Slideshow: Syria uprising

Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images file

A U.S. Army guard stands ready in a "pod" inside the Camp 6 detention facility at the U.S. Naval Station Oct. 2, 2007 in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Modeled on maximum security prisons in the United States, Camp 5 and Camp 6 allow easier observation of detainees with fewer guards.

The Pentagon is considering plans for a $150 million overhaul of the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- including building a new dining hall, hospital and barracks for the guards -- as part of an ambitious project recommended by the top general in charge of its operations, officials tell NBC News.    

The proposed spending spree comes amid mounting signs of unrest among Guantanamo detainees that lawyers say is threatening their  lives. U.S. military officials confirmed Wednesday that the number of hunger strikers at Guantanamo has more than tripled in the last two weeks -- from 7 to 25 -- and that eight of them are being force fed through tubes. Defense lawyers said in a letter to Congress this week they have gotten reports that “over two dozen men have lost consciousness.”

U.S. military officials denied any lives were in danger but acknowledged that resistance and frustration among the detainees is growing, a development that a senior general said is because they are “devastated” that President Barack Obama’s pledge to shut down the facility has not been fulfilled.

“They had great optimism that Guantanamo would be closed,” said Gen. John Kelly, the commander of the U.S. Southern Command, when asked about the hunger strikes during testimony before the House Armed Services Committee. “They were devastated, apparently… when the president backed off -- at least their perception -- of closing the facility.

“He said nothing about it in his inauguration speech,” Kelly continued, referring to President Obama. “He said nothing about it in his State of the Union speech. He has said nothing about it. He's not -- he's not restaffing the office that… looks at closing the facility.”

White House officials say they remain committed to closing Guantanamo but have been blocked from doing so by Congress, leading officials to close the small State Department office charged with finding new homes for the detainees. At the same time, Kelly –- who took over as Southcom commander last year -- began laying the groundwork for a substantial overhaul of Guantanamo, testifying that many of the buildings there are “falling apart.”

Brennan Linsley / AP file

A Guantanamo detainee, center, is escorted by U.S. military personnel on the grounds of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay US Naval Base, Cuba, in this May 15, 2007, file photo reviewed by U.S. Department of Defense Official.

“Gitmo seems to be the one place they don’t care about spending money,” said David Remes, a defense lawyer who represents detainees, noting that the plans for the overhaul are moving forward even as the sequester is forcing costs and layoffs throughout the government.

“They will spare no expense to keep these men there rather than bring them to the United States.”

Guantanamo is already considered the country’s most expensive prison per capita by far, with an operating budget this year of nearly $177 million, which means that taxpayers are paying more than $1 million for the care and maintenance of the 166 detainees.

But Lt. Cmdr. Ron Flanders, a spokesman for the Southern Command, told NBC News that Kelly has recommended substantial new spending that includes nearly $100 million slotted to build new barracks for the 848 guards stationed at the facility. The current guard barracks are plagued by mold, he said.

In addition, Flanders said, Kelly has signed off on construction projects that include:

- a new $12 million dining hall for the troops;

- a new $11.2 million hospital and medical units for the detainees;

- a $9.9 million “legal meeting complex” where lawyers can meet their detainee clients;

- a $10.8 million “communications network facility” to store data, including computer records and tapes of interrogations, which has been required by a federal court order.

All these projects have been signed off by Kelly in the last few months and been forwarded to the Pentagon, where they are being reviewed by budget officials in Secretary Chuck Hagel’s office, Flanders said.

At the same time, Flanders said, the operations budget for Guantanamo has already increased substantially this year with the construction of a $40 million fiber optic cable being built from south Florida to the facility in Cuba. The cable is needed to improve Internet access, thereby allowing officials to have improved live video feeds of the military commission proceedings of the Sept. 11 hijackers.

In his testimony, Kelly emphasized that the costs of running Guantanamo are substantially higher because of its remote location at a U.S. military base on the eastern tip of Cuba.

“Everything that’s built down there is at least twice as expensive,” said Kelly. “So a ten-penny nail costs 20 cents. So, everything is more expensive. So we have to take care of the barracks. We have to replace the dining hall…It’s literally falling apart.

“And there’s other projects…none of them have to do with creature comforts for the detainees. They’re already living humanely and comfortably, acknowledging the fact they’re in jail.”

U.S. Air Force handout

An image from the U.S. Air Force shows a MQ-1 Predator unmanned aircraft.

A federal court of appeals handed a victory -- although a very limited one -- to the ACLU on Friday in the civil rights group's effort to use the Freedom of Information Act to get documents from the CIA about US drone strikes overseas.

A three-judge panel of the DC Court of Appeals ruled unanimously that the CIA cannot simply refuse to respond by saying that it cannot confirm or deny the existence of any records. That position, the court said, has been completely undercut by public statements about the drone program made by President Barack Obama, CIA Director Leon Panetta and White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan.

"Given these official acknowledgments that the United States has participated in drone strikes, it is neither logical nor plausible for the CIA to maintain that it would reveal anything not already in the public domain to say that the Agency 'at least has an intelligence interest' in such strikes," the court said.

Those statements, the court said, make it "implausible that the CIA does not possess a single document on the subject of drone strikes."

But Friday's court victory does not hand the ACLU the key to the documents.

The court sent the case back to a federal judge to decide whether the CIA can still argue that actually handing over any documents it has would damage national security. In fact, Friday's decision even holds out the possibility that the CIA may not have to be very explicit at all in saying what documents it has and why it wants to withhold them. 

The ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the CIA three years ago, seeking records pertaining to the use of drones by the CIA or the armed forces for targeted killings overseas.  When the agency failed to respond in time, the ACLU went to court.  A federal judge accepted the CIA’s argument that even answering the question of whether it had any drone records would raise national security problems.  That ruling was reversed by the appeals court. 

Jameel Jaffer, the ACLU lawyer who handles the case, called Friday's decision an important ruling.

“It requires the government to retire the absurd claim that the CIA's interest in the targeted killing program is a secret, and it will make it more difficult for the government to deflect questions about the program's scope and legal basis. It also means that the CIA will have to explain what records it is withholding, and on what grounds it is withholding them," he said.

Ben Stansall / AFP - Getty Images, file

A Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk unmanned aircraft at the Farnborough International Airshow in Hampshire, southern England, on July 22, 2010.

WASHINGTON -- As many as 66 countries would be eligible to buy U.S. drones under new Defense Department guidelines but Congress and the State Department, which have a final say, have not yet opened the spigots for exports, a senior Pentagon official said on Wednesday.

The 66 countries were listed in a Defense Department policy worked out last year to clear the way for wider overseas sales of unmanned aerial systems, as the Pentagon calls such drones, said Richard Genaille, deputy director of the Pentagon's Defense Security Cooperation Agency. He did not name them.

"We don't really have a comprehensive U.S. government policy" on such exports, he told an industry conference called ComDef 2012. "It hasn't moved quite as fast as we would like, but we're not giving up."

NYT: US arms sales make up most of global market

Northrop Grumman Corp chief executive Wes Bush on Wednesday praised the Obama administration for what he described as significant moves to boost arms exports, but voiced frustration at delays in codifying them in a new export policy.

"I wish we were further along in getting that done. It's slow, it's painful, but we're doing the right things to move in that direction," Bush told Reuters.

Panetta: Military cuts to hit 'all 50 states'

U.S. arms makers are looking abroad to help offset Pentagon spending cuts spurred by U.S. deficit-reduction requirements.

Northrop Grumman's ability to boost its overseas arms sales, which now account for less than 10 percent of its overall revenues, hinges largely on streamlined export controls, Bush said.

Complex web of regulations
U.S. defense and high-technology exporters have long complained about the complex web of regulations governing exports of weapons and "dual-use" goods that have both civilian and military applications. They believe the rules disadvantage them versus foreign competitors.

Of particular concern to Northrop Grumman are restrictions on exports such as the company's high-altitude Global Hawk surveillance planes.

The administration last year began informally consulting Congress on plans to sell Global Hawk to South Korea before withdrawing the proposed sale for reasons that have not been publicly disclosed.

Japan, Singapore and Australia also have shown interest in acquiring the aircraft, a Northrop Grumman spokeswoman told Reuters last year.

Bush said that failure to allow such exports could spark a repeat of the 1990s, when strict curbs on U.S. commercial satellite sales prompted other countries to develop rival hardware and software. Those efforts eventually eroded the market share of U.S. satellite producers from more than 70 percent to just around 25 percent.

New Navy fighter drone promises pilotless future

"The consequences of the decisions that were made in the early '90s were devastating for the US industrial base, and ultimately did nothing to enhance security, and in fact, were detrimental to our security," he said.

Overhaul of munitions list
The Obama administration, over the objections of some Republicans in Congress, is aiming to create a single list of items subject to export controls overseen by a single licensing agency, instead of the two separate lists now administered by the State Department and the Commerce Department.

Report: Obama embraces disputed definition of 'civilian' in drone wars

Jim Hursch, director of the Defense Department's Defense Technology Security Administration, speaking at the ComDef event, said the administration was well into the overhaul but still had significant work to do.

Government agencies, as interim steps toward creating the single unified list, have worked their way through the 21 categories of the U.S. Munitions List administered by the State Department to see what items can be moved to the Commerce Department's Commercial List, Hursch said.

"We'll see what happens in November and what the victors of that election want to do to move forward on that," Hursch said.

Beth McCormick, deputy assistant secretary for defense trade and regional security, said she hoped the reforms would continue whether President Barack Obama is reelected on November 6 or Republican challenger Mitt Romney.

"Regardless of what happens in November, we should continue this work and bring it closure," McCormick said.

The Obama administration has already put proposed revisions to nine categories of the munitions lists out for public comment and faces some hard decisions moving ahead.

'Covert' US drone operation is mapped on Twitter

"There are some categories that by their basic nature are very, very difficult," including one that encompasses both night-vision technology and fire control, she said.

In deciding what items to move to the commercial list, "we obviously have to think about the type of technology that we use on the battlefield, where obviously the control of the night has been something that's been very, very important to us," McCormick said.

Kevin Wolf, assistant secretary of Commerce for export administration, said moving an item from the munitions list to the commercial list did not mean it was "decontrolled."

It does give the U.S. government more flexibility in allowing exports to close allies, while maintaining a strict arms embargo on other countries such as China, he said.

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Saurabh Das / AP file

U.S. M1 Abrams tanks withdraw to a safe position after mortar rounds landed nearby in Kufa, Iraq, on April 29, 2004.

Editor's note: This article was corrected after publication. An earlier version incorrectly said the Pentagon spends $3 billion every 82 minutes. The Pentagon actually spends $3 billion in a little more than a day. Also, the earlier version said that members of the House Armed Services Committee got $31,500 from General Dynamics during a two-week period in September last year. The correct figure is $30,500.

The M1 Abrams tank has survived the Cold War, two conflicts in Iraq and a decade of war in Afghanistan. No wonder – it weighs as much as nine elephants and is fitted with a cannon capable of turning a building to rubble from two and a half miles away.

But now the machine finds itself a target in an unusual battle between the Defense Department and lawmakers who are the beneficiaries of large donations by its manufacturer.

The Pentagon, facing smaller budgets and looking towards a new global strategy, has decided it wants to save as much as $3 billion by freezing refurbishment of the M1 from 2014 to 2017, so it can redesign the hulking, clanking vehicle from top to bottom.

Its proposal would idle a large factory in Lima, Ohio, as well as halt work at dozens of subcontractors in Pennsylvania, Michigan and other states.

Opposing the Pentagon’s plans is Abrams manufacturer General Dynamics, a nationwide employer that has pumped millions of dollars into congressional elections over the last decade. The tank’s supporters on Capitol Hill say they are desperate to save jobs in their districts and concerned about undermining America’s military capability.

So far, the contractor is winning the battle, after a well-organized campaign of lobbying and political donations involving the lawmakers on four key committees that will decide the tanks’ fate, according to an analysis of spending and lobbying records by the Center for Public Integrity.

Sharp spikes in the company’s donations – including a two-week period in 2011 when its employees and political action committee sent the lawmakers checks for their campaigns totaling nearly $50,000 – roughly coincided with five legislative milestones for the Abrams, including committee hearings and votes and the defense bill’s final passage last year.

After putting the tank money back in the budget then, both the House and Senate Armed Services Committees have again authorized it this year — $181 million in the House and $91 million in the Senate. If the company and its supporters prevail, the Army will refurbish what Army Chief of Staff Ray Odierno described in a February hearing as “280 tanks that we simply do not need.” 

The Center for Public Integrity

The cash and the tank. Click to enlarge image.

It already has more than 2,300 M1’s deployed with U.S. forces around the world and roughly 3,000 more sitting idle in long rows outdoors at a remote military base in California’s Sierra mountains.

The $3 billion at stake in this fight is not a large sum in Pentagon terms – it’s roughly what the building spends in a little more than a day. But the fight over the Abrams’ future, still unfolding, illuminates the major pressures that drive the current defense spending debate.

These include a Pentagon looking to free itself from legacy projects and modernize some of its combat strategy, a Congress looking to defend pet projects and a well-financed and politically savvy defense industry with deep ties to both, fighting tooth-and-nail to fend off even small reductions in the budget now devoted to the military – a total figure that presently composes about half of all discretionary spending.

Vulnerable to IEDs but impervious to Pentagon budgeteers
The M1 Abrams entered service in 1980, but first saw combat during Operation Desert Storm in 1991. That episode indicated that, on the battlefield at least, the only thing that could destroy an Abrams was another Abrams; only seven of the tanks deployed in the operation were destroyed, all by friendly fire. 

In the last decade, however, as hundreds were deployed to Iraq and later Afghanistan, a key shortcoming became apparent: Their flat bottoms made the Abrams surprisingly vulnerableto improvised explosive devices (IEDs). As a result, the Abrams in Iraq ended up being used as “pillboxes”— high-priced armored bunkers used to protect ground.

“The M1 is an extraordinary vehicle, the best tank on the planet,” Paul D. Eaton, a retired Army major general now with the nonprofit National Security Network, said in an interview. Since the primary purpose of tanks is to kill other tanks, however, their utility in modern counterinsurgency warfare is limited, he added.

Ashley Givens, a spokeswoman for the Army’s Program Executive Office for Ground Combat Systems, said that the Army can refurbish all 2,384 tanks it needs by the end of 2013. Freezing work after that, she said, will allow the Army to “focus its limited resources on the development of the next generation Abrams tank,” rather than building more of the same that “have exceeded their space, weight and power limits."

Warfare has changed, Odierno explained while discussing the Army’s new strategy at the February hearing: “We don’t believe we’ll ever see a straight conventional conflict again in the future.”

But top Army officials have so far been unable to get political traction to kill the M1. Part of the reason is that General Dynamics and its well-connected lobbyists have been carrying a large checkbook and a sheaf of pro-tank talking points around on the Hill.

For example, when House Armed Services Committee member Hank Johnson, D-Ga., held a campaign fundraiser at a wood-panelled Capitol Hill steakhouse called the Caucus Room just before Christmas last year, someone from GD brought along a $1,500 check for his reelection campaign. Several months later, Johnson signed a letter to the Pentagon supporting funding for the tank. Johnson spokesman Andy Phelan said the congressman has consistently supported the M-1 “because he doesn't think shutting down the production line is in the national interest."

The contribution was a tiny portion of the $5.3 million that GD’s political action committee and the company’s employees have invested in the current members of either the House and Senate Armed Services Committees or defense appropriations subcommittees since Jan. 2001, according to data on defense industry campaign contributions the Center for Public Integrity acquired from the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

These are the committees that approve the Pentagon’s spending every year; without their support, the tank – or any other costly military program -- would be dead.

Kendell Pease, GD’s vice president for government relations and communications, said in an interview that the company – which produces submarines and radios for the military, as well as tanks -- makes donations to those lawmakers whose views are aligned with the firm’s interests. “We target our PAC money to those folks who support national security and the national defense of our country,” says Pease. “Most of them are on the four (key defense) committees.”

But Pease denies trying to time donations around key votes, saying that the company’s PAC typically gives money whenever members of Congress invite its representatives to fundraisers. “The timing of a donation is keyed by (members’) requests for funding,” he says, adding that personal donations by company employees are not under his control. He said the donations tend to be clumped together because lawmakers often hold fundraisers at the same time.

More cash at key milestones
During the current election cycle, General Dynamics’ political action committee and its employees have sent an average of about $7,000 a week to members of the four committees. But the week President Obama announced his defense budget plan in 2011, the donations spiked to more than $20,000, significantly higher than in any of the previous six weeks. A second spike of more than $20,000 in donations occurred in early March 2011, when Army budget hearings were being held.

At a March 9 hearing of the House subcommittee dealing with land forces, Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, railed against the Army’s decision to freeze work on the Abrams. Since the start of 2001, Reyes has received $64,650 in GD donations, including $1,000 on March 10, the day after the hearing, according to the data.  Reyes office did not return a request to comment; his overall campaign receipts in the current election cycle have been $1 million.

Another large spike occurred the first two weeks of May 2011, a period in which the House Armed Services Committee voted 60-1 for a budget bill containing money to continue work on the Abrams through 2013. Over this period, GD’s PAC and employees donated a total of $48,100 to members of the four committees, with almost $20,000 of that going directly to members of the House Armed Services Committee as they voted.

During another two week period in September, in which the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense handed in its conference report and Congress rushed to pass a stopgap spending bill to keep the government open, the company sent $36,500 to members of the four committees — primarily the House Armed Services Committee, whose members got $30,500.

The final large spike in donations last year came the week of Dec. 11-17, when Congress made a final vote on the whole budget. During this week, GD’s donations to members of the four committees totaled $17,000.

Along with its checks, the company has been carrying around a message that a cutoff of tank manufacturing work in Lima will harm the nation’s “industrial base,” using what has become a favorite expression of alarm for military contractors facing cutbacks.

The workforce “is not like a light switch. You can’t just click it off, then walk away for three years, come back and click it on,” Pease said. Smaller suppliers who exclusively make parts for the Abrams could be shuttered if the Army’s spending stops, he said. GD has also accused the Army of underestimating the plant’s temporary shutdown costs, claiming that the government’s actual savings would be minimal.

To help bring its corporate viewpoint to lawmakers, General Dynamics has spent at least $84 million over the past 11 years on lobbyists, according to Senate Office of Public Records lobbying data acquired from the Center for Responsive Politics. Just in the last year and a half, the firm —  which draws nearly three-quarters of its revenues from public tax dollars in the form of federal contracts —  has spent at least $13.5 million on more than 130 individual advocates, who pressed Congress to fund a variety of military and non-military programs at the firm.

While lobbyists often do not name their causes, those working for GD that specifically listed the Abrams tank, along with other topics, reported earning at least $550,000 from 2011 to the first quarter of 2012, according to the data. Pease described the lobbying efforts as “education… Shame on us if we don’t go and tell them (Congress) our side, because the Army is doing the same thing as we’re doing, having just as many meetings as we are.”

Relying on special contacts
In addition to tapping its in-house team, the company also hired outside firms to help sway lawmakers’ votes, which in turn assigned the General Dynamics account to former congressional staff tightly connected to committee members — part of the “revolving door” phenomenon now common among veterans of both political parties.

GD paid the Podesta Group nearly $1.7 million since 2009 to lobby on the defense appropriations and authorizations bills, according to lobbying disclosure forms. Among the more than 20 Podesta lobbyists assigned to the account was Josh Holly, communications director for the House Committee on Armed Services under Republican leadership for six years.

According to Holly’s bio on the Podesta website, he worked directly with Republican Buck McKeon of California, its current chairman. McKeon is a major recipient of GD campaign donations, garnering $68,000 from GD’s PAC and employees since the start of 2001 — with $56,000 of that coming just since 2009, when he became the committee’s top Republican. Holly did not respond to emails and phone calls seeking his comment and committee spokesman Claude Chafin said McKeon has consistently argued that it is fiscally smarter to keep the Abrams work going than to stop it.

Podesta also assigned the GD account to two former House Appropriations Committee aides.  One of them, Jim Dyer, confirmed that he lobbied on the tank this year, but directed other questions to General Dynamics. GD also hired firms that assigned its account to six other lobbyists who worked for the relevant committees and to a former Pentagon liaison to Congress. 

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Pease said that when working with outside firms, he lets them pick the specific lobbyists on the account. But when picking the firms, “you always look for those people who can get the job done,” he says, referring to his approach as using a rifle rather than a shotgun. The company hires “a lot of individuals who understand our message, and how to deliver the message, so we can educate the right people, so they can understand our side of the equation.”

The company’s efforts so far have had great success. In April, 111 House Republicans joined with 62 House Democrats in a letter to Secretary Panetta decrying the decision to freeze work on the tanks. Less than a quarter were from Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania — the rust belt states with small subcontractors that would be directly impacted by a halt to Abrams work.

Of the 173 signers, 137 received contributions totaling more than $2 million from GD since 2001. Giving to Republicans and Democrats was split in half, with Republicans receiving about 51 percent of contributions, and Democrats 49 percent. More than half of the Armed Services committee and defense appropriations subcommittee members signed, effectively telgraphing the outcome of their deliberations.

The first signature was from Rep. Sander Levin, D-Mich., whose district includes the Detroit suburb of Sterling Heights, the location of the headquarters for General Dynamics Land Systems. Rep. Levin’s brother is Michigan Democrat Sen. Carl Levin, the powerful head of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Sen. Levin has received $46,200 from General Dynamics since 2001; his brother has received $43,000.

In a written statement, Rep. Levin said he wants to protect the Abrams because it is of “vital importance to more than 60 local companies” in Michigan and the difficulty of restarting tank production after a hiatus. Rep. Levin’s spokesman Josh Drobnyk says Levin has not conferred with his brother on the issue but confirms that representatives from GDLS contacted the congressman’s office about the Abrams.

Sen. Levin’s spokeswoman Tara Andringa said that “based on information on the M1 tank program from the Army, from contractors, and from independent analysts,” the senator supported the funds for the Abrams as being in “the best interests of U.S. security and protecting taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars.”

Both this year and last year, the funds were added to the President’s proposed budget without a specific recorded vote, in what independent experts have termed an earmark — money directed by members of Congress to a pet project that often benefits their district. Earmarks were supposed to have been banned after the 2010 election, but lawmakers have decided that when multiple members favor adding funds – rather than just one lawmaker – it is not formally an earmark.

So far, there has been a great silence on the Abrams funding issue from congressional deficit hawks. Rep. Jim Jordan, who represents the Ohio district where the Lima plant is located and has received $31,000 for his campaigns from General Dynamics’ leadership PAC and employees, said he is now optimistic that the Abrams money will make it safely through the Senate.

If it does, the fight still might not be over. The White House, in its May 15 responseto the House budget, objected to the “unrequested authorization” of funds for the Abrams during a “fiscally-constrained environment.”  The administration did not specifically threaten a veto over the issue but said that if too many unrequested projects impeded “the ability of the administration to execute the new defense strategy and to properly direct scarce resources,” senior advisors will recommend the president veto the bill. 

Reporter Zach Toombs and Data Editor David Donald contributed to this report.

The Center for Public Integrity is a nonprofit, independent investigative news outlet.

AFP - Getty Images

This photo obtained in 2003 shows alleged plotter of the September 11, 2001 attack Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The United States issued charges against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, along with four other alleged plotters, setting the stage for a much-awaited military trial.

WASHINGTON -- Charges against five alleged co-conspirators in the 9/11 attacks were referred to trial by the Pentagon on Wednesday, and the men could face the death penalty.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin Attash, Ramzi Binalshibh, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi are (once again) charged with planning and executing the attacks on Sept 11, 2001, leading to the deaths of 2,976 people.

The convening authority of the Office of Military Commissions referred the case to a capital military commission, so these men are eligible for the death penalty.

The five men have been charged before, but charges were dropped against them in 2009 when President Barack Obama ordered a review of the Military Commissions process, hoping to move the process to a civilian court.

In May 2011, military prosecutors filed charges against all five again. Wednesday's announcement means that the convening authority has agreed they should stand trial.

The next step is for the chief judge of the Military Commissions Trial Judiciary to assign a military judge to the case and for a date to be set for their arraignment. According to the rules, they are supposed to be arraigned within 30 days of being served the charges. 

They will be tried at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Jim Miklaszewski is the chief Pentagon correspondent for NBC News and Courtney Kube is the Pentagon producer. 

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The Defense Department, which has promised to publish a reliable account of how it spends its money by 2017, has discovered that its financial ledgers are in worse shape than expected and that it will have to spend billions of dollars in the coming years to make its financial accounting credible, the Center for Public Integrity reported Thursday.

Win Mcnamee / Getty Images

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta testifies before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday. He was joined by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen.

The U.S. military has spent more than $6 billion to develop and deploy new financial systems, but the effort has been plagued by significant added overruns and delays, defense officials told the CPI, a nonprofit investigative news organization.

The Government Accountability Office said in a report last month that although the services can now fully track incoming appropriations, they still can't demonstrate that their funds are being spent as they should be.

Despite the difficulties in putting a new audit system in place, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, in opening remarks to the House Armed Services Committee, pledged Thursday to cut the implementation timeline in half "so that in 2014 we will have the ability to conduct a full budget audit."

"This focused approach prioritizes the information that we use in managing the department, and will give our financial managers the key tools they need to track spending, identify waste, and improve the way the Pentagon does business as soon as possible." 

But the effort to speed accountability will itself be costly. Pentagon officials were already budgeting $300 million a year for new accounting systems and other preparations for 2017. The CPI reported that several officials estimated that meeting the earlier deadline could cause that spending to rise beyond a billion dollars over the next three years.

The Pentagon’s bookkeeping has come under increased scrutiny as Congress and the Obama administration have vowed to reduce the federal deficit. The Pentagon requested $671 billion for fiscal 2012, but disputes over the deficit prevented Congress from passing the budget by the Sept. 30 deadline. The department could face substantial cutbacks if a special bipartisan "supercommittee" can’t agree on a formula for reducing the deficit.

As the Associated Press explained this week, the summer debt agreement between President Barack Obama and Congress mandates $350 billion in defense cuts over 10 years, and that figure could grow significantly depending on how the supercommittee slashes at least $1.2 trillion from future deficits. But if the panel stumbles, or Congress rejects its recommendations, the cut to defense could be even deeper as automatic reductions kick in, with half coming from defense.

Panetta testified Thursday that the budget cuts will force difficult choices.

"We have a strong military, but one that has been stressed by a decade of fighting, squeezed by rising personnel costs, and is in need of modernization given the focus of the past decade," he said, referring to fighting insurgencies and terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, international security issues have grown more complex, Panetta said, noting the United States in the future must be prepared to continue dealing with violent extremism as well as the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea, the prospects of cyber attackers who may target American infrastructure, and other threats.

"Our challenge is taking a force that has been involved in a decade of war and ensuring that we build the military we need to defend our country for the next decade even at a time of fiscal austerity," Panetta said in a statement prepared for a House Armed Services Committee hearing. Also testifying before the panel was Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, making his first congressional appearance since taking over as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Oct. 1.

NBC News Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

At Open Channel we're following the continuing release of the first of 251,287 diplomatic messages by WikiLeaks, the whistleblowing website, timed in concert with several news organizations that had early access to the documents so they could begin reporting.

Latest updates are at the top.

Editors at The New York Times are answering questions about the choices they made.

The Guardian tweaks Sarah Palin for turning the WikiLeaks release into a business opportunity: " At last Sarah Palin speaks on the Wikileaks revelations – well, she tweets on the subject. And being Sarah Palin, it's mainly about her: 'Inexplicable: I recently won in court to stop my book America by Heart from being leaked, but US Govt can't stop Wikileaks' treasonous act?'

The Guardian opines: "Well, one is under the jurisdiction of the United States' government and laws, and one isn't. Apart from that, inexplicable. But top marks for using this unlikely subject to plug your own book."

The Guardian also reports on a U.S. ambassador who was shocked by comments by Prince Andrew.

Israel waits
From LA Times: Israel, waiting for the WikiLeaks shoe to drop, still cleaning up past messes

An apology to Pakistan?
The U.S. ambassador writes a column about the disclosures. "I cannot vouch for the authenticity of any one of these documents," wrote Cameron Munter. "But I can say that the United States deeply regrets the disclosure of any information that was intended to be confidential. And we condemn it. Diplomats must engage in frank discussions with their colleagues, and they must be assured that these discussions will remain private."

One man's solution
A talk show host in Nashville offers this suggestion:"The wikileaks guy isn't hiding in a cave in Pakistan. Can't we find him and kill him!?!?!?!?" (Spotted by Phil Williams.)

A mystery solved
The Guardian's editor tells Yahoo's The Cutline that it gave a copy of the WikiLeaks documents to The New York Times. As noted below, The Times received the documents from a source that insisted on timing that coincided with publication by the other news organizations.

Gaddafi's fear of flying, even with his 'voluptuous blonde'
From the Washington Post: WikiLeaks cables reveal personal details on world leaders

Also from the Post: With better sharing of data comes danger

LA Times roundup is here: Iran 'must be stopped': Arab leaders pushed U.S. to attack, WikiLeaks disclosures show

But it's still early...
McClatchy Newspapers and Miami Herald: No evidence that WikiLeaks releases have hurt anyone 

• Embassy cables tell of elderly American's escape from Iran: Man, 75, rode horse over freezing mountain range into Turkey
• Fear of 'different world' if Iran gets nuclear weapons
• Israel primed to attack a nuclear Iran
• Secret EU plot to boycott Ahmadinejad inauguration
• Iran 'lied to UN inspectors about Qom nuclear site'
• Arab states scorn 'evil' Iran
• Iranian spies 'used Red Crescent to enter war zones'
• Briton teaches U.S. diplomats how to talk to Iran
• Editor's note: Publishing the cables

A historian's dream, a diplomat's nightmare
Guardian journalists and others discuss the release, its context and the highlights so far.

Diplomats are not spies, State spokesman says
(via NYTimes): P.J. Crowley, spokesman for the U.S. State Department, reacts on his Twitter feed to the cables encouraging U.S. diplomats at the UN to collect personal information on UN officials: "Contrary to some #Wikileaks’ reporting, our diplomats are diplomats. They are not intelligence assets." And then, "Diplomats collect information that shapes our policies and actions. Diplomats for all nations do the same thing."

Newsweek analysis by Christopher Dickey: WikiLeaks will achieve the opposite of its goal of transparency. He says diplomats will now be afraid to write anything candid, turning diplomacy into public relations. (It's worth noting that WikiLeaks' stated goal is transparency. What it's actual goal is, will be judged by its actions.)

 Google allows a word-by-word search of the (relatively few) documents released so far, using its "site" command. Phrase it like this, without the quotation marks: site:cablegate.wikileaks.org clinton. Like this.

Wired's Kevin Poulsen, who reports on hacking, has a roundup of the day's events. He reminds us that the Army intelligence specialist accused of pilfering the documents, Bradley Manning, smuggled them out of a secure facility on a CD-RW labeled "Lady Gaga."

 AP posts a timeline of WikiLeaks and its leaks. 

Nightly News video:

What these documents tell us about the Arab world
Marc Lynch describes the Arab reaction and disclosures, at Foreign Policy. He muses on the effects of revealing what Arab leaders really say, behind closed doors, particularly about Iran.

"Will Arab leaders pay any significant political price for these positions, as they clearly feared?   Or will it turn out that in this era of authoritarian retrenchment they really can get away with whatever diplomatic heresies they like even if it outrages public opinion?  Will the publication of their private views lead them to become less forthcoming in their behavior in order to prove their bona fides -- i.e. less supportive of containing or attacking Iran, or less willing to deal with Israel? Or will a limited public response to revelations about their private positions lead them to become bolder in acting on their true feelings?" 

Setting the timing
A question: Why did the New York Times release the documents at the same time as the other news organizations, if it didn't get the documents from WikiLeaks?

The Times says it did not receive the documents from WikiLeaks, but from another source. And The Times says it has had the documents for several weeks? So why did it release them today, when other news organizations did? Why not, say, yesterday? The Times editor's note sheds only a little light on this, saying its source set the timing: "The documents — some 250,000 individual cables, the daily traffic between the State Department and more than 270 American diplomatic outposts around the world — were made available to The Times by a source who insisted on anonymity. They were originally obtained by WikiLeaks, an organization devoted to exposing official secrets, allegedly from a disenchanted, low-level Army intelligence analyst who exploited a security loophole. ... Except for the timing of publication, the material was provided without conditions."

So it appears that the Times is making the point that it didn't get the documents from WikiLeaks, but acknowledging that whoever gave the documents to the Times set the timing, which happens to be the same timing that WikiLeaks (or an intermediary) set for the other news organizations working under the embargo. It's curious: Has the Times decided that it would prefer (for legal reasons?) to receive the WikiLeaks data dumps through an intermediary? Or did WikiLeaks choose to use a third person to get the documents to The Times, and perhaps to the others? It will be interesting to read more about this in the editors' memoirs.

We asked the editor of the Times, Bill Keller, about this. Here's his reply, in full: "We agreed to coordinate timing with the other news organizations to avoid a stampede that would make for sloppy journalism and increase the risk of publishing something dangerous. Our agreement meant we had time to absorb the material and supply context. As you will see over the next week or so, this is careful journalism. It also allowed time for serious (and fruitful, in my view) discussions with the government about what to redact."

Yahoo's The Cutline blog says The Guardian fills in the missing piece: The British newspaper gave a set of the documents to The Times.

At Wired, Kevin Poulsen's take on all this: "The paper was among the outlets given embargoed access to earlier WikiLeaks disclosures, but fell out of favor with the organization when it profiled its leader, Julian Assange."

WikiLeaks says tomorrow it will invite other news organizations to "apply" for access to the cables under an embargo.

More from The Washington Post
"Secret cables reveal Iran has advanced missiles, is distrusted by U.S. allies in Persian Gulf." "The diplomatic memos disclose the extent to which many of the United States's allies in the Arab world repeatedly implored Washington to stop Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons."

WikiLeaks site is up
The WikiLeaks direct link for its cables site is finally working: http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/. Only a small portion of the cables have been posted, more than 200, with more expected. The documents posted so far have source names redacted, although anyone close to any of the governments could use these documents to quickly tell who is talking to (or working for) the U.S. embassy.

U.S. statement condemns release as "reprehensible."

Cable shows U.S. concern about the mental health of the president of Argentina.

From the Telegraph: Taliban courts prepare to punish any Afghan informers named in the diplomatic cables.

Times says its copy of the documents did not come directly from WikiLeaks (via Yahoo).

Senators in Washington: prosecute leakers.

What "inappropriate behavior" by a British royal will we be reading about?

William Kristol's advice for the U.S. on the WikiLeaks release, in the Weekly Standard: No apologies, no complaints, no explanations, no excuses.

On Twitter, users are reading about a hacker who claims responsibility for the denial-of-service attack against WikiLeaks.

From The Telegraph, a profile of Bradley Manning, suspected of stealing and distributing the diplomatic cables. So far he has been charged with distributing just one diplomatic cable.

Washington Post video: The founder of WikiLeaks answers questions from Post readers.

In Israel, the newspaper Haaretz explores a 2009 cable about Iranian nuclear ambitions: "A 2009 American government cable released Sunday by the WikiLeaks website quotes Defense Minister Ehud Barak as telling visiting American officials that a strike on Iran's nuclear facilities was viable until the end of 2010, but after that "any military solution would result in unacceptable collateral damage."

Locked out of the early release, the Washington Post provides perspective. From among all the stories in these documents, the Post seems to choose the most interesting: spying at the UN. "The documents suggest American diplomats were ordered to engage in low-level spying by obtaining personal information on foreign diplomats such as frequent flier and credit card numbers, presumably to better track their movements."

In a closing of the barn door after the horse has ridden away, the Pentagon has tightened rules on use of flash drives.

Talk back to the editors
Editors at The New York Times are inviting questions on the WikiLeaks release. See the bottom of this editor's note or send an e-mail. And Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger will be online Monday at 4 p.m. in London.

The Guardian is blogging about WikiLeaks here.

One more from Der Spiegel: WikiLeaks FAQ: What do the cables really tell us?

More from the Guardian UK):

• U.S. cables leak sparks global diplomacy crisis
• Explore the database of U.S. cables
• Diplomats ordered to spy on UN leadership
• Saudi Arabia urges U.S. attack on Iran to stop nuclear programme
• US view of Kim Jong-il, Putin, Sarkozy and Berlusconi
• Commentary: The job of the media is not to protect power from embarrassment
• How 250,000 U.S. embassy cables were leaked
• Siprnet, where America stores its secret cables
• Data blog: What the cables tell us

The four New York Times articles:

• Cables shine light into secret diplomatic channels
• Around the world, distress over Iran
• Iran fortifies its arsenal with the aid of North Korea
• Mixing diplomacy with spying

The Times is following reaction on its Lede Blog.

And a selection of notable messages, via The Times.

More from Der Spiegel:

• A superpower's view of the world. "Never before has a superpower lost control of such vast amounts of such sensitive information."
• The German dispatches: Internal source kept U.S. informed of Merkel coalition negotiations
• 'Tribune of Anatolia': Diplomatic cables reveal U.S. doubts about Turkey's government
• Orders from Clinton: U.S. diplomats told to spy on other countries at United Nations

It's interesting to see the manpower tally at the bottom of a news article. Here's the New York Times contributor list for its lede article, a roster which few news organizations could match: Scott Shane reported from Washington, and Andrew W. Lehren from New York. Reporting was contributed by Jo Becker, C. J. Chivers and James Glanz from New York; Eric Lichtblau, Michael R. Gordon, David E. Sanger, Charlie Savage, Eric Schmitt and Ginger Thompson from Washington; and Jane Perlez from Islamabad, Pakistan.

The New York Times publishes letters between WikiLeaks and the U.S. government.

The White House issues a condemnation of the WikiLeaks disclosures: "We condemn in the strongest terms the unauthorized disclosure of classified documents and sensitive national security information. ... President Obama supports responsible, accountable, and open government at home and around the world, but this reckless and dangerous action runs counter to that goal,” the statement said. “By releasing stolen and classified documents, WikiLeaks has put at risk not only the cause of human rights but also the lives and work of these individuals."

The New York Times posts the first four articles of a series drawn from the new cables. A huge trove of State Department communiqués offer an extraordinary look at the inner workings, and sharp elbows, of diplomacy. The first article leads with disclosures on a standoff with Pakistan over nuclear fuel, gaming of an eventual collapse of the North Korean regime, bargaining with countries to take Guantanamo prisoners, suspicions of corruption in the Afghan government, and Chinese efforts to hack into computers in the U.S.

And Times editors post a note explaining their decision to publish, and to withhold many of the documents: "The Times believes that the documents serve an important public interest, illuminating the goals, successes, compromises and frustrations of American diplomacy in a way that other accounts cannot match. ... The Times has taken care to exclude, in its articles and in supplementary material, in print and online, information that would endanger confidential informants or compromise national security. The Times’s redactions were shared with other news organizations and communicated to WikiLeaks, in the hope that they would similarly edit the documents they planned to post online."

From other news organizations taht had advance access to the messages: The Guardian (UK), Der Spiegel (English language version of the German news magazine), Le Monde (French), and El País (Spanish).

A political meltdown
The summary by Der Spiegel: "Included are 243,270 diplomatic cables filed by US embassies to the State Department and 8,017 directives that the State Department sent to its diplomatic outposts around the world. In the coming days, the participating media will show in a series of investigative stories how America seeks to steer the world. The development is no less than a political meltdown for American foreign policy."

Our roundup story from NBC News sources is here.

Trying to pump up the volume, WikiLeaks begs the Web to use a hashtag #cablegate to discuss the release.

Pages from the German magazine Der Spiegel have been released early. Report by Jerusalem Post:'Ahmadinejad is Hitler; Sarkozy is a naked emperor.'

Cover of Der Spiegel is posted by Gawker among others.

WikiLeaks claims to be under a denial-of-service attack. As of 12:52 p.m. Eastern time, the WikiLeaks Web site is failing to load, or is timing out.

12:42 p.m. Eastern: New report from The New York Times, one of the news organizations expected to publish some of the documents.

Roundups here from Reuters and CNN.

WikiLeaks says information will be released this evening by El Pais, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, Guardian & New York Times

Gawker says tweets from Germany suggest the release will be a let-down, without explosive items.

Reuters: Italian foreign minister calls the release the 9/11 of diplomacy

Also see Michael Isikoff's report Friday on Open Channel: Harmful documents or hyperventilating?

What should we be investigating? Send documents and story ideas to NBC's Open Channel.

Pentagon officials are expressing strong concerns about what they expect may be the biggest and most damaging WikiLeaks document dump yet: hundreds of thousands of internal U.S. government cables that reveal private communications with foreign governments, sources tell NBC News.

WikiLeaks fired back on its Twitter account on Tuesday evening, "The Pentagon is hyperventilating again over fears of being held to account."

But a senior administration official tells NBC that the expected release of State Department documents by Wikileaks may have grave national security and foreign policy implications. "This stuff is very very damaging," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "It’s stuff from all over the world and goes well beyond Iraq and Afghanistan. It's classified, sensitive cables -- our ambassadors' talks with the leadership of foreign governments, candid assessments of people, readouts on meetings. ... Some of this will be embarrassing."

The official said about 250,000 State Department documents are involved and are expected to be posted soon by WikiLeaks, with excerpts and portions also published by the New York Times and other news organizations.

The expected release suggests that Obama administration attempts to crack down on WikiLeaks disclosures are failing. But officials suspect that Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning, accused of leaking past Iraq documents and videos, may have had access to the State Department cables through interagency computer networks and may have supplied them to WikiLeaks before he was taken into custody. The charges against him in June included downloading more than 150,000 cables (he was charged then with distributing only one), and he bragged about having obtained 260,000 cables.

The Pentagon already has a 100-person task force investigating WikiLeaks disclosures and is working with the Justice Department on a criminal investigation. The upcoming disclosures could prompt officials to ratchet up the probe, possibly by subpoenaing Julian Asange, the Australian founder of WikiLeaks. To date, Justice Department officials have not taken such a step. "The question is, at what point, do you take the gloves off?" the official said. (Asange was recently made the subject of an Interpol arrest warrant based on allegations of rape in Sweden. WikiLeaks did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.)

A Pentagon official sent an e-mail to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday advising that a new WikiLeaks disclosure was expected soon. Bloomberg reported Tuesday evening that Elizabeth King, assistant secretary for legislative affairs, wrote that the documents “touch on an enormous range of very sensitive foreign policy issues. She told committee staff, “We anticipate that the release could negatively impact U.S. foreign relations.” Bloomberg reported that King wrote that the The New York Times, the U.K.’s The Guardian and Der Spiegel of Germany “are each currently working with WikiLeaks to coordinate the release of these State Department documents.”

WikiLeaks itself has said on its Twitter account on Sunday that "next release is 7x of Iraq War logs," a reference to its last release.

The  State Department spokesman, P.J. Crowley, said Wednesday, "These revelations are harmful to the United States and our interests. They are going to create tension in relationships between our diplomats and our friends around the world."

AP quoted Crowley telling reporters that U.S. diplomatic stations have begun notifying governments that the release may come within days, apparently based on State Department documents."We wish this would not happen, but we are obviously prepared for the possibility that it will,"Crowley said.

NBC quoted Crowley saying, "This will be harmful to national security and will put lives at risk." He said these kinds of cables include classified information about activities and personnel. The cables are "diplomacy in action."

Wired has more background on the case, including Manning's claim, in an online chat with the (former) hacker who turned him in, that he had 260,000 diplomatic cables. In the chat, Manning said, "Hillary Clinton and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning, and find an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available, in searchable format, to the public."

(This post was updated to note that Manning was charged in June with obtaining diplomatic cables.)

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What should we be investigating? Send documents and story ideas to NBC's Open Channel.

More stories from NBC investigative correspondent Michael Isikoff.