Summary: Deputy national security adviser John Brennan tells NBC’s David Gregory on “Meet the Press” that politicians are using national security to score political points and that he’s exasperated with partisan political football over counterterrorism professionals’ handling of failed airline bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on February 8, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that defense contractor KBR Inc. had been awarded a $35 million Pentagon contract involving major electrical work, even as it was under criminal investigation in the electrocution deaths of at least two U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

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Summary: A new report warns that al-Qaida has not abandoned its goal of attacking the United States with a chemical, biological, or even a nuclear weapon. … Al-Qaida’s high-value target list. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on January 26, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that counterterrorism officials and the FBI were investigating whether al-Shabab or other Somali Islamic groups were actively recruiting in the United States. Officials said as many as 20 Somali-Americans between the ages of 17 and 27 had left their Minneapolis homes since 2007, apparently bound for Somalia.

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Summary: Baitullah Mehsud, commander of the Pakistani Taliban until he was killed in a U.S. missile strike in August 2009, said in March last year his group was planning an attack on the White House that would “amaze” the world. In that regard, it’s notable that Osama bin Laden reportedly told 9/11 planner Ramzi Binalshibh that he preferred the White House over the Capitol as a target. Hence, it must be assumed that the White House is currently at the top of al-Qaida’s high-value target list. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on January 18, 2009, Aubrey Immelman considered how George W. Bush might restore his legacy upon leaving office in a climate where 98 percent of historians view his tenure as a failure and only 13 percent of Americans believe he helped solve the country’s problems.

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Summary: Thousands of Somali boys and teenagers fleeing war and chaos at home are sailing to Yemen, where officials worry that the new arrivals could become the next generation of al-Qaida fighters. U.S. and Yemeni authorities also fear that Islamist fighters from Somalia could slip into the country among the throngs of refugees, deepening ties between al-Qaeda leaders in Yemen and the particularly hard-line al-Shabab militants of Somalia. … Massoud Ali Mohammadi, a nuclear physics professor who publicly backed Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi in the disputed June 2009 presidential election, was killed when a bomb-rigged motorcycle blew up outside his home in Tehran. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on January 12, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that security forces used tear gas and batons to repel anti-Israel protesters who tried to attack a U.S. consulate in Pakistan as tens of thousands of people demonstrated worldwide against Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip. He also reported that seven years after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan routed the Taliban regime, hard-line Islamic fighters who had scattered under massive bombardment to their villages and rear bases in Pakistan once again govern large swaths of Afghanistan and are dug in across regions that surround the capital Kabul, saying they welcome the U.S. military’s proposal to send as many as 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan by summer 2009 because it will give them more chances to kill “infidels.”

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Summary: Sequence of events in the Dec. 30, 2009 suicide bombing that killed seven CIA personnel and contractors at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost, Afghanistan. … CIA bomber Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, in a videotape released posthumously by the Pakistani Taliban, called on Muslim jihadists worldwide to avenge the death of former Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud last August in a U.S. missile strike, by attacking U.S. targets. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on January 10, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that President-elect Barack Obama, in announcing his nomination of Leon Panetta as CIA director and Adm. Dennis Blair as national intelligence director, said his administration would not compromise its ideals to fight terrorism and that he had instructed his nominees to honor the Geneva Conventions.

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Summary: While ramping up the fight against al-Qaida with U.S. help, the Yemeni government has also escalated its own internal conflicts with Shi’ite rebels in the north and Sunni secessionists in the south, threatening to throw the fractured country into greater chaos and nourish the growth of al-Qaida. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on January 9, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr had called on the Iraqi resistance to stage “revenge operations” against American forces to protest Israel’s Gaza offensive.

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Summary: Intelligence lapse: Dr. Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, the 32-year-old Jordanian physician who turned against his Jordanian intelligence recruiters and struck the CIA’s Camp Chapman forward base in Khost province near the Afghan-Pakistan frontier on December 30, 2009 killing seven Central Intelligence Agency employees and his Jordanian recruiter, matched the psychological profile of a suicide bomber. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on January 5, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that Vice President Dick Cheney, in an exit interview on CBS “Face the Nation,” defended the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, of which he was a key proponent and architect.

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Summary: The suicide bombing on a CIA base in Afghanistan was carried out by a Jordanian doctor, Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, who was an al-Qaida double agent. Personality profile of al-Qaida No. 2, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on January 4, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that a female suicide bomber, in what has become an emerging pattern in Iraq — the mujahidaat — killed at least 38 and wounded 72 in an attack on pilgrims at the Imam Moussa al-Kadhim shrine in Kadhimiya, Iraq.

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Summary: White House aide John Brennan, President Barack Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, says U.S. intelligence agencies did not miss a “smoking gun” that could have prevented the attempt by radical Islamic fundamentalist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to blow up a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on January 3, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that tensions were mounting between Sunni Arabs and Kurds in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, where political violence was increasing ahead of provincial elections.

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Summary: The New York Times reports that in the midst of two unfinished major wars — Afghanistan and Iraq — the United States has quietly opened a third, largely covert front against Al Qaeda in Yemen. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 28, 2008, Aubrey Immelman reported that the Taliban, which had long operated its own shadow government in the most dangerous parts of Afghanistan, had begun spreading north, encroaching on the capital city of Kabul.

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