Free Republic

Critical infrastructure operators in the U.S. continue to face a hailstorm of hacks. Federal documents obtained by USA Today through a FOIA request revealed that hackers infiltrated the Department of Energy's computer system over 150 times between 2010 and 2014. As the department overseeing the country's power grid and nuclear weapons stockpile, the Energy Department is an attractive target for overseas cyber spies seeking to uncover vulnerabilities. Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security is warning critical infrastructure providers of a malicious spear-phishing campaign in which hackers use bogus emails to infiltrate users' networks. The campaign has targeted government facilities and...

audi King Salman bin Abdulaziz has sacked his younger half-brother as crown prince and appointed his nephew, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, as the new heir apparent, state television said. Al Jazeera's Mohamed Vall, reporting from Jizan in the country's south, said the reshuffle was announced by royal decree via state television early on Wednesday. SNIP-- Political earthquake' Khalil Jahshan, the executive director for the Arab Centre of Washington from Fairfax, Virginia, said that the reshuffle constitutes a "political earthquake of the greatest magnitude". "The Saudi Arabia we knew a few hours ago is no longer," Jahshan told Al...

Scotland Yard on Wednesday reversed a coroner's finding of foul play in the 2010 death of British spy Gareth Williams, concluding that an accident was likely responsible for the death of the code-breaker whose naked, decomposing body was found stuffed inside a zipped and padlocked gym bag. London Metropolitan Police investigators had undertaken a review of evidence in the case 16 months ago, after initial restrictions on homicide detectives' access to details of Williams' intelligence work were lifted by the British secret service, MI6. Deputy Asst. Commissioner Martin Hewitt told journalists in London that investigators only had access to Williams'...

MADISON, Wis. – They illegally seized the property of their political targets in an unconstitutional investigation. Now two top investigators in Wisconsin’s political John Doe probe are asking the state Supreme Court to hold on to that property so they can use it to defend themselves against civil rights lawsuits. David Budde and Robert Stelter, investigators with the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s office, want to intervene in John Doe special prosecutor Francis Schmitz’s appeal. Schmitz is asking the Wisconsin Supreme Court to reconsider its ruling last month that shut down the investigation. As part of that ruling, the court ordered...

SNIPPET: "Things apparently did not go smoothly at last week's Chicago conference on "Islam and Muslims in America," which was sponsored by the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC). President Obama's special envoy to the OIC, Rashad Hussain, had been scheduled to address the event, held at the American Islamic College. But after news reports highlighted his participation, Hussain reportedly withdrew at the last minute, citing a "scheduling conflict." This earned him an angry rebuke from websites like this (which the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report asserts is "an arm of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.")" Read more at: http://www.investigativeproject.org/blog/2010/10/rashad-hussain-reportedly-yanked-from-oic-chicago

Five years before he was shot to death in the failed terrorist attack in Garland, Texas, Nadir Soofi walked into a suburban Phoenix gun shop to buy a 9-millimeter pistol.At the time, Lone Wolf Trading Co. was known among gun smugglers for selling illegal firearms. And with Soofi's history of misdemeanor drug and assault charges, there was a chance his purchase might raise red flags in the federal screening process.Inside the store, he fudged some facts on the form required of would-be gun buyers.What Soofi could not have known was that Lone Wolf was at the center of a federal...

Republicans are investigating what they call "improper influence" from a national green group on the Obama administration's signature Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) climate change regulation. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, as well as Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, are demanding the EPA and the environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) hand over documents on the organization's involvement in drafting the proposed carbon pollution rules. The investigation is based on a New York Times ' report that said the NRDC provided the blueprint used for the rules, and "heavily influenced the president's proposal." While...

The White House confirmed to Fox News what the Investigative Project on Terrorism reported two days ago — that the administration met with the deputy of a radical cleric who is barred from entering the United States, and whose organization supports Hamas.  Sheik Abdullah bin Bayyah served as vice president of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, a group headed by Egyptian cleric Yusuf Qaradawi, who has urged Muslim nations to acquire nuclear weapons, demanded the death of American soldiers in Iraq, and defended Hitler. So what did the White House want to discuss with bin Bayyah? Moderation: A senior...

An American cyberattack on North Korea half a decade ago was fruitless overall, sources say. The National Security Agency (NSA) led a mission in 2010 to damage North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, Reuters reported on Friday. Operatives tried using a variant of the Stuxnet computer virus deployed against Iran that same year, the news service said, with developers crafting a version that would activate once it reached Korean-language settings on targeted machines. Operatives hoped the virus would disable centrifuges for enriching uranium, much like it had when used against Iran, Reuters said, but the cyberattack stumbled when it encountered North...

Chief Justice John Roberts is not stepping down from the Supreme Court, despite a celebrity gossip report, a source very close to Roberts told Fox News. RadarOnline.com reported Thursday that Roberts, 55, would be resigning for personal reasons. But the source said the report is "completely untrue." There is "no medical issue, no issue at all," the source said, adding that there is not even a 1 percent chance that Roberts is considering resignation.

The presidential ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton have become ensnared in an obscure gold-mining project in Haiti, as the Democratic favorite for the presidency begins her second run for the White House. In a story that suggests cronyism, questionable ethics and a blurring of the lines between charity and profiteering, The Daily Mail reported on Sunday that Hillary Clinton's brother, Tony Rodham, sat on the board of VCS Mining when the unlisted, Delaware-based junior was granted a permit to mine gold in Haiti following a massive earthquake on the impoverished island nation in 2010. The permit was the first to...

Full title.....Gold Mine: Hillary Clinton’s Brother Granted Super-Rare Mining Permit from Haiti After State Dept. Sent Country Billions Hillary Rodham Clinton’s brother, Tony Rodham, sat on the board of a self-described mining company that in 2012 received one of only two “gold exploitation permits” from the Haitian government—the first issued in over 50 years. The tiny North Carolina company, VCS Mining, also included on its board Bill Clinton’s co-chair of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC), former Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive. The Rodham gold mine revelation is just one of dozens featured in a forthcoming bombshell investigative book by...

Wow, so Bob Woodward’s new book is making a lot of headlines to today and why shouldn’t it? It’s an amazing view into the White House and well, frankly scared the bejeesus out of me just knowing that this joker is in charge of our country and military. Where to begin? It starts with the front page story from the Washington Post which talks about Bob Woodward’s new book, Obama’s Wars. The book quite literally is a stark reality check for the American people on who their Commander-in-Chief is and how he thinks. The first bombshell that people are talking...

“My greatest fear,” General Raymond Odierno, the then commanding general of U.S. forces in Iraq, told me in early 2010, “is that we stabilize Iraq, then hand it over to the Iranians in our rush to the exit.” General O (as he is known), had recently watched the 2007 movie Charlie Wilson’s War, which recounts how U.S. interest in Afghanistan ceased once the mujahedeen defeated the Soviet Army in 1989 and drove them out. Now, he had a premonition that the same could happen in Iraq. “I’ve invested too much here,” he said, “to simply walk away and let that...

David Alan Stockman interviewed on CBS-TV 60 Minutes (October 2010) Highlights of recent interview by Harry Dent. David Stockman: People don't want to hear the reality and the truth that we're facing. But I think there is an enormous appetite out in the country to get a different perspective than what you have from the media day in and day out, so I say the fed is out of control. Its balance sheet is exploded. It's printing money like never before. Zero interest rates for 70 months have basically destroyed the pricing function in the financial markets. I said...

In January, 2000, Malaysia’s capital was where key members of Al Qaeda held their “Kuala Lumpur summit” to plan the bombing of the USS Cole that October, as well as the later attacks of 9/11/01. In light of this, and other facts pointing to Kuala Lumpur playing host to a hotbed of Islamic terrorists over the years, the baffling mystery of the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 provokes renewed scrutiny of Kuala Lumpur in fostering international terrorism to date. In this context, Malaysia’s Islamic government and prevailing majority Mohammedan culture comes across as either grossly incompetent, or even somewhat...

Malik Obama runs the Barack H. Obama foundation and was the Best Man at the president's wedding. He appeared at the 2010 Orphans Development Fund conference wearing a Hamas 'keffiyeh' scarf with well-known Palestinian slogans printed on it. The sayings included 'Jerusalem is ours – WE ARE COMING' and 'From the river to the sea,' a statement that suggests Israel doesn't exist. The president has been tight-lipped about his relationship with Malik, who told GQ in 2013 that the two are closer than Americans think. Malik told MailOnline in March 2013 that his more famous half-brother is 'always at the...

In the spring of 2010, Afghan officials struck a deal to free an Afghan diplomat held hostage by Al Qaeda. But the price was steep — $5 million — and senior security officials were scrambling to come up with the money. They first turned to a secret fund that the Central Intelligence Agency bankrolled with monthly cash deliveries to the presidential palace in Kabul, according to several Afghan officials involved in the episode. The Afghan government, they said, had already squirreled away about $1 million from that fund. Within weeks, that money and $4 million more provided from other countries...

June 07, 2010 SNIPPET: "His appointment to head the MIT immediately preceded the "humanitarian" flotilla organized by terrorist-linked Turkish organization IHH. Prior to being this most recent appointment he was central to moving Turkey into the Iranian camp."

On Oct. 10, The Wall Street Journal reported that Hakan Fidan, the head of Turkey's spy agency Milli Istihbarat Teskilati, or MIT, has been the "driving force behind [Turkey's] efforts to supply the rebels and topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad." Consequently, Fidan "has tilted the interests of the longtime U.S. ally in ways sometimes counter to those of the U.S," the report stated. According to the WSJ article, Fidan, who was once lauded by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erodgan as "my secret-keeper," had in 2010 provided Iran with "sensitive intelligence" collected by the US and Israel. "U.S. officials believe...