Free Republic

While concluding a segment on racism involved in anti-Obama protests, MSNBC Hardball host Chris Matthews promoted the book of one of his guests, liberal historian Douglas Brinkley, and proceeded to rant: "There’s so much right-wing crap on the best seller list these days. It’s great to see a book that you might want to put on your shelf and let your respected friends see you actually reading." Brinkley’s book, Teddy Roosevelt: The Wilderness Warrior, did make the New York Times best seller list, coming in at twenty one. However, the list’s top ten was dominated by "right-wing crap." Michelle Malkin’s...

Bill Gertz, defense and national security reporter for The Washington Times, argues that high-level bureaucrats in the State Department, White House, Pentagon, and CIA have repeatedly undermined the Bush administration's national security policies. Mr. Gertz says that these unelected officials - liberals from both political parties - have pursued their own agendas towards countries like Iran, China, North Korea, and Iraq and have weakened U.S. security as a result. Mr. Gertz discusses his book with Frank Gaffney, president and CEO of the Center for Security Policy.

The Failure Factory: How Unelected Bureaucrats, Liberal Democrats, and Big Government Republicans Are Undermining America's Security and Leading Us to War  by Bill Gertz A Review:Unfortunately, Bill Gertz is not the household name he deserves to be. In the media it seems, only the propensity to lie and hew to a left-wing line brings widespread fame and fortune. Think Dan Rather, for example. Instead, a conservative interested in the truth like Bill Gertz has to be content with a much smaller measure of fame - but he is entitled to a full measure of our respect for telling the...

RUSH: We're joined now by Bill Gertz, another book, a prolific writer. Bill, it's a long title. I'm going to mention the title in full once, and I'm just going to call it The Failure Factory after that. Is that all right? GERTZ: That's great. RUSH: The Failure Factory: How Unelected Bureaucrats, Liberal Democrats, and Big Government Republicans are Undermining America's Security and Leading Us to War. Now, your focus is the Pentagon, that's your beat for the Washington Times, but you cover in this book the financial sector in a way. I mean, you write about Henry Paulson, you...

Bill Gertz talked about his book The Failure Factory: How Unelected Bureaucrats, Liberal Democrats, and Big Government Republicans Are Undermining America's Security and Leading Us to War (Crown Forum; 1 edition (September 30, 2008). Mr. Gertz argues that high-level bureaucrats in the State Department, White House, Pentagon, and Central Intelligence Agency have repeatedly undermined the Bush administration's national security policies. Mr. Gertz says that these unelected officials - liberals from both political parties - have pursued their own agendas toward countries like Iran, China, North Korea, and Iraq and have weakened U.S. security as a result. The guest interviewer was...

Having reviewed books for a quarter of a century, I have found that it is often possible to enjoy and recommend one even if I do not totally buy its conclusions. This is particularly true when it makes me think. In "The Failure Factory," Bill Gertz has produced such a work. The thesis of the book is that liberals held over from the Clinton administration, big government Republicans, and liberal career bureaucrats have done much to undermine the Bush national security establishment. Mr. Gertz does an exhaustive job of making his case. It is impossible to outline the whole book...

U.S. military "Red Team" charged with challenging conventional thinking says that words like "jihad" and "Islamist" are needed in discussing 21st-century terrorism and that federal agencies that avoid the words soft-pedaled the link between religious extremism and violent acts. "We must reject the notion that Islam and Arabic stand apart as bodies of knowledge that cannot be critiqued or discussed as elements of understanding our enemies in this conflict," said the internal report, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Times.

Judge Withdraws Threat as Reporter Pleads the 5th In Spy Leak Probe By JOSH GERSTEIN, Staff Reporter of the Sun | July 24, 2008 SANTA ANA, Calif. — A federal judge withdrew his threat to order a prominent reporter on the national security beat to identify his confidential sources after the journalist took the Fifth Amendment in a surprise-filled hearing here this morning. Judge Cormac Carney excused William Gertz of the Washington Times from further proceedings here after he repeatedly invoked his constitutional right against self-incrimination in response to questions from the judge and a defense attorney. Mr. Gertz's refusal...

SANTA ANA – A Washington Times reporter has been subpoenaed by a federal judge who wants him to reveal the sources for a story he wrote about an engineer convicted of conspiracy to export U.S. defense technology to China. National security reporter Bill Gertz was ordered to appear before U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney in June, the newspaper reported Saturday. The judge has also requested e-mail messages, files and correspondences. Gertz cited U.S. government sources in a 2006 story saying that Justice Department officials approved an indictment against Tai Mak and that four of Mak's relatives would also be charged....

Authority to conduct warrantless electronic surveillance comes from the Constitution and is vital to stopping foreign terrorist attacks and spies, says a Republican staff assessment of the revised Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. "There is nothing new or aggressive about relying on Article II authority in the context of foreign intelligence surveillance," stated the assessment produced by the office of Sen. Christopher S. Bond, Missouri Republican and vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The 13-page assessment counters Democrats and other critics of the Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP) who argued during a Senate filibuster of the legislation last month...

LOS ANGELES A federal court plans to investigate whether government officials illegally supplied grand jury information in a U.S. military secrets case to a Washington Times reporter. Court papers show the investigation seeks to uncover a possible source and content of "improper communications" with Times reporter William Gertz for a story he wrote in May. The order, entered Wednesday by a federal judge in Orange County, comes at the request of a defense attorney for Rebecca Laiwah Chiu, one of five family members indicted in an alleged scheme to send sensitive information about Navy warships to China. The request was...

China obtained secret stealth technology used on B-2 bomber engines from a Hawaii-based spy ring in a compromise U.S. officials say will allow Beijing to copy or counter a key weapon in the Pentagon's new strategy against China. Details of the classified defense technology related to the B-2's engine exhaust system and its ability to avoid detection by infrared sensors were sold to Chinese officials by former defense contractor Noshir S. Gowadia, an Indian-born citizen charged with spying in a federal indictment released by prosecutors in Hawaii.

Bill Gertz, defense and national security reporter for The Washington Times, describes a growing threat posed by foreign agents and terrorists who exploit U.S. weaknesses in this first of three excerpts from his new book, "Enemies: How America's Foes Steal Our Vital Secrets -- And How We Let It Happen" (Crown Forum), out this week.

Goss quits as CIA chief By Joseph Curl and Bill Gertz THE WASHINGTON TIMES Published May 6, 2006 CIA Director Porter J. Goss resigned abruptly yesterday, leaving a post he held for less than two years and becoming the latest high-level administration official to be ensnared in a White House shake-up.     Mr. Goss, widely unpopular among senior officials in the intelligence community and blamed for repeated leaks in recent months, called President Bush yesterday morning to offer his resignation. "I've accepted it," the president said.     Yesterday's announcement was hastily arranged, with the two men speaking briefly to reporters in the...

Bin Laden's phone There's been a lot of press this month about the U.S. missing a chance to catch Osama bin Laden because he stopped using a satellite phone in August 1998. While some Clintonites and President Bush blamed the press for writing that he used such a phone, we thought there was another plausible reason: August 1998 was when the U.S. tried to kill bin Laden in an air strike. Such events would likely make the terrorist leader change his methods. Anyway, we came across a speech, delivered in April 2002, that reveals the U.S. continued to gain valuable...

Several Chinese companies involved in selling missile goods and chemical-arms materials to Iran have been hit with U.S. sanctions, Bush administration officials said yesterday. The sanctions cover six Chinese government-run companies, two Indian firms and one Austrian company, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The penalties have been under consideration since April and were approved by Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick within the past several weeks. An announcement will be published in the U.S. government's Federal Register in the next several days -- and perhaps as early as today, the officials said.

A senior State Department official is warning that terrorists are continuing to seek nuclear, chemical and biological weapons for use in future attacks. "If terrorists acquire these weapons, they are likely to employ them, with potentially catastrophic effects," said Robert Joseph, undersecretary of state for arms control and the senior Bush administration arms proliferation policy-maker. Mr. Joseph also said the U.S. government will not back off from sanctions imposed on an Asian bank that the Treasury Department said was part of the North Korean government's illegal counterfeiting and money-laundering program. On terrorism, Mr. Joseph said a well-organized terrorist group with...

A defense contractor charged with failing to register as a Chinese agent admitted passing data on U.S. Navy arms technology to China for 22 years, including information on next-generation destroyers, an aircraft carrier catapult and the Aegis weapons system, according to new court papers in the case.

Four persons arrested in Los Angeles are part of a Chinese spy ring, federal investigators said, and the suspects caused serious compromises for 15 years to major U.S. weapons systems, including submarines and warships.

Four persons arrested in Los Angeles are part of a Chinese intelligence-gathering ring, federal investigators said, and the suspects caused serious compromises for 15 years to major U.S. weapons systems, including submarines and warships. U.S. intelligence and security officials said the case remains under investigation but that it could prove to be among the most damaging spy cases since the 1985 one of John A. Walker Jr., who passed Navy communication codes to Moscow for 22 years. The Los Angeles spy ring has operated since 1990 and has funneled technology and military secrets to China in the form of documents...

Four persons arrested in Los Angeles are part of a Chinese intelligence-gathering ring, federal investigators said, and the suspects caused serious compromises for 15 years to major U.S. weapons systems, including submarines and warships. U.S. intelligence and security officials said the case remains under investigation but that it could prove to be among the most damaging spy cases since the 1985 one of John A. Walker Jr., who passed Navy communication codes to Moscow for 22 years. The Los Angeles spy ring has operated since 1990 and has funneled technology and military secrets to China in the form of documents...

Rep. Curt Weldon: 2 weeks before the attack on the USS Cole and then again 2 days before the attack on the USS Cole, saw through their analysis that a major event was going to occur in Yemen. They told the Navy not to bring the Cole into Yemen harbor and it went in and was attacked. That information was also compiled and the analysis was done by Able Danger. That story has not been told. These people will testify to that story as well.

A draft proposal floating behind closed doors would reconstitute and improve upon a former Army data-mining program called Able Danger. Able Providence, as the new program has been dubbed, would establish “robust open-source harvesting capabilities” to give military and law enforcement agencies the information to take the initiative in the war on terrorism—that is, to be able to plan and execute offensive measures—in addition to continued defensive actions. In addition, the program would be driven by a presumption that use of weapons of mass destruction within the United States is possible. As a result, Able Providence would need to detect,...

I did not take the story to the media first when I was told about Able Danger in June. I'd been working on datamining with the Army's LIWA (Land Information Warfare Assessment) facility for six years, since 1999...When I first found out about Able Danger three months ago, I went to the House floor after I investigated this. I went to two 9/11 commissioners, a Democrat and a Republican. And John Lehman told me I should pursue this publicly. He said, "Curt, if you don't, nobody else will." I went to the House floor and did a speech, and no...

Louis Freeh: No I disagree with that. And you know, while we're on the subject of the 9-11 Commission, I'm very interested and I know the country is in the Able Danger report. We have now very honorable military officers telling the United States, Tim, that in 2000 not only had Mohammad Atta been identified, by photo and name, but was earmarked as an Al Qaeda operative in the United States...

One of the biggest names of the conference never even uttered a word. Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer is the military intelligence operative who recently went public with a controversial claim that a year before September 11, his top-secret task force "Able Danger" was able to identify the man who later turned out to be the lead hijacker as being connected to al Qaeda. Shaffer is a veteran of top-secret operations against terrorists, including some in Afghanistan, and several of his DIA colleagues have come out publicly to confirm that they remember Mohamed Atta being identified in 2000 as part of...

Rep. Curt Weldon, Pennsylvania Republican, correctly asserts the terrorist attack on America on September 11, 2001, could have been averted. The assertion was based on his efforts as early as 1999 to create a national collaborative or fusion center. It would data-mine vast amounts of information from U.S. intelligence and law enforcement to confront such asymmetrical threats as terrorism, proliferation, illegal arms trafficking, espionage, narcotics and information warfare and cyber-terrorism. It was a process that produced, among other things, the Able Danger open-source analysis that reportedly revealed hijacker Mohamed Atta as a potential terrorist before the attack. Mr. Weldon first...

"It really does raise the question about where the [Armed Services] committees are on this," Zaid said. He emphatically states that the two Armed services have "done nothing, at least with respect to contacting Able Danger team members." Shouldn't these two panels at least have some curiosity about what information the DoD had about al Qaeda prior to 9/11? Everyone else seems to want answers--except those closest to the Pentagon. And Zaid wants Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer to be allowed to supply them. It's extraordinary that the Armed Services committees would continue to act as wallflowers while the Pentagon they...

The Senate Intelligence Committee has taken closed-door statements in an inquiry that could clear up whether the intelligence program Able Danger identified September 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta a year before the attack. A spokesman said yesterday that the committee likely will release a report or a statement in the next two weeks that makes conclusions, or at least determines the facts. Most of the attention on Able Danger has come from the Senate Judiciary Committee, which already has conducted one public hearing on the intelligence-collection program. It is now asking the Pentagon to allow personnel associated with Able Danger, such...

This is my first post on this blog and I want to use this opportunity to comment on something that I find to be very important, and that is the issue of LTC Shaffer's security clearance. The AP story that was issued Friday entitled "Pentagon revokes clearance of 'Able Danger' officer" was replete with many errors and unfortunate omissions that portrayed my client, who the reporter never interviewed, in a false light. I would like to set the record straight so that everyone knows the situation. I set up the story so that a full and balanced portrait could be...

The purported photo of Atta was later reproduced on a chart that had the names of up to 60 suspected terrorists that Mr. Weldon says he gave to Stephen J. Hadley in 2001, when he was White House deputy national security adviser. Frederick Jones, an NSC spokesman, said that Mr. Hadley does not recall ever seeing the chart with the Atta photo, but does not rule out the possibility that he was given the photo by Mr. Weldon. The photo was purchased from the woman by Orion Scientific Systems Inc., a government contractor that was involved in an early phase...

China's intelligence services are mounting wide-ranging efforts to acquire U.S. technology and are among the most active of nearly 100 nations whose spying has undermined U.S. military advantages, according to a senior U.S. counterintelligence official. China's "national-level intelligence services employ a full range of collection methodologies, from the targeting of well-placed foreign government officials, senior scientists and businessmen to the exploitation of academic activities, student populations and private businesses," Michelle Van Cleave, the national counterintelligence executive, said at a recent congressional hearing on foreign spying.

***PLA Generals Convert Boeing Jet Into Flying HQ *** The Chinese army has converted a U.S.-made airliner into an advanced military command aircraft. The conversion is a direct violation of U.S.-Sino trade agreements and U.S. export laws. Officials at the U.S. State and Commerce departments refused to comment on the illegal Chinese modification. Photographs of the converted jet surfaced earlier this year and were the subject of an article by investigative reporter Bill Gertz. Now new, close-up photos of the converted jetliner have appeared. The aircraft, identified as a Boeing 737, tail number B-4052, was sold to China United Airlines...

The Air Force is reviewing plans to modernize the U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile force, now made up of 500 single-warhead Minuteman IIIs, including plans for a new ICBM. A report on the effort includes options for extending the life of the aging Minuteman III force through 2020, and building a new missile system as a replacement, said Air Force Gen. Lance Lord, commander of Air Force Space Command who took part in a study of the options for the ground-based ICBM force. A ceremony was held Monday to mark the deactivation of the last of 50 Peacekeeper 10-warhead ICBMs in...

Pentagon lawyers during the Clinton administration ordered the destruction of intelligence reports that identified September 11 leader Mohamed Atta months before the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, according to congressional testimony yesterday. A lawyer for two Pentagon whistleblowers also told the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday that the Defense Intelligence Agency last year destroyed files on the Army's computer data-mining program known as Able Danger to avoid disclosing the information.

Rumsfeld says Iran is arming Iraqi insurgents By Bill Gertz THE WASHINGTON TIMES Published August 20, 2005 Iran is continuing to supply weapons to insurgents in Iraq with the goal of creating an Islamist government, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said....     "I see intelligence reports and we know that we're finding Iranian weapons inside the country," Mr. Rumsfeld told reporters on his way to visit Paraguay earlier this week. "They don't just get there by accident. They don't fly there......     "And we know that Iran has a system of government it would like to replicate in Iraq. And we know...

Soldiers from Massachusetts and Hawaii who work at the U.S. military detention facility at U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, gave visiting home-state senators a piece of their mind last week. Sens. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat, and Daniel K. Akaka, Hawaii Democrat, met with several soldiers during a visit led by Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. John W. Warner, Virginia Republican. Pentagon officials said soldiers criticized the harsh comments made recently by Senate Democrats. Sen. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the Senate's No. 2 Democrat, last month invoked widespread military outrage when he compared Guantanamo to the prison labor...

China is stepping up its overt and covert efforts to gather intelligence and technology in the United States, and the activities have boosted Beijing's plans to rapidly produce advanced-weapons systems. "I think you see it where something that would normally take 10 years to develop takes them two or three," said David Szady, chief of FBI counterintelligence operations. He said the Chinese are prolific collectors of secrets and military-related information. "What we're finding is that [the spying is] much more focused in certain areas than we ever thought, such as command and control and things of that sort," Mr. Szady...

Pentagon officials say an internal political battle has been under way in the Bush administration over the forthcoming annual report on China's military power. The report was due for release several weeks ago, but was then held up and portions have been removed and modified, said officials familiar with the internal debate.

China is building its military forces faster than U.S. intelligence and military analysts expected, prompting fears that Beijing will attack Taiwan in the next two years, according to Pentagon officials. U.S. defense and intelligence officials say all the signs point in one troubling direction: Beijing then will be forced to go to war with the United States, which has vowed to defend Taiwan against a Chinese attack. China's military buildup includes an array of new high-technology weapons, such as warships, submarines, missiles and a maneuverable warhead designed to defeat U.S. missile defenses. Recent intelligence reports also show that China has...

................... Pushing an agenda China's government also uses influence operations designed to advance pro-Chinese policies in the United States and to prevent the U.S. government from taking tough action or adopting policies against Beijing's interests, FBI officials said. Rudy Guerin, a senior FBI counterintelligence official in charge of China affairs, said the Chinese aggressively exploit their connections to U.S. corporations doing business in China. "They go straight to the companies themselves," he said. Many U.S. firms doing business in China, including such giants as Coca-Cola, Boeing and General Motors, use their lobbyists on behalf of Beijing. "We see the Chinese...

Pentagon officials tell us China's recent flight test of a new 6,000-mile-range JL-2 submarine-launched ballistic missile earlier this month was not the only recent troubling development in Beijing's military buildup. About the same time as the JL-2 test, China also test-fired a new long-range air-to-air missile. "The missile has over-the-horizon capability, something they have not had before," said one official familiar with the test. Defense analysts believe the missile, which was not identified by type, could be one of China's new PL-12 air-to-air missiles, an indigenous missile that has beyond-visual-range radar guidance and targeting. Air Force Gen. Paul V. Hester,...

China is building its military forces faster than U.S. intelligence and military analysts expected, prompting fears that Beijing will attack Taiwan in the next two years, according to Pentagon officials. U.S. defense and intelligence officials say all the signs point in one troubling direction: Beijing then will be forced to go to war with the United States, which has vowed to defend Taiwan against a Chinese attack. China's military buildup includes an array of new high-technology weapons, such as warships, submarines, missiles and a maneuverable warhead designed to defeat U.S. missile defenses. Recent intelligence reports also show that China has...

China is building its military forces faster than U.S. intelligence and military analysts expected, prompting fears that Beijing will attack Taiwan in the next two years, according to Pentagon officials. U.S. defense and intelligence officials say all the signs point in one troubling direction: Beijing then will be forced to go to war with the United States, which has vowed to defend Taiwan against a Chinese attack. China's military buildup includes an array of new high-technology weapons, such as warships, submarines, missiles and a maneuverable warhead designed to defeat U.S. missile defenses. Recent intelligence reports also show that China has...

Chinese dragon awakens By Bill Gertz THE WASHINGTON TIMES Published June 26, 2005 Part I China is building its military forces faster than U.S. intelligence and military analysts expected, prompting fears that Beijing will attack Taiwan in the next two years, according to Pentagon officials. U.S. defense and intelligence officials say all the signs point in one troubling direction: Beijing then will be forced to go to war with the United States, which has vowed to defend Taiwan against a Chinese attack. China's military buildup includes an array of new high-technology weapons, such as warships, submarines, missiles and a maneuverable...

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(Snip) China is building its military forces faster than U.S. intelligence and military analysts expected, prompting fears that Beijing will attack Taiwan in the next two years, according to Pentagon officials. U.S. defense and intelligence officials say all the signs point in one troubling direction: Beijing then will be forced to go to war with the United States, which has vowed to defend Taiwan against a Chinese attack. China's military buildup includes an array of new high-technology weapons, such as warships, submarines, missiles and a maneuverable warhead designed to defeat U.S. missile defenses. Recent intelligence reports also show that China...

A new report by the Congressional Research Service states that China is moving into Latin America to gain access to resources such as oil, copper and iron.Beijing is also seeking to isolate Taiwan by pressing 12 Latin American and Carribean nations that now have diplomatic relations with Taipei to break them and recognize China, the report said.

Inside the Ring By Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough THE WASHINGTON TIMES Published June 10, 2005 Spies and studies The FBI and other U.S. security agencies are approaching top colleges and universities to better deal with foreign spies stealing technology secrets, we are told. The FBI recently carried a subtle if unmistakable message to 15 university leaders: If you want to continue receiving millions of dollars in government defense contracts for research, tighten up security against foreign spies. For example, Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore gets some $300 million a year in government contracts for overt research. Additional millions are...

Analysts missed Chinese buildup By Bill Gertz THE WASHINGTON TIMES A highly classified intelligence report produced for the new director of national intelligence concludes that U.S. spy agencies failed to recognize several key military developments in China in the past decade, The Washington Times has learned. The report was created by several current and former intelligence officials and concludes that U.S. agencies missed more than a dozen Chinese military developments, according to officials familiar with the report. The report blames excessive secrecy on China's part for the failures, but critics say intelligence specialists are to blame for playing down or...