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Where is CIA Director Gen. David Petraeus? He seems to be the missing man in the unfolding Benghazi debacle. It is his agency, among others, which is being fingered by the White House for getting the Libya attack wrong. However, we know that within a very short time after the murder of our ambassador (an extraordinary occurrence) and others, our intelligence community did have the story straight: This was an organized al-Qaeda attack. Is he to preside over a witchhunt? Or is he, who to date has been one of the most respected national security officials, going to be instrumental...

Where is CIA Director Gen. David Petraeus? He seems to be the missing man in the unfolding Benghazi debacle. It is his agency, among others, which is being fingered by the White House for getting the Libya attack wrong. However, we know that within a very short time after the murder of our ambassador (an extraordinary occurrence) and others, our intelligence community did have the story straight: This was an organized al-Qaeda attack. Is he to preside over a witchhunt? Or is he, who to date has been one of the most respected national security officials, going to be instrumental...

The last few weeks have produced many intriguing political moments, but none as shocking as the revelation that President Obama has been absent from the vast majority of his daily intelligence briefings. According to a study by the Government Accountability Institute, Obama failed to attend a single Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) in the week leading up to the recent anniversary of 9/11 and the chaos that erupted in the Arab world. The mere fact that we were approaching 9/11 was a crucial enough reason to attend not one but all the briefings. President Obama attended none. Worse, this is apparently...

WASHINGTON - U.S. intelligence efforts in Libya have suffered a significant setback due to the abandonment and exposure of a facility in Benghazi, Libya identified by a newspaper as a "CIA base" following a congressional hearing this week, according to U.S. government sources.(Snip) The publication of satellite photos showing the site's location and layout have made it difficult, if not impossible, for intelligence agencies to reoccupy the site, according to government sources, speaking on condition of anonymity. The post had been a base for, among other things, collecting information on the proliferation of weaponry looted from Libyan government arsenals,

ACHIEVING an IQ score higher than Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking seems almost impossible, but not for one young girl. Northwood College School pupil, Fabiola Mann, of Harrow on the Hill, scored a remarkable IQ of 162 in this summer’s University of London’s (UCL) Mensa medical test. It is the highest possible score anyone can achieve in the UK and European test. The 15-year-old beat physicists Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein, who both scored 160 when they took it. Being a whizz kid at puzzles and mathematical tests, Fabiola decided to give it a go, she sat the test on...

James Clapper, director of National Intelligence (DNI), has come out swinging against his critics, just two weeks after his public affairs director said that US intelligence had initially labeled the attacks on our Benghazi consulate “spontaneous.” Back on September 28, the DNI public affairs director explained, “We provided that initial assessment to Executive Branch officials and members of Congress, who used that information to discuss the attack publicly and provide updates as they became available. As we learned more ... we revised our initial assessment to reflect new information indicating that it was a deliberate and organized terrorist attack carried...

This situation can end the president's reign of terror. Video Link

Joe Klein: "Bigoted" If You Don't Think Obama's Intelligent - The Chris Matthews ShowOn Chris Matthews' weekend talk show, NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell and Time Magazine's Joe Klein teamed up to insulate President Obama from attack, insinuating that questioning the President's intelligence and work ethic in the wake of a lackluster debate performance is racist. First up, Andrea Mitchell recounted an exchange she had with Romney campaign co-chair John Sununu in which Sununu said Obama "revealed his incompetence, how lazy and detached he is, and how he has absolutely no idea how serious the economic problems of the country are."...

“There is usually only a limited amount of damage that can be done by dull or stupid people. For creating a truly monumental disaster, you need people with high IQs.” — Thomas Sowell ***** 1) They may believe that learning about something is the same as doing it. When you’ve gone to school for years, read hundreds of books, and talked to “experts” about a subject, there’s a tendency to believe that you can learn everything you possibly need to know about something without ever doing it. Unfortunately, there are some things in life you can just never understand without...

WASHINGTON — Extremists from groups linked to al Qaida struck the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, in a “deliberate and organized terrorist attack,” the top U.S. intelligence agency said Friday, as it took responsibility for the Obama administration’s initial claims that the deadly assault grew from a spontaneous protest against an anti-Islam video. The unusual statement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence appeared to have two goals: updating the public on the latest findings of the investigation into the assault, and shielding the White House from a political backlash over its original accounts.

Despite repeated, self-serving claims by Obama officials that the Administration did everything it could to head off and then respond appropriately to the violence against American facilities in Libya and Egypt last week, their blunders in policy, intelligence and security illustrates an incompetence every bit as profound as exhibited by the administration of Jimmy Carter in Iran 33 years ago. It appears nothing has been learned in more than three decades; despite significant gains in technology available to the U.S. government during those intervening years. In 1979, the Carter Administration precipitously abandoned the Shah of Iran, Washington’s long-time and loyal...

The CIA claims that it never saw the storm coming, but Canadian intelligence sure did. Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird landed in Vladivostok, Russia, earlier this month for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit and had barely stepped off the plane when he announced that Canada would be pulling its diplomats out of Iran and closing its embassy while kicking all Iranian diplomats out of Canada. At the time, some thought that maybe the minister had a few too many mini vodkas on the ride over. Several days later, when protests and embassy attacks erupted in Islamic nations, and the...

Washington: The US National Security Archive has fully declassified the most controversial nuclear policy document of the Cold War, the Presidential Directive 59 (PD-59) http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Presidential-Directive-59 , which focused on a possible nuclear war with the Soviet Union. The full text of the document, available on the US National Security Archive page at George Washington University's website, provides insights about the thinking of key US officials about the state of nuclear planning and the possible progression of events should war break out. In a surprising reverse from previous policies, PD-59 called for pre-planned nuclear strike options and capabilities for rapid development...

In Libya, U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three colleagues were murdered Tuesday. Earlier that day, protesters in Egypt stormed the U.S. embassy and tore down the American flag. It was "the day the roof fell in," proclaimed blogger and historian Walter Russell Mead. Barack Obama's "efforts to reconcile the U.S. and moderate Islamism -- in part by distancing the U.S. from Israel -- have angered Israel without reducing Islamist bitterness against the United States." In other words, his Middle East policies are in shambles. His assumption that a president "who doesn't look like other presidents" would endear America to Arabs...

FORT HUACHUCA - The tips of fingers are sensitive, they can tell much to a person about what is felt and, in the world of intelligence gathering, ascertaining the intentions of an enemy many times requires a slight touch, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency said last week. “It’s pretty stunning how far the intelligence community has come. How integrated we are. How interagency dependent we are,” Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn said Wednesday. But in a constantly changing, violent-prone world, those engaged in intelligence work not only have to be current but be ahead of interpreting potential changes, said...

While it has been customary for presidential nominees of major political parties to receive intelligence briefings during the campaign, the Obama Administration has neglected to follow this precedent until now. “We didn’t think it’d be such a big deal,” said Thomas Donilon, Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. “I mean, the President himself is hardly ever at the intel briefings. How could it be important for someone who’s not even part of the government to get this info?” if you missed any of this week's other semi-news posts you can find them at... http://azconservative.org/2012/09/15/attacks-on-us-embassies-seen-as-boost-for-presidents-reelection/

White House says 'no intelligence’ could have been acted on to prevent attacksBy Jonathan Easley - 09/14/12 12:40 PM ET The White House on Friday said a report stating the president failed to act on knowledge of a potential attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya was “absolutely wrong.” White House press secretary Jay Carney said there was “no actionable intelligence” ahead of the attack that killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens. “There was no intelligence that could in any way have been acted on to prevent these attacks,” he said. “The report was false.” Embassies...

Concerned about the reaction to an anti-Muslim film that was gaining attention online, the U.S. intelligence community sent a cable to the embassy in Egypt warning of the concern, a U.S. official told CNN. It was sent 48 hours before the protests in Cairo and Benghazi, the official said. The cable did not discuss any specific threat, the official said. It warned instead about the existence of the movie being posted on the internet and the fact that it was gaining attention. A seven minute portion of the movie aired on an Egyptian TV talk show the weekend before the...

According to the White House calendar, there is no public record of President Barack Obama attending his daily intelligence briefing–known as the Presidential Daily Brief (PDB)–in the week leading up to the attacks on the U.S. embassy in Cairo and the murder of U.S. Libyan Ambassador Chris Stevens and three American members of his staff...