Free Republic

The first commanding officer of SEAL Team Six - the US military's vaunted counter-terrorism unit that would hunt down and kill Osama Bin Laden - died Sunday at age 81. Richard 'Dick' Marcinko was tasked with designing the counter-terrorist team after the Iran hostage crisis in 1979. Marcinko, along with another Navy representative, was on a task force to help free the American hostages in Iran, but were unsuccessful. The mission, known as Operation Eagle Claw, highlighted deficiencies within the US military command structure and revealed the need for a full-time counter-terrorist team. Marcinko launched the United States' third SEAL...

The material suggests that Gaetz’s father was told his son’s legal problems could go away if he gave $25 million to help secure the release of Iranian hostage Bob Levinson. --- The scandal swirling around Rep. Matt Gaetz took a stunning turn Wednesday with the news that a former Air Force intelligence official and a Florida lawyer tried to get the congressman’s dad to cough up $25 million that would be used to free American Bob Levinson from Iranian custody—and somehow release Gaetz from a federal sex-crimes investigation. And if that wasn’t enough, here’s one more strange fact: Levinson was...

There are many "what would you do?" scenario in law enforcement. In this video not sure if this is a training exercise or a real world life threatening situation from the Far East Asia. Scenario looks to be a hostage taking at a hospital. The bad guy has a cleaver to a female nurse’s neck. While a male (maybe a PO) is trying to talk to him, possibly to get him to calm down. He is shown making a call over the radio. A second female nurse arrives with something in her left hand. She is holding it out as...

ISLAMABAD — A 72-year-old American development worker who was kidnapped in Pakistan by al-Qaeda more than two years ago appealed to President Obama in a video released Thursday to negotiate his release, saying he feels “totally abandoned and forgotten.” The video of Warren Weinstein was the first since two videos released in September 2012. Weinstein, the country director in Pakistan for J.E. Austin Associates, a U.S.-based firm that advises a range of Pakistani business and government sectors, was abducted from his house in the eastern city of Lahore in August 2011. **SNIP** “Nine years ago I came to Pakistan to...

FBI agents die in Virginia training accidentPair of agents from elite hostage rescue team (excerpt)

Argentina's relations with the U.S. worsened sharply Monday as the South American country continued to hold military equipment it confiscated last week from a U.S. Air Force C-17 transport plane sent as part of a training course for local police. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Arturo Valenzuela, called on Argentina to return the property without delay. "It's absolutely necessary that they immediately return that material. It makes no sense for it to have been confiscated this way. This material was intended for a joint exercise in training people to rescue hostages," Mr. Valenzuela Monday said on...

Military officials in Pakistan say a siege by militants near the army's headquarters in Rawalpindi, near the capital, Islamabad, is over. Commando forces raided a building where militants were holding hostages just before dawn Sunday. Four militants, two soldiers and three hostages were killed during the operation. Another wounded militant was captured. The violence began just before midday Saturday when a group of heavily armed militants in army uniforms tried to enter the Pakistani military headquarters. As soon as they were stopped at a main check post, the attackers lobbed several grenades and opened fire with automatic weapons on the...

An American engineer held hostage by Islamic militants in Afghanistan was freed in a daring nighttime raid by a Special Operations team last month, a rare move in a country where hostages often pay ransoms — or don't come home at all. A team of about 30 special operators composed mostly of Navy SEALs flew into the mountains outside Kabul on October 14 to retrieve the 61-year-old American businessman, killing his captors and returning him to safety after nearly two months in captivity, according to an account in the Army Times. -snip-

I am going to be interviewed on Pat Dollard's radio show tonight concernign events surrounding the Iranian Revolution and events leading up to the Hostage Rescue Attempt in Iran. The show is a 2200 Eastern and 1900 Pacific time that's 10 PM Eastern and 7 PM eastern for you civilian types. :P

A sensation in the 'Nord-Ost' case: the victims of the tragedy could for the first time read the attorney general's resolution refusing to bring a criminal complaint Judge Susina's achievement. The intriguing part of the sensation, and not there would be no sensation at all, if the machines of government had simply carried out the law. The 'Nord-Ost' victims had no access to the case materials for more than two years. The ice began to crack only on November 11th, 2004, and only as if by accident. Judge Natalya Susina of the capital's Zamoskvoreche law court, during the course of...

THE editor of Melbourne's The Age newspaper has defended Australia's Journalist of the Year, Paul McGeough, in the wake of revelations that he may have erred in two significant reports he filed from Iraq. McGeough claimed in an article published in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald that former Iraqi interim leader Iyad Allawi shot dead as many as six prisoners in June last year. But the story was discredited by a report yesterday that Iraqi officials and US special forces bodyguards assigned to Allawi had passed lie detector tests in denying the murder allegations. "My view is that...

<p>Tune in tonight as The Wall Street Journal editorial board discusses the battle for the Senate, the Haitian refugee situation, the fallout of Russia's hostage-rescue operation, the trial lawyers' latest shenanigans, and the issue of free speech in the workplace. OpinionJournal.com's "Political Diary" columnist John Fund. joins the panel for a segment on voter fraud and election litigation.</p>