Free Republic

CIA Director Leon Panetta has terminated a "very serious" covert program the spy agency kept secret from Congress for eight years, Rep. Jan Schakowsky, a House Intelligence subcommittee chairwoman, said Friday. Schakowsky is pressing for an immediate committee investigation of the classified program, which has not been described publicly. Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-TX), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has said he is considering an investigation. "The program is a very, very serious program and certainly deserved a serious debate at the time and through the years," Schakowsky said in an interview with The Associated Press. "But now it's...

Panetta kills secret spy program By: Alex Isenstadt July 10, 2009 11:56 AM EST The ongoing tussle between Congress and the CIA deepened Friday as a congresswoman said that CIA Director Leon Panetta had killed an eight-year-long covert spy program that had operated without the knowledge of Congress. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) told The Associated Press Friday that the program in question was "very, very serious," adding that it "certainly deserved a serious debate at the time and through the years." Schakowksy, who serves as chairwoman of the Intelligence Oversight & Investigations Subcommittee, also called for a full investigation into...

The wife of the new head of Britain's spy agency has posted pictures of her husband, family and friends on internet networking site Facebook, details which could compromise security, a newspaper said on Sunday. In what the Mail on Sunday called an "extraordinary lapse," the new spy chief's wife, Lady Shelley Sawers, posted family pictures and exposed details of where the couple live and take their holidays and who their friends and relatives are. Publishing the story on its front page and the pictures on a double-page spread, the Mail on Sunday said the information "could potentially be useful to...

McCain explicitly included the Fifth Amendment in his legislation because it addresses his target, coercive interrogation. As we’ve seen, in Dickerson, the Supreme Court held that Miranda was now considered part of the Fifth Amendment’s core. In the al-Owhali case, Judge Sand ruled that Miranda imposes daunting burdens on American agents overseas — burdens far more challenging than the rote reading of an advice-of-rights card that typically happens in domestic policing. With the Supreme Court, beginning in 2004, imposing more and more criminal-justice procedure on the battlefield, the McCain Amendment would almost certainly be used by courts or a Democratic...

SPY UNIVERSITIES: EX-FOREIGN ESPIONAGE OPERATIVE REVEALS HOW PROFS., STUDENTS, AND OTHERS, ARE RECRUITED TO UNDERMINE AMERICA International News Analysis Today Updated June 10, 2009 By Toby Westerman U.S. universities are important recruiting grounds for foreign spies, according to a former intelligence operative who has defected to the United States, and issued a report giving a rare glimpse into the intelligence operations of one of America's most determined espionage foes. Jose Cohen Valdes was a Cuban intelligence officer employed in several areas of information acquisition and analysis in Havana, and has documented his nation's penetration of U.S. universities in a report...

Note: The following text is a quote: Former State Department Official and Wife Arrested for Serving as Illegal Agents of Cuba for Nearly 30 Years Couple Allegedly Conspired to Provide Classified Information to Cuban Government A former State Department official and his wife have been arrested on charges of serving as illegal agents of the Cuban government for nearly 30 years and conspiring to provide classified U.S. information to the Cuban government. The arrests were announced today by David Kris, Assistant Attorney General for National Security; Channing D. Phillips, Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia; Joseph Persichini, Jr.,...

On his trip to get a burger with Brian Williams at Five Guys this afternoon, the President appears to have learned of the existence of a Defense Department intelligence arm, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, from an agency employee also at the burger restaurant. "So explain to me exactly what this National Geospatial..." Obama said, after the worker mentioned his employer, according to a video of the event. "We work with, uh, satellite imagery," the worker, Walter replied. A POLITICO reader caught the exchange, which starts around 5:45 on this C-SPAN video. The transcript: Obama: What do you do Walter?...

Jeffrey Rosen has written a few times about Obama's SCOTUS nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, and her "compelling" life story. Compelling? Whatever....so is Justice Thomas' story. That didn't help him a whole lot during confirmation tho. What's even more interesting is the view of her from those who have worked with her: Over the past few weeks, I've been talking to a range of people who have worked with her, nearly all of them former law clerks for other judges on the Second Circuit or former federal prosecutors in New York. Most are Democrats and all of them want President Obama to...

In a little over 100 days, the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress have delivered a series of blows to the pride and morale of the Central Intelligence Agency. It began with the release of the Justice Department memos - a move opposed by CIA Director Leon Panetta along with four previous directors.Then, Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. did not rule out Justice Department cooperation with foreign lawsuits against American intelligence operatives.Then, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused the CIA of lying to her in 2002 about waterboarding, which she admitted learning about five months later anyway but did nothing to...

WASHINGTON, (AP) -- The Pentagon said Monday it no longer includes a Bible quote on the cover page of daily intelligence briefings it sends to the White House as was practice during the Bush administration.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's war with the CIA could not come at a worse time for America's beleaguered intelligence agencies. When the United States needs its intelligence arms the most - to combat terrorism, track Iran's nuclear-weapons program and fend off foreign espionage - they are under assault from many quarters.

The New Yorker has a fascinating essay this week on self-control in children and the role it plays in their life chances. The story starts with a Stanford academic who experimented on whether children when left alone with a sweet of their choice would delay eating it in exchange for being allowed to eat two later. The study found that when these children grew up “the child who could wait fifteen minutes had an S.A.T. score that was, on average, two hundred and ten points higher than that of the kid who could wait only thirty seconds.” Another study in...

Women with brains have more fun in bed than the average bimbo, new research suggests. A study of more than 2,000 female twins showed that those with greater emotional intelligence had larger numbers of orgasms. Emotional intelligence (EI) is the ability to monitor and manage feelings and emotions in oneself and others. The findings suggest that low EI is a risk factor for female orgasmic disorder, one of the most common sexual problems suffered by women. Up to 30 per cent of women find it difficult or impossible to reach a climax during sexual intercourse. Professor Tim Spector, director of...

Unification ministry closes N. Korea aid unit, bolsters intelligence By Kim Hyun SEOUL, May 12 (Yonhap) -- South Korea's unification ministry on Tuesday closed its bureau on humanitarian aid to North Korea and created a new one to better analyze Pyongyang's internal politics as part of government restructuring. The Cabinet approved the ministry's proposal to shut down its Humanitarian Cooperation Bureau and set up the tentatively-named Political Analysis Bureau, Kim Jung-tae, assistant minister for planning and coordination, said in a press briefing. "The restructuring aims to strengthen the ministry's long-term unification policy and intelligence analysis and merge overlapped low-level units,"...

Since leaving my post as CIA director almost three years ago, I have remained largely silent on the public stage. I am speaking out now because I feel our government has crossed the red line between properly protecting our national security and trying to gain partisan political advantage. We can't have a secret intelligence service if we keep giving away all the secrets. Americans have to decide now. A disturbing epidemic of amnesia seems to be plaguing my former colleagues on Capitol Hill. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, members of the committees charged with overseeing our nation's intelligence services...

“Since feeling is first,” wrote e.e. cummings, one who “pays any attention to the syntax of things will never wholly kiss you.” As it turns out, modern science thoroughly supports the poet’s insight; for studies show that from making moral judgments to sizing up a stranger, humans first utilize the part of the brain in which emotions arise. This primacy of feeling also explains why psychology assigns a great deal of importance not just to the first emotion with which a person reacts to a “stimulus” but also to its intensity. Now, not to worry; for this piece won’t attempt...

(IsraelNN.com) According to a classified intelligence assessment handed to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, U.S. President Barack Obama and his senior advisors wish to “incrementally diminish U.S. strategic cooperation with Israel.” A report in World Tribune quoted an Israeli source familiar with the intelligence assessment who said that "Obama wants to make friends with our worst enemies and [those who were] until now the worst enemies of the United States. Under this policy,” the source added, “we are more than irrelevant. We have become an obstacle.”

Security forces launched a major operation in Buner on Tuesday after intelligence agencies intercepted a telephone conversation of Swat Taliban chief Maulana Fazlullah with his ‘commanders’ which revealed their plan to take over the area after faking a withdrawal. The operation led by the inspector general of Frontier Corps (FC) was being backed by army troops and air force jets, Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Director General Maj-Gen Athar Abbas said at a press briefing. He said the operation in Lower Dir had been completed, around 70 militants had been killed and others flushed out of the area. He said there...

It is time for all combat veterans from all past wars to explain to our unknowing government officials what actually constitutes torture. We who have served know that America has never used torture as has been practiced by many other nations and non-uniformed terrorists who represent no one nation or country. The Bataan Death March of broken, starving and dead bodies was torture; the cutting off of fingers, tongues, ears, or other body parts by Saddam Hussein was torture. Through the ages of so-called civilization, torture was always defined as interrogation that caused extreme physical pain, generally causing blood to...

THE hunt for a nest of female suicide bombers in Chechnya led an elite group of Russian special forces commandos to a small village deep in the countryside. There they surrounded a modest house just before dawn to be sure of catching their quarry unawares. When the order came to storm the single-storey property, dozens of heavily armed men in masks and camouflage uniforms - unmarked to conceal their identity - had no difficulty in overwhelming the three women inside. Their captives were driven to a military base.

Congressional Republicans, led by House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Peter Hoekstra (R-MI), came out swinging against President Barack Obama's apparent new-found willingness to entertain the possibility of prosecuting former Bush Administration officials for decisions made regarding enhanced interrogations. Hoekstra (R-MI), penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal declaring that if Democrats wanted to conduct an investigation, Republicans would make sure Congressional Democrats were the subjects of the probe right along with the Bush Administration. House Minority Leader John Boehner echoed Hokestra's sentiments, saying that there was little that could be learned from any investigation that Congressional leaders did not...

Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair got it right last week when he noted how easy it is to condemn the enhanced interrogation program "on a bright sunny day in April 2009." Reactions to this former CIA program, which was used against senior al Qaeda suspects in 2002 and 2003, are demonstrating how little President Barack Obama and some Democratic members of Congress understand the dire threats to our nation. George Tenet, who served as CIA director under Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, believes the enhanced interrogations program saved lives. He told CBS's "60 Minutes" in April 2007:...

The damage at CIA may have deadly consequences!The Politico reports that Obama's missteps on "torture" are "muddled" and "confused." The idea that an incoming Administration will investigate and prosecute it's predecessor is wrong on so many levels. In this case, the direct impact may be felt hardest by those charged with the difficult job of discovering where the next terrorist attack will come. Slow Roll Time At Langley By David Ignatius Washington Post Wednesday, April 22, 2009 ...Sad to say, it's slow roll time at Langley after the release of interrogation memos that, in the words of one veteran officer,...

At the Central Intelligence Agency, it's known as "slow rolling." That's what agency officers sometimes do on politically sensitive assignments. They go through the motions; they pass cables back and forth; they take other jobs out of the danger zone; they cover their backsides...in the words of one veteran officer, "hit the agency like a car bomb in the driveway." President Obama promised CIA officers that they won't be prosecuted for carrying out lawful orders, but the people on the firing line don't believe him. They think the memos have opened a new season of investigation and retribution. The lesson...

Mark Levin provided a lecture on history last night to President Barack Obama about the law and the decisions made by Lincoln, FDR, and others when American lives hung in the balance. "If we get hit again, that blood is on Obama's hands." It makes no logical difference that Bybee could have foreseen that the result of his incorrect legal advice would be the commission of a crime. Gorelick could have foreseen that the consequences of her incorrect legal advice would permit the commission of a crime (just read her memo ... and you will see that the warning signs...

The Obama grandstanding tour took a domestic turn with his release of four highly classified Justice Department legal opinions about interrogation. The political point of their release was to signal the end of “a dark and painful chapter in our history,” as President Obama put it — See, we’re not like those lawless Bushies. There’s a cost to this preening. Foreign intelligence services will rethink cooperating with us, knowing how bad we are at keeping secrets. Obama’s relationship with the intelligence community will be strained. And al-Qaeda now knows important details of the CIA’s controversial enhanced-interrogation program and will doubtless...

Barack Obama's decision to give the nod to Congress and his attorney general to investigate and possibly prosecute former Bush administration officials opens a Pandora's Box that could ultimately consume his presidency. When he released the four so-called "torture" memos - the Obama administration has now all but abandoned their use of the t-word - the new president, who has yet to pass the early landmark of 100 days in office - insisted he wanted to "move forward". He added that "at a time of great challenges and disturbing disunity, nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy...

The Obama administration's top intelligence official privately told employees last week that "high value information" was obtained in interrogations that included harsh techniques approved by former President George W. Bush. "A deeper understanding of the al-Qaida network" resulted, National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair said in the memo, in which he added, "I like to think I would not have approved those methods in the past." The Associated Press obtained a copy. Critics of the harsh methods—waterboarding, face slapping, sleep deprivation and other techniques—have called them torture. President Barack Obama said Tuesday they showed the United States "losing our moral bearings"...

Now that the memos showing the rulings of interrogation techniques have been released, the Obama administration should release additional documents that show what the interrogations yielded, former Vice President Dick Cheney told FOX News on Monday. In an interview with FOX News' Sean Hannity to be aired on "Hannity" Monday night, Cheney questioned the point of releasing the legal decisions behind the interrogations but not the outcome of them. Watch "Hannity" at 9 p.m. ET on FOX News Channel. "One of the things that I find a little bit disturbing about this recent disclosure is they put out the legal...

"Gregory Cochran has always been drawn to puzzles. This one had been gnawing at him for several years: Why are European Jews prone to so many deadly genetic diseases?"

Five former military personnel have come forward to reveal that they worked at the secretive Area 51 testing facility. While stationed at Area 51 they claimed they worked on top secret CIA and military projects including a supersonic jet that could travel at three times the speed of sound. The appearance and flight performance of the top secret OXCART program led it to being often mistaken as a UFO according to the whistleblowers. A Los Angeles Times article with their testimonies concluded that the UFO mystery has been solved. Before celebrating the solution of the UFO mystery, it’s worth considering...

The US government has endorsed a plan to build a new generation of spy satellites, although funding to boost the Pentagon's imaging capacity still needs congressional approval. Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair said Tuesday that his agency and the Department of Defense had finalized a plan to modernize the fleet of US observation satellites. "Imagery is a core component of our national security that supports our troops, foreign policy, homeland security and the needs of our intelligence community," Blair said in a statement. He said the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), which oversees all US spy...

UCLA researchers find that genes determine brain's processing speed They say a picture tells a thousand stories, but can it also tell how smart you are? Actually, say UCLA researchers, it can. In a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience Feb. 18, UCLA neurology professor Paul Thompson and colleagues used a new type of brain-imaging scanner to show that intelligence is strongly influenced by the quality of the brain's axons, or wiring that sends signals throughout the brain. The faster the signaling, the faster the brain processes information. And since the integrity of the brain's wiring is influenced by...

Chas Freeman was not the only questionable selection by Intelligence Chief Dennis Blair. Newsweek is reporting problems with another pick another Blair pick: John Deutch. Deutch is a former head of the CIA who was a bit sloppy with our nations secrets : Add president Obama's national intelligence czar, Dennis Blair, to the list of embattled top-level appointees. Blair, a retired four-star Navy admiral who attended Oxford with Bill Clinton, courted controversy among pro-Israel and anti-China activists this month when he named Charles (Chas) Freeman, an outspoken former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, to chair the National Intelligence Council, a committee...

Add president Obama's national intelligence czar, Dennis Blair, to the list of embattled top-level appointees. Blair, a retired four-star Navy admiral who attended Oxford with Bill Clinton, courted controversy among pro-Israel and anti-China activists this month when he named Charles (Chas) Freeman, an outspoken former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, to chair the National Intelligence Council, a committee of the government's top intel analysts. After House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other pols complained to the White House, Freeman abruptly withdrew. Now both Republican and Democratic intel experts are raising questions about another Blair pick: John Deutch, a former CIA director once...

If you surf the Internet, you've seen the ads for IQ tests which claim: Barack Obama's IQ is (the numbers vary from 135-171); Joe Biden's is 150; Hillary Clinton's is 155 and so on. Naturally, Republicans are rated much lower and a fake article on the presidents' IQ once claimed that George Bush's IQ was the lowest of all. The ad goes on to ask-Are you smarter than...? Well, I am and I can prove it unlike all these so-called claims of how smart our newly elected president is. There may be substance to these judgments of Barack Obama's intelligence,...

Two people have been killed in a shooting at a school in southwest Germany, local media reports say. A number of people are also thought to have been wounded in the incident in Winnenden, near Stuttgart. Reports say the gunman wore a black combat uniform and fled into the town. However, local police were not immediately available to comment.

WASHINGTON – Iran does not yet have any highly enriched uranium, the fuel needed to make a nuclear warhead, two top U.S. intelligence officials told Congress Tuesday, disputing a claim by an Israeli official. U.S. National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair and Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt. Gen. Michael Maples said Tuesday that Iran has only low-enriched uranium — which would need to be refined into highly enriched uranium before it can fuel a warhead. Neither officials said there were indications that refining has occurred.

UH-OH Based on what Chas Freeman's Son Said this weekend, there are members of the Senate who are cruising for a bruising. Seven US Senators sent a letter to Dennis Blair the Director of National Intelligence, objecting to his pick of former ambassador Chas Freeman as Chairman of the NIC. The letter focuses on Freeman's lack of experience as well as his controversial remarks regarding Chinese protesters and Israel to exclude him from the position:

IDF Intelligence Chief Gen. Amos Yadlin confirmed on Sunday, in his monthly briefing to the Cabinet, that ayatollah-controlled Iran has the technology to develop a nuclear bomb - and that it is taking advantage of U.S. President Obama's dialogue policy. “Iran has crossed the technological threshold,” Yadlin said, “such that its reaching military nuclear capabilities is a matter of adapting its strategy to the target of manufacturing a nuclear bomb.” The bottom line, according to Yadlin, is that it is entirely up to Iran’s decision makers, independent of outside considerations and factors, to decide when to proceed with producing the...

WASHINGTON, March 6, 2009 – Iraq’s internal intelligence community is gradually making the transition from wartime to peacetime operations, a senior U.S. advisor told Defense Department bloggers and online journalists. Iraq’s National Information and Investigation Agency -- similar to the FBI -- is training to remove legal gray areas from criminal investigations in the middle of a counterinsurgency fight, Army Col. Benjamin Lukefahr said at a March 4 Blogger’s Roundtable, hosted by the department’s Emerging Media directorate. The processes they are learning apply to national security, major crimes and generic law and order, he said. Lukefahr, a senior advisor to...

Interesting experiment. Google suggest offers to complete searches based on other popular searches. The "researcher" asked a similar question two different ways - one in what they called a less intelligent fashion. The Google suggestions came our radically different.

FORT HUACHUCA — One of the legends in the enlisted military intelligence community honored a young soldier on Tuesday afternoon. Retired Command Sgt. Maj. Douglass S. Russell presented the award named after him to 23-year-old Sgt. Julian M. Jones at a ceremony in Fitch Auditorium, where a worldwide conference of senior intelligence noncommissioned officers is being held this week. Deciding who would receive the 2009 Command Sgt. Maj. Doug Russell Award was difficult, said Command Sgt. Maj. Gerardus Wykoff, who is the Military Intelligence Corps, Intelligence Center and Fort Huachuca senior NCO. There were eight candidates for the honor, which...

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.whitehouse.gov/agenda/foreign_policy/ THE AGENDA • FOREIGN POLICY THE AGENDA FOREIGN POLICY President Obama and Vice President Biden will renew America’s security and standing in the world through a new era of American leadership. The Obama-Biden foreign policy will end the war in Iraq responsibly, finish the fight against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan, secure nuclear weapons and loose nuclear materials from terrorists, and renew American diplomacy to support strong alliances and to seek a lasting peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Afghanistan and Pakistan Afghanistan: Obama and Biden will refocus American resources on...

The appointment by the Obama administration of Charles “Chas” Freeman as chairman of the National Intelligence Council on Thursday caused some outrage, In fact it this confidence inspiring pick from President Obama made Sean Casey's Outrage of the day.

National Security: Imagine one of China's and Saudi Arabia's mouthpieces in America writing intelligence reports for the White House. Meet Chas Freeman, who will soon fill all three roles.National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair has named Freeman to head his council of advisers, an influential post that, regrettably, does not require Senate confirmation. As National Intelligence Council chairman, Freeman will serve as a key intelligence adviser to President Obama and will prepare his daily briefings and the all-important National Intelligence Estimate on foreign threats. The job demands an uncompromising objectivity that Freeman can't possibly deliver, given his conflicts of interest involving...

http://www.dni.gov/testimonies/20090225_testimony.pdf Annual Threat Assessment of the Intelligence Community for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Dennis C. Blair Director of National Intelligence 25February 2009 HPSCI ATA FEB 2009–IC STATEMENT FOR THE RECORD 1 February2009 HOUSE PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTTEE ON INTELLIGENCE FEBRUARY 2009 INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY ANNUAL THREAT ASSESSMENT UNCLASSIFIED STATEMENT FOR THE RECORD Chairman Reyes, Ranking Member Hoekstra, Members of the Committee, thank you for the invitation to offer my assessment of threats to US national security. As in previous years, the judgments I offer the Committee in these documents and remarks and in myresponses to your questions are based...

...The news Web site Politico.com yesterday reported that it could confirm rumors that a former Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Charles "Chas" Freeman Jr., has been appointed chairman. (My calls to the White House and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence produced neither confirmation nor denial.).... Unsurprisingly, Mr. Freeman has views about Middle East policy that differ rather sharply from those held by supporters of the state of Israel. More surprisingly, they also differ rather sharply from the views -- or at least the views stated during the campaign -- of the president who has invited him to serve....

A flurry of reports over the weekend said that the former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, considered a sharp critic of Israel, is to be named to a top intelligence post in the administration of President Barack Obama. Chas W. Freeman Jr., ..... snip Typical of Freeman's viewpoints is a statement he made in a speech before the Washington Institute of Foreign Affairs in 2007, in which he more or less blames international terrorist acts on Israel. "American identification with Israeli policy has also become total. Those in the region and beyond it who detest Israeli behavior, which is to...

Panetta Vows Honesty as CIA Director Leon Panetta is overseeing major changes in the CIA as directed by President Obama, including an end to the use of harsh interrogation tactics and the closure of secret prisons. Thursday, February 19, 2009 Director Leon Panetta promised honest leadership as he took the helm Thursday of an agency with a public image tarnished by allegations of torture and faulty intelligence estimates. Cheering CIA employees welcomed Panetta and Vice President Joe Biden, who swore him in, to the agency at Panetta's ceremonial oath-taking. Panetta has been settling in as the CIA's new director for...