Free Republic

An Oklahoma congressman has sent a second letter to the Secretary of the Army demanding access to Ranger School records for the classes that have involved female soldiers. Republican Rep. Steve Russell, an infantry battalion commander who is Ranger qualified, has continued his quest as a third woman prepares to graduate from the Army’s most demanding combat leadership school Friday at Fort Benning. In a second letter to Secretary John McHugh dated Oct. 7, Russell said he is concerned that some of the documentation he has requested has been destroyed. “I was somewhat puzzled by the Army officials informing me...

From documents obtained by Jesse Trentadue, it’s clear that Clinton Administration Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder and his DOJ team had conspired to squelch any investigation into the August, 1995 murder of Trentadue’s brother Kenneth. (1) But the obvious question is WHY? And why kill Kenneth Trentadue at all? He was no more than a face in the crowd, hardly distinguished or distinguishable from tens of millions of others throughout the United States. What would move the Deputy Attorney General to animate resources of the United States Justice Department to make certain there would be no hearing, no investigation, no...

The Los Angeles Police Department misclassified an estimated 14,000 serious assaults as minor offenses in a recent eight-year period, artificially lowering the city's crime levels, a Times analysis found. With the incidents counted correctly, violent crime in the city was 7% higher than the LAPD reported in the period from 2005 to fall 2012, and the number of serious assaults was 16% higher, the analysis found. When presented with the findings, top LAPD officials acknowledged the department makes errors and said they were working to improve the accuracy of crime data reporting. "We know this can have a corrosive effect...

President Obama on Sunday called Hillary Rodham Clinton’s use of a private email server “a mistake,” but said it had not endangered national security and had been “ginned-up” into a political attack by Republicans eager to keep her from being president. “As a general proposition, when we’re in these offices, we have to be more sensitive and stay as far away from the line as possible when it comes to how we handle information, how we handle our own personal data,” Mr. Obama said. “And, you know, she made a mistake. She has acknowledged it.”

A declassified CIA report concludes former agency Director John McCone withheld information about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy Jr., according to a recent news story. The 2013 report, declassified last fall, concludes that McCone, who ran the spy agency when Kennedy was fatally shot in November 1963, kept information from the Warren Commission during its investigation into the assassination. The report’s author, CIA historian David Robarge, writes that McCone and other top CIA officials were part of a "benign cover-up" to keep the commission focused on what the agency believed at the time was the "best truth …...

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — An Army officer is recommending that Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl face a lower-level court martial and be spared the possibility of jail time for leaving his post in Afghanistan, his lawyer said Saturday. Defense attorney Eugene Fidell said Lt. Col. Mark Visger has decided Bergdahl’s case should go to a military system similar to civilian courts that handle misdemeanor charges. It limits the maximum punishment to reduction of rank, a bad conduct discharge and a short jail term, though that isn’t being sought, Fidell said. ... Paul Boyce, a spokesman for the U.S. Army’s Force Command, released...

Retired Army Sgt. 1st Class William Kotel said this was done in an attempt to paint a rosy picture of the coalition's efforts in the Middle East. "They left key information out of intelligence, such as attacks," Kotel said. "The idea was that Al Qaeda was decimated, so therefore it wasn’t part of the threat analysis that should be submitted higher." Kotel said that is very critical information that is important to the nation's safety and security. "The chain of command and higher don't see a clear picture if we leave intelligence out, especially about attacks and any kind of...

Hillary Clinton's personal attorney balked at the State Department's first effort to erase a newly-classified email from the thumb drive containing about 30,000 messages she turned over to her former agency, according to just-released correspondence. Clinton lawyer David Kendall said deleting the now-secret message could run afoul of promises he previously made to the House Benghazi committee and two inspectors general to preserve electronic copies of all Clinton's work-related message from her tenure as secretary of state. "I have responded to each preservation request by confirming to the requestor that I would take reasonable steps to preserve the 55,000 pages...

Washington (CNN)Employees at the company that maintained Hillary Clinton's private email server expressed concern among themselves about the way the former secretary of state's team directed them to manage data backups after the FBI started looking into the arrangements, according to emails obtained by a senator. In a letter obtained by CNN, Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin, asks Datto, Inc, the makers of Clinton's server back-up system, for information on how her emails were preserved and protected. The FBI has also sought information from the company, according to sources. Johnson indicates that a "Clinton...

The FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email has now expanded to include obtaining data from a second tech company, which is fully cooperating with the FBI probe that has threatened Clinton’s bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, Fox News has learned. A source familiar with the investigation told Fox that the FBI contacted Connecticut-based Datto, Inc. in September and asked them to preserve all data they had which may be connected to Clinton. Datto was hired to help back up data in May 2013 by Platte River Networks, the Colorado-based tech company that managed Clinton’s server and has already been...

Hilary Clinton is scheduled to testify before the House Select Committee on Benghazi on Oct 22nd. She has said she will make only one appearance before the committee. Chairman Gowdy has said repeatedly that he will NOT have Clinton appear until is he "reasonably certain that the committee has had access to all of Clinton's relevant emails."

Obama Admin Had Tapes of Bergdahl Deserting to Taliban - Ignored Them at Trial Retired General David Hunt told Bill O'Reilly tonight the Obama administration has tapes that prove Bowe Bergdahl deserted to the Taliban. The Obama administration did not use the tapes in the trial of Bergdahl.

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration says the fingerprints of 5.6 million people who applied for or received a federal security clearance were stolen — not 1.1 million as first believed. That sobering news comes from the Office of Personnel Management, the federal personnel agency whose data was hacked in what officials believe was a Chinese espionage operation. An estimated 21.5 million current and former federal employees or job applicants were affected in a data theft that experts say will give Chinese intelligence a huge leg up in recruiting informants. It could also help the Chinese catch U.S. spies. The agency...

When Osama bin Laden was banished from Sudan in 1996, he left the country in a rented Soviet jet — an aged and antique Tupolev flown by a Russian pilot he did not trust. With him were a few bodyguards, his military commander, Saif al-Adel, and two sons named Sa’ad and Omar — both young men in their late teens. Although it was the corrupt Islamic government of Sudan that had robbed Osama bin Laden of much of his vast personal wealth, he blamed America for his misfortunes, according to Pulitzer Prize-winner Lawrence Wright. “He held America responsible for the...

The Nuclear Iran Deal that is at the epicenter of a Congressional battle and the focus of so much attention for months is not actually any deal at all, as not one of the parties, including any representative of the Islamic Republic of Iran, has signed the Agreement. This morning, Sept. 18, Cong. Mike Pompeo (R-KS-04) sent a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry. In that letter Pompeo informed the Secretary that while reviewing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (Nuclear Iran Deal), he noted that there are no signatures on the so-called final Agreement. Without signatures, there can...

The Obama administration is declining to inform Congress about the number of American citizens and troops killed by Iran and its terror proxies, according to a document provided to Congress and obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. The administration was repeatedly asked by Congress to release figures describing how many Americans and Israelis have been killed by Iran’s military and terror activities since the country’s 1979 revolution. In a series of on-the-record responses obtained exclusively by the Free Beacon, and provided in written form to Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), Kerry sidestepped the questions on all of the three separate...

Fourteen years after the September 11, 2001 attacks, one of the last, great mysteries surrounding the terrorist attacks on America has yet to be unmasked - parts of the Congressional probe that have been kept secret from the public under two U.S. administrations.

The Obama administration told a federal court Wednesday that former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was within her legal rights to use of her own email account, to take the messages with her when she left office and to be the one deciding which of those messages are government records that should be returned. In the most complete legal defense of Mrs. Clinton, Justice Department lawyers insisted they not only have no obligation, but no power, to go back and demand the former top diplomat turn over any documents she hasn’t already given — and neither, they said, can...

WASHINGTON – The State Department has delivered only seven of nearly 70 pages of documents that a federal judge identified as potentially responsive to an Associated Press request for documents relating to Hillary Rodham Clinton's hiring of longtime aide Huma Abedin as a special government contract staffer. The department's response contained only five email documents, two of them partially censored. Meanwhile, government lawyers asked another federal judge to delay releasing thousands of pages of documents, sought by news media and legal and political organizations, from Clinton's tenure as secretary of state until January 2016. The State Department's request to delay...

Hillary Rodham Clinton and her family personally paid a State Department staffer to maintain the private e-mail server she used while heading the agency, according to an official from Clinton’s presidential campaign. The unusual arrangement helped Clinton retain personal control over the system that she used for her public and private duties and that has emerged as an issue for her campaign. But, according to the campaign official, it also ensured that taxpayer dollars were not spent on a private server that was shared by Clinton, her husband and their daughter as well as aides to the former president.