Mark Hosenball

Presidential pep-talks may not suffice for an anxious CIA.

President Obama's decision to authorize Navy snipers to kill three Somali pirates who took an American sea captain hostage was a hit with U.S. voters. But the operation makes shipping and insurance industries nervous.

A document from a hijacked ship contained a 'list of written rules' of pirate conduct.

Will deadly force deter Somali pirates—or just make them more violent?

It's a mystery what the head of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorism squad was thinking when he walked into the U.K. prime minister's office at 10 Downing Street carrying in plain view a "secret" report about Al Qaeda's attack planning.

Baitullah Mehsud, the brazen jihadist operating along the violent, lawless border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, has a curious gift for escape. On several occasions over the past couple of years, security forces in Pakistan have launched operations to kill or capture him, and each time he has vanished without incident.

While U.S. officials largely dismiss a Pakistani jihadist's threats against the White House, they are keeping an eye on his evolving tactics.

The case of a Guantánamo detention-camp detainee named Shaker Aamer, an alleged former associate of Osama bin Laden, has evolved into a perfect example of the dilemmas facing the Obama administration as it tries to shutter the facility: is Aamer truly dangerous or not?

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says Washington is stepping up its efforts to assist in Mexico's war on drug cartels.

The Obama administration has a complex relationship with the long-gestating antimissile program known as Star Wars. On the one hand, it has used Star Wars as a bargaining chip to deal with thorny diplomatic issues.

Tim Geithner is a brilliant guy who's working 20-hour days to fix the economy, but he can't do it by himself. So why are key posts at the Treasury Department—every single job requiring Senate confirmation—vacant except for his own?

The CIA faces a threat it's never been great at analyzing: the fallout from global recession.

In retrospect, Kyle (Dusty) Foggo probably wasn't such a smart choice to be CIA Director Porter Goss's No. 3 during the Bush administration. Foggo, who was sentenced to three years in prison last week after pleading guilty to an elaborate corruption scheme, had used his authority to arrange secret agency contracts for companies controlled by his best friend, a San Diego businessman, who in turn paid for vacations for Foggo and promised him a lucrative job.

House Republicans want an investigation of the Democratic senator's remarks about a secret U.S. military facility inside Pakistan.

A new daily presidential paper will keep Obama up to speed on how the global economic crisis could affect U.S. national-security interests.

They're already calling him Mini-Madoff, but Allen Stanford, the Texas tycoon whose alleged "massive, ongoing fraud" was shut down last week by the SEC, is a different character than Bernie.

Free-speech hero or an anti-Islamic publicity hound? Geert Wilders is coming to America.

Obama will send 17,000 U.S. troops.

He seemed just the sort of spy the CIA is looking for to fight the war on terror. Andrew Warren is a 6-foot-4 African-American schooled in the martial arts.

Publicly at least, President Obama has made a clean break with his predecessor's controversial counterterrorism policies, but in private the new administration is leaving itself some wiggle room.

With Democrats in control on Capitol Hill, the incoming Obama team shouldn't have to worry much about hostile probes. Last week's confirmation hearings for top Obama nominees were largely congenial (though there are still a few ongoing flaps, including Treasury nominee Tim Geithner's tax and "nanny" issues).

Back in the 1990s, a generation of ambitious congressional Republicans made their bones with inquisitions into the affairs of Bill and Hillary Clinton. But when Hillary shows up this week for her Senate confirmation hearing to become President-elect Obama's secretary of state, she can expect a much sunnier reception.

President-Elect Obama may have pleased his base by naming a CIA chief—former Clinton aide Leon Panetta—who had nothing to do with the Bush administration's controversial interrogation practices.

Why are Democrats criticizing Obama's CIA pick?

Score one last win for the Bush hard-liners: the White House appears to have nixed a plan to open a diplomatic office in Iran. Factions within the administration had been debating the proposal for two years, and just before the Nov. 4 election, senior Bush officials told NEWSWEEK that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice wanted to proceed with the opening of a U.S. "interests section" in Tehran, with an announcement likely to come before Thanksgiving.But the holiday came and went with no...

The lucky folks who cashed in and got out before Bernard Madoff's $50 billion investment empire came crashing down might not be as lucky as they think. Sources close to the Madoff case say that a recent court ruling in a similar collapse—a Ponzi scheme called the Bayou Group—is likely to provide the legal road map for recovering as much money as possible from the Madoff mess.

Why did Malaysia release Al Qaeda's bioweapons expert?

The Bush Administration's rough treatment of captured terror suspects has bedeviled President-elect Barack Obama's efforts to fill key posts on his intelligence team, as nearly every qualified candidate is linked, however remotely, to the practices.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which was widely ridiculed for its pitiful response to Hurricane Katrina, may undergo big changes under President Obama.

Only weeks before dropping North Korea from an official U.S. blacklist of countries that support terrorism, the Bush administration apparently thwarted the transfer of missile parts (possibly including gyroscopes for guidance systems) from Pyongyang to Iran, U.S. officials tell NEWSWEEK.