Profligate spending, an "aura of secrecy" and "intransigence" toward consulting on-site managers at airports aggravated the problems, said David S. Stempler, the president of the Air Travelers Association, which earlier this month called for the creation of a national security task force to assist the government in airport security using industry and consumer experts.
But the key is putting one million people to work on this vital national security task before November - that is before corporate donations unleashed by the Supreme Court make a mockery of elections.
But a voluminous report released last week by the American Psychological Association APAaccusedsed Banks and top APA officials of colluding with the Department of Defense DODD) and manipulating a 2005 APA national security task force into issuing a set of "loose" ethical guidelines for psychologists who participated in military interrogations.
Banks, who was director, Psychological Applications for the US Army's Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, and who was a member of that APA national security task force, is named in the 542-page report more than 800 times and identified as one of the "key players" who conspired with APA leadership to keep the organization's ethical guidelines in sync with DOD's interrogation policies.
Nearly 60 of the 181 prisoners at Guant?mo Bay, Cuba, are Yemenis who -- according to a national-security task force review -- present weak cases for continued detention.
He is said to be working on a plan to meld them into a national security force, a task that would require Kurdish leaders to give up control over their armies.
"The request for broader powers is the excuse of first resort of anyone who's failed at national security or law-enforcement tasks," said Mr. Powers.
"Why would you pick the leader of an oil and gas corporation to spearhead a position tasked with national security and global climate action?" he asked.
Judge Loretta A. Preska of Federal District Court in Manhattan dismissed the suit, saying the "balancing of economic, environmental, foreign policy and national security interests involved" was a task "consigned to the political branches, not the judiciary".
The co-author of two books, one on the reunification of Germany, the other on the Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Army, she would be the first to admit that the task of national security adviser will be challenging.
On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton often advocates the toughest-sounding position when it comes to national security — she took Barack Obama to task a few months ago for saying that he would be willing to meet with Iran's leaders.
