The State of U.S. Intelligence Post-9/11

The September 11 attacks and the war in Iraq have raised a number of questions about the state of U.S. intelligence. Leading intelligence scholars - featuring a range of academic experts along with representatives from the Department of Defense and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence - will gather at Williams College on April 12 to offer insights about the future of U.S. intelligence.

News Sources: Water-boarding Wariness

The debate over whether the practice of "water-boarding" is a permissible interrogation technique or is torture has been heightened by an ABC News interview with ex-CIA officer John Kiriakou. He acknowledged that water-boarding was used in interrogating al-Qaeda prisoner Abu Zubaydah, but he says he thinks it did amount to torture. Meanwhile, the public has learned that in 2005 the CIA destroyed hundreds of hours of videotapes showing the interrogations of Abu Zubaydah and another al-Qaeda prisoner. Reporters looking for experts to interview on this topic can find them online at the collegenews.org database of news sources and subject matter experts from America's leading liberal arts colleges, including the following (click on names for contact information):

Darius Rejali - Professor of Political Science, Reed College - Rejali is the author of Torture and Modernity: Self, State, and Society in Modern Iran as well as articles on torture, executions, violence in Latin America, and mass rape in ethnic war, particularly Bosnia. He is a aResearcher on human rights of sexual minorities, AIDS testing policies in the U.S. and Europe and Iranian politics.

Martha D. Huggins - Roger Thayer Stone Professor of Sociology, Union College - Huggins has studied police torture and police death squads in military dictatorships in Brazil and Greece, a project that included interviews with 27 former police officers.

Samuel V. Wilson - Wheat Visiting Professor in Leadership, Hampden-Sydney College - Wilson is president emeritus of Hampden-Sydney College. He is former deputy to the director of central intelligence for the intelligence community and retired director of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency.

News Sources: Intelligence Finding on Iran

President Bush said today that a new intelligence finding that Iran halted its nuclear weapons work in 2003 had not altered his sense that Iran remained a danger. At a White House press conference, Bush called the report “a warning signal,” not grounds for reassurance, and said the United States would not renounce the option of a military response. Reporters looking for experts to interview on this topic can find them on the collegenews.org database of news sources and subject matter experts from America's leading liberal arts colleges, including the following (click on names for contact information):

Samuel V. Wilson - Wheat Visiting Professor in Leadership, Hampden-Sydney College - Wilson is former deputy to the director of central intelligence for the intelligence community and retired director of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency. He is president emeritus of Hampden-Sydney College.

Martha Crenshaw - John E. Andrus Professor of Government, Wesleyan University - Crenshaw has gained an international reputation for studies of political terrorism. She has testified before Congress and has served as a consultant to the Department of State, the U.S. Naval and Army War Colleges, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Defense Nuclear Agency. Crenshaw has authored three books, including Terrorism, Legitimacy, and Power: The Consequences of Political Violence.

Darius Rejali - Professor of Political Science, Reed College - An expert on human rights, Rejali is the author of Torture and Modernity: Self, State, and Society in Modern Iran.