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The terrorists who attacked the U.S. consulate and CIA annex in Benghazi on September 11, 2012 used cell phones, seized from State Department personnel during the attacks, and U.S. spy agencies overheard them contacting more senior terrorist leaders to report on the success of the operation, multiple sources confirmed to Fox News. The disclosure is important because it adds to the body of evidence establishing that senior U.S. officials in the Obama administration knew early on that Benghazi was a terrorist attack, and not a spontaneous protest over an anti-Islam video that had gone awry, as the administration claimed for...

PARIS -- On June 6, the Central Intelligence Agency joined the social media platform Twitter with its first tweet: "We can neither confirm nor deny that this is our first tweet." Presumably this is an attempt by the agency to develop its "brand." Here's why this is a really bad idea: -- The CIA doesn't need a brand. If anything, the agency is supposed to be all about discretion and secretiveness, meaning that it should be defined solely by its conspicuous absence. In fact, if the CIA ever wanted to run a TV ad, it should consist of 30 seconds...

Kenneth Timmerman, writing in The New York Post, breaks open another shocking chapter in the Benghazi scandal. The Obama administration isn’t only giving the Taliban back its commanders — it’s giving them weapons... Miliary records and sources reveal that on July 25, 2012, Taliban fighters in Kunar province successfully targeted a US Army CH-47 helicopter with a new generation Stinger missile. The helicopter and all aboard survived the attack as it was able to crash land. But what had hit the Chinook?

Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton insists “there will never be perfect clarity” or full agreement on everything that happened regarding the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya — but that does not mean a lack of effort on getting to the truth. “There will never be perfect clarity on everything that happened,” Mrs. Clinton writes in her book, “Hard Choices,” according to excerpts published by CBS News. “It is unlikely that there will ever be anything close to full agreement on exactly what happened that night, how it happened, or why it happened. But that should...

Richard Armitage. I repeat, Richard Armitage. One more time...RICHARD ARMITAGE. I just made Valerie Plame wince three times once she reads this article. Why? Because the name Richard Armitage completely destroys the myth she is desperately hanging onto after all these years that the Bush administration deliberately leaked her name as a CIA employee in order to discredit her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson who criticized the decision to invade Iraq. Unfortunately for both Plame and the Left who have been clinging to that myth for years, it was completely undone when the name of the real leaker, who was an...

On the same weekend that the secretary of veterans affairs resigned amid the scandal of veterans dying before the government’s doctors could treat them in government hospitals; on the heels of another revelation of the National Security Agency’s unconstitutional spying, in which federal agents have been seizing the digital images of our loved ones and friends that have accompanied our emails; and a week after the White House intentionally or negligently revealed the true identity of the CIA station chief in Afghanistan, President Obama announced a new foreign-policy initiative called “No One Left Behind.” The reference was to the sole...

...[C]urrent U.S. intelligence and defense officials who spoke to The Daily Beast on Monday say the process for exchanging Taliban for Bergdahl this time was rushed and closely held, in some instances leaving little room for any push back against a policy clearly favored by the White House. “This was an example of forcing the consensus,” one U.S. military official said. “The White House knew the answer they wanted and they ended up getting it.” The White House did not even consult or inform Congress until after the prisoner release had begun. Dianne Feinstein, the Democratic chairwoman of the Senate...

To pull off the prisoner swap of five Taliban leaders for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the White House overrode an existing interagency process charged with debating the transfer of Guantanamo Bay prisoners and dismissed long-standing Pentagon and intelligence community concerns based on Top Secret intelligence about the dangers of releasing the five men, sources familiar with the debate tell TIME. National Security Council officials at the White House decline to describe the work of the ad hoc process they established to trade the prisoners, or to detail the measures they have taken to limit the threat the Taliban officials may pose....

Over at Commentary, our friend Jonathan Tobin rightly asks “Where’s the Outrage Over CIA Outing?” It should be remembered that it was only a few years ago that the same Democratic Party that currently runs the White House was up in arms because the name of a CIA official was leaked to the press…. the outrage about [Valerie] Plame’s outing in the liberal mainstream press was universal and white-hot. An angry Washington press corps helped manufacture a crisis that forced President Bush to appoint a special prosecutor to look into an act that was proclaimed to be nothing short of...

Valerie Plame, the former CIA officer who was infamously outed during the Bush administration, was on CNN yesterday to react to the accidental outing of another CIA official this week. Plame called it “colossally stupid,” but made it clear this is in no way equivalent to what happened to her. Plame’s outing over ten years ago turned into a full-fledged scandal that implicated a number of Bush administration officials, which she doesn’t believe is in par with one person’s “colossally stupid” accident. Plame told Wolf Blitzer this week’s embarrassment was “an error of huge proportions with tremendous consequences,” but the...

Valerie Plame doesn't deny that blowing the cover of the CIA station chief in Afghanistan is a serious matter. It's just that, discussing the issue at a Wednesday evening forum sponsored by The Atlantic, Plame seemed to view the outing of the CIA's top spy on the front lines in the Afghan war as more of an embarrassment than an outrage. "My understanding is … it was a military aide who compiled this list of those that were greeting the president when he came," Plame said. "Colossally stupid, but I think it was inadvertent. It was an error … really...

When George W. Bush was president, a week didn't go by when the press wasn't dismissing his intelligence and proclaiming his administration's incompetence. Over the weekend, President Barack Obama made a surprise visit to the troops in Afghanistan. Someone on his staff demonstrated truly jaw-dropping incompetence by accidentally releasing to 6,000 journalists the name of the CIA station chief in Afghanistan as part of Obama's welcoming delegation. That is a death sentence, not just for the agent but for all those around him. Try to imagine the media firestorm this would have created had the transgression occurred during the W...

The White House will investigate how Obama's press team managed to accidentally leak the name of the CIA's Chief of Station in Kabul. Chief of Staff Denis McDonough has deputized White House counsel Neil Eggleston to look into how the name of the top U.S. spy in Afghanistan ended up on Obama's itinerary for his weekend trip to Afghanistan, which was emailed to an estimated 6,000 members of the press. Eggleston will review what led to the disastrous mistake and make recommendations to prevent such a disclosure from happening again.

Edward J. Snowden says he was not merely a “low-level analyst” writing computer code for American spies, as President Obama and other administration officials have portrayed him. Instead, he says, he was a trained spy who worked under assumed names overseas for the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency. “I was trained as a spy in sort of the traditional sense of the word in that I lived and worked undercover overseas — pretending to work in a job that I’m not — and even being assigned a name that was not mine,” Mr. Snowden told Brian Williams...

**SNIP** Valerie Plame, the ex-CIA operative outed by the W. Bush administration, also chimed in. “Astonishing: White House mistakenly identifies CIA chief in Afghanistan,” she tweeted in a sardonic message on Monday. The name of the CIA’s chief of station in Kabul, the agency’s top spy in Afghanistan, was listed among the 15 officials briefing Obama upon his arrival at Bagram Air Base. The White House only caught the error when Washington Post reporter Scott Wilson alerted the press office, after Obama’s schedule was included in an email that was circulated to as many as 6,000 members of the media.

On Sunday, President Barack Obama traveled to Afghanistan to do a photo op with the troops amid fallout from the burgeoning Veterans Administration scandal. Announcing his visit, the White House promptly released a list of guests, including the name of the top CIA officer in Afghanistan. That officer is responsible for intelligence and drone warfare. The information was sent to over 6,000 email addresses. Oops. This is not the first time the Obama administration has compromised national security with leaks, either purposeful or inadvertent. SEAL Team Six. After the killing of Osama Bin Laden, the Obama administration steadfastly refused to...

The White House press office canceled the daily briefing with reporters Tuesday, dodging tough questions after the press office mistakenly revealed the identity of the top CIA official in Afghanistan. The official was named in a list of participants of a meeting with President Obama during his brief trip to Afghanistan. After journalists at the Washington Post questioned the White House decision, the press office scrambled to update the list of participants sent to the press pool. On Tuesday afternoon, the White House surprised reporters by canceling the White House press briefing and instead scheduling a press call on President...

The White House has launched an internal probe after its press office inadvertently outed the top CIA official in Afghanistan -- a national security blunder that could put that individual at risk. A spokeswoman with the National Security Council confirmed to Fox News that the White House chief of staff asked White House Counsel Neil Eggleston to “look into what happened” and make recommendations on “how the administration can improve processes and make sure something like this does not happen again.” The brief statement from the National Security Council was the first on-the-record comment made by the administration since the

Anybody can make a mistake, and that certainly appears to be what led to the Obama White House’s exposure of the top CIA official in Afghanistan this weekend. Unfortunately, as Roger Kimball details , this is not an isolated incident. In year six of the Obama administration, it speaks volumes about not just incompetence but immaturity and the skewed priorities that come with it. Exactly because anyone can make a mistake, large organizations — presidential administrations included — build layers of vetting into the disclosure of information to the public. In this instance, because the commander-in-chief made a surprise visit...

The White House made a big mistake over the weekend, accidentally revealing the name of the CIA’s top officer in Kabul in a prepared list of U.S. officials who were taking part in a briefing related to President Barack Obama‘s surprise visit to Afghanistan. After the White House caught the error, which named the individual as the “Chief of Station” — a label given to the CIA’s top spy in any given country — the agent was removed from the email and a revised list was distributed, the Washington Post reported. But before making the change, the official’s identity was...