By Bill Mears
CIA secret interrogation methods - including detention and harsh questioning of suspected terrorists - remain off limits to public release, a federal appeals court ruled Monday.
The agency was sued eight years ago to provide details of certain communications describing the use of waterboarding and other direct intelligence-gathering methods of foreign terror suspects. A three-judge panel from the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled "intelligence methods" are not subject to a Freedom of Information Act request from the lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union.
"We give substantial weight to the government's declarations, which establish that disclosing the redacted portions of the (secret memos) would reveal the existence and scope of a highly classified, active intelligence activity," said the judges. FULL POST
Editor's note: Read all of Security Clearance's coverage of the 2012 NATO summit in Chicago. Follow our reporting and other key NATO tweets with our NATO summit Twitter list.
Two suspects who appeared in court in Cook County, Illinois, on Sunday are not believed to be part of an alleged terror plot in Chicago during the NATO summit, prosecutors said Sunday.
Instead, charges against the two arose from "related investigations," authorities said.
Three men had previously been charged in the NATO plot, with authorities saying they planned to target President Barack Obama's campaign headquarters, the home of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and several other law enforcement and financial sites.
The three men charged in the NATO plot were identified as Brian Church, 22, of Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Jared Chase, 27, of Keene, New Hampshire; and Brent Betterly, 24, who told police he resides in Massachusetts, authorities said. An Illinois judge set bail at $1.5 million for each. FULL POST
By Barbara Starr
The Yemeni branch of al Qaeda now has "a whole outfit designated to target the U.S. homeland," according to a source closely working with U.S. intelligence agencies and the military.
In addition, the U.S. now believes Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is working on "several types of bombs" that could get past airport x-ray screening machines.
Recommended: Saudi mole in bomb plot held British passport
The bomb technology is aimed at targeting the U.S., according to the source.
Although the group has not yet succeeded in any of their bomb plots against the U.S., there are several bomb makers and a group of would-be suicide bombers inside the group, which operates out of rudimentary training camps in southern Yemen. FULL POST
Three months before he was killed by a U.S. drone strike, Fahd al Quso, one of al Qaeda's top operatives in Yemen, spoke at length to a local journalist. He was asked why al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula had stopped plotting against the United States. Was it because all efforts were devoted to an internal project?
"The war didn't end between us and our enemies. Wait for what is coming," al Quso replied.
It seems al Quso, the head of the group's external operations, wasn't bluffing after the recent discovery of a device designed to be carried aboard an airliner by a suicide bomber without detection.
U.S. officials describe the device as an evolution of the bomb smuggled aboard a U.S.-bound plane on Christmas Day 2009 by a young Nigerian, Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab.
By Larry Shaughnessy
The Obama administration's struggle over how to handle the prisoners and prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, enters a new chapter Saturday when a military judge there will convene an arraignment for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other men for their alleged roles in the September 11 terrorist attacks.
It could be a routine military commission hearing, with charges being read and pleas being entered, or it could be the latest act of a legal and political free-for-all.
"I've had conversations with other people who believe the circus is going to begin with the first appearance," said Rear Adm. Donald Guter, who once served as the Navy's top lawyer. FULL POST
By Pam Benson
The dire impact of CIA drone missile strikes against suspected terrorists in Pakistan certainly did not go unnoticed by Osama bin Laden, prompting the al Qaeda leader to repeatedly warn associates to take appropriate security measures, according to documents seized during the raid on the al Qaeda leader's Pakistan compound last year.
Read: Security Clearance's coverage of the Osama bin Laden documents
The letters written by bin Laden were among a number of documents released to the public on Thursday by West Point's Combating Terrorism Center.
In an October 2010 letter to Atiyya Abdul Rahman, al Qaeda's top operational planner, bin Laden noted the experience the United States had in using drones to monitor activities in the tribal areas of Pakistan where many of al Qaeda's core members operated.
"They can distinguish between houses frequented by men at a higher rate than usual. Also, the visiting person might be tracked without him knowing," he wrote.
By Mike Mount
Osama bin Laden ordered suicide squads to be created in Pakistan and Afghanistan for the sole reason of tracking down President Obama and Gen. David Petraeus, who was then the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, according to a letter written by bin Laden in May of 2010.
Read: Security Clearance's coverage of the Osama bin Laden documents
The letter, released by West Point's Combating Terrorism Center, published some of the documents captured in the bin Laden raid last May. A review of the letters released publicly Thursday offer insight into the top leader's thinking and planning as he remained hidden from global view but still tried to have a hand in directing his organization, al Qaeda.
The al Qaeda leader asked his lieutenants to identify people in both countries who could keep an eye out for Obama and Petraeus and conduct suicide operations against them as they traveled in either country. FULL POST
By Tim Lister
After years of isolation at his Abbottabad compound, Osama bin Laden's frustration was growing. He couldn't rein in groups that had taken the al Qaeda name but took little or no notice of "headquarters." He seemed even envious of their freedom to operate and of the money they had, and he was still yearning to get operatives into the United States.
Read: Security Clearance's coverage of the Osama bin Laden documents
Among the letters seized during the Abbottabad raid a year ago and released Thursday by the Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) at West Point, there's plentiful evidence that bin Laden was distressed by the behavior of affiliates in Iraq, Yemen and Pakistan - and especially the casualties among Muslim civilians they were inflicting.
By 2010, the al Qaeda leader was even suggesting a fresh start. FULL POST
Scores of pages of al Qaeda documents seized in last year's U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden were released Thursday.
They comprise 175 pages in the original Arabic of letters and drafts from bin Laden and other key al Qaeda figures, including the American Adam Gadahn and Abu Yahya al-Libi.
Throughout the day, Security Clearance will be posting new stories here
The Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York, published the papers on its website. Here are the center's brief description of the documents. You can click the links for the English translations: FULL POST
By Tim Lister and Paul Cruickshank
The editor and star contributor may be dead, but that hasn't prevented al Qaeda in Yemen from issuing the eighth and ninth editions of its online English-language magazine, Inspire.
The eighth edition of the high-color magazine includes the most detailed advice yet from radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki on launching attacks against Western countries. In a five-page article entitled "Targeting the Populations of Countries at War With Muslims," al-Awlaki justifies the killing of women and children and the use of chemical and biological weapons in addition to bombings and gun attacks.
Al-Awlaki and the man widely believed to have been Inspire's editor, former North Carolina blogger Samir Khan, were both killed in a drone attack in September in Yemen. It's unclear why it's taken so long to publish their articles. FULL POST
What's the status of al Qaeda a year after Osama bin Laden's death and what do we know now that we didn't know then? 
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