Terrorism

Legal experts said Tuesday that they were taken aback by the claim in the latest batch of secret Bush-era memos that the president alone had the power to set the rules during the war on terrorism. Yale law professor Jack Balkin called this a "theory of presidential dictatorship. They say the battlefield is everywhere. And the president can do anything he wants, so long as it involves the military and the enemy." The criticism was not limited to liberals.

The CIA's secret prisons are being shuttered. Harsh interrogation techniques are off-limits. And Guantanamo Bay will eventually go back to being a wind-swept naval base on the southeastern corner of Cuba. But even while dismantling these programs, President Obama left intact an equally controversial counter-terrorism tool.

The Bush administration's post-Sept. 11 surveillance efforts went beyond the widely publicized warrantless wiretapping program, a government report disclosed Friday, encompassing additional secretive activities that created "unprecedented" spying powers. The report also raised new questions about how the Bush White House kept key Justice Department officials in the dark as it launched the surveillance program.

The Islamic Center of Irvine is a beige stucco building that blends into the rows of office buildings surrounding it. But last week, it became the most publicized mosque in California with disclosures that the FBI sent an informant there to spy and collect evidence of jihadist rhetoric and other allegedly extremist acts by a Tustin man who attended prayers there. The revelations dismayed mosque members like Omar Turbi, 50, and his 27-year-old son who shares his name.

Harvard Law Dean Elena Kagan, President Obama's choice to represent his administration before the Supreme Court, told a key Republican senator Tuesday that she believed the government could hold suspected terrorists without trial as war prisoners. She echoed comments by Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. during his confirmation hearing last month.

Auditioning in December for the role of a Bollywood villain, Rajan Verma was asked to act like a man attacking a train or a building. He clutched a toy gun and spewed out what he hoped sounded like a venomous diatribe. Verma, 28, had no idea what the movie was about. But when the casting director handed him a black T-shirt, beige cargo pants, a blue backpack and a replica of an AK-47 assault rifle, he knew instantly.

President Obama's decision Friday to revive military tribunals to try suspected terrorists will likely fail to erase the taint of illegitimacy over the courts despite efforts at reform, civilian and military legal experts said. Obama outlined five rule changes aimed at bolstering defendants' rights, including strict limits on the use of coerced evidence, tougher restrictions on the use of hearsay evidence and more latitude for defendants to choose their own lawyers.

The FBI and Justice Department plan to significantly expand their role in global counter-terrorism operations, part of a U.S. policy shift that will replace a CIA-dominated system of clandestine detentions and interrogations with one built around transparent investigations and prosecutions. Under the "global justice" initiative, which has been in the works for several months, FBI agents will have a central role in overseas counter-terrorism cases.

It happened in Baku, transforming the capital of Azerbaijan into a battleground in a global shadow war. Police intercepted a fleeing car and captured two suspected Hezbollah militants from Lebanon. The car contained explosives, binoculars, cameras, pistols with silencers and reconnaissance photos. Raiding alleged safe houses, police foiled what authorities say was a plot to blow up the Israeli Embassy in Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic that borders Iran.

Federal authorities in North Carolina on Monday arrested seven men who they said had trained with high-powered weapons as part of a terrorist conspiracy to wage an Islamic holy war overseas. The men -- including a father who, authorities said, trained in jihad camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and his two sons -- sought to provide material support to terrorists and to murder, kidnap, maim and injure people overseas, according to a seven-count federal indictment.