Free Republic

Set aside for now the troubling changes in the Obama administration’s position on whether former Bush officials should be prosecuted for suggesting tough interrogation tactics against terrorists. Set aside the manifest unfairness of prosecuting lawyers merely for doing their job of giving legal advice. Set aside the raft of other reasonable objections to the proposed prosecutions, including a justifiable aversion to witch-hunts. Instead, consider how flagrantly President Barack Obama violated his repeated promises that he would run a transparent and honorable administration. His administration’s selective and highly prejudicial release of only partial information about CIA interrogations clearly was designed to...

Obama’s DNI reminds Obama that “enhanced interrogation” worked April 22, 2009 by Ed Morrissey Barack Obama’s top man in the intelligence community sent the President a memo defending the use of enhanced interrogation techniques, which the White House edited before releasing to the press de-emphasizing that defense. Dennis Blair, the Director of National Intelligence, pointed out that most of what we know about al-Qaeda came from using those techniques on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah, countering leaks last week from the Obama administration that claimed the methods produced no data... In other words, the Obama administration covered up the...

The US government has endorsed a plan to build a new generation of spy satellites, although funding to boost the Pentagon's imaging capacity still needs congressional approval. Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair said Tuesday that his agency and the Department of Defense had finalized a plan to modernize the fleet of US observation satellites. "Imagery is a core component of our national security that supports our troops, foreign policy, homeland security and the needs of our intelligence community," Blair said in a statement. He said the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), which oversees all US spy...

President Barack Obama's choice for spy chief, Dennis Blair, said Thursday that U.S. intelligence agencies should seek ways of working with Iran on issues of mutual interest, underscoring the new administration's interest in engagement with elements in the Islamic state. "While policymakers need to understand anti-American leaders, policies and actions in Iran, the intelligence community can also help policymakers identify and understand other leaders and political forces, so that it is possible to work toward a future in both our interests," retired Admiral Blair said on Thursday in a prepared statement for a Senate hearing on his nomination as Director...