Sudan expelled bin Laden on May 18, 1996, to Afghanistan.
— Barton Gellman
Al Qaeda is closely aligned with the Chechens.
Ordinary Geiger counters, worn on belt clips and resembling pagers, have been in use by the U.S. Customs Service for years.
Unsettling signs of al Qaeda's aims and skills in cyberspace have led some government experts to conclude that terrorists are at the threshold of using the Internet as a direct instrument of bloodshed.
The CIA now assesses that four nations - Iraq, North Korea, Russia and, to the surprise of some specialists, France - have undeclared samples of the smallpox virus.
During the morning rush hour on March 20, 1995, the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo placed packages on five subway trains converging on Tokyo's central station. When punctured, the packages spread vaporized Sarin through the subway cars and then into the stations as the trains pulled in.
First developed as a weapon by the U.S. Army, VX is an oily, odorless and tasteless liquid that kills on contact with the skin or when inhaled in aerosol form. Like other nerve agents, it is treatable in the first minutes after exposure but otherwise leads swiftly to fatal convulsions and respiratory failure.
Among all the upheavals of war with al Qaeda, the surest indicator of the historic stakes is the ongoing rotation of top U.S. government managers - scores at a time - into a bunker deep underground and far from Washington.
Iraq has the most extensive petrochemical industry in the Middle East and a wealth of vaccine factories, single-cell protein research labs, medical and veterinary manufacturing centers and water treatment plants.
The first time I set out to find George F. Kennan, in 1982, I had just turned 21, begun my final semester at Princeton University and noticed with astonishment that the senior thesis deadline had crept to within four months.
On March 12, 2004, acting attorney general James B. Comey and the Justice Department's top leadership reached the brink of resignation over electronic surveillance orders that they believed to be illegal.
I don't say I never use Facebook, but I often think about closing my account.
One common puzzle for the security-minded is how to work with confidential data on the road. Sometimes you can't bring your laptop, or don't want to. But working on somebody else's machine exposes you to malware and leaves behind all kinds of electronic trails.
Given the volume of PC sales and the way McAfee runs its operation, I imagine there must be thousands of phantom subscribers - folks who signed up once upon a time and left the software behind two or three computers ago.
Companies that receive government information demands have to obey the law, but they often have room for maneuver. They scarcely ever use it.
Activists and geeks, standing together, are demonstrating powers beyond the reach of government control.
Friend of mine, a smart journalist, had his iPad stolen. He couldn't help that - the thief broke into his house. But his private, personal data wasn't stolen, exactly. Donated, more like. He had no passcode set on the iPad.
The government of Sudan, employing a back channel direct from its president to the Central Intelligence Agency, offered in the early spring of 1996 to arrest Osama bin Laden and place him in Saudi custody, according to officials and former officials in all three countries.
There is evidence that some of al Qaeda's nuclear efforts over the years met with swindles and false leads.
Experts said public companies worry about the loss of customer confidence and the legal liability to shareholders or security vendors when they report flaws.
Nearly all government advice on terrorism sacrifices practical particulars for an unalarming tone. The usual guidance is to maintain a three-day supply of food and water along with a radio, flashlight, batteries and first-aid kit.
The U.S. government has known since the early 1990s about Soviet-era smallpox weapons, and collected circumstantial evidence of programs elsewhere.
The U.N. Security Council ordered Iraq in April 1991 to relinquish all capabilities to make biological, chemical and nuclear weapons as well as long-range missiles.
Governors normally have jurisdiction over public health emergencies, but a widespread biological attack would cross state boundaries.
The gravest risks from al Qaeda combine its affinity for big targets and its announced desire for weapons of mass destruction.
At the height of Iraq's clandestine nuclear weapons program, which nearly succeeded in building a bomb in 1991, Tuwaitha incorporated research reactors, uranium mining and enrichment facilities, chemical engineering plants and an explosives fabrication center to build the device that detonates a nuclear core.
In the urgent aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, with more attacks thought to be imminent, analysts wanted to use 'contact chaining' techniques to build what the NSA describes as network graphs of people who represented potential threats.
NoScript is probably the most important privacy tool, but it costs you in convenience.
'Social engineering,' the fancy term for tricking you into giving away your digital secrets, is at least as great a threat as spooky technology.
It turns out that American Express honors recurring payments even if the vendor is unable to supply an accurate card number and expiration date. An Amex phone representative said this is a feature, not a bug, which makes sure my bills are paid.
Dell fills its computers with crapware, collecting fees from McAfee and other vendors to pre-install 'trial' versions.
The Obama administration, like those before it, promotes a disturbingly narrow interpretation of the Fourth Amendment, misapplying the facts of old analog cases to a radically different digital world.
It no longer counts as remarkable that Egyptians organized their uprising on social media.
Privacy is relational. It depends on the audience. You don't want your employer to know you're job hunting. You don't spill all about your love life to your mom or your kids. You don't tell trade secrets to your rivals.
White House officials acknowledge in broad terms that a president's time and public rhetoric are among his most valuable policy tools.
Searches of al Qaeda sites in Afghanistan, undertaken since American-backed forces took control there, are not known to have turned up a significant cache of nuclear materials.
Counterterrorism analysts have known for years that al Qaeda prepares for attacks with elaborate 'targeting packages' of photographs and notes.
For political and bureaucratic reasons, governments at all levels are telling far less to the public than to insiders about how to prepare for and behave in the initial chaos of a mass-casualty event.
Smallpox, which spreads by respiration and kills roughly one in three of those infected, took hundreds of millions of lives during a recorded history dating to Pharaonic Egypt. The last case was in 1978, and the disease was declared eradicated on May 8, 1980.
The United States, a signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention, destroyed the last of its stocks of VX and other chemical agents on the Johnston Atoll, 825 miles southwest of Hawaii, in November 2000.
In the field of biological weapons, there is almost no prospect of detecting a pathogen until it has been used in an attack.
Leaders at the top of al Qaeda's hierarchy, the evidence shows, completed plans and obtained the materials required to manufacture two biological toxins - botulinum and salmonella - and the chemical poison cyanide.
Enclosed by a sand berm four miles around and 160 feet high, the Baghdad Nuclear Research Facility entombs what remains of reactors bombed by Israel in 1981 and the United States in 1991. It has stored industrial and medical wastes, along with spent reactor fuel.
When the 'New York Times' revealed the warrantless surveillance of voice calls, in December 2005, the telephone companies got nervous.
Ghostery lets you spy on the spies in your computer. For each web page you visit, this extension uncloaks some - but not all - of the invisible tracking software that is working behind the scenes.
The IronClad is faster than most thumb drives but far slower than a standard hard drive. Boot up, application launch and other Windows operations feel sluggish, though still usable.
I do read licenses, and they aggravate me, but a computer isn't much good without software. When I need a product, I hold my nose and click 'agree.'
We know what's in our Cheerios and in our retirement accounts because the law requires disclosure.
Federal prosecutors want to indict Julian Assange for making public a great many classified documents.
A minimum precaution: keep your anti-malware protections up to date, and install security updates for all your software as soon as they arrive.
