His plan was to rip apart nightclubs with explosives, unleash a wave of destruction on bridges, and open fire on police officers–all in sunny Florida. This was the murderous intent of Sami Osmakac, 25, an American citizen from the former Yugoslavia who was determined to spill blood, foment destruction, and bring terror to the United States all in the name of Allah. Fortunately, undercover FBI agents thwarted his efforts, making this the 44th foiled terrorist plot against America. Osmakac’s plot is a not-so-subtle reminder that terrorists lurk not only in …
The House of Representatives today is due to take up the 2012 funding bill for the Department of Defense, and as Heritage’s Cully Stimson writes in today’s Washington Times, it’s bringing with it some controversy: [The bill] reaffirms that the United States is in a state of armed conflict with “al Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces” and that the president has authority to “detain certain belligerents until the termination of hostilities.”Neither statement presents anything new. The first simply reflects the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). The …
Last week, the American Society of Magazine Editors’ awarded writer Scott Horton with their National Magazine Award for Reporting. The problem is, his story was a complete fiction and its flaws had been exposed from every conceivable quarter. It was June 2006 and the phone rang in the middle of the night. I knew it had to be something bad. My employee on the other end of the line said, “three detainees killed themselves at Gitmo.” As the head of detainee policy at the Pentagon, I ordered him to get …
WikiLeaks, which has been sitting on an enormous cache of classified U.S. government documents, released another batch of materials to U.S. and European news “partners” including The New York Times. According to press reports, the documents include “intelligence assessments of nearly every one of the 779 individuals who have been held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since 2002. In them, analysts have created detailed portraits of detainees based on raw intelligence, including material gleaned from interrogations.” A Pentagon official stated, “[i]t is unfortunate that several news organizations have made the decision …
After taking office earlier this year, President Obama issued an executive order to close the detention facilities by the end of the year, without a plan for the relocation of over 200 detainees currently housed at the base. One option that I do not support is bringing the detainees here to the States for trial and placing them in our federal prisons. Many of the detainees pose a serious threat to our national security. The Pentagon just released a report stating that one in seven of the detainees that have been released …
It would all make for a great half-hour sitcom. First, they released classified memos on interrogation practices used to grill terrorists. Then, the White House promised the ACLU that they were going to release photos showing detainees being interrogated. Then, White House officials said they were not going to release photos of the Air Force One photo-op that sent New Yorkers screaming into the streets—because they were “classified.” Then they announced they were going to release to release the “classified” Big Apple Air Force One shots. Then they threatened to …
