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Welcome to the Monday Morning News Kick Off post. Yes, it is still raining and it seems like it will continue for a while now. So, what better way to get our minds of the weather than to focus on the breaking news stories that impact what we do? For today’s post, we cover a number of different items that will surely motivate and enlighten. From Obama urging for international support of protests in Iran to a Justice Department attorney using The Daily Show as an example for not being transparent, we got it all. Grab that extra cup of coffee. Scroll down and be prepared for a productive and prosperous work week.

Obama Urges International Support for Iran Protesters
Yesterday, President Obama called for the international community to stand behind Iranian protesters angry at the outcome of that nation’s disputed election. Here’s what he had to say: “We respect Iran’s sovereignty, but we also are witnessing peaceful demonstrations, people expressing themselves, and I stand for that universal principle that people should have a voice in their own lives and their own destiny.” To see more photos of protesters in the U.S., click here.

Judge to Review Cheney interview in CIA Leak; No Fodder for The Daily Show
It’s amazing the power that The Daily Show wields. So much power that a Justice Department attorney made the case that we should not disclose vice presidential information — like an FBI interview with Dick Cheney regarding the Valerie Plame case — for fear of being ridiculed on The Daily Show. This is no joke. Here’s what Jeffrey Smith, attorney at The Justice Department had to say: “If we become a fact-finder for political enemies, they aren’t going to cooperate. I don’t want a future vice president to say, `I’m not going to cooperate with you because I don’t want to be fodder for ‘The Daily Show.’” Read more here.

Delay of C.I.A. Interrogation Report
You all may have seen the news last week about the Obama administration is delaying by a week its release of an internal 150-page CIA report on the agency’s Bush-era secret detention and interrogation program. The word is that the report will be issued this Friday. We will certainly be waiting for it to come out and will post it as soon as it becomes public.

DigitalGlobe Wins NGA Contract to Enable a “Rapid Delivery of Online Geospatial-Intelligence” (RDOG)
Last week, DigitalGlobe announced that the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) has awarded DigitalGlobe a contract to enable a “Rapid Delivery of Online Geospatial-Intelligence” (RDOG). DigitalGlobe is providing NGA with unclassified imagery-derived products and services in support of NGA’s mission to develop imagery and map-based intelligence solutions for U.S. national defense, homeland security and safety of navigation. Read the entire press release here.

House Bill Expands Oversight Of NSA
Last week, the House intelligence committee approved measures that would strengthen oversight of the National Security Agency (NSA) and the overall intelligence community. The measure also included making the jobs of NSA director and general counsel subject to Senate confirmation, as well as establish independent inspectors general at the NSA and at the ODNI who could not be fired by the heads of those agencies. Perhaps the story about the DNI firing the inspector general after he issued a report saying this about the ODNI: “bureaucratic bloat, financial mismanagement and a failure to end the turf battles among America’s spy agencies”?

Happy Monday!

Tags: GEOINT, National Security Agency, NSA, ODNI, Oversight of the NSA, President Obama, Protests in Iran, The Daily Show, Valerie Plame, Vice President Cheney