Greg Myre

When Mohammed bin Salman became Saudi Arabia's deputy crown prince in 2015, just before his 30th birthday, it created a wave of optimism that he could modernize a kingdom that has long resisted change.

Change has come rapidly indeed. Women can now drive, the powers of the religious police have been scaled back, and Mohammed has sketched out plans to overhaul and diversify the oil-based economy.

The National Security Agency's Rob Storch is a talkative guy at a place that specializes in eavesdropping.

Staff Sgt. Ronald Shurer, a medic in the Green Berets, was part of a small unit sent by helicopter on a risky mission to track down an enemy fighter in a remote mountain village in northeastern Afghanistan in 2008.

After the Americans landed and began climbing the mountain to approach the village, they came under withering fire from an unexpectedly large force of some 200 fighters armed with automatic rifles, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, according to the military.

A new report says U.S. counterterrorism efforts need to focus much more on the long-term goal of supporting fragile countries and preventing extremism from taking root.

The report, sponsored by the nonpartisan U.S. Institute of Peace, says that after the 2001 terrorist attacks, the U.S. response was to protect the homeland and pursue terrorists abroad.

On Sept. 11, 2001, President George W. Bush was visiting Sarasota, Fla. At 8 a.m. sharp, the CIA's Michael Morell delivered the daily intelligence briefing — something he did six mornings a week — regardless of whether the president was at the White House or on the road.

"Contrary to press reporting and myth, there was absolutely nothing in my briefing that had to do with terrorism that day," Morell recalled. "Most of it had to do with the Israeli-Palestinian issue."

For the third time in recent days, a prominent group of former national security officials has signed a letter criticizing President Trump's decision to revoke the security clearance of former CIA Director John Brennan.

In a related development, Trump said in a tweet Monday that he wasn't concerned about Brennan's remarks over the weekend that he might take legal action in response to the president's move.

By her own account, Samantha Sally had a comfortable life for years in Elkhart, Ind., with her Moroccan husband and their children.

But on a family vacation to Turkey in 2015, Sally says her husband, Moussa Elhassani, tricked the entire family into crossing the border into Syria.

Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats on Monday directly challenged comments by President Trump, saying the U.S. intelligence community has been "clear in our assessments of Russian meddling in the 2016 election."

Coats has maintained an extremely low profile, rarely making public comments, since President Trump appointed him last year.

Summits between U.S. presidents and Kremlin leaders are often filled with great drama and moments that shape history.

And then there's Boris Yeltsin's 1994 visit to Washington.

When World War II ended in August 1945, President Harry Truman was a man in a hurry.

In the final few months of that year, he pushed hard to help establish the United Nations to handle international political disputes, and the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to deal with the shattered global economy.

When President Trump shakes hands with Kim Jong Un on Tuesday morning, it will mark the first time that a sitting U.S. president comes face to face with a North Korean leader. Trump once dubbed Kim "Little Rocket Man" and threatened "fire and fury" against his regime, but has expressed optimism about a potential deal with North Korea on denuclearization. "I just think it's going to work out very nicely," he said Monday. But he has also said he is prepared to walk away from the table if talks are not fruitful.

David Douglas Duncan went everywhere and took extraordinary pictures at every stop.

Duncan, who died Thursday in the south of France at age 102, was one of the greatest photojournalists of the 20th century.

When Mike Pompeo became CIA director last year, he immediately set his sights on North Korea and its opaque nuclear program.

"Within weeks of me coming here, I created a Korea Mission Center, stood it up with a senior leader who had just retired, brought him back to run the organization," Pompeo said in January.

The White House has nominated Navy Adm. Harry Harris to be the U.S. ambassador to South Korea, filling a key post that's been vacant for the first 16 months of the Trump presidency.

The Senate on Thursday confirmed Gina Haspel as CIA director, making her the first woman to lead the spy agency, despite the controversy surrounding her role in the waterboarding program.

The Senate vote of 54-45 in favor of Haspel came mostly along party lines. She needed support from several Democratic senators to win confirmation.

The Senate intelligence committee voted 10-5 Wednesday to recommend Gina Haspel as CIA director despite the controversy surrounding her role in the agency's waterboarding program.

The full Senate now appears all but certain to confirm Haspel within the next week or so, which would make her the first woman to lead the CIA.

Her confirmation also would complete President Trump's recent shakeup of his national security and foreign policy teams.

The nominee to lead the CIA, Gina Haspel, said in a letter that the spy agency should not have undertaken a harsh interrogation campaign, which included waterboarding terrorism suspects, following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Shortly after her letter became public Tuesday, three Democratic senators announced their support for Haspel, effectively ensuring that she will be confirmed as the first woman to lead the CIA.

Updated at 3:15 p.m. ET

The Pentagon said Thursday that an investigation into the deaths of four American soldiers in Niger last year found "individual, organizational and institutional failures." But it said no sole reason was responsible for the ambush.

Gina Haspel's appearance before the Senate intelligence committee on Wednesday promises to be a very unusual confirmation hearing.

Most every nominee for a top government job has a long public record that is open for scrutiny. Not so with Haspel, who would be the first woman to lead the CIA.

When Michael Hayden ran the CIA and the National Security Agency, his public comments were largely confined to congressional testimony. Now that he's retired, "I'm on Twitter and I'm on CNN," said Hayden.

He was also the featured guest as dozens of former national security officials and several current ones spoke at a recent conference on threats the U.S. faces.

This story was originally published on Oct. 20, 2017, and is being republished with minor changes to update.

When U.S. troops were ambushed in Niger last October, the widespread reaction was surprise: The U.S. has military forces in Niger? What are they doing there?

The Pentagon has started briefing the families of four soldiers killed in an ambush in Niger last October, and the military acknowledges a series of missteps contributed to the deaths, one family member told NPR.

"I think in any instance where people lose there lives, there were obviously mistakes that were made," said Will Wright, the brother of one of those killed, Staff Sgt. Dustin Wright. Will Wright is himself a combat veteran, having served as a staff sergeant in Afghanistan. He and his family were briefed by military officers on Thursday.

John Brennan's tenure as CIA director ended the same day that President Trump entered office last year, and since then, the former spy chief has been a relentless critic of the president.

"I think he is dishonest, he lacks integrity, he has very questionable ethics and morality, and he views the world through a prism of 'how it's going to help Donald Trump?,' " Brennan said in a wide-ranging interview with All Things Considered.

"I just think that he has not fulfilled the responsibilities of the president of the United States," Brennan added.

A Pentagon report has found that Islamist extremists ambushed and killed four U.S. troops in Niger last October after a series of missteps left the Americans exposed and vulnerable in a remote corner of the African nation.

The Pentagon has sent the classified report to Congress and military officers have started to brief the families of the soldiers who were killed. The report has not been released publicly, but an official who has seen it described it to NPR Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman.