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Bush's foreign policy challenges

When he goes to Capitol Hill tonight, the President will have to deal with foreign policy challenges in almost every part of the world. A year after declaring that "democracy is on the march," Mr. Bush is  learning that it can sometimes be dangerous to get what you ask for. In the Palestinian territories, the stunning Hamas victory is a disaster for the U.S. peace plan -- a legislative majority dedicated to the destruction of Israel. And four years after calling Iraq, Iran and North Korea the "axis of evil" in his 2002 State of the Union address, Bush is still battling insurgents in Iraq. A radical leader is defying the world and continuing nuclear research in Iran. And America and its allies are no closer to a solution in North Korea.

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Ayman al-Zawahri's 'proof of life' tape

A White House official immediately said that the videotape shows that Ayman al-Zawahri  is "frustrated and angry" and on the run, but the visual evidence is exactly the opposite: intelligence officials confirm that this tape shows a strident al-Qaida leader who managed to get a tape out very quickly after this month's attack in Pakistan. On the tape, Zawahri is very forceful, not only saying that the U.S. did not get him during its strike, but threatening again to deliver body bags to the Pentagon. He appears to be very self-confident and seems to feel safe in his security.

The quality of the Zawahri tape is notable in that he is clearly in a studio -- delivering a well-produced message. This is in stark contrast to the scratchy audio quality of the Osama bin Laden tape that surfaced 10 days ago. And unlike the Zawahri audio tape on Jan 20, this is clearly current, referring to the Pakistan strike. It is a "proof of life" message aimed both at his followers and at the American public.

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Defending the NSA's actions

Despite bipartisan criticism of the administration's domestic eavesdropping program -- with even Republicans like Sens. Arlen Specter, Pa., and John McCain, Ariz., expressing doubts about its legality -- the White House has clearly decided that electronic spying is a political plus, not a minus. Framing the issue as a choice between protecting America against al-Qaida vs. personal privacy, the White House followed up Karl Rove's strong defense last week by bringing out one of its super spies today, Deputy National Intelligence Director General Mike Hayden.

This is really unusual: Mike Hayden's public appearances are usually limited to annual reports to the Senate Intelligence Committee, normally very dry affairs. This time, he went into the belly of the beast, the National Press Club, to criticize public disclosure of the secret program and contradict New York Times reporting that it is "data-mining" that sweeps up innocent communications. (full transcript of Hayden's remarks)

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Then & now: Iran in the news

Twenty five years ago today, a new U.S. president was inaugurated and 52 American diplomats were released from Iran after 444 days of captivity. Their capture forever changed American foreign policy and helped defeat Jimmy Carter, who spent the final year of his presidency agonizing over failed efforts to win their release. So on Inauguration Day, Tehran spited Carter by waiting until just after Ronald Reagan was sworn in as president to make sure the hostages were released on Reagan's watch.

For those who didn't live through it, it's hard to recreate the way the hostage situation shadowed America for those 444 days. It was the crisis that brought the perils of Islamic fundamentalism home to the U.S. as nothing had before. It was the impetus for a nightly broadcast on ABC called "America Held Hostage," which later become "Nightline." As a relatively new correspondent at NBC News, in the days before 24-hour cable or the Internet, part of my job was to stay up all night in the newsroom just in case there was some urgent word out of Iran about the hostages' fate that would warrant breaking into network programming. 

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Spy suit

How do you prove you've been eavesdropped upon if the National Security Agency's surveillance program is so secret? That's the legal challenge for plaintiffs in the first lawsuits filed today against the NSA for its top secret program of domestic spying without court warrants. My producers and I have been interviewing some of the challengers today, as well as talking to government officials about their contention that the program is a necessary part of the war on terror. How do you balance security versus privacy? Or is that even the right question?

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Iran's controversial president

Iran's president, who previously denied that the Holocaust took place and threatened Israel with extinction, has now managed to do what George Bush and Condi Rice haven't been able to do:  unite the United States and Europe, including Russia, on a joint diplomatic track - and get the U.S. to praise the United Nations.  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - the man with the unpronounceable name who fronts for the mullahs who run Iran - have defied the world by resuming nuclear research that could be used to develop a bomb.

I was at a State Department briefing today and asked the Secretary of State why Iran has chosen isolation. She, like most analysts, hasn’t figured out Iran's motive.  But most experts agree that Iran appears to have a deeply seated need to show it can be a nuclear power. 

Iran protests that it just wants to enrich uranium in order to produce nuclear energy. It can't explain why one of the world's great oil producing nations needs nuclear power plants and why it is refusing Russia's offer to do Iran's enriching on Russian soil, under international safeguards. 

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CIA sued by German citizen

In the first legal challenge to the controversial CIA practice of kidnapping terror suspects and taking them to a third country for allegedly abusive interrogation, the ACLU today filed suit against former CIA director George Tenet for allegedly illegally kidnapping and torturing a German national, Khaled al-Masri, for months even after knowing it was a case of mistaken identity. Al-Masri is asking for an apology and at least $75,000 in damages. 

Al-Masri participated in the D.C. newser by video conference from Germany after having been refused entry into the U.S. when he landed in Atlanta last Saturday. Through a translator, he described how he was kidnapped from Macedonia and allegedly tortured by CIA interrogators.

"I am asking the American government to admit its mistakes and to apologize for my treatment," al-Masri said. "Throughout my time in the prison, I asked to be brought before a court but was refused. Now I am hoping that an American court will say very clearly that what happened to me was illegal and cannot be done to others."

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