UK Attorney General Baroness Scotland said March 26 that police will conduct an investigation into claims that an agent of the country's MI5 intelligence service took part in the allegedly abusive interrogation of former Guantánamo Bay detainee Binyam Mohamed. Scotland said she determined the investigation was necessary after reviewing allegations that an MI5 agent gave US CIA agents questions that were asked of Mohammed during his alleged torture in Morocco. Mohamed, a native of Ethiopia who claims to have been transferred to Morocco for torture under a US program of extraordinary rendition, said he obtained the documents through the US legal process while seeking his release from Guantánamo Bay.

Having already dropped the "enemy combatant" nomenclature, the Barack Obama administration has now formally abandoned the Bush-era phrase "Global War on Terrorism." The new term is the dryly clinical and antiseptic "Overseas Contingency Operation." Is this an improvement—or a switch from a hubristic and bellicose rallying cry to an Orwellian euphemism? From the Washington Post, March 25:

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) March 17 hailed a decision by the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit not to revisit an earlier decision requiring the Department of Defense (DoD) to disclose photographs of apparent detainee abuse. The Bush administration filed a request for rehearing in November in response to a Second Circuit ruling that the DoD must release the photographs of Iraqi and Afghan detainees after redacting personally identifying information.

The Irish Times notes March 14 that when former ambassador Chas Freeman was picked last month to chair the National Intelligence Council (NIC), few US newspapers reported the appointment. Freeman's withdrawal last week was front page news, however—because of his blistering parting shot at the "Israel Lobby" he claimed had brought him down. The case opens a window into the intra-elite paleo-neocon wars still playing themselves out in the Barack Obama administration.

On March 13, the Obama administration officially abandoned the term "enemy combatant." In a filing with the DC District Court, the Justice Department said that it will no longer use the term and asserted a new standard for the government's authority to hold detainees at Guantánamo Bay. The Obama administration is still claiming it has the authority to hold prisoners at Gitmo, but says it will now be based on authority from Congress and the international laws of war. The Bush administration claimed that the president could unilaterally hold prisoners without charge.

Trust fund millionaire James G. Cummings, a neo-Nazi sympathizer from Maine who was slain by his wife Amber in December, allegedly had the radioactive components necessary to construct a "dirty bomb," a newly released threat analysis report states. The man, allegedly furious over the election of Barack Obama, purchased radioactive materials over the Internet.

The government's terrorist watch list has hit 1 million entries, according to figures released to USA Today—up 32% since 2007. The rise comes despite the removal of 33,000 entries last year by the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center in an effort to purge the list of outdated information and remove people cleared in investigations.

Italy's highest court ruled March 11 that an investigation into the role of US and Italian intelligence agents in the kidnapping of an Egyptian terrorism suspect breached state secrets. It was not immediately clear whether the Constitutional Court's ruling will force a lower court to shelve the trial of 26 Americans and seven Italians when proceedings resume on March 18.