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Hillary Clinton's close adviser Sidney Blumenthal did not personally author or verify any of the memos he sent her about Libya or the Benghazi siege, according to the head of a House panel investigating the 2012 attacks. "What we learned today is he’s not the author of a single one of those memos. He was passing on information authored by someone else and he has no idea about the credibility or reliability of any of the sources," House Select Committee on Benghazi Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) told reporters on Tuesday. "So, the information passed on to the secretary of State,...

In the two years since the Edward Snowden saga went public, a handful of people who actually understand the Western signals intelligence system have tried to explain the many ways that the Snowden Operation has smeared NSA and its partners with salacious charges of criminality and abuse. I’ve been one of the public faces of what may be called the Snowden Truth movement, and finally there are signs that reality may be intruding on this debate. No American ally was rocked harder by Snowden’s allegations than Germany, which has endured a bout of hysteria over charges that NSA was listening...

The U.S. Cyber Command and Director of the National Security Agency, Admiral Michael Rogers, released a statement this morning informing the public of a massive security breach after a group of hackers broke into the NSA's secure network and read through a sizeable amount of personal emails, retrieved web browser history, and even recorded Skype conversations. "Earlier today, while we were performing routine monitoring of far right-wing internet activity, we discovered a security hemorrhage of personal information of NSA agents that was put on display in multiple online forums and social media across the internet," the statement said. "It appears...

Tucked into the surveillance bill that became law was a little-noticed section that will let the United States complete ratification of two long-stalled treaties aimed at stopping a frightening scenario: terrorists wielding radioactive bombs. "Today, nearly 2,000 metric tons of weapons-usable nuclear materials remain spread across hundreds of sites around the globe — some of it poorly secured," said former Sen. Sam Nunn, co-chairman of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, an organization in Washington that works on the issue. "We know that to get the materials needed to build a bomb, terrorists will not necessarily go where there is the most...

Just when we thought the absurdity that marks every single day of Obama's reign could not possibly be surpassed, we learned that 4 hours (3 hours and 47 minutes to be precise) after the US president vowed to sign a new law banning bulk data collection by the NSA (named, for purely grotesque reasons, the "USA Freedom Act"), the Obama administration asked the secret Fisa surveillance court to ignore a federal court that found bulk surveillance illegal and to once again grant the National Security Agency the power to collect the phone records of millions of Americans for six months....

President Barack Obama is aiming to show unity with Western allies on global challenges during an overnight trip to Germany, especially Chancellor Angela Merkel amid enduring anti-Americanism in her country over U.S. spying programs. Obama and Merkel plan to open his visit Sunday with a public display of friendliness, delivering remarks about the U.S.-German alliance before taking a walk through the picturesque alpine village of Kruen to sample the Bavarian food and sights. Then the two plan to meet privately at the nearby site of the two-day summit of the Group of Seven leading industrial nations to coordinate their agenda...

KENNEBUNKPORT, Maine — A banner in the town square says, “Happy 90th Barbara Bush.” Postcards read “Kennebunkport: 2 presidents, 1 town.” A local gift shop is already selling unofficial “Jeb Bush 2016” magnets. In this coastal hamlet made famous by George H.W. Bush and his cigarette boat, it is hard to escape the Bush family — but Jeb Bush is trying very hard to do so. After festivities this weekend to celebrate his mother’s 90th birthday, Bush will jet overseas for a foreign-policy tour and then launch his 2016 presidential campaign 1,500 miles to the south in Miami. The iconic...

Well, this is a new one.While announcing his candidacy for the highest office in the land, newly minted Democratic presidential candidate and former Rhode Island senator and governor Lincoln Chafee made the bold case for … the U.S. to switch to the metric system?Bloomberg's Dave Weigel was there: Chafee, a Republican-turned-independent-turned-Democrat, gave a brief and chipper address that called for America to re-engage with "international community" with diplomacy and "symbolic" moves. That meant everything from barring campaign donors from becoming diplomats, to allowing Edward Snowden to come home without punishment, to bringing America into the Metric system."It doesn't take long...

Without public notice or debate, the Obama administration has expanded the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance of Americans’ international Internet traffic to search for evidence of malicious computer hacking, according to classified N.S.A. documents. In mid-2012, Justice Department lawyers wrote two secret memos permitting the spy agency to begin hunting on Internet cables, without a warrant and on American soil, for data linked to computer intrusions originating abroad — including traffic that flows to suspicious Internet addresses or contains malware, the documents show. The Justice Department allowed the agency to monitor only addresses and “cybersignatures” — patterns associated with computer...

The famous (and in some circles infamous) former CIA infrastructure analyst Edward Snowden has written an op-ed for the New York Times about what he calls “a post-terror generation” that’s ”finally standing up for the right to privacy.” Snowden first explains that when he sounded the alarm about the NSA’s ridiculously broad spying program he was persecuted and deemed a traitor (which is why he had to flee to Russia). In the years since, though, a lot has changed: "Two years on, the difference is profound. In a single month, the N.S.A.’s invasive call-tracking program was declared unlawful by the...

He likened Bush's position on the NSA to his "confused" position on the Iraq War. Rand Paul is slamming Jeb Bush over the former Florida governor’s defense of National Security Agency data collection, the latest round in the Kentucky senator’s battles with his own party on the issue. “Just like he was confused for weeks about his position on the Iraq war, Gov. Bush appears completely unaware of the facts about the government’s illegal and unnecessary spying [on] the American people and made it clear his position is based on politics, not policy and the Constitution,” Paul spokesman Sergio Gor...

Without public notice or debate, the Obama administration has expanded the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance of Americans’ international Internet traffic to search for evidence of malicious computer hacking, according to classified NSA documents. In mid-2012, Justice Department lawyers wrote two secret memos permitting the spy agency to begin hunting on Internet cables, without a warrant and on American soil, for data linked to computer intrusions originating abroad — including traffic that flows to suspicious Internet addresses or contains malware, the documents show. The disclosures, based on documents provided by Edward J. Snowden, the former NSA contractor, and shared with...

A pair of decisions handed down by federal appeals courts in the last month highlight two telling pillars of recent U.S. national security strategy. They are: open our border and collect everyone's phone records. In Texas v. U.S.A., the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit refused to allow President Obama to move forward with his plan to unilaterally grant legal status to as many as 4.3 million illegal aliens. The administration argued that Texas and 25 others states that sued to stop Obama's plan did not even have standing to challenge the action. These states, the administration argued,...

If John McCain, John Cornyn, Mitch McConnell, and the other Republican senators lashing into Rand Paul because of his efforts to force expiration of Sec. 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act had been alive and part of the debate back in 1775-76, they would have been blasting Patrick Henry for supporting Liberty. Colonialists McCain, Cornyn and McConnell would have been firmly in the Tory camp; defending the powers of the Crown to “protect” the colonialists through such tools as Writs of Assistance. Today, in this 21st Century, the tools may have changed, but the foundational principle on which our independence...

Tuesday in in Orlando at the Florida Economic Growth Summit, former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-FL) said he was “upset” and “deeply troubled” about the debate over the NSA encroaching upon American’s civil liberties by the warrantless collection of bulk data that has now been reformed by the Senate passing the Freedom Act. Bush said, “The simple fact is, we are safer today because of the Patriot Act, and this notion that somehow you create a false narrative, as many on the left, and a few on our team, but mostly on the left, that our civil liberties are being violated....

Since the NSA stopped collecting metadata about telephone calls on Sunday, May 31, 2015 (or was ordered to stop, anyway… with this government, you never really know), many have declared that we are a less safe nation today. And this is true; we ARE a less safe nation today. But as usual, both the answer and the foundation for it are largely misunderstood, in a nation in which a biased press refuses to tell the whole story, and a disinterested public refuses to study the issues until the third presidential debate rolls around every four years. To answer the question...

A bill that would allow key government surveillance programs to resume for now – after they were temporarily suspended Sunday – cleared another hurdle in the Senate on Tuesday.

WASHINGTON — In a remarkable reversal of national security policy formed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Senate voted on Tuesday to curtail the federal government’s sweeping surveillance of American phone records, sending the legislation to President Obama’s desk for his signature. The passage of the measure, achieved after a vigorous debate on the Senate floor, will lead to the reinstatement of government surveillance efforts that were blacked out on Monday after Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, blocked their extension. The vote was a rebuke to Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, as...

The Senate on Tuesday sent legislation reforming the nation’s surveillance laws to President Obama’s desk — days after a stalemate caused the National Security Agency’s powers to lapse. The vote for the USA Freedom Act came more than 36 hours after three parts of the Patriot Act expired, which caused the NSA to wind down its programs. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) suffered a political blow during the bruising fight over the USA Freedom Act, which he and other hawkish Republican senators opposed even after it was approved by the House in a broad, bipartisan vote. Senate Minority Leader...

The legal authority for several national security programs expired at midnight Sunday and will not be renewed for at least two days, after Senate Republicans leaders were unable to maneuver around Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a presidential candidate who followed through on a pledge to block an extension of the law. The Senate closed a rare Sunday session without approving the only legislation that would have averted a lapse in the authority — a House-passed bill that would provide for an orderly transition away from the most controversial program authorized under the current law: the National Security Agency’s bulk collection...