Free Republic

A man was arrested in New York City's international airport with uranium destined for Iran hidden in the soles of his shoes, the US Justice Department said. Patrick Campbell, 33, who was arrested Wednesday as he arrived at the John F Kennedy airport from Paris, is accused of trying to act as an intermediary to sell Iran 1,000 tons of purified uranium, in violation of US law. The Sierra Leone-based Campbell had been under surveillance since May 2012, when he responded to an ad on the site Alibaba.com by someone looking to buy uranium 308, or yellow cake. The buyer...

Edward Jay Epstein has a large and distinguished body of work on intelligence and intelligence-related issues. Among his books in the field are Legend: The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald and Deception: The Invisible War Between the KGB and the CIA. Ed has also taken to the ebook form. His ebooks on intelligence-related issues include Killing Castro and James Jesus Angleton: Was He Right? This morning Ed has forwarded the following questions on the Petraeus scandal: Before we can walk the cat back, and establish the chronology of a possible penetration, we need to answer the following ten...

See for yourself. Issa’s committee was told last year that the report would be ready in September, two months before the election. Eight months later, the bomb finally dropped. Why? Did the IG initially underestimate the volume of malfeasance and how long it would take to dig it up? Or are there other, more cynical reasons?Even if the report wasn’t ready, Issa claims the IG had a statutory obligation to keep Congress updated on its findings as they were made. He didn’t. Why not? Issa is referring to part of the Inspector General Act that requires watchdogs to report serious...

<p>Looks Like DOJ HAS BEEN TAPPING AP NEWS TELEPHONE LINES TO DISCOVER THEIR CONFIDENTIAL SOURCES IN CONGRESS!</p> <p>The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative's top executive called a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into how news organizations gather the news.</p>

Do you recall a time, a few years back, when the media wouldn't shut up about a supposed outing of an agent? Yup, the left and the media were pissed. I bet you could just imagine the firestorm of coverage that would result if instead of a former Secretary of State leaking a name it was our President....right? Guess not: Just a week ago the establishment media was aflutter with news that a CIA double-agent had thwarted a new type of underwear bomb attack targeting U.S. flights in a plot devised by al-Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula. But as...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative's top executive called a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into how news organizations gather the news. The records obtained by the Justice Department listed incoming and outgoing calls, and the duration of each call, for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and the main number for AP reporters in the House of Representatives press gallery, according to attorneys for the AP....

BANGKOK — Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta has ordered the Pentagon to find out why so many generals and admirals have become embroiled in legal and ethical problems, a trend exacerbated by recent investigations of two of the military’s best-known commanders. The Pentagon disclosed Panetta’s directive on Thursday after he arrived in Thailand as part of a visit to Asia. But aides insisted that he had been considering the review for some time and that it was not prompted by revelations that the FBI has been investigating former CIA director David H. Petraeus, a retired Army general, and Marine Gen....

The commander of the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa has been fired for misconduct. Army Maj. Gen. Ralph Baker was relieved of his duties on March 28, according to U.S. Africa Command spokesman Benjamin Benson. Gen. Carter Ham, AFRICOM commander, lost confidence in Baker's ability to lead, but the command isn't releasing any further details at this time because the alleged misconduct is being appealed, Benson said. "The allegations remain under adjudication, so it would be inappropriate to comment at this time," he said. Baker assumed command less than a year ago last May. This incident follows on the...

The Investigative Project on Terrorism has learned that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi headlined a Democratic Party fundraiser with leaders of Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood front groups in May of this year. The invitation-only fundraiser was sponsored by Reps. Keith Ellison, D-Minn.; Andre Carson, D-Ind.; and Steve Israel, D-N.Y., chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and took place on the evening of May 16, 2012, at the W Hotel in Washington D.C. In attendance were about 20 members of a Syrian dissident group and 10 officials representing Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas front groups. Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR)...

May 2012 — Anonymous emails, ultimately traced to Broadwell, were [FIRST] sent to Gen. John Allen, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, and several other generals warning them to stay away from Kelley, the Florida socialite. The emails came from the pseudonym "Kelleypatrol" and included notes on Allen's plans to see Kelley in Washington the following week. Concerned about how anyone else would know about his personal plans, Allen forwarded the emails to Kelley to see whether she was playing a prank on them. Other generals also forward to Kelley copies of emails they received. Early June 2012 — Kelley...

The U.S. Muslim Brotherhood and its non-Muslim allies have sprung into action. They are demanding that President Obama make Israel end its offensive against Hamas which, in characteristic Islamist fashion, they are falsely depicting as a genocidal crusade. Obama blames Hamas, but the pressure from Islamists, the anti-Israel left and other countries like Britain and France, may be taking a toll. He signaled possible opposition to an Israeli ground operation, saying it’d be “preferable” to end the Hamas rocket threat without sending in troops. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim Brotherhood entity whose executive director was fundraising for...

BAMAKO - Tuareg rebels and Islamist militants have joined forces in northern Mali and say they will create an independent Islamist state. The groups took advantage of a military coup in Bamako to seize control of the territory in early April. Resistance is growing in the north to the efforts to introduce Islamic law. In the northern Malian town of Gao, court is in session. Commissioner Abdoulaye Maiga begins by reading from the Quran in the roadside courtyard outside the former police station. Once an area businessman, Maiga is a member of the militant Islamist sect Ansar Dine that residents...

A chilling detail in this Reuters report on yesterday's protests at the US embassy in Tunisia from reporter Tarek Amara: "Obama, Obama, we are all Osamas," they chanted, in reference to the slain al Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden. The protesters pulled down the U.S. flag flying over the embassy, burned it, and replaced it with a black flag emblazoned with the Shahada, the Islamic declaration of faith.

As you'll recall, I was very skeptical this morning of initial US government assertions that there was "no intelligence" indicating the deadly Benghazi raid was premeditated or planned in advance.  White House Press Secretary Jay Carney repeated this heavily-parsed denial at his briefing today (note that he appears to be reading a verbatim statement), only to give a markedly different answer just 45 minutes later:   Carney Contradicts On Whether There Was Advance Warning Of Embassy AttacksABC's Jake Tapper notes that the Defense Secretary briefed the Senate Armed Services Committee on the attack, telling Senators that the US Government believes...

The United States intelligence community does not believe the core of al Qaeda was behind this week's attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, a U.S. intelligence official told CNN Thursday. The official said the picture is becoming clearer within the intelligence community as to what group or groups were responsible for the attack. Given what officials know about al Qaeda in Libya, U.S. intelligence believes it is very unlikely that core al Qaeda was behind the attack. But the official said the intelligence does not rule out that the attack was perpetrated by al Qaeda sympathizers.

Diplomats and other observers in Libya say that with elections one month away, the National Transitional Council is struggling to exert control over various militia prominent in the uprising against Moammar Gadhafi. One source briefed by Western intelligence officials said that of particular concern is the city of Derna on the Mediterranean coast some 160 miles (260 kilometers) west of the Egyptian border. The source told CNN that hundreds of Islamist militants are in and around the town, and there are camps where weapons and physical training are provided to militants. He said one official had described the area as...

Bicycles instead of cars? Dense apartment clusters instead of single homes? Community rituals instead of churches? "Human rights" instead of religious freedom? The UN Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II) which met June 3-14 [1996]in Istanbul, painted an alarming picture of the 21st century community. The American ways-free speech, individualism, travel, and Christianity-are out. A new set of economic, environmental, and social guidelines are in. Citizenship, democracy, and education have been redefined. Handpicked civil leaders will implement UN "laws", bypassing state and national representatives to work directly with the UN. And politically correct "tolerance"-meaning "the rejection of dogmatism and absolutism"...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) told a recent gathering of the Women’s Political Committee that the spirits of suffragists Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Alice Paul spoke to her at the White House. Pelosi said she heard them say: “At last we have a seat at the table”. A video recently posted on Youtube shows Pelosi speaking in May describing her first meeting with President Bush in the White House after becoming part of the Democratic House leadership.

A US federal grand jury has indicted two men, one from Iran and the other from China, on charges of conspiring to send materials from the United States to Iran for the purpose of enriching uranium, the US Justice Department said on Friday. Using a Chinese company as a go-between to avoid trade sanctions, the men tried for three years to obtain US materials, such as high-strength steel, that could be used in an Iranian nuclear program, the department said. Iranian citizen Parviz Khaki was arrested in May in the Philippines, while the other man, Zongcheng Yi of China, remains...

In a surprise turnaround, the White House announced Monday afternoon that Chicago won’t be hosting the controversial G-8 summit after all. It will be held at Camp David instead of Chicago. The NATO summit will proceed here May 20-21. City Hall insisted that it was President Barack Obama’s decision — that Mayor Rahm Emanuel did not ask the White House to take the more controversial of the two summits off Chicago’s hands. One leading demonstrator pledged the protests “will go forward” here despite the switch. The White House issued a terse statement dropping the bombshell shortly before 3 p.m. “In...