The election of Jorge Mario Cardinal Bergoglio as Pope Francis I has sparked new interest in the atrocities performed during Argentina’s period of military rule from 1976-1983.

Francis is the first pope to have been elected from the Americas, which will more accurately reflect the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church in Latin America. That primacy, however, during the Cold War led to many dioceses throughout the region turning a blind eye to the atrocities of military governments. These right-wing governments, often taking power via coup, were supported by the United States and the church alike for their stand against Communism.

Particularly devastating was the period known in Argentina as as “The Dirty War.” Beginning as a crackdown on armed left-wing guerrilla groups following a military coup in 1976, the regime soon expanded its focus, imprisoning and torturing anyone thought to hold leftist views or criticize the government. Women who were pregnant at the time of their incarceration were allowed to bring their children to term, before being “transferred” — a euphemism used by the junta for execution — drugged and tossed from airplanes into the ocean. All-told, an estimated 30,000 civilians were “disappeared” by the government.

Years later, one priest told a panel of judges that the church at the time was “scandalously close to the dictatorship” in turning a blind eye, “to such an extent that I would say it was of a sinful degree.” Former Argentine dictator Jorge Videla claimed in an interview years removed from power that the Church was definitely “consulted” throughout the crackdown. That included offering their good offices and discouraging families from searching for relatives who had “disappeared.” That link was much stronger in Argentina than in neighboring dictatorships in Brazil and Chile:

“Patriotism came to be associated with Catholicism,” said Kenneth P. Serbin, a history professor at the University of San Diego who has written about the Roman Catholic Church in South America. “So it was almost natural for the Argentine clergy to come to the defense of the authoritarian regime.”

That tie has been a stain on Catholicism in Argentina ever since. The Argentine Catholic Church issued a document in 1996 admitting they had made “insufficient efforts” to prevent atrocities. When Pope John Paul II issued a blanket apology for church abuses throughout the ages in 2000, Bergoglio — by then the archbishop of Buenos Aires — insisted that Argentine Catholic officials wear garments symbolizing penance for sins committed by the clergy during the military dictatorship.

Bergoglio’s precise role during the Dirty War is still clouded. In 2005, when he was first considered as a possible replacement for John Paul II, a human rights activist accused Bergoglio of aiding in the military’s kidnapping of two Jesuits, filing criminal charges in a Buenos Aires court. That case has since not moved forward, though claims exist that he actively prevented human rights groups from finding political prisoners. However, at least one woman, former Buenos Aires Ombudsman Alicia de Olivia, has come forward to say that Bergoglio hid her from the military government during the crackdown.

Speaking at a panel at George Washington Law School this morning, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) indicated that his struggle with the Obama administration for more transparency on national security matters is just beginning.

Wyden was the opening speaker at a Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington event on drones, in which he laid out his position on the secrecy surrounding the Obama administration’s counterterrorism targeted killing program.

Wyden made clear during his talk that he believed that there are “certainly legitimate reasons” for the government to keep some matters secret, including the details of covert operations. Sources and methods — or the precise ways that intelligence is collected — are in a very different basket than keeping the law secret, Wyden explained. “Secret operations are different than secret laws,” Wyden said. What Wyden is firmly opposed to is secret interpretations of public laws by the Executive Branch without the conclusions being disclosed:

WYDEN: [W]e aren’t going to take a backseat to anybody — not anybody — on the question of protecting genuinely sensitive sources and operations. But I am also not going to take a backseat to anybody in the effort to try to make sure our public laws stay public. And that’s what this is, in effect, discussion is all about.

At the forefront of Wyden’s concerns is a set of classified memos from the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel laying out the justifications for when force can be used against American citizens overseas. An unclassified white paper summarizing those memos leaked to the press last month, stirring up the current debate.

Wyden indicated that he had spent the last two years asking the administration for access to the DOJ memos on targeting Americans abroad. As part of its deal to have John Brennan confirmed as CIA Director, the White House has turned over those memos to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, but has not declassified them as of yet. These memos, Wyden believes, as the official interpretation of the Executive Branch on how it reads current laws need to be made public. At present, there is no one place within the law that Americans can go to see what the standard is with regard to targeting Americans, Wyden said.

“I don’t buy that,” Wyden said when asked about whether the memos reveal too much in the way of operational details to be declassified. “That’s what we have redaction for.” Wyden was the only member of the Democratic Caucus to join Rand Paul’s nearly thirteen-hour long filibuster of John Brennan last week, though he disagreed with Paul on the forthrightness of the administration.

House Democrats earlier this week wrote to the White House also demanding the declassification of the DOJ memos, as well as answers related to the broader use of drones in warfare.

Another day, another high profile hacking headline. In January it was Chinese hacks of newspapers, then it was think tanks, and now everyone from Beyonce and Jay-Z to First Lady Michelle Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder is having their personal data splashed upon the web. There’s one scary truth all these stories should highlight: The only reason your data hasn’t been compromised is because you haven’t been competently targeted yet.

This latest instance of hacking in and dumping someone’s personal data onto the web, a practice often called “doxxing” in hacker circles, is perhaps the strongest case yet for why you should be wary about the security of your personal information.

The full list of the compromised contains big names: Vice President Biden, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck, AG Holder, former Secretary Clinton, FBI Director Robert Mueller in addition to a string of celebrities of varying stature. Undoubtedly, the most prominent were using strong security procedures to avoid the exposure of their personal data. And yet, none of that mattered, thanks to the source of the breach according to NBCNews.com:

“The Equifax credit bureau confirmed Tuesday that criminals have stolen credit reports from AnnualCreditReport.com, the website designed to allow consumers free access to their own credit reports.

The theft suggests criminals have outfoxed AnnualCreditReport.com’s defenses, potentially giving them access to potentially 200 million Americans’ credit reports. According to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, 16 million consumers use AnnualCreditReport.com annually.”

AnnualCreditReport.com, a joint project between our nation’s three largest credit bureaus, itself was not hacked so to speak, but the hackers likely used a combination of trial and error and personal information that could have been gleaned from scouring the web or purchasing it from online data brokers to successfully authenticate themselves as the victims. The ease of the fraud raises a host of concerns: Consider that Equifax has assembled a private database of the employment and salary records of more than one-third of working U.S. adults. Plus, Equifax and its customers have previously agreed to pay a $1.6 million dollar Federal Trade Commission settlement for improperly selling lists of consumers late on mortgage payments. Does their data security record suggests an ability to competently secure access to that mountain of sensitive information?
Read more

Afghan President Hamid Karzai is sticking with his claims that the United States and Taliban are working together to lengthen the former’s occupation of Afghanistan, even as negotiations to get Western forces out continue.

On Sunday, Karzai first voiced the accusation that the two enemies were working together to achieve the same goals while delivering a nationally televised speech. Karzai doubled down on that rhetoric in a speech on Tuesday to tribal leaders in the Helmand Province, rebuking a recent Taliban attack while still suggesting cooperation between foreign forces and the former Afghan government:

“You announce that you show your power to America by killing an 8-year-old Muslim child and civilians,” Mr. Karzai said. “I don’t think so. You are serving for them.”

He also suggested that recent Taliban propaganda footage of attacks in the strategic Wardak province near Kabul was likely filmed by foreign helicopters, and distributed by foreigners in order to exaggerate the insurgency’s strength and justify a continued foreign presence.

The new spate of sharp rhetoric from Karzai comes as the United States and other NATO countries are negotiating the withdrawal of their combat forces from Afghanistan, currently due to be completed by the end of 2014. In his Helmand speech, Karzai insisted that he would not be in favor of any foreign troops remaining within Afghanistan post-2014, encouraging them to provide financial aid instead. Gen. James Mattis, head of U.S. Central Command, told the Senate last week that he envisioned a remainder force of 20,000 troops after the pullout, a number that has yet to be made official by the Obama administration.

What is clear, however, is that the vast majority of foreign forces will be gone from Afghanistan in 2015, leaving Karzai in need of domestic support and desiring to shore-up his legacy as President:

Interviews with tribal elders, business leaders, political analysts and diplomats here paint an image of a leader who is desperately trying to shake his widely held image as an American lackey by appealing to nationalist sentiments and invoking Afghanistan’s sovereignty. [...]

Many Afghan observers say that Mr. Karzai is trying to keep himself politically potent during the last year of his term by playing to at least three Afghan constituencies: his ethnic Pashtun base; ethnic Tajik and Hazara leaders in his government; and, notably, the Taliban, who have rejected negotiations with him.

Inflammatory statements against the West have become a staple of Karzai’s at key times during his Presidency. Amid questions of corruption following the 2009 Presidential election, Karzai lashed out at “foreign interference” in the balloting. When under pressure in 2010 to institute reforms in his government, he threatened to join the Taliban himself.

Karzai’s original statements were met with shock and anger by U.S. officials, having come during a visit by U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, and served to highlight tensions between Afghanistan and the United States despite twelve years and billions of dollars spent in the country. Taliban officials also did not take kindly to the linkage, issuing a statement reminding Karzai of the inglorious fate of Afghan leaders who worked with the Soviet Union.