Administration to release Bush-era interrogation memos

The Obama administration will release four Bush-era memos on terror interrogations Thursday, according to a senior administration official. The administration also informed CIA officials they will not be prosecuted for past waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics, the official also confirms. The memos, written by a top Justice Department lawyer, provided legal guidance to the entire executive branch, including the intelligence agencies, on permissible “enhanced interrogation techniques” that could be used against suspected terrorists taken into custody.

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Right-wing extremism may be on rise, report says

Right-wing extremist groups may be using the recession and the election of the nation’s first African-American president to recruit members, a Department of Homeland Security report contends. Though the nine-page report said it has “no specific information that domestic right-wing terrorists are currently planning acts of violence,” it said real-estate foreclosures, unemployment and tight credit “could create a fertile recruiting environment for right-wing extremists and even result in confrontations between such groups and government authorities similar to those in the past.” The report, prepared in coordination with the FBI and published April 7, was distributed to federal, state and local law enforcement officials under the title “Right-wing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.” It compares the current climate the 1990s, “when right-wing extremism experienced a resurgence fueled largely by an economic recession, criticism about the outsourcing of jobs, and the perceived threat to U.S. power and sovereignty by other foreign powers.” It cites proposed restrictions on weapons as likely to increase membership in extremist groups and expresses concern the groups might try to recruit veterans.

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CIA bars contractors from doing interrogations

CIA Director Leon Panetta has carried through on his pledge to prohibit independent contractors from conducting interrogations of terror suspects. In a message to agency employees on Thursday, Panetta said he had notified the congressional oversight committees about the current CIA policy regarding interrogations.

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Biden rebukes Cheney, guarantees we’re ‘safer today’

Vice President Joe Biden brushed aside recent criticism by predecessor Dick Cheney that moves by the Obama administration had put the United States at risk, telling CNN on Tuesday that the former vice president was "dead wrong." “I don’t think [Cheney] is out of line, but he is dead wrong,” he told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. “This administration — the last administration left us in a weaker posture than we’ve been any time since World War II: less regarded in the world, stretched more thinly than we ever have been in the past, two wars under way, virtually no respect in entire parts of the world. “..

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Poll: U.S. split on Muslim allies

President Obama stood before the Turkey’s parliament on Monday and told lawmakers that the Muslim nation is "a critical ally," but a new poll shows Americans are split about the level of trust the United States should have with Muslim allies. A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll released Monday shows that 51 percent of Americans believe the United States should trust Muslim allies the same as any other ally, but 48 percent said the United States should trust Muslim allies less

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