Greg Myre

The riot at the Capitol appeared to be almost all chaos and anarchy. But as private researchers and ordinary individuals scrutinized online video and photos, they identified some of those who took part and assisted law enforcement.

John Scott-Railton from Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto focused on individuals who seemed to have a real purpose amid the mob — like two men who were spotted with plastic handcuffs that could be used to detain people or take them hostage.

In a day filled with shocking images, one of the most startling was a mob of President Trump's supporters surging into the U.S. Capitol with relative ease.

Editor's Note: As this year winds down, we're looking back at some people we spoke to earlier in 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic was in its early stages. Now that there's a vaccine, we wanted to check in with someone whose family has a long history with vaccines.

When I spoke to Dr. Peter Salk back in May, he told me the tale of receiving an early polio vaccine - the one invented by his father, Dr. Jonas Salk.

The first word that hackers had carried out a highly sophisticated intrusion into U.S. computer networks came on Dec. 8, when the cybersecurity firm FireEye announced it had been breached and some of its most valuable tools had been stolen.

A massive computer breach allowed hackers to spend months exploring numerous U.S. government networks and private companies' systems around the world. Industry experts say a country mounted the complex hack — and government officials say Russia is responsible.

The hackers attached their malware to a software update from SolarWinds, a company based in Austin, Texas. Many federal agencies and thousands of companies worldwide use SolarWinds' Orion software to monitor their computer networks.

Microwave radiation is the "most plausible" cause of migraines, dizziness, memory loss and other ailments that dozens of U.S. diplomats have complained of while serving in Cuba and China, a new report says.

The first time Scott O'Grady made a splash in the news the Air Force pilot had been shot down on a mission over Bosnia in 1995. He survived in the woods by eating leaves, grass and bugs for six days before he was rescued. He returned to the U.S. a hero, was welcomed by President Bill Clinton and appeared on the cover of Time magazine.

He's in the news again, this time for different reasons.

For someone poised to become the ultimate insider as the director of national intelligence, Avril Haines spent her formative years more as a hipster and an outsider.

An only child raised on the West Side of New York, she spent her teenage years helping care for her ailing mother, who died when Haines was 15. As soon as she finished high school, Haines set out on a series of adventures. She began with a stint at an elite judo academy in Japan, earning a brown belt.

In the past 10 days, President Trump has fired the defense secretary as part of a leadership shake-up at the Pentagon. His administration has announced troop cutbacks in Afghanistan and Iraq. And the president huddled with his national security team and discussed possible military action against Iran.

As president-elect, Joe Biden should start receiving the same daily intelligence briefing as the one prepared for President Trump.

But so far, this hasn't happened, and it's not clear when the daily briefings will begin, according to intelligence officials.

Trump has not accepted the election results, and his administration has not yet authorized Biden and his team to start receiving government resources that range from the mundane — like office space and desks — to the highly sensitive, like top-secret intelligence briefings.

President Trump distilled his foreign policy into the phrase "America First." In practice, the result has often been friction with allies, withdrawal from international agreements and the scaling back of the leading international role the U.S. has played for generations.

President-elect Joe Biden wants to restore a more traditional U.S. posture: warmer relations with longstanding partners, a recommitment to organizations such as NATO, and a U.S. that's once again front and center on the global stage.

A Russian group acquired U.S. voter data in at least a couple of states. The Iranians reportedly did the same. President Trump's campaign website was briefly defaced.

During 26 years at the CIA, Marc Polymeropoulos spent a lot of time in rough places, like war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But he never suffered any harm until December 2017, when he was sound asleep at a Marriott Hotel in Moscow near the U.S. Embassy.

"I was awoken in the middle of the night," recalled Polymeropoulos, 51. "I just had incredible vertigo, dizziness. I wanted to throw up. The room was spinning. I couldn't even stand up without falling down. I had tinnitus ringing in my ears."

National security leaders normally lay low to the point of invisibility during presidential election campaigns. Not this year.

Most members of the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff are quarantining at home after Adm. Charles Ray, the vice commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, tested positive for COVID-19, the military said Tuesday.

Ray is not a member of the Joint Chiefs, the nation's top military officers, but he was at Pentagon meetings last week with others who are.

It's not clear how Ray was infected, though he did attend a White House ceremony on Sept. 27, just one day after President Trump introduced Amy Coney Barrett as his Supreme Court nominee. Multiple people at that event contracted COVID.

National security officials say the Kremlin is at it again: Just like in 2016, Russia is using social media to try to undermine the U.S. presidential election, only with even more sophisticated tools.

The al-Qaida attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, may now seem like a distant memory for some. But not for Ali Soufan, a former FBI agent who interrogated many al-Qaida suspects.

"For me, it has the feeling that it just happened yesterday," Soufan told NPR in an interview.

He has good reasons for feeling that way. This week, Soufan released a new version of his 2011 book, The Black Banners (Declassified): How Torture Derailed The War On Terror After 9/11, which now includes details of interrogations previously censored by the U.S. government.

A Department of Homeland Security official said in a whistleblower complaint that the head of DHS told him to stop reporting on the Russian threat to the U.S. election because it "made President Trump look bad."

The White House and DHS denied the allegations. However, the president's Democratic critics say the accusations are the latest sign that the Trump administration is attempting to politicize the intelligence community and downplay Russian attempts to interfere in this year's election, as Moscow did in 2016.

The Pentagon ordered the closure of the venerable military newspaper Stars and Stripes on Friday. But hours later, President Trump tweeted that he wouldn't allow that to happen "under my watch."

In August 2016, during the run-up to the last presidential election, U.S. intelligence officials began briefing congressional leaders on what they described as unprecedented Russian interference efforts.

The Russians had a history of meddling, but this time was different, Mike Rogers, then the director of the National Security Agency, told All Things Considered co-host Mary Louise Kelly.

A recently ousted counterterrorism chief says the country is risking the gains made against terrorist threats by cutting back resources with little or no public debate. In an interview with NPR, Russ Travers also expressed frustration at the poor state of relations between the intelligence community and the Trump administration.

The National Security Agency, as well as its counterparts in Britain and Canada, all said Thursday that they're seeing persistent attempts by Russian hackers to break into organizations working on a potential coronavirus vaccine.

The Western intelligence agencies say they believe the hackers are part of the Russian group informally known as Cozy Bear. The intelligence agencies refer to it as APT29.

Russian military intelligence, known as the GRU, was founded a century ago under the leadership of the revolutionary Leon Trotsky.

Only in recent years has it come to the fore with a series of brazen actions. They include Russia's military operations in Ukraine and Syria and the hack of Democratic Party emails in the 2016 U.S. election.

President Trump has said he was not told about a suspected Russian bounty program to pay the Taliban to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Many immigrants have inspiring stories. Then there's Janis Shinwari, who worked eight years as an Afghan interpreter with the U.S. military in some of the most dangerous parts of his homeland.

"During his service, he saved the lives of five American soldiers. That is not something many people can say," Ken Cuccinelli, the acting director of Citizenship and Immigration Services.