Free Republic

THE UK GOVERNMENT is facing demands to reveal the details of a secret flight through Scottish airspace which was at the centre of a plot to capture whistleblower Edward Snowden. The plane, which passed above the Outer Hebrides, the Highlands and Aberdeenshire, was dispatched from the American east coast on June 24 2013, the day after Snowden left Hong Kong for Moscow. The craft was used in controversial US ‘rendition’ missions. Reports by Scottish journalist Duncan Campbell claim the flight, travelling well above the standard aviation height at 45,000 feet and without a filed flight plan, was part of a...

IDF Intelligence officers have warned Israeli soldiers that the CIA may be trying to gain their confidence to obtain information that could reveal security information. The memo warns soldiers to “be aware and report any unusual incidents.” The IDF attached to its memo a copy of an article from a Israeli newspaper that once reported that American s serving in the IDF were extensively questioned when they visited or returned to the United States. The American government has ears and eyes in Israel, both on the spy level and within the consulate. One security officer in a community in Judea...

At least one of the emails on Hillary Clinto's private server contained extremely sensitive information identified by an intelligence agency as "HCS-O" which is the code used for reporting on human intelligence sources in ongoing operations, according to two sources not authorized to speak on the record. Both sources are familiar with the intelligence community inspector general's January 14 letter to Congress, advising the Oversight committees that intelligence beyond Top Secret -- known as Special Access Program (SAP) -- was identified in the Clinton emails, as well the supporting documents from the affected agencies that owned the information and have...

Our government using sophisticated equipment to watch the Oregon protesters, and probably a lot of other Americans.

Hail to the Chief. Dave Baldwin, the mastermind behind Milwaukee's legendary spy-themed bar and restaurant the Safe House, died Sunday, his wife, Shauna Singh Baldwin, said. Baldwin had just retired this summer after nearly 50 years devoted to celebrating the spy craft. In June, at age 84, he sold the Safe House to the Milwaukee-based Marcus Corp., but it remains true to his vision. With its entry tucked away on an alley off E. Wells St., the Safe House honors a type of 1960s Hollywood image of secret agents and spies. Passwords, secret doorways, spy memorabilia and a booth that...

Reflections on the immigration of Tashfeen Malik, and the search for balance in a war-torn world… By the morning of September 23, John Anderson (not his real name) had had a very rough 24 hours. In his line of work, that might not have been unusual, but it was rather new for him. He’d been in this job for a year and a half, and had just closed a pretty substantial deal the day before. The discussions began on the night of the 21st, and went on well into the night, but by morning, an impressive operation was as good...

How a Soviet mole in FDR's inner circle triggered Pearl Harbor – and its dire relevancy to our conflict today. ... On December 7, 1941, 353 Japanese aircraft delivered a shocking blow .. Nearly seven years later, Harry Dexter White, a senior official in the Roosevelt Administration, appeared to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities . Numerous witnesses, including Whittaker Chambers and Elizabeth Bentley, had implicated White in involvement with the Communist Party and the Soviet Union. ... Harry Dexter White, a Harvard PhD and Assistant Treasury Secretary, had played a major role in creating the World Bank...

The director of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, the storied home of the agency’s most secretive intelligence operations, has announced that he plans to retire, The Daily Beast has learned. CIA spokesman Dean Boyd confirmed that the director announced his retirement “after a long and distinguished career at CIA. We thank him for this profound and lasting contributions to both CIA and to our nation’s security.” As a practice, the CIA doesn’t identify the head of the clandestine service by name. But Frank Archibald was outed in a Twitter post in 2013, and details of his biography were known to...

The Simple Sabotage Field Manual, declassified in the 1970s. (Photo: Joe Loong/Flickr)When you think of Allied espionage, you might imagine disguised explosives, wiretaps, bat bombs, or other dramatic inventions. But declassified documents reveal that World War II was won in part by more everyday saboteurs–purposefully clumsy factory workers, annoying train conductors, and bad middle managers, all trained by the U.S.'s Simple Sabotage Field Manual.In 1944, World War II was in its final throes. Though the Allies were holding their own against the Axis, they were in need of more troops and more local cooperation. The Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a precursor...

House Benghazi Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy appears to have accidentally released the name of a CIA source in the midst of a back-and-forth with Democrats about how sensitive the information was and whether its presence in former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email account constituted a security breach. Gowdy’s aides blamed the State Department for the disclosure, and the agency acknowledged Monday a “human error” led to a failure to delete a name from the email in question.

A Muslim cleric has claimed to have been tortured with electric shocks, left in a cell where rats crawled on him and threatened with rape after he was allegedly kidnapped from a Milan street by CIA agents three years ago.The claims of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, appeared in an affidavit provided to Milan prosecutors investigating his alleged abduction in February 2003, the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reported yesterday. Prosecutors say that the cleric, who was formerly suspected of links to terrorism, was driven to the Aviano military air base and flown via Germany to...

Russian agent 'betrayed spy ring for money' A top Russian secret service agent suspected of blowing the cover of a sleeper spy ring in the United States was a heavy drinker who betrayed Moscow purely to make money, sources said on Wednesday. Alexander Poteyev, who will go on trial in absentia for treason in Moscow on May 16, is charged with having tipped off Washington about a ring of 10 Russian spies who were later deported in the biggest post-Cold War spy scandal. The Izvestia daily Wednesday published a slew of new information about Poteyev, saying he was linked to...

Sexy Russian Spy Anna Chapman Arrested Because She Was Getting Too Close To Someone Inside "Obama's Inner Circle"? That's what a former FBI counterintelligence officer reveals. The Independent (UK) highlights the six hundredth revelation that Iraqi informant "Curveball" lied. They bury the actual new news -- that the FBI felt it had to move quickly to arrest and deport Anna Chapman, for fear that someone close to Obama was about to snork her, and get caught in a "honey trap" (sex, followed by extortion for secrets/influence). That someone "close" to Obama? A "sitting cabinet official," this FBI counterintelligence officer says....

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced Wednesday that Khalid Al-Jawary, a dangerous Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) terrorist convicted of a 1973 New York City bomb plot and implicated in multiple terrorist attacks spanning two decades, was deported to Sudan. He had served only half of his thirty year sentence. Recently declassified information additionally reveals that Al-Jawary got help from New York's Iraqi diplomatic mission in communicating with his PLO masters. In March of 1973, Al-Jawary and possible accomplices planted three powerful car bombs: two along 5th Avenue near Israeli-owned banks, and one at Kennedy Airport. Timed to explode upon...

Kiriakou, 47, was a source for stories by The New York Times and other news organizations in 2008 and 2009 about some of the agency’s most sensitive operations after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. ......... that the information Kiriakou supplied to journalists ... enabling defense attorneys there to obtain photographs of CIA operatives suspected of being involved in harsh interrogations. Some of the pictures were subsequently discovered in the cells of high-value detainees.

The Secret Service has had a bad couple of years, with prostitution scandals and security gaps that have embarrassed the agency — and in one instance, had an intruder running through the White House. As part of the effort to bolster security around the President, the agency has gone on a hiring spree, bringing in fresh talent to address some of the recent failures. The Washington Post’s Carol Leonnig, who has reported more than a few of those failures, now reports that the rush to man the posts has resulted in agents working in sensitive areas without the proper...

Revelations from emails purloined by a Romanian hacker show that Hillary Clinton was being secretly advised about Libya -- before and after the Benghazi terrorist attack -- by an off-the-shelf private spook group associated with controversial former Clinton confidante Sydney Blumenthal that claimed to be helping the Libyan opposition and considered placing ground operatives near the border. What's this all about? It's not completely clear, but apparently the goal of the rogue group, which included a former high level CIA covert operative and a former U.S. General, was, at the very least, to gather and provide sensitive reports to the...

A former Army Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who was cleared of spy accusations is now a Democratic National Convention delegate pledged to Sen. Barack Obama. Former Capt. James J. Yee was among the delegates who were elected by precinct representatives Saturday at the party's 9th Congressional District convention at North Thurston High School. Others chosen at the gathering were Zach Smith, a former supporter of ex-Sen. John Edwards who is now pledged to Clinton, and Natalie Stevens, an alternate pledged to Obama. Yee, a West Point graduate, was accused in 2003 of being part of a spy ring...

Israel’s reported strike January 18 on a joint Iranian-Hezbollah convoy driving on the Syrian Golan Heights was one of the most strategically significant events to have occurred in Israel’s neighborhood in recent months. Its significance lies both in what it accomplished operationally and what it exposed. From what been published to date about the identities of those killed in the strike, it is clear that in one fell swoop the air force decapitated the Iranian and Hezbollah operational command in Syria. The head of Hezbollah’s operations in Syria, the head of its liaison with Iran, and Jihad Mughniyeh, the son...

The MI6 spy who was found dead inside a holdall bag in his bathtub in London hacked into secret data held on former U.S. President Bill Clinton, The Sun newspaper has sensationally claimed today. Gareth Williams was 31 years old when he was found naked, dead in his own bathtub in Pimlico, just a few minutes walk away from Britain’s Houses of Parliament. Speculation has been rife ever since his death in September 2010 about the circumstances surrounding his death. A Metropolitan Police investigation revealed predictably, though suspiciously, that Mr Williams’ death was “probably an accident”. This was despite an...