Terrorism News Stories

Excerpts of Key Terrorism News Stories in Major Media

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Note: This comprehensive list of news stories is usually updated once a week. Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.

Revelations that top officials are targeting people to be assassinated abroad, including American citizens, are only the most recent, disturbing proof of how far our nation’s violation of human rights has extended. This development began after [9/11] and has been sanctioned and escalated by bipartisan executive and legislative actions. While the country has made mistakes in the past, the widespread abuse of human rights over the last decade has been a dramatic change from the past. With leadership from the United States, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in 1948 as “the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.” This was a bold and clear commitment that power would no longer serve as a cover to oppress or injure people, and it established equal rights of all people to life, liberty, security of person, equal protection of the law and freedom from torture, arbitrary detention or forced exile. It is disturbing that, instead of strengthening these principles, our government’s counterterrorism policies are now clearly violating at least 10 of the declaration’s 30 articles, including the prohibition against “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” Recent legislation has made legal the president’s right to detain a person indefinitely on suspicion of affiliation with terrorist organizations or “associated forces,” a broad, vague power that can be abused without meaningful oversight from the courts or Congress. This law violates the right to freedom of expression and to be presumed innocent until proved guilty, two other rights enshrined in the declaration.

Note: For revealing reports from major media sources on war crimes committed by US forces in the "global war on terror," click here.

Malaysia is brave to organise a war crimes tribunal and to recognise former United States president George W. Bush and his associates as war criminals. In a public forum entitled "9/11 and the Ecological Crisis", renowned theologian, scholar and author Professor David Ray Griffin praised Malaysia for having the courage to bring these prominent figures to justice and to expose their crimes to the international community. "Someone has to get started somewhere, and this is a good start, Malaysia is ideally placed in this aspect and hopefully the international community will take notice," he said. In his lecture, Griffin also explained his theory on the Sept 11 attacks, claiming that it was a "staged event" and could not have been the work of Muslim terrorists. He explained that the rigid steel columns of the (World Trade Center) twin towers made it impossible for them to crumble unless they had been rigged with explosives. Griffin added that the fires could not have come within 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit of the temperature needed to melt steel. He also alleged that the hijackers had minimal competence to fly single-engine aircraft, let alone be able to handle commercial jets. Griffin noted that more than any others, Muslims have paid the greatest price as a result of 9/11 that later launched the war on terrorism. "We have started something called Consensus 9/11 where we have gathered several experts to provide the world with a clear statement, based on expert independent opinion, of some of the best evidence opposing the official narrative about 9/11."

Note: The New Straits Times is Malaysia's oldest newspaper, founded in 1845. This article is a rare example of objective mainstream press coverage of alternative interpretations of the 9/11 events. WantToKnow team member Prof. David Ray Griffin's most recent book on 9/11 is 9/11 Ten Years Later.

If you thought that the fires at the World Trade Center twin towers, set off by the horrific jetliner impacts of September 11, 2001, were the cause of the destruction of those iconic skyscrapers, you may be mistaken. Experts now cite evidence showing that high-temperature incendiaries and explosives were planted throughout the twin towers and the lesser-known 47-story Building 7, also destroyed later the same day. So says a group of architects and engineers nearly 1700 strong, represented by Richard Gage, AIA, founder of Architects & Engineers For 9/11 Truth and the director/producer of a new documentary. Two years in the making, the documentary "9/11: Explosive Evidence - Experts Speak Out - FINAL EDITION " officially debuted today. The film features 43 experts in building engineering, physics, chemistry, and other technical fields, plus a half-dozen psychologists who discussed the denial of the evidence that the AE911Truth engineers have been seeking to get attention to since the founding of the nonprofit organization in 2007. The group's petition, signed by 14,000 concerned citizens in addition to the architectural and engineering experts, calls upon the U.S. Congress to initiate a new independent investigation. "The official story about the attacks of September 11 falls apart when you look squarely at the facts and apply basic scientific principles to interpret them," says Gage.

Note: For an early version of this powerful documentary, click here. See our 9/11 Information Center for lots more information on the realities behind 9/11.

A U.N. investigator has called on the Obama administration to justify its policy of assassinating rather than capturing al Qaeda or Taliban suspects, increasingly with the use of unmanned drone aircraft that also take civilian lives. Christof Heyns, U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, urged Washington to clarify the basis under international law of the policy, in a report issued overnight to the United Nations Human Rights Council. The U.S. military has conducted drone attacks in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen, in addition to conventional raids and air strikes, according to Heyns, a South African jurist serving in the independent post. Citing figures from the Pakistan Human Rights Commission, he said U.S. drone strikes killed at least 957 people in Pakistan in 2010 alone. Thousands have been killed in 300 drone strikes there since 2004, 20 percent of whom are believed to be civilians." Although figures vary widely with regard to drone attack estimates, all studies concur on one important point: there has been a dramatic increase in their use over the past three years," Heyns said. Human rights law requires that every effort be made to arrest a suspect, in line with the "principles of necessity and proportionality on the use of force", the investigator said.

Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the warcrimes committed by the US military, click here.

Most Americans have gotten used to regular news reports about military and CIA drones attacking terrorist suspects – including US citizens – in Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere abroad. But picture thousands of drone aircraft buzzing around the United States. By some government estimates, as many as 30,000 drones could be part of intelligence gathering and law enforcement here in the United States within the next ten years. Operated by agencies down to the local level, this would be in addition to the 110 current and planned drone activity sites run by the military services in 39 states, reported this week by the Federation of American Scientists, a non-government research project. Civil libertarians warn that “unmanned aircraft carrying cameras raise the prospect of a significant new avenue for the surveillance of American life,” as the American Civil Liberties Union put it in a report last December. “The technology is quickly becoming cheaper and more powerful, interest in deploying drones among police departments is increasing, and our privacy laws are not strong enough to ensure that the new technology will be used responsibly and consistently with democratic values,” reported the ACLU. “In short, all the pieces appear to be lining up for the eventual introduction of routine aerial surveillance in American life.”

Note: For deeper analysis of the threats posed to American citizens by military and police drones in the skies, click here. For information on a federal recent law compelling the Federal Aviation Administration to allow drones to fly in US skies, click here. For more information on the use of drones by police in the US, click here. For lots more from reliable sources on surveillance in the US, click here.

Military researchers are at work on another revolution in the air: shrinking unmanned drones ... to the size of insects and birds. The drones in development ... are designed to replicate the flight mechanics of moths, hawks and other inhabitants of the natural world. “We’re looking at how you hide in plain sight,” said Greg Parker, an aerospace engineer, as he held up a prototype of a mechanical hawk that in the future might carry out espionage or kill. An explosion in aerial drones is transforming the way America fights and thinks about its wars. Predator drones ... are by now a brand name, known and feared around the world. But far less known is the sheer size, variety and audaciousness of a rapidly expanding drone universe, along with the dilemmas that come with it. The Pentagon now has some 7,000 aerial drones, compared with fewer than 50 a decade ago. Within the next decade the Air Force anticipates a decrease in manned aircraft but expects its number of “multirole” aerial drones like the Reaper — the ones that spy as well as strike — to nearly quadruple, to 536. Already the Air Force is training more remote pilots, 350 this year alone, than fighter and bomber pilots combined. “It’s a growth market,” said Ashton B. Carter, the Pentagon’s chief weapons buyer. The Pentagon has asked Congress for nearly $5 billion for drones next year, and by 2030 envisions ever more stuff of science fiction: “spy flies” equipped with sensors and microcameras to detect enemies

Note: Ashton B. Carter, CIA director John Deutch, and executive director of the 9/11 Commission Philip Zelikow co-authored a 1998 article in the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations, Foreign Affairs, titled "Catastrophic Terrorism". It predicted, years in advance, a massive attack on the World Trade Center that would result in loss of civil liberties, detention without charge, torture, and endless wars abroad. The Pentagon's weapons-buying spree, now including billions of dollars for drones to be used over US soil, and for which Carter is the "chief weapons buyer," would have been impossible without the 9/11 attacks.

Drone aircraft spy on and attack terrorists with no pilot in harm's way. Small teams of special operations troops quietly train and advise foreign forces. Viruses sent from computers to foreign networks strike silently, with no American fingerprint. It's war in the shadows, with the U.S. public largely in the dark. The high-tech warfare allows Obama to target what the administration sees as the greatest threats to U.S. security, without the cost and liabilities of sending a swarm of ground troops to capture territory; some of them almost certainly would come home maimed or dead. But it also raises questions about accountability and the implications for international norms regarding the use of force outside of traditional armed conflict. "Congressional oversight of these operations appears to be cursory and insufficient," said Steven Aftergood, an expert on government secrecy issues for the Federation of American Scientists, a private group. "It is Congress' responsibility to declare war under the Constitution, but instead it appears to have adopted a largely passive role while the executive takes the initiative in war fighting," Aftergood said in an interview. That's partly because lawmakers relinquished their authority by passing a law just after the Sept. 11 [attacks]. In this shroud of secrecy, leaks to the news media of classified details about certain covert operations have led to charges that the White House orchestrated the revelations to bolster Obama's national security credentials and thereby improve his re-election chances.

Note: For deeper analysis of the threats posed to American citizens by military and police drones in the skies, click here. For information on a federal recent law compelling the Federal Aviation Administration to allow drones to fly in US skies, click here. For more information on the use of drones by police in the US, click here. For lots more from reliable sources on surveillance in the US, click here.

New evidence shows that the September 11th activities of former President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld were falsely reported by official sources. The 20-member 9/11 Consensus Panel analyzed evidence from press reports, FOIA requests, and archived 9/11 Commission file documents to produce eight new studies, released today. The international panel also [determined] that four massive aerial practice exercises traditionally held in October were in full operation on 9/11. The largest, Global Guardian, held annually by NORAD and the U.S. Strategic and Space Commands, had originally been scheduled for October 22-31 but was moved, along with Vigilant Guardian, to early September. Although senior officials claimed no one could have predicted [the use of] hijacked planes as weapons, the military had been practicing similar exercises on 9/11 itself -- and for years before it. Official sources claimed neither Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Joint Chiefs of Staff Acting Chairman General Richard Myers (filling in for General Hugh Shelton), nor war-room chief General Montague Winfield were available to take command until well after the Pentagon was struck about 9:37. Yet emerging documents and memoirs show that top leaders were engaged earlier -- and later discussed a shootdown of [United Airlines] Flight 93 before debris was scattered widely around its alleged Shanksville, Pennsylvania crash site. Most intriguing is the mystery of who was running the Pentagon's war-room during the critical early hours.

Note: To examine the evidence presented by the 9/11 Consensus Panel which refutes the questionable accounts of the whereabouts and activities of key political and military leaders provided by The 9/11 Commission Report, as well as the best evidence concerning other claims of the official story of 9/11, click here.

The Kuala Lumpur Tribunal's indictment of President George W. Bush and his deputies for war crimes sets a new precedent. The [tribunal] ruled in the second week of May that George W. Bush, former President of the United States, and six members of his administration were guilty of war crimes. The tribunal, after recording eyewitness accounts of torture victims in a trial that lasted five days, pronounced that Bush, his Vice-President, Dick Cheney, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and five senior officials who had sought to provide legal cover for the [invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq] were guilty of “war crimes”. The American invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan has resulted in the death of more than a million people.. Richard Falk, Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University, observed that [only] leaders from countries that opposed the interests of the West were held accountable to international criminal law. He pointed out that the ICC's Special Court on Sierra Leone had been financed by the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and the Netherlands. Companies from these countries have big interests in the diamond trade. With Taylor now out of the scene, Western companies are back in the lucrative diamond trade. Falk ... observed that the U.S., more than any other country in the world, “holds itself self-righteously aloof from accountability on the main ground that any judicial process might be tainted by political motivations”. The U.S. has signed with over 100 countries agreements that prohibit the handing over of any U.S. citizen to the ICC.

Note: For an insightful analysis of the cooptation of the ICC by imperial powers, click here.

Mr. Obama has placed himself at the helm of a top secret "nominations" process to designate terrorists for kill or capture, of which the capture part has become largely theoretical. Mr. Obama ... insisted on approving every new name on an expanding "kill list," poring over terrorist suspects' biographies. When a rare opportunity for a drone strike at a top terrorist arises -- but his family is with him -- it is the president who has reserved to himself the final moral calculation. In interviews with The New York Times, three dozen of his current and former advisers described Mr. Obama's evolution since taking on the role, without precedent in presidential history, of personally overseeing the shadow war. They describe a paradoxical leader who shunned the legislative deal-making required to close the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, but approves lethal action without hand-wringing. When he applies his lawyering skills to counterterrorism, it is usually to enable, not constrain, his ferocious campaign ... even when it comes to killing an American cleric in Yemen, a decision that Mr. Obama told colleagues was "an easy one." Beside the president at every step is his counterterrorism adviser, John O. Brennan, who is variously compared by colleagues to a dogged police detective, tracking terrorists from his cavelike office in the White House basement, or a priest whose blessing has become indispensable to Mr. Obama, echoing the president's attempt to apply the "just war" theories of Christian philosophers to a brutal modern conflict.

Note: For further analysis of Obama’s role in the selection of drone missile targets, click here.

From Pakistan to Somalia, CIA-controlled pilotless aircraft rain down Hellfire missiles on an ever-expanding hit list of terrorist suspects – they have already killed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of civilians in the process. At least 15 drone strikes have been launched in Yemen this month, as many as in the whole of the past decade, killing dozens; while in Pakistan, a string of US attacks has been launched against supposed "militant" targets in the past week, incinerating up to 35 people and hitting a mosque and a bakery. But then Predators and Reapers are Barack Obama's weapons of choice and coercion, deployed only on the territory of troublesome US allies, such as Pakistan and Yemen – and the drone war is Obama's war. In his first two years in office, the US president more than tripled the number of attacks in Pakistan alone. Since 2004, between 2,464 and 3,145 people are reported to have been killed by US drone attacks in Pakistan, of whom up to 828 were civilians (535 under Obama) and 175 children. Some Pakistani estimates put the civilian death toll much higher – plausibly, given the tendency to claim as "militants" victims later demonstrated to be nothing of the sort. The US president insisted recently that the civilian death toll was not a "huge number". These killings are, in reality, summary executions and widely regarded as potential war crimes by international lawyers. The CIA's now retired counsel, John Rizzo, who authorised drone attacks, himself talked about having been involved in "murder".

Note: For a deep analysis of how killer drone technology and the concept of ‘remote war’ have altered the balance of options available to our political and military leaders and made the political cost of military intervention much lower than it had previously been, click here.

Today marks two years of imprisonment of Private Bradley Manning. The US government was going to use Manning as a warning to anyone else who might feel compelled to report on war crimes, or any other crimes they witness from within the system. Blow the whistle, goes the warning, and you will be buried alive by the state, shredded by the same secrecy machine a whistleblower would try to expose. Because of courage and creativity of activists, Bradley Manning has not been forgotten, even if that was the aim of authorities, and he never shall be forgotten. His case has been largely shunned by most of the mainstream media, especially in the US. This needs to change, because if he is indeed found guilty of being a whistleblower of such magnitude that it shook the entire secrecy machine of our world out of its comfort zone, his acts would need to be honored as an inspiration to change the way governments hide the reality of their actions from the people they are supposed to be serving and informing. Manning should not be convicted in secret: the media should be given access to the court filings; and the media should be pushing harder for the first amendment of the US constitution to be honored in the Manning case.

Note: For key reports on government secrecy from reliable sources, click here.

As NATO protesters marched by the hundreds to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s house, three others were in court Saturday facing terrorism charges for allegedly planning to bomb the mayor’s residence, police stations and Obama’s campaign headquarters during the upcoming summit. Three men who had been arrested in a raid Wednesday appeared before a Cook County judge, charged with conspiracy to commit terrorism, possession of an explosive device and providing material support for terrorism. The men ... are being held on $1.5 million bond. Prosecutors alleged they had made Molotov cocktails and had discussed using other weapons, including swords and knives. Lawyers for the suspects disputed those claims. “There are a lot of sensational allegations being made,” said Kris Hermes, a spokesman for the National Lawyers Guild. “This is obviously an effort to chill dissent ahead of the NATO demonstrations.” As darkness fell, the crowds of protesters who gathered to show support to the terror suspects swelled to nearly 1,000, and there were several tense scuffles with police. At least 10 more protesters were detained, Hermes said.

Note: This entire article contains almost nothing about the trumped up charges against these protestors. You can learn more about police provocation of the group at this link.

FBI director Robert S. Mueller III today disclosed that the FBI is investigating leaks to the news media about the recently disrupted plot by Al Qaeda’s Yemen affiliate to smuggle a bomb designed to be concealed in underwear onto a U.S. bound jet. The plans for the attack, which featured a more sophisticated version of the device the “underwear bomber” of Christmas 2009 was arrested with, were first revealed by the AP. But a day later, it was revealed that the individual at the center of the plot was a double agent working for Britain’s MI-6 secret intelligence service and the CIA along with Saudi Arabian intelligence assets. “We have initiated an investigation into this leak,” Mueller testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. Justice Department officials and an FBI spokesman declined to comment on the nature of the investigation. The CIA also declined comment. Matthew Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, addressed the issue of media leaks relating to the plot and called it “devastating.”

Note: Yes, it's devastating to the image of the FBI to be caught aiding terrorist plots. Now why isn't the government investigating why the FBI is doing such things? For lots more from reliable sources on the games intelligence agencies play, click here.

A judge on [May 16] blocked enforcement of a recently enacted law's provision that authorizes indefinite military detention for those deemed to have "substantially supported" al Qaeda, the Taliban or "associated forces." District Judge Katherine Forrest in Manhattan ruled in favor of a group of civilian activists and journalists who said they feared being detained under a section of the law, which was signed by President Barack Obama in December 2011. "In the face of what could be indeterminate military detention, due process requires more," the judge said. She added that it was in the public interest to reconsider the law so that "ordinary citizens are able to understand the scope of conduct that could subject them to indefinite military detention." By issuing a preliminary injunction, the judge prevents the U.S. government from enforcing section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act's "Homeland Battlefield" provisions. During day-long oral arguments in March, Forrest heard lawyers for former New York Times war correspondent and Pulitzer Prize winner Chris Hedges and others argue that the law would have a "chilling effect" on their work. The judge said she worried at the government's reluctance ... to specify whether examples of the plaintiffs' activities ... would fall under the scope of the provision. "Failure to be able to make such a representation... requires the court to assume that, in fact, the government takes the position that a wide swath of expressive and associational conduct is in fact encompassed by 1021," the judge wrote.

Note: For more on the courageous journalist behind this lawsuit, Chris Hedges, see his excellent columns at this link. For reports from major media sources on governmental threats to civil liberties, click here.

A would-be "underwear bomber" involved in a plot to attack a US-based jet was in fact working as an undercover informer with Saudi intelligence and the CIA, it has emerged. The revelation is the latest twist in an increasingly bizarre story about the disruption of an apparent attempt by al-Qaida to strike at a high-profile American target using a sophisticated device hidden in the clothing of an attacker. The news that the individual at the heart of the bomb plot was in fact an informer for US intelligence is likely to raise just as many questions as it answers. Citing US and Yemeni officials, Associated Press reported that the unnamed informant was working under cover for the Saudis and the CIA when he was given the bomb, which was of a new non-metallic type aimed at getting past airport security. The informant then turned the device over to his handlers and has left Yemen, the officials told the news agency.

Note: For more on this bizarre news, see the CBS report at this link. Isn't it amazing how many terrorist groups have undercover FBI and CIA agents involved in actually pushing plots forward? One has to wonder how far the plots would go without prompting by intelligence insiders. For a powerful BBC documentary suggesting that terrorism is pushed and sold by politicians for a deeper agenda, click here.

A cycle of overhyped terror plots involving government agency entrapment feeds a multimillion-dollar surveillance industry. The news stories ... quickly surface, long enough to cause scary headlines, then vanish before people can learn how often the cases are thrown out. These are stories about "bumbling fantasists", hapless druggies, the aimless, even the virtually homeless and mentally ill, and other marginal characters with not the strongest grip on reality, who have been lured into discourses about violence against America only after assiduous courting, and in some cases outright payment, by undercover FBI or police informants. But the tales of entrapment and terror hype continue apace – ten years after 9/11. Now we have another "underwear bomber" – declared by the Pentagon to have been about to launch a major attack via a US-bound plane, but who appears, reportedly, to have been a CIA-run double agent. What is the evidence that the "device", which is supposedly so sophisticated that there is doubt as to whether existing surveillance technologies in US airports would have caught it, actually exists? It is important to note that we can no longer assume that the FBI and the CIA and the NSA work ... for the safety of the American people; they [now] represent a revolving door of government officials who become security industry lobbyists and manufacturers, which, in turn, get the multimillion-dollar contracts for tackling the very problems these stories [hype].

Note: For more on this bizarre news, see the CBS report at this link. Isn't it amazing how many terrorist groups have undercover FBI and CIA agents involved in actually pushing plots forward? One has to wonder how far the plots would go without prompting by intelligence insiders. For a powerful BBC documentary suggesting that terrorism is pushed and sold by politicians for a deeper agenda, click here.

The five men accused of plotting the Sept. 11 attacks used their weekend war court appearances to stage “peaceful resistance to an unjust system” being used for political reasons, defense lawyers said Sunday — a day after the 9/11-accused turned the judge’s plans to hold a simple arraignment into a 13-hour marathon of prayer and protest. “The system is a rigged game to prevent us from doing our jobs,” argued criminal defense attorney David Nevin, accusing the prison camp commander of making it impossible to learn from alleged mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed how the CIA waterboarded him 183 times and used other since-outlawed techniques to break him. “The government wants to kill Mr. Mohammed,” Nevin said, “to extinguish the last eyewitness to his torture.” Each of the accused steadfastly refused to answer basic questions posed to them by Army Col. James L. Pohl, the war court’s chief judge, on whether they accepted their Pentagon-appointed attorneys. Instead, they periodically disrupted the proceedings with demonstrations of Muslim prayer and protests of prison conditions. “These men have endured years of inhumane treatment and torture” that will “infect every aspect of this military commission tribunal,” attorney James Connell III warned.

Note: For key reports from reliable sources on the destruction of civil liberties in the name of the "global war on terror," click here.

America's top military officer [the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey] has condemned a course taught about Islam at one of America's top military schools as "totally objectionable". The course taught officers there was no such thing as moderate Islam and that they should consider the religion their enemy. It advocated "total war" against all the world's Muslims, including possible nuclear attacks on the holy cities of Mecca and Medina and the wiping out [of] civilian populations. The Pentagon has confirmed [that] the course material found on their website is authentic. This is not ... a rather sick academic exercise in stretching the bounds of what could be thought. It is actually what the officer teaching it believes. In other words: completely nutty stuff that would disgrace the wilder fringes of the blogosphere. The voluntary course aimed at senior officers was taught at the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia, for a year. It came to light when one of the officers on the course complained last month. There is now an investigation into how the course was approved and why it was part of the curriculum. A lieutenant colonel has been suspended from teaching, but for the moment keeps his job.

Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the extremism evident in the prosecution of the "global war on terror," click here.

The Pentagon is planning to ramp up its spying operations against high-priority targets such as Iran under an intelligence reorganization aimed at expanding on the military’s espionage efforts beyond war zones. The newly created Defense Clandestine Service would work closely with the CIA ... in an effort to bolster espionage operations overseas at a time when the missions of the agency and the military increasingly converge. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, who signed off on the newly created service last week, served as CIA director at a time when the agency relied extensively on military hardware, including armed drones. Michael Vickers, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence and the main force behind the changes, is best known as one of the architects of the CIA’s program to arm Islamist militants to oust the Soviets from Afghanistan in the 1980s. He is also a former member of U.S. Special Operations forces. Despite the potentially provocative name for the new service, the official played down concerns that the Pentagon was seeking to usurp the role of the CIA or its National Clandestine Service. The new service fits into a broader convergence trend. U.S. Special Operations forces are increasingly engaged in intelligence collection overseas and have collaborated with the CIA on missions. The blurring is also evident in the organizations’ upper ranks. Panetta previously served as CIA director.

Note: For lots more from major media sources on the activities of government intelligence agencies, click here.

Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.