Today's Headlines and Commentary

Let's begin with news of released terrorists. The Miami Herald reports, as does Bobby, that Ibrahim al Qosi--Osama bin Laden's occasional driver and self-confessed Al Qaeda operative--was repatriated to Sudan yesterday after ten years at Guantanamo Bay. And Jurist informs us that Abu Hafs al-Mauritani, a senior Al Qaeda operative who was connected to 9/11, was released from prison in Mauritania. Great. Meanwhile, Jeffrey Kaye and Jason Leopold of Trouthout.org have this long feature story on the "mind altering drugs" that were given to detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Here is the Pentagon's declassified report containing the information. CNN's Security Clearance blog wonders why the Haqqani network isn't on the U.S. terror list. Rezwan Ferdaus, the gentleman from Massachusetts who was arrested last year for plotting to fly model airplanes laden with explosives into the Pentagon, has agreed to a plea deal. He will face seventeen years behind bars and ten years of supervision, says CNN's Security Clearance blog. The New York Times has snippets of a forthcoming interview between Michael Semple, "a fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights at the Kennedy School at Harvard and one of the leading authorities on Pashtun politics, the Taliban and reconciliation," and a man identified as Maulvi, a senior Taliban commander. The interview captures some fascinating insights into the Taliban's perspective on the current situation in Afghanistan and its relationship with Al Qaeda. The Guardian has more. The Times reports that the CIA's use of Dr. Shakil Afridi to locate Osama bin Laden has "clearly hurt" Pakistan's polio drive. Tom Junod has a lengthy feature in Esquire about the implications of President Obama's drone war. According to the Washington Post, NSA director and head of the US Cyber Command, Gen. Keith Alexander, pressed for cybersecurity legislation to "enable the sharing of threat data between the private sector and the government." Speaking of surveillance, the Post also states that Judge Raymond Dearie of the Eastern District of New York was appointed to the FISA court last week. DARPA, too, has a new head--a controversial one at that, reports Wired's Danger Room. Dr. Arati Prabhakar, who has Solyndra on her resume, will run the Pentagon's advanced research tank beginning July 30. As I mentioned in Monday's roundup, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Mahgreb appears--by most accounts--to have dwindled to a fraction of what it once was in Algeria, the country where it originated. John R. Schindler, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College, discusses in The National Interest "the ugly truth" that even though this may be the case, the Algerian government's tactics "would make most Westerners shudder." And Joshua Rozenberg discusses secret courts, drones, and other international law matters with Britain's former Foreign Office legal adviser, Sir Daniel Bethlehem in this interview on BBC. 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.