All posts tagged "Counterterrorism"

States are being pressured into rewriting their election rules to receive terrorism grants, according to a New York Times report.

The Trump administration is demanding that states overhaul how they run elections, a few months before the midterms, or forfeit tens of millions in federal counterterrorism funding, The Times reported.

The changes include transitioning to hand-marked paper ballots, verifying the citizenship of voters, and conducting manual audits of 5 percent of ballots, which is "likely to cause significant delays in counting, cost millions of dollars and, in some cases, fall far short of what would be considered an adequate audit for races with narrow margins," The Times noted....

Joe Kent, the newly confirmed director of the National Counterterrorism Center, once complained that federal agencies responding to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol were promoting “a narrative that labels all of us terrorists or insurrectionists just for questioning things.”

It was September 2021, and Kent was an Iraq war veteran and candidate for Congress, speaking at the “Justice for J6” rally at the U.S. Capitol.

Kent claimed without evidence that the Jan. 6 defendants were “political prisoners” who had been “denied due process” — thereby pioneering a false claim Donald Trump would use in his 2024 presidential campaign. ...

WASHINGTON — Michael Leiter, the head of the US National Counterterrorism Center across two administrations, is resigning, officials said Thursday as President Barack Obama paid a warm tribute.

A former CIA field officer says the Bush administration's reforms of the intelligence community have made it more difficult to prevent terrorist operations.

[rebelmouse-image 24745507 original_size="329x400" expand=1]UPDATE: The White House is strongly disputing claims that the head of the National Counterterrorism Center stayed on the ski slopes for "several days" after the attempted Christmas Day bombing.