Incomprehensibly, there are reports that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has decided to oust fellow Rep. Jane Harman of California in January as the top Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Mrs. Pelosi intends to replace Mrs. Harman in her Intelligence Committee leadership role with Rep. Alcee Hastings of Florida, who, depending…

Spooky86 sends out a Warning Report: From today’s Financial Times comes word that North Korea may be planning a test-launch of its Tapeo Dong 2 (TD-2) missile from a test site along its northeastern coast. A test launch of the missile’s medium-range predecessor (designated the TD-1) created an international incident in 1998, when the missile…

WaPo associated editor Robert Kaiser tries to justify the publication of secrets. The gem: Labeling something “classified” or important to “national security” does not make it so. The government overclassifies with abandon. And the definition of “national security” is elusive. Some politicians act as though revealing any classified information threatens our nation’s security, but that…

Via Powerline: All that paper, all those hard drives, all those unanswered questions, so little time . . . What’s that you say? The war is over? This is just history? The war is approaching the 30-year mark with no sign of respite as long as we keep deluding ourselves that martial victory in a…

Real insecure: The Department of Homeland Security allowed a man to enter its headquarters last week using a fake Matricula Consular card as identification, despite federal rules that say the Mexican-issued card is not valid ID at government buildings. Bruce DeCell, a retired New York City police officer, used his phony card — which lists…

A computer hacker got into the U.S. agency that guards the country’s nuclear weapons stockpile and stole the personal records of at least 1,500 employees and contractors, a senior U.S. lawmaker said on Friday. The target of the hacker, the National Nuclear Safety Administration, is the latest agency to reveal that sensitive private information about…

Military officials insist their case [in 2003] for attacking Zarqawi¹s operation [a terrorist camp in Iraq] was airtight, but the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam. Al-Qaida in Iraq before the war. Iraq, that place run by Saddam, the guy who would never work with…

[…] what the Americans had always lacked was someone from inside Mr. Zarqawi’s network, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, who would betray … According to a Pentagon official, the Americans finally got one. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because details of the raid are classified, said that an Iraqi informant inside Al Qaeda…

A former FBI agent who once faced up to 15 years in federal prison for allegedly tipping off a family friend that he was suspected of spying for the Chinese pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor offense Wednesday. By all public accounts the PRC CI squad is if f’ed up beyond repair, but a year…

Actually, it was going on well before the late Mr. Z got into the game but that’s OK; they’re trying to pay attention and it is better late than never.