Obama Books Banned for Jailed Terrorist

Documents reveal al-Qaeda leader also wanted Petraeus dead

(NEWSER) - Documents taken from Osama bin Laden's compound during the US raid that killed the al-Qaeda leader reveal a plot to kill President Obama and David Petraeus. David Ignatius got a look at the documents, which will be available to the public soon, and he reports in the Washington Post that bin Laden wanted his network to focus on attacks in America, rather than operations inside Muslim countries, and he specifically instructed attacks on Obama's and Petraeus's aircraft. The way he saw it, "killing [Obama] automatically will make [Vice President Joe] Biden take over the presidency. … Biden is totally unprepared for that post, which will lead the US into a crisis." More»

President, Clinton cite US arrests, but link to Pakistan appears weak

(NEWSER) - The White House has been overstating the link between recent domestic terrorism arrests and al-Qaeda activities in Pakistan and Afghanistan, security experts say. In justifying the Afghanistan troop buildup, President Obama cited recent arrests within the US; Hillary Clinton cited some of the same incidents a few days later. But the connection between al-Qaeda’s nerve center in Pakistan and those arrests is much more nebulous than they’re implying, counterterrorism officials tell the Washington Independent . More»

'New York Times' dives into president's counterterrorism approach

(NEWSER) - The New York Times is running what is undoubtedly today's biggest talker—in terms of both length and heft. The paper interviewed three dozen current and past Obama advisers in an attempt to define the president's counterterrorism approach—a topic it describes using words such as baffling, confounding, paradoxical, and inscrutable. Among the most notable talking points:

• Some 100 national security officials meet via video teleconference near weekly as part of a Pentagon-led "secret nominations process" (described as "an invention of the Obama administration") in which they review potential additions to the "kill list" of suspected terrorists.
• Nominations are communicated to Obama, who himself approves every single name added to the "kill list," after reviewing potential targets' bios. He OKs "lethal action without hand-wringing."

His father told immigrations officials he'd be given up at birth

(NEWSER) - Barack Obama’s father once told immigration officials that he and Ann Dunham were planning to give their then-unborn child up for adoption, writes Sally Jacobs for the Boston Globe . The elder Obama had been under scrutiny from federal immigration officials, who feared that he had another wife in Kenya. In writing a biography of the elder Obama, Jacobs recently obtained a memo from 1961 that reads: “Although they were married they do not live together and Miss Dunham is making arrangements with the Salvation Army to give the baby away." More»

But general stresses it's not the people in charge

(NEWSER) - US intelligence indicates “flickers” of evidence that there are fighters among the Libyan rebels with ties to al-Qaeda and Hezbollah, but neither group holds significant sway over the movement, Admiral James Stavridis told Congress today. “The intelligence that I'm receiving at this point makes me feel that the leadership that I'm seeing are responsible men and women,” said Stavridis, NATO’s supreme Europe commander, according to the Wall Street Journal . More»