Walter Pincus

Charles Colson, special counsel to President Richard M. Nixon, suggested in January 1973 that The Washington Post fire Executive Editor Ben Bradlee, pull Watergate stories off the front page or produce "obviously friendly editorials" on the Vietnam War as ways to prove it wanted to end its warfare with the White House.

Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee want to question Attorney General Eric Holder Jr about his support of a compromise reporters' shield law before they vote on it.

The Obama administration has given Congress a draft of a proposed shield law that toughens its position on controversial national security sections.

The Senate Judiciary Committee this week will take up a new version of a reporter shield law.

Lawmakers are voicing concerns about the Pentagon's strategic communications programs, through which the military aims to win over civilians and erode support for adversaries in countries around the world.

Key lawmakers are pushing to dramatically escalate U.S. defenses against cyberattacks, crafting proposals that would empower the government to set and enforce security standards for private industry for the first time.

According to Joel F. Brenner, national counterintelligence executive and mission manager for counterintelligence for the director of national intelligence, in the new electronic information world, your cellphone or BlackBerry can be tagged, tracked, monitored and exploited by a foreign intelligence service between the time you disembark from a plane in that country's capital and the time you reach the airport taxi stand.

If it is ultimately upheld, a memorandum opinion written by a federal judge in Virginia and released last week may limit the overclassification of information on national security grounds and prevent future prosecutions for leaking such information.

The Pentagon's inspector general said yesterday that the Defense Department's public affairs office may have "inappropriately" merged public affairs and propaganda operations in 2007 and 2008 when it contracted out $1 million in work for a strategic communications plan for use by the military in collaboration with the State Department.

In two recent speeches that have attracted little notice, Donald Kerr, principal deputy director of national intelligence, has called for a radical new relationship between government and the private sector to counter what he called the "malicious activity in cyberspace [that] is a growing threat to everyone." Kerr said the most serious challenge to the nation's economy and security is protecting the intellectual property of government and the private sector that is the basis for advancements in science and technology.