Today's Headlines and Commentary

DNI James Clapper has officially apologized to Congress for his "clearly erroneous" response to Senator Ron Wyden's question concerning NSA surveillance programs. Here are The Hill and the letter itself. The effort to corner Edward Snowden inched forward yesterday: a rumor circulated that he may have joined Bolivia's president on the latter's jet out of Moscow, prompting the plane to be grounded in Vienna overnight. It seems, however, that Snowden never sought to board the flight, but instead remains---still---in limbo at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport. Venezuela's president Nicolas Maduro praised Snowden for telling a "great truth," but nevertheless did not offer Snowden asylum in the country, explains The Hill's Jeremy Herb.  Apropos, the Washington Post is tracking Snowden's twenty-one asylum requests and the governments' responses in this handy graphic. Snowden's father, meanwhile, wrote an open letter to Edward, in which he called his son a "modern day Paul Revere." Here is the AP story on the letter. Brookings nonresident senior fellow John Villasenor penned this op-ed in Forbes entitled "Five Reasons Why the Media's Love of U.S. Government Leaks is Problematic." Wait:  the U.S. and U.K. governments aren't the only ones with global surveillance programs.  China has them, too.  Didi Kristen Tatlow writes at the New York Times about efforts to uncover Chinese programs---with such code names as "Golden Shield," "Great Wall," and "Green Dam"---that may be similar to the United States' PRISM program. The prosecution rests in the Bradley Manning trial, the Washington Post's Julie Tate writes. The defense begins its arguments next week up at Fort Meade. Another GTMO hunger striker, Syrian Abdelhadi Faraj, has written an op-ed in the  Huffington Post describing conditions in the detention facility. Meanwhile, Miami Herald reporter Carol Rosenberg gives us the low-down on how the detention facility plans to deal with forced-feeding practices during Ramadan, which begins next Monday. Chances are slim that 9/11 military judge Col. James Pohl will agree to the prosecution's proposed trial date of September 2014. The AP's Ben Fox writes about the proposal, contained in a just-released prosecution filing. A drone strike targeting a Haqqani network compound in northwest Pakistan killed at least 16 people on Tuesday, report Salman Masood and Ihsanullah Tipu Mehsud of the New York Times. The leader of an Islamist militant group in the Caucasus has called for terrorist attacks on the 2014 Winter Olympic Games, scheduled for Sochi, Russia. Gregory L. White reports over at the Wall Street Journal. In Canada, charges have been filed against two people for facilitating terrorist activity and making explosives.  The pair planned to detonate the devices during Canada Day in British Colombia, explains the National Post. Another Canadian recently pleaded guilty to facilitating terrorism, this time in the United States. The National Post explains that the defendant, Surish Sriskandarajah, procured sophisticated technology for the Tamil Tigers, a designated foreign terrorist organization. Headlines and Commentary will be taking a long weekend beginning tomorrow, but our bloggers will share breaking news over the weekend as appropriate. Fire up the grill, y'all. 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, Syracuse’s Institute for National Security & Counterterrorism’s newsroll and blog, and Fordham Law’s Center on National Security’s Morning Brief and Cyber Brief. Email Raffaela Wakeman and Ritika Singh noteworthy articles to include, visit the Lawfare Events Calendar for upcoming national security events, and check out relevant job openings at the Lawfare Job Board.