Yesterday, Dennis Blair gave the House Intelligence Committee an explanation of the “specially permission” that the Government grants itself before it places a US citizen on its kill list.

The U.S. intelligence community policy on killing American citizens who have joined al Qaeda requires first obtaining high-level government approval, a senior official disclosed to Congress on Wednesday.

Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair said in each case a decision to use lethal force against a U.S. citizen must get special permission.

“We take direct actions against terrorists in the intelligence community,” he said. “If we think that direct action will involve killing an American, we get specific permission to do that.”

He also said there are criteria that must be met to authorize the killing of a U.S. citizen that include “whether that American is involved in a group that is trying to attack us, whether that American is a threat to other Americans. Those are the factors involved.”

If you haven’t already, you should read Glenn Greenwald’s entire piece on why this stance violates US law. Here’s Glenn’s description of the legal background.

The severe dangers of vesting assassination powers in the President are so glaring that even GOP Rep. Pete Hoekstra is able to see them (at least he is now that there’s a Democratic President).  At yesterday’s hearing, Hoekstra asked Adm. Blair about the threat that the President might order Americans killed due to their Constitutionally protected political speech rather than because they were actually engaged in Terrorism.  This concern is not an abstract one.  The current controversy has been triggered by the Obama administration’s attempt to kill U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen.  But al-Awlaki has not been accused (let alone convicted) of trying to attack Americans.  Instead, he’s accused of being a so-called “radical cleric” who supports Al Qaeda and now provides “encouragement” to others to engage in attacks —  a charge al-Awlaki’s family vehemently denies (al-Awlaki himself is in hiding due to fear that his own Government will assassinate him).

The question of where First Amendment-protected radical advocacy ends and criminality begins is exactly the sort of question with which courts have long grappled.  In the 1969 case of Brandenburg v. Ohio, the Supreme Court unanimously reversed a criminal conviction of a Ku Klux Klan leader who — surrounded by hooded indivduals holding weapons — gave a speech threatening “revengeance” against any government official who “continues to suppress the white, Caucasian race.”  The Court held that the First Amendment protects advocacy of violence and revolution, and that the State is barred from punishing citizens for the expression of such views.  The Brandenburg Court pointed to a long history of precedent protecting the First Amendment rights of Communists to call for revolution — even violent revolution — inside the U.S., and explained that the Government can punish someone for violent actions but not for speech that merely advocates or justifies violence (emphasis added):

As we [395 U.S. 444, 448] said in Noto v. United States, 367 U.S. 290, 297 -298 (1961), “the mere abstract teaching . . . of the moral propriety or even moral necessity for a resort to force and violence, is not the same as preparing a group for violent action and steeling it to such action.” See also Herndon v. Lowry, 301 U.S. 242, 259 -261 (1937); Bond v. Floyd, 385 U.S. 116, 134 (1966). A statute which fails to draw this distinction impermissibly intrudes upon the freedoms guaranteed by the First and Fourteenth Amendments. It sweeps within its condemnation speech which our Constitution has immunized from governmental control.

From all appearances, al-Awlaki seems to believe that violence by Muslims against the U.S. is justified in retaliation for the violence the U.S. has long brought (and continues to bring) to the Muslim world.  But as an American citizen, he has the absolute Constitutional right to express those views and not be punished for them (let alone killed) no matter where he is in the world; it’s far from clear that he has transgressed the advocacy line into violent action.

I want to go back to just one more problem with this whole state of affairs.

We have been focusing all of our powers of telecom surveillance on Anwar al-Awlaki for at least a year (and probably far longer). Our government has tracked not only what he has said on jihadist websites, but also knows precisely what he has been emailing and presumably saying on the phone.

But none of that stuff, before Christmas Day, even merited an indictment.

And then–perhaps only because of the testimony from Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab that Republicans have shrieked for weeks was inadequate–the Government moved from having no charges against al-Awlaki to attempting to assassinate him. All at a time when we’ve increasaed our presence in and cooperation with Yemen (so therefore, presumably also our ability to extradite someone from Yemen).

Glenn’s point is important because it appears the government agrees with him on the First Amendment point: all of the speech al-Awlaki has engaged in for the last decade was not deemed worthy of even a criminal indictment. Yet all of a sudden, it got al-Awlaki on the kill list.

The process by which that happened must be transparent to the American people.

Eric Holder just sent the following letter to a bunch of whiny Republican Senators trying to make an issue about Americans respecting the rule of law. (I’m posting the whole thing bc there’s a lot of excellent smack down in it.)

Dear Senator McConnell:

I am writing in reply to your letter of January 26,2010, inquiring about the decision to charge Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab with federal crimes in connection with the attempted bombing of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 near Detroit on December 25, 2009, rather than detaining him under the law of war. An identical response is being sent to the other Senators who joined in your letter.

The decision to charge Mr. Abdulmutallab in federal court, and the methods used to interrogate him, are fully consistent with the long-established and publicly known policies and practices of the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the United States Government as a whole, as implemented for many years by Administrations of both parties. Those policies and practices, which were not criticized when employed by previous Administrations, have been and remain extremely effective in protecting national security. They are among the many powerful weapons this country can and should use to win the war against al-Qaeda.

I am confident that, as a result of the hard work of the FBI and our career federal prosecutors, we will be able to successfully prosecute Mr. Abdulmutallab under the federal criminal law. I am equally confident that the decision to address Mr. Abdulmutallab’s actions through our criminal justice system has not, and will not, compromise our ability to obtain information needed to detect and prevent future attacks.

There are many examples of successful terrorism investigations and prosecutions, both before and after September 11, 2001, in which both of these important objectives have been achieved — all in a manner consistent with our law and our national security interests. Mr. Abdulmutallab was questioned by experienced counterterrorism agents from the FBI in the hours immediately after the failed bombing attempt and provided intelligence, and more recently, he has provided additional intelligence to the FBI that we are actively using to help protect our country. We will continue to share the information we develop with others in the intelligence community and actively follow up on that information around the world.

1. Detention. I made the decision to charge Mr. Abdulmutallab with federal crimes, and to seek his detention in connection with those charges, with the knowledge of, and with no objection from, all other relevant departments ofthe government. On the evening of December 25 and again on the morning of December 26, the FBI informed its partners in the Intelligence Community that Abdulmutallab would be charged criminally, and no agency objected to this course of action. In the days following December 25 – including during a meeting with the President and other senior members of his national security team on January 5 – high-level discussions ensued within the Administration in which the possibility of detaining Mr. Abdulmutallab under the law of war was explicitly discussed. No agency supported the use of law of war detention for Abdulmutallab, and no agency has since advised the Department of Justice that an alternative course of action should have been, or should now be, pursued.

Since the September 11,2001 attacks, the practice of the U.S. government, followed by prior and current Administrations without a single exception, has been to arrest and detain under federal criminal law all terrorist suspects who are apprehended inside the United States. The prior Administration adopted policies expressly endorsing this approach. Under a policy directive issued by President Bush in 2003, for example, “the Attorney General has lead responsibility for criminal investigations of terrorist acts or terrorist threats by individuals or groups inside the United States, or directed at United States citizens or institutions abroad, where such acts are within the Federal criminal jurisdiction of the United States, as well as for related intelligence collection activities within the United States.” Homeland Security Presidential Directive 5 (HSPD-5, February 28,2003). The directive goes on to provide that “(following a terrorist threat or an actual incident that falls within the criminal jurisdiction of the United States, the full capabilities of the United States shall be dedicated, consistent with United States law and with activities of other Federal departments and agencies to protect our national security, to assisting the Attorney General to identify the perpetrators and bring them to justice.”

In keeping with this policy, the Bush Administration used the criminal justice system to convict more than 300 individuals on terrorism-related charges. For example, Richard Reid, a British citizen, was arrested in December 2001 for attempting to ignite a shoe bomb while on a flight from Paris to Miami carrying 184 passengers and 14 crewmembers. He was advised of his right to remain silent and to consult with an attorney within five minutes of being removed from the aircraft (and was read or reminded of these rights a total of four times within 48 hours), pled guilty in October 2002, and is now serving a life sentence in federal prison. In 2003, Iyman Faris, a U.S. citizen from Pakistan, pled guilty to conspiracy and providing material support to al- Qaeda for providing the terrorist organization with information about possible U.S. targets for attack. Among other things, he was tasked by al-Qaeda operatives overseas to assess the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City as a possible post-9/11 target of destruction. After initially providing significant information and assistance to law enforcement personnel, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. In 2002, the “Lackawanna Six” were charged with conspiring, providing, and attempting to provide material support to al-Qaeda based upon their pre-9/11 travel to Afghanistan to train in the Al Farooq camp operated by al-Qaeda. They pled guilty, agreed to cooperate, and were sentenced to terms ranging from seven to ten years in prison. There are many other examples of successful terrorism prosecutions – ranging from Zacarias Moussaoui (convicted in 2006 in connection with the 9/11 attacks and sentenced to life in prison) to  Ahmed Omar Abu Ali (convicted in 2005 of conspiracy to assassinate the President and

other charges and sentenced to life in prison) to Ahmed Ressam (convicted in 2001 for the Millenium plot to bomb the Los Angeles airport and sentenced to 22 years, a sentence recently reversed as too lenient and remanded for resentencing) –which I am happy to provide upon request.

In fact, two (and only two) persons apprehended in this country in recent times have been held under the law of war. Jose Padilla was arrested on a federal material witness warrant in 2002, and was transferred to law of war custody approximately one month later, after his court-appointed counsel moved to vacate the warrant. Ali Saleh Kahlah AI-Marri was also initially arrested on a material witness warrant in 2001, was indicted on federal criminal charges (unrelated to terrorism) in 2002, and then transferred to law of war custody approximately eighteen months later. In both of these cases, the transfer to law of war custody raised serious statutory and constitutional questions in the courts concerning the lawfulness of the government’s actions and spawned lengthy litigation. In Mr. Padilla’s case, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit found that the President did not have the authority to detain him under the law of war. In Mr. AI-Marri’s case, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reversed a prior panel decision and found in a fractured en bane opinion that the President did have authority to detain Mr. Al Marri, but that he had not been afforded sufficient process to challenge his designation as an enemy combatant. Ultimately, both AI-Marri (in 2009) and Padilla (in 2006) were returned to law enforcement custody, convicted of terrorism charges and sentenced to prison.

When Flight 253 landed in Detroit, the men and women of the FBI and the Department of Justice did precisely what they are trained to do, what their policies require them to do, and what this nation expects them to do. In the face of the emergency, they acted quickly and decisively to ensure the detention and incapacitation of the individual identified as the would-be bomber. They did so by following the established practice and policy of prior and current Administrations, and detained Mr. Abdulmutallab for violations of federal criminal law.

2. Interrogation. The interrogation of Abdulmutallab was handled in accordance with FBI policy that has governed interrogation of every suspected terrorist apprehended in the United States for many years. Across many Administrations, both before and after 9/11, the consistent, well-known, lawful, and publicly-stated policy of the FBI has been to provide Miranda warnings prior to any custodial interrogation conducted inside the United States. The FBI’s current Miranda policy, adopted during the prior Administration, I provides explicitly that “[w]ithin the United States, Miranda warnings are required to be given prior to custodial interviews. . . .,,2 In both terrorism and non-terrorism cases, the widespread experience of law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, is that many defendants will talk and cooperate with law enforcement agents after being informed of their right to remain silent and to consult with an attorney. Examples include L’Houssaine Kherchtou, who was advised of his Miranda rights, cooperated with the government and provided critical intelligence on al-Qaeda, including their interest in using piloted planes as suicide bombers, and Nuradin Abdi, who provided significant information after being repeatedly advised of his Miranda rights over a two week period.

During an international terrorism investigation regarding Operation Crevice, law enforcement agents gained valuable intelligence regarding al-Qaeda military commanders and suspects involved in bombing plots in the U.K. from a defendant who agreed to cooperate after being advised of, and waiving his Miranda rights. Other terrorism subjects cooperate voluntarily with law enforcement without the need to provide Miranda warnings because of the non-custodial nature of the interview or cooperate after their arrest and agree to debriefings in the presence of their attorneys. Many of these subjects have provided vital intelligence on al-Qaeda, including several members of the Lackawanna Six, described above, who were arrested and provided information about the Al Farooq training camp in Afghanistan; and Mohammad Warsame, who voluntarily submitted to interviews with the FBI and provided intelligence on his contacts with al- Qaeda in Afghanistan. There are other examples which I am happy to provide upon request. There are currently other terrorism suspects who have cooperated and are providing valuable intelligence information whose identities cannot be publicly disclosed.

The initial questioning of Abdulmutallab was conducted without Miranda warnings under a public safety exception that has been recognized by the courts.

Subsequent questioning was conducted with Miranda warnings, as required by FBI policy, after consultation between FBI agents in the field and at FBI Headquarters, and career prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office and at the Department of Justice. Neither advising Abdulmutallab of his Miranda rights nor granting him access to counsel prevents us from obtaining intelligence from him, however. On the contrary, history shows that the federal justice system is an extremely effective tool for gathering intelligence. The Department of Justice has a long track record of using the prosecution and sentencing process as a lever to obtain valuable intelligence, and we are actively deploying those tools in this case as well.

Some have argued that had Abdulmutallab been declared an enemy combatant, the government could have held him indefinitely without providing him access to an attorney. But the government’s legal authority to do so is far from clear. In fact, when the Bush administration attempted to deny Jose Padilla access to an attorney, a federal judge in New York rejected that position, ruling that Padilla must be allowed to meet with his lawyer. Notably, the judge in that case was Michael Mukasey, my predecessor as Attorney General. In fact, there is no court-approved system currently in place in which suspected terrorists captured inside the United States can be detained and held without access to an attorney; nor is there any known mechanism to persuade an uncooperative individual to talk to the government that has been proven more effective than the criminal justice system. Moreover, while in some cases defense counsel may advise their clients to remain silent, there are situations in which they properly and wisely encourage cooperation because it is in their client’s best interest, given the substantial sentences they might face.

3. The Criminal Justice System as a National Security Tool. As President Obama has made clear repeatedly, we are at war against a dangerous, intelligent, and adaptable enemy. Our goal in this war, as in all others, is to win. Victory means defeating the enemy without damaging the fundamental principles on which our nation was founded. To do that, we must use every weapon at our disposal. Those weapons include direct military action, military justice, intelligence, diplomacy, and civilian law enforcement. Each of these weapons has virtues and strengths, and we use each of them in the

appropriate situations.

Over the past year, we have used the criminal justice system to disrupt a number of plots, including one in New York and Colorado that might have been the deadliest attack on our country since September 11, 2001, had it been successful. The backbone of that effort is the combined work of thousands of FBI agents, state and local police officers, career prosecutors, and intelligence officials around the world who go to work every day to help prevent terrorist attacks. I am immensely proud of their efforts. At the same time, we have worked in concert with our partners in the military and the Intelligence Community to support their tremendous work to defeat the terrorists and with our partners overseas who have great faith in our criminal justice system.

The criminal justice system has proven to be one of the most effective weapons available to our government for both incapacitating terrorists and collecting intelligence from them. Removing this highly effective weapon from our arsenal would be as foolish as taking our military and intelligence options off the table against al- Qaeda, and as dangerous. In fact, only by using all of our instruments of national power in concert can we be truly effective. As Attorney General, I am guided not by partisanship or political considerations, but by a commitment to using the most effective course of action in each case, depending on the facts of each case, to protect the American people, defeat our enemies, and ensure the rule of law.

I The Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (DIOG) was finalized on December 16,2008. It is the FBI’s manual implementing the Attorney General’s Guidelines for Domestic FBI Operations, which were issued by Attorney General Mukasey on September 29, 2008.

2 FBI policy also reminds agents that “[t]he warning and waiver of rights is not required when questions which are reasonably prompted by a concern for public safety are asked. For example, if Agents make an arrest in public shortly after the commission of an armed offense, and need to make an immediate inquiry to determine the location of the weapon, such questions may be asked, even of an in-custody suspect, without first advising the suspect of [his Miranda rights].” FBI Legal Handbook for Special Agents § 7- 3.2(6). The public-safety exception to Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966), was recognized by the Supreme Court in New York v. Quarles, 467 U.S. 649 (1984).

As Admiral Mullen just testified to Congress, Underwear Bomber Umar Abdulmutallab has been cooperating with the FBI.

The blood-thirsty right, of course, has been screaming all month that Abdulmutallab wasn’t taken immediately to a military facility to be tortured interrogated harshly.

That blood-thirst has always felt rather weird to me. Unlike all the others that the torture industry has made an exhaustive effort to sufficiently dehumanize such that we (or rather they) could all cheer torture, I have a tougher time doing that with Abdulmutallab. I know that Abdulmutallab is at this very minute less than twenty miles away from me (and for two days, he was just a few miles from my house). And even with that proximity, he just doesn’t feel like that big a threat to me right now.

Maybe that’s one reason they’ve been screaming for his torture, to make sure we don’t start to normalize the thought of these people in normal prisons.

Or maybe, they wanted to prevent precisely what has occurred. That is, in response to–presumably–normal FBI interrogation, Abdulmutallab has resumed cooperating with investigators.

They didn’t need to waterboard him!

Surprise, surprise. A month of interrogation works better than a month of waterboarding.

Just go read it. Because every word Glenn Greenwald wrote in his post today, entitled Nostalgia for Bush/Cheney Radicalism, is the gospel truth. It is rare that you will see a post here just pointing you somewhere else because the other source says it all. This is one of those times. Here is a taste:

How much clearer evidence can there be of how warped and extremist we’ve become on these matters? The express policies of the right-wing Ronald Reagan — “applying the rule of law to terrorists”; delegitimizing Terrorists by treating them as “criminals”; and compelling the criminal prosecution of those who authorize torture — are now considered on the Leftist fringe. Merely advocating what Reagan explicitly adopted as his policy — “to use democracy’s most potent tool, the rule of law against” Terrorists — is now the exclusive province of civil liberties extremists. In those rare cases when Obama does what Reagan’s policy demanded in all instances and what even Bush did at times — namely, trials and due process for accused Terrorists — he is attacked as being “Soft on Terror” by Democrats and Republicans alike. And the mere notion that we should prosecute torturers (as Reagan bound the U.S. to do) — or even hold them accountable in ways short of criminal proceedings — is now the hallmark of a Far Leftist Purist. That’s how far we’ve fallen, how extremist our political consensus has become.

Now go read the rest and weep for your country.

Earlier today, bmaz and I asked a series of questions about the significance of Anwar al-Awlaki’s name on the list of US citizens who can be assassinated with no due process.

bmaz: So, the US can put Awlaki on a list for death by assassination, but couldn’t, and apparently still cannot, form the basis to prosecute him criminally??

ew: And cannot prosecute him having had a tap on his phones going back–at the very least–at least a year?

ew: I wonder if [the targeting of Awlaki] is what happened to the William Webster inquiry into Awlaki’s communications with Nidal Hasan?

Today, Declassifed blog’s Mark Coatney asked a related question that I had earlier raised: Why was the Administration, immediately, so chatty about the Underwear Bomber, even while it remains very close-lipped about Nidal Hasan? (The Administration–though not, apparently, Webster–was supposed to brief the Intelligence Committees on the Hasan investigation today, which I guess makes it safe to assume Dana Priest’s article came up in the briefing, if Congress didn’t already know about the assassinations of American citizens.)

Capitol Hill officials say that the Obama White House and relevant government agencies have been very cooperative in supplying congressional oversight committees with a torrent of information—both raw intelligence and law-enforcement material and results of internal administration inquiries—about alleged would-be Christmas Day underpants airplane bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. President Obama and other senior administration officials have said that in the months before Abdulmutallab boarded his flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, U.S. agencies had collected various “bits and pieces” of intelligence, which, had they been properly knitted together, might well have enabled U.S. authorities to foil Abdulmutallab’s attempted airplane bombing before he boarded his flight.

By contrast, the same officials allege that the administration has been relatively tightfisted with information, both from raw intelligence and law-enforcement files and from postmassacre investigations, on the background of the accused Fort Hood shooter. Congressional officials say they don’t know why the administration has been more reticent about Fort Hood than about the failed underpants attack, but that the contrast between how the cases have been treated up until now has been striking.

I’m glad I wasn’t the only one noticing the disparity in treatment of the two extremists.

More interesting than the confirmation that I’m not crazy in seeing the disparity, though, is the timeline revealed in several recent details on Al-Awlaki.

December 17, 2008: Nidal Hasan sends first email to al-Awlaki “asking for an edict regarding the [possibility] of a Muslim soldier killing his colleagues who serve with him in the American army”

November 5, 2009: Hasan killings in Ft. Hood

November 8, 2009: Al-Awlaki blesses Hasan’s killings

November 19, 2009: Underwear Bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s father alerts US embassy of his concerns about his son

December 4, 2009:  Abdulmutallab leaves Yemen, having met with al Qaeda Arabian Peninsula members, possibly including al-Awlaki

December 22, 2009: FBI Deputy Director John Pistole provides classified briefing to Senate Homeland Security Committee on Fort Hood

December 23 (?), 2009: Al-Awlaki does interview with al-Jazeera that is subsequently posted to many jihadi forums

December 24, 2009: Strike in Yemen mistakenly thought to have hit al-Awlaki

December 25, 2009: Abdulmutallab attempts to blow up plane outside of Detroit

December 26, 2009: Crazy Pete Hoekstra says there may have been ties between al-Awlaki and Abdulmutallab

After December 24 but before end of 2009: Al-Awlaki added to JSOC list of those to be killed or captured

December 29: Moonie Times reports that al-Awlaki blessed Abdulmutallab’s plot beforehand (based on intelligence source)

If you match this timeline with the assertion that Awlaki had some tie with Abdulmutallab and that he was placed on the assassination list(s) just after Abdulmutallab’s attempted attack, then it seems clear that, after al-Awlaki’s ties to Hasan became clear, and after the attempted attack in Detroit, the Obama Administration almost immediately placed him on the list. (Note, ABC had one of those dubious Brian Ross pieces on Monday claiming that Al-Awlaki was not yet on the assassination list, and that that was why he had not yet been taken out; that may be why Senior Administration Officials were telling Priest that he was on the list for today’s article.)

That established, let’s go back to bmaz and my questions: I’m not so much interested, now, in how they justified placing him on the assassination list (though that’s obviously still a huge legal issue). Rather, I’m curious how the over a year of intercepts of Al-Awlaki’s communications played into both the lack of attention on Hasan and Abdulmutallab, as well as the quick placement of Al-Awlaki on the assassination list after the attempted Christmas bombing. After all, if Awlaki was such a threat before Hasan’s attack on November 5, why weren’t officials watching him more closely–closely enough to pick up his purported (and less well-proven) role in Abdulmutallab’s preparations? But if there wasn’t anything that damning, then how was it so easy to move Al-Awlaki to the assassination list just after the Christmas bombing attempt? Or is it simply that officials became aware of Al-Awlaki’s ties to Abdulmutallab from the latter’s testimony here in Detroit?

All of which is just an elaborate way of saying their high-falutin’ surveillance is not working. If, after the Hasan connection, they couldn’t keep track of al-Awlaki well enough to have an eye on Abdulmultallab, it’s not doing what it should be (even while our privacy is being sacrificed in the process).

And al-Awlaki, for his part, is rubbing it in. Here’s al-Jazeera’s follow-up to Al-Awlaki’s description of Hasan’s email about whether a Muslim soldier could kill his American colleagues.

Q: “So he asked you that question about a year before the operation was carried out?”

A: “Yes. And I wondered how the American security agencies, who claim to be able to read car license plate numbers from space, everywhere in the world, I wondered how [they did not reveal this].”

Which may get us back to Administration’s reluctance to give more information on Hasan (and therefore, earlier intercepts from al-Awlaki) to Congress.

Now Declassified’s Coatney makes it clear that Congress has gotten many of the intercepts. And, interestingly, al-Awlaki gives fairly detailed–and, according to Coatney’s sources–accurate–descriptions of some, but not all, of the emails Hasan sent him in his al-Jazeera interview.

People familiar with the contents of the secret NSA versions of al-Awlaki–Hasan messages say that the messages described by al-Awlaki in the Al-Jazeera interview do exist and that he describes them accurately, though in the interview he does not describe all the messages that NSA intercepted.

Which leads to al-Awlaki’s accusation that the Administration (not al-Jazeera) is burying the remainder of the emails.

In the interview, al-Awlaki accuses the U.S. government of trying to suppress his correspondence with Hasan and says he has provided Al-Jazeera with copies of the exchange of messages. To date, however, the Web site has not published any of the messages verbatim. The news organization did not reply to a NEWSWEEK e-mail requesting access to the materials, although a reporter involved in the story at one point suggested that he might be willing to share the messages in return for payment, which NEWSWEEK declined.

Like I said, al-Awlaki seems to be rubbing in the fact that US surveillance, though it picked up all these emails, did not prevent the Hasan attack. And remember, this Al-Awlaki interview was just days before the attempted strike on him in Yemen and Abdulmutallab’s attempted strike in Detroit, quite literally when Abdulmutallab was already en route.

All of which doesn’t answer my questions. But does leave me with the lurking suspicion that the Administration is tight-lipped about Hasan’s ties to al-Awlaki–even while boasting that it aims to assassinate the cleric–out of both a delayed alarm at his power and a sense of embarrassment that our great surveillance system doesn’t serve the purpose it’s supposed to.

This Dana Priest article is interesting for the way it fleshes out the way the US is working in Yemen (primarily), Pakistan, and Somalia. But note this line, which she kind of buries in there.

As part of the operations, Obama approved a Dec. 24 strike against a compound where a U.S. citizen, Anwar al-Aulaqi, was thought to be meeting with other regional al-Qaeda leaders. Although he was not the focus of the strike and was not killed, he has since been added to a shortlist of U.S. citizens specifically targeted for killing or capture by the JSOC, military officials said. [my emphasis]

That is, somewhere there’s a list of Americans who, the President has determined, can be killed with no due process.

Priest goes on much later in the article.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush gave the CIA, and later the military, authority to kill U.S. citizens abroad if strong evidence existed that an American was involved in organizing or carrying out terrorist actions against the United States or U.S. interests, military and intelligence officials said. The evidence has to meet a certain, defined threshold. The person, for instance, has to pose “a continuing and imminent threat to U.S. persons and interests,” said one former intelligence official.

The Obama administration has adopted the same stance. If a U.S. citizen joins al-Qaeda, “it doesn’t really change anything from the standpoint of whether we can target them,” a senior administration official said. “They are then part of the enemy.”

Both the CIA and the JSOC maintain lists of individuals, called “High Value Targets” and “High Value Individuals,” whom they seek to kill or capture. The JSOC list includes three Americans, including Aulaqi, whose name was added late last year. As of several months ago, the CIA list included three U.S. citizens, and an intelligence official said that Aulaqi’s name has now been added. [Update, February 17, 2010: WaPo has since retracted the report that CIA had US citizens on its kill list.]

Of course, they said Jose Padilla had close ties to al Qaeda, but those turned out to be more tenuous than originally claimed. Likewise the case against John Walker Lindh. And there are any number of “aspirational” terrorists whom officials have claimed had joined al Qaeda.

But I guess the tenuousness of those ties don’t really matter, when the President can dial up the assassination of an American citizen.

The White House has released its summary of the intelligence review on the Christmas Crotch Bomber (and here is Obama’s order for corrective action). The big take-away is:

The US Government had sufficient information prior to the attempted December 25 attack to have potentially disrupted the AGAP attack.

But, the summary says, the Watch List system and the Intelligence Community are not broken; they just need to be improved.

All well and good.

But I’m curious by the quick turnaround on this report and the lack of any similar unclassified summary of the report on Nidal Hasan’s successful attack. For that matter, William Webster is still working on his review of the Hasan attack (which I understand to be a follow-up to just this kind of initial review).

Does that mean whatever the review found, preliminarily, could not be published? Meanwhile, the military has just appointed a “sanity board” to review Hasan’s competence to stand trial.

As Time admits, the story the Jordanians are telling about the CIA suicide bomber,Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawim may simply be their attempt at spin. Nevertheless, they’re saying that al-Balawi was not a double agent; rather he attacked the base because he was angry about all the civilian deaths

The Jordanians say that in December, al-Balawi requested an urgent meeting with the CIA and his Jordanian go-between, Captain Sharif Ali bin Zeid, reportedly a relation of the royal Jordanian family. To whet their appetite, al-Balawi dangled a tantalizing piece of information: he claimed to have “some information” on the whereabouts of al-Zawahiri, these sources say.

[snip]

So why did al-Balawi, a seemingly trusted agent, switch sides? The Jordanian intelligence sources who spoke to TIME speculate that al-Balawi had become enraged at the Americans for killing a high number of civilians in their hunt for al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders. And al-Balawi, who felt partly responsible for these deaths because of his role in pointing out the targeted villages in which al-Qaeda militants had been hiding, may have been consumed by guilt. “It’s very possible that he decided to take revenge for the death of these Muslim civilians,” says a senior Jordanian official.

I was in my holiday lull last week when the man who wants to be my Governor, Crazy Pete Hoekstra, callously tried to fundraise off of an attempted attack on a flight bound for Michigan.

My promise to you, as your governor, my first duty and most solemn responsibility is to keep Michigan safe!

For almost a decade I have been a leader on National Security and at the forefront of the war on terror. I understand the real and continuing threat radical jihadists pose to our great state of Michigan and our great Nation.

I have pledged that I will do “everything possible” to prevent these terrorists from coming to Michigan.

But I need your help.

If you agree that we need a Governor who will stand up the Obama/Pelosi efforts to weaken our security please make a most generous contribution of $25, $50, $100 or even $250 to my campaign.

Thankfully, for a change, the TradMed was not lulled by Crazy Pete’s fear-mongering. Here’s Terry Moran asking Crazy Pete why he tried to profit off of an attempted terrorist attack aimed at Michigan.

Someone should have told Crazy Pete that filibustering as shamelessly as he did here is a skill best used in the Senate, not in the Governor’s mansion.

Politico is now aiding the fear-mongerers in declaring the Obama’s Administration’s response to a failed terrorist attack a failure (one, two, three, four, balanced by this).

And yet, little mention of the successes the Obama Administration has had: preventing Najibullah Zazi’s alleged attack attempt, rooting out efforts to recruit Somali youth from Minnesota, catching several self-radicalizing Americans. Indeed, the frenzy surrounding the Obama Administration’s failure to prevent a failed attack seems to exceed that surrounding questions about the handling of Nidal Hasan.

Meanwhile, there’s also little mention of the recent reports showing how badly the Bush Administration screwed up the Afghan war–a massive strategic failure that has allowed al Qaeda to sustain its threat. And real hypocrisy about the Bush Administration response to equivalent events, like the Shoe Bomber.

Right Wing Breaking News!! Failure failure failure (if you don’t look closely at all)!!!

But note the silence, thus far, about a real Obama Administration failure. (h/t Calculated Risk)

The Obama administration’s $75 billion program to protect homeowners from foreclosure has been widely pronounced a disappointment, and some economists and real estate experts now contend it has done more harm than good.

Since President Obama announced the program in February, it has lowered mortgage payments on a trial basis for hundreds of thousands of people but has largely failed to provide permanent relief. Critics increasingly argue that the program, Making Home Affordable, has raised false hopes among people who simply cannot afford their homes.

As a result, desperate homeowners have sent payments to banks in often-futile efforts to keep their homes, which some see as wasting dollars they could have saved in preparation for moving to cheaper rental residences. Some borrowers have seen their credit tarnished while falsely assuming that loan modifications involved no negative reports to credit agencies.

Some experts argue the program has impeded economic recovery by delaying a wrenching yet cleansing process through which borrowers give up unaffordable homes and banks fully reckon with their disastrous bets on real estate, enabling money to flow more freely through the financial system.

The Obama Administration’s unwillingness to force the banks sucking at the federal teat to take a haircut on mortgages whose value had been blown out of proportion by a captive mortgage industry is a damning failure, one that may lead us into a double dip recession, one which forces more and more families into dire circumstances. Even if you only care about national security, narrowly defined (as Republicans and Lieberman appear to), if the failure to solve the foreclosure crisis extends the recession, it’ll make it a lot harder to pay for all the cool war toys that seem to give fear-mongers big woodies.

Politico judges that “Democrats’ worst nightmare” is terrorism on their watch. But at some point, captive press and the fear-mongerers need to take a holistic view of America’s overall health. And while the Obama Administration had better make a serious effort to identify where the system failed to identify the underwear bomber and Hasan, we all ought to be a lot more concerned about Obama’s documented, colossal failures to fix the country financially.