OVERNIGHT DEFENSE: Military commander to testify on Benghazi

by Jeremy Herb and Carlo Muñoz - 07/29/13 9:59 PM ET

GOP lawmakers have been frustrated at the difficulty of
tracking down the Marine colonel. They argue he has a unique perspective, given
their concerns that the military wasn’t prepared to quickly respond to the last
year’s terrorist attack on the U.S. diplomatic annex in Benghazi that left four
dead, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens.

{mosads}“Col. Bristol has experience that could be valuable in
deepening our understanding of the events of that day,” a committee source told
The Hill. “Of particular interest to the committee is what our posture was in
the weeks and months that proceeded the attack.”

A spokeswoman for Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), who has also
been seeking Bristol’s testimony, did not respond to a request for comment.

Judgment day for
Manning: Former Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning will learn his
fate on Tuesday when a military judge will determine whether the 25-year-old
will spend the rest of his life in a military prison for leaking classified
information.

Military prosecutors and Manning’s defense team delivered
closing arguments last Thursday, with the two sides portraying the ex-Army
Private as either a traitor or a hero for free speech.

Army Judge Col. Denise Lind, who is presiding over the case
at Fort Meade, Md., is expected to issue her verdict on Tuesday.

Manning is facing 22 federal charges of treason and
espionage after handing thousands of classified Pentagon and State Department
documents to the website WikiLeaks in 2010.

The case has become a touchstone for civil rights activists,
who claim Manning is being unfairly persecuted by the Obama administration for
disclosing the information.

Since being taken into military custody three years ago,
Manning has admitted to providing the classified information to WikiLeaks in an
attempt to spark public debate on U.S. actions in Iraq and around the world.

But by publicly leaking that information to Wikileaks, the
Pentagon argues he willfully provided sensitive and classified data to known
terror groups, like al Qaeda and the Taliban.

“This is a case about a soldier who systematically harvested
hundreds of thousands of classified documents and dumped them onto the
Internet, into the hands of the enemy,” Army prosecutor Capt. Joe Morrow
said during his opening statement.

Senate Appropriations
subpanel marks up Defense bill: The last of the four annual Defense bills
will begin working its way through the markup process on Tuesday, with the
Senate Defense Appropriations subcommittee.

The Senate’s Defense spending bill will then be marked up
before the full Appropriations Committee on Thursday, before Congress breaks
for its month-long August recess.

The Senate’s Pentagon spending bill, which typically is the
last of the four Defense bills to move, then faces an uncertain future amid a
budget fight between House Republicans and Senate Democrats.

The House passed its Defense Appropriations bill last week,
after some dramatics over an amendment curbing the NSA’s surveillance
activities. The House bill is expected to be funded at roughly the same topline as the
Senate’s bill.

But the two chambers have a major dispute over the overall
discretionary topline budget, as the House cut other agencies’ budgets in order
to keep Defense spending at current levels while getting under the
sequestration cap.

The Senate also has yet to bring the Defense authorization
bill to the floor, though it could be considered as early as September.

FISA court reforms
past due, lawmaker says: One House lawmaker says it
is time for the White House to change the way it appoints judges to the
federal court that monitors intelligence programs.

“There is a lot of momentum behind reforms to the [Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act] court that would provide for different methods
of appointing the judges to the court,” House Intelligence Committee
member Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said Monday.

The approach would have the White House nominate FISA court
judges and have those nominees be subject to the Senate confirmation process,
Schiff said in an interview with MSNBC.

Last week’s close House vote to curb the NSA’s surveillance
activities has given privacy advocates in Congress new
momentum to try to curtail the agency’s power.

The FISA legislation established the court as the final
legal authority for U.S. intelligence agencies to conduct operations on
American soil.

All 11 federal judges who sit on the FISA court
were appointed by Chief Justice John Roberts and were named to the court
without any measure of congressional oversight.

That said, Schiff’s proposal would allow Congress more
insight into the nominees’ views on privacy and civil liberties rights under
the Fourth Amendment versus national security priorities.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) is reportedly floating a
process in which the chief justice for each federal appeals court picks a judge
to sit on the FISA court.