Did the president hit delete on his national security stump speech?
By Dan Lothian, reporting from Athens Ohio
A standard line in the president's stump speech that touts his administration's efforts to target al Qaeda has been missing from recent stops, in the wake of the Libya terror attacks.
"I said we'd refocus on the people who actually attacked us on 9/11, and today al Qaeda is on the run and Osama bin Laden is dead," the president has said.
Click here for the FULL STORY
Accused 9/11 mastermind says U.S. tortured in name of national security
By Paul Courson
Accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed asserted on Wednesday that the U.S. government sanctioned torture in the name of national security, and compared the scale of the terror attack that killed nearly 3,000 people to the "millions" he said have been killed by America's military.
"Many can kill people under the name of national security, and torture people under the name of national security," Mohammed said during a pretrial hearing at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
"This is a resilient definition," he said in open court, as military censors stood ready to interrupt the video and audio.
"Every dictator can put on shoes to step on this definition, every law, every constitution, with this definition any can evade the rule and also go against it," he said.
He also compared the nearly 3,000 victims killed in the 9/11 hijack attacks in New York, Washington and western Pennsylvania to killings he blamed on the American military that he said number in the "millions."
U.S. official: CIA officer killed in Afghanistan
By Mike Mount with reporting from Chris Lawrence, Suzanne Kelly and Pam Benson
A CIA officer was among those killed in Afghanistan in a suicide attack that also killed an American soldier, according to a U.S. official.
The attack, which occurred Saturday in southern Kandahar province, also killed four Afghan National Security troops, according to a U.S official with knowledge of the details of the attack.
The attack is believed to have been a case of an Afghan security force member attacking his own forces, the official said.
Syrian rebels said to cut deals for arms from extremists
By Chris Lawrence
Syrian rebels are through waiting for substantial arms from western nations and Arab countries and are instead increasingly cutting their own deals to get weapons from extremists, including al Qaeda-like groups, a senior U.S. lawmaker told CNN.
"Even rebels we've identified as somebody we could work with have partnered with jihadists, because they have their own sources of money and weapons," House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers said in an interview.
Also: The lure of jihad and the danger to Euope
The Obama administration has been cautiously aiding in the vetting of Syrian rebels, and sticking to its policy of only providing non-lethal aid like computers and satellite communication gear.
FULL POST
Taking tea with a terrorist
By Paul Cruickshank
He didn't look like a hardened terrorist. A short, meek man with a neatly cropped beard and glasses, Moez Garsallaoui was shy and courteous. He served me and a CNN crew sweet Moroccan tea and north African cakes in the living room of the pinewood Swiss chalet he shared with his Belgian-Moroccan wife.
That was in 2006. Fast forward to the present: A posting on the Shumukh al-Islam Jihadist forum Monday said Garsallaoui had been killed in "a cowardly, treacherous raid" somewhere in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region. He was 44.
In the intervening six years, he had become a jihadist of some standing, and may have influenced the young Frenchman who carried out a string of shootings in southwest France earlier this year.
"We received the painful news about the killing of another hero of the heroes of this Ummah, and one of its best," the posting by a militant calling himself Abu al-Laith al-Waziri stated, according to a translation by the SITE Intelligence Group.
FULL POST
Man arrested in plot to blow up New York Fed
Federal authorities running a sting operation arrested a 21-year-old man who they say was planning to blow up the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in lower Manhattan, officials said Wednesday.
Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis was arrested after an attempt to detonate what he believed was a 1,000-pound bomb, authorities said Wednesday.
He is expected to make an initial court appearance Wednesday at a federal courthouse in Brooklyn.
Authorities say the public was not in danger because the suspect never acquired the necessary material for a bomb.
The "explosives that he allegedly sought and attempted to use had been rendered inoperable by law enforcement and posed no threat to the public," according to a statement from U.S. Attorney Loretta E. Lynch
He faces charges of "attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and attempting to provide material support to al Qaeda."
Suspect in Saudi ambassador assassination plot pleads guilty
By CNN's Mark Norman
An Iranian-American man from Texas on Wednesday pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court to participating in a plot meant to kill the Saudi ambassador to the United States.
Prosecutors said Manssor Arbabsiar, 57, tried to recruit a Mexican drug cartel to bomb a Washington restaurant where Saudi Ambassador Adel Al-Jubeir dined. But the scheme unraveled when Arbabsiar's cartel contact turned out to be an undercover agent.
Arbabsiar acknowledged in court to conspiring with members of the Iranian military in the formulation of the plot and is expected to be sentenced in January.
Federal officials say Arbabsiar met "on a number of occasions in Mexico with a Drug Enforcement Administration confidential source."
FULL POST
Treasury sanctions terror facilitators in Pakistan
By Jamie Crawford
The United States imposed sanctions on three men who allegedly facilitated Taliban operations and helped another group deemed a terrorist organization, the Treasury Department said on Wednesday.
One of the men was linked to the failed car bomb attack on New York's Times Square in 2010, Treasury said.
The three, all based in Pakistan, were each were targeted for allegedly providing material, logistical, or financial support to a separate group: the Taliban in Afghanistan, Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan, also known as the Pakistani Taliban, and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.
"Today's actions are intended to disrupt the activities of three individuals working to carry out violent attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan that threaten the lives of civilians and military forces," Davis Cohen, Treasury under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in a statement.
FULL POST
No rush to push through U.S. training for elite Libyan force
By Mike Mount, Senior National Security Producer
Pentagon officials insisted this week there was no effort to accelerate training of an elite Libyan commando unit after a New York Times report suggested there was a push to speed up the program following last month's deadly attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi.
The program is part of a joint initiative by the Defense and State departments to fund training of a small force of Libyans to combat the growing threat of violent extremist organizations since the fall of the Qadhafi regime last year, according to a Pentagon document discussing funding of the plan that was obtained by CNN.
Japanese officials angry after 2 U.S. sailors arrested in Okinawa rape case
By Yoko Wakatsuki
Japanese officials expressed outrage after two U.S. sailors were arrested over accusations that they raped a woman on the island of Okinawa, where the American military presence has generated long-simmering resentment.
Defense Minister Satoshi Morimoto on Wednesday called the alleged rape "vicious and mean" and said Japanese authorities were lodging protests with the U.S. government and military, as well as demands for better preventive measures.
Okinawa Governor Hirokazu Nakaima, who met with Morimoto over the matter, said it went "beyond madness" that the alleged attack took place two months after a U.S. Marine was arrested over accusations he assaulted and molested a woman in Naha, the capital of Okinawa.
FULL STORY
@natlsecuritycnn on Twitter
