Free Republic

Detail by painful detail, the CIA is coming to grips with one of the most devastating episodes in its history, a botched cloak-and-dagger flight into China that stole two decades of freedom from a pair of fresh-faced American operatives and cost the lives of their two pilots. In opening up about the 1952 debacle, the CIA is finding ways to use it as a teaching tool. Mistakes of the past can serve as cautionary tales for today's spies and paramilitary officers taking on al-Qaida and other terrorist targets. At the center of the story are two eager CIA paramilitary officers...

Ex-CNN president arrives in North Korea SEOUL, Aug. 13 (Yonhap) -- Former CNN President Ted Turner arrived in North Korea Saturday, heading a 10-member delegation that included a U.S. congressman, the North's media reported. Turner flew to the North's capital, Pyongyang, with Curt Weldon, a Republican congressman from Pennsylvania, and former U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Donald Gregg, the Korean Central News Agency said in a brief report. The group is scheduled to visit South Korea Aug. 15-18. Their itinerary in South Korea includes a meeting with former President and Nobel peace laureate Kim Dae-jung. The KCNA report gave...

Former U.S. Ambassador to Korea Secretly Visits N. Korea Japan's Mainichi Shimbun reported in a Washington dispatch on Thursday that former U.S. Ambassador to Korea Donald Gregg secretly visited North Korea last week. According to the paper, in response to its request to confirm his visit to the North, Gregg said, “I do not want to talk about my visit to the North,” but foreign officials have raised the possibility that he may have met with key North Korean leaders and been asked to convey the North’s messages concerning six-way talks to the U.S. The paper also said that Gregg...