesn’t come as much of a surprise that the new attorney general, Eric Holder, hinted this month that the new administration will take a radically new approach to one drug issue in particular-medical marijuana. “What [President Obama] said during the campaign is now American policy,” Holder told a news conference this week. Read the rest of this entry »

The Obama administration appears to be continuing many of its predecessor’s tactics in the fight against suspected al Qaeda forces in the tribal regions of Pakistan, including a controversial program using unmanned airplanes to strike at key targets. U.S. intelligence officials credit the highly classified program with the killing of key terrorist leaders, but it has also sparked a strong backlash in Pakistan for causing numerous civilian casualties. Read the rest of this entry »

The president and his CIA chief seem to be reading Foreign Policy Magazine, which recently suggested that the incoming administration change the nature of the daily intelligence updates to the White House. Today, CIA Director Leon Panetta told reporters that his agency was producing, at the request of the Obama administration, a new “economic intelligence brief” and distributing it to key policymakers. Reflecting the comments of the director of national intelligence, who called the economic crisis a serious national security threat, the new brief will focus on global economic issues, Panetta says. “It will cover overseas developments, economic, political, leadership developments,” he says. “Obviously, the implications in terms of the U.S. economy will be analyzed as well.” The first EIB was sent out today to “key players” in the administration. Read the rest of this entry »

Domestic radicalization may be the newest front in the ongoing campaign against terrorism, a reality underscored last October when a man from Minnesota traveled to Somalia and blew himself up in a suicide bombing. Read the rest of this entry »