Fmr. CIA official: CIA torture report provides ISIS propaganda material
On Tuesday, the FBI and Homeland Security warned federal and local law enforcement to be on guard for violent extremists reacting to an explosive report on the CIA's use of torture.
The report charges that the agency's enhanced interrogation techniques were even more brutal than previously stated and didn't work in obtaining actionable intelligence.
The report details torture that included mock executions, threats of sexual abuse of detainees and even threats of sexual abuse of their family members. Prisoners were kept awake for more than seven days at a time. One prisoner was chained to the floor and left to freeze to death, while others were hooded, then beaten while being dragged.
The report says the techniques were not only "deeply flawed" but they often yielded "fabricated" information - hallucinatory detainees saying anything to make it stop.
The CIA fired back, saying the program was "effective" and substantially helped them obtain crucial information in the war of terror.
Senator John McCain, who was tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam defended the report, while passionately condemning torture.
McCain makes passionate defense for torture report's release
"I know from personal experience that abuse of prisoners will produce more bad than good intelligence," McCain said on the Senate floor.
But with the FBI's warning of retaliation from violent extremists reacting to the CIA report, should it have been released?
OutFront, Hank Crumpton was deputy director of the CIA's Counter-Terrorism Center. He was in charge of CIA operations in Afghanistan after 9/11 when his team of 100 CIA agents helped crush the Taliban. He spent 24 years in the CIA and worked for then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Fifth victim dies in Israel terror attack
It was one of the worst terror attacks in Israel in recent years.
Two Palestinian men, wielding butcher knives and a gun, attacked and killed four men as they prayed at morning services in a Jerusalem synagogue. Several others were wounded.
Three American rabbis with dual citizenship are among the dead. A fourth rabbi, a British-Israeli man, was also killed, along with a policeman who responded to the attack.
Police killed the attackers.
Dore Gold is a Senior Foreign Policy Adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He is also a Former Israeli Ambassador to the U.N.
Two years after the Benghazi attack, chaos in Libya
Thirteen years ago today, four planes hijacked by terrorists took their suicide mission across the northeast, striking landmarks at the heart of the country. It was the worst terror attack on the homeland in our history.
Years later, on another 9/11, another attack left four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens dead when militants stormed the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi.
CNN's Erin Burnett has more.
White House: James Foley killing first ISIS terrorist attack on U.S.
The Obama administration is calling the beheading of American James Foley by ISIS a terrorist attack.
The U.S is now considering more airstrikes against Iraq and perhaps even inside Syria to stop the terror group. On Friday, One of the president's top National Security Advisers made it clear that Foley's horrific murder was an attack against all Americans.
"Clearly, the brutal execution of Jim Foley represented an affront, an attack, not just on him, but he's an American," Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes said. And we see that as an attack on our country when one of our is killed like that."
Is the White House making a case for war?
OutFront, Bob Baer, a Former CIA Operative who lived and worked in Syria; and retired General Wesley Clark, former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO.
Prosecutors: Christmas lights used in Boston marathon bombs
(CNN) - The accused Boston Marathon bombers used Christmas lights and model-car parts to make the explosives, prosecutors said in court documents obtained by CNN Wednesday.
"The Marathon bombs were constructed using improvised fuses made from Christmas lights and improvised, remote-control detonators fashioned from model car parts," federal prosecutors said in a motion filed Wednesday. "These relatively sophisticated devices would have been difficult for the Tsarnaevs to fabricate successfully without training or assistance from others."
To obtain explosive fuel for the pressure cooker bombs, the filing says, brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev "appeared to have crushed and emptied hundreds of individual fireworks containing black powder."
Authorities say Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 20, planted bombs at the finish line of the 2013 race. Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed during the manhunt that paralyzed Boston. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has pleaded not guilty to killing four people and wounding more than 200.
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