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WASHINGTON — Not everyone thinks imitation is the best form of flattery. In fact, U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson of Orlando took such offense at a parody website aimed at unseating him that the freshman Democrat has asked that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder investigate the Lake County activist who started the anti-Grayson website “mycongressmanisnuts.com.” Specifically, Grayson accuses Republican activist Angie Langley of lying to federal elections. His four-page complaint highlights the fact that the Clermont resident lives outside his district, but that Langley still uses the term “my” in “mycongressmanisnuts.com.”“Ms. Langley has deliberately masqueraded as a constituent of mine, in...

LANGLEY, Va. - Part of the new Dan Brown novel is based on a local mystery. In the introduction to his new best-selling novel, "The Lost Symbol," author Dan Brown lists the following: "In 1991, a document was locked in the safe of the director of the CIA. The document is still there today, its cryptic text includes references to an unknown location underground. The document ... includes the phrase, 'It's buried out there somewhere.'" Brown says the 20-year-old document contains the answers to a 20-year-old mystery. WTOP's National Security Correspondent J.J. Green investigated the claim, and found out it's...

After watching for 8 years as the Central Intelligence Agency sought to bring down the Bush Administration, the Democrats have decided that the spooks attacking politicians is not a good idea. Funny how "whistelblowers" turn into "leakers" almost overnight.

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...

President Barack Obama made his first visit to the Central Intelligence Agency on Monday in an attempt to calm an uproar among America's spies over his release of secret memos about interrogation techniques. "Don't be discouraged by what's happened the last few weeks. Don't be discouraged that we have to acknowledge potentially we have made some mistakes - that's how we learn," Mr Obama said in a speech at the agency's headquarters. "So I want to make a point that...I understand that it's hard when you are asked to protect the American people against people who have no scruples and...

WASHINGTON, April 20 (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama and his CIA chief buried differences on Monday over the release of classified documents on waterboarding, even as former Vice President Dick Cheney kept the debate alive. Obama visited CIA headquarters and told agency employees that a fight against al Qaeda and other challenges, and foreign policy changes he is pursuing, make their expertise vital. He he pledged his full support. "We live in dangerous times. I am going to need you more than ever," Obama said. He counseled the employees not to be discouraged by public discussion of "mistakes." ----snip-----...

WASHINGTON – Days after releasing top-secret memos that detailed the CIA's use of simulated drowning while interrogating terror suspects, President Barack Obama went to the spy agency's Virginia headquarters on Monday to defend his decision and bolster the morale of its employees. "I acted primarily because of the exceptional circumstances that surrounded these memos, particularly the fact that so much of the information was public," Obama said.

President Obama, making his first trip to C.I.A. headquarters, acknowledged Monday that agency officials had expressed ‘’understandable anxiety and concern” about his decision to release confidential memos detailing brutal interrogation techniques used by agency operatives, and urged employees not to be discouraged about the ensuing uproar. “Don’t be discouraged by what’s happened in the last few weeks,” the president said. “Don’t be discouraged that we have to acknowledge potentially we’ve made some mistakes. That’s how we learn.” Mr. Obama banned the harsh techniques on his second day in office, and he acknowledged that his decision may have made the job...

As Milosevic's intelligence chief, Jovica Stanisic is accused of setting up genocidal death squads. But as a valuable source for the CIA, an agency veteran says, he also 'did a whole lot of good.' By Greg Miller March 1, 2009 Reporting from Belgrade, Serbia -- At night, when the lawns are empty and the lamps along the walking paths are the only source of light, Topcider Park on the outskirts of Belgrade is a perfect meeting place for spies. It was here in 1992, as the former Yugoslavia was erupting in ethnic violence, that a wary CIA agent made his...

Today the President visited CIA Head Quarters in McClean Virginia where he was briefed on terrorism and the Russian-Georgia conflict. Pray for President Bush -- Day 2892 Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice attended a meeting about the Russia-Georgia conflict at the Fort de Bregancon residence in Bormes-les Mimosas on the French Riviera with France's President Nicolas Sarkozy and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates and Vice Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. James Cartwright speak to reporters during a briefing at the Pentagon. First Lady Laura Bush addresses Edna Karr High School students to promote...

Fox News reports they are awaiting videotape of President Bush speaking to reporters at the CIA headquarters filmed a short time ago.The President was at the CIA getting a briefing on the situation in Georgia.

HAMPTON, Va. (AP) -- If astronauts ever spend some time on the moon, they could be sheltered in surface structures being tested at NASA's Langley Research Center. The idea isn't too far from camping. An early model of the inflatable planetary surface habitat is 20 feet high, 12 feet wide and covered in nylon webbing. It sits on legs. Later models could be used someday as living quarters, storage units and air locks for astronauts stationed on the moon.

He's respectful, polite, say friends of suspect Chuck Cummings wants people to know his son, Dan, is polite, respectful and loves Ole Miss, not a 20-year-old who carelessly killed a campus police officer. "We've had an outpouring of support from people who knew Dan as a real polite guy," Cummings said in a telephone interview Friday. "I'm not aware of how he's being talked about. We've been too busy with details to keep up with it." Cummings' comments were the first public statements by the Germantown family since the younger Cummings was charged with capital murder in the Oct. 21...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The head of the CIA's counter-terrorism center has been forced to step down as part of efforts by the spy agency to bolster its pursuit of al Qaeda, current and former intelligence officials said on Tuesday.Robert Grenier, 51, told colleagues in an e-mail on Monday that he had been asked to move on from the helm of the unit that plans and executes CIA counter-terrorism operations and provides analysis on terrorism issues. It was not clear whether Grenier planned to leave the spy agency and there was no immediate word on who would succeed him in the...

Director Launches Investigation Into Who Gave Sensitive Information To The Media. Feb 7, 2006 — The director of the CIA has launched a major internal probe into media leaks about covert operations. In an agencywide e-mail, Porter Goss blamed "a very small number of people" for leaks about secret CIA operations that, in his words, "do damage to the credibility of the agency." According to people familiar with the Goss e-mail, sent in late January and classified secret, the CIA director warned that any CIA officer deemed suspect by the agency's Office of Security and its Counter Intelligence Center (which...

The futuristic F-22A "Raptor" fighter jet, designed to dominate the skies well into the 21st century, joined the U.S. combat fleet on Thursday, 20 years after it was conceived to fight Soviet MiGs over Europe. The Air Force said "initial operational capability" had been achieved at the 1st Fighter Wing's 27th Fighter Squadron at Langley Air Force Base, Virginia. Pilots in the squadron, the Air Force's oldest in continuous operation, have been training on the F-22, the Air Force's most advanced weapon system, for about a year. "If we go to war tomorrow, the Raptor will go with us," Gen....

For 15 years, a sculpture known as Kryptos has stood in a courtyard inside the heavily guarded Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Its coded message, made up of thousands of letters on a copper scroll, has stumped code breakers for 15 years. And although it's been seven years since anyone has made any progress cracking it, there's been an explosion of renewed interest in Kryptos since writer Dan Brown hid references to it on the jacket of The Da Vinci Code -- one of the hottest books in North America. And that has made life interesting for Kryptos'...

It is one of the world's most baffling puzzles, the bane of professional cryptologists and amateur sleuths who have spent 15 years trying to solve it. But the race to find the secrets of Kryptos, a sculpture inside a courtyard at the CIA's heavily guarded headquarters in Langley, Virginia, may be reaching a climax. And interest has soared since Dan Brown hid references to Kryptos on the cover design for his bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code, and suggested it might play a role in his next novel, The Solomon Key. The Kryptos sculpture incorporates a coded message made up...

HAMPTON -- Gerry Brown says there is a chill in the air at NASA Langley Research Center. People are afraid to talk, he says - afraid that if they express concerns about safety, they'll suffer the same fate he did.

Terrorist told of plan to crash into CIA's HQ Two years ago, federal prosecutors turned down a cooperation offer from a terrorist who claimed he was part of a well-financed 1995 plot to crash an airplane into the CIA headquarters. Abdul Hakim Murad said he got his pilot's license after training at several American flight schools, including one that is now under scrutiny in the terror investigation. Murad was convicted in 1996 for his role in a highly choreographed scheme to blow up 12 U.S.-bound jetliners flying out of Southeast Asia. The Pakistani-born man said that in addition to the ...

Today in a ceremony at the Reagan Building, President Bush swore in new Department of Homeland Security chief, Michael Chertoff. The President also visited the CIA and gave warm support for the department and Porter Goss. Enjoy your daily dose of Dubya!

This is my first post so I hope I got it right. This is breaking here in San Anonio. A single engine plane has been forced down at Stenson Field south of San Antonio. Homeland Security, DPS and SAPD are on the scene. They are waiting for a Chinese tranlator but they have Chinese illegals in custody and said that the pilot was someone Homeland Security has been looking for. I'll post more as it comes available.

Her name is maybe Nancy, Susan, or Ann, and she lives in a modest home in Virginia. Appointed to her post by President Bill Clinton, it was a “thank you” for her work on his campaign, a customary tactic of all Presidents. The only problem is her job. It is at the CIA Headquarters at Langley, Virginia, and she actually decides what some independent contractors and Agency operatives will do overseas to gather intelligence or conduct direct action missions. Most of these men are former Special Forces officers and NCO’s, a few former Navy SEALs, and a couple ex-Marines. This...

Since new CIA Director Porter Goss blocked the October Surprise agency left-wingers had prepared against Bush (discussed in “Porter At The Pass” last week), they desperately rigged another one, working with Mohammad ElBaradei at the UN. What nobody is focusing on in Al Qaqaagate is that the CIA is behind it. The anti-Bush lefties are now known as the “Rogue Weasels” at Langley, and they are frantic to do whatever they can to elect Kerry. They cooked up this entire phony “tons of missing explosives” scandal, sweet-talked the head of the UN’s nuclear inspection agency, ElBaradei, to carry their water...

WASHINGTON: Soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, a two-man intelligence team set up shop at the Pentagon, searching for evidence of links between terrorist groups and host countries. The men, Michael Maloof and David Wurmser, culled classified material, much of it uncorroborated data from the CIA. "We discovered tons of raw intelligence," said Maloof. "We were stunned that we couldn't find any mention of it in the CIA's finished reports." They recorded and annotated their evidence on butcher paper hung like a mural around their small office. By the end of 2001, they had constructed a startling new picture of...

Critics from inside the intelligence community tell Newsweek that post-9/11, despite the Bush administration's establishment of the Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC) to remedy U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies' failure to communicate, everything the various intelligence agencies learn is still not being shared. "The whole bureaucracy is against TTIC," says one CIA analyst. "They've got the long knives out for it." Launched last May, the TTIC is an independent body manned with analysts from more than a dozen agencies, including the CIA, FBI, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, the National Security Agency, the Coast Guard, Homeland Security and the...

Mission to Capture or Kill al Qaeda Leader Frustrated by Near Misses, Political Disputes First of two articles.The seeds of the CIA's first formal plan to capture or kill Osama bin Laden were contained in another urgent manhunt -- for Mir Aimal Kasi, the Pakistani migrant who murdered two CIA employees while spraying rounds from an assault rifle at cars idling before the entrance to the CIA's Langley headquarters in 1993. For several years after the shooting, Kasi remained a fugitive in the border areas straddling Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. From its Langley offices, the CIA's Counterterrorist Center asked the...

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 30 — The Iraqi authorities, with the help of American intelligence agencies, are creating an intelligence service here that will focus on rooting out guerrilla fighters, especially those from outside the country, Iraqi and American officials said Friday. The service will employ some former agents of Saddam Hussein's security apparatus and will probably receive financing from the American government, the officials said. Many of the agents will work in the border towns of Iraq to identify foreign fighters who have slipped into the country and will monitor their activities, said Ibrahim al-Janabi, a senior member of the...

Allegations leveled during last night's debate by Gov. Howard Dean and Sen. John Kerry that Vice President Dick Cheney "berated" CIA analysts to get them to exaggerate Iraq war intelligence are false, NBC's Washington correspondent Andrea Mitchell said Friday. "It's absolutely not true," Mitchell told radio host Don Imus. "The vice president went over to the CIA on a couple of Saturdays, you know, more than once . . but he did not, by anybody's account, berate the analysts." Mitchell noted that former CIA analysts Ray McGovern and Larry Johnson, who were not present during the Cheney meetings, have said...

McLEAN ( Virginia ): When the CIA's secret gadget-makers invented a listening device for the Asian jungles, they disguised it so the enemy wouldn't be tempted to pick it up and examine it: The device looked like tiger droppings. The guise worked. Who would touch such a thing? The fist-sized, brown transmitter detected troop movements along the trails during fighting in Vietnam , a quiet success for a little-known group of researchers inside the world's premier intelligence agency. The CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology is celebrating its 40th anniversary by revealing a few dozen of its secrets for a...

The ridiculous fiasco which attended the attempt at aerial navigation in the Langley flying machine was not unexpected, unless possibly by the distinguished Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, who devised it, and his assistants. Prof. MANLY, who undertook the voyage, prudently clothed himself in a cork jacket--doubtless because cork is a good non-conductor and would tend to keep the wearer warm in the rarified strata of the upper atmosphere in which he perhaps expected to cruise. However, as the machine was to be launched over the Potomac, it appears, as matters eventuated, to have been a wise precaution for other...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States plans to set up an Iraqi intelligence service to spy on groups and individuals inside Iraq that are targeting U.S. troops and civilians, The Washington Post reported on Thursday. Citing unidentified U.S. officials, the Post said the CIA plans to set up the new service with help from Jordan. Two members of an Iraqi exile group are at CIA headquarters in Virginia this week to work out details of the new program, the Post said. Iraqi Interior Minister Nouri Badran, a secular Shiite Muslim, has been selected to head the service initially, the Post...

<p>CAPE CANAVERAL -- A NASA manager criticized for his role in the Columbia disaster was tapped Friday to direct a new safety and engineering watchdog group that will oversee all space agency programs.</p> <p>Ralph Roe, a former shuttle program manager reassigned in the wake of the Feb. 1 accident, will head up the NASA Engineering and Safety Center at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.</p>

WASHINGTON - A NASA (news - web sites) safety engineer warned days before Columbia broke apart that he feared the shuttle was at risk for a devastating breach near its left wheel, and he suggested people in the space agency weren't adequately considering the threat. "We can't imagine why getting information is being treated like the plague," the engineer wrote in one of a number of e-mails released Friday that describe greater concerns about Columbia's safety in the days before its breakup. Other documents NASA released show that Columbia may have been struck by as many as three large chunks...

Scene 0: US Military Cemetery Arlington Virginia July 4, 2004 A memorial of an American military KIA from the war is show with a picture of the deceased. Enter pall bearers caring American Flag draped casket, crying widow, crying parents, uncomprehending child, a bugler, color guard, honor guard, a minister, and General Patton. The casket is flagged draped and placed over the grave. The pallbearers fold the flag. The flag is run up the pole quickly and the summons to arms is played.  As this happens the casket sinks into the ground slowly.The flag is raised Star Spangled Banner is...

CIA Used Dragonfly, Catfish as Spy Gadget Models Tue 28 October, 2003 17:35 By Tabassum Zakaria LANGLEY, Va. (Reuters) - The CIA once built a mechanical dragonfly to carry a listening device but found small gusts of wind knocked it off course so it was never used in a spy operation. The agency also tested a 24-inch-long rubber robot catfish named "Charlie" capable of swimming inconspicuously among other fish and whose mission remains secret. Charlie and the dragonfly were among spy gadgets displayed at CIA headquarters in an exhibit to mark the 40th anniversary of the Directorate of Science and...

LIKE MANY FORMER and active-duty case officers of the Central Intelligence Agency, I often find it painful listening to outsiders talk about the clandestine service. Operations are usually rather straightforward, earthy affairs between consenting adults--espionage is seldom a seductive recruitment plan played out in the shadows. But outsiders routinely depict clandestine intelligence collection as a sexy, dark, and dangerous profession. Intelligence officers, too, often can't resist exaggerating the importance, the sleuthful methods, and the risk attached to a normal career in the Directorate of Operations. The common man, the journalist on the intelligence beat, and the spooks at Langley all...

America's secret spy satellites are costing you billions, but they can't even get off the launch pad The United States has invested $200 billion over the past four decades developing and operating its supersecret spy satellite programs. In this new age of terrorism, and as the nation faces bellicose regimes like North Korea and Iran, these programs are more important than ever. But there's a problem. The agency that builds and operates the satellites, a little-known outfit called the National Reconnaissance Office, is in crisis. Despite its $7 billion annual budget, its satellites don't always work as promised. Its projects...

Did the government let bin Laden’s trail go cold? One day this past March, in Langley, Virginia, there was jubilation on a little-known thoroughfare called Bin Laden Lane. Analysts at the C.I.A.’s Counter-Terrorism Center, a dingy warren of gray metal desks marked by a custom-made street sign, were thrilled to learn that, seven thousand miles away, in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, colleagues from the agency had helped local authorities storm a private villa and capture Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the man believed to be the third most important figure in the Al Qaeda terrorist organization. At last, the stalled hunt for Al Qaeda...

Thursday July 17, 2003 The Guardian As the CIA director, George Tenet, arrived at the Senate yesterday to give secret testimony on the Niger uranium affair, it was becoming increasingly clear in Washington that the scandal was only a small, well-documented symptom of a complete breakdown in US intelligence that helped steer America into war. It represents the Bush administration's second catastrophic intelligence failure. But the CIA and FBI's inability to prevent the September 11 attacks was largely due to internal institutional weaknesses. This time the implications are far more damaging for the White House, which stands accused of politicising...

<p>June 10, 2003 -- THE carping smells fishy to me.</p> <p>A small chorus of disgruntled intelligence analysts from the CIA and the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) are claiming that senior Bush administration officials, such as Vice President Dick Cheney and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, bullied them into manipulating intelligence on weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to bolster support for a war against Iraq. This is likely to be nonsense.</p>

Report: Some CIA Analysts Said Felt Pressure on Iraq Thu Jun 5, 1:36 AM ET WASHINGTON (Reuters) - "Multiple" visits to the CIA (news - web sites) by Vice President Cheney and a top aide over the past year created an environment in which some analysts felt they were being pressured to make assessments of Iraq data fit the administration's policy objectives, The Washington Post reported on Thursday. The report cited an unnamed senior CIA official as saying that the visits by Cheney and his chief of staff to question the analysts "sent signals, intended or otherwise that a certain...

Cheney, Aide 'Sent Signals,' Senior Official Says Vice President Cheney and his most senior aide made multiple trips to the CIA over the past year to question analysts studying Iraq's weapons programs and alleged links to al Qaeda, creating an environment in which some analysts felt they were being pressured to make their assessments fit with the Bush administration's policy objectives, according to senior intelligence officials.With Cheney taking the lead in the administration last August in advocating military action against Iraq by claiming it had weapons of mass destruction, the visits by the vice president and his chief of staff,...

TERRORIST THREAT INTEGRATION CENTER BEGINS OPERATIONS The Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC), whose creation was announced by President Bush in his State of the Union address in January, began operations today. Among those in attendance at the ribbon cutting ceremony held at CIA Headquarters this morning were Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet; FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III; Department of Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Gordon England; TTIC Director John O. Brennan; Paul J. Redmond, Assistant Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis, Department of Homeland Security; Richard Haver, Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Intelligence; Ambassador at...

AN AIR BASE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN REGION — From chaos comes order. Or, at least, “organized chaos,” according to Capt. Brian Thomas, executive officer for Col. Terry New, the commander of the 401st Air Expeditionary Wing. He was describing the creation of an expeditionary wing, the joining of disparate parts into one unified whole. Thomas knows about this. His job back at Aviano Air Base, Italy, is executive officer for the commander of the 16th Air Expeditionary Wing. “You can’t apply a cookie cutter mentality,” he said. “You have no idea what you do or do not need until...

March 3 — Suspected Sept. 11 planner Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is believed to command a global network of al Qaeda terrorists, but in the three days since his arrest he has refused to tell interrogators anything about planned attacks, instead reciting the Koran to himself, U.S. officials told ABCNEWS. Mohammed was questioned for a third day by U.S. and Pakistani agents today. Analysts said interrogators were seeking details of any planned al Qaeda attacks and leads on the whereabouts of the world's most-wanted man, Osama bin Laden. Though the arrest of Mohammed in Pakistan on Saturday has been described as...

Al-Qaida had extensive contacts with Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security, as well as with an elite military unit which helped the terrorists train and plot attacks against Americans, according to a former intelligence officer who recently fled Iran. Hamid Reza Zakeri, a former inspector and director of Iran's Revolutionary Guards and Ministry of Intelligence, or MOIS, member said models of the World Trade Center, the White House, Pentagon and other United States government buildings "were in our headquarters." In an explosive interview with a London-based Arabic newspaper last week, Zakeri stated that al-Qaida leader and Egyptian terrorist Ayman al-Zawahiri,...

F-16 Pilots Considered Ramming Flight 93 By William B. Scott/Aviation Week & Space Technology 09-Sep-2002 9:24 AM U.S. EDT Editor's Note: This is Part 3 of an ongoing special report on how the military responded to terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Earlier articles appeared in the June 3 and June 10 issues. For this segment, one D.C. Air National Guard F-16 pilot chose not to have her name used, so is identified only by her call-sign. ANDREWS AFB, MD. -- With Pentagon in flames and hijacked aircraft threatening Washington, White House scrambled fighters with little or no armament. Within...