Pentagon

When the White House sent a last-minute invitation for Asif Ali Zardari to attend the two-day NATO summit, they were taking a highly public gamble. Would sharing the spotlight with President Obama and other global leaders induce the Pakistani president to allow vital supplies to reach alliance troops fighting in Afghanistan? But long before the summit ended Monday, the answer was clear: No deal. Zardari's refusal to reopen the supply routes left a diplomatic blot on a summit that NATO sought to cast as the beginning of the end of the conflict in Afghanistan.

WASHINGTON - In the months after the U.S. militarymission that killed Osama bin Laden, Pentagon officials met with Hollywood filmmakers and gave them special access in an effort to influence the creation of a film about the operation, newly released documents show. Emails and meeting transcripts obtained from the Pentagon and CIA through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch suggest that officials went out of their way to assist the filmmakers, while trying to keep their cooperation from becoming public.

A pocket-size drone dubbed the Nano Hummingbird for the way it flaps its tiny robotic wings has been developed for the Pentagon by a Monrovia company as a mini-spy plane capable of maneuvering on the battlefield and in urban areas. The battery-powered drone was built by AeroVironment Inc. for the Pentagon's research arm as part of a series of experiments in nanotechnology. The little flying machine is built to look like a bird for potential use in spy missions. The results of a five-year effort to develop the drone are being announced Thursday by the company and the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

WASHINGTON -- In the months after the U.S. military mission that killed Osama bin Laden, Pentagon officials met with Hollywood filmmakers and gave them special access in an effort to influence the creation of a film about the operation, newly released documents show. Emails and meeting transcripts obtained from the Pentagon and CIA through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the watchdog group Judicial Watch suggest that officials went out of their way to assist the filmmakers, while trying to avoid the public learning of their cooperation.

Under mounting pressure to keep its massive budget in check, the Pentagon is looking to cheaper, smaller weapons to wage war in the 21st century. A new generation of weaponry is being readied in clandestine laboratories across the nation that puts a priority on pintsized technology that would be more precise in warfare and less likely to cause civilian casualties. Increasingly, the Pentagon is being forced to discard expensive, hulking, Cold War-era armaments that exact a heavy toll on property and human lives.

The Pentagon is investigating 10 U.S. military members in a widening probe into whether an advance team of Secret Service and military personnel hired local prostitutes or engaged in other misconduct before President Obama visited Colombia for a summit last week, U.S. officials said. The Pentagon investigation is focusing on five Special Forces Army soldiers, two Marines, two Navy personnel and one member of the Air Force, a U.S. military official said.  The Navy and Air Force personnel are members of explosive detection unit, the official said,.

After landing by helicopter at the Pakistani compound housing Osama bin Laden early Monday, local time, the U.S. special operations team tasked with capturing or killing the Al Qaeda leader found itself in an almost continuous gun battle. For the next 40 minutes, the team cleared the two buildings within the fortified compound in Abbottabad, north of Islamabad, trying to reach Bin Laden and his family, who lived on the second and third floors of the largest structure, senior Defense Department and intelligence officials said Monday.

To conservatives who love the military and hate big government: The Pentagon is not a private corporation. G. DE WITT Seal Beach

Did the Obama administration release classified information to Hollywood notables for a film about the operation that killed Osama bin Laden? That's a question Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.) wants answered.  And in response, the Pentagon's inspector general has launched an investigation, King disclosed Thursday. “We plan to begin subject investigation immediately,” Patricia A. Brannin, deputy inspector general for intelligence and special program assessments, wrote in a memo that King emailed to reporters.

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon is beefing up its spy service to send several hundred undercover intelligence officers to overseas hot spots to steal secrets on national security threats after a decade of focusing chiefly on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The move comes amid concerns that the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon's spy service, needs to expand operations beyond the war zones and to work more closely with the CIA, according to a senior Defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the classified program.

WASHINGTON -- House Republicans approved a sweeping package of budget cuts to food stamps, Meals on Wheels and other domestic programs -- while sparing the Pentagon -- in an election-year showcase of party priorities. Democrats overwhelmingly opposed the legislation, which is expected to stall in the Senate, but House Speaker John A. Boehner's decision to call a vote gives the GOP an opportunity to highlight its agenda and attack President Obama's efforts to reduce the deficit. The bill was approved on party lines, 218-199.

WASHINGTON - A top U.S. commander is seeking authority to expand clandestine operations against militants and insurgencies around the globe, a sign of shifting Pentagon tactics and priorities after a grueling decade of large-scale wars. Adm. William H. McRaven, a Navy SEAL and commander of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, has developed plans that would provide far-reaching new powers to make special operations units "the force of choice" against "emerging threats" over the next decade, internal Defense Department documents show.

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon is beefing up its spy service to send several hundred undercover intelligence officers to overseas hot spots to steal secrets on national security threats after a decade of focusing chiefly on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The move comes amid concerns that the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon's spy service, needs to expand operations beyond the war zones and to work more closely with the CIA, according to a senior Defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the classified program.

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon will reorganize its spy service to target national security threats around the globe after a decade of focusing chiefly on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a senior defense official said Monday. The official said several hundred case officers and analysts at the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency would be shifted to the new Defense Clandestine Service. The fledgling service is supposed to work closely with CIA officers based at U.S. embassies overseas to collect and distribute intelligence on foreign terrorist networks, nuclear proliferation and other difficult targets, the official said.

The results are in from last summer's attempt to test new technology that would provide the Pentagon with a lightning-fast vehicle, capable of delivering a military strike anywhere in the world in less than an hour. In August the Pentagon's research arm, known as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, carried out a test flight of an experimental aircraft capable of traveling at 20 times the speed of sound. The arrowhead-shaped unmanned aircraft, dubbed Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2, blasted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base, northwest of Santa Barbara, into the upper reaches of the Earth's atmosphere aboard an eight-story Minotaur IV rocket made by Orbital Sciences Corp.

The Pentagon is investigating 10 U.S. military members in a widening probe into whether an advance team of Secret Service and military personnel hired local prostitutes or engaged in other misconduct before President Obama visited Colombia for a summit last week, U.S. officials said. The Pentagon investigation is focusing on five Special Forces Army soldiers, two Marines, two Navy personnel and one member of the Air Force, a U.S. military official said.  The Navy and Air Force personnel are members of explosive detection unit, the official said,.

In the worst terrorist attack ever against the United States, hijackers struck at the preeminent symbols of the nation's wealth and might Tuesday, flying airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and killing or injuring thousands of people. As a horrified nation watched on television, the twin towers of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan collapsed into flaming rubble after two Boeing 767s rammed their upper stories. A third airliner, a Boeing 757, flattened one of the Pentagon's five sides.

The U.S. military has agreed for the first time to provide information to the International Committee of the Red Cross about prisoners held in secret detention camps in Afghanistan and Iraq, but it will continue to deny the organization access to them, military officials said Saturday. The facilities are "short-term places" operated by U.S. Special Forces for newly captured suspected insurgents considered to have valuable information or to be serious threats, according to an official familiar with the subject who was not authorized to discuss it on the record.

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon is investigating 10 U.S. military members in a widening inquiry into whether an advance team led by the Secret Service hired prostitutes or engaged in other misconduct before President Obama visited Colombia for a weekend summit, U.S. officials said Monday. The Pentagon investigation is focusing on five Army Special Forces soldiers, two Marines, two Navy personnel and one member of the Air Force, a U.S. military official said. The Navy and Air Force personnel belong to an explosives detection unit, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.