Elisabeth Bumiller New York Times

• After war room, heading Ivy League classroom

  On a recent evening in a classroom at Yale, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal held forth for two animated hours on the conflicts in Northern Ireland and South Africa, with bits of his own history as the former top commander in Afghanistan thrown in. In earlier classes he covered the Bay of Pigs and Vietnam and, as his students tell it, recounted in mesmer...

• 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' is history

  Now it can be told: A prominent gay rights advocate who called himself J D Smith is in fact 1st Lt Josh Seefried, a 25-year-old active-duty Air Force officer. At 12:01 am on Tuesday, he dropped the pseudonym, freed from keeping his sexual orientation secret like an estimated tens of thousands of others in the United States military

• Hackers gained access to sensitive US military files

  The Defence Department suffered one of its worst digital attacks in history in March, when a foreign intelligence service hacked into the computer system of a corporate contractor and obtained 24,000 Pentagon files during a single intrusion, senior officials said Thursday. The disclosure came as the Pentagon released a strategy for military operati...

• US Admiral ties Pakistan to killing of journalist

  Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Thursday that he believed that the government of Pakistan had "sanctioned" the killing of a Pakistani journalist who had written scathing reports about the infiltration of Islamic militants into the country's security services.Admiral Mullen, who is due to retire at the end of September,...

• Obama met commando dog used in Osama raid

  Marines were on a foot patrol last fall in the Taliban stronghold of Marja, Afghanistan, when they shot and killed a lethal threat: a local dog that made the mistake of attacking the Marines' Labrador retriever.Captain Manuel Zepeda, the commander of Company F, Second Battalion, Sixth Marines, was unapologetic. If the Lab on the patrol had been hur...

• Osama's secret life in a diminished, dark world

  The world's most wanted terrorist lived his last five years imprisoned behind the barbed wire and high walls of his home in Abbottabad, Pakistan, his days consumed by dark arts and domesticity. American officials believe that Osama bin Laden spent many hours on the computer, relying on couriers to bring him thumb drives packed with information from...

• Videos seized from Osama bin Laden's hide-out released

  The Obama administration on Saturday released five videos recovered from Osama bin Laden's hide-out in Abbottabad, Pakistan, that an intelligence official said showed the Qaeda founder threatening the United States, condemning capitalism and at some points flubbing his lines and missing a cue. In the most candid scenes, Bin Laden can be seen watchi...

• Osama raid: Why were there mistakes in account?

  On Monday, the Obama administration said that Osama bin Laden had been killed after a firefight with Navy Seal commandos, and that he had used his wife as a human shield. On Tuesday, the administration said that bin Laden was not armed at all, and that his wife had not been a shield, but had rushed her husband's assaulter and was shot in the leg.On...

• The men who went to Osama's bedroom, shot him

  There were 79 people on the assault team that killed Osama bin Laden, but in the end, the success of the mission turned on some two dozen men who landed inside the Qaeda leader's compound, made their way to his bedroom and shot him at close range -- all while knowing that the president of the United States was keeping watch from Washington. (Read: ...

• 'Good day for America', says Obama

  Calling it a "good day for America," President Obama said on Monday that the death of Osama bin Laden had made the world "a better place," as new details emerged about the overnight raid and firefight in Pakistan that killed him. (Watch: Obama on Osama's death)"The world is safer," Mr. Obama said as he appeared at a White House ceremony bestowing ...