Alleged Russian spies were arrested in the NYC area. 

The FBI announced yesterday the arrests of 11 people associated with an alleged Russian spy ring. The arrests were made on Sunday in Massachusetts, Virginia, New Jersey and New York. Details coming out of the FBI reports read like a Russian spy novel — if not stranger.  Authorities worked for at least seven years to gather information about the suspects, who were all charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering and failing to register as guests of a foreign government. The maximum sentences for these crimes are five to 20 years.

The Pentagon is searching for Julian Assange, founder of the website Wikileaks, amidst concerns that the site could publish thousands of international cables from the State Department. The cables are allegedly part of a larger package of material given to Wikileaks by 22-year-old Army Specialist Bradley Manning. In late May police arrested Manning, an intelligence analyst in Iraq, accusing him of downloading confidential material from computers on his base and posting it to WikiLeaks.

We speak with Scott Shane, the National Security reporter for The New York Times. He says that while President Obama's administration was elected on a campaign of government transparency, it is actually following a doctrine of extreme media secrecy. Shane says Obama has, in two years, prosecuted more information-leakers than any other president in history.

Scott Shane of our partner, The New York Times, says that there is a shift in the way the Obama administration is pursuing leaks to the press after reports that the website WikiLeaks has obtained 250,000 diplomatic cables; this morning's headlines.

The question everybody is asking this week has been, who is 30-year-old Faisal Shahzad, the man held and accused of placing a car bomb in New York's Times Square over the weekend? After two days of intense interrogation efforts, news continues to trickle in about the motives and connections behind the attempted attack.

Details are still trickling out on how the alleged Christmas Day 'bomber' managed to board a Detroit-bound plane despite several intelligence agencies having some information on him.  To look at what happened and what procedures may change in the future, we talk with Scott Shane, New York Times national security reporter.

Over the weekend, federal authorities charged a 23-year-old Nigerian man with trying to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day. That man, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, claims that he received the explosive chemicals from a bomb expert with ties to al-Qaida. For an update on the case, we speak with reporter Scott Shane, who is covering the case for our partner, The New York Times, along with BBC reporter Ahmed Idris, who joins us from Nigeria.

• National Security Takeout: New York Times National Security Reporter Scott Shane talks about five Muslim-American men being detained in Pakistan on possible connections to terrorism. The men disappeared from Washington, D.C. last month, leaving a farewell video that has authorities exploring possible terrorist connections.
• Elections Takeout: Executive Producer and host of Georgia Public Broadcasting Rickey Bevington, on a close run-off election in Atlanta yesterday between Kasim Reed and Mary Norwood. Mr. Reed led Ms. Norwood by 715 votes, a small enough margin to require a recount by state law.

At a memorial for victims of the Fort Hood shootings, President Obama said the killer will "be met with justice in this world and the next." We focus on the legal challenges for the alleged shooter, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, in this world. Hasan will probably face a long and complex trial, but only after an equally complex assessment of his mental health. We speak with Eugene Fidell, who teaches military law at Yale Law School and is president of the National Institute of Military Justice. We also speak to New York Times national security reporter Scott Shane, who gives us the latest on the case.

New details are emerging in the case of the suspected Fort Hood shooter, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist who shot and killed 13 people and wounded 29 others during a shooting spree last week. Our partner The New York Times reports that Hasan had sent 10 to 20 messages since late last year to a radical Islamic cleric, once a leader at the Virginia mosque where Hasan worshipped and since relocated to Yemen. Scott Shane, New York Times national security reporter, joins us. And for a look at how the community in and around Fort Hood is reacting to the tragedy, we talk to Colonel Chaplain Frank Jackson. He is the garrison chaplain at Fort Hood.

The war in Afghanistan continues to drag on, and the Obama administration is waiting for the country's presidential election runoff before deciding whether to send additional troops to the region. Former Vice President Dick Cheney called this timetable "dithering" in a speech yesterday. For a military perspective on the matter, we speak to retired Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner. Some of the logistical challenges facing troops on the ground also complicate the ongoing strategy; part of the problem is as basic as knowing who to fight. New York Times reporter Scott Shane writes in today's paper about the two types of Taliban that U.S.-led troops are fighting.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney spoke out on Fox News yesterday against the decision by Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate the alleged abuse of prisoners by CIA interrogators. Cheney said he was concerned what effect the investigation would have on morale in the CIA and called it "clearly a political move." We’re here this morning with Scott Shane, who covers intelligence for our partners The New York Times, to go over the details.

Attorney General Eric Holder will appoint federal prosecutor John Durham to investigate alleged prisoner abuses at CIA prisons during the Bush administration.  Durham has a long reputation as a no-nonsense, under-the-radar prosecutor who’s gone after career criminals and corrupt government officials for decades.

For more on this elusive figure, we talk to Durham’s old boss Kevin O'Connor, former U.S. Attorney for the State of Connecticut. And for more on the ramifications of the decision to investigate the CIA's interrogation techniques, we turn to New York Times Reporter Scott Shane.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney ordered the CIA to withhold information from Congress for eight years regarding a secret counter-terrorism program. C.I.A. director Leon Panetta told the Senate and House intelligence committees back in June about this and immediately put an end to the program. The program never became fully operational but details of it still remain classified. Joining The Takeaway is The New York Times National Security Reporter, Scott Shane.

Bush administration policies on the treatment of detainees have now embroiled President Obama in a growing controversy.

News broke last night that the U.S. will restart military tribunals for a small number of Guantanamo detainees (fewer than 20 of the 241 detainees in the prison). Obama had suspended the tribunals within hours of taking office in January. The military trials will remain frozen for another four months as the administration adjusts the legal system. Those changes to the system will be announced later today. Obama's new rules for military tribunals will reportedly include a ban on any statements made under so-called enhanced interrogation techniques.

The torture controversy has also spread to Congress. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi acknowledged that in 2003 she was informed by an aide that the CIA had used waterboarding during interrogation, which is an adjustment from Pelosi's previous statements. She claims the CIA misled the Congress.

Finally, Obama has reversed an earlier decision and said he wouldn't authorize the release of reportedly over 1,000 photos involving abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan. The photographs were scheduled to be released to the American Civil Liberties Union on May 28. Following that story is Scott Shane, a reporter for our partners the New York Times. He joins The Takeaway with a look at whether the president will succeed in suppressing the photos.

For more, read Scott Shane's article, Experts Say Obama May Need to Classify Photos, in the New York Times.

The Justice Department has been investigating the Bush administration lawyers who drafted the so-called torture memos that outlined brutal techniques for gathering information. According to our partners, The New York Times, today the Justice Department will recommend that that lawyers who wrote the memos should not be criminally prosecuted, despite their serious lapses in judgment. To discuss, The Takeaway is joined by Scott Shane, national security reporter for the New York Times.



For more, read Scott Shane's and David Johnston's article, Torture Memos: Inquiry Suggests No Prosecutions, in today's New York Times.

A new examination by our partner The New York Times, shows that in 2002 top officials in the Bush administration for the first time signed off on the barbaric interrogation procedures, that in the past it had always condemned. And no one involved in that decision, from the President down through the House and Senate, knew the history behind the methods they had just signed off on. Even George J. Tenet, the C.I.A. director who insisted that the agency had thoroughly researched its proposal didn't know of the history of these programs.

What was that history? According to several former top officials interviewed by the New York Times, the methods used by the CIA against terror suspects were taken from a military training program, called SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape. The program had been created decades earlier to give American pilots and soldiers a sample of Communist torture methods that had wrung false confessions from Americans during the Korean War. Obviously not something you want to pick up off the shelf and start using again. Here to present his report is New York Times reporter Scott Shane.

For more, read Scott Shane's and Mark Mazzetti's article, In Adopting Harsh Tactics, No Inquiry Into Their Past Use in today's New York Times.

The fallout from the release of the so-called torture memos that document the CIA's interrogation techniques against purported terrorists continues. Now more details of the potentially illegal torture are becoming clear. In 2007, a former CIA officer told new organizations that an al Qaida operative, Abu Zubayadah, had undergone waterboarding for only 35 seconds before agreeing to tell everything he knew. Now new analysis of the so-called torture memos shows that Zubaydah was actually waterboarded at least 83 times. The same simulated drowning technique was used almost 200 times against Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, the self-described planner of the September 11 attacks. New York Times reporter Scott Shane has been following this story for the paper and he joins The Takeaway with the disturbing tale.

For more, read Scott Shane's article, Waterboarding Used 266 Times on 2 Suspects in today's New York Times.

For five long days Richard Phillips, the captain of the American cargo ship Maersk Alabama, was held captive on a lifeboat by Somali pirates. In a dramatic rescue yesterday U.S. Navy snipers freed him. The standoff was ended, but the bigger situation is far from over. Pirates are still holding a dozen ships with more than 200 crew members from countries around the globe. Add to that the fact that some maritime experts expect the number of pirate attacks around the Horn of Africa to actually increase after this capture. For an overview of the pirates' life we are joined by New York Times reporter Scott Shane.

For more, read Scott Shane's article In Rescue of Captain, Navy Kills 3 Pirates in today's New York Times.

A new report by the International Committee of the Red Cross reveals the unsavory fact that medical personnel were deeply involved in the abusive interrogations of terror suspects held overseas by the CIA in so-called Black Sites. These medical personnel witnessed waterboarding, slamming of prisoners into walls, hanging shackled prisoners from the ceiling, among other tortures. While unfortunately the reports of torture are not new, this report from the ICRC digs deep into the medical ethics of the workers involved. New York Times reporter Scott Shane has been following this story and he and Gregg Bloche, visiting law professor at the University of Chicago join The Takeaway to discuss these findings.

For more, read Scott Shane's article, Report Outlines Medical Workers’ Role in Torture in today's New York Times.