National Security

As children sleep safely in their beds, a menace is set loose in the world -- and a phone rings in the White House. "Your vote will decide who answers the call," says a narrator, "whether it's someone . . . tested and ready to lead in a dangerous world." In her newest television ad, released Friday, Hillary Rodham Clinton shows who should answer the 3 a.m. call: She is pictured picking up the phone, confident and businesslike.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, once seen as a lock for the Democratic nomination, battled Saturday into possibly the last weekend of her presidential campaign, struggling to reverse a tide of money and momentum that has turned dramatically toward Barack Obama. The New York senator stormed across Texas, questioning Obama's readiness to lead, particularly on national security issues. "You are, in effect, hiring the next president," Clinton told supporters at a rally at a San Antonio high school.

The FBI indicated Wednesday that widespread irregularities in a program to gather confidential data on people in the United States after the Sept. 11 attacks continued into at least 2006. The bureau's use of national security letters to gather phone, Internet and credit records in terrorism and espionage investigations -- a power magnified by the Patriot Act -- first came under attack last March in a report by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine.

Here's a 21st century twist on a conspiracy theorist's adage: Just because you're paranoid, that doesn't mean you're not being followed electronically. News outlets have brimmed with tales of websites, cable TV companies, Internet service providers and even the government quietly monitoring what you do and say. It's all supposedly for your own good, in ways large (protecting you from terrorist sleeper cells) or minute (showing you advertisements that might be less irritating).

Ivan Scott, 78, a broadcaster whose reports on the Pentagon were heard on a number of stations across the country including KNX-AM (1070) news radio and KABC-AM (790) in Los Angeles, died March 10 of a brain tumor at George Washington University Hospital in Washington, D.C. Scott's distinctive baritone voice was heard for more than 20 years as a military-affairs and national-security correspondent. He had been an anchor for ABC and Mutual radio. A native of Washington, Scott graduated from Princeton University.

William G. Hyland, former deputy national security advisor to President Ford and former editor of Foreign Affairs magazine, died of an aortic aneurysm March 25 at Inova Fairfax Hospital in Virginia. He was 79. Hyland, an expert on U.S.-Soviet relations during the latter days of the Cold War, worked for the Nixon administration at the National Security Council and the State Department as the head of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research. He returned to the NSC during the Ford administration.

Authorities say two men have been charged with trying to illegally export sensitive infrared cameras from Los Angeles to China. Beijing residents Tah Wei Chao and Zhi Yong Guo were named Monday in a complaint alleging that they tried to export restricted items without a license, authorities said. Each faces up to 20 years in federal prison if convicted. The government says the men tried to board a flight on Saturday with 10 thermal imaging cameras without the proper export licenses.

The Bush administration has not drafted a comprehensive plan to destroy a resurgent Al Qaeda or other militant groups in the tribal areas of Pakistan and has not adequately monitored the billions in U.S. taxpayer dollars sent to the Pakistani government to combat the groups, according to a sharply critical report by an independent government watchdog agency issued Thursday. The Government Accountability Office said the administration's effort has been so ineffective that the U.S.

Re "Primary toll," editorial, April 24 Conventional wisdom suggests that it is going to take a united Democratic front to defeat GOP Sen. John McCain in November. If true, then let me say it: Democratic Party unity is a matter of national security. How else can you explain it when the presumptive Republican nominee says the United States may need to remain in Iraq for 100 years, or that his solution to the nation's economic meltdown is to take a wait-and-see approach? McCain's positions promote national insecurity.

The three major candidates for president now agree that Congress should pass a law allowing reporters to protect their confidential sources. Unfortunately, the current occupant of the White House still resists such legislation, which is why the Senate needs to follow the House in approving the Free Flow of Information Act by a veto-proof margin. That prospect was enhanced last month when Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) told newspaper editors that, like Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.