Today's Headlines and Commentary

Let’s begin with Pakistan today. The New York Times takes a closer look at Islamabad’s Red Mosque, where soldiers and Islamist students fought a pitched battle in 2007 and where a new library named for Osama bin Laden is set to be dedicated. The authors ask: does the mosque’s boldness and success foreshadow militant Islamism’s victory in Pakistan? One Joel Cox, an FBI agent in Pakistan on temporary duty, was arrested on Monday by Pakistani police while attempting to board a flight with ammunition in his bag. His bail was set at $10,000 and he was released today. Nine Pakistani soldiers were killed when a bomb hit an army convoy in North Waziristan. The Pakistani military went after militant hideouts in the area in search of the perpetrators, to no avail. In Nigeria news, Brookings has released an essay “Explaining the Emergence of Boko Haram” by Jideofor Adibe, a Nigerian academic and journal editor. Adibe traces the origins of the Islamic terrorist group that recently kidnapped hundreds of schoolgirls, and argues that its emergence is a product of broader problems in Nigerian state building. Adam Nossiter and David Kirkpatrick of the Times tell us about the surprisingly negative response from Al Qaeda to the horrific abduction. Al Qaeda affiliates have a complicated relationship with Boko Haram, and do not necessarily support the killing of innocent locals. And as the Obama administration prepares to deploy a small team of military and civilian advisers to the Nigerian capital to aid in the search for the girls, members of Congress press for a more robust U.S. role. The Washington Post has the story. The South Korean Defense ministry has concluded that recently crashed drones were launched from North Korea and were intended to return after flying over South Korean military installations. Reuters has the story. Congress will introduce legislation today seeking to continue and expand the State Department’s Afghan Special Immigrant Visa program. The program, which has been beset by delays, approves resettlement visas for Afghan interpreters and others whose work on behalf of the United States has put them and their families in danger. Sabiri's Jamaat, a Central Asian jihadist group made up of Uzbek, Tajik, and Russian fighters, has joined with ISIS, the jihadist group in Syria that was disowned by Al Qaeda earlier this year. Bill Roggio of the Long War Journal has more. The AP says that Syrian rebels have bombed a once beautiful hotel in Aleppo in a powerful show of force. As you all have undoubtedly heard, Putin announced yesterday that he had pulled Russian troops from the Ukraine border. In true modern-day diplomacy, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen got into a testy Twitter exchange with Russia’s foreign ministry about the situation; the former tweeted: “We haven’t seen any signs that Russia is withdrawing its troops from Ukraine’s borders” and the latter  insisted “For those with a blind eye we suggest to follow President Putin’s statement of May 7.” As Ben has already noted, this morning the New York Times editorial board endorsed recent attempts to hold up David Barron’s nomination to the First Circuit Court of Appeals in order to compel the Obama administration to make public memos justifying the targeted killing of American citizen affiliated with Al Qaeda. The Times’ Ben Weiser continues his coverage of the trial of Mostafa Kamel Mostafa, the radical British imam being tried on terrorism charges in New York. The prosecution called its final witness, a hostage held in an terrorist operation allegedly abetted by Mostafa.  Mostafa himself later took the stand in his own defense, and denied any role in the hostage-taking or other terror operations. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, President José Mujica of Uruguay announced that his country would be willing to take as many as six of the Guantanamo detainees, on the condition that the United States permitted them to live as free citizens. That said, he has no intention of raising the issue in his upcoming meeting with President Obama. DNI’s directive regulating the intelligence community’s interaction with the press has been getting some attention. But in this post, Steve Aftergood takes a look at a second DNI directive, this one requiring pre-publication review of any intelligence-related materials publicly released by ODNI personnel. The surveillance reform bill proposed by Representative Jim Sensenbrenner, a USA PATRIOT act author and member of Congress who implausibly claims not to have known about NSA’s metadata programs, has cleared the Judiciary Committee unanimously, reports the Post. The Nation is running excerpts from the remarks at the ceremony where Laura Poitras and Edward Snowden were awarded the Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling. There is nothing particularly new here, but its about as infuriatingly self-indulgent as you might imagine. Lawyers for accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev are asking the court to take the death penalty off the table, arguing that new facts---including the botched Oklahoma execution---make the federal Death Penalty Act unconstitutional. The Journal has the story. Could Bitcoin pose a threat to national security? The Post reports on Pentagon efforts to address concerns that virtual currencies could help terrorists and criminals evade law enforcement and launch attacks against the United States. Email the Roundup Team noteworthy law and security-related articles to include, and follow us on Twitter and Facebook for additional commentary on these issues. Sign up to receive Lawfare in your inbox. Visit our Events Calendar to learn about upcoming national security events, and check out relevant job openings on our Job Board.