Free Republic

The director of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, the storied home of the agency’s most secretive intelligence operations, has announced that he plans to retire, The Daily Beast has learned. CIA spokesman Dean Boyd confirmed that the director announced his retirement “after a long and distinguished career at CIA. We thank him for this profound and lasting contributions to both CIA and to our nation’s security.” As a practice, the CIA doesn’t identify the head of the clandestine service by name. But Frank Archibald was outed in a Twitter post in 2013, and details of his biography were known to...

  Courtesy UK Ministry of Defence The beginnings of a robust and dedicated Afghan helicopter force is beginning to take shape, thanks in part to the contribution of British military experience and expertise.The Kandahar Air Wing of the Afghanistan National Air Corps has come on leaps and bounds since its arrival in October 2009.Now with 572 personnel established on the wing, including experienced pilots, trainee pilots, engineers, logistics and admin staff, mission planning is becoming a reality.The Air Wing currently operate four Mi-17 transport helicopters but are planning to have 14 by 2011.Two Afghan Mi17s could recently be seen...

Pervez Musharraf is America’s favorite dictator. The Bush administration seems to consider the Pakistani general -- who took power in a 1999 military coup -- an indispensable ally, and has yet to publicly pressure him on the democracy front. Democrats and foreign policy thinkers of the "realist" school seem equally comfortable with the idea of Gen. Musharraf running Pakistan for the indefinite future. Indeed, if the purpose of the general’s new autobiography -- "In the Line of Fire" -- was to win American sympathy ahead of an attempt to fiddle with next year’s presidential election, he probably needn’t have bothered....