By Jay Sekulow
The left's outrage over the IRS turns to a plea to 'move on'
Former Rep. Peter Hoekstra, who was chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, recalls a cryptic telephone call from the White House in August 2004: "Come on over. We've got something to tell you."
Whether we like to admit it or not, the war on terrorism is still being fought. The immediate challenge is to identify the best strategy to permanently defeat the terrorist menace. Unless you share Gen. Michael V. Hayden's defeatist view of world affairs, that is.
Reports are released every day in Washington, but one that could prove to be of life-or-death importance was unveiled last week by the Henry Jackson Society, a bipartisan think tank with headquarters in London. "Al-Qaeda in the United States: A Complete Analysis of Terrorism Offenses" holds up a mirror to America and provides us with a clear but terrifying image.
In most countries, secrecy shrouds the workings of state intelligence services. Israel's Mossad sets a gold standard for such organizations, especially in operational effectiveness. Almost invariably, Mossad chiefs are promoted from within and possess extensive operational experience.
Mitt Romney has assembled a foreign-policy platform rooted in the belief that adversaries such as Russia must be confronted for backsliding on democracy and that Israel must be supported in the face of common threats such as a nuclear-armed Iran.
Mitt Romney's corps of advisers is heavily salted with figures who surrounded President George W. Bush as he watched over massive increases in federal spending, the creation of more government programs and the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the nation-building efforts that followed.
GOP presidential front-runner Mitt Romney has assembled a cast of conservative George W. Bush-era veterans as his key national security advisers. Some of them played important roles in the war on terror and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
The U.S. Central Command is stepping up psychological warfare operations using software that allows it to target social media websites used by terrorists.
U.S. intelligence and security agencies are warning Congress and the telecommunications industry that an American company's plan to use Chinese components in cell-phone towers for the next generation wireless network will make communications vulnerable to electronic spying by Beijing.
Israel's long-anticipated attack on Iran's nuclear program may come as soon as Friday. Yesterday, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said Israel had eight days to strike Iran's nuclear facility at Bushehr before it would become operational. He revised the timeline to three days after word came that nuclear fuel would begin loading on Friday. We're now down to two days and counting.
WikiLeaks Part II has begun.
A former CIA director said Sunday that military action against Iran now seems more likely because no matter what the United States does diplomatically, Tehran keeps pushing ahead with its suspected nuclear program.
'Skirmish line'
An FBI agent assigned in 2002 to help obtain intelligence from a top al Qaeda operative challenged the interrogation techniques used on the terrorism suspect by the CIA, taking what a government report yesterday described as his "strong concerns" to senior officials in the bureau's counterterrorism division.
'Skirmish line'
"So, you do retain the information so that you can ask questions of it in the future," Mr. Hayden said. "With regard to abuse, there are no records of abuse under President Bush, under President Obama."
Ex-insider: Prism use like 'Bush on steroids'; Hoekstra still backs NSA intel program →
At that meeting, Vice President Dick Cheney and Michael V. Hayden, director of the National Security Agency, told him about the Terrorist Surveillance Program — the NSA's project to gather billions of phone records.
Ex-insider: Prism use like 'Bush on steroids'; Hoekstra still backs NSA intel program →
