Today's Headlines and Commentary

Maj. Gen. Salim Ali Qatn, a Yemeni senior commander, was assassinated in a suicide bombing attack this morning. Laura Kasinof in the New York Times has the story. Late on Friday came the announcement that the Obama administration will be declassifying the details of military campaigns in Yemen and Somalia. Robert Burns of the AP covered this on Friday evening, as did Al Jazeera, And on those leak investigations: as of last Friday, more than 100 people have been interviewed, writes Sari Horwitz in the Washington Post. Jeremy Herb at The Hill discusses the potential for media to be targeted in the leak investigations. James Mann at Salon has this story on the CIA's efforts to retain President Bush's detention and interrogation program. Terry McDermott, the co-author of The Hunt for KSM: Inside the Pursuit and Takedown of the Real 9/11 Mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, has this LA Times op-ed arguing that the war against Al Qaeda won't be won by sheer force alone. Carol Rosenberg reports in the Miami Herald that defense attorneys in the USS Cole bombing case have filed a motion to disqualify Army Col. James Pohl as the chief judge in the case. The defense attorneys allegedly argue that Judge Pohl has a financial incentive to keep the case alive because his Army contract is up for renewal every year. The motion itself is not yet public. Fred Kaplan has this piece in Slate praising President Obama for his active role in determining the fate of those on the "kill list." Over the weekend, we learned that the June 1st attack on a U.S. outpost in Khost province near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border was worse than initial reports indicated. Joshua Partlow and Craig Whitlock at the Washington Post report. The AP reported over the weekend that a militant commander in Pakistan along the Afghan border has been distributing pamphlets warning polio vaccinators against attempting to immunize those in the region until the U.S. ceases its drone strikes (Pakistan, for those who were not aware, is one of three countries in which the polio virus is still endemic). Reza Singh at CNN also reports on this. The Washington Post editorial board wonders what our cyberwar policy is in an editorial over the weekend. The Post writes:

Secrecy in military and intelligence matters, including cyber, is vital to protect sources, methods and operations. But in a broader sense, the technology of cyberconflict has grown faster than policy. The Pentagon now describes cyberspace as a new domain on a par with land, sea, air and outer space, but the United States today has no overarching, open doctrine to govern an offensive cyberprogram, nor is there a healthy debate about what it should entail. It is time to start that debate. Nuclear weapons policy was openly discussed during the Cold War, when the stakes were existential. The United States crafted a declaratory policy about the use of nuclear forces, which was public; an employment policy that included sensitive matters, which was largely secret; and an acquisition policy, which was some of both. Why not start by creating a declaratory policy for cyberforces?

And the AP has this story on the "new weapons" of American warfare: drones and cyberattacks. For more interesting law and security-related articles, follow us on Twitter, visit the Georgetown Center on National Security and the Law’s Security Law Brief, Fordham Law’s Center on National Security’s Morning Brief, and Fordham Law’s Cyber Brief. Email us noteworthy articles we may have missed at wakeman.lawfare@gmail.com and  singh.lawfare@gmail.com.