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The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is a chronic problem. The controversy over President Bush's decision to bypass FISA warrants in the electronic surveillance of al Qaeda operatives has highlighted the act's limitations. But FISA has been a problem ever since it became law in 1978. Congress passed and President Carter signed the bill regulating electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence collection in the wake of an extended, post--Watergate debate about the so--called "imperial presidency." The debate was given added urgency by reports and official investigations of indiscriminate snooping in this country by elements of the U.S. intelligence community. However, like...

A U.S. president has just received word that American counterterrorist operatives have captured a senior al Qaeda operative in Pakistan. Among his possessions are a couple of cell phones -- phones that contain several American phone numbers. In the wake of Sept. 11, 2001, what's a president to do? If the president were taking the advice offered by some politicians and pundits in recent days, he would order the attorney general to go to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The attorney general would ask that panel of federal judges for a warrant under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to...

THE HEADLINE for the lead story in yesterday's Washington Post was "Iran Is Judged 10 Years from Nuclear Bomb." The story itself is based on leaked portions of a January 2005 national intelligence estimate (NIE) on Iran, whose annex apparently contains a revised assessment by American intelligence of the time Iran needs to produce a nuclear weapon. Previous estimates had Iran possibly producing a weapon in five years or less. There are several points worth noting about this story. * First, the Post sets this revised estimate off against "forceful public statements by the White House" and "administration officials" that...

MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERSFROM: GARY SCHMITTSUBJECT: Democracy and the Black Sea RegionI would like to draw your attention to the testimony of Bruce P. Jackson, President of the Project on Transitional Democracies and a director of the Project for the New American Century, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Subcommittee on European Affairs. Mr. Jackson's statement - "The Future of Democracy in the Black Sea Region" - makes a compelling case for why the region should matter to U.S. policymakers; details the gains and obstacles related to the development of democratic governance in the region; and offers a series of...

MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERS FROM: GARY SCHMITTSUBJECT: Robin Wright is WrongYesterday, Washington Post senior foreign policy reporter Robin Wright’s analysis of the recent elections in Iraq (“Iraq Winners Allied with Iran Are the Opposite of U.S. Vision”) ran on the Post’s front page. As the title to the piece suggests, Wright’s claim is that Iraqis “went to the polls and elected a government with a strong religious base – and very close ties to the Islamic republic next door.” But about the only thing right in that sentence is that the Iraqis “went to the polls.”First, the United Iraqi Alliance,...

ON MONDAY, in Brussels, Republican strategist Charles Black debated Kerry campaign adviser and fundraiser R. Scott Pastrick on the implications for Europe of the upcoming U.S. presidential elections. As reported from Europe, Pastrick stated that a Kerry administration would be "culturally sensitive" to European concerns and that the candidate himself had a "natural tendency to march with Europe." Of that point, we have no doubt.

MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERSFROM: GARY SCHMITTSUBJECT: "Get our troops home" - Part II: Is Kerry undermining the effort in Iraq right now?Sen. Kerry's recent emphasis on getting our troops home - "where they belong" - not only has implications for the broader war on terror but also for the current conflict in Iraq. With his repeated promises to "bring the troops home," Kerry may be damaging international efforts to reconstruct and stabilize Iraq right now.Experts in counterinsurgency know that the key to defeating an insurgent force is gaining and keeping the support of the population in which the insurgency operates....

MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERSFROM: GARY SCHMITTSUBJECT: Kerry: "Get our troops home"The more Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry talks about how he would wage the war on terror, the more he appears to be planning a retreat from an offensive to a defensive strategy. Last Friday, Kerry told a Kansas City audience that: "I know I can run a more effective, smarter, more productive war on terror…. I will do it by bringing to our side the allies that we used to have which should have been with us in the first place. I'll take the target off American troops…and...

Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry told an audience in Washington, D.C. today that if elected he would wage "a more sensitive war on terror." Aside from its amusing qualities, this statement adds to other evidence in Kerry's recent statements and speeches, including his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, that Kerry will be very hesitant to use force in his "war" on terrorism. Contrary to widespread accounts of his acceptance speech as hawkish, Kerry seems to believe that the struggle against terrorism can be won chiefly by strengthened alliances and public declarations. Above all, Kerry seems opposed to taking...

MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERSFROM: GARY SCHMITTSUBJECT: Iraq's Attempts to Acquire Uranium from NigerIn his 2003 State of the Union speech, President Bush said "the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Since then, this statement has been criticized by Former Ambassador Joe Wilson and others as relying on flimsy or non-existent intelligence. Today, however, the British government released a report titled "Review of Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction,"* which, on page 125 (paragraph 503), states: "From our examination of the intelligence and other material on Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from...

With the failure to find stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction and the continuing difficulties in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, it's reasonable to ask: Has a death blow been delivered to the idea of military preemption and, more broadly, to the idea of preventive wars? Has our experience in Iraq effectively removed from play a policy option that many here and abroad believed was the cornerstone of the Bush administration's new strategic doctrine? For the foreseeable future, the Iraq war and its aftermath cannot help but put a hitch in the step of any president contemplating similar action. People can continue...

MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERSFROM: GARY SCHMITTSUBJECT: Addressing Terrorism before 9/11 This past Sunday, pundit Fareed Zakaria alleged that the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which he characterized as "Bill Kristol's advocacy group," paid no attention to Al Qaeda in the 1990s. Similarly, Zakaria wrote last month in the New York Times, "One searches vainly through the archives of the Project for the New American Century, the main neoconservative advocacy group, for a single report on Al Qaeda or a letter urging action against it before 9/11." In fact, the directors and fellows of the Project published several articles...

Wall Street JournalMarch 23, 2004TAIPEI -- With televised pictures of demonstrators clashing Sunday morning with riot police in Taiwan’s southern port city of Kaohsiung, crowds surrounding the judicial offices in Taichung, Taiwan’s second largest city, and thousands rallying outside the presidential mansion in Taipei, the impression conveyed to the rest of the world is that Taiwan’s young democracy is deeply polarized and potentially unraveling politically. It’s not the case -- or at least not yet.As the new week begins, Taiwan’s streets are calm, the Nationalist Party (Kuomintang/KMT) supporters out front of the presidential offices remain vocal but nonviolent, and the...

MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERS FROM: GARY SCHMITT SUBJECT: Cut Defense?  If congressional “budget hawks” have their way, there will be cuts made to the Bush administration’s defense spending package. Last week, the Republican-controlled Senate Budget Committee voted to slice $7 billion from the Pentagon’s FY 2005 budget. The ostensible reason for the reduction is the large federal deficit. With the national defense budget authority up by nearly $90 billion since 2001, the presumption is that there is room to cut. But this is not the case. Adjusted for inflation, the $423 billion in defense budget authority requested for FY 2005 is only 15% more...

If David Kay is right about what his weapons inspection teams have found — or rather not found — in Iraq, it's clear the Bush administration was wrong about Iraq's programs to develop weapons of mass destruction. Kay, the former chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, says there are no large chemical and biological stockpiles likely to be found, and that Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program had been literally buried. While he also concluded that Iraq had been aggressively moving to develop longer-range ballistic missiles, had kept its biological-weapons research program alive and tried to restart its nuclear program in...

MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERS FROM: GARY SCHMITT SUBJECT: The Pentagon’s Plans: Do They Make Sense? The Washington Times today carries a front-page article (“Troops to Shift from S. Korea,” Richard Halloran) that reports that the Pentagon is planning major changes to the U.S. military posture in South Korea. According to the story, “The moves are part of a gradual disengagement of U.S. land forces from Korea and a greater reliance on sea power to maintain the American security posture in Asia.” These proposed changes, when combined with other Pentagon plans concerning both the overhaul of U.S. military basing in other...