ASHA RANGAPPA

The idea of interviewing someone is that you are getting their first off-the-cuff impression or response. You don't want them to have the chance to really prepare.

We are a nation founded on distrust of government power, and questioning that power is essential to promoting transparency and accountability.

My parents came under a provision where the government was specially looking for doctors, because the Vietnam war was happening and many doctors were overseas.

Like any country with sophisticated intelligence services, Russia has long been a careful student of U.S. freedoms, laws and the constraints of its main nemesis in the U.S., the FBI.

In 1978, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act after hearings exposed the F.B.I.'s egregious practice of illegally spying on civil rights leaders, black nationalists, Communists and Vietnam War protesters.

Under the dual sovereignty principle, the Fifth Amendment's prohibition on double jeopardy - which prevents the government from trying someone twice for the same crime - doesn't apply if the second trial is by a different 'sovereign' - in this case, the state.

Counterintelligence is, in effect, chasing ghosts, which is why the tools used to investigate foreign intelligence activity are secret, like human sources or electronic surveillance.

The Trump administration's assault against the FBI's efforts to assess a national security threat posed by suspected foreign agents only raises more questions about what went on in 2016.

I was a pretty unsavvy applicant, and I am grateful that the dean of admissions at Princeton chose to take a chance on a girl from an average public high school in southern Virginia.

For wealthy or privileged students, applying to Ivy League schools or elite schools is sort of expected of them. If you go to a prep school, for example, that's just what your guidance counsellor tells you.

But I have to say, in my 12 years as the dean of admissions at Yale Law School, there was a lot of legal behaviour that I saw that worried me and that clearly was allowing wealthier and privileged students to tilt the balance in their favour.

FYI, there are basically only three things besides a vest that will stop a bullet: a tree trunk, the engine block of a car, and a U.S. mailbox: if you are ever caught in gunfire, find one of those.

I'm a process person. Process is a manifestation of values.

I mean, the FBI has to assure people who come and help them that they're going to be able to keep their identities confidential and protect them.

Unfortunately, once a person who is willing to act against the interests of the United States assumes the awesome powers of the presidency, the laws and investigative techniques we use in ordinary national security situations are woefully inadequate.

President Trump is a defense lawyer's worst nightmare - and a dream defendant for special counsel Robert Mueller.

Facebook's greatest strength - its ability to identify and connect like-minded people - is also a major vulnerability.

Originally, in fact, the power to pardon was used precisely for economic and political ends. Legal historians have noted that in England, kings used pardons for their own ends. For instance, criminals could be pardoned if they agreed to labor for the American colonies or the Crown's navy.

If there's one thing that lawyers know about reading documents, it's to pay attention to the footnotes. In fact, oftentimes the most important information is buried there.

As an FBI agent, you don't want to go in there gangbusters and confrontational. You are going to get a lot more information if you put the subject at ease and allow them to talk.

As a former FBI counterintelligence agent who investigated foreign propaganda cases, I've seen firsthand how foreign intelligence services leverage American freedoms - and the constitutional limitations on the FBI's investigative power - to their advantage.

In a typical whistleblower scenario where the inspector general determines a complaint to be credible and urgent, there would be no colorable legal basis for the complaint to not reach Congress.

Though my parents were professionals and expected me to go to college, they were immigrants from India with no idea about how the admissions process worked in the United States or the importance of standardized tests.

In response to Russia's election hacking, the U.S. expelled not just one, but 35 spies posing as diplomats - the strongest response ever to a cyberattack against the U.S.

But history shows that when courts intervene because a president is trying to shield his own conduct, the deck is stacked against him.