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TEHRAN (Reuters) - An earthquake of magnitude 6.0 and a series of aftershocks struck the southern Iranian province of Hormuzgan on Saturday, causing minor damage, officials said. There were no immediate reports of casualties. "The earthquake, with a magnitude of 6.0, was centered near the rural area of Fin in Hormuzgan province," Farhad Jabari, head of Hormuzgan's Red Crescent rescue service told Reuters. Before leaving for the quake-hit area, Jabari said by telephone he did not think the first quake at 10.58 a.m. (0728 GMT) had done much damage but feared a third aftershock at about 1.30 p.m. (1000 GMT)...

Last night John rendered his "Verdict: The New York Times blew the story." The "story" was the testimony of five federal judges -- Magistrate Judge Allan Kornblum and four former FISA court judges -- on Senator Specter's proposed revision of the FISA statute. According to yesterday's New York Times story by Eric Lichtblau: In a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the secretive court, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, several former judges who served on the panel...voiced skepticism at a Senate hearing about the president's constitutional authority to order wiretapping on Americans without a court order. They...

Romania and the United States have signed an agreement that would establish the first U.S. military bases in an Eastern European country from the former Soviet bloc. The United States already has the rights to a base in the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan, and is in the process of vacating one in neighboring Uzbekistan. With the United States already possessing a military presence in much of the world, what does it want with even more foreign bases? Washington, 7 December 2005 (RFE/RL) -- Romanian President Traian Basescu seemed as pleased to be hosting the bases as the Americans are...

WASHINGTON [MENL] -- The U.S. intelligence community has quietly concluded that Osama Bin Laden was in a town in Pakistan. Intelligence sources said major U.S. agencies have assessed that the Al Qaida chief has relocated from the Afghanistan-Pakistani border to a town or city within Pakistan. The sources said Bin Laden was equipped with advanced communications. "There seems to have been changes made and Bin Laden is now in a position where he has the capability to be in communications with people anywhere in the world," an intelligence source said. The assessment was drafted in wake of Bin Laden's taped...

Peter Lance's new book, Triple Cross, (the complete title is: Triple Cross, How Bin Laden's Master Spy Penetrated the CIA, the Green Berets and the FBI -- And Why Patrick Fitzgerald Failed to Stop Him) is out in bookstores on 11/21/2006. This is a link to the Able Danger Blog's review of the book. Here is the text of the Harper Collins' press release for the book: TRIPLE CROSS How Bin Laden's Master Spy Penetrated the CIA, the Green Berets and the FBI -- And Why Patrick Fitzgerald Failed to Stop Him By Peter Lance In TRIPLE CROSS, five-time Emmy-award...

Ali Nouri Zadeh, Asharq Alawsat: Eight fundamentalist Islamist organizations have received large sums of money in the last month from the Iranian intelligence services, as part of a project to strike U.S military and economic installations across the Middle East Asharq Al-Awsat has learned. The plan, which also includes the carrying out of suicide operations targeting US and British interests in the region, as well as their Arab and Muslim allies, in case Iran is attacked, was drawn up by a number of experts guerilla warfare and terrorist operations, and was revealed by a senior source in the Iranian armed...

Former CIA undercover agent: KGB and GRU former intelligence operators assist Hezbollah to penetrate the US Hezbollah - the Iranian-backed Lebanese terrorist organization - has more American blood on its hands than any Islamic terrorist ring with the sole exception of al-Qaeda, The American Spectator writes. Last week FBI Director Robert Muller announced that though the FBI and Customs had caught others, Hezbollah had succeeded in smuggling some operatives across the Mexican border into the US, he said. "This was an occasion in which Hezbollah operatives were assisting others with some association with Hezbollah in coming to the United States....

This is long but worth the read: "Just before that Christmas Day attack, in early November 2009, I (Phillip Haney), was ordered by my superiors at the Department of Homeland Security to delete or modify several hundred records of individuals tied to designated Islamist terror groups like Hamas from the important federal database, the Treasury Enforcement Communications System (TECS). These types of records are the basis for any ability to "connect dots." Every day, DHS Customs and Border Protection officers watch entering and exiting many individuals associated with known terrorist affiliations, then look for patterns." This may be the smoking...

A former Pentagon spokeswoman under President Reagan launched a Web site Friday to solicit donations for a possible run against Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. Republican Kathleen Troia "KT" McFarland is still gauging support and has not actually decided whether to run, said adviser William O'Reilly.

The FBI, Hillary and the Alavi Foundation (Iran) Posted on March 26, 2015 | Comments Off on The FBI, Hillary and the Alavi Foundation (Iran) It was a secret: The Alavi Foundation says its purpose is “promoting the teaching of Islamic culture, Persian language, literature and civilization.” The Alavi Foundation’s site, a 36-story midtown Manhattan skyscraper originally built in the 1970s by the Pahlavi Foundation, an entity of the Shah-led government of Iran. After the Shah was overthrown in 1979, the new Iranian regime took it over and renamed it. Lev L. Dassin, the Acting United States Attorney for the...

Jordan executes killers of U.S. envoy Two with ties to al Qaeda hanged for 2002 assassination (CNN) -- The Jordanian government Saturday executed two al Qaeda-linked terrorists convicted in the 2002 assassination of a U.S. diplomat, according to Jordan's Petra news agency. Salem Sa'ed Salem bin Suweid, a Libyan national, and Yasser Fathi Ibraheem, a Jordanian, were hanged at the Siwaqa Correctional and Rehabilitation Center for the killing of U.S. diplomat Laurence Foley.

Evidence accumulates of a hoax in Haditha. The weblog Sweetness & Light has done an estimable service gathering together the articles which cast substantial doubt on the charge of a massacre of civilians at Haditha . Because the blog is too busy gathering and fisking the news, I offered and the publisher accepted my offer to put what he has uncovered in a narrative form. Having done so, I can tell you that the story has a whiff of yet another mediagenic scandal like the TANG memos or the Plame “outing.” While the Marines quite correctly will not comment on...

A retired FBI agent was indicted on murder charges Thursday for allegedly taking bribes from a mobster to supply him with inside information that led to four underworld slayings in Brooklyn. R. Lindley DeVecchio, 65, was arrested in a case of "confidential leaks, payoffs and death" dating back two decades, District Attorney Charles Hynes said. DeVecchio pleaded not guilty and was released on $1 million bail. He did not speak at his arraignment. One of the two alleged mob hitmen behind the slayings was jailed without bail. The other was in Florida, awaiting extradition.

When U.S. Special Operations forces raided several houses in the Iraqi city of Ramadi in March 2006, two Army Rangers were killed when gunfire erupted on the ground floor of one home. A third member of the team was knocked unconscious and shredded by ball bearings when a teenage insurgent detonated a suicide vest. Who, the relative asked, was this man — the one represented by a blue dot and nearly killed by the suicide bomber? After some hesi­ta­tion, the military briefers answered with three letters: FBI. The wounded agent in Iraq was Jay Tabb, a longtime member of the...

ALBANY -- The spiritual leader of an Albany mosque repeatedly called a phone number in Syria that an FBI report indicates had been used to gather terrorist intelligence for Osama bin Laden, according to classified documents unsealed late Tuesday in U.S. District Court. The FBI report, which was based on information from a confidential informant, was among several once-secret documents that federal authorities say raise questions about Yassin Aref's connections to terrorist organizations across the Middle East. Aref, 35, a Kurdish refugee who moved to Albany with his family in 1999, is in jail without bond while awaiting trial on...

IRAN AWARDS ENERGY BIDS TO WESTERN MAJORS NICOSIA [MENL] -- Iran has decided to award energy development contracts to Western majors. An Iranian state oil firm said the Oil Ministry would grant Total, Royal Dutch Shell and Repsol upstream development contracts in the South Pars gas field in the Gulf. The Pars Oil and Gas Co. said the three Western contractors would develop phases 11 and 13 of South Pars. France's Total was expected to be awarded the contract to develop Phase 11 of South Pars, regarded as the largest reservoir of natural gas in the world. Iran wants Total...

Haditha: Where Are They (the Accusers) Now? Diana West January 18, 2012 Eight charged; seven cleared; one, please, let’s hope, to go.Finally, the last “Haditha” trial is in progress, and, thanks to Nat Helms at Defend Our Marines, everything you need or want to know about the proceedings, the witnesses, the facts about the case of SSGT Frank D. Wuterich, the last of the Marine Mohicans, is here. Tim McGirk, source of the Haditha myth-acre. Of course, I still have a few questions — the exact same questions I had when I first looked at the case back in late...

n the name of Allah, the merciful, the compassionate. To whom it may concern: I am writing this letter to inform you of my reasons for premeditating and attempting to murder citizens and residents of the United States of America on Friday, March 3, 2006 in the city of Chapel Hill, North Carolina by running them over with my automobile and stabbing them with a knife if the opportunities are presented to me by Allah. I did intend to use a handgun to murder the citizens and residents of Chapel Hill, North Carolina but the process of receiving a permit...

BAGHDAD, Iraq, AP - Saddam Hussein's chief deputy, who has eluded capture since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq three years ago, purportedly called for Arab leaders to back Iraq's Sunni-backed insurgency, in an audiotape broadcast Monday. The tape, which Al-Jazeera television said was made by Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, appeared to be an address to the Arab League summit in Khartoum, Sudan, this week. The voice on the tape said Iraq's Sunni-led insurgency was "the sole legitimate representative of the Iraqi people." It was impossible to determine the tape's authenticity. Al-Douri was sixth on the U.S. deck of cards that enumerated...

RALEIGH, N.C. -- The man who hit nine people with a sport utility vehicle on the University of North Carolina's Chapel Hill campus wrote a letter to a television reporter saying he read the Quran's 114 chapters 15 times and found that the Muslim holy book justified the attack. ''I did not act out of hatred for Americans, but out of love for Allah instead,'' Mohammed Taheri-azar, 22, wrote in a letter to Amber Rupinta dated March 10 posted on WTVD's Web site. Police say that just before lunchtime March 3, Taheri-azar drove a rented 2006 Jeep Cherokee through the...