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The Introduction and Chapter 1 came out in March.

Chapter 2 offers a normative account of where we think the administration’s speeches on national security legal questions get things right, where they miss the mark, and where they require further development. We have also added Chapter 2 to the Speaking the Law page, which contains the entire project.

Speaking the Law (Chapter 2), by Kenneth Anderson and Benjamin Wittes

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There is a great deal of hyperventilation—much of it self-interested on the part of the press—about the Administration’s “assault on the First Amendment.” In particular, the Administration has been roundly [criticized] for suggesting that a reporter who knowingly solicits classified information might be committing a crime. At the risk of violating the old adage about not picking a fight with someone who buys printer’s ink by the barrel, I want to take this on.

The Department of Justice did not claim that the Fox News reporter in the [Stephen Jin-Woo] Kim case committed a crime merely by publishing classified information. According to the Government’s filing in the case, the reporter in question actively asked people with access to classified information to break the law by providing him classified information he could publish. He used false names and “dead drop” email accounts to do so. In other words, he wasn’t someone to whom a whistleblower came to disclose information; he was actively asking people to violate the law, and enabling them to do so. Remember, there’s no doubt that—assuming Mr. Kim is the guilty party—he violated the law if he disclosed properly classified information to a reporter.

Let’s look at an analogy. If a reporter finds Justin Bieber’s private diary on the street and publishes it, that’s journalism (of a sort). But if she pays someone to break into Bieber’s house to steal the diary, hasn’t she has aided and abetted, or conspired in, a crime, even if her intent is to get material to publish? That’s exactly what the Government says happened here—a reporter soliciting, and aiding and abetting criminal activity.

Now, it’s one thing to say someone may have committed a crime, and another thing to prosecute him for it.  It’s noteworthy that the Department of Justice did not charge the Fox News reporter but simply used his potential criminal activity as a basis for a search warrant, and identified him as an unindicted co-conspirator.  This was a damaging leak and the Government had every right to investigate to try to find the person who leaked it, and certainly there is a strong circumstantial case that they found him in this case.  The fact that the First Amendment affords protection to the publication of truthful information doesn’t give reporters license to do anything they want to get that information.

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While neither we nor the critics know the circumstances behind the prosecutors’ decision to issue this subpoena, we do know from the government’s public disclosures that the prosecutors were right to investigate this leak vigorously. The leak — which resulted in a May 2012 article by The A.P. about the disruption of a Yemen-based terrorist plot to bomb an airliner — significantly damaged our national security. . . .

The leak of such sensitive source information not only denies us an invaluable insight into our adversaries’ plans and operations. It is also devastating to our overall ability to thwart terrorist threats, because it discourages our allies from working and sharing intelligence with us and deters would-be sources from providing intelligence about our adversaries. Unless we can demonstrate the willingness and ability to stop this kind of leak, those critical intelligence resources may be lost to us.

An odd move from Guatemala’s highest court: it invalidated proceedings from April 19th onward, in the trial of Efrain Rios Montt for genocide and crimes against humanity.  That period includes Montt’s recent conviction for both crimes—which the court’s ruling effectively overturned.  As this BBC report  explains, the decision has its roots in an April 18 walkout by Montt’s defense counsel. Elisabeth Malkin of the New York Times also has a story.

Ryan Fogle, a U.S. diplomat and alleged CIA officer, is not the only American to be expelled from Mother Russia in recent weeks.  Also getting the boot is Tom Firestone, former legal adviser at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow and now senior counsel at Baker McKenzie’s office there. The New York Times says  Firestone was approached about becoming an informant for the FSB, Russia’s domestic security service, but declined.  That, it seems, prompted Russian officials to declare Firestone persona non grata.   Robert Beckhusen of Wired  analyzes the Firestone story here.

The Washington Post editorial board thinks l’affaire Fogle was a frame job:

The way Mr. Fogle’s arrest was turned into a public spectacle suggests it was a setup by the Russian security service. Over the weekend, a Russian news agency, quoting an FSB officer, identified by name the CIA station chief in Moscow, a breach of long-standing protocol.

The Times’s Thom Shanker profiles the outgoing deputy commander of Special Operations forces in Afghanistan, Brig. Gen. Don Bolduc.  The latter trains Afghan villagers to defend themselves against insurgents. Bolduc’s program is blessed by senior Afghan government officials; boasts the participation of more than 22,000 villagers in 55 village districts; and, according to Special Operations HQ, has a lower attrition rate than the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police.  Still, for all these successes, Bolduc’s initiative is not controversy-free, as Shanker notes.

It’s official: the Pentagon has taken control of some drone operations, particularly those in Yemen.  According to this Reuters story, operations in Pakistan still will be run by the CIA, in order to maintain their covert status and ensure deniability for the U.S. and Pakistan.

Over at CFR, Micah Zenko excerpts the transcript from last week’s Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the AUMF.

Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s embattled ex-president, was granted bail on Monday.  But he’s still under house arrest, and three different cases against him continue to move forward, according to Salman Masood and Ismail Khan of the Times.

With the latest round of Benghazi hearings done, the State Department is focused on implementing the Accountability Review Board’s security recommendations. Read Eric Schmitt‘s piece in the Times. And the Post’s Anne Gearan covered SecState Kerry’s remarks yesterday, about new restrictions on diplomats’ activities while posted in dangerous locales.  He said that, in order to perform their duties, foreign service officers must work “outdoors,” sometimes even beyond security barriers.

A 2010 Chinese cyberattack on Google sought information about U.S. surveillance targets, who were then believed to be Chinese intelligence operatives. Ellen Nakashima has more on the story in the Washington Post.

The Times’s Nicole Perlroth dives into the investigation into the Syrian Electronic Army’s recent cyberattacks.

And the GSA has taken the next step in setting standard cybersecurity contract requirements, as mandated by President Obama’s cybersecurity executive order. Here’s the agency’s request for information in the Federal Register.

A weekend Washington Post editorial called for cybersecurity legislation. It concluded:

To protect what we hold dear — from mobile apps to mutual funds — it is vital that the United States erect better defenses. Congress stalled in the last session over legislation that would improve cooperation between the private sector, which controls most of the networks, and the government, which could help defend those networks. An unreasonable business allergy to regulation was the main obstacle. The need for legislation is more urgent than ever.

Speaking of cyber, GTMO has turned off its WiFi and blocked access to social networking sites, as a result of a threat by Anonymous.  The notorious hacking outfit apparently has deployed its technical prowess in a show of solidarity with the detainees. Here’s the BBC story.

GTMO detainee and hunger striker Shaker Aamer has launched a Twitter campaign—or, at least, UK human rights group Reprieve has launched one on Aamer’s behalf.  Spencer Ackerman at Wired says that Aamer’s Twitter proxies are asking supporters to call the U.S. embassy and demand action on GTMO.

Congressman Adam Smith, Democrat of Washington State, has sent this letter to the White House.  Smith therein repeats his call to close GTMO—among other things by transferring cleared people, and prosecuting eligible detainees in federal courts or military commissions.

Brazilian police arrested one Hamzi Ahmad Barakat, a suspected member of Hezbollah and U.S.-designated global terrorist. This Times story has more.

Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, UBL’s son-in-law, stands charged with conspiring to kill Americans.  He seeks the help of defense lawyer Stanley Cohen, who has deep experience in terrorism cases but who also faces some legal troubles of his own.  It turns out Cohen is under federal investigation; Judge Lewis Kaplan said this might compromise Cohen’s ability to obtain the security clearance needed to review classified materials in Abu Ghaith’s case. Ben Weiser of the Times gives us a play-by-play of last week’s hearings.

In the New York Times, Clyde Haberman profiles Karen Greenberg, director of Fordham Law’s Center on National Security.

For more interesting law and security-related articles, follow us on Twitter and check out the Lawfare News Feed, visit the Georgetown Center on National Security and the Law’s Security Law Brief,  Syracuse’s Institute for National Security & Counterterrorism’s newsroll, and Fordham Law’s Center on National Security’s Morning Brief and Cyber Brief. Email Raffaela Wakeman and Ritika Singh noteworthy articles to include, visit the Lawfare Events Calendar for upcoming national security events, and check out relevant job openings at the Lawfare Job Board.

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Ben and Bobby’s begins:

Thank you, Chairman Goodlatte, Ranking Member Conyers, and members of the committee for this opportunity to give our views on the subject of military detention under the laws of war of terrorist suspects arrested within the United States.

This written statement represents the views of Robert Chesney, Professor of Law at the University of Texas School of Law and Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Benjamin Wittes, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution.

We would like to make four major points today, points which lead to a single recommendation:

First, a review of the relevant case law suggests that the Supreme Court as currently aligned would probably not approve the use of long-term military detention under color of the Authorization for the Use of Military force (AUMF) with respect to a United States citizen detainee who was arrested by law enforcement authorities within the United States. Whether it would approve detention for a non-citizen captured within the United States is also in doubt, though the matter is less clear in that setting.

Second, current criminal justice authorities provide ample grounds for ensuring the incapacitation of such persons in most foreseeable instances. There is little if anything to be gained for the executive branch in gambling with the domestic military detention option, which would carry significant litigation risk and guarantee divisive political friction.

Third, although the Bush administration did use military detention for domestic captures in two instances—one involving a citizen, another a non-citizen—it typically relied on the criminal justice system instead. Indeed, in the case of the citizen detainee, it eventually backed away in the face of a looming judicial reversal. The Obama administration has stayed this course, taking similar action with respect to the domestic non-citizen detainee in military custody. Today it is highly unlikely that an administration of either party would attempt to use these authorities again.

Fourth, because these options nonetheless have not formally been foreclosed in law, there are periodic surges of interest in them by both political supporters and opponents. Supporters demand their use in cases like that of the Boston Marathon bombing. Opponents, meanwhile, have gone to court to seek injunctive relief against law of war detention authorities based on speculative fears of military detentions that will not take place.  All of this is disruptive, undesirable, and unnecessary.

Based on these observations, we therefore recommend that Congress codify in statute today’s practical status quo. That is, Congress should state explicitly that detention authority under the AUMF and the NDAA does not extend to any persons captured within the territory of the United States. We provide a more expansive discussion of these points below, in two parts.  The first part outlines the legal context against which these issues arise today.  The second discusses the practical and policy consequences of leaving the current status quo uncodified in statute and explains our recommendation for legislation.

Steven A. Engel’s begins:

Chairman Goodlatte, Ranking Member Conyers, and the Members of the Committee, thank you for the invitation to testify today on protecting U.S. citizens’ constitutional rights during the War on Terror.

For more than ten years now, the United States has been engaged in an armed conflict against Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces. That conflict, while centered outside our borders, has not been limited to external threats. To the contrary, on September 11th, Al Qaeda proved that it had the military capability to inflict an attack on our homeland as devastating as anything that our Nation had experienced before.

While Al Qaeda clearly demonstrated that it represented a military threat to our country, the group and its associated forces are quite different from prior enemies. Al Qaeda is not a nation state, and its forces neither wear uniforms nor control territory in a conventional sense. Rather, Al Qaeda operates outside of, or in the shadows of, the laws of nation states, by exploiting power vacuums in failed states, making opportunistic alliances where available, and operating covertly within nations. As time has passed, the nature of Al Qaeda itself has changed, as the group has shifted, fragmented, and associated with regional groups outside of the Afghanistan and Pakistan region.

The War on Terror, as this armed conflict has been described, is thus a very different kind of conflict from ones we have seen in the past. And the nature of that conflict—with an ill-defined enemy, operating covertly and opportunistically—has itself raised special issues when it comes to defining the laws of war that govern this conflicts. The traditional laws of war are premised upon a conventional armed conflict or, in some cases, civil wars. The established legal framework provides clear answers to who may be detained, how they must be treated, and where they should be prosecuted. None of these questions is self-evident when it comes to the War on Terror.

The War on Terror poses special issues as well when it comes to the rights secured to United States citizens under our Constitution. With the nature of the enemy less defined, and the enemy set on attacking our homeland, the War on Terror requires that the Government work to detect and stop terrorist plots at home. The means by which we seek to stop such threats, and the rights of those, including American citizens, detained on our soil pose special challenges to ensure that we protect the constitutional rights of Americans at the same time as we protect their lives.

Mary Ellen O’Connell’s begins:

Members of Congress, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for this opportunity to help clarify the law regarding fundamental rights in the war on terror. The basic Constitutional and human rights to life, to liberty, and to a fair trial have all been implicated by America’s response to 9/11. My focus today is on the first of these basic rights, the right to life and on the use of armed unmanned aerial vehicles, known as drones, to launch missile attacks and to drop bombs far from the field of battle.

I am Professor Mary Ellen O’Connell of the University of Notre Dame. I hold degrees in history, international relations, and law from institutions including Northwestern University, Columbia, the London School of Economics, and Cambridge University. I have also served as a civilian employee of the United States Department of  Defense, teaching at the George C. Marshall Center in Southern Germany for a number of years. I have taught, written, and chaired committees on the subject of this hearing for almost 25 years. Work in this area requires extensive education not just in U.S. law but also in the international law on the use of force, international human rights law and international law generally. Unfortunately, very few persons have these qualifications in the United States today. Even fewer are able to speak from the privileged position of an independent scholar.

I hold such a position thanks in large part to the longtime president of the University of Notre Dame, Father Theodore Hesburgh. I find it auspicious that I will present testimony today, on the very day that Father Ted will be honored at a reception this afternoon in the Rayburn Room. Father Ted has been a pillar of civil and human rights for well over a half century, and I have been honored to use him as a sounding board myself on complex issues implicating law, morality and the efficient use of military force, including drone use.

The Right to Life

All human beings possess the right to life, which is protected in the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution: “No person shall be … deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” It is also protected in Article 6 to the International Civil and Political Rights Covenant (ICCPR) to which the United States is a party: “Every human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.” As both the Fifth Amendment and Article 6 indicate, some deprivation of life may be justified under the law. The justifications are found in two different legal categories: one category pertains to the ordinary situation of peacetime and the other to the exceptional and extraordinary situation of war or armed conflict.

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In that speech and since then, the President has repeatedly emphasized three major elements of a counterterrorism legal-policy agenda, but his administration has not followed through in a serious way: (1) closing Guantanamo; (2) working with Congress to put forceful counterterrorism actions (including detention and targeting) on sound and durable legal footing; and (3) making targeted killing more transparent.  If the President intends to use this speech to reinvigorate these initiatives, here is an overview of what he might say:

1. A True Policy, Not Just a Slogan, for Closing Guantanamo

There are now 166 detainees at Guantanamo.  Many of them are already approved for transfer or release, some of them are slated to be prosecuted by military commission, and others the President already acknowledged are likely not prosecutable yet are too dangerous to release or transfer.

Although there are fewer detainees at Guantanamo than when he came to office, Congress has since then imposed legislative restrictions on the President’s discretion to move them out (whether to the United States or to any other location) – so arguably the President is farther from his goal of Guantanamo closure today than when he started.  The President also cast into doubt his own position on this issue a few weeks ago, when in remarks to the press he seemed to reverse his view that it is appropriate to detain some Guantanamo detainees without trial for the long-run under color of the law of war (that is to say, under color of the legal theory that his own administration has advanced successfully in court for the past five years).

If the President is serious about closing Guantanamo now, he needs to put something concrete on the table and his administration needs to launch a political effort worthy of an issue it calls a national security imperative.  There are some short-term things he could do, and some longer-term initiatives he could outline.  As for short-term items:

• Restart periodic, individualized review of the need for continued detention in particular cases at Guantanamo (a process that used to occur on a regular basis, and which is way overdue for revival), while also making the case that it is not in America’s national security interest to continue to hold detainees in those situations where other available options can reasonably mitigate their threat.
• Direct the Secretary of Defense to issue the requisite certifications to transfer detainees from Guantanamo, something that can in fact be done under current statutory restrictions if the administration has sufficient political will to do it.
• Restart aggressive diplomacy to return transferable detainees, including to Yemen.

It is worth emphasizing that the core substance of those three items were all part of the Bush Administration’s Guantanamo policy as well, and used to have bipartisan support.  That said, it is also worth emphasizing that even if these short-term items are effective, this will only reduce the population, not empty Guantanamo altogether; the hardest cases will remain, just as President Obama explained in his 2009 National Archives address.  Which brings us to the topic of long-term initiatives relating to Guantanamo.

Under the long-term heading, it is clear the President is not interested in defending the current location of detention (presumably no matter how robust a review process he establishes and uses). What then?  The President might begin spending the political capital needed to move remaining detainees to an alternative facility inside the United States, as he planned in 2009, such as the facility in South Carolina where former military detainees Yaser Hamdi, Jose Padilla, and Ali al-Marri were held in the past, or the civilian facility in Thompson, Illinois that DOJ purchased last fall.  It is almost impossible to imagine a scenario for closing Guantanamo that does not involve moving some of them here.  Perhaps he might go about this by reopening the possibility of a “grand bargain” with some influential congressional Republicans who may be open to closing Guantanamo but would insist on other counterterrorism legislative reforms.  This brings us to the second major agenda element.

2.  Working with Congress on a Legislative Framework

When the President said in his 2009 National Archives speech that he would “work with Congress” on these issues, many assumed he meant actual legislative reform.  He has repeated that notion again and again, but so far the administration has not come forward with any substantial proposal of its own.  Instead, it has focused on playing defense, albeit rather half-heartedly and certainly ineffectually, each year as Congress has limited his discretion in handling or prosecuting detainees.  In short, the administration’s position generally has been that it doesn’t want to reopen the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (“AUMF”), while the President continues to say he wants to work with Congress on this issue but without giving any specifics.

It is growing more difficult to maintain this position.  During a hearing on the scope of the AUMF that occurred last week before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Pentagon officials made waves by suggesting that the conflict under the AUMF could last many more years, and by noting a broad array of groups and geographic locations as to which the AUMF might apply.  Thursday’s speech is an opportunity for the President to get in front of this issue at last (or at least to catch up with it), providing more details regarding the scope of authority he currently believes the government has—and just what authority he thinks the government actually should and should not have.

In a previous post, we outlined some recommendations along these lines, including mechanisms for improving joint executive-legislative deliberation on the scope of the conflict and appropriate statutory restrictions on lethal targeting.  Even if there is presently no need to expand substantive statutory authorities to use force, these clarifications and reforms could serve as a template if expansion were necessary in the future.  Whatever occurs on the substantive authority front, however, the question of transparency and oversight can and should be addressed immediately.  Which brings us to the third category.

3.  Establishing Targeting Transparency

Public transparency has been a rhetorical theme of this administration since the beginning.  It has found, however, that policy and bureaucratic factors encourage only incremental disclosure–and incrementalism doesn’t earn much benefit or credit, especially in an area like targeted killing.  Operational and diplomatic secrecy is important, but it comes at steep price in terms of our ability to instill public confidence and shape international norms.  Indeed, it breeds damaging myths.

The series of speeches by senior administration officials outlining the legal and policy framework for targeting operations have been useful in clarifying many important points, but they fall short of the degree of “transparency” needed for the sake of legitimacy and democratic accountability.  And so the question arises: Will the President make another incremental move with Thursday’s speech, or will he do something bold and substantial?

One proposal that’s been floated for a while is to transition targeting operations from CIA to the Defense Department.  This would open up possibilities to be more publicly transparent in how we talk about targeting (without the need to maintain deniability, the government could explain its actions rather than declining comment). Moving targeting operations out of CIA’s hands doesn’t on its own resolve transparency concerns, however.  Such a move would need to be combined with more timely and granular congressional oversight of sensitive DoD operations (see a discussion of Rep. Thornberry’s proposal here).

Whatever becomes of the oversight associated with overseas kill/capture missions, the President also could do much good by stating unequivocally that all strikes are governed by the law of armed conflict no matter who conducts them.  And he would do well to be more candid about collateral damage and the government’s efforts to minimize it even when strikes are not conducted by the military.

As noted at the outset, the President has repeatedly emphasized these three elements – Guantanamo closure, executive-legislative cooperation, and transparency – in a reform agenda.  Whether he announces concrete steps will tell us a lot about whether he’s serious about them in his second term.

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First, we learn from today’s Washington Post that when Chinese hackers breached Google back in 2010, they may have gained access to files that indicated which Gmail accounts were under surveillance by the FBI — evidently with the intention of trying to figure out which Chinese agents were known to the FBI and subject to scrutiny.  This suggest two things, of course:  First, that since the FBI was using Gmail accounts to try and track Chinese agents, the possibility that Gmail was insecure (in this case through appropriate domestic legal process) was well known.  And, second, not only was it known to the US government but also apparently to the Chinese who demonstrated Gmail’s insecurity to inappropriate non-legal process as well.  Given the events of 2010, it strikes me as even =more= unlikely that using Gmail would be part of CIA tradecraft in 2013.

On the other hand, we now also know (again thanks to the Washington Post) that James Rosen, the Fox News reporter almost certainly communicated some of the time with his alleged source Stephen Jin-Woo Kim through a Gmail account.  Those communications are at the heart of a leak investigation in which DOJ is, as Jack has noted, pushing very hard.  So, apparently what I consider an obvious lapse in tradecraft is, to at least one sophisticated news reporter, …. a surprise. And if Fox News doesn’t know that Gmail is insecure, maybe it is too much to expect that the CIA would know.

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I need to make two points in closing.  First, of course, the profusion of possible values-based distinctions itself threatens another important value – simplicity.  As discussed above, intolerable complexity is the most likely spur for a blue-sky project.  But simplicity will require limiting governmental authority.  At the extreme, the simplest set of collection rules, applicable to any kind of collection, is also the most restrictive.  If we want one set of rules governing both non-consensual collection of content from the home of a U.S. person in the United States, and consensual collection of metadata from a non-U.S. person abroad, we will be using the more restrictive rules in both cases.  This tension between simplicity and maximum authority is, I believe, not always understood by government officials who decry the complexity of the current regime.  The balance between the two may be out of whack, but a balance will have to be struck.

Second, if a blue-sky project proceeds, the final challenge – perhaps the hardest of all – will be to escape, wherever possible, the zero-sum game between liberty and security.  There are certainly times when those values conflict, and we simply need to plant our flag and take a position somewhere along the continuum between them.  But there are also times, I believe, when changes in rules can enhance both values.  For example, I have argued that lowering the so-called FISA “wall,” which kept intelligence and law enforcement officials separated, enhanced both liberty and security.[1]  The best blue-sky approach would look hard for these win-win possibilities.  But that, like the rest of the project, will not be easy.

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Writes Suzanne:

We’ve timed our kick-off to coincide with the upcoming Iranian presidential election, in hopes of enriching the discussion that has already emerged around the ballot. As current president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad prepares to leave office, Iran’s internal power struggles will enter a new phase. From now through the vote on June 14^th and presumably well beyond, we’ll closely follow the twists and turns of Iran’s frequently unexpected electoral dynamics and consider what the future may bring for Iran. This discussion will delve into the major issues confronting Tehran today, especially the economic crisis and the impact of sanctions.

Although the electoral interplay will consume a great deal of attention in the next few weeks, the focus of the blog will extend well beyond the events of the election and Iran’s domestic dramas. We will be tackling Iran’s approach to the region and the world, its relationship with established and emerging powers, and the strategies and tactics of various players, including the United States, toward Tehran. Inevitably, we’ll spend a lot of time examining the nuclear issue, starting with the prospects for revitalizing the stalled negotiations between Tehran and the international community and discussions around alternative approaches if dialogue fails to produce a diplomatic resolution of Iran’s nuclear ambitions. However, the sense of urgency surrounding the nuclear issue has narrowed the American debate on Iran in recent years, problematically in my opinion. For that reason, watch the space for a robust discussion of the range of issues and threats related to Iran, including terrorism, human rights, the peace process and the Syrian civil war, the rise of new regional and global powers, and the impact of technology and changes in energy markets on Iranian politics and the policy options of the international community.

Suzanne already has an additional post on “Why Iran’s Presidential Election Matters“—advancing the counterintuitive thesis that it actually matters very much:

It would be tempting . . . to dismiss the election scheduled for June 14 as mere window-dressing or to disregard the brewing antagonisms within Iran’s political establishment as irrelevant. This would be a mistake, however, and yet another misreading of Iran’s complicated domestic dynamics. Don’t get me wrong— I don’t mean to suggest that the election will bear any resemblance to a truly democratic enterprise; even in the best of times, the Islamic Republic fell far short of meeting international standards for free and fair elections. However, while the outcome will be engineered, the element of improvisation is real, and the outcome of this latest twist in the thirty-four year power struggle within Iran will have significant implications for the future of the country and its role in the world.

If the past eight years of Ahmadinejad’s antics have taught us nothing else, they have demonstrated over and over again that Iran’s presidency matters. Despite its electoral illegitimacy, its institutional constraints, and the assiduous efforts of a system built around a divine mandate, the office of the presidency has emerged as one with real power to shape the context for domestic and foreign policy. The post exerts considerable authority over the Iranian budget, the framework for internal political activities, the social and cultural atmosphere, and even the most sensitive aspects of Iran’s security policies. Whoever assumes the office in August of this year will find himself near the apex of power, at a time of unprecedented external pressure and at the cusp of generational change within the Iranian regime. For this reason, the election and its outcome will have enormous sway over the future course of the Islamic Republic.

She also has this fascinating post on the recently-failed wrestling diplomacy between Iran and the United States—and Suzanne’s own experiences in people-to-people exchanges with Iran during the late 1990s.

This will be a site very much worth watching over the coming weeks and beyond.

(Full Disclosure: Suzanne works at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy, which my wife—Tamara Cofman Wittes—directs.)

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Speaking of Jack, he noted another of today’s big stories: the Washington Post’s piece on the FBI’s search, a few years back,  of an email account belonging to Fox News reporter James Rosen.

Naureen Shah and Tarek Z. Ismail of Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute have this op-ed in the Hill about the push to expand the FBI’s surveillance powers after the Boston marathon bombings:

Where ideology plays a larger role in terrorism, the best prevention is counter-ideas. Perversely, fear of FBI surveillance has made some American Muslim leaders feel they must shun or silence, rather than engage with, youth who show interest in violent extremism. Less surveillance, not more, is likely to free these communities to address violent extremist beliefs with anti-violence principles of Islam and democratic values already abundant within them.

Matt Waxman offered another perspective on this issue, and New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice has a fact sheet entitled “Just What Is An FBI Investigation?” which lays out the broad categories and features of FBI investigations.

The Times editorial board describes the FBI’s new proposal to eavesdrop on internet communications, arguing that the “rules will have to strike the right balance between privacy and cybersecurity and the government’s need to monitor criminal activity.”

The Associated Press reports that a gentleman and gentlewoman from Florida have been arrested and charged with possession of an explosive device.  Authorities had discovered pipe bombs and an arsenal of weapons in their home.

Chinese army hackers have resumed their hacktivities, after being accused earlier this year of stealing information from American companies and government agencies.  So says the Times. BBC also has the story.

The Washington Post editorial board explains why cyberattacks matter and why the United States urgently needs to pass legislation to deal with vulnerabilities in cyberspace.

For all of you who were trying to read Al Qaeda’s latest issue of Inspire over the weekend—and found it a scrambled mess—Western intelligence agencies may have been the reason. CNN reports.

CNN also informs us that the Obama administration is flexing its Benghazi  muscles.  The military has updated its “capture or kill” plans for the attacks’ alleged perpetrators.

Violence in Iraq continues to leave a devastating death toll: At least 48 people were killed and 170 injured as car bombs exploded across Baghdad and Basra today, reports Duraid Adnan of the New York Times.

According to the BBC, Russian counterterrorism officials prevented a terrorist attack in Moscow over the weekend; the suspects allegedly had undergone training in the “Afghanistan-Pakistan region.”

One Fazliddin Kurbanov, of Boise, Idaho, has pleaded not guilty to federal terrorism charges. He was arrested last Thursday, indicted in both Idaho and Utah, and has been charged with “one count of conspiracy to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization, one count of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists and one count of possessing an unregistered destructive device.” CNN has the scoop.

The Toronto Star investigates the Canadians who have joined the jihad in Africa, from al-Shabaab to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

The Times says that Rasul Mohseni, the powerful head of a provisional council in Afghanistan, was killed by a suicide bomber today.

Good news from the Frenemies: The AP announces that Pakistan has taken significant steps to regulate the sale of fertilizer produced at two factories in the country–and thus also to prevent the fertilizer’s use in IEDs in Afghanistan. And Pakistan’s powerful military general Ashfaq Kayani met with incoming prime minister Nawaz Sharif about a host of issues, according to the Post.

Michael Sheehan, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations/Low-Intensity Conflict, told the Senate Armed Services Committee at last week’s hearing (at which Jack testified) that the War on Terror would last “10 to 20 years,” reports the Hill.

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