The Navy is trying to build a next-generation super-drone that it can launch from an aircraft carrier and refuel in mid-air.

In the first quarter of 2015, the US Navy will pick a winner from among the four defense contractors asked to design a version of the aircraft.

According to a rundown of Navy programs, four to eight units of the Unmanned Carrier-Launched Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) will be brought into participating carrier air wings, "enabling a single carrier to conduct '24/7' [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance], targeting, strike, and bomb damage assessment operations."

Unmanned aircraft come with significant advantages over their piloted relatives. Drones don't suffer from pilot fatigue, making fuel their only flight limitation. And Northrop Grumman is looking to solve that with in-flight refueling capabilities for its candidate, the X-47B.

The contractor ran successful trials  of the X-47B last August and September, using a manned Learjet 25B on autopilot as a stand-in which was fueled in flight by a Boeing 707. The trial was a proof of concept, but mid-air refueling tests involving an actual X-47B may come as early as next year. Two units of the prototype — called Salty Dog 501 and Salty Dog 502 — are already in use in another Navy program, and one of them is equipped with a mid-air refueling capability.

Separately, DARPA, the Pentagon's technological research arm, has even tested flights between two drones flying close enough to allow for refueling.

UCLASS will likely be able to leave its carrier for more time, and cover greater distances than manned alternatives. In a 2008 report that strongly recommends carrier-based drone development, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments states that "with aerial refueling, a [combat drone] would be able to stay airborne for 50 to 100 hours — five to ten times longer than a manned aircraft."

Drones might also make safer landings. Landing a plane on an aircraft carrier is routinized but still incredibly dangerous, with Sam LaGrone noting in Popular Science that "combat losses are tiny compared to the number lost in just attempting to take off and land on a carrier."

It might be safer to entrust more and more of naval aviation to robots, especially for missions that are less reliant on the human element. The X-47B achieved its first carrier landing last year, and its first takeoff and landing in "rapid succession" in August.

The goal is to make the X-47B truly unmanned, with commands given through simple mouse clicks rather than the joystick used to control much smaller, land-based drones.     

Drones also call for way fewer manhours of training, which allows the Navy to conserve its resources. According to War on the Rocks, "fewer flying hours equates to direct savings in fuel and maintenance costs, but also fewer aircraft needed for training, reducing procurement costs."

Despite these advantages, the UCLASS probably won't serve an active combat role. Some Pentagon and Navy officials want the drone limited to an intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) function as opposed to using it for strikes in hostile airspace.

"The challenges of developing a trio of high dollar warplanes at once [the UCLASS, the F-35, and the F/A-XX] and the latent cultural resistance to unmanned strike aircraft in naval aviation circles made an ISR centric UCLASS" easier to swallow for the Navy, according to sources who spoke with the US Naval Institute.

SEE ALSO: Here are the X-Planes, the most ambitious and secretive flying machines ever made

Join the conversation about this story »

During the past year, the Islamic State has evolved to become one of the most heavily armed and well-funded terrorist organizations of all time.

It's also becoming so violent and brutal that terrorists within the Islamic State group are beginning to question the group's direction. The Islamic State's leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has been called "more violent, more virulent, more anti-American" than Osama bin Laden.

In an in-depth article for The Guardian, Martin Chulov chronicles how one senior official within the Islamic State is having doubts about the group's direction.

The official, identified under the nom de guerre Abu Ahmed, first got to know Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi a decade ago when the two were detained together in the US-run prison Camp Bucca in southern Iraq.

He talked to Chulov about how the Islamic State as it stands today was born in Camp Bucca, as jihadists held there used the prison as a planning ground for terrorism. Al-Baghdadi became a kind of leader within the prison and, once released, rose to power within the Islamic State.

Ahmed now worries about the direction al-Baghdadi is taking the group in.

Chulov writes: "With Iraq and Syria ablaze, and the Middle East apparently condemned to another generation of upheaval and bloodshed at the hands of his fellow ideologues, Abu Ahmed is having second thoughts. The brutality of ISIS is increasingly at odds with his own views, which have mellowed with age as he has come to believe that the teachings of the Koran can be interpreted and not read literally."

Ahmed told The Guardian that many young men were drawn to the organization in the early 2000s because they were angry about the US invasion of Iraq. But now, the Islamic State is stepping in to fill the vacuum created by the Syrian civil war, which isn't exactly true to the group's origins.

"The biggest mistake I made is to join them," Ahmed said.

He continued: "It’s not that I don’t believe in Jihad. I do... But what options do I have? If I leave, I am dead."

Ahmed is still an active member of the Islamic State. He said he thinks leaving is too risky.

"[The Islamic State] got bigger than any of us," Ahmed said of Bucca alumni who are now involved with the terrorist organization. "This can’t be stopped now. This is out of the control of any man. Not Baghdadi, or anyone else in his circle."

NOW WATCH: This Drone Footage Of Desolate Detroit Looks Like Something From 'The Walking Dead'

SEE ALSO: ISIS Commander Reveals How The 'Caliph' Radicalized Under American Detention In Iraq

Join the conversation about this story »

On Dec. 8, after a 13 year-long military operation, the US and NATO ceremonially ended their combat mission in Afghanistan. 

Operation Enduring Freedom had the dual objective of hitting back at al Qaeda and their Taliban hosts after the 9/11 attacks and rebuilding Afghanistan into a functioning state. Today, the Taliban is in the middle of a resurgence with the Afghan military taking unsustainable losses as they assume more of the country's security burden. 

It was against this backdrop that photographer Robert L. Cunningham returned to Afghanistan in order to capture the end of combat and the sense of the unknown that is now permeating both the Afghan and US military about what happens next. 

Cunningham is one of a handful of people who have ever taken a Leica Monochrom, a black-and-white only digital camera, into a war zone. The majority of the following images are taken with the Monochrom, although not all of them.

Serving in Afghanistan was often exhausting, requiring soldiers to partake in grueling 12-hour-long patrols.

The threat of a Taliban attack always loomed. Vehicles destroyed in past Taliban operations are stacked at a police headquarters in a reminder of the war's constant dangers.

The country's tenuous situation has not been lost on Afghan officials. Here, the governor of Khost Province meets with Afghan military advisors to discuss security operations after coalition troops leave.

The Middle East has been racked by turmoil for much of the past decade, and its militaries are constantly thrown into the region's often-violent chaos.

A mixture of transnational threats like ISIS and domestic insurgencies from local militant groups, along with larger regional rivalries, all force Middle Eastern countries to develop their armed forces. 

They aren't always successful: Iraq's military folded as soon as ISIS began to blitz across the country last summer, despite its superior manpower and American-made weaponry.

To make sense of the fire power of the Middle East's countries, we have turned to the Global Firepower Index, a ranking of 106 nations based on more than 50 factors including overall military budget, available manpower, and the amount of equipment each country has in its respective arsenal, as well as access to natural resources.

The index is by no means the definitive end-all analysis and focuses exclusively on quantity. The index also does not factor in advantages like advanced weapons systems or nuclear stockpiles. Still, the index gives a good approximation of a country's basic military readiness. 

We've created a chart to compare 15 of the militaries in the Middle East according to the most recent information from the Global Firepower Index. The ranking was released in April (before ISIS's blitz through Iraq and the flare-up between Israel and Hamas) and involves a complex set of data that is subject to ongoing adjustments and corrections.

SEE ALSO: The most powerful militaries in the Middle East [RANKED]

Join the conversation about this story »

The US is ending its 13-year-old combat operation in Afghanistan later this month.

But thirty-five years ago today, a small group of key players within the Soviet Union decided to commit the empire to military involvement in the country.

On Dec. 12, 1979, a resolution was presented to the Politburo and ratified with a majority of the members' signatures ordering the Soviet military into Afghanistan.

Critically, the Premier of the Soviet Union Alexei Kosygin, who had been against a ground incursion, was absent from the meeting. And only five top officials had even discussed the resolution at all. But from that moment forward, the USSR was on the path to war — and to its own eventual ruin.

The decision was made in the absence of the full Politburo, according to Georgy Korniyenko, a Soviet diplomat who opposed the war and wrote a book (download link) on the events leading up to it.

As it happened, it was the initiative of a small and hawkish coterie of Soviet statesmen that had first gotten the ball rolling on a disastrous intervention, one that paved the way for the Union's fall.

On Dec. 10, 1979, Soviet Defense Minister Dmitry Ustinov had already ordered "preparations for deployment of one division of paratroopers and of five divisions of military-transport aviation," according to George Washington University's National Security Archive, which published a series of Soviet documents related to the invasion in 2001.

Ustinov also decided "to step up the readiness of two motorized rifle divisions in the Turkestan Military District, and to increase the staff of a pontoon regiment to full staff without setting it any concrete tasks."

The inevitably doomed Soviet effort to prop the country's communist government began in the last week of 1979, as troops invaded the central Asian country. They would leave in 1989, after a war which killed thousands of Soviet soldiers and more than a million Afghans.

The Beginning Of A Quagmire

Moscow's motives for opening what would become a failed and nearly decade-long campaign are best understood in the larger context of the late Cold War.

The invasion was the Soviets' heavy-handed response to a domestic uprising that threatened to overthrow the country's young communist regime. The People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (or PDPA) had only muscled its way into power in April 1978 after a brief coup. 

Moreover, the Soviets feared that Afghanistan, even in its higher echelons, was beginning to tilt away from Soviet influence in favor of a rapprochement with the United States, as the National Security Archive documents show.

Afghan Prime Minister Hafizullah Amin, who deposed the country's president in a putsch that September, "held a series of confidential meetings with the American charge d'affaires in Kabul," according to a cable written by top Soviet figures.

In a letter to Communist Party General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev — whose doctrine staked out the Soviet prerogative for military intervention to preserve neighboring communist regimes — his eventual successor Yuri Andropov wrote that "after the coup and the murder of [president Nur Muhammad] Taraki in September of this year, the situation in Afghanistan began to undertake an undesirable turn for us."

"All of us agree," one official said in a conversation with party heavyweights like Yuri Andropov and Mikhail Gorbachev, "we must not surrender Afghanistan." 

Military involvement wasn't always on the table. The Soviet Union started by sending shipments of wheat, bread, and of course weapons to Afghanistan's fragile communist regime throughout the year, in addition to the gas it sold to the country.

What worried the Soviet Union about the country — in addition to its potentially growing western sympathies — was the unrest in Herat earlier that year. In March 1979, a popular uprising alongside mutineering Afghan soldiers led to the execution of Soviet military advisers.

Even then, Afghanistan's communist rulers appealed for a Soviet intervention. Moscow offered assurances. Speaking with Afghan president Nur Muhammad Taraki just after the uprising, a Soviet official advised a more open form of government to strengthen the communist state's legitimacy.

"We think it important that within your country you should work to widen the social support of your regime, draw people over to your side, insure that nothing will alienate the people from the government," one cable stated.

The USSR also seemed aware of its own lack of information about the facts on the ground in Afghanistan. "The relationship between the supporters of the government and the insurgents is still very unclear," one cable reads,labeling as "insurgent" any Afghan citizen who resisted the government.

Elsewhere Moscow shows a concern for sending weapons only "if we are convinced they will not fall into the hands of the insurgents."

After the decision to invade had already been taken, Defense Minister Dmitriy Ustinov had to steamroll past the protests of his chief of general staff, who called the decision to send between 75 and 80 thousand troops "reckless."

At a broader meeting, the chief warned that Afghans had "never tolerated foreigners on their soil."

A Soviet Strategic Disaster

Perhaps the most stunning revelation in the National Security Archive documents is how quickly the Soviet command realized that the conflict was a dead end.

"The realization that there could be no military solution to the conflict in Afghanistan came to the Soviet military leadership very early on," the National Security Archive writes in its introduction to the material. The issue of troop withdrawal and the search for a political solution was discussed as early as 1980. But no real steps in that direction were taken, and the Soviets continued to fight in Afghanistan "without a clearly defined objective."

Soviet troops wallowed in the Afghan quagmire for just over nine years; the cables even show Soviet decision-makers comparing the campaign to that of the US in Vietnam. The observation was made on both sides of the Iron Curtain: Even before the invasion, a US defense official wondered aloud whether it was worth "sucking the Soviets into a Vietnamese quagmire." Despite the existence of such a damning case study, Afghanistan became one of the last places where the Cold War went hot.

One US concern was that Afghanistan might serve as first grounds for the Soviet Union's growing regional ambitions. In his memoirs, then National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote that the USSR was "transforming that neutral buffer [Afghanistan] into an offensive wedge, bringing the Russians so much closer to their historic target of the Indian Ocean."

From there, the reasoning went, it might challenge the US's own strategic tilt toward the Gulf. The US had sent American warships to the Persian Gulf in the fall of 1979, and the Iranian hostage crisis, which would remain in the forefront of American public discourse until its resolution in 1981, had begun just weeks before the Soviet invasion.

The US took advantage of the conflict to drain its great rival of military resources and money, a campaign that got the Hollywood treatment in 2007's Charlie Wilson's War.

One CIA estimate was that the expense of $200 million by 1983 had bled the Soviet Union of a much greater sum: $12 billion. Thirty-five years ago, one of the last empires of the 20th century set itself on the path to ruin.

SEE ALSO: The 35 most powerful militaries in the world

Join the conversation about this story »

The NSA's phone-tapping of German chancellor Angela Merkel, the person in charge of Europe's largest economy and the most powerful woman in the world, was a crisis for two close allies when it was reported in October of 2013.

But the story, one of the most consequential items to come from Edward Snowden's leaked of about 200,000 government, now appears to rest on remarkably shaky ground.

Germany's top public prosecutor says Berlin has hasn't found any evidence proving there ever was a tap on Merkel. 

"There is no proof at the moment which could lead to charges that Chancellor Merkel's phone connection data was collected or her calls tapped," prosecutor Harald Range said, according to Reuters.

Furthermore, he noted that the "the document presented in public as proof of an actual tapping of the mobile phone is not an authentic surveillance order by the NSA. It does not come from the NSA database."

Der Spiegel based its October 2013 story on research by reporters "in Berlin and Washington, talks with intelligence officials and the evaluation of internal documents of the US' National Security Agency and other information, most of which comes from the archive of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden."

The report states that the tapping allegations was "suggested by a document that apparently comes from an NSA database in which the agency records its targets. This document, which SPIEGEL has seen, is what set the cellphone scandal in motion."

The paper stands by the Merkel phone story, saying that their reporters had access to information from an NSA database and confirmed that the NSA was tapping Merkel's unencrypted phone. Der Spiegel acknowledges that the report was based on a copy of an NSA document (as opposed to an original from a database).

Its complicated, but it seems that Spiegel created an NSA "intercept" based on a description of such a document. http://t.co/W0VsckN8fx

— Jeffrey Lewis (@ArmsControlWonk) December 12, 2014

The situation is astonishing considering the stir that the Merkel phone tap caused at the time it was reported and its continuing impact on US-German relations. 

"The German press has worked itself into a state of self-righteous hysteria; the German foreign minister is talking about severing alliances and suspending trade discussions," author and columnist Anne Applebaum wrote in November of 2013, calling the controversy "the worst crisis in German-American relations in decades." 

In a profile of Merkel in the New Yorker this month, George Packer chronicled the still-unfolding consequences of the NSA revelation. "With the German public the sense of betrayal was deep ... particularly because Obama, while promising that the eavesdropping had stopped, never publicly apologized," Packer wrote. He reported that Germany asked for a "no-spy agreement" with the US and was refused.

This past July, Germany expelled the CIA station chief in Berlin after a bureaucrat for Germany's intelligence service was caught passing documents to the Agency. The NSA uproar gave deeper public and political resonance to what would might have been an otherwise-minor incident. As Packer put it, "The spying scandals have undermined German public support for the NATO alliance just when it’s needed most in the standoff with Russia."

They've also badly eroded a longstanding sense of trust in the US, forcing US and German officials to "agree to create a framework for clearer rules about spying and intelligence sharing." Today, "barely half the German public now expresses a favorable view of the US — the lowest level in Europe, other than in perpetually hostile Greece."

Now it turns out the precipitating event for one of the major developments in post-war trans-Atlantic relations might never have actually happened, raising uncomfortable questions about journalists who are close to Snowden.

The lead writer on the story was Jacob Appelbaum, an encryption activist who has been called the "American WikiLeaks Hacker" and is a close friend of American journalist and Der Spiegel contributor Laura Poitras. Poitras, who received a set of documents from Snowden, brought in Appelbaum in to vet Snowden.

In December 2013, Appelbaum and Poitras published a report with detailed information about the NSA's elite TAO hackers and published a catalog of tools, created by TAO's technical expert division (known as ANT), used to hack into computers. In December 2012, Snowden threw a Crypto Party with Appelbaum's former colleague at the Tor project, Runa Sandvik.

Amanda Macias contributed to this report.

SEE ALSO: We Now Know A Lot More About Edward Snowden's Epic Heist — And It's Troubling

Join the conversation about this story »

For a country whose recent presidents all suffered at the hands of the military regime that ruled from 1964 to 1985, Brazil has been awfully slow to probe that dark chapter of its history. Dilma Rousseff, the incumbent, was tortured.

Her two immediate predecessors, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Fernando Henrique Cardoso, were respectively jailed and forced into exile. On December 10th, after nearly three years of sleuthing, the National Truth Commission presented its report into human-rights abuses committed from 1946 to 1988, with special attention to the dictatorship years. "Brazil deserves the truth," said Ms Rousseff, who cried upon receiving the report.

The 4,400-page publication stands out among similar efforts in other countries. It names 377 individuals as responsible for 434 political murders and disappearances. They include all eight military presidents and the top brass, as well as minions who carried out their orders. Their crimes were deliberate acts of policy, not occasional excesses, the report makes clear.

Most culprits are either dead or in their dotage. Under an amnesty law enacted in 1979 (to benefit exiled dissidents) few will face trial. The commission hopes its report will prompt a rethink of the amnesty, which falls foul of human-rights treaties. But for now, symbolism must suffice. While no substitute for justice, admits José Miguel Vivanco of Human Rights Watch, a New York-based lobby group, "it is a start".

The decision to name and shame is not unprecedented: El Salvador did so in 1993. In Brazil's case it is easier, because the wait has been so long. Truth commissions are usually established soon after regimes' (often disorderly) collapse. Truth, the thinking goes, is the first step toward reconciliation. In Brazil, where it comes nearly 20 years since the first reparations were awarded to victims' families, it is one of the last.

Oscar Vieira of FGV Law School in São Paulo attributes this to Brazil's penchant for "slow and steady" transitions. Even the army coup was a negotiated affair, agreed among political, military and business elites to head off what they saw as a drift toward socialism. Brazil's restored democracy eschewed purges; not until 1999 did a civilian become defence minister. Only after the old guard bowed out could unencumbered truth-seeking commence.

Two-thirds of today's Brazilians had not been born when military repression peaked in the 1970s. Many who were alive then recall the period's economic boom rather than the generals' crimes. These were modest beside the 2,000-3,000 murders and disappearances in Chile and 10,000-30,000 in Argentina. Brazil's police killed 2,212 people last year alone. The armed forces are popular.

Perhaps for these reasons, they did not co-operate with the truth commission. It could summon soldiers who had served the regime as junior officers, but could not compel them to speak. Most stayed silent, laments Pedro Dallari, its chairman. They also claimed that many relevant documents had been destroyed.

Unlike their Chilean and Argentine counterparts, or indeed the Brazilian state, the generals refuse to acknowledge their predecessors' sins, let alone apologise--either from a misplaced esprit de corps or a belief that the crimes were justified to defend the country against a red threat. In letters to the defence minister in August the three services chiefs did not deny past misdeeds. But they stopped short of admitting guilt. Unless they do, no amount of truth will ensure complete reconciliation.

Click here to subscribe to The Economist.

Join the conversation about this story »

When America dropped its two atom bombs, Little Boy and Fat Man, over Japan in August 1945, it launched the world into a devastating new era of warfare.

Nearly 70 years later, humanity is still trying to contain the fallout. But in its zeal to check nuclear proliferation, America--along with Israel--opened up yet another theatre of war: cyberspace.

In 2007 a computer worm called Stuxnet was detected for the first time by virus-scanning software, although signs of it may have existed unnoticed before that.

At least three more versions followed, seeking to wreak havoc upon Iran's uranium-enrichment facility at Natanz. Stuxnet made itself busy. It turned valves on and off and meddled with the centrifuges, wasting uranium and damaging equipment. It succeeded in slowing Iran's uranium enrichment, and by extension its purported nuclear-weapons programmes, making Stuxnet the first documented case of cyber-warfare intended to cause physical damage.

Where Stuxnet fell short was in remaining hidden, thanks to a series of "flubs that should never have occurred", writes Kim Zetter in "Countdown to Zero Day", an authoritative account of Stuxnet's spread and discovery. In June 2010 a tiny antivirus firm in Belarus stumbled upon Stuxnet while investigating a malfunctioning machine in Iran.

The worm contained a "zero-day exploit"--a previously undiscovered software bug--that brought it to attention. An unprecedented five "zero-day exploits" were eventually found in the code. Researchers also discovered that Stuxnet had used a stolen digital certificate, the foundation of the internet's web of trust, bringing the worm further renown.

Such attention-grabbing tactics were the first mistake. The second was failing to anticipate the willingness of security experts to make up for the shortcomings of Iranian investigators. Researchers at Symantec, and Kaspersky, an American and a Russian computer-security company, tore apart Stuxnet and its siblings for more than two years in a bid to reveal the full range of their abilities.

Had Ms Zetter, a reporter at Wired, stopped at simply recounting this saga, "Countdown to Zero Day" would be an interesting record of an intriguing worm of little interest beyond security specialists. But the book deserves a wider audience for its sobering message about the vulnerability of the systems--train lines, water-treatment plants, electricity grids--that make modern life possible. These industrial control systems are increasingly hooked up to the internet, allowing remote access.

Passwords are seldom changed from the systems' defaults. Security updates are rare. Firewalls and network logs are inconsistent. Warnings are ignored. Little surprise, then, that researchers have been able to simulate shutting down energy grids, infiltrating water plants and destroying generators.

A 14-year-old in Poland derailed four trams in 2008. Another teenager took down communications at a Massachusetts airport. Utilities today encourage the use of internet-connected "smart meters" in homes. The attackers of tomorrow could very well use them to black out entire cities.

Despite the opportunity, the world has yet to see a sequel to Stuxnet. But "given the varied and extensive possibilities for conducting such attacks," Ms Zetter writes, "...it is only a matter of time until the lure of the digital assault becomes too irresistible for someone to pass up." Containing this new proliferation will be even harder. It takes money, raw materials and large facilities to develop nuclear weapons. A cyberwarrior needs only a computer and an internet connection to wreak havoc.

Click here to subscribe to The Economist

Join the conversation about this story »

The National Guard is the US military's reserve force, offering manpower, equipment, and expertise for missions abroad but also providing America’s first line of defense at home.

When there's a natural disaster or a threat to public safety that law enforcement alone can't handle, the Guard kicks into action. It is constantly preparing itself for new and emerging threats, be they nuclear, chemical, biological, or a natural disaster.

We recently watched the New Jersey National Guard’s 2nd Battalion, 113th Infantry participate in a drill to practice how they would respond to a possible nuclear or chemical emergency without warning and with no immediate explanation of what was happening. The snap exercise aimed to duplicate the conditions of an actual unfolding threat and showed how the Guard keeps itself prepared for even a worst-case scenario.

The National Guard team arrives early in the morning on a frigid November day. The drill is as much a test of endurance as a test of skills, with the team working out in the cold for eight hours or more.

Arm & Hammer Park, home of the minor league Trenton Thunder baseball team, was the site of the drill. The military chooses locations for tests like these by picking “high-value targets” that would be likely to be hit by an attack, like sporting venues and theaters.

The New Jersey team, and every other National Guard team, is tested every 18 months in high-pressure, high-stakes role plays like this one.

See the photos»

Join the conversation about this story »

According to Jack Daniel's Master Distiller Jeff Arnett, the US military buys the most of the brand's premium Single Barrel whiskey in the world.

The price tag for an entire barrel of this whiskey, approximately 250 bottles, swings from $9,000-$12,ooo since no two whiskey barrels have the same volume.

"Over the entire span of when the program has existed, the US military is the largest purchaser. It has been represented by base exchanges, individual units, as well as other on-base military entities like Officers’ Clubs," Arnett told Business Insider in an email.

Single Barrel whiskey was first sold in 1997 and was such a success that the distillery created the 'By The Barrel' program a year later, and ever since then the American military has been the top buyer.

During a tour of the distillery in Lynchburg, Tenn., our tour guide said it is believed that Navy SEAL Team 6 bought a barrel after the successful raid on Osama Bin Laden.

Although, we could not confirm, parent company Brown-Forman did share, "SEAL teams have purchased barrels before but we can't officially confirm Seal Team 6."

At the distillery, only 1 in 100 barrels makes the cut for the select 94-proof Single Barrel whiskey.

In an average 53-gallon barrel, there are approximately 250 bottles-worth of Jack Daniel's Single Barrel whiskey.

Here's how the 'by the barrel' program works.

A prospective whiskey barrel buyer is invited to tour the distillery in Lynchburg, Tennessee and meet with an expert Jack Daniel's Master Taster and sometimes the Master Distiller, Jeff Arnett. 

A buyer samples whiskey from 3 handpicked barrels along with the expert. After the tasting, a buyer selects a barrel and then later receives the empty barrel along with approximately 250 bottles. The bottles are individually numbered and personalized with a custom metal hang tag. The top of the barrel is also engraved before it is shipped to the buyer. 

And in the distillery's Single Barrel room, the buyer gets their name on a special plaque.

Those who buy more than one barrel are given a medallion on their tablet. MacDill Air Force Base's plaque reflects the purchase of 7 barrels of Jack Daniel's Single Barrel whiskey.

According to Arnett, Jack Daniel's derives all of its' color and most of the flavor from the handmade charred oak barrels.

Single Barrel whiskey sits on the highest level of the distillery's barrelhouses where temperatures can reach up to 120-degrees Fahrenheit, the fluctuations in temperature give this whiskey the most interaction with the barrel, and therefore a darker color and more robust flavor. 

The distillery's relationship with America's troops spans further with the creation of the Operation Ride Home program. Since 2011, approximately 1,200 service members have benefitted from free travel from their bases to homes in order to celebrate the holidays with their families.

"The men and women of our armed forces have been some of the best friends of Jack Daniel’s over the years, and Operation Ride Home is a continuation of our longstanding support of our nation’s military," Arnett told Business Insider.

SEE ALSO: Here's A Tour Of The Jack Daniels Distillery

Join the conversation about this story »

The historic drop in crude-oil prices is poised to give a clear boost to President Barack Obama both in the US and abroad.

"Even President Barack Obama likely would agree that 2014 has been a tough year for him—and he doubtless would welcome a sign that he will catch a break or two in 2015," Gerald Seib, the Washington bureau chief of The Wall Street Journal, wrote on Monday. "Well, here’s one: Low oil prices ... are shaping up as a win-win for the president."

Earlier on Monday, the price of both Brent and WTI crude hit a five-year low. Prices have fallen more than 30% since peaking in June, and the decline has accelerated since OPEC declined to cut production at its November meeting. Declining global demand and rising US production have led to a glut in supply this year.

Seib argued this price drop has both domestic and international benefits for the Obama administration. High gasoline prices, which result from high oil prices, are widely detested among American consumers. And many of the countries hurt by low oil prices could be on a who's-who list of US geopolitical foes.

"It's hard to imagine a single development that carries so many upsides and so few downsides. The domestic economic benefits are obvious," Seib wrote. "It just happens that the countries hurt most by the oil-price decline are on the current U.S. naughty list, from Iran and Syria to Russia and Venezuela. Meanwhile, many obvious economic and strategic beneficiaries—Jordan, Egypt, Israel and Japan among them—are on the nice list."

A senior administration official told the Journal the impact would be "very profound" in Russia, an oil exporter that has repeatedly clashed with the US over its recent annexation of Ukrainian territory.

"They may be heading into a recession," the official remarked, suggesting the Russian government may need to curtail its financial support for Ukrainian separatists. "There are going to have to be tradeoffs."

Seib said Obama would also see benefits in the Middle East, where the White House is hoping to negotiate a deal with Iran to rein in its nuclear program in exchange for ending economic sanctions. The jihadists of the Islamic State, or ISIS, also use oil sales to partially self-fund their military in Iraq and Syria.

"Iran’s predicament is similar and, from the American point of view, particularly well timed," Seib wrote. "The Obama administration has perhaps three months to pressure Iran into a long-term deal restricting its nuclear program. Only economic pressure has brought such a deal into view, and the pinch on Iranian oil revenues now will escalate the pressure at precisely the right time."

NOW WATCH — T. Boone Pickens' Strict Morning Routine Will Inspire You To Plan Your Days Better

Join the conversation about this story »

Putin has become shockingly effective at influencing European politics through a host of far-right parties. 

The following chart from the Center for Eurasian Strategic Intelligence (CESI) shows Russia's growing influence within six different European Union countries.

The parties, located in the UK, France, Germany, Greece, Bulgaria, and Hungary, are increasingly popular—and staunchly against giving more power to the EU. Each of the parties has also fostered a closer relationship with Russia, and has protested against sanctions on Moscow following its annexation of Ukraine. 

The six parties linked to Russia are the UK's UK Independence Party (UKIP), France's National Front, Germany's National Democratic Party, Hungary's Jobbik, Greece's Golden Dawn, and Bulgaria's Attack. 

Britain's UKIP party, which favors withdrawing from the EU and having stronger relations with Russia, received 29% of the votes in the most recent election. This was double what the party obtained in elections five years ago. 

Likewise, according to CESI, France's National Front won 25% of the votes in a national election. The party's head, Marine Le Pen, views Putin as a traditional ally and plans to form a coalition with other pro-Russian, far-right parties in the European Parliament. 

Jobbik (Hungary), the Golden Dawn (Greece), and Attack (Bulgaria) are also attracted to and possibly financed by Russia. All three parties oppose placing sanctions on Moscow for its annexation of Crimea, and have favorable views of Putin as a defender of traditional Christianity. 

Hungary, in particular, views Russia as an ally. Jobbik is the second-most-powerful political party in the country after the leading Fidesz party, which is also pro-Russian. Both parties oppose sanctions on Moscow and sought Russian help for building a nuclear power plant. 

The rise in European far-right parties is largely tied to Russian policies first developed during the Cold War. These policies, called "special war," attempt to conduct foreign policy through a combination of espionage and dark money rather than traditional warfare. Russia expert John Schindler explains that while the Soviet Union backed communist-leaning parties to influence politics, Russia is now financing far-right parties in an attempt to steer European politics. 

The preferred outcome for Russia would be the dissolution of the EU and the end of a counterweight to Russian power. 

"Resulting from the election of May 25, 20% of the European Parliament members are representatives of parties supporting dissolution of the EU," a CESI report states. "Their core is made of right-wing politicians."

SEE ALSO: Putin waged a 'special war' long before Crimea

Join the conversation about this story »

Across the globe, there are small pockets of land where citizens have chosen to "break away" from their mother countries and forge new communities, often to escape war or turmoil.

While many of these countries begin with noble intentions, they often end up in political limbo, unable to gain recognition as legitimate countries from the global community.

Since 2005, photographer Narayan Mahon has set out to document these unrecognized states, photographing five would-be nations that are attempting to separate themselves from such war-torn countries as Georgia, Azerbaijan, Cyprus, and Somalia. 

Mahon tells the New York Times that, while he expected these breakaway nations to be filled with pride, patriotism, and determination, he actually found that many nations were still at the whim of their former homes, begging for recognition while being used as pawns in a larger, geopolitical game.

“It all just comes down to nationalism, and chauvinism, and the uglier parts of humanity,” he says. “That’s kind of sad, actually.”

Mahon's series, entitled "Lands in Limbo," show that sadness and disillusion front and center.

One of the first areas Mahon visited was Abkhazia, a separatist region that broke away from Georgia during the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. It has since declared independence, built a national military, and created the usual trappings of a sovereign government.

Mahon quickly found, however, that no country in the world recognizes Abkhazia as a sovereign country, instead regarding it as part of Georgia.

In the violence that ensued when Abkhazia attempted to break away, tens of thousands were killed and several hundred thousand Georgian, Armenian, and Megrelian citizens were forced to leave the area. Only a few families still live in these apartment buildings, which are located in what was once a regional industrial center.

A GOVERNMENT television channel dubbed Vladimir Putin's latest state of the nation address "A Message from Above". Dmitry Kiselev, Mr Putin's chief propagandist, even likened it to speeches by Roosevelt, Churchill and De Gaulle.

Mr Putin's sermon had both messianic and defensive overtones. He called Crimea a sacred place, rather like the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

"It was in Crimea, in the ancient city of Chersonesus or Korsun, that Grand Prince Vladimir was baptised before bringing Christianity to Russia ... this allows us to say that Crimea and Sevastopol have invaluable civilisational and even sacred importance for Russia. And this is how we will think of it--from now and forever."

Andrei Kuraev, a Russian Orthodox deacon, noted in his blog that, although Mr Putin's statement had little basis in religion, it resembled Mussolini's 1930s assertion that "Ethiopia, from now and forever, belongs to Italy which has become what it was during the time of Julius Caesar."

In fact, remarkably few Russians are even aware of Vladimir's baptism in Crimea. For them the peninsula is linked to hedonism rather than spirituality. It was a place for holidays, summer romances, state sanatoriums and dachas. It is also at the heart of Russia's post-imperial nostalgia, and it was to this that Mr Putin was appealing.

Soviet ideology proclaimed a Utopian future; modern Russian ideology focuses on the past. But the key ingredient of confrontation with America remains the same. In his speech Mr Putin cast it as part of an existential struggle for Russia's survival as a sovereign state, likening the West to Hitler who "set out to destroy Russia and push us back beyond the Urals".

Western sanctions, Mr Putin insisted, were a result not of his meddling in Ukraine, but of America's desire to weaken Russia: "If none of that [ie, Ukraine] had ever happened, they would have come up with some other excuse to try to contain Russia's growing capabilities."

He blamed the West for supporting Chechen insurgents who launched an attack on Grozny on the eve of his speech. Russia, in this narrative, is not an aggressor but a victim and defender of its interests and values against America, which staged a coup in Ukraine in hopes of placing missile defences there. Had Russia not moved into Crimea, it would have become a military base for America.

The main reason why people believe propaganda is because it resonates with their own feelings. As Mikhail Yampolsky, a cultural historian, argues, the dominant feeling, exploited and fuelled by the Kremlin, is of resentment: a sense of jealousy and hostility. People who are deprived of any say in their own fate turn their resentment on an imagined enemy, be it Ukrainian "fascists" or American imperialists.

Yet, just as with Soviet propaganda, which blamed outside enemies for the country's failures, resentment is vulnerable to reality. When television pictures contradict people's personal experience, they stop working. "You can't really 'sell' anything to people, that they don't wish to buy," says one television boss. As the ratings show, Russians are tiring of news about Western aggression. "People now want to watch melodramas and fairy tales," says the TV boss.

What most Russians really need is news about the unfolding economic crisis that Mr Putin's message from above largely ignored. The continuing fall in the rouble, eroding living standards and a sharp rise in food prices are worrying people far more than the fate of separatists in Ukraine. Now that sanctions are starting to bite, enthusiasm for war and isolation is diminishing fast. "Cognitive consonance between propaganda and people's self-feel does not withstand external shocks," says Mikhail Dmitriev, head of New Economic Growth, a think-tank.

Over the past nine months opinion polls find that support for the presence of Russian troops in Ukraine have fallen from 74% to 23%. Many who dismissed Western sanctions as irrelevant now fret over Russia's isolation.

"The sanctions are working," says Lev Gudkov, head of the Levada Centre, an independent pollster. The consumers who have emerged in Russia's big cities in the past decade are "not prepared to tighten their belts," he adds. This does not mean that such people are prepared to sacrifice their consumption for civic freedoms, either.

Despite growing anxiety about living standards, Mr Putin's popularity rating remains at record levels. Yet, as the street protests in 2011 showed, this could change quickly. Polls show that the overall view of the state as corrupt and uninterested in the people remains as strong as ever. Mr Putin is aware of the dangers. To sustain his position, he needs the West to start lifting sanctions so as to induce more economic growth in Russia, but he also has to keep up the appearance of an enemy both within and outside.

To achieve this Mr Putin might yet surrender the east of Ukraine while keeping Crimea. Novorossiya, an historic term that Mr Putin invoked to justify Russia's intervention in south-east Ukraine, was notably absent from his state of the nation speech. He is also hoping that he can entice businesses to invest more in Russia without any political liberalisation.

Less than a week after his speech, in which Mr Putin proclaimed "freedom" as a necessary condition for the country's growth, Russian civil institutions came under renewed pressure. The Moscow School of Civic Education, one of Russia's oldest NGOs, which campaigns for the rule of law, was added to the list of foreign agents. Memorial, a noted human-rights group, is under threat. And Andrei Sakharov's centre is being harassed. Yet while this will further undermine civil society, it is unlikely to compensate most Russians for their declining incomes.

So far, it seems, Mr Putin's preferred method of dealing with Russia's crisis is to talk the country out of it. His message from above was meant to persuade the people and the elite that nothing terrible is happening and that Russia can weather both the West's sanctions and falling oil prices.

Yet Mr Putin looked tired and anxious, betraying a lack of confidence. It was a sharp contrast with his question and answer session of four year ago, when a young Russian from Tyumen, an oil town in Siberia, asked him: "Is it true you are blessed with luck?""Yes," Mr Putin answered confidently at the time.

Click here to subscribe to The Economist

Join the conversation about this story »

In the wake of the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary two years ago, President Obama signed an executive order to review the availability of innovative gun safety technologies.

The shorthand for that is "smart guns," weapons that — through one technical solution or another — only fire when in the hands of their owner.

Significant hurdles have been raised by Second Amendment absolutists and the NRA. Though the technology is out there and available in parts of Europe, smart guns have yet to be consistently available in the United States.

Despite the market's challenges, investing in progress isn't a worthless pursuit. Proving the reliability of these new weapons — a major concern for averse consumers — would help the smart gun's case.

Last year, a report by the National Institute of Justice identified 13 groups (universities, research organizations, and private gun manufacturers) working on solutions.

The Smart Tech Foundation isn't one of them, but it does offer a $1 million prize to stoke innovation. Some 200 people from 35 countries have applied, the youngest just 13 years old.

"We certainly think that the marriage of software technology with firearms is inevitable," Jim Pitkow, a board member the Foundation, told Business Insider. Pitkow was inspired to cofound the foundation after having met some of the Sandy Hook victims' families, and by the apparent lack of capital in the sector.

Bringing new solutions to market may be years away, and Pitkow concedes that domestic resistance has been stiff. But "technology finds its own way," he said. "It'll be applied to the problems where it's able and ready to be applied."

One of the foundation's fund recipients is TriggerSmart, a company based in Ireland. The company won a grant, the sum of which will be announced early next year.

Its founder, Robert McNamara, started the business believing that the biometric approach — like the fingerprint activation technology that has also attracted support from the Smart Tech Foundation — wasn't the best route.

"I wondered why biometrics had failed to make it to market," McNamara said. "And the answer seemed fairly obvious, that it was speed and reliability. Biometrics take a while to analyze and people don't have that five seconds or ten seconds in a situation where they need to use the weapon."

Instead, TriggerSmart uses RFID (or radio frequency identification) technology. The gun doesn't fire unless it's coupled with a device that holds the right chip.

German company Armatix has also created a pistol that leverages RFID, which in its case is paired with a watch worn by the user.

McNamara and others think smart guns could eventually be paired with technology creating "safe zones" around schools or airports, "so that trigger-smart enabled guns coming into that zone could be remotely disabled at point of entry," McNamara said. "We call that feature wide area control."

Conversely, some guns could be authorized only in certain areas. In a military setting, this might reduce the chance of an accident outside a shooting range — or the damage done when a rogue shooter picks up a weapon at the armory.

But for safe zones around schools to be worth the investment, they'd have to exist in a society where most guns are safe ones. "I think there's a gun for every man woman and child in America," said McNamara, whose native Ireland, he added, only has about two thousand licensed owners and an unarmed police force.

He's nearly correct. There are close to 90 guns per 100 Americans — the highest rate of any country — and they go off no matter who's pulling the trigger. Over a third of Americans surveyed by Pew said they or someone in their household owned a gun.

Like others in the hopeful business of smart guns, McNamara has received a few death threats. "I didn't lose any sleep," he said, because they were one-off instances made over social media.

But similar backlash once pressured Maryland gun shop owner Andy Raymond to go back on the decision to carry Armatix's smart pistol.

The power of a sale would have been more than symbolic; a New Jersey law mandates that gun sellers in the state carry only smart guns starting three years after their availability anywhere in the country.

Just earlier this month, however, the New Jersey Attorney General's office ruled out of the "personalized handgun" designation the Armatix pistol once considered by Raymond. Their reasoning: Someone other than the intended user could still fire the weapon if they were close enough to the RFID chip, making the gun not so smart after all (but the iGun's ring, its creator said, transmits "only a couple of inches at most," so perhaps it would meet the state's stringent criteria).  

Belinda Padilla, CEO of Armatix, wrote in an email to Business Insider that "With this verdict, I look forward to working with distribution companies and retail stores and soon you will begin to see our products on the shelves."

Jonathan Mossberg is the CEO of iGun Technology Corporation. The company is working on a smart shotgun (there's more room to innovate in a bigger gun), which the report by the National Institute of Justice stated "could be considered the first personalized firearm to go beyond a prototype to an actual commercializable or production-ready product."

iGun's product uses magnetic spectrum tag technology, similar in function to RFID. And like TriggerSmart's technology, it's embedded in a ring. If you're not wearing it, you can't fire the gun.

Eventually, Mossberg said the technology could fit in a grain of rice.

"There's no electricity no power, totally waterproof, and it lasts, I think, forever," said Mossberg. "So that's a pretty long time."

For a while, smart guns just weren't getting any interest. "The whole company, the whole concept has been on ice for like ten years because there was no demand," said Mossberg. "And in the past couple of years there's been a resurgence of demand and interest in it." Now iGun is in trials with a few police departments.

In 2010, hundreds were unintentionally killed (and thousands injured) by accidents involving firearms. McNamara believes smart gun technology can cut that statistic.

"You can have as many guns as you like," McNamara said. "I'm not suggesting that you can't have your guns. I'm just suggesting that they should be smart guns. A bit like putting a seatbelt in a car."

Recently, he recalled, a police officer told him that a certain dangerous stretch of road had seen 51 fatalities for children under four. "And he asked me the question: 'how many of them had their seatbelts on?' And I'd said, I guessed half of them, or less than half. And he said 'none of them.'

"So I'm sure some of them would be still toddling around the place if they'd had seatbelts on them, and I think likewise if all guns were childproof there'd be lots of kids alive today that unfortunately aren't."

Join the conversation about this story »

The US Senate report on the CIA's so-called enhanced interrogation techniques that was released on Tuesday said a firm identified only as "Company Y" was responsible for developing many of the tactics used during the questioning of terrorism suspects after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

After the release of the details of the Senate investigation, NBC News reported the company that worked to develop these techniques and received more than $80 million from the government for its work was a firm based in Spokane, Washington, called Mitchell, Jessen & Associates.

While much of the attention on Mitchell, Jessen & Associates has focused on the two owners of the company who gave it its name, the firm had seven co-owners. Documents exclusively obtained by Business Insider on Wednesday confirmed the names of these seven people as well as their roles at the company. The records also detailed when Mitchell, Jessen & Associates was first established.

According to a document filed with the state of Washington in 2008, the seven owners of Mitchell, Jessen & Associates were James Mitchell, John Bruce Jessen, David Ayers, Randall Spivey, James Sporleder, Joseph Matarazzo, and Roger Aldrich.

Records show Mitchell, Jessen & Associates became inactive in October 2009. However, four of the company's owners appear to work at other firms that currently consult with the US government. Three of them — Spivey, Sporleder, and Aldrich — are still working together at a company called the Center For Personal Protection & Safety, which counts both the Department of Defense and the FBI among its clients.

Their company reportedly developed interrogation techniques the Senate report described as "brutal," including forced rectal feedings, waterboarding, sleep deprivation, mock executions, and intense psychological manipulation. Late Wednesday evening, a CIA representative said the agency would not be able to comment on this story until the following morning, at the earliest. 

Reverse-Engineering Torture

Most of the owners of Mitchell, Jessen & Associates previously worked with the military's Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) program, which trains American service members to survive and resist interrogation by enemy forces. In this program, they worked with soldiers who survived being captured and abused in foreign countries. The SERE trainers studied the effects of this torture. They also engaged in role-playing scenarios in which they taught soldiers to face these techniques. 

Participation in the SERE program gave the owners of Mitchell, Jessen & Associates firsthand experience in identifying which torture techniques were most effective and the psychology behind them. The CIA later reverse-engineered these tactics to use on terrorism suspects at so-called black sites placed in foreign countries outside of US legal jurisdiction, because the practices employed during these "enhanced" interrogations were clearly prohibited by US law.

In 2011, Truthout obtained a series of handwritten notes it said were written by Dr. John Bruce Jessen, who Business Insider has learned was the president of Mitchell, Jessen & Associates. In these notes, written during his time working at the SERE program, Jessen described what he referred to as the "psychological aspects of detention."

Jessen's notes described how torture could be effective and gave US soldiers strategies to withstand abuse. He warned detainers would "manipulate and control your external environment almost at will." These notes outlined some of the same strategies CIA interrogators would later use on terrorism suspects at black sites, where the Senate report said detainees were subjected to loud rock music and severe cold temperatures.

NBC reported that Mitchell, Jessen & Associates presented the CIA with 20 techniques, and the agency passed on a few "because some of proposed techniques were considered too harsh even for terrorists." 

From A Fortified Facility To A Quiet Office Building 

SERE is based at the Air Force Survival School, located at an Air Force base just outside of Spokane. The program is overseen by the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency, which conducts more secretive work and is located at a facility adjacent to the base that reportedly has a barbed-wire fence, armed guards, and "3-foot thick, blast-proof concrete walls." Through their work with the CIA, these experts from Mitchell, Jessen & Associates seem to have employed their expertise on the torture techniques used by America's enemies to develop tactics that the US subsequently used on its prisoners.

The CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques were initially used during the administration of President George W. Bush, who authorized them after the Sept. 11 attacks. The Senate report argued the interrogations that employed these techniques led to questionable intelligence and were so that violent they disturbed members of both the CIA and the FBI who were involved in US counterterrorism efforts.

President Barack Obama has acknowledged that some terrorism detainees were tortured while being questioned by the CIA. He banned the enhanced interrogations shortly after he took office in 2009.

A company registration filed in Washington in 2007 showed Mitchell, Jessen & Associates was originally formed in Delaware on Sept. 9, 2004, and began doing business in Washington in 2005. The company was operated out of a suite in a nondescript office building in downtown Spokane. In the handwritten registration, signed by Jessen, it said the company "provides consulting and training to US government." 

Read about the seven owners of Mitchell, Jessen & Associates and their connections to the CIA torture program below.

James Mitchell: A limited-liability company license renewal filed with the state of Washington in 2008 identified Mitchell as the CEO of Mitchell, Jessen & Associates.

He has been widely described as the "architect" of the CIA's enhanced interrogation program.  

According the 2009 New York Times story that first publicized his role in the CIA torture program, Mitchell joined the Air Force in 1974 and was initially stationed in Alaska, where "he learned the art of disarming bombs and earned bachelor's and master's degrees in psychology." Mitchell, who was from Florida, went on to work with the SERE program in the 1980s at the Air Force Survival School outside of Spokane with Dr. John Bruce Jessen. 

Both Mitchell and Jessen were close during their time at the Air Force Survival School. The Times said the two men "took weekend ice-climbing trips together" and became "part of what some Defense Department officials called the 'resistance mafia,' experts on how to resist enemy interrogations."

Initially, Jessen was the SERE psychologist at the school. In this capacity, he vetted instructors who portrayed interrogators at the school's mock prison camp that was used to train soldiers who might end up in enemy hands.

In 1988, The Times said, Jessen left his position at the survival school and took "the top psychologist's job at a parallel 'graduate school' of survival training, a short drive from the Air Force school." He was replaced by Mitchell.

According to The Times, Mitchell retired from the military shortly before the Sept. 11 attacks and began consulting for the CIA by "the start of 2002."

In March 2002, when Abu Zubaydah, who was suspected of being the third-ranked member of Al Qaeda, was captured in Pakistan, The Times said Mitchell traveled to a CIA black site in Thailand to oversee the interrogation.

Zubaydah's questioning reportedly included his being sleep deprived, waterboarded, held in a box naked, exposed to cold temperatures, and beaten. The Senate report that was released Tuesday identified Zubaydah as something of a guinea pig for the CIA's harsh interrogation techniques. The Times said Jessen joined Mitchell in Thailand a few months after he arrived to observe Zubaydah's questioning. 

After the Senate report on CIA interrogation techniques was released, Mitchell told Bloomberg he could not confirm or deny whether he was involved with the program because of a nondisclosure agreement. 

"I'm in a box — I'm caught in some Kafka novel," Mitchell said. "Everyone is assuming it is me, but I can't confirm or deny it. It is frustrating because you can't defend yourself."

Mitchell did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider on Wednesday.

Dr. John "Bruce" Jessen: In the document filed with Washington state, Jessen was named as the president of Mitchell, Jessen & Associates.

Jessen, who was once a Mormon bishop, became the SERE psychologist at the Air Force Survival School outside of Spokane in the 1980s. According to the Times story, while at the survival school, Jessen made an "unusual job switch" and went "from supervising psychologist to mock enemy interrogator." The Times reported Jessen became "so aggressive" in his staged interrogations that he frightened his colleagues. 

NBC's Robert Windrem, who first connected Mitchell, Jessen & Associates to the Senate report, published a story Tuesday that said "former intelligence officials and congressional investigators" confirmed the CIA began consulting with both Jessen and Mitchell about interrogation techniques in July 2002. 

"Jessen immediately resigned from the Air Force and, along with Mitchell, another recently retired colleague, founded Mitchell, Jessen & Associates," Windrem wrote. 

In 2009, the Senate Armed Services Committee conducted an inquiry into the "treatment of detainees in US Custody." Both Jessen and Mitchell testified before the committee about their work advising the government on interrogation techniques. The committee's report noted many of their tactics were developed based on their work with SERE and the JPRA. It also said Mitchell, Jessen & Associates had seven co-owners and "between 55 and 60 employees, several of whom were former JPRA employees."

The report did not name the other co-owners of Mitchell, Jessen & Associates. On Wednesday, a committee staffer told Business Insider the report was the only public record from the inquiry and that further details of Jessen and Mitchell's testimony were not released. Jessen could not be reached for comment on this story. 

David Ayres: Records for Mitchell, Jessen & Associates show Ayres was the firm's CFO. 

In January, a press release from a Virginia-based defense contractor, Tate Incorporated, identified Ayres as the company's president. According to its website, Tate "is the preeminent firm focusing exclusively on personnel recovery."

"We provide unparalleled expertise in PR training to the Department of Defense (DoD), other US Government agencies and government contractors," the site says.

In 2009, ProPublica reported that Tate Inc. was headquartered at an address in Alexandria, Virginia, that was shared by Mitchell, Jessen & Associates. 

Ayres did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

Randall Spivey: The website of the Center for Personal Protection & Safety, a firm based in Spokane and Virginia, identifies Spivey as the company's CEO and founder. CPPS' site says it provides"scalable training and consulting solutions in the US for Workplace Violence Prevention, Active Shooter Response, and High Risk Travel" to businesses and several government agencies including the FBI and Department of Defense. 

The document filed in Washington state in 2008 listed Spivey as a partner at Mitchell, Jessen & Associates. His biography on the CPPS website says Spivey is a former DOD executive who "provided oversight to all Hostage Survival training programs in the Department of Defense from 1997 to 2002 and co-authored multiple hostage-related policy and doctrine documents."

According to the CPPS website, two other former owners of Mitchell, Jessen & Associates, James Sporleder and Roger Aldrich, work with Spivey at the company. Spivey did not respond to multiple requests for comment from Business Insider on Wednesday.

James V. Sporleder: A 2007 article in Spokane's Spokesman-Review newspaper described Sporleder as a former official with the secretive JPRA, which oversees the SERE program for which Mitchell and Jessen both worked. 

On the CPPS website, Sporleder is identified as the company's "president and cofounder." In this capacity, the site says he "is responsible for directly training more than 5,000 high-risk-of-capture personnel from some of the most elite units in the military."

"During his government career, he was responsible for planning, preparation, support, and execution of numerous repatriation operations reaching back to 1993. He served as team chief in repatriation preparations for three US Army soldiers held in Kosovo in 1999 and also led the debriefing team for that effort," the CPPS site says of Sporleder. "He was additionally assigned as the Repatriation Team Chief, Forward, for the return and debrief of 24 United States Navy EP-3 Crew members detained for 13 days in the People's Republic of China."

The record for Mitchell, Jessen & Associates filed with the state of Washington listed Sporleder as one of the company's partners. He did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider. 

Joseph Matarazzo: In a statement emailed to The Spokesman-Review in 2007, Matarazzo said he owned 1% of Mitchell, Jessen & Associates. In spite of acknowledging partial ownership, Matarazzo, a former psychology professor who was once president of the American Psychological Association, told the newspaper he was "not and never has been involved in the company’s operational decisions" and only "attends brief and infrequent company meetings."

Matarazzo also disavowed the torture of terrorism suspects.

"I have never been involved in the use either of torture or the legal or illegal interrogation of prisoners or anyone else. And I would strongly advise against it," Matarazzo said. "I also have no knowledge of anyone who has been involved in such torture or interrogation."

On the document filed with Washington state, Matarazzo was described as a partner at Mitchell, Jessen & Associates. Matarazzo, who is nearly 90 years old, could not be reached for comment on this story. An Oregon phone number listed in his name was disconnected.

Roger Aldrich: The Times report on Mitchell and Jessen called Aldrich a "legendary military survival trainer."

On the CPPS website he is listed as the company's chief communications officer. According to CPPS, Aldrich spent 33 years working for the DOD at the JPRA, where he was "an instructor, instructor trainer, curriculum developer, and director of the US Government's only specialized, foreign governmental detention and hostage survival program." 

Aldrich was identified as a Mitchell, Jessen & Associates partner in the record filed with Washington state. He did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider on Wednesday.

View the Mitchell, Jessen & Associates records obtained by Business Insider below. Some personal information has been redacted.

Join the conversation about this story »

During the past year, the Islamic State has evolved to become one of the most heavily armed and well-funded terrorist organizations of all time.

It's also becoming so violent and brutal that terrorists within the Islamic State group are beginning to question the group's direction. The Islamic State's leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has been called "more violent, more virulent, more anti-American" than Osama bin Laden.

In an in-depth article for The Guardian, Martin Chulov chronicles how one senior official within the Islamic State is having doubts about the group's direction.

The official, identified under the nom de guerre Abu Ahmed, first got to know Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi a decade ago when the two were detained together in the US-run prison Camp Bucca in southern Iraq.

He talked to Chulov about how the Islamic State as it stands today was born in Camp Bucca, as jihadists held there used the prison as a planning ground for terrorism. Al-Baghdadi became a kind of leader within the prison and, once released, rose to power within the Islamic State.

Ahmed now worries about the direction al-Baghdadi is taking the group in.

Chulov writes: "With Iraq and Syria ablaze, and the Middle East apparently condemned to another generation of upheaval and bloodshed at the hands of his fellow ideologues, Abu Ahmed is having second thoughts. The brutality of ISIS is increasingly at odds with his own views, which have mellowed with age as he has come to believe that the teachings of the Koran can be interpreted and not read literally."

Ahmed told The Guardian that many young men were drawn to the organization in the early 2000s because they were angry about the US invasion of Iraq. But now, the Islamic State is stepping in to fill the vacuum created by the Syrian civil war, which isn't exactly true to the group's origins.

"The biggest mistake I made is to join them," Ahmed said.

He continued: "It’s not that I don’t believe in Jihad. I do... But what options do I have? If I leave, I am dead."

Ahmed is still an active member of the Islamic State. He said he thinks leaving is too risky.

"[The Islamic State] got bigger than any of us," Ahmed said of Bucca alumni who are now involved with the terrorist organization. "This can’t be stopped now. This is out of the control of any man. Not Baghdadi, or anyone else in his circle."

NOW WATCH: This Drone Footage Of Desolate Detroit Looks Like Something From 'The Walking Dead'

SEE ALSO: ISIS Commander Reveals How The 'Caliph' Radicalized Under American Detention In Iraq

Join the conversation about this story »

The sale of weapons is big business, especially for the US and Russia, and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute has compiled a list of the biggest weapons companies in the world. 

The SIPRI Arms Industry Database, created in 1989, contains financial and employment data on arms-producing companies worldwide.

Chinese companies are excluded because of "the methodological difficulties posed by the lack of transparency about China's arms sales."

American companies dominate the list. Lockheed Martin, which makes some the most ambitious weapons projects in history, is at the top.

Here are the top 25 arms-producing and military-services companies in the world in 2013, excluding those in China.

Here's a look at the breakdown by country (Russian arms sales have soared over the past year):

SEE ALSO: This Map Of US And Russian Arms Sales Says It All

Join the conversation about this story »

• The hostage situation has ended after police stormed the cafe.
• Three people — the gunman and a hostage — have died.
• The gunman has been identified as 49-year-old Man Haron Monis, who is out on bail and facing a charge of accessory to murder in a previous case.

A gunman took a group of more than a dozen people hostage inside a Lindt cafe in Sydney on Monday and forced them to hold up a black flag with white Arabic writing in the window.

Police fired a volley of shells into the building before forcing their way inside the cafe after a 16-hour standoff.

More gunshots followed shortly afterwards. Television footage showed the cafe, which had been in darkness since just after sunset, being lit up inside by gunfire. Several hostages were seen fleeing right before police went in.

Police have named a 49-year-old Iranian, Man Haron Monis, as the gunman. He's currently out on bail and facing a charge of accessory to murder in an unrelated case. Monis has a long rap sheet that also includes charges of sexual assault.

Authorities say 3 people are dead, including the gunman.

Paramedics were on scene.

Here they are entering the building:

And helping hostages:

(This story is being edited live as the story develops. You can refresh it by clicking here.)

Earlier in the day, five people came running out of the cafe. Fifteen people were reportedly still trapped after that.

It is unclear whether the five hostages escaped on their own or were released.

Police negotiated with the hostage-taker for more than 12 hours.

According to videos posted to YouTube that were taken down, a gunman holding the hostages says he is a member of the Islamic State. There is no confirmed connection between the man and Islamic militant groups.

The videos show requests for a safe line of communication with Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott to negotiate. Hostages in the cafe also contacted media organizations to voice demands from the gunman. 

"This is a very disturbing incident," Prime Minister Tony Abbott said in a televised message. "It is profoundly shocking that innocent people should be held hostage by an armed person claiming political motivation."

Police have been unable to confirm the exact number of people in the cafe.

So far, nobody has been harmed.

"It might take a bit of time, and I can assure you we want to resolve this peacefully,"deputy police commissioner Catherine Burn said.

Local news stations captured footage of some hostages fleeing the cafe:

Police are on scene:

A reporter for 7 News in Sydney has been tweeting updates describing the scene:

Police have allowed me back into Martin Place newsroom - gunman is clear - white shirt, black cap, unshaven, holds poss pump action shotgun

— Chris Reason (@ChrisReason7) December 15, 2014

From inside Martin Place newsroom we can see gunman is rotating hostages, forcing them to stand against windows, sometimes 2 hours at a time

— Chris Reason (@ChrisReason7) December 15, 2014

From inside Martin Place we can see the faces of hostages - pained, strained, eyes red and raw. One young am with head in hands

— Chris Reason (@ChrisReason7) December 15, 2014

From inside the Martin Place newsroom - we can see food is being delivered to the hostages. Staff bringing it out from kitchen at back

— Chris Reason (@ChrisReason7) December 15, 2014

All the hostages now huddled at one end of Lindt Cafe, one is covering the window at that end with an apron

— Chris Reason (@ChrisReason7) December 15, 2014

When the 5 hostages escaped, the gunman could be seen from here getting extremely agitated, shouting at remaining hostages

— Chris Reason (@ChrisReason7) December 15, 2014

The lights in the cafe have just gone off

— Chris Reason (@ChrisReason7) December 15, 2014

Still complete darkness at the Lindt Cafe, but you can just make out the black extremist flag being held up in the window

— Chris Reason (@ChrisReason7) December 15, 2014

Here is video direct from the scene as the first of the hostages escaped:

And the second, via Vine:

Abbott has previously warned about militant plans to attack Australian targets.

Australia, which is backing the US and its escalating action against the ISIS in Syria and Iraq, is on high alert for attacks by radicalized Muslims or by homegrown fighters returning from the conflict in the Middle East. There's also the threat of self-radicalized individuals who might claim a connection to a terror group even when none really exists.

Dozens of heavily armed police surrounded the cafe in Martin Place, home to the Reserve Bank of Australia and commercial banks. It's also close to the New South Wales state parliament.

Television footage showed several people inside the cafe standing with their hands pressed against the windows.

Pictures showed a black and white flag similar to those used by the Islamic State group being held up by what appeared to be a staff member and another woman. The flag is not actually an ISIS flag, however.

A couple hundred people were being held back by cordons and the fire brigade's hazardous unit was on the scene, a Reuters witness said.

The Reserve Bank of Australia near the cafe said staff had been locked down inside the building, with all members safe and accounted for.

The nearby Sydney Opera House was temporarily evacuated after a suspicious package was found, a staff member told Reuters. Tourists were being let back into the world-famous venue by early afternoon.

Trains and buses were stopped and roads were blocked in the area, with train operators saying there had been a bomb threat at Martin Place.

Qantas Airways Ltd. said planes were avoiding flying over the central business district but were landing as normal. An ABC News photo shows parts of Sydney looking deserted.

Traders in currency markets said the hostage news might have contributed to a dip in the Australian dollar, which was already under pressure from global risk aversion as oil prices fell anew. The local currency was pinned at $0.8227, having hit its lowest since mid-2010 last week.

Reuters contributed to this report.

SEE ALSO: The Reported Sydney Hostage Taker Is A 'Spiritual Healer' With A Long Rap Sheet

Join the conversation about this story »