Free Republic

In his Loyal Opposition blog, New York Times ed page editor Andrew Rosenthal goes after the Justice Department’s decision to prosecute former CIA officer, former Democratic Senate staffer and Huffington Post blogger John Kiriakou for leaking classified information — including the names of CIA operatives — to journalists. Rosenthal writes, That may seem simple: CIA officer, classified information disclosed, prison. But take a closer look. He’s been charged with revealing that two men accused of organizing the Sept. 11 attacks, Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohamed, were tortured. So the man who blew the whistle on torture may go to...

In a book just released, The Story: A Reporter's Journey, Judith Miller, a key witness in the Libby prosecution, states that Patrick Fitzgerald had offered repeatedly to drop all charges against Lewis Libby if he would "deliver" Vice President Cheney to him. In addition, she charges that Fitzgerald manipulated her into incorrectly testifying about a critical conversation she had with Libby and withheld exculpatory evidence from both her and the defense in order to induce her mistaken testimony – testimony the prosecution knew was made because she was acting under a false belief....[must read snip]....Rizzo, of course, is focused only...

Forty years ago, on Nov. 10, 1975, the freighter Edmund Fitzgerald sank during a ferocious storm on Lake Superior, killing all 29 men aboard. Rather than linking to the famous Gordon Lightfoot song (and according to SiriusXM radio, Gordon personally attended todays annual memorial service held by the families), this is a 32 minute recording of actual US Coast Guard marine radio traffic from that tragic day.

Kiriakou, 47, was a source for stories by The New York Times and other news organizations in 2008 and 2009 about some of the agency’s most sensitive operations after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. ......... that the information Kiriakou supplied to journalists ... enabling defense attorneys there to obtain photographs of CIA operatives suspected of being involved in harsh interrogations. Some of the pictures were subsequently discovered in the cells of high-value detainees.

David Petraeus saw his career come to an end for mishandling classified information. Sandy Berger was punished for mishandling classified information. Scooter Libby got it worst of all. And he did virtually nothing. Remember Scooter Libby? Libby was the Bush aide who went to prison for having a bad memory. He was hunted down and persecuted by Peter Fitzgerald who was looking for the scalp of the person who allegedly leaked the name of Valerie Plame. Libby went to prison and he wasn't even the leaker. Richard Armitrage was. Jennifer Rubin: Right Turn readers know my view that former vice...

An activist who was using his position on Colorado’s oil and gas task force to push for a New York-style ban on oil and natural gas development has given up on the fringe proposal for lack of support, according to documents released by state officials overnight. The proposal’s demise is yet another defeat for national anti-fracking groups in Colorado, such as Food and Water Watch and the Sierra Club, which are desperately trying to reboot their failed campaign for an effective statewide oil and gas development ban. It’s also a reminder of how outside of New York, the “ban fracking”...

A team of CIA counterintelligence officials recently visited the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and concluded that CIA interrogators face the risk of exposure to al Qaeda through inmates' contacts with defense attorneys, according to U.S. officials. The agency's "tiger team" of security specialists was dispatched as part of an ongoing investigation conducted jointly with the Justice Department into a program backed by the American Civil Liberties Union. The program, called the John Adams Project, has photographed covert CIA interrogators and shown the pictures to some of the five senior al Qaeda terrorists held there in an effort...

CIA official's John Rizzo's revelations in new book, Company Man: Thirty Years of Controversy and Crisis in the CIA, establish beyond peradventure of doubt that the Plame case was a hoax, stirred up by her husband and Patrick Fitzgerald. See these excerpts from the book:

The documents kept by the Iraqi Intelligence Service were meticulous in detail and sweeping in scope. In some, Iraqi intelligence officers in the United States are directed to use informers to track the "criminal'' actions of one current and one former Chicago area resident, both Assyrian Christians from Iraq who founded an anti-Saddam Hussein political party. Another accuses the group of being influenced by "imperialists'' and "Zionists.'' Others include the exact dates of the group's meetings and conventions in Chicago and elsewhere, the names of the people who ran the events, those in attendance and what statements were made. Trips...

Accused spy had one-way ticket to Jordan WAR ON TERROR - Man accused of spying on Iraqi dissidents arrested one day before departure By MIKE ROBINSON Associated Press Writer CHICAGO -- An Arabic-language community newspaper publisher accused of spying on Iraqi dissidents in this country for Saddam Hussein's intelligence service apparently was planning to leave the country when he was arrested, an FBI agent testified Friday. Khaled Dumeisi, 61, was arrested on July 9, one day before the scheduled departure date on a one-way ticket to Jordan discovered in his home, agent Edward Lawson testified. The testimony came just before...

FoxNews just reported that an agent for Saddam Hussein has been arrested in Chicago. .....developing....

CHICAGO - A community newspaper publisher accused of spying on Iraqi dissidents in the United States was found guilty Monday of serving as an unregistered agent for Saddam Hussein. The jury took less than two hours to convict Khaled Abdel-Latif Dumeisi after the weeklong trial. "This sends an important message that people can't come to our country and spy on their fellow residents," U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald said. Dumeisi, 61, was convicted of failing to obey a federal law that requires agents of foreign governments to register with the Justice Department. Prosecutors maintained that the Palestinian-born Dumeisi spied on...

Guilty verdict in spying case Tue Jan 13,11:14 AM ET - Chicago Tribune By Matt O'Connor, Tribune staff reporter A federal jury deliberated less than three hours Monday before convicting a suburban Arabic-language newspaper publisher on charges he acted as a secret agent of Iraq before Saddam Hussein fall. The government alleged that since 1999, Palestinian-born Khaled Abdel-Latif Dumeisi provided information to Mukhabbarat, the Iraqi intelligence agency, about Hussein opponents living in the U.S. Prosecutors said Dumeisi betrayed the U.S. out of admiration for Hussein's support for the Palestinian cause and to get money for his cash-strapped publication, though he...

CHICAGO - A suburban Chicago newspaper publisher convicted of spying on Iraqi dissidents for Saddam Hussein was sentenced Wednesday to three years and 10 months in federal prison. Khaled Abdel-Latif Dumeisi, 61, is expected to be deported after he finishes his prison term. U.S. District Judge Suzanne B. Conlon also said he may not re-enter the United States without permission from the attorney general. "He helped to sustain a hostile foreign government," federal prosecutor Daniel Gillogly said in urging a tough sentence. Defense attorney William H. Theis argued that his client was not very important in the world of Iraqi...

Illinoispaytoplay.com (IP2P) has learned that Daniel S. Mahru, former business partner of Antoin "Tony" Rezko, made a deal with the Department of Justice (DoJ) for his silence. IP2P is the first to report that on, October 4 2012, Daniel S. Mahru will receive probation at his sentencing hearing. IP2P has also learned that this is being done to insure Mahru will not speak of crimes, of which he has knowledge, that implicate Barack Obama, Valarie Jarrett, Allison Davis, Tony Rezko and others. (Remember Tony recently saying he committed crimes for which Fitzgerald did not charge him.) IP2P is also investigating...

Whether the name of Richie Urso ever makes it into the corruption trial of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich next June is anybody's guess. You've probably never heard of Richie Urso. But the FBI sure has heard of him. His is a classic Chicago story, about a beefy yet charming guy born on Grand Avenue, who got in trouble with the law as a kid, only to make political friends and become extremely wealthy. He was arrested once for jewelry theft in the '60s by the Outfit's top Chicago police detective, William Hanhardt. Urso's alleged partner in the theft was the...

Pete Souza, Director and Chief Official White House Photographer, has released his 2014 version of “The Year In Pictures.” Would you like to play a game? Identify the book/movie that served as the inspiration for each of the photographs in his album. Extra credit if you can also provide actual quotes from the book/movie. Here are a few I recognized immediately, butt there are tons more to play with, so have a go at it. Girl With a Pearl Earring: “I hear you have been of great use to your master. All that grinding and stirring, eh?” - Van Ruijven Sunset...

Does anybody get the feeling the Dems are increasingly  desperate to find new talent that doesn't implode?  Weak bench if you ask me... and telling There's plenty of similarities between the way they promoted a poorly-vetted Wendy Davis in Texas -and now gubernatorial candidate (and political goober) Ed FitzGerald in Ohio-  only to collapse in a utterly failed effort. The Buckeye state Dems blame a firm they hired to vet him, so typical of leftists to point the finger when they screw something up. Both of these Democratic Party 'rising stars' imploded spectacularly, all but guaranteeing the Republicans will not only retain...

In case you missed it, GreetingsFromYonkers posted an insightful comment late Wednesday night on the limitations of Twitter in a semi-illiterate age: “Gosh, wholly apart from whether we do or don't know what we do or don't know, I have an even more basic issue with Twitter.It's the 140-character limit. Frankly, most people are not literate enough to work around this roadblock, which calls for exceptionally high vocabulary and syntax skills. Thus tweets end up being an incomprehensible mélange of clichéd abbreviations, or extremely superficial.Let's all close our eyes and imagine what Twitter would be like in the hands of...

WESTLAKE, Ohio – Officers responding to a call of suspicious behavior found Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald and a woman who was not his wife in a parked car at 4:30 a.m. on a Saturday in 2012, police records here show. Nothing inappropriate happened in the car, FitzGerald, now the Democratic nominee for governor, said Friday in a telephone interview after a campaign stop in Cincinnati. FitzGerald, a former FBI agent, prosecutor and mayor of Lakewood, was not charged with a crime. He said the woman with him was a friend visiting from Ireland as part of a larger delegation...