Zbigniew Brzezinski, a senior adviser to President-elect Barack Obama on matters of national security and foreign policy, was the featured speaker at Chatham House in London on November 17, 2008. The title of his lecture was "Major Foreign Policy Challenges for the Next US President." Although Chatham House events are known to attract "the great and the good" of England's political, financial, and academic elites — as well as many of its top media representatives — there has been virtually no word as to what Brzezinski had to say in any of the world's press.

During a speech given on November 13 before the Atlantic Council think tank, CIA Director Michael Hayden offered his best-informed opinion that Osama bin Laden is isolated and most likely hiding amidst the mountainous terrain along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

The New York Times revealed on November 10 the existence of yet another secret administration policy that had been hidden from the American people: "Since 2004 [the Bush administration] has used broad, secret authority to carry out nearly a dozen previously undisclosed attacks against Al Qaeda and other militants in Syria, Pakistan and elsewhere." The Times story noted that the Bush administration had singled out 15-20 nations where such military operations could be conducted without congressional approval (and perhaps even congressional knowledge).