Morning Brief - 4/27/12

The United States
GUANTANAMO ARRAIGNMENT TO BE SCREENED AT 8 SITES
The May 5 arraignment of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other accused 9/11 conspirators will be screened via closed-circuit television to eight sites in the eastern United States, a military judge ruled Thursday. There will be five viewing sites for families of Sept. 11 victims, survivors and emergency personnel who responded to the attack. Those will be at Fort Meade, Fort Hamilton, another site to be announced in New York City, Joint Base McGuire Dix in Lakehurst, New Jersey, and Fort Devens, Massachusetts. There will be three other viewing sites for the public, journalists and government officials, two at Fort Meade and one in Washington. (AP)

BIN LADEN’S LAST DAYS
Peter Bergen and Graham Allison have this week’s Time magazine cover story marking the anniversary of the Abbottabad raid: a special report on Osama bin Laden’s last days and how the U.S. operation went down over the final months. As part of the reporting, Time reveals the memo Leon Panetta jotted down moments after President Obama authorized the raid. (The pieces are available to subscribers only online, but the issue hits newsstands today.) (Intro, Bergen, Allison, Atlantic Wire with memo)

Torture report: Reuters reports that a year-long investigation by Senate Intelligence Committee Democrats is expected to say it found little evidence that enhanced interrogation techniques used by the CIA against detainees produced effective results. Investigators say evidence they have examined does “not substantiate claims by some Bush supporters that the harsh interrogations led to counter-terrorism coups.” (Reuters)

Hacking bill: The House of Representatives passed a hacking bill Thursday, in defiance of a veto threat from President Obama. The House bill encourages businesses to share information about cyber threats with intelligence agencies; critics say it lacks adequate privacy protections. (NYT, LA Times)

NYSE: The New York Stock Exchange received a “credible” cyber threat to disrupt its external website this week, according to Fox Business. The threat prompted the exchange to increase its cyber security and monitoring. (Fox Business)

Conflict Zones
Israel/Iran: Israel’s top defense officials continued to send mixed messages on Iran on Thursday. The chief of the IDF, Benny Gantz, told Haaretz newspaper Wednesday that he believed Iran would make the “rational” decision not to build a nuclear weapons program, but Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said yesterday that the chances “appear low” that Iran would halt its progress toward weapons. U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told reporters that he hopes Gantz is right. (NYT, Haaretz)

North Korea: A pair of German weapons experts say that missiles put on parade by North Korea this month are fakes. Analysts Markus Schiller and Robert H. Schmucker posted research online arguing that none of the weapons “are exactly the same, a glaring issue for weapons that must be carefully engineered,” reports the LA Times. “They spotted a number of strange features on the purported missiles. For instance, the warheads do not appear capable of separating from the missiles, a key stage in ensuring proper flight.” (LA Times, NYT)

Syria: With hundreds of Syrian civilians reportedly killed since the April 12 ceasefire, the Arab League urged the U.N. on Thursday to quickly deploy several hundred additional monitors to the country. (WSJ)

World News
CHARLES TAYLOR FOUND GUILTY OF WAR CRIMES AT THE HAGUE
Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia, was convicted Thursday at The Hague of “arming, supporting and guiding a brutal rebel movement that committed mass atrocities” during the civil war in Sierra Leone during the 1990s, reports the New York Times. He is the first head of state to be convicted by an international court since the Nuremberg trials. He is due to be sentenced May 30; there is no death penalty and any prison time would be served behind British bars. (NYT)

Lithuania: European lawmakers say they are “dismayed” that the results of two Lithuanian probes into alleged CIA prisons in the country “are contradictory and raise serious questions.” One probe determined that prisoners had been held at two sites; a follow-up found that no prisoners had been present. (AP)

Arguments, Editorials, and Must Reads
Jack Goldsmith on how Obama’s weak counterterrorism record is an opening for Romney: “As the general-election campaign comes into focus, conventional wisdom holds that President Obama is untouchable on national security,” writes Goldsmith in the Washington Post. “But the presidential politics of counterterrorism are less clear than they may seem. Mitt Romney has advantages; the risk is that he will overplay them.” The counterterrosim successes Obama has enjoyed overseas “have not translated into political capital on counterterrorism issues at home.”

The Washington Post on two Uighur detainees’ fresh start in El Salvador: “After 10 years of unjustified imprisonment, two Uighur detainees have found new homes in El Salvador, far beyond the confines of the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,” writes the Washington Post editorial board. “Seventeen Uighurs were freed earlier, while three remain at Gitmo, with little prospect for release any time soon....The saga of the Uighur detainees has been marked by unlucky turns and remarkable congressional cowardice....Congress should scrap the reprehensible measure that forbids Guantanamo detainees, including the Uighurs, from being brought into this country. The best reason, of course, is that it is the right and moral thing to do. The refusal of the United States to take in even one Uighur darkens an already sorry chapter in this country’s history.”

J. Peter Pham on why Taylor’s conviction is incomplete justice: Charles Taylor’s conviction by a tribunal at The Hague “will prevent him from endangering the security of West Africa again,” writes Pham in the New York Times. But “the trial — with its limited scope — didn’t even begin to address the devastating damage Mr. Taylor did to his country. Though it is just, the conviction, with sentencing next month, demonstrates the severe limitations of an international justice system that is insufficient to deter future atrocities.”

Charles Krauthammer on Obama’s shameful dithering on Syria: “Last year President Obama ordered U.S. intervention in Libya under the grand new doctrine of ‘Responsibility to Protect,’” writes Krauthammer in the Washington Post. “Moammar Gaddafi was threatening a massacre in Benghazi. To stand by and do nothing ‘would have been a betrayal of who we are,’ explained the president. In the year since, the government of Syria has more than threatened massacres. It has carried them out. Nothing hypothetical about the disappearances, executions, indiscriminate shelling of populated neighborhoods. More than 9,000 are dead. Obama has said that we cannot stand idly by. And what has he done? Stand idly by.”