Welcome OTB readers . . . Christine Axsmith, a software contractor for the CIA, considered her blog a success within the select circle of people who could actually access it. Only people with top-secret security clearances could read her musings, which were posted on Intelink, the intelligence community’s classified intranet. Writing as Covert Communications, CC…

U.S. officials said Tuesday the U.S. intelligence community was grappling with policies to effectively share information. […] Rep. Rob Simmons, R-Conn., chairman of the Homeland Security Intelligence Subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives, said he was not satisfied with progress on reforming national intelligence capabilities to counter threats. […] The U.S. Congress mandated modernization…

Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte may have his eye on history as he attempts to secure a prime downtown Washington property – Navy Hill, overlooking the Potomac River – for his headquarters. During World War II, the property’s gracious Central Building, constructed in 1910, served as the home office for William “Wild Bill”…

The Transportation Security Administration, which has faced start-up pains for much of the past four years, is expanding career opportunities for passenger and baggage screeners in hopes of reducing staff turnover and improving aviation security. For the most part, TSA screeners have had little chance to advance in their jobs, and many have quit because…

Now is the time to tell our soldiers in Iraq that “hot pursuit” is okay, that the terrorist training camps on both sides of Iraq are legitimate targets, to be attacked in self-defense. Now is the time to tell the Iraqi government to come forward with the abundant evidence of Iranian evil-doing, and that we…

More a current events than an intel post, so pardon the interruption . . . So I’m reading about Hezbollah rocket attacks against Nazareth and for some reason I’m taken back to the spring of 2001 when the Taliban blew up the Bamiyan Buddhas and I wonder: how soon before there is no physical evidence…

An internal investigation by the [FBI’s] Office of Professional Responsibility found “sufficient circumstantial evidence” that Special Agent Bassem Youssef was blocked from a counterterrorism assignment in 2002 after he and U.S. Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.) met with FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III to discuss Youssef’s complaints. […]   Youssef, who served as FBI…

SOI reminds us that success in this fight means less about territory than some would suggest. The down-side; it means that it’ll get uglier before it gets prettier.

Iran’s Hizbollah, which claims links to the Lebanese group of the same name, said on Tuesday it stood ready to attack Israeli and U.S. interests worldwide.”We have 2,000 volunteers who have registered since last year,” said Iranian Hizbollah’s spokesman Mojtaba Bigdeli, speaking by telephone from the central seminary city of Qom. Somewhere in the Pentagon,…

. . . to come out of the IC in a long time: Many U.S. intelligence agencies as well as the congressional intelligence oversight committees hire their senior staff from a predictable, somewhat in-grown pool of personnel, which frequently includes those who have previously worked in the intelligence field since they can be immediately cleared.…