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	<title>Swampland &#187; Michael Crowley &#124; TIME.com</title>
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	<link>http://swampland.time.com</link>
	<description>Political insight from the Beltway and beyond</description>
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		<title>Swampland &#187; Michael Crowley &#124; TIME.com</title>
		<link>http://swampland.time.com</link>
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		<title>Holder: Obama&#8217;s New Drone-Strike &#8216;Playbook&#8217; Has Arrived</title>
		<link>http://swampland.time.com/2013/05/22/holder-obamas-new-drone-strike-playbook-has-arrived/</link>
		<comments>http://swampland.time.com/2013/05/22/holder-obamas-new-drone-strike-playbook-has-arrived/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 22 May 2013 21:46:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Michael Crowley</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[National Security]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://swampland.time.com/?p=96306</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The big story this afternoon is the formal admission by the Obama Administration, via a letter to Congress from Attorney General Eric Holder, that it has killed four American citizens in drone strikes. That&#8217;s an interesting sign of the pressure Obama is under to be more transparent about his targeted killing operations in the fight against al-Qaeda. But the information itself is not surprising: it has long been known that Obama approved the killing of the al-Qaeda preacher Anwar al-Awlaki, and that other Americans (including al-Awlaki&#8217;s teenage son) have been killed inadvertently — although one of the deaths, Jude Kenan Mohammad, had not previously been reported. Perhaps more significant, however, is something Holder&#8217;s letter mentions only briefly in its second-to-last paragraph: the Attorney General writes that Obama has approved a policy document that &#8220;institutionalizes the Administration&#8217;s exacting standards and processes for reviewing and approving operations to capture or use lethal force against terrorist targets.&#8221; This appears to be the &#8220;disposition matrix&#8221; that Obama officials, led by former counterterrorism adviser (and now CIA director) John Brennan, spent much of last year assembling. Casually referred to as the drone &#8220;playbook,&#8221; the document reportedly aspired to clear up questions like who should pull the trigger on drone strikes — some are conducted by the Pentagon, some by the CIA — and just what legal authorities and restrictions apply to them. It may codify a reported shift of some drone activity from the CIA to the Defense Department. So while the deaths of Americans by drone — including the targeting of al-Awlaki — aren&#8217;t really news, the implementation of a formal new policy guiding Obama&#8217;s targeted killing against suspected al-Qaeda terrorists is a big deal. But the veil of secrecy is not being lifted entirely. Holder writes that the new policy document will remain classified, although &#8220;relevant congressional committees&#8221; will be briefed on its contents. We may hear more about it, in broad unclassified terms, when President Obama gives a big speech on his counterterrorism policies.<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=swampland.time.com&#038;blog=5284847&#038;post=96306&#038;subd=timeswampland&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>National Security</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://swampland.time.com/category/domestic-policy-2/national-security/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeswampland.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/dbff773489594267945b5394c3ccc364-0.jpg?w=200</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">An X-47B Navy drone does a flyby the USS George H.W. Bush after it was launched from the ship off the coast of Virginia, on May 14, 2013.</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">crowley100</media:title>
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		<title>Three Lessons from the Benghazi Emails</title>
		<link>http://swampland.time.com/2013/05/16/three-lessons-from-the-benghazi-emails/</link>
		<comments>http://swampland.time.com/2013/05/16/three-lessons-from-the-benghazi-emails/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 16 May 2013 09:00:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Michael Crowley</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Controversies]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://swampland.time.com/?p=95777</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The 100 pages of emails about Benghazi released by the White House on Tuesday evening provide a fascinating glimpse at the machinations of national security officials working under stress. The exchanges, which hashed out a set of talking points intended for members of Congress to use a few days after the September 11, 2012, terrorist attack in Libya that killed four Americans, tell us virtually nothing new about the now well-excavated story. But they do underscore a few important points: No one doubted a demonstration Every version of the talking points&#8211;which were first crafted by the CIA&#8211;asserted that a demonstration had occurred at the U.S. compound in Benghazi. &#8220;We believe based on currently available information that the attacks in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault&#8221; on the U.S. facilities, read the talking points. (Those facilities included a State Department post and a nearby CIA annex.) Throughout two days of exchanges that involved the CIA, FBI, State Department, and White House, no one ever challenged that claim, and that language survived to the end, even as many other phrases were deleted. It&#8217;s worth remembering that demonstrations against a notorious anti-Islamic amateur film actually had occurred in 20 other countries, a likely source of the early confusion. That undercuts the charge that the Obama administration ginned up a narrative about a nonexistent demonstration in Benghazi for political purposes&#8211;namely, to avoid explaining why al Qaeda-affiliated radicals were killing Americans in a country where the president had intervened militarily with apparent success. It is true that the final talking points were stripped of references to al Qaeda. But there may have been a reason for that. Early in the process, on the afternoon of Friday, September 14, the CIA&#8217;s general counsel warned colleagues about &#8220;express instruction&#8221; from law enforcement officials that &#8220;in light of the criminal investigation, we are not to generate statements about who did this.&#8221; (MORE: Joe Klein: Benghazi and Dick Cheney&#8217;s Staggering Lack of Self-Knowledge) The CIA made the<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=swampland.time.com&#038;blog=5284847&#038;post=95777&#038;subd=timeswampland&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Controversies</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://swampland.time.com/category/2012-election/controversies/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeswampland.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/e9858d26b2494cadaf37f150d29af4e5-0.jpg?w=200</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">A Libyan man investigates the inside of the U.S. Consulate after an attack that killed four Americans, in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 12, 2012, in Benghazi, Libya.</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://2.gravatar.com/avatar/25edc643b57a776abbc75835c699af51?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F2.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">crowley100</media:title>
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		<title>Terror, Security, and Hillary 2016: Making Sense of the Benghazi Hearings</title>
		<link>http://swampland.time.com/2013/05/08/death-security-and-hillary-2016-making-sense-of-the-benghazi-hearings/</link>
		<comments>http://swampland.time.com/2013/05/08/death-security-and-hillary-2016-making-sense-of-the-benghazi-hearings/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 08 May 2013 20:40:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Michael Crowley</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Libya]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://swampland.time.com/?p=95165</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[To Republicans, the deadly September 11 attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, was a huge, conscience-shocking security scandal, one that Democrats are shamelessly trying to cover up. To Democrats, the attack was the sort of tragedy that inevitably comes from practicing diplomacy in a dangerous world, one that Republicans are shamelessly exploiting for political gain. Those two views came no closer to agreement during a Wednesday House hearing on the subject. The hearing by the Republican-led House Government Oversight &#38; Reform Committee was not the first on the events surrounding the death of the U.S. Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, and three other Americans. Hillary Clinton, who was running the State Department at the time of the attack, testified for hours back in January. But the story was given fresh dramatic life and new narrative details through the testimony of two self-described whistle blowers who had not previously spoken in public: Mark Thompson, acting deputy assistant secretary for counterterrorism; Gregory Hicks, the former deputy of mission in Libya. Joining them was Eric Nordstrom, a former regional security officer in Libya, who had previously testified on the issue. Virtually no one disputes the basic facts of that violent night, in which a group of militants stormed the compound and battled the Americans for hours. But the sharply different interpretations of why the attacks happened, and how the Obama administration responded, have left many people understandably confused. So has the way &#8220;Benghazi&#8221; has come to describe several different arguments related to the incident. Here&#8217;s a breakdown by TIME&#8217;s Washington staff of the key plot lines, and what we know about them: Could the U.S. military have done more to help? Not according to the Pentagon – and the hearing’s key witness. Aircraft that might have buzzed the compound where the second pair of Americans died – and scared the militants away &#8212; were 900 miles north in Italy. &#8220;Time and distance are a tyranny of their own,&#8221; Admiral James Stavridis, who responded to the attacks as the NATO commander,<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=swampland.time.com&#038;blog=5284847&#038;post=95165&#038;subd=timeswampland&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Libya</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://swampland.time.com/category/foreign-policy-2/libya-foreign-policy/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeswampland.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/benghazi1.jpg?w=200</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">From left: Mark Thompson, Gregory Hicks, and  Eric Nordstrom are sworn in before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C., on May 8, 2013.</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">crowley100</media:title>
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		<title>What if al-Qaeda Gets Syrian Chemical Weapons?</title>
		<link>http://swampland.time.com/2013/05/07/what-if-al-qaeda-gets-syrian-chemical-weapons/</link>
		<comments>http://swampland.time.com/2013/05/07/what-if-al-qaeda-gets-syrian-chemical-weapons/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 07 May 2013 09:30:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Michael Crowley</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Syria]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://swampland.time.com/?p=94892</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Even in light of recent evidence that Syria’s embattled ruler, Bashar Assad, might have used nerve gas against his own people, Barack Obama seems reluctant to escalate American involvement in Syria&#8217;s brutal civil war. But another scenario involving chemical weapons could force Obama into the deeper engagement he has long resisted: the alarming prospect that radical Islamists could acquire Syrian chemical weapons and try to use them beyond Syria&#8217;s borders, perhaps even within the U.S. &#8220;I think we should be worried,&#8221; says Jeffrey White an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and former military-intelligence officer. &#8220;As the war progresses and the rebels gain territory, assuming they do, inevitably they&#8217;re going to close in on some of the regime&#8217;s chemical facilities.&#8221; In fact, that has already happened. Earlier this year, rebel fighters with the powerful Jabat al-Nusra faction — a group the State Department calls an extension of al-Qaeda in Iraq — battled close enough to a major Syrian chemical stockpile near Aleppo that the regime is believed to have relocated its weapons to another location. (VIDEO: U.S. Ponders Syria’s Possible Chemical Weapons) In theory, this is a nightmare scenario. Since 2001, preventing terrorists from acquiring weapons of mass destruction has been America&#8217;s highest security priority. George W. Bush largely justified his invasion of Iraq as an effort to secure Saddam Hussein&#8217;s (supposed) chemical and biological weapons, lest they fall into terrorist hands. Obama opposed that war, but he shares the underlying concern. &#8220;[T]here is no greater threat to the American people than weapons of mass destruction,&#8221; Obama&#8217;s 2010 National Security Strategy declared. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham cast the Syrian threat in dire terms recently: &#8220;Chemical weapons — enough to kill millions of people — are going to be compromised and fall into the wrong hands, and the next bomb that goes off in America may not have nails and glass in it.&#8221; (PHOTOS: Chaos and Killing in Syria: Photos of a Slow-Motion Civil War) The reality in Syria is more complicated. The prospect of Assad&#8217;s weapons falling<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=swampland.time.com&#038;blog=5284847&#038;post=94892&#038;subd=timeswampland&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Syria</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://swampland.time.com/category/foreign-policy-2/syria-foreign-policy/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeswampland.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/syria_0506.jpg?w=200</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Women on the frontlines of Syrian civil war</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://2.gravatar.com/avatar/25edc643b57a776abbc75835c699af51?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F2.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">crowley100</media:title>
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		<title>Four Enduring Mysteries About the Boston Bombings</title>
		<link>http://swampland.time.com/2013/04/29/four-mysteries-about-the-boston-bombings/</link>
		<comments>http://swampland.time.com/2013/04/29/four-mysteries-about-the-boston-bombings/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 29 Apr 2013 09:20:32 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Michael Crowley</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Boston Marathon Bombings]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://swampland.time.com/?p=94309</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Two weeks after the Boston marathon bombings killed three people and injured hundreds more, one suspect is dead and another is in custody and charged with a capital crime. The basic outlines of the story of the Tsarnaev brothers seem clear. Yet recent news reports and comments from members of Congress underscore that critical questions about their alleged crimes remain unanswered, complicating the emerging debate over what lessons America should draw from the horror on Boylston Street. Here are the most pressing: Did They Really Act On Their Own? During his initial interrogation, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev reportedly said that he and his brother Tamerlan acted alone, motivated by anger over America&#8217;s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that they learned how to construct their bombs online. Officials have disclosed no evidence to the contrary, but there are hints of a more complex plot. By some accounts, their bomb detonators&#8211;exploded via remote controllers for toy cars&#8211;required a sophistication that the Tsarnaev brothers didn&#8217;t otherwise show when, for instance, they failed to wear disguises to the marathon site, or when they carelessly allowed a hostage to escape. &#8220;There was some outside counsel to these individuals on how to build and how to detonate,&#8221; House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers told Fox News last week, although a national security source also told Fox that the toy-car detonator is not a known al Qaeda technique. Meanwhile, investigators continue to explore a six-month trip Tamerlan took to Russia last year, and whether he met with Islamist rebels in the country&#8217;s troubled republic of Dagestan. House Homeland Security Chairman Michael McCaul suggested to NBC yesterday that the Tsarnaev brothers might have had a foreign &#8220;trainer&#8221;: &#8220;And the question is, where is that trainer or trainers?&#8221; McCaul asked. &#8220;Are they overseas in the Chechen region or are they in the United States?&#8221; How Much Does Vladimir Putin Know? Some lawmakers believe the Russian government is being coy about its intelligence on the Tsarnaev family. &#8220;I think they do know more than they’re telling us,” Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff,<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=swampland.time.com&#038;blog=5284847&#038;post=94309&#038;subd=timeswampland&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Boston Marathon Bombings</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://swampland.time.com/category/boston-marathon-bombings/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeswampland.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/suspects1and2.jpg?w=200</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">From left: Boston Marathon bombing suspects Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in Boston, Mass., on April 15, 2013.</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://2.gravatar.com/avatar/25edc643b57a776abbc75835c699af51?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F2.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">crowley100</media:title>
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		<title>The Thick Red Line: White House Cautious on Chemical Weapons Use in Syria</title>
		<link>http://swampland.time.com/2013/04/25/the-thick-red-line-white-house-says-syrians-used-sarin-gas-but-action-may-be-slow/</link>
		<comments>http://swampland.time.com/2013/04/25/the-thick-red-line-white-house-says-syrians-used-sarin-gas-but-action-may-be-slow/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 25 Apr 2013 17:16:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Michael Crowley</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Syria]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://swampland.time.com/?p=94057</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Catching up with the assessments of France, Great Britain and Israel, the Obama administration now says it believes that chemical weapons, including the lethal nerve agent sarin, have been used in Syria. Given that President Obama has declared chemical weapons use a &#8220;red line,&#8221; this could mean war. But it almost certainly won&#8217;t. Obama is extremely loath to get deeply involved in Syria. The administration says it&#8217;s still not sure if chemical weapons were used, or by whom exactly. And the way Obama officials view it, their policy options in Syria range from bad to terrible. For starters, note the hedged nature of the administration&#8217;s language today. In letters to two senators who had asked about reports of Syrian chemical weapons use, John McCain and Carl Levin, the White House says that U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed with &#8220;varying degrees of confidence&#8221; that sarin was deployed; it warns that the &#8220;chain of custody&#8221; of the weapons is unclear; and it explains that the U.S. is pushing for &#8220;a comprehensive United Nations investigation&#8221; to &#8220;establish the facts.&#8221; Speaking to reporters today, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel underscored that last point: &#8220;We need all the facts. We need all the information,&#8221; he said. Generally speaking, you don&#8217;t take dramatic action right after admitting that the facts are unclear. Although several members of Congress are declaring the red line crossed, McCain, who is among them, told CNN today that the administration&#8217;s careful spin &#8220;may give them an out for not acting in a decisive fashion.&#8221; The practical options also stink. So long as American, and possibly Israeli, national security is not directly threatened, there&#8217;s no political will for American boots on the ground. Securing Syria&#8217;s chemical weapons sites could require 100,000 of them. Limited airstrikes against responsible forces and commanders is a more plausible option, but would require credible information about exactly who oversaw and carried out the chemical attacks. (A direct strike on Syria&#8217;s embattled dictator, Bashar al-Assad, is almost surely out of the question.) No wonder Obama never spelled out the consequences<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=swampland.time.com&#038;blog=5284847&#038;post=94057&#038;subd=timeswampland&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Syria</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://swampland.time.com/category/foreign-policy-2/syria-foreign-policy/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeswampland.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/rtxy6mk.jpg?w=200</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Member of the Free Syrian Army holds his weapon as he sits on a sofa in the middle of a street in Deir al-Zor</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">crowley100</media:title>
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		<title>Will the Boston Bomber Be Executed?</title>
		<link>http://swampland.time.com/2013/04/25/will-the-boston-bomber-be-executed/</link>
		<comments>http://swampland.time.com/2013/04/25/will-the-boston-bomber-be-executed/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 25 Apr 2013 09:30:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Michael Crowley</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Boston Marathon Bombings]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://swampland.time.com/?p=93933</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Even as doctors nurse the accused Boston bomber back to health, federal prosecutors in Washington are considering whether Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should be put to death. If convicted and given the death penalty, Tsarnaev would be strapped to a table and injected with a lethal cocktail of chemicals, possibly at the same Indiana federal prison where the Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy McVeigh, was executed twelve years ago. But that outcome will only be possible if Attorney General Eric Holder asks for capital punishment for Tsarnaev’s role in the April 15 Boston marathon bombings, a sentence made possible by the charge that Tsarnaev used a weapon of a mass destruction in the attack. That seems likely. Prominent Democratic senators are calling for the death penalty against Tsarnaev, and his legal team seems to expect it. In the case of the accused 9/11 plotters, Holder has called execution a means of achieving “justice.” (MORE: Tsarnaev Snafus: Nearly 12 Years After 9/11, Boston Bombings Highlight Intelligence Holes) Still, Holder will make his decision at a moment of declining popular support for the death penalty, and amid a years-long halt in federal executions. Since 1963, only three federal convicts have been put to death—all of them between 2001 and 2003. Another 59 federal convicts are now on death row, according to Robert Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. Most of their cases are tangled up in the years-long appeals process and none have execution dates scheduled. That’s a contrast to the pace of the mid-20th century, when dozen of convicts were hanged, gassed and electrocuted. Some were extreme cases of national security, like the six German would-be saboteurs captured on U.S. soil in 1942, and the Cold War spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, dispatched by electric chair in 1953. Others were an assortment of kidnappers, rapists, killers and bank robbers. (PHOTOS: Images: Joy and Relief in Boston After Bombing Suspect’s Arrest) In the late 1960s, most executions in the U.S. stopped after legal challenges to state death penalty laws. But even the Supreme Court<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=swampland.time.com&#038;blog=5284847&#038;post=93933&#038;subd=timeswampland&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Boston Marathon Bombings</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://swampland.time.com/category/boston-marathon-bombings/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeswampland.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/death-penalty.jpg?w=200</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Lethal injection death chamber in Huntsville, Texas.</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">crowley100</media:title>
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		<title>Did the Boston Bombers Really Use WMD?</title>
		<link>http://swampland.time.com/2013/04/22/dont-panic-if-the-boston-bomber-is-charged-with-wmd-use/</link>
		<comments>http://swampland.time.com/2013/04/22/dont-panic-if-the-boston-bomber-is-charged-with-wmd-use/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 22 Apr 2013 15:52:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Michael Crowley</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Boston Marathon Bombings]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://swampland.time.com/?p=93661</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Justice Department charged the accused Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in federal court Monday, making him a criminal defendant and not an enemy combatant. Among the charges contained in the Justice Department&#8217;s affidavit: use of a weapon of mass destruction. Did the Boston bombers really use WMD? Legally, yes. That might sound surprising — but don&#8217;t be alarmed. The Tsarnaev brothers didn&#8217;t release anthrax in the Boston subway or tuck a dirty bomb outside Fenway Park. It turns out that federal law defines &#8220;weapon of mass destruction&#8221; in extremely broad terms. The relevant statutes define almost any significant explosive device as a WMD. That specifically includes bombs, grenades, mines, and small rockets and missiles. The pressure-cooker bombs planted at the Boston marathon and the explosives hurled at police on Thursday night would almost certainly qualify. Needless to say, the law also covers weapons more commonly considered to be WMD, including &#8220;any weapon involving a biological agent, toxin, or vector&#8221; and any weapon &#8220;designed to release radiation or radioactivity at a level dangerous to human life.&#8221; (More here on what qualifies as an agent, toxin or vector.) But there is no indication that the Tsarnaevs had access to such materials. As it happens, the feds applied this narrow WMD definition just last month, when they charged a former U.S. soldier with fighting alongside a terrorist group aiding the Syrian rebellion. A federal affidavit accused Eric Harroun of conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction for firing rocket-propelled grenades in the ranks of Syria&#8217;s radical al-Nusra Front. That stirred up a long-running academic and policy debate about the term&#8217;s usage. Another twist here is that killing someone with a weapon of mass destruction is a capital offense only under certain circumstances, though Bobby Chesney of the blog Lawfare argues they would likely apply in Boston. Chesney also suggests two other potential capital charges against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. One would be an act of terrorism &#8220;transcending national boundaries,&#8221; a charge that could apply if prosecutors establish a connection between the bombings and the trip<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=swampland.time.com&#038;blog=5284847&#038;post=93661&#038;subd=timeswampland&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Boston Marathon Bombings</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://swampland.time.com/category/boston-marathon-bombings/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeswampland.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/rtxyn2e.jpg?w=200</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Runners continue to run towards the finish line as an explosion erupts at the finish line of the Boston Marathon</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">crowley100</media:title>
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		<title>How a Stupid Mistake Led Police Straight to the Boston Terrorists</title>
		<link>http://swampland.time.com/2013/04/21/give-thanks-for-dumb-terrorists/</link>
		<comments>http://swampland.time.com/2013/04/21/give-thanks-for-dumb-terrorists/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 21 Apr 2013 18:54:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Michael Crowley</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Boston Marathon Bombings]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://swampland.time.com/?p=93585</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Among the many mysteries lingering over last week&#8217;s horrors in Boston is this one: How did the Tsarnaev brothers allow the man they carjacked on Thursday night to get away? The release or escape — it&#8217;s unclear which is the case — of a person to whom they had identified themselves immediately put the police hot on their trail. For Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, it was a colossal error. For the rest of the world, it was a crucial development that led to their capture and may have saved numerous lives. To recap: after the FBI released images of the two on Thursday night, the men sprang into malevolent action. They first shot and killed an MIT campus police officer. Then they carjacked a man — who has not been identified but is described as a Caucasian in his 20s — and rode with him in his black Mercedes SUV. According to federal authorities, the Tsarnaevs used the man&#8217;s ATM card to withdraw $800 from bank machines in the area. This would explain keeping him alive initially, rather than shooting him and taking his car: the brothers would have needed his ATM PIN to access the cash. The mystery involves what happened next: the Tsarnaevs either dumped their hostage at a Cambridge gas station, or allowed him to escape, perhaps in the confusion after Dzhokhar was caught trying to shoplift junk food from the gas station&#8217;s convenience store. (That would count as another pretty boneheaded move, by the way.) The man was unharmed, though understandably hysterical, and immediately called 911. [Update, April 22, 2:55 p.m.: A federal affidavit released today asserts that the carjacking victim “managed to escape,” though it doesn’t explain how. The affadavit also describes how one of the Tsarnaev brothers showed the victim that he had a loaded gun and told him, “Did you hear about the Boston explosion ... I did that.”] Why had they not already killed him? If the allegations against the Tsarnaevs are true, they were obviously quite capable of killing in cold blood.<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=swampland.time.com&#038;blog=5284847&#038;post=93585&#038;subd=timeswampland&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Boston Marathon Bombings</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://swampland.time.com/category/boston-marathon-bombings/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeswampland.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/aptopix-boston-marath_yang-1.jpg?w=200</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Two images taken from surveillance video of men the FBI are calling suspect No. 2, in white cap, and suspect No. 1, in black cap, as they walk near each other through the crowd before the explosions at the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013.</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">crowley100</media:title>
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		<title>Making Sense of the Tsarnaev Brothers</title>
		<link>http://swampland.time.com/2013/04/19/boston-terror-making-sense-of-the-tsarnaev-brothers/</link>
		<comments>http://swampland.time.com/2013/04/19/boston-terror-making-sense-of-the-tsarnaev-brothers/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 19 Apr 2013 15:18:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Michael Crowley</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Boston Marathon Bombings]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://swampland.time.com/?p=93454</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[April 19, 2013, 6:31 PM Less than 24 hours after the FBI posted photos of two suspects in Monday&#8217;s Boston Marathon bombings, the world has learned an astounding amount, with astounding speed, about the two men — one of whom is now dead after a murder, car chase and shootout that climaxed in Watertown, Mass., last night. The other suspect, his brother, remains at large. But for all the detail emerging today, a huge question remains unanswered: What motivated their alleged actions? The dead man is 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Still on the loose is his younger brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who is just 19. Media accounts say the men were born abroad but have been in America for a decade or more. There are conflicting accounts of where they lived before arriving in the U.S., though all suggest roots around the Caucasus region of southern Russia. By some accounts, the family moved to the U.S. about a decade ago to escape brutal violence in the Russian republic of Chechnya. The English-language Russian news outlet RT reports that in 2001 the family moved from the central Asian country of Kyrgyzstan to the Russian republic of Dagestan; but according to his page on a Russian social networking site, Vkontakte, the younger brother, Dzokhar, attended school in Dagestan from 1999 to 2001. The Associated Press found their father today in Dagestan’s capital, Makhachkala. Dagestan lies at Russia’s southern extremity, not far from Chechnya. After moving to the U.S., both men grew up on Norfolk Street in Cambridge, Mass., not far from the main campus of Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where a campus police officer was shot to death last night. Neighbors interviewed by TIME in the ethnically mixed, transitional neighborhood said the boys used to play soccer in the street and the father worked on his cars behind the family house. Online glimpses of Tamerlan suggest a young man who never assimilated to his host country — &#8220;I don&#8217;t have a single American friend,&#8221; he is quoted as saying in this photo essay. By contrast, however, Dzhokhar appears to have<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=swampland.time.com&#038;blog=5284847&#038;post=93454&#038;subd=timeswampland&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Boston Marathon Bombings</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://swampland.time.com/category/boston-marathon-bombings/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeswampland.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/dzhokhar_tsarnaev.jpg?w=200</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Dzhokhar_TSARNAEV</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">crowley100</media:title>
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		<title>Paul Kevin Curtis and the Weird History of Domestic Ricin Terrorism</title>
		<link>http://swampland.time.com/2013/04/17/paul-kevin-curtis-and-the-weird-history-of-domestic-ricin-terrorism/</link>
		<comments>http://swampland.time.com/2013/04/17/paul-kevin-curtis-and-the-weird-history-of-domestic-ricin-terrorism/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 17 Apr 2013 23:05:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Michael Crowley</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[terror]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://swampland.time.com/?p=93226</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Late Wednesday afternoon, the FBI arrested a Mississippi man accused of sending ricin-laced letters to Barack Obama and Republican Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi, and possibly other government officials. The arrest was a relief to anxious members of Congress and staffers, surely mindful of the five deaths and 17 illnesses that followed the anthrax letters sent to Capitol Hill and several media outlets in September 2001. But the arrest, which the FBI says is not connected to the Boston Marathon bombings, also spotlights the strange past of a bioweapon that has attracted numerous bumbling would-be domestic terrorists, a rogues&#8217; gallery of antigovernment cranks who in some cases managed to scare people, but mostly just wound up in federal prison. Among their ranks may now be Paul Kevin Curtis of Corinth, Miss., whom a local newspaper describes as a celebrity impersonator of everyone from Johnny Cash to Prince to Kenny Chesney. He appears to be the same Curtis who claimed, in a comment under this article on an Elvis website, to have gone &#8220;undercover&#8221; to expose corruption in Elvis impersonation contests. The comment suggests that its author may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer: &#8220;Consumer-reports mag published article last year stating Mississippi as the most corrupt state in all 52 states in the U.S. so go figure!&#8221; How Curtis might have acquired ricin, and whether his letters contained more than harmless trace elements, isn&#8217;t known. To be clear, ricin is no laughing matter. The toxic compound, which can be extracted from widely available castor beans with relative ease, is lethal in tiny quantities. In a John le Carré–style plotline, a pellet of ricin deployed with a jab from a pointed umbrella tip killed the Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov in 1978. If ingested, inhaled or absorbed through the skin, ricin can cause vomiting, bloody urine and seizures, then massive organ failure. It has no antidote. Hence its appeal to some nasty characters. Saddam Hussein tried to weaponize it in large quantities. Al-Qaeda&#8217;s Yemen affiliate has worked to produce ricin, and the organization&#8217;s<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=swampland.time.com&#038;blog=5284847&#038;post=93226&#038;subd=timeswampland&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>terror</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://swampland.time.com/category/domestic-policy-2/terror/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeswampland.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/ap501892664769.jpg?w=200</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Suspicious Letters</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">crowley100</media:title>
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		<title>A Short Recent History of Pressure-Cooker Bombs</title>
		<link>http://swampland.time.com/2013/04/16/a-short-history-of-pressure-cooker-bombs/</link>
		<comments>http://swampland.time.com/2013/04/16/a-short-history-of-pressure-cooker-bombs/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 16 Apr 2013 17:35:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Michael Crowley</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[National Security]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://swampland.time.com/?p=93070</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Authorities are now saying the explosive devices used in the Boston attack were fashioned from pressure cookers. Yes, like the kitchen pot you might use to cook rice at home. As it happens, pressure cookers have a nefarious reputation in counterterrorism circles. In 2004, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was concerned enough about pressure-cooker bombs to issue an alert to federal and state security officials: &#8220;A technique commonly taught in Afghan terrorist training camps is the use/conversion of pressure cookers into [improvised explosive devices],&#8221; the bulletin warned. That bulletin cited several plots from 2002 to 2004 to use pressure-cooker bombs in France, India and Nepal. But more recently there have been at least three other instances of would-be terrorists in the West, all of them Islamic radicals, in possession of pressure cookers for reasons that seemed not to involve having friends over for dinner. One was an Army private linked to the 2009 Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan, who had reportedly been taking bombmaking tips from al-Qaeda&#8217;s short-lived (literally) online magazine Inspire and had various weapons and explosives along with his cooking pot. (The magazine reportedly recommended pressure cookers as explosive devices.) A 2010 suicide bomber in Stockholm had rigged a pressure-cooker bomb that failed to detonate. And as a newer DHS warning about the kitchen devices noted, the failed 2010 SUV bomb in New York&#8217;s Times Square was a pressure-cooker device containing 120 firecrackers. The same DHS memo refers to a March 2010 bombing with a pressure cooker at a Western Christian aid agency in Pakistan that killed six people. Counterterrorism officials are surely well aware of these facts and studying any related leads. But it&#8217;s important to bear in mind that the ability to make these bombs is hardly unique to al-Qaeda and its sympathizers. Members of at least one prominent white-supremacist website have shared terrorist tips from Inspire, which one called &#8220;highly recommended reading.&#8221; Pressure-cooker bombs are also discussed in detail on this anarchist site, which describes how to build what is &#8220;affectionately known as a HELLHOUND.&#8221; Nor do<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=swampland.time.com&#038;blog=5284847&#038;post=93070&#038;subd=timeswampland&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>National Security</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://swampland.time.com/category/domestic-policy-2/national-security/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeswampland.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/rtr2nh40.jpg?w=200</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">pressure cooker</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">crowley100</media:title>
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		<title>Boston Poses Biggest Challenge Yet for Obama&#8217;s Seasoned Counterterrorism Team</title>
		<link>http://swampland.time.com/2013/04/16/the-aftermath-obamas-counter-terror-team-takes-over/</link>
		<comments>http://swampland.time.com/2013/04/16/the-aftermath-obamas-counter-terror-team-takes-over/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 16 Apr 2013 16:20:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Michael Crowley</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[National Security]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://swampland.time.com/?p=93009</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Barack Obama&#8216;s counterterrorism team has been tested repeatedly the past several years, from the Nigerian man who nearly downed a passenger jet on Christmas day 2009 to the failed May 2010 attempt to detonate an SUV bomb in Times Square. But yesterday&#8217;s bombings in Boston pose an unprecedented challenge for a team of terrorist hunters now scrambling for answers—and signs of any follow-up attacks. In each of the major terror scares of Obama&#8217;s tenure, suspects were quickly identified and arrested. The underwear bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was hauled off the plane after his bomb failed to detonate. Faisal Shahzad was arrested at New York&#8217;s JFK airport soon after his bomb fizzled. The would-be New York subway bomber Najibullah Zazi was nabbed while still planning his attack. Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan (whom the Pentagon has not labeled a terrorist) was apprehended at the scene of his November 2009 massacre. And after cargo bombs headed for the U.S. from Yemen were intercepted in October 2010, the U.S. quickly traced them to al Qaeda&#8217;s Yemen branch, whose members it has been steadily killing. In this case, there is no suspect, and by most accounts few solid leads. In his brief statement at the White House this morning, President Obama conceded that authorities remain unsure whether the Boston bombing was an attack of foreign or domestic origin. His top law enforcement, counterterrorism and homeland security officials are already working frantically to get answers, motivated by the fear that whoever struck in Boston could already be planning a next act. Taking the lead on the investigation is the FBI, headed by Robert Mueller, sworn in as director just one week before September 11, 2001 With his ten-year term set to expire in 2011, Obama convinced Mueller to stay on for two more years, in part, the president said, due to “the ongoing threat to the United States” from terrorists. Mueller has now overseen dozens of terrorism cases of varying severity and runs an FBI whose counterterrorism capabilities are light years beyond their pre-9/11 levels,<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=swampland.time.com&#038;blog=5284847&#038;post=93009&#038;subd=timeswampland&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>National Security</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://swampland.time.com/category/domestic-policy-2/national-security/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeswampland.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/8652493831_3d4087a2c0_o.jpg?w=200</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Obama Oval Office</media:title>
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		<title>Syria: A War Obama Doesn&#8217;t Want</title>
		<link>http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2140777-1,00.html</link>
		<comments>http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2140777-1,00.html#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 11 Apr 2013 12:20:42 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Michael Crowley</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Magazine]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://swampland.time.com/?p=92658</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=swampland.time.com&#038;blog=5284847&#038;post=92658&#038;subd=timeswampland&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Magazine</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://swampland.time.com/category/magazine/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeswampland.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/360_int_zsyriarebels_0422.jpeg?w=200</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Battle to Death</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">crowley100</media:title>
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		<title>National Security&#8217;s Alpha Women</title>
		<link>http://swampland.time.com/2013/04/04/national-securitys-alpha-women/</link>
		<comments>http://swampland.time.com/2013/04/04/national-securitys-alpha-women/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 04 Apr 2013 09:45:17 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Michael Crowley</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[National Security]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://swampland.time.com/?p=92070</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Today’s popular culture features some memorable terrorist-hunting heroines, from Homeland’s tenacious Carrie Mathison to Zero Dark Thirty’s steely Maya. In reality, national security remains very much a boys’ club. But that’s slightly less true thanks to the recent rise of women to three of the U.S.’s most sensitive and secretive jobs. President Obama has a new White House counterterrorism adviser in Lisa Monaco, a top Justice Department lawyer who stepped in when the job’s prior occupant, John Brennan, took over the CIA last month. Just before Brennan decamped for Langley, a female career CIA employee assumed command of the agency’s deeply secretive clandestine service. (The woman is undercover, making her name secret enough that if they told you, they really might have to kill you.) And on March 26, Obama put a woman in charge of protecting his own life when he named Julia Pierson director of the Secret Service. Each of these women inherits some mighty gender-neutral challenges. Monaco confronts the roiling debate about America’s drone strikes overseas. The CIA’s clandestine service chief manages U.S. spies and covert operations around the world. And Pierson has to sweat not just Obama’s security but also her agency’s lesser-known policing of financial crimes like counterfeiting and credit-card fraud. (MORE: What Awaits John Brennan at the CIA) Not that gender is irrelevant to these posts. Pierson, a 30-year Secret Service veteran who is the first woman to hold the director job, takes over an agency shamed by last year’s revelation that agents working in Colombia before a presidential visit there had hired prostitutes. Some 90% of Secret Service agents are male, and critics say a better testosterone-estrogen balance might deter future scandals. A woman running the CIA’s clandestine service is another first. She too oversees a male-dominated culture in a field where some experts believe a female perspective is valuable. “We do bring different attributes to the table,” says former CIA analyst Nada Bakos, who suggests that female spies can excel thanks to a knack for “empathy and listening.” Whether the clandestine chief will stay is<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=swampland.time.com&#038;blog=5284847&#038;post=92070&#038;subd=timeswampland&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>National Security</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://swampland.time.com/category/domestic-policy-2/national-security/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeswampland.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/alpha-female.jpg?w=200</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">U.S. President Obama shakes hands with U.S. Secret Service agent Pierson after she is sworn in as first woman Director of the Secret Service in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">crowley100</media:title>
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		<title>Watching Kennedy: The Court&#8217;s Swing Voter Offers Clues to a Gay-Marriage Ruling</title>
		<link>http://swampland.time.com/2013/03/27/watching-kennedy-the-courts-swing-voter-offers-clues-to-a-gay-marriage-ruling/</link>
		<comments>http://swampland.time.com/2013/03/27/watching-kennedy-the-courts-swing-voter-offers-clues-to-a-gay-marriage-ruling/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 27 Mar 2013 09:45:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Michael Crowley</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Gay Marriage]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://swampland.time.com/?p=91424</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[This morning the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments about the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act, a 1996 law that prevents the federal government from recognizing state-level same-sex marriages. In an effort to divine how the case might be decided, activists, journalists and legal experts will study each Justice’s questions and utterances with the kind of exhaustive, even absurd, scrutiny typically reserved for wills and ransom notes. But the words of Justice Anthony Kennedy — the swing vote on a panel whose other eight members, four to a side, are relatively predictable — will likely offer the most valuable clues. If yesterday’s arguments around a different gay-marriage case are any indication, however, they may be tantalizingly inconclusive. When the court heard arguments on Tuesday about the constitutionality of Proposition 8, a 2008 California ballot measure that banned gay marriage in the state, Kennedy occasionally seemed in sync with conservative Justices like Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito, who warned, among other things, that an institution as old as heterosexual marriage should not be redefined until its potential societal effects are clearer. Redefining marriage would lead society into to &#8220;uncharted waters,” Kennedy said, and (mixing metaphors) potentially over a “cliff.” In an exchange with Charles Cooper, the private lawyer arguing for backers of Proposition 8 (which California’s governor and attorney general declined to defend themselves), Kennedy said that &#8220;[the] sociological information is new. We have five years of information to weigh against 2,000 years of history or more.” (MORE: Pride and Prejudice: An Interactive Timeline of the Fight for Gay Rights) But Kennedy then pivoted to a new perspective, suggesting that same-sex-marriage bans are causing an identifiable harm right now. “On the other hand,&#8221; he continued, “there are some 40,000 children in California &#8230; that live with same-sex parents, and they want their parents to have full recognition and full status. The voice of those children is important in this case, don&#8217;t you think?” Kennedy said those children may be suffering an “immediate legal injury” as a result. With that, he had flipped the<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=swampland.time.com&#038;blog=5284847&#038;post=91424&#038;subd=timeswampland&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>2</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Gay Marriage</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://swampland.time.com/category/domestic-policy-2/gay-marriage-domestic-policy/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeswampland.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/kennedy.jpg?w=200</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Anthony Kennedy</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">crowley100</media:title>
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		<title>Americans: No Drone Killings at Home, Which May Be How Congress First Wanted It</title>
		<link>http://swampland.time.com/2013/03/25/americans-no-drone-killings-at-home-which-may-be-how-congress-first-wanted-it/</link>
		<comments>http://swampland.time.com/2013/03/25/americans-no-drone-killings-at-home-which-may-be-how-congress-first-wanted-it/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 25 Mar 2013 20:33:30 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Michael Crowley</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[National Security]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://swampland.time.com/?p=91221</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[What hath Rand Paul wrought? Maybe this: A new Gallup poll conducted after the Kentucky Senator&#8217;s epic filibuster finds that a majority of Americans&#8211;52 percent to 41 percent&#8211;now oppose killing U.S. citizens overseas with drones. As Dave Weigel notes, that figure is well down from the finding of a February 2012 Washington Post survey. It&#8217;s worth reiterating here that just three four of the thousands of suspected bad guys (and innocent bystanders) killed by drones over the past decade have been Americans. Only one, the al Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, was a specific target. The others, including Awlaki&#8217;s 16-year-old son and the al Qaeda propagandist Samir Khan (who died with Awlaki), were what the military likes to call &#8220;collateral damage.&#8221; (The fourth was killed in the very first known drone strike of the &#8220;War on Terror.&#8221;) A paltry 13 percent of Gallup&#8217;s respondents endorsed the even narrower scenario that so concerned Rand Paul: killing American citizens &#8220;who are suspected terrorists&#8221; here at home. A whopping 79 percent oppose it. (Actually, Paul seemed worried about something even more specific: that Obama might casually kill Americans here at home who have vague or even no ties to terrorism&#8211;a position that only someone rooting for Obama to be a Saddam Hussein-style dictator would openly support.) This rising concern about whether the war on terror is coming home might be a good occasion to note some history that has apparently gone unmentioned in recent weeks. According to Vanity Fair writer Kurt Eichenwald in his recent book 500 Days: Secrets and Lies in the Terror Wars, the Bush White House originally sought express authority from Congress right after 9/11 to wage the war on terror on U.S. soil. White House lawyer Timothy Flanigan, Eichenwald writes, originally drafted language for a use-of-force resolution that authorized the president: To use all necessary and appropriate force in the United States and against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons [emphasis<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=swampland.time.com&#038;blog=5284847&#038;post=91221&#038;subd=timeswampland&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>National Security</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://swampland.time.com/category/domestic-policy-2/national-security/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeswampland.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/rtxkgw2.jpg?w=200</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">The United States Air Force&#039;s Global Hawk unmanned spy plane at the Royal Australian Air Force Base,..</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">crowley100</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">More...</media:title>
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		<title>Is the CIA Getting Out of the Drone Business? There&#8217;s Less Than Meets the Eye</title>
		<link>http://swampland.time.com/2013/03/21/is-the-cia-getting-out-of-the-drone-business-theres-less-than-meets-the-eye/</link>
		<comments>http://swampland.time.com/2013/03/21/is-the-cia-getting-out-of-the-drone-business-theres-less-than-meets-the-eye/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 21 Mar 2013 19:44:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Michael Crowley</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[National Security]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://swampland.time.com/?p=91020</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I have a feature in this week&#8217;s issue of TIME on the way Barack Obama&#8216;s drone war has rapidly shifted from a campaign bragging point to a political headache&#8211;not to mention a potential strategic national security problem&#8211;and what Congress and the White House might do about it. Now comes one answer: the White House is planning to transfer the CIA&#8216;s drone operations to Pentagon control. It&#8217;s an interesting development, one that suggests a desire on Obama&#8217;s part to at least partly move the drone campaign from what is widely perceived as a shadowy, extra-legal status. But there&#8217;s probably less here than meets the eye, for a few reasons. One, there&#8217;s little sign that this plan&#8211;which the new CIA director, John Brennan, hinted at during his confirmation hearing&#8211;means fewer drone strikes in total. This seems to be about who chooses the targets, flies the missions and pulls the trigger. There have been some recent indications that the pace of drone strikes is slowing. But this isn&#8217;t a plan to scale back the volume of drone attacks. It&#8217;s about distribution of duties. Bear in mind that the military already runs its own drone operations; this change would simply enlarge them. It would also free up the CIA to refocus on its traditional intelligence-gathering role. To understand why that&#8217;s a priority for Obama and his new CIA director, John Brennan, check out today&#8217;s Washington Post story on concerns that the agency&#8217;s fixation on al Qaeda has left it with dangerous blind spots around the world. Two, although it may sound like moving the drone program out of a convert agency (which will not even acknowledge its drones in Pakistan and Yemen) is a step towards transparency, that&#8217;s not clear. As former Bush administration national security official Matthew Waxman puts it, &#8220;critics often underestimate oversight of CIA activities and overestimate the openness of military operations.&#8221; There is a compelling case that drone operations run by the Pentagon face a higher burden to comply with international and domestic law, whereas the CIA has broader freedom<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=swampland.time.com&#038;blog=5284847&#038;post=91020&#038;subd=timeswampland&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>National Security</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://swampland.time.com/category/domestic-policy-2/national-security/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeswampland.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/rtr3df74.jpg?w=200</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Drone</media:title>
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		<title>Down on Drones</title>
		<link>http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2139176-1,00.html</link>
		<comments>http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2139176-1,00.html#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 21 Mar 2013 18:01:52 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Michael Crowley</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Magazine]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://swampland.time.com/?p=91031</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=swampland.time.com&#038;blog=5284847&#038;post=91031&#038;subd=timeswampland&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Magazine</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://swampland.time.com/category/magazine/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeswampland.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/360_wterror_0401.jpg?w=200</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">drone</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">crowley100</media:title>
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		<title>On U.S. Drone Policies, Ex-Pentagon Lawyer Warns of &#8216;Erosion of Support&#8217;</title>
		<link>http://swampland.time.com/2013/03/18/on-u-s-drone-policies-ex-pentagon-lawyer-warns-of-erosion-of-support/</link>
		<comments>http://swampland.time.com/2013/03/18/on-u-s-drone-policies-ex-pentagon-lawyer-warns-of-erosion-of-support/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 18 Mar 2013 13:30:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Michael Crowley</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[National Security]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://swampland.time.com/?p=90636</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Amid the roiling debate about the Obama administration&#8217;s drone program, a former top Pentagon lawyer is weighing in today on the wisdom of adding  judicial oversight to the government&#8217;s targeted killing activities. In a speech at Fordham University this morning, Jeh Johnson, who stepped down as chief counsel to the Defense Department in January, acknowledges that many Americans now imagine &#8220;dark images of civilian and military national security personnel in the basement of the White House–acting, as Senator Angus King put it, as &#8216;prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner&#8217;&#8230;deciding for themselves who shall live and who shall die, pursuant to a process and by standards no one understands.&#8221; In a striking acknowledgment of how fast the national political debate has moved, Johnson acknowledges that the government&#8217;s anti-terror targeted killing program, once a campaign bragging point for Obama, &#8220;risks an erosion of support by the people.&#8221; (MORE: On U.S. Drone Policies, Ex-Pentagon Lawyer Warns of ‘Erosion of Support’) But in the heart of his speech, Johnson calls himself a &#8220;skeptic&#8221; when it comes to an idea for gaining support in Congress and policy circles: a &#8220;drone court,&#8221; modeled after the FISA judicial panel that approves the government&#8217;s wiretapping operations. Like some other former government lawyers, Johnson&#8212;-whose former job that involved signing off on (or in some cases vetoing) dozens of proposed targets for drone strikes&#8211;worries about both the constitutionality and practicality of having judges approve or deny targeting requests that often depend on fast-changing situations and involve a president&#8217;s commander in chief powers. He also notes that such a court would have to act in secret, and&#8211;like the FISA court&#8211;would probably approve most requests, doing little to assuage critics of the drone program. Johnson also offers three suggestions for how Obama might carry on targeted killing operations with stronger public support. One is to be more transparent. (&#8220;Put 10 national security officials in a room to discuss de-classifying a certain fact,&#8221; he says, and &#8220;they will all say &#8216;I&#8217;m for transparency in principle,&#8217; but at least 7 will be concerned about second-order effects,<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=swampland.time.com&#038;blog=5284847&#038;post=90636&#038;subd=timeswampland&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>National Security</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://swampland.time.com/category/domestic-policy-2/national-security/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeswampland.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/132187920.jpg?w=200</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Pentagon General Counsel Jeh Johnson, right, with Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during a Senate Armed Services Hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Nov. 10, 2011.</media:title>
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