Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Joint Chief of Staff General Martin E. Dempsey testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on February 7, 2013, about the September attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi, Libya and the response of the Defense Department. Panetta's and Dempsey's prepared remarks and video of the hearing are available on the Committee's website.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on January 23, 2013, about the September attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi, Libya and the response of the State Department.

In the wake of the deadly attacks on U.S. diplomatic missions in Egypt and Libya, Bobby Ghosh writes that the newly-formed democratic governments which replaced long-standing dictatorships, as a result of the Arab Spring, has contributed to greater instability and a more chaotic and unstable Middle East.

The 9/11 attacks on the United States catalyzed effective counterterrorism efforts worldwide and demonstrated the ongoing need for public resilience, says CFR President Richard Haass.

In this United States Institute of Peace special report, freelance journalist Andrew Walker explains the history of Boko Haram, an extremist Islamic sect in Nigeria, that has created havoc across the north of the country and its violent attacks on government offices, the United Nations, and churches.

Laurie Garrett discusses the mistakes and misjudgments made by government officials in response to the anthrax attacks of 2001 and provides recommendations for what should be done now.

Laurie Garrett says man-made killer bird flu is now a reality and asks if governments can--and should--try to stop it.

Daniel Markey says tough talk is not enough as the United States places demands on Islamabad to deal with the Haqqani network.

This video is part of a special Council on Foreign Relations series that explores how 9/11 changed international relations and U.S. foreign policy. In this video, James M. Lindsay, Senior Vice President, Director of Studies, and Maurice R. Greenberg Chair at the Council on Foreign Relations traces the shifts in the balance of power in American politics following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. "What we witnessed in the months after the attack was a political dynamic as old as the American republic. When the country feels imperiled, the White House gains in power and Congress loses it," says Lindsay. However, ten years after the attacks, "the era of terrorism has given way to the era of fiscal austerity," Lindsay argues, and "we now have American politics that looks more normal, that is much more focused inward, and features much more heated battles between Capitol Hill and the White House."

Richard N. Haass argues that 9/11 was a terrible tragedy by any measure, but it was not a historical turning point that heralded a new era of international relations in which terrorists with a global agenda prevailed, or in which such spectacular terrorist attacks became commonplace.

While we can contain terrorism, we can't afford the costs of trying to eliminate it and will have to learn how to live with the chronic threat of low-level attacks, says CFR's Stephen Biddle.

This video is part of a special Council on Foreign Relations series that explores how 9/11 changed international relations and U.S. foreign policy. In this video, Stewart M. Patrick, senior fellow and director of the International Institutions and Global Governance Program at the Council on Foreign Relations, identifies the successes and lasting challenges in the international community's response to global terrorism since the attacks of September 11, 2001. "The world has made a lot of progress," says Patrick, "but it still has quite a bit of a ways to go to achieve real consensus and real solidarity in this fight."

Max Boot argues that the glow of the bin Laden raid may blind the United States to other terrorist threats.

Max Boot says early release for political killers is dangerously common.

This video is part of a special Council on Foreign Relations series that explores how 9/11 changed international relations and U.S. foreign policy. In this video, Isobel Coleman, Senior Fellow and Director of CFR's Civil Society, Markets, and Democracy Initiative, discusses how the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2011 influenced a debate over social and economic challenges and opportunities in the Middle East.

Russell Jacoby writes in the New York Times how Anders Behring Breivik illuminates an uncomfortable truth that the rancor originates very often among kith and kin, not among strangers — and targets fellow citizens. A Norwegian citizen with Norwegian parents slaughtered some 76 of his countrymen.

Missing from the body of literature about 9/11 and the anthrax scare that followed is a sense of what 2001 felt like for those that experienced the events in a very personal way. This book bridges the divide and offers new insights into the period, presenting its profound implications for public health, mass psychology, governance, scientific integrity, social resilience and cohesion, criminal justice, and America's sense of itself.

This video is part of a special Council on Foreign Relations series that explores how 9/11 changed international relations and U.S. foreign policy. In this video, Elliott Abrams, Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, discusses how the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2011 transformed the Bush administration. Abrams says 9/11 led then-president Bush to conclude that "bringing democracy and good governance to the Middle East was going to be critical in terms of fighting the sources of Islamic terrorism."

This video is part of a special Council on Foreign Relations series that explores how 9/11 changed international relations and U.S. foreign policy. In this video, Foreign Affairs Editor Gideon Rose argues that the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States "unleashed U.S. power on the world." Rose says this resulted "not just in the Afghanistan campaign, but in the Iraq campaign eventually, in the Global War on Terror, and in the massive deployment of American resources, in power projection, and in an activist world role that wouldn't have been conceivable without the immediate trigger of a threat in the previous decade." He says the end of this decade saw a "chastened, less hubristic" U.S. attitude and a country confronting a host of domestic challenges.

Michael L. Baker discusses the seventh anniversary of the terrorist bombing in Istanbul.