In case you missed it, President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sat down with 60 minutes on Jan. 27, for a brief interview. Much of the conversation revolved around the perception that the two didn’t get along, and have subsequently grown quite fond of one another. Sources who have been in meetings...
About a year before he was killed, U.S. Ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens stopped by Foggy Bottom to brief reporters on the security situation in Libya. Most of the talk centered around the difficulties in creating an effective democratic government from a variety of factions. But Stevens, hauntingly, foreshadowed some of the security problems...
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will head to Congress Jan. 23 to testify about the Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens. After a series of delays in her appearance, which included a medical emergency when Clinton fell, hit her head and suffered...
Several years ago, the U.S. State Department had been relegated to afterthought status in national security planning, an agency whose budget was and is dwarfed by that of the Defense Department. The budget reality hasn’t changed, but the State Department’s influence has blossomed, with the agency playing a critical role in strategy and policy-making. Its...
After Moammar Gadhafi lost his grip on the reins of Libya, and then lost his life, the new government inherited a military and police arsenal depleted by civil war and already antiquated. During years of isolation by the broader international community, Gadhafi had found few allies and even fewer arms trading partners, and surplus Russian...
Currently relations between State and DoD are quite good, driven by close personal relationships of the agencies’ leads. But as Senator John Kerry and former Senator Chuck Hagel can learn from recent history, a failure to get along at the top can greatly harm national security policy and both agencies’ effectiveness. Several current and former senior State...
Iran’s uranium enrichment facility at Natanz may have had one of the most secure computer systems in the world. The building housing the nuclear program’s equipment is underground, protected by a combination of concrete walls, earth and military guards. And it was a “closed” network, sealed off from the Internet and unsusceptible to vulnerabilities in...
As the State Department continues to consider what options might force Syrian President Bashar al–Assad from his perch, international humanitarian organizations continue to push for greater action to protect civilians and slow the hemorrhaging of life. And while State continues to rule out providing military equipment to the Syrian opposition, a fact that has been...
A thought that’s been floating around Washington think tanks for several weeks, but was well expressed in an article from the New York Times today, is that John Kerry and Chuck Hagel, President Obama’s nominees for the head job at State and DoD respectively, could form an interesting partnership when it comes to national security...
Over the weekend Syrian ruler Bashar Assad made waves by making a speech labeling opposition fighters terrorists and generally being aggressive in the midst of diplomatic efforts to convince him to seek comfortable exile elsewhere. And with the State Department standing by its policy that it will only provide non-lethal aid to opposition fighters, the...
Dressed in a bright pink jacket, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton strode into her first meeting back at the Dept. of State, to a round of applause according the agency spokeswoman Victoria Nuland. And when the 75 participants had quieted down, Clinton was given a large white box with a pair of gifts from her...
On the day that Hillary Clinton returned to work at Foggy Bottom, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland made a point of laying out Sec. Clinton’s Benghazi agenda during the agency’s daily press briefing. “Let me just say that she will testify,” Nuland said. “She will testify while she is still sitting Secretary of State.” As...
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