Free Republic

A small part of more than $800,000 that was parked in campaign accounts controlled by indicted or convicted California lawmakers is making its way back to contributors, but more than half a million dollars remains missing.. At the time of his arrest on bribery and corruption charges in March, Sen. Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) had $134,000 cash in his secretary of state campaign account and had weeks earlier sent more than $518,000 to a Los Angeles media agency for future campaign commercials. Campaign finance reports filed with the state by Thursday's reporting deadline show the indicted lawmaker had reduced that...

Over the objections of reputed gang figure Raymond "Shrimp Boy" Chow's lawyers, a federal judge has ordered that the government's evidence in a sweeping criminal case that includes political corruption charges against state Sen. Leland Yee must be kept secret for now. U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer imposed the restrictions Monday on every lawyer and defendant in the case, finding the material should be kept under wraps while both sides prepare for trial. Breyer rejected the free speech arguments of Chow's lawyer, J. Tony Serra, who insisted he should be able to reveal evidence to combat the government's public charges.

**SNIP** The investigation extended to Yee after an undercover FBI agent who had infiltrated Chow's group was introduced to the senator and allegedly persuaded him to trade political favors for campaign contributions. Lim became enmeshed in the case due to his political backing of Yee. According to a 137-page FBI affidavit, Yee introduced Lim to the undercover agent as a man who could secure guns. The agent, the FBI said, had asked Yee to facilitate an arms deal in exchange for more campaign money. The accusations prompted the Philippines government to open a probe into whether Lim had links to...

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) - Suspended California state Sen. Leland Yee could face a jury as early as June for charges of political corruption and conspiracy to import guns. At a scheduling conference on Thursday, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer said Yee will be tried along with his political consultant Keith Jackson, who also faces drug and murder-for-hire charges. Breyer said those charges will be tried separately, but lawyers for the defendants, including Yee's lawyer James Lassart, were not satisfied. "The firearms charges are going to be extremely prejudicial. The government has acquired 50 to 70 different firearms that, undoubtedly to...

Bulgaria plans to extradite a Frenchman suspected of knowing or having been in touch with one of the two Islamist militants who shot dead 12 people at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo’s offices last week, prosecutors said on Monday. Using a European arrest warrant alleging that he had abducted his 3-year-old son and was likely to take him to Syria, Bulgarian police arrested Fritz-Joly Joachin, 29, on January 1st at a border checkpoint when he tried to cross into Turkey.

>PATRICK J. FITZGERALDUNITED STATES ATTORNEYNORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOISPREPARED REMARKS FOR THESUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIME, TERRORISM, AND HOMELAND SECURITYCOMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARYU.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVESAPRIL 28, 2005INTRODUCTIONMr. Chairman, members of the Committee, thank you for asking me here today. I verymuch look forward to this opportunity to discuss with you how the efforts of the United StatesAttorney’s Offices in the investigation and prosecution of terrorists have changed since thepassage of the USA PATRIOT Act (“Patriot Act”) and, in particular, section 218 of the PatriotAct which helped to dismantle what was formerly known as “the wall” between intelligence andlaw enforcement.I will state up...

<p>Page 6 from document BIAP 2003-000654 is a Top Secret letter dated March/11/2001 six months prior to 9/11/2001, proves that not only Saddam Regime supported terrorists organization like Hamas and Al Qaeda as we have learned from other documents but also they were recruiting Suicide Terrorist Bombers to hit US interests. Saddam Regime was a TERRORIST REGIME and there was no other way but to destroy it after 9/11.</p>

DAKAR, Senegal — A girl perhaps no more than 10 years old detonated powerful explosives concealed under her veil at a crowded northern Nigeria market on Saturday, killing as many as 20 people and wounding many more. The blast inflicted devastating damage on shoppers at the Monday Market in Maiduguri, the shopping hub in a city that is at the heart of the Boko Haram insurgency. The explosion, witnessed by dozens of people, represented a new tactic in the Islamists’ campaign with their decision to use perhaps their youngest-ever suicide bomber. The terrorist group has increasingly employed women as suicide...

A veteran State Department diplomat and longtime Pakistan expert is under federal investigation as part of a counterintelligence probe and has had her security clearances withdrawn, according to U.S. officials. The FBI searched the Northwest Washington home of Robin L. Raphel last month, and her State Department office was also examined and sealed, officials said. Raphel, a fixture in Washington’s diplomatic and think-tank circles, was placed on administrative leave last month, and her contract with the State Department was allowed to expire this week. Two U.S. officials described the investigation as a counterintelligence matter, which typically involves allegations of spying...

A new issue of Inspire, the English-language online magazine produced by al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen, is devoted to “jihad on America” and suggests targeting major American figures as well as Western commercial airliners, according to a report Wednesday by SITE Intelligence Group. The issue is the 13th since Inspire was first published online in 2010. Its founder, Samir Zafar Khan, was born in Saudi Arabia to Pakistani parents but grew up in New York state. Khan, a blogger on jihadist themes who was well-known to U.S. intelligence, is believed to have traveled to Yemen and joined al-Qaeda in the Arabian...

Today, following a national security criminal investigation, the RCMP Ottawa Integrated National Security Enforcement Team (INSET) arrested and charged two individuals from Ottawa with a number of terrorism offences under the Criminal Code of Canada. Ashton Carleton Larmond (D.O.B. 1990-11-21) has been charged with Facilitating terrorist activity (Sec. 83.19), Participation in the activity of a terrorist group (Sec. 83.18), and for Instructing to carry out activity for a terrorist group (Sec. 83.21 (1)). Carlos Larmond (D.O.B. 1990-11-21) has been charged with Participation in the activity of a terrorist group (Sec. 83.18) and for Attempting to leave Canada to participate in...

Ten people have been reported killed in a what appears to be a terrorist attack in the offices of the Charlie Hebdo satire magazine on boulevard Richard-Lenoir in Paris (Paris XI). A policeman has also been wounded. At least 2 or 3 gunman are believed to have been involved, shooting Kalashnikov rifles. According to La Figaaro, the gunman are on the run after a shootout with policemen. The magazine has published anti-ISIS and Prophet Mohammed cartoons in the past.

Damascus, Jan 3 (IANS) Intense clashes were raging since Saturday morning between the Syrian troops backed by the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front militants in Lebanon. According to the anti-government Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), violent clashes flared up in the area of Flaita, in the western part of al-Qalamoun, in Lebanon, Xinhua reported. Meanwhile, al-Mayadeen TV denied reports that the Nusra fighters managed to storm a Hezbollah position in Flaita, adding that the clashes raged on. No reports of losses, however, have yet emerged. Syrian government troops have been fighting rebel groups and militants since...

President Obama on Saturday condemned the "barbaric murder" by al Qaeda of U.S. hostage Luke Somers in Yemen during a rescue attempt by U.S. forces. "On behalf of the American people, I offer my deepest condolences to Luke’s family and to his loved ones," he said in a statement. "As this and previous hostage rescue operations demonstrate, the United States will spare no effort to use all of its military, intelligence, and diplomatic capabilities to bring Americans home safely, wherever they are located. And terrorists who seek to harm our citizens will feel the long arm of American justice," he...

Obama quietly eliminated the NATIONAL DRUG INTELLIGENCE CENTER, that was monitoring terrorist activity on the border. Mexican cartel violence is at an all-time high along the increasingly porous southern border yet the Obama Administration has shut down a critical intelligence agency dedicated to identifying, tracking and severing the nexus between drug trafficking and terrorism. It’s a senseless move, which is why it was done very quietly. The only real way to discover that the Justice Department’s 19-year-old National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC) has been closed is by trying to visit its website. It simply says that on June 15, 2012,...

Only months ago convicted Terrorist Bill Ayers signed a pro-abortion petition from Stop Patriarchy, a communist pro-choice group, against Texas law HB2 now closing several abortion clinics in the state. Bill Ayers was a member of the terrorist group the Weather Underground which blew up buildings and terrorized America in the 1960’s. Bill Ayers FBI Weather Underground Now, the former terrorist himself, has conducted an interview with Kourosh Ziabari a reporter with Iran’s leading news outlet Fars News Agerncy, where he calls the United States a “terrorist nation” which is in a “decisive decline.”

An Al Qaeda terrorist on the FBI’s most wanted list for years crossed back and forth into the United States from Mexico to meet fellow militant Islamists in Texas and piloted an aircraft into the Cielo Dorado airfield in Anthony, New Mexico, law enforcement sources tell Judicial Watch. The same Al Qaeda operative helped plan the 2009 bombing of talk-show superstar Oprah Winfrey’s Chicago studios and the iconic Sears Tower (renamed Willis Tower), a story that Judicial Watch broke just last week. His name is Adnan G. El Shukrijumah (also known as “Javier Robles”) and over the weekend he was...

Megyn Kelly has compelling interview

Former Vice President Dick Cheney offered a full-throated defense of the Central Intelligence Agency on Monday, arguing that its harsh interrogations of terrorism suspects a decade ago were “absolutely, totally justified” and dismissing a new Senate report criticizing them. Mr. Cheney, who was a vocal champion of those techniques after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and has never accepted the widespread description of them as torture, said he had not read the report that the Intelligence Committee is expected to release on Tuesday. But from news reports about it, he said he had heard nothing to change his mind...

U.S. embassies around the world are bracing for a potentially explosive report about to be released that details what the CIA did to terror suspects in the days after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, and the fear is that its release could threaten American lives. The report, due to be released Tuesday by the Senate, is described as shocking in its very graphic descriptions of secret interrogations, including some details that have never been heard before. All U.S. facilities around the world are being urged to review security and brace for the reaction, with concern particularly high in areas where...