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WASHINGTON (AFP) – US President Barack Obama on Tuesday ended the divide between national security and homeland security staff in the White House, arguing the move would make Americans safer. Obama shook up the security structure of his teams of advisors after examining the results of a study he ordered into how best to handle homeland security and counter-terrorism efforts. "I have carefully reviewed the findings and recommendations of that study, and am announcing a new approach which will strengthen our security and the safety of our citizens," Obama said in a statement. "These decisions reflect the fundamental truth that...

"The whole concept of what constitutes the membership of the national security community -- which, historically has been, let's face it, the Defense Department, the NSC itself and a little bit of the State Department, to the exclusion perhaps of the Energy Department, Commerce Department and Treasury, all the law enforcement agencies, the Drug Enforcement Administration, all of those things -- especially in the moment we're currently in, has got to embrace a broader membership," he said. New NSC directorates will deal with such department-spanning 21st-century issues as cybersecurity, energy, climate change, nation-building and infrastructure. Many of the functions of...

Result of directive expands security body's role far beyond traditional rangePresident Obama plans to order a sweeping overhaul of the National Security Council, expanding its membership and increasing its authority to set strategy across a wide spectrum of international and domestic issues. The result will be a "dramatically different" NSC from that of the Bush administration or any of its predecessors since the forum was established after World War II to advise the president on diplomatic and military matters, according to national security adviser James L. Jones, who described the changes in an interview.

ABC News' Jonathan Greenberger reports: If she makes it to the White House, Sen. Hillary Clinton said today her husband will take on the same responsibilities as traditional presidential spouses, with no access to National Security Council meetings. "I think he would play the role that spouses have always played for presidents," said Clinton, in an exclusive interview with ABC News' George Stephanopoulos. "He will not have a formal, official role, but just as presidents rely on wives, husbands, fathers, friends of long years, he will be my close confidante and adviser as I was with him."

Sandy Bungler's Burglary Exposed or...Why Character Matters “My staff’s investigation reveals that President Clinton’s former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger compromised national security much more than originally disclosed,” Davis said. “It is now also clear that Mr. Berger was willing to go to extraordinary lengths to compromise national security, apparently for his own convenience. “The 9/11 Commission relied on incomplete and misleading information regarding its access to documents Mr. Berger reviewed. No one ever told the Commission that Mr. Berger had access to original documents that he could have taken without detection. “We now know that Mr. Berger left stolen...

Investigation into pilfered documents reveals former president signed letter President Bill Clinton signed a letter authorizing former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger's access to classified documents that later came up missing, according to a newly released investigation report by the National Archives and Records Administration. The sensitive drafts of the National Security Council's "Millennium After Action Review" on the Clinton administration's handling of the al-Qaida terror threats in December 1999 suspiciously disappeared after Berger said he intended to "determine if Executive Privilege needed to be exerted prior to documents being provided to the 9/11 Commission." Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft testified...

<p>The case is a spin-off of a probe that has already led to charges under the Espionage Act against two AIPAC lobbyists, whose case is still pending, and to a 12-and-a-half-year prison sentence for former Defense Intelligence Agency official Lawrence A. Franklin. Franklin pleaded guilty a year ago to three felony counts involving improper disclosure and handling of classified information about the Middle East and terrorism to the two lobbyists, who in turn are accused of passing it on to a journalist and a foreign government, widely believed to be Israel. The two lobbyists, who have denied any wrongdoing but were dismissed by AIPAC in April of 2005, were indicted on felony counts of conspiring with government officials to receive classified information they were not authorized to have access to and providing national defense information to people not entitled to receive it.</p>

WASHINGTON - Elliott Abrams, a special assistant to the president and an assistant secretary of state in the Reagan administration, has been appointed deputy national security adviser with a focus on promoting global democracy and human rights. President Bush's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, also announced Wednesday that Faryar Shirzad will continue to serve in an expanded role as deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs. Abrams, who becomes national security adviser for global democracy strategy, will continue work on Israeli-Palestinian affairs in concert with Hadley and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Abrams has served as special assistant...

Federal authorities have subpoenaed bank records from a Chevy Chase nonprofit group over questions about its financial reporting for work performed for NASA, including the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt. The U.S. Attorney's Office in Maryland has sought financial records from the Alliance for Competitive Technology as part of a federal probe into whether the group made false claims to NASA, court records show. The Justice Department and the attorney's office filed papers in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt June 30 on behalf of NASA's Office of Inspector General based at Goddard. The papers say the nonprofit group refused...

Back in the early 1990s, when Los Angeles was stuck in the pits of a deep recession, somebody facetiously suggested that if Southern California were returned to Mexico _ maybe throw in south Texas and the San Joaquin Valley as well _ it could improve the economies of both countries. But given the current debate about immigration in all its economic and social complexity, that facetious idea left an increasingly compelling question: Where _ and what _ is the border? The obvious answer is that it's the line established by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of 1848, which ended the...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - April 24, 2006 Contact: Robert Dixon [cell] (916) 441-6197 or email: robert@MoveAmericaForward.org CIA LEAKER MARY McCARTHY & WASH. POST’S DANA PRIEST HAVE PARTISAN HISTORY TOGETHER New Questions Arise About CIA Leaker & Washington Post Reporter’s Political Motivations (SAN FRANCISCO) – The nation’s largest pro-troop grassroots organization, Move America Forward (website: www.MoveAmericaForward.org) has uncovered new ties between disgraced CIA leaker, Mary McCarthy, and Washington Post reporter, Dana Priest. Priest was the reporter who received a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on classified information on the war on terrorism that CIA analyst Mary McCarthy leaked to her in...

Secrets of the CIA A former colleague says the fired Mary McCarthy ‘categorically denies’ being the source of the leak on agency renditions. WEB EXCLUSIVE By Mark Hosenball and Michael Isikoff Updated: 7:07 p.m. ET April 24, 2006 April 24, 2006 - A former CIA officer who was sacked last week after allegedly confessing to leaking secrets has denied she was the source of a controversial Washington Post story about alleged CIA secret detention operations in Eastern Europe, a friend of the operative told NEWSWEEK. The fired official, Mary O. McCarthy, “categorically denies being the source of the leak,” one...

Proving that he’s just as adept at stuffing an election candidate’s coffers as he is at stuffing his own socks, Sandy Berger hosted an "almost secret" Washington fund-raiser for a recently retired three-star vice admiral last night. Vice Adm. Joseph Sestak Jr, as the Village People would say, is "In the Navy". And when you want to take an Able Danger Congressman Curt Weldon down, what better way than to send in the Navy? Berger, dubbed "Sandy Burglar" by radio meister Rush Limbaugh, gained notoriety for trying to stuff classified documents into his socks and other attire. The man, who...

Several members of President Bill Clinton’s national security team are hosting a Washington fund-raiser tonight for retired Vice Adm. Joseph Sestak Jr., the Democrat running against U.S. Rep. Curt Weldon in November. Officials at Sestak’s campaign headquarters in Media will not comment on the event, though an invitation sent out to potential donors and obtained by the Daily Times lists Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger as a host. "As a general rule, campaigns don’t comment on fund-raisers or people who hold them," said Sestak’s campaign chairman, Myles Duffy. Berger, who served as Clinton’s second-term national security adviser, pleaded guilty last year...

How the CIA Funds Anti-Bush Propaganda By Bill Gertz The Washington Times | September 14, 2004 The CIA's Counterterrorist Center has spent more than $15 million in the past three years funding studies, reports and conferences produced by former Democratic administration officials and other critics of the Bush administration. The latest effort was a $300,000 grant by the CIA to the Atlantic Council for a study co-authored by Richard A. Clarke, the former counterterrorism official who wrote a best seller accusing the Bush administration of failing in the war on terrorism by invading Iraq.

Censorship of the Press: Do not “Imply Defeat” Sun. Feb. 12, 2006 The secretariat of Iran’s National Security Council (NSC) has asked the managers of the local press not to publish any news reports or stories regarding Iran’s referral to the UN Security Council which imply that all is lost and that the Islamic Republic has suffered a defeat. The request asks that writers and commentators to demonstrate Iran’s national unity to foreigners by writing nationalistic and heroic articles portraying the nuclear issues as a national and popular cause. The NSC has exercised control over what the local press and...

NSC warns against visiting Sinai Herb Keinon, THE JERUSALEM POST Oct. 1, 2005 The National Security Council's counter-terrorism unit called on all Israelis in Egypt, including Sinai, to leave immediately because of concrete information of plans to kidnap Israeli vacationers there. The counter-terrorism unit also called on Israelis to refrain from visiting Sinai or any part of Egypt during the upcoming holiday period, a period during which Israelis have in the past streamed into Sinai by the tens of thousands. This warning is an upgrade of a warning issued in April that designated Egypt a 'high threat level' destination after...

     Inman on the Culture of Leaks 07/26 06:04 PMI recently asked Admiral Bobby R. Inman (USN Ret.), a professor at UT's LBJ School of Public Affairs who served as both Director of the National Security Administration and former Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, what he thought about Wilson, Plame and the leaking of classified information. Inman brought up an episode that has been overlooked in the recent debate — the CIA leaks during the 2004 election cycle, particularly the book Imperial Hubris, published by former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer under the pseudonym Anonymous. Inman said: I was utterly...

I hesitate to weigh in on this subject with so many interesting and insightful contributions already posted. However, since I've been doing a series of interviews, I have had to develop opinions on all aspects of the Iranian elections. Since everyone else is doing it, here are my own questions, comments and evolving views. Ahmadinejad seems to have been the beneficiary of a populist revolt (in addition to a little polling station assistance from his friends in the Revolutionary Guards and Basij). A friend of mine compares this to the election of Communist mayors in Italy during the Cold War...

Democrats seem determined to filibuster John Bolton's nomination to be U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., embarrassing President Bush and sending a message that any public official who declines to kowtow to the permanent bureaucracy will be punished. Mr. Bush now has to decide how to respond in a way that shows he's not a lame duck. The easiest response would be to make a recess appointment, which would send Mr. Bolton to Turtle Bay for the duration of this Congress, roughly 18 months. But this would allow Democrats to claim that they've wounded Mr. Bolton and embolden U.N. officials to...