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The Senate on Tuesday reaffirmed a ban against torturing detainees and moved ahead on a more than $600 billion defense policy bill that is entangled in a broader fight in Congress about caps on Pentagon and non-military spending. The Senate overwhelmingly voted 78 to 21 to approve an amendment that bolsters current law and makes the U.S. Army Field Manual on interrogations the standard for all interrogations conducted by the U.S. government. It also gives the International Committee of the Red Cross access to every detainee held by the U.S. The vote comes just months after the Senate intelligence committee...

Al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri has called on Muslims to kidnap Westerners, particularly Americans, who could then be exchanged for jailed jihadists including a blind Egyptian cleric convicted in 1995 of conspiring to attack the United Nations and other New York landmarks. In a wide ranging audio interview, the al Qaeda leader expressed solidarity with the Muslim Brotherhood which is facing a violent crackdown by the army-backed government in Egypt and urged unity among rebels in their fight against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Lawfare Blog: Following an American special forces raid on the compound of Islamic State operative Abu Sayyaf, U.S. interrogators, who are part of the High Value Detainee Interrogation Group, have flown to Iraq in order to question Umm Sayyaf, the wife of Abu Sayyaf, who was taken during the operation. Umm Sayyaf was allegedly involved in the workings of the Islamic State and could possibly have played a role in “the enslavement of women in Iraq and Syria.” U.S. interrogators plan to talk to Umm Sayyaf about U.S. hostages held by the militant group. However, according to the Washington Post,...

Republicans on the House select committee investigating the Benghazi, Libya terrorist attack are planning to subpoena Sidney Blumenthal, who served in Clinton’s inner circle while she led the State Department. The New York Times reported that panel chairman Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) is planning to issue the subpoena. The top Democrat on the House select committee criticized the plan. “These latest moves by the Benghazi Committee-issuing a subpoena without first contacting the witness, leaking news of the subpoena before it was served, and not holding any Committee debate or vote-are straight out the partisan playbook of discredited Republican investigations,” Rep....

A lawyer who came to prominence for his full-throated defense of a subsequently convicted terrorist was quietly promoted to the No. 3 slot at the Department of Justice last month, a post that puts him in charge of the administration’s policy regarding Guantanamo Bay detainees. The move has raised red flags on Capitol Hill and elsewhere among national security stalwarts who argue that the promotion could imperil the country’s longstanding war on terrorism.

BOSTON - APRIL 8: Camille Lerner, 21, of Boston, painted the words 'B Strong' on the window of Sugar Heaven on Boylston Street, across from the Finish Line where the first bomb went off, after the verdict came down in the trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in Boston on April 8, 2015. No victim of the Boston Marathon bombings was more poignant, perhaps, than eight-year-old Martin Richard. It was a photo of a smiling Martin, who was from Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood, holding up a handmade sign saying, “No more hurting people,” that seemed to underscore the callousness of the acts and...

The view from (some) on the right in regard to the Bin Laden news is: waterboarding is vindicated. One GOP Congressman tweeted: Wonder what President Obama thinks of water boarding now? The reason is that there's a direct line to be traced from the big news to data collected at GITMO -- data that was almost certainly collected under duress. Here's the key interrogation note regarding a courier going to Abottabad: Rest @ link

It’s been four years since a group of US Navy Seals assassinated Osama bin Laden in a night raid on a high-walled compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The killing was the high point of Obama’s first term, and a major factor in his re-election. The White House still maintains that the mission was an all-American affair, and that the senior generals of Pakistan’s army and Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) were not told of the raid in advance. This is false, as are many other elements of the Obama administration’s account. The White House’s story might have been written by Lewis Carroll:...

American soldiers, American civilians, and other innocent people are going to die because Pres. Barack Obama wants to release photographs of prisoner abuse. Note: I said, “wants to release” — not “has to release,” or “is being forced to release,” or “will comply with court orders by releasing.” The photos, quite likely thousands of them, will be released because the president wants them released. Any other description of the situation is a dodge. If President Obama wanted to refrain from releasing these photos in order to protect the military forces he commands or promote the security of Americans — his...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The former top aide to then-secretary of state Colin Powell has reportedly emerged as an increasingly high-profile and vocal critic of US administration policy at home and abroad. Lawrence Wilkerson, who was Powell's chief-of-staff, "says his decision to speak in the open about the policy wars of the first Bush term was slow in coming, but a major factor was the revelations about Abu Ghraib, which he said he realized ... had resulted from decisions on prisoner treatment and intelligence set shortly after September 11, 2001," the New York Times reported. "What I saw was a cabal...

A one-time associate of Osama Bin Laden died in New York on Friday while awaiting trial for allegedly plotting the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Abu Anas al-Libi, 50, was captured in Libya by U.S. commandos in Oct. 2013 and brought to New York where he was due to stand trial. He had been wanted for more than a decade and there was a $5 million reward for his arrest. Al-Libi had pleaded not guilty. The al Qaeda terror suspect has been in poor health and suffered liver disease as a result of hepatitis C, according...

Matt DeHart, a former American soldier who sought asylum in Canada claiming torture by U.S. agents probing Anonymous hackers and WikiLeaks, was taken from his Ontario prison cell Sunday morning and delivered to U.S. agents at the border. Mr. DeHart, 30, was allowed to make a quick phone call en route to his parents, who are living in Toronto facing their own removal order, said his father, Paul. “He was peaceful and in good health,” Paul DeHart said in an interview but the family remains deeply worried. “We are concerned about Matt’s safety as he transits,” he said. “We said...

The formerly released Guantanamo detainees in Uruguay haven taken to complaining–about almost everything.One of the detainees stated that the government should give all of them welfare, as they have no means of supporting themselves. However, a local union has told the media that it has offered the former detainees work, only to be turned down. Numerous companies have stepped forward to offer the former prisoners jobs, only to be rebuffed time and again since the detainees first landed in Uruguay two months ago. Political officials, who first welcomed them into the country, are becoming increasingly frustrated, Fox News reports.In the...

On Tuesday, Barack Obama adamantly defended his policy of emptying the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, demanding that Congress get on board with it as well. As Jim Hoft noted at the time, the military leadership present at the State of the Union address didn’t appear too enthusiastic about it:CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO Perhaps the New York Times has an explanation for that stone-faced reaction. At the same time that Obama bragged about “turning the page” on war and the end of combat operations in Afghanistan, one of the men transferred from Gitmo worked to establish a...

A new poll from the Pew Research Center is the first to gauge reactions to last week's big CIA report on "enhanced interrogation techniques" -- what agency critics call torture. And the reaction is pretty muted. The poll shows people says 51-29 percent than the CIA's methods were justified and 56-28 percent that the information gleaned helped prevent terror attacks.

Obviously as a reward for committing theft of classified documents for the democrats, Barack Obama has named Alissa Starzak to the legal department at the Pentagon. It’s a position she has never achieved on her own and is a large promotion over her previous jobs. But why put someone with a history of stealing classified secrets to a job where she could steal the country’s most guarded secrets? It’s a reward. Republicans in both houses of congress have accused her of making copies of documents and carrying them out of the Pentagon for use by Diane Feinstein and her committee...

Peoria, Ill. - A federal judge sentenced an Al Qaeda "sleeper" agent to eight years in prison Thursday -- about half the time prosecutors had requested -- because the agent received what the judge called "unacceptable" treatment in a U.S. Navy brig. U.S. District Judge Michael Mihm could have sentenced Ali Marri to as much as 15 years. Prosecutors had endorsed that, presenting testimony that he remained a threat. But Mihm handed down the lighter sentence of eight years and four months in consideration of what he called "very severe" conditions under which Marri was kept during the almost six...

Ali Saleh Kahlah al Marri, an admitted former al Qaeda operative, has been released from a American jail and permitted to return home to Qatar. No formal statement has been released yet by either government, but it is being reported that al Marri's release was the result of a bilateral agreement between the Qatari and American governments. According to the US Bureau of Prisons, a prisoner with the same name and estimated age (ID number 12194-026) was freed on Friday. Additionally, a source from al Marri's family told the Qatari press he was recently released and arrived in Doha Saturday....

An imprisoned man known as the "20th hijacker" in the 9/11 terror attacks is asking a South Florida federal judge for a transfer to the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The request is part of a rambling, handwritten letter filed Wednesday in Miami federal court by Zacarias Moussaoui. He is serving a life prison sentence after pleading guilty in 2005 to conspiring with the Sept. 11 hijackers to kill Americans.

When U.S. authorities got their hands on terrorist Mohammed Mansour Jabarah in May 2002, he agreed to inform on some of the most influential al-Qaeda leaders. So instead of being sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, or a high-security CIA detention facility, Jabarah was housed with relatively lax security at Fort Dix, N.J., where he was allowed to watch television and movies, speak to his family in Canada by telephone, go for walks and even make his own meals, all under 24-hour FBI watch. That arrangement soon proved to be a major problem for the bureau. In court papers filed in...