Terrorism

CHICAGO - 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 - The Supreme Court, after a four-year break from terrorism issues, is set to decide as soon as Monday whether to again take up constitutional challenges to George W. Bush-era anti-terrorism laws involving wiretapping and the Guantanamo prisoners. In one case, the Obama administration is asking the court to block a suit against the government's monitoring of international phone calls and emails. And in the other set of appeals, lawyers for six detainees at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are asking the justices to make good on their promise of four years ago and give the inmates a "meaningful opportunity" to be released.

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia told world leaders at a U.N. interfaith meeting that terrorism is the enemy of all religions, and he called for a united front to combat it and promote tolerance. "We state with a unified voice that religions through which Almighty God sought to bring happiness to mankind should not be turned into instruments to cause misery," the king said, opening a U.N. General Assembly meeting his government initiated. "Terrorism and criminality are the enemies of every religion and every civilization.

In the face of privacy concerns, the Los Angeles Police Department has agreed to change the way it collects information on suspicious activity possibly related to terrorism. The department, after coming under fire from civil liberties and community groups, will no longer hold on to so-called suspicious activity reports that the LAPD's counter-terrorism unit determines are about harmless incidents. Until now, the department stored the innocuous reports in a database for a year.

Barack Obama picked CIA veteran John Brennan as his top advisor on counter-terrorism, a White House position not subject to Senate approval. Brennan will be an influential advisor on the Middle East and on Iran, an area in which he has called for a sharp break with past U.S. policy. The president-elect's decision comes only six weeks after Brennan was forced to pull out of contention for the directorship of the Central Intelligence Agency because of fears that his statements supporting some controversial interrogation techniques would have complicated his confirmation.

On the campaign trail, the two presidential teams have been savaging each other over what they contend are stark differences between how Barack Obama and John McCain would lead the United States in its multibillion-dollar war on terrorism. Obama declared in his convention speech: "McCain likes to say that he'll follow Bin Laden to the gates of Hell -- but he won't even go to the cave where he lives." At the GOP convention, Sarah Palin, McCain's running mate, fired back: "Al Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America -- he's worried that someone won't read them their rights?"

Right-wing plotters targeted prominent figures for assassination, including Orhan Pamuk, the Nobel Prize-winning author, and planned to attack NATO installations in Turkey, the government charged Friday in a wide-ranging indictment against what it described as a nationwide network of conspirators. The 2,500-page document laying out details of the alleged ultranationalist plot was released by prosecutors Friday, as an Istanbul court agreed to take up the case and scheduled hearings to begin Oct. 20. At least 86 people face trial on charges that include conspiracy and terrorism, and authorities have said more people are likely to be charged.

After nearly two months of investigation, prosecutors are expected to ask a federal grand jury in Los Angeles today to charge at least three men with conspiracy to commit terrorism in connection with an alleged plot to attack National Guard recruitment centers, synagogues and other sites in Southern California. Prosecutors may also seek to bring charges against one or two inmates at a state prison in Folsom, said federal, state and local law enforcement sources.

Their name conjures up the most celebrated moment of America's post-Sept. 11 military campaigns. Now the Navy SEALs belong to a grimmer chapter in history: the most deadly incident for U.S. forces in the 10-year Afghanistan war. Three months after they killed Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in neighboring Pakistan and cemented their place in military legend, the SEALs suffered a devastating loss when nearly two dozen of the elite troops were among...

It takes guts to write a satire about terrorism - and Lionel Shriver has guts. She has already published biting novels about the failings of the U.S. healthcare system ("So Much for That") and a school shooter ("We Need to Talk About Kevin"). Terrorism? Why not? In "The New Republic," the problem is in Barba, a Portuguese peninsula with a legitimate yet tiny political movement seeking independence, and an unaffiliated - so they say - terrorist arm that has taken up international violence.

A New York federal judge temporarily blocked enforcement of a provision in the National Defense Authorization Act that opponents contend could subject them to indefinite military detention for political activism, news reporting or other 1st Amendment activities. U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest in Manhattan ruled Wednesday in favor of a group of writers and activists who sued President Obama, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and the Defense Department. Obama signed the bill into law Dec. 31. The complaint was filed Jan. 13 by a group including former New York Times reporter Christopher Hedges.

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba — Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the boastful self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, sat in a small blue chair for hours at the opening of his capital murder trial — holding his tongue. As Saturday wore on, it became clear that Mohammed and the four other defendants were staging a silent protest, aimed at both confounding the U.S. military court system here and demonstrating to the outside world that they do not acknowledge America's control over them.

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.

A UC Berkeley law professor who helped the Bush administration create policies to justify harsh interrogation techniques and prolonged detention may not be sued by an American citizen detained under those conditions, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said Jose Padilla, an American citizen arrested in 2002 and declared an "enemy combatant," may not hold professor John Yoo liable for "gross physical and psychological abuse" that Padilla said he suffered during more than three years of military detention.

Mistakes were made, but on balance waterboarding of terrorism suspects made the world safer. That is the conclusion of Jose Rodriguez, a key CIA architect of the harsh measures used to elicit intelligence from prisoners snatched from the streets of foreign countries and flown to a globe-spanning network of secret prisons for interrogation. But in Europe, where leaders of developing democracies like Poland, Lithuania and Romania allowed the CIA to conduct counter-terrorism activities the Council of Europe defines as torture, Rodriguez's position is unlikely to dampen the quest for accountability for those who welcomed U.S. agents.

WASHINGTON - President Obama's top counter-terrorism advisor Monday defended using drones to launch missiles against militants in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, saying the growing use of armed unmanned aircraft had saved American lives and caused few civilian casualties. The comments by John Brennan, coming shortly before the first anniversary of the U.S. Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden, marks the first time a senior White House official has spoken at length in public about widely reported but officially secret drone operations.

The Supreme Court heard arguments in two war-on-terrorism cases Tuesday -- one that tests whether American civilians can seek the help of American courts if they are held in Iraq, and the other to determine whether the man who plotted to bomb Los Angeles International Airport will serve his full 22-year prison term. In both cases, the justices sounded as though they would rule on the side of the Bush administration. The first case, Munaf vs.

An Afghan immigrant who admitted planning to bomb New York City targets to protest the war in his homeland takes the stand again Wednesday in the trial of an alleged co-conspirator in the plot, which officials called "one of the most serious threats" to the country since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Najibullah Zazi began his testimony Tuesday in federal court in Manhattan, looking far different from the defiant, bearded man who stood in a courtroom in February 2010 and pleaded guilty to terror-related charges.

NEW YORK — A federal court judge sentenced convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout to 25 years in prison on Thursday, but in a swipe at prosecutors said there was no convincing evidence that he would have committed crimes they alleged if he had not been the target of a sting operation. Judge Shira Scheindlin gave the 45-year-old Bout, known as the "Merchant of Death," the minimum mandatory sentence for conspiring to acquire and use antiaircraft missiles. She also sentenced him to 15 years on three other counts of conspiracy to kill Americans and conspiracy to provide material support to a terrorist organization, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC.