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...enemy-combatant option, however, raises a host of thorny legal questions. Since Sept. 11, only two terrorism suspects arrested on American soil - Jose Padilla and Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri - have been designated as enemy combatants; the remainder were captured overseas. Both men were held for years in an offshore Navy brig, as challenges to their detentions dragged through the courts. The legality of their detention on those terms has never been cleanly settled. Just days before the Supreme Court was scheduled to hear arguments in Padilla's case in late 2005, the Bush Justice Department moved the case...
...deadliest in CIA history. That sad honor goes to the 1983 truck bomb that ripped off the face of the U.S. embassy in Lebanon, killing eight members of the Beirut station, among many others. But this suicide bomber, a Jordanian doctor named Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, was the CIA's worst ever security breach. In an era when grandmothers are routinely screened at airports, al-Balawi was whisked into Forward Operating Base Chapman, the CIA headquarters for the drone war against al-Qaeda, without so much as a pat-down. He was then ushered into a meeting with...
...Both of these facts are crucial. The CIA clearly considered this guy a hot ticket, the path - finally - to the al-Qaeda leadership. The idea that so many CIA personnel would attend the meeting, and that it would be held on base, is attributable not only to al-Balawi's perceived importance but also to the CIA's bureaucratic caution: in the past, such a meeting would be held off base, with fewer handlers. But everyone wanted to evaluate this guy in the flesh. The fact that al-Balawi wasn't given even a rudimentary security screening speaks...
...there was also a quieter and potentially more profound reaction: Given the skill of this operation, how trustworthy are the other sources the CIA has been using to help target its drone attacks against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan? The standard claim has been that the CIA's human intelligence against al-Qaeda - and other threats - has improved dramatically in recent years. "In a very perverse way, this attack may be the best testimony of all that human intelligence has improved," said the former official. But spies are, by nature, paranoid, and there will be suspicion now that...
...Saleh, 67, finds his snake-dancing skills being tested as never before. The suspicion that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian who allegedly tried to blow up a flight to Detroit on Christmas Day, trained for his mission with al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen has renewed attention on the nation as a breeding ground for extremists. Saleh - a professed U.S. Ally - has promised action and indeed has sent hundreds of extra soldiers to the front lines of al-Qaeda-dominated territory east of Sana'a. But U.S. officials view him as a fickle leader facing a difficult array of threats - from...