CFR’s Noah Feldman says outgoing U.S. Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales harmed the Department of Justice, especially abroad, by allowing it to become increasingly politicized.

Daniel Markey, a former State Department specialist on South Asia for the Policy Planning Council, says relations between Pakistan and the United States have fluctuated widely in recent years. The United States now needs Pakistan badly to help stem the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

Henri Barkey, a Middle East expert at Lehigh University, says Iraqi plans for an amnesty can seriously undercut the Iraqi insurgency.

U.S.-EU cooperation against terrorism has led to a new dynamic in U.S.-EU relations by fostering dialogue on law enforcement and homeland security issues previously reserved for bilateral discussions. Nevertheless, some challenges persist in fostering closer U.S.-EU cooperation in these fields. Among the most prominent are data privacy and data protection concerns.

"While it was not the first country where the United States used drones, [Pakistan] became the laboratory for the targeted killing operations that have come to define a new American way of fighting, blurring the line between soldiers and spies and short-circuiting the normal mechanisms by which the United States as a nation goes to war."

As the French-led military forces retake northern Mali, [AQIM emir Abdelmalek] Droukdel's eight month old letter should resonate as an ominous warning as it points to a long-term strategic plan to outlive the intervention and sets the stage for a potentially successful return. Clearly, under Droukdel's leadership, AQIM has no intention of relinquishing northern Mali.

This account of what led to the [Anwar al-]Awlaki strike, based on interviews with three dozen current and former legal and counterterrorism officials and outside experts, fills in new details of the legal, intelligence and military challenges faced by the Obama administration in what proved to be a landmark episode in American history and law.

This report looks at why extremist strategic communications in Pakistan have been so successful and what it would take for the government and its allies to reverse the gains of what is sometimes called "the al-Qaeda worldview." Like all good communications campaigns, extremist messaging is grounded in a reality. In this case, that reality is the views and emotions—and the narratives that articulate them—that were born out of the establishment and subsequent conduct of the state of Pakistan.

Globalizing Torture is the most comprehensive account yet assembled of the human rights abuses associated with CIA secret detention and extraordinary rendition operations.

A "disposition matrix," the continuously expanding database that highlights intelligence on targets and strategies for handling them, has become an important aspect in one of the most difficult categories of suspected terrorists: U.S. citizens.

White House counterterrorism adviser John O. Brennan is compiling a "playbook" that will lay out the administration's procedures for the targeted killings that have come to define its fight against al-Qaeda and its affiliates.

The Haqqani network, a semi-autonomous arm of the Taliban, is one of the deadliest factions of the latter group; and the most financially diverse and sophisticated as well.

Richard M. Thompson II assesses the use of drones under the Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures.

The role of drones in the military--and their move toward autonomy--is rapidly progressing.

This memorandum from the Congressional Research Service attempts to clarify the debate over lethal targeting of U.S. citizens with suspected ties to terrorist activites by providing legal background, setting forth what is known about the Administration's positionz and identifying possible points of contention among legal experts and other observers.

This Georgetown Journal of International Law article conducts a historical survey of assassinations and targeted killings, following up with a legal analysis of the bin Laden killing as a precedent for future American counterterrorism operations.

This Congressional Research Service report outlines the background and history of recent Navy irregular warfare and counterterrorism activities, a number of which may pose critical oversight issues for Congress.

The war on terror may be over, but it's left behind a terrible human rights legacy--and Barack Obama has done very little about it, says James Traub, a fellow at the Center on International Cooperation.

American drones have changed everything for al-Qaeda and its local allies in Pakistan, becoming a fact of life in a secret war that is far from over, writes Foreign Policy's Pir Zubair Shah.

This Congressional Research Service report details the background and issues surrounding Special Operations Forces (SOF), elite military units with special training and equipment that can infiltrate into hostile territory through land, sea, or air to conduct a variety of operations, many of them classified.