National Security

The world wants Syria's chemical arsenal destroyed. But so far, no country has offered to do the dirty work on its soil. Over the past week, an alternative has gained ground: Carry out the destruction at sea. The plan taking shape is complicated and untested, but it just might work.

Newly disclosed court opinions and statements from the Obama administration raise big questions about whether the National Security Agency's surveillance programs are too complicated for anyone to understand or oversee. Self-policing comes with big challenges. Is it possible to control the vast spy agency?

Should the Afghan government sign a security agreement, the U.S. plans to keep as many as 9,000 American troops in Afghanistan even after the U.S. and NATO's combat mission officially ends late in 2014. But the remaining U.S. troops will almost certainly be outnumbered by civilian contractors.

For the first time, three women were among the Marines who graduated Thursday from the two-month combat training course. The U.S. lifted the ban on women in combat earlier this year. Now, the Marines are conducting tests to see if women have what it takes to actually serve in the infantry.

A congressional directive requires U.S. detention centers to fill 34,000 beds per night. Supporters say it ensures that the nation's immigration laws are being enforced. But critics say housing a fixed number of immigrants at any given time is inhumane, inefficient and too expensive.

Faced with harsh criticism over its vast surveillance operation, the NSA and its allies are pushing back. They say their intelligence collection is being done in response to demands from the executive branch of the U.S. government and not on its own. The NSA says it is currently working on 36,000 pages of what it calls "requirements" — intel speak for intelligence assignments it gets from branches of the U.S. government.

Over the five months since Edward Snowden began leaking secret documents to the media about American spying, President Obama has adjusted his response to the disclosures. At first, he suggested the concern was misplaced, but more recently, his message has been that something needs to change.

The shooting at Los Angeles International Airport is renewing debate over whether security at airports is tough enough. Some aviation security experts say the response at LAX went as well as it could have in this era of "random violence" in public areas.

New public opinion polls show distaste for National Security Agency surveillance does not break cleanly across party lines. Despite the administration's attempts otherwise, one new study finds that the more people know about the NSA, the more they dislike it.

Several new developments put the NSA surveillance program into the spotlight this week. The U.S. had to explain why it eavesdrops on foreign leaders; The Washington Post reported that the NSA can tap directly into overseas servers of Google and Yahoo; and lawmakers have introduced legislation to rein in the program that allows NSA to gather phone data on Americans.