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CIA Director Michael V. Hayden yesterday named Michael J. Sulick to head the National Clandestine Service, bringing back to government service a veteran covert operator who left almost three years ago after a confrontation with aides to Hayden's predecessor, former congressman Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.). In announcing the appointment, Hayden described Sulick as "a familiar figure to many of you" and "a seasoned operations officer" who "earned a reputation for superior tradecraft and sound judgment." In November 2004, Stephen R. Kappes, then CIA deputy director of operations, the top spy position, and Sulick, then his deputy, became involved in a...

US 'in covert war against Hizbullah' Clancy Chassay in Beirut Tuesday April 10, 2007 Guardian Unlimited (UK) The Hizbullah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah. His deputy accuses the US of waging a covert war against their organisation. Photograph: Getty Images Washington is waging a covert war against Hizbullah, according to the militant group, which accuses the US administration of arming anti-Hizbullah militias and seeking to undermine the Lebanese army in moves that could plunge the country back into civil war. "[The US vice president] Dick Cheney has given orders for a covert war against Hizbullah... there is now an American programme...

BY JAMES TARANTO Tuesday, March 20 Plamnesia--II Yesterday we noted that Kerfuffle Gal Valerie Plame testified she did not know whether she was a "covert" CIA agent as defined under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act in 2003, when her supposedly secret identity surfaced. Reader Jim Lucas makes a crucial point that we missed: The Intelligence Identities Protection Act makes it a federal crime to intentionally reveal the identity of an agent whom one knows to be covert. So how can anyone be accused of knowingly revealing Valerie Plame's identity as a covert agent if Valerie Plame herself didn't know if...

New policy authorizing attacks on Iranian agents in Iraq also allows for covert ops against Iran-backed terror groups all across ME, including Hizbullah Yitzhak Benhorin President Bush has authorized an aggressive program aimed at impeding Iran's influence all around the Middle East, including in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. Friday, the Washington Post reported Bush's authorization of a new, more intensive policy that allows for more stringent measures against Iran. This includes, primarily, the authority to capture or kill Iranian agents active in Iraq, a story Bush and other US officials did not deny. However, the new policy...

Other, more contemporary Senior programs named by Arkin reveal and track the Air Force's growing interest in and development of the new field of computer network warfare and electronic attack, which include Senior Keystone (related to classified information warfare) and Senior Suter. However, the Air Force's theme remains the same--penetrating the enemy's defenses. Senior Suter is a Big Safari-managed special access program. Big Safari itself is a shadowy Air Force unit that has developed small numbers of specialized reconnaissance systems, including drones, in what are often classified programs. The Suter technology was developed during the last several years by BAE...

Covert US group plots to isolate 'rising' Iran Farah Stockman, Washington January 3, 2007 A SELECT group of US officials has been quietly co-ordinating actions for nearly a year to counter the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran, including increasing the military capabilities of Arab allies such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. The group, known as the Iran Syria Policy and Operations Group, is also giving covert help to Iranian dissidents and building international outrage towards Iran by publicising its alleged role in a 1994 terrorist attack in Argentina. Pentagon officials involved with the group intend to...

US accused of covert operations in Somalia Emails suggest that the CIA knew of plans by private military companies to breach UN rules Antony Barnett and Patrick Smith Sunday September 10, 2006 The Observer (UK) Dramatic evidence that America is involved in illegal mercenary operations in east Africa has emerged in a string of confidential emails seen by The Observer. The leaked communications between US private military companies suggest the CIA had knowledge of the plans to run covert military operations inside Somalia - against UN rulings - and they hint at involvement of British security firms. The emails, dated...

CURTIS Crooke's connection with the Glomar Explorer began back in 1969, when two men from the Central Intelligence Agency showed up at his office uninvited. "They walked in my door and closed it, and my office door was never shut," said Crooke, now 78 and retired in Carmel, Calif. "They wanted to know if my company could build something to lift something so many tons and in about 15 to 20,000 feet of water." Crooke, then the vice president of engineering for Houston-based Global Marine, wasn't told what the CIA wanted to do with this special ship. But he had...

She is 52 years old, married, grew up in the Kansas City suburbs and now lives in Virginia, in a new three-bedroom house. Anyone who can qualify for a subscription to one of the online services that compile public information also can learn that she is a CIA employee who, over the past decade, has been assigned to several American embassies in Europe. The CIA asked the Tribune not to publish her name because she is a covert operative, and the newspaper agreed. But unbeknown to the CIA, her affiliation and those of hundreds of men and women like her...

Valerie Plame: Was She, or Wasn’t She? Newly released documents don’t quite answer the question. They are some of the most basic questions of the CIA leak investigation: Was Valerie Plame a covert agent when her identity was revealed in a column by Robert Novak on July 14, 2003? Had she been involved in covert work at any time in the previous five years, which could make revealing her status a crime under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act? Was the CIA taking affirmative measures to conceal her identity? There's a new report today that suggests we finally have some answers....

In the aftermath of "Scooter" Libby's indictment, leading Democrats have been demanding that President Bush apologize for the release of Valerie Plame's name to the media, fire Karl Rove and chastise Dick Cheney. He should not oblige. Ms. Plame's identification as a CIA employee was not a crime because she was not a covert agent -- a readily ascertainable fact that should have concluded Special Counsel Fitzgerald's investigation almost as soon as it got underway. Moreover, revealing Ms. Plame's role in husband Joseph Wilson's 2002 mission to Africa was relevant to an accurate understanding of his later allegations against the...

FROM: JULY 18, 2005 Hold on to your hat. The plot is about to thicken. Behind the scenes, the single most important reason for the Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson farce is that CIA Director Porter Goss has finally started to clean house at Langley. Goss’s long-overdue shake-up is clearly backed by the White House, the top levels of the Pentagon and State Department, and the new National Director of Intelligence, John Negroponte. Judging by Director Goss’s remarks at his Senate confirmation hearings, those whose jobs are most in danger include the CIA “experts” in WMD proliferation – Valerie Plame’s outfit –...

The Rove/Plame Brouhaha: Exactly what DOES the law say? There are two parts you have to look at: 50 USC 421 and 50 USC 426.(Corrected- I originally posted 15 USC in error.) I'm going to put them up in reverse order because § 426 is where the term "covert agent" is defined (see (4) and § 421 is the law concerning "Protection of identities of certain United States undercover intelligence officers, agents, informants, and sources" to which these definitions apply. TITLE 50 > CHAPTER 15 > SUBCHAPTER IV > § 426 § 426. Definitions For the purposes of this subchapter:...

QUESTION: What's your reaction to the protests in Iran around the British Embassy? This is a reaction to the IAEA vote, I presume, were there to be a U.S. embassy, they would be protesting there. MR. MCCORMACK: Right. Well, I'll leave it to those on the ground to describe the protests there and who might be organizing those protests. The position where Iran finds itself right now, I think, is one that is probably a surprise to them after the IAEA Board of Governors vote. And where they find themselves is more isolated from the international community than when they...

John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO and member of the Democratic Socialists of America, must have mixed emotions. The bad news for him is that union membership as a percentage of the nation’s total private-sector workforce peaked in the 1950s at about 40% and has dropped to 7.9% today. That devastating decline recently motivated four of Sweeney’s major international union affiliates—United Food and Commercial Workers Union, Teamsters, Service Employees International Union, and Unite Here—to sever their AFL-CIO membership ties. Sweeney’s federation thereby lost 5 million dues-paying members, constituting more than one-third of his AFL-CIO roster. Sweeney’s good news—quietly endorsed by...

In a column that ran in the Sun-Times on Monday, Novak suggested he learned Plame's identity partly from reading Who's Who in America. A CNN source said a producer had placed a copy of Who's Who on the set Thursday prior to the taping, apparently so it could be consulted while Novak was asked about the issue...What's inside that book?

The liberal press and the Democrat demagogues on Capitol Hill are having a hissy fit over "who blew the cover of Joe Wilson's wife." The answer is not hard to find. The culprit was Joe Wilson IV--with some help from his wife. When Wilson wrote an op-ed in The New York Times in July and revealed that he had gone to Niger on a CIA assignment, he called attention to his wife. CIA people who are really undercover are very careful about not identifying themselves or their families with the agency. They wait until their children are old enough to...

In journalism, the definition of “leak” suggests that it is applied to government officials who purposely give reporters secret or confidential information in order to publicize something they do not like so that it can be defeated before being voted upon. “Outing” a CIA agent is only a crime if the agent is under cover overseas or has been during the past five years. This law was created to prevent the assassinations of CIA agents on foreign shores as had been caused by Philip Agee in 1978 who listed CIA agents undercover in foreign cities, causing the murder of some....

If speculation about Supreme Court nominees isn't the biggest story in the Nation's Capitol, allegations that Karl Rove leaked the name of a covert CIA officer is. The ultra-liberal MoveOn.org argues Rove must be fired and investigated. Representative Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y) said Rove "should be thoroughly investigated and prosecuted." Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) called for the immediate cancellation of Rove's security clearances. Representative Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) said that Rove should be subjected to a full congressional inquiry. It all sounds pretty serious. That's how political gamesmanship is played - making something of nothing. The game is played by claiming there...

Now, two years later, it's been revealed that, despite his earlier denials, Rove did in fact disclose to at least one journalist, Time magazine's Matt Cooper, that Wilson's wife (whom he did not cite by name) worked for the CIA. That's all the wolves were waiting for: Now they want Rove indicted, convicted, flayed and filleted — and then locked up on Devil's Island. And fired, too. For starters. But what really happened? Did Karl Rove commit a crime? We'll reserve final judgment, pending the outcome of the probe. But it appears not. Every news media organization that filed briefs...

MIDI - IT'S A HEARTACHE It was a heartbreak...truly, a great heartbreak More than Joey could take...Rove will be so screwed I am a spygirl...yes, a real spygirl Do not ask me "Why girl?"...it's just what I do It was our fourth date...he said that we should mate I had to set Joe straight...what I really did Sometimes I must go covert...there's a chance I could get hurt...or die You must promise not to tell...or I'll blow your brains to hell...oh my It was a heartbreak...truly, a great heartbreak More than Joey could take...it was so surreal There was...

Jane's Intelligence Digest reports on the mounting evidence of Iranian intelligence activity in Iraq. According to information provided by several US officials, Iranian intelligence agents have been extremely active in Iraq since the collapse of Saddam's regime in April 2003. Much of this activity has taken place in the Shia-dominated south. Understandably, the Islamic Republic vehemently denies it is involved in such intelligence operations. However, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has claimed repeatedly that operatives belonging to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) are infiltrating Iraq. There is mounting evidence of Iranian activity in Iraq. In August 2004, 30...

Iraqi independent media mogul accused of running Saudi-funded covert propaganda operationLondon-26-01-2005- According to allegations made in the high court in London, Iraq's first independent media mogul has been running his empire with millions of pounds secretly provided by the Saudi regime. Based on documents lodged with the court, Saad Al-Bazzaz - dubbed the Rupert Murdoch of Iraq - was alleged to have received the money for the launch of his newspaper Azzaman, which is now the most widely read daily in Iraq. Mr Bazzaz also controls Iraq's first private satellite TV channel. The papers emerged during a libel action in...

Friends, We need to take immediate action to back President Bush's selection of John Bolton to serve as U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. As we informed you about yesterday, Bolton is a harsh critic of the UN. His appointment has caused an outcry in the "Blame America First" crowd because they know his presence in the UN will spell trouble for those who have backed the UN's track record of corruption and failure. In 1994 Bolton lashed out at the UN in a speech saying: "There is no such thing as the United Nations. There is an international community that...

If the U.S. embassy in Caracas began a campaign to flood a local Venezuelan newspaper critical of the USA with negative mail - openly using Venezuelans themselves as their agents - we'd never hear the end of it as a CIA 'covert' operation. And the deceptive concept is as distasteful as it is unthinkable. But that's what the activist hand of Hugo Chavez in the United States is doing now. The Venezuelan Information Office, which is financed by the government of Venezuela, yesterday announced the targeting of the Los Angeles Times because of its honest, eloquent "A Little Fidel In...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

LET'S REVISIT BESLAN FOR A MOMENT Please ... tell me you remember Beslan. It was in Beslan just about a month ago that some Islamic terrorists took hundreds of children and adults hostage in a school. These brave warriors of Islam rigged the school with explosives. You remember how it ended, don't you? As school children tried to escape after the explosions began these mighty followers of Mohammed started shooting them in the back. Shooting children in the back! Why bring this up again? Hell ... it ought to be brought up every single hour of every single day right...

New York, Sept 20 (PTI) As defence experts in the US and Israel claim that Iran has been taking advantage of loopholes in the NPT, American intelligence agencies have conducted war games to determine the possible outcome of a pre-emptive strike on Tehran, a media report said today. The American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) have conducted war-games to determine possible consequences of a pre-emptive strike on Iran but no one liked the outcome, it said. "The war games were unsuccesful at preventing the conflict from escalating," 'Newsweek' magazine said quoting an Air Force source. Instead,...

The explanation for Senator John Kerry that he was in “Cambodia on Christmas 1968” is by now a famous if not humorous footnote to his overall portrayal of hi own Vietnam War experiences. It is seared in his own, and now our own, memories. However the statement by John Kerry of his whereabouts at that time begs a very important question. Did Kerry in fact violate a secret oath, made official by his signature, under penalty of severe punishment?William Shawcross, in his 1979 book Sideshow, detailing covert U.S. operations in Cambodia during the period of the Royal Cambodian government...

Kerry campaign releases irrefutable proof that he was engaged in covert ops in Cambodia in 1969 . . .

(2004-07-22) -- The 9/11 commission report released today blames the 2001 terror attacks on a "failure of imagination" among government officials, and urges intelligence agencies to "hire more evil people who could effectively anticipate acts of unrestrained wickedness." According to the report, America is vulnerable to terrorism because the CIA and FBI are filled with "patriotic people of integrity who have a hard time imagining the kinds of twisted and macabre things which are the stock-in-trade of terrorists." The report recommends that intelligence agencies recruit and hire "a new generation of heartlessly wicked and depraved agents and analysts who can...

Australian guilty of embassy plot Roche had earlier claimed he was innocent A British-born Muslim convert has been convicted of plotting to blow up Israel's embassy in Australia after he changed his plea to guilty. Jack Roche, 50, had earlier told the court he agreed to conduct surveillance of the embassy for al-Qaeda and Asian militant group Jemaah Islamiah (JI). He said he had feared for his life if he did not carry out the task, but had never agreed to bomb the building. Roche is due to be sentenced on Tuesday and faces up to 25 years in...

Mohammed Kalif, a Mid-Eastern man with an intelligence file stemming from weapons smuggling and political dissidence, comes across CIA's technical intercepts radar screen. Tapes of his conversations reveal he is a procurer of small arms.

Hillary's Afghan photo op: a medialess turkeyBush Stuns Nation With Surprise Visit to Baghdad...Liberals Respond To Bush's Trip With CriticismBy Jon Christian Ryterwww.jonchristianryter.com Once again George W. Bush's political detractors have been upstaged by the man that none of them thought was smart enough to occupy the White House. This time, Bush outfoxed the fox who has been secretly sniffing around outside the chicken coop at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. As the liberal media proudly announced that Sen. Hillary Clinton [D-NY] would be dining with American troops in a relatively secure area in Afghanistan (filing video tape footage for her...

These tapes are an incredible archive of a span of communist Chinese stealing our national security secrets for a span of up to thirty years - courteousy of the Democratice Party of the United States. HERE IT IS (Macromedia Flash required. Get it HERE

Ok so here’s my dilemma. I have a neighbor in my apartment complex with whom I have had several interesting conversations. All of these conversations have been friendly and “neighborly.” The thing is this neighbor who is a male Pakistani I would guess to be in his mid-forties has told me a lot of unsolicited things about himself. I have observed some things too; he is married and has two college age children, a boy and a girl. According to my neighbor, he was a pilot in the Afghan Air Force and fought against the Russians. Now he drives a...

Iran 'seeking covert nuclear aid' By Colin Joyce and Anton La Guardia (Filed: 12/06/2003) Iranian nuclear experts made three secret visits to North Korea earlier this year, possibly to consult on ways to fool international inspectors, a Japanese newspaper said yesterday. The claim came as the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, issued a warning that Iran was making swift progress in attempts to build a nuclear bomb.Quoting an unnamed "Korean peninsula source" Sankei, a respected national daily, said two Iranian experts visited Pyongyang in March, staying for several days, with further visits in April and May. The report suggested that...

The Pentagon is advocating a massive covert action program to overthrow Iran's ruling ayatollahs as the only way to stop the country's nuclear weapons ambitions, Senior State Department and Pentagon officials told ABC News.The proposal, which would include covert sponsorship of a group currently deemed terrorist by the US Government, is not exactly new, and has not yet won favor with enough top officials to be acted upon.But sources say it is a viable option that is getting a new look as the Bush Administration ramps up the rhetoric against Iran, and it is likely to be one of the...

White House fears covert influence on Iraqi Shias Julian Borger in Washington Thursday April 24, 2003 The Guardian Washington warned Iran not to interfere in Iraqi affairs yesterday after it was reported that Iranian agents had crossed the border to promote pro-Tehran Shia clerics in the southern cities of Kerbala, Najaf and Basra. The White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, said: "We have made clear to Iran we would oppose any outside organisation and interference in Iraq, interfering in their road to democracy. "Any infiltration of agents to destabilise the Shia population would clearly fall into that category, and that's the...