Free Republic

When I heard this on the radio on the drive home the first thing I thought was, I’ll bet they’re democrats (socialist) and huge Obama supporters. Walter Kendall Myers, 72, aided by his wife Gwendolyn Myers, 71, used his Top Secret security clearance to pass on classified information to the Cuban government and at one point met with Cuban leader Fidel Castro, according to court documents. The two were charged with conspiracy to act as illegal agents of the Cuban government and to communicate classified information to Cuba, the Justice Department said. They were also charged with wire fraud and...

Three American hikers who have been detained in Iran after crossing into the country from Iraq have been charged with espionage, according to reports by Iran's State News Agency. Shane Bauer, 27, Sarah Shourd, 31, and Josh Fattal, 27, have been detained in Iran since July 31. Their families say they entered the Islamic Republic accidentally while hiking in a scenic area of northern Iraq. The families, who have had no contact with the detainees, released videos in October that showed them dancing and singing before they were captured by Iranian authorities.

After seven years of forced silence, a government whistleblower is opening up on what she learned while working as a Turkish translator for the FBI in the wake of 9/11. In sworn testimony to attorneys on Aug. 8, Sibel Edmonds described a Pentagon where key personnel helped pass defense secrets to foreign agents or provided them names of knowledgeable officials who were vulnerable to blackmail or co-option. And firmly rooted in this espionage program in the 1990s, according to Edmonds’ deposition, were two men who, with the election of George W. Bush as president in 2000, found themselves in the...

Muslim-American interns who have served in Congress should be respected, and not subject to questions about their patriotism, House Judciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) said Thursday. Responding to allegations from Republican lawmakers that the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) sought to plant Muslim "spies" in the Capitol, Conyers issued a scathing statement on his colleagues' accusations. "It shouldn't need to be said in 2009, and after the historic election of our first African-American president, but let me remind all my colleagues that patriotic Americans of all races, religions, and beliefs have the right - and the responsibility - to...

Sibel Edmonds has a story to tell. She went to work as a Turkish and Farsi translator for the FBI five days after 9/11. Part of her job was to translate and transcribe recordings of conversations between suspected Turkish intelligence agents and their American contacts. She was fired from the FBI in April 2002 after she raised concerns that one of the translators in her section was a member of a Turkish organization that was under investigation for bribing senior government officials and members of Congress, drug trafficking, illegal weapons sales, money laundering, and nuclear proliferation. She appealed her termination,...

A Guest Blog By RONALD RADOSH I noticed the controversy over the late Senator McCarthy in the comments column at NewsReal. It is a mistake for conservatives to think that just because McCarthy's targets were real, the Senator did no harm. Stan Evans has contributed mightily to this confusion in his recent book Blacklisted By History. NewsReal readers may be interested in my review.There were Communist spies, and they did infiltrate the U.S. Government at the highest levels during the New Deal years of F.D.R.’s presidency. While the U.S. treated the Soviet Union as an ally during the war against...

SPY THREAT: CATCH AND RELEASE -- A Veteran Counterintelligence Officer Warns America International News Analysis Today September 30, 2009 By Toby Westerman America is about to be forced into a dangerous game of catch and release with deadly spies, threatening both national security and the morale of the U.S. intelligence community, warns veteran counterintelligence officer Christopher Simmons in a exclusive interview with International News Analysis Today. Christopher Simmons is director and founder of the Cuban Intelligence Research Center. International coercion, attacks on national security, lies and misinformation spread in the media, and the murder of American citizens are part of...

Note: The following text is a quote: Jury Convicts Defense Department Official of Unlawful Communication of Classified Information and Making False Statements James Wilbur Fondren Jr., was convicted by a federal jury today on charges involving providing classified information to a man working with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and lying to the FBI about it. Fondren was convicted of one count of unlawfully communicating classified information to an agent of a foreign government and two counts of making false statements to the FBI. He was acquitted of two unlawful communication of classified information, one count of conspiracy to...

Sibel Edmonds has a story to tell. She went to work as a Turkish and Farsi translator for the FBI five days after 9/11. Part of her job was to translate and transcribe recordings of conversations between suspected Turkish intelligence agents and their American contacts. She was fired from the FBI in April 2002 after she raised concerns that one of the translators in her section was a member of a Turkish organization that was under investigation for bribing senior government officials and members of Congress, drug trafficking, illegal weapons sales, money laundering, and nuclear proliferation. She appealed her termination,...

I have now read for a second time the testimony of the apparently credible Sibel Edmonds. Based on her testimony, the only conclusion one can reach is that a Turkish government spy ring, perhaps acting for the interests of Turkey, perhaps as a cutout spy ring acting for the interests of another country or some combination of both, has infiltrated, in a massive way, "high levels of the United States government". We are talking about the Pentagon, the State Department and Congress. It is mind boggling that there is not major league front page coverage. 24 hour cable coverage. I...

The common ancestor of all the Granny Smiths and Cox's Orange Pippins still grows on some of the world's most beautiful but little known mountainsides in the former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan. The discovery of the "Garden of Eden" in Central Asia has triggered efforts to save what remains of the forests, always known for their abundance of wild fruit. Once under assault by Soviet agricultural planners, they are now menaced by the wealth of oil capitalism and as much as 80 per cent has disappeared. "In earlier historical times there were vast mixed fruit forests across the area," said...

Spies Among Us by: Brittany Fortier, September 01, 2009 The world of espionage has been full of danger and intrigue, but today it draws criticism from those who question both the capabilities and usefulness of intelligence gathering. It seems the American Left it still in denial as to the extent of the danger posed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, authors of the new book Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America, had the opportunity to study the notebooks of Alexander Vassiliev, a former Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (KGB) officer...

The Soviet Union was never comfortable living in the same world with the Vatican. The most recent disclosures document that the Kremlin was prepared to go to any lengths to counter the Catholic Church’s strong anti-Communism. In March 2006 an Italian parliamentary commission concluded “beyond any reasonable doubt that the leaders of the Soviet Union took the initiative to eliminate the pope Karol Wojtyla,” in retaliation for his support to the dissident Solidarity movement in Poland. In January 2007, when documents disclosed that the newly appointed archbishop of Warsaw, Stanislaw Wielgus, had collaborated with Poland’s Communist-era political police, he admitted...

SNIPPET: "Poor Ayman. He's concerned that there are spies in the forums, and posts a warning at as-Ansar:" SNIPPET: "Above the list of six things to look for, the expert spy-catcher has posted an image. A large animated question mark:"

SNIPPET: "Of course, one can't rule out that the "spy" is a real jihadi, and that the erstwhile spy-catchers are really working for Jordanian intelligence."

If It Ain’t Broke… By Norma Zager “God bless America, our soldiers and spies. They risk their lives so ours may be safe.” Norma Zager “Be not intimidated...nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberties by any pretense of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery and cowardice.” John Adams What is Terror? Few hear ba bum ba bum, the opening notes from Jaws and fail to think of a fin cruising through the water on a hunt for human munchies. Everyone understands the terror of Jimmy...

Up till now, this has been a notably cheerful year for admirers of Ernest Hemingway – a surprisingly diverse set of people who range from Michael Palin to Elmore Leonard. Almost every month has brought good news: a planned Hemingway biopic; a new, improved version of his memoir, A Moveable Feast; the opening of a digital archive of papers found in his Cuban home; progress on a movie of Islands in the Stream. Last week, however, saw the publication of Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (Yale University Press), which reveals the Nobel prize-winning novelist was...

A new book published by Al Qaeda shows that the terrorist group is under intense pressure and in "deathly fear" of U.S. counterterrorism efforts in Pakistan, terror experts say. The 150-page book, titled "Guide to the Laws Regarding Muslim Spies," was recently posted on jihadist Web sites. It was written by a senior Al Qaeda commander, Abu Yahya Al-Libi, and features an introduction by Ayman Al-Zawahri, the No. 2 man in Al Qaeda. The book accuses some in Al Qaeda's ranks of being spies who provide intelligence, including information about Al Qaeda camps and safehouses, to U.S. forces. According to...

August 14, 2005 -- LONDON — The $21.3 billion United Nations oil-for-food scandal has now widened to include the brother of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Kobina Annan, the Ghanaian ambassador to Morocco, is said by investigators to be "connected" to an African businessman at the center of the scandal. The probe into Kobina's dealings are at an early stage and he has not been interviewed. However, investigators are understood to suspect that Michael Wilson, an African businessman, and Kobina had a business relationship at the time of the scandal. A source close to the investigation said: "We believe Kobina Annan...

To think that Boris and Natasha lived right here in South Dakota, and we didn't even know it! Recently, Walter Kendall Myers and Gwendolyn Steingraber-Trebilcock-Myers - a couple who once lived in Aberdeen - were arrested for spying. The news rocked the nation. Well, actually, the nation immediately forgot the story. Still, South Dakota hasn't forgotten. It's not every day suspected spies are found traipsing through your own neighborhood. The espionage likely started after they left Aberdeen, but you still wonder if that abandoned shopping cart you saw in aisle 8 of Kessler's might have contained a coded message. The...

A reproduction of a page of ROK newspaper Munhwa Ilbo shows stories and pictures of Kim Jong-un, the DPRK leader Kim Jong-il's third son. [Agencies] SEOUL, South Korea: Leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) Kim Jong Il has put his youngest son in charge of the country's spy agency as a prelude to handing over control of the country, a news report said Wednesday. Kim visited the headquarters of the State Security Department in March, along with his 26-year-old son, Kim Jong Un, and told agency leaders to "uphold" his third son as head of the department,...

To the list of collegiate types -- nerds, jocks, Greeks -- add one more: spies in training. The government is hoping they'll be hard to spot. The Obama administration has proposed the creation of an intelligence officer training program in colleges and universities that would function much like the Reserve Officers' Training Corps run by the military services. The idea is to create a stream "of first- and second-generation Americans, who already have critical language and cultural knowledge, and prepare them for careers in the intelligence agencies," according to a description sent to Congress by Director of National Intelligence Dennis...

SNIPPET: "Frontpage Interview's guest today is Konstantin Preobrazhenskiy, a former KGB agent who became one of the KGB’s harshest critics. He is the author of seven books about the KGB and Japan. His new book is KGB/FSB's New Trojan Horse: Americans of Russian Descent." SNIPPET: "My work in Tokyo as a spy from 1980-85, was very successful. I was covered as a correspondent of the Soviet TASS Agency. But it was not a cover for me. It was my actual job, because I am a born author. My KGB colleagues in Tokyo called me, with a grin, “An author covered...

The Miami Herald explains that the FBI was reluctant to arrest and prosecute Americans who spied for Cuba until after Cuba shot down two Brothers to the Rescue planes, killing four Americans. It also indicates that Cuban intelligence was badly damaged when Army General Arnaldo Ochoa was executed for drug running and the Ministry of Interior, the agency in charge of Cuba's security was purged.

(IsraelNN.com) United Nations Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) may have been involved in arresting Lebanese citizens suspected of spying for Israel. The story was reported Thursday by Spanish media and by Israel's Channel 10 news. Channel 10 obtained video footage in which a Spanish UNIFIL commander states that his troops worked with Lebanese troops to arrest alleged spies for Israel in primarily Shiite Muslim areas. The taped conversation allegedly took place two days ago

  Now We Know Anne Applebaum,  The New Republic  Published: Wednesday, June 17, 2009 Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in AmericaBy John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev(Yale University Press, 637 pp., $35)If one were trying to define the lowest point in the long and venerable tradition of American anti-communism, surely it came in 2003, with the publication of Ann Coulter's Treason. Coulter's "thesis" in this work of cut-and-paste-from-the-Internet history was that a straight line could be drawn between Americans such as Alger Hiss, who spied for the Soviet Union in the 1940s, and Americans such...

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...

UNDATED (AP) - A couple charged with spying for Cuba over the last 30 years lived in South Dakota. Retired State Department worker Walter Kendall Myers and his wife, Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers, are charged with passing U.S. secrets to the communist government.

National Security: Amid all the neighborly talk about new U.S. efforts to engage Cuba, the arrest of a State Department official as a Cuban spy ought to be a wake-up call about the intentions of the Castro dictatorship.Last Friday, federal agents arrested Walter Kendall Myers, 72, and his wife Gwendolyn, 71, as unregistered Cuban agents. The Feds said the pair had been spying for Cuba since 1979 and, like other agents in service to the Castro regime, didn't do it for money, but out of sympathy for communism and a loathing of the United States. For that, they stole not...

Last week a Department of State retiree and his wife were arrested and charged with spying for Cuba for thirty years. In this article I will sort out what we know, don't know and need to explore about this matter. Walter Kendall Myers, Jr .and his wife Gwendolyn Steingarber Myers

“Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB In America,” by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev, Yale University Press, May 2009, 704 pages, $35. Joe McCarthy was right after all. There were Communists in the State Department. Maybe not the number Tail Gunner Joe claimed — or even the ones he suspected. However, Soviet spies were, indeed, employed by the U.S. government in the 1930s and ’40s. Documentation of these Soviet espionage efforts in the United States comes from KGB archives — as revealed in “Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB In America.” After the...

He was a courtly State Department intelligence analyst from a prominent family who loved to sail and peruse the London Review of Books. Occasionally, he would voice frustration with U.S. policies, but to his liberal neighbors in Northwest D.C. it was nothing out of the ordinary. "We were all appalled by the Bush years," one said.

They wouldn't have looked out of place at a yacht club with him dressed in a blue blazer and khakis and her sporting a soft tan but federal authorities say the appearance of Walter Kendall Myers and his wife, Gwendolyn Myers, belied a darker truth: For three decades, the couple spied for the Cuban government. Mr. Myers, a 72-year-old former State Department analyst with a top-secret security clearance, and Mrs. Myers, 71, appeared in federal court to answer charges of conspiracy to act as illegal agents of the Cuban government, passing classified information, and wire fraud. They each face 35...

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department charged Friday that a former State Department analyst and his wife worked as spies for Cuba for nearly 30 years, using a short-wave radio to pass secret diplomatic information to their Cuban handlers. Officials said the couple, Walter Kendall Myers, 72, and Gwendolyn S. Myers, 71, received little in the way of compensation from the Cubans except for the short-wave radio and some travel expenses. Rather, the officials said, the couple appears to have been driven by their strong affinity for Cuba and their bitterness toward “American imperialism.” “We think they did it because they...

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.,...

A 72-year-old former State Department employee and his 71-year-old wife have been arrested and charged with illegally aiding the government of Cuba for nearly 30 years, the Department of Justice announced Friday. Walter Kendall Myers retired from the State Department in October 2007. Walter Kendall Myers and his wife, Gwendolyn Myers, were charged with conspiracy to act as illegal agents of the Cuban government, providing classified information to that government, and wire fraud, according to court documents unsealed in Washington. The couple appeared briefly Friday before a federal magistrate in Washington, who ordered them held without bail pending a detention...

Federal officials say a Washington, D.C.-area couple has been arrested and accused of spying for Cuba. Officials say both are former U.S. government employees -- he from the State Department, she as a Congressional aide. One official says the spying went on for more than two decades. We expect to learn more details later today when a federal indictment is unsealed. For now, officials will not disclose the names or any other details....

Mathematics professor suspected of being part of Israeli espionage ring slips under border fence with his family; another suspect also escapes. Lebanese internal security chief: We have begun to crack the infrastructure of Israeli spy rings A disabled Lebanese citizen and his family fled to Israel at dawn Monday along with another suspected spy amid a crackdown on espionage networks throughout Lebanon, a security official said. Elie Maroun Hayek, a mathematics professor who lives in the southern town of Qolayaa, some 10 kilometers from the Israeli border, slipped under barbed wire between the border towns of Rmaysh and Yaron, the...

Murder and Spies: A Spy Catcher's Warning May 20, 2009 International News Analysis Today By Toby Westerman The national security of the United States is for sale, and every American is in danger as a result, according to a counterintelligence expert who was central to the interrogation and conviction of a spy considered to be one of the most grave threats to national security ever apprehended in the United States. Chris Simmons, currently a Lt. Col. in the U.S. Army Reserve counterintelligence services and founder of the online Cuban Intelligence Research Center, gave an exclusive interview to International News Analysis...

The captured espionage equipment on display at Lebanese police headquarters on Monday was hardly the stuff of James Bond's Q lab - just a small collection of computers, passports and electronic gear that would have looked at home in an Internet cafÉ. But then a Lebanese security agent, masked to hide his identity from the pack of journalists invited to view the spy trove, pulled away the top of a bright orange watercooler to reveal a hidden disc-shaped device, which officials explained had been used to transmit video surveillance to Israel of secret locations linked to Hizballah. The arrest last...

(CBS) Sometimes history is shaped by unknown people who operate in the shadowy world of espionage. And this story of war, deception and murder has a plot worthy of a John le Carre novel. Thirty-five years ago, the armies of Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack against the state of Israel on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year. Militarily, it ended in a stalemate, but in practical terms the war changed the map and the politics of the Middle East. At the center of it all is a little known story about one man who played...

It’s like a domino effect. Yet another group of spies allegedly working for the Israeli intelligence services was uncovered in Lebanon. Local media reported Monday that five more Lebanese recruited by the Mossad were arrested by the official security services during the last week. This brings to about a dozen the number of suspected Lebanese agents spying for Israel since last November. Most of them are reportedly equipped with sophisticated espionage equipment, including high-end surveillance cameras and communication devices. So is each of these arrests simply leading to the next spy network? Aren’t espionage rings supposedly isolated from one another?...

Iranian authorities have arrested a group of people linked to Israel who are suspected of planning bombings ahead of the Islamic republic's presidential election on June 12, Reuters cited the country's intelligence minister as saying on Sunday. "A group of deceived elements... who wanted to carry out explosions, particularly before the June election, was arrested," Intelligence Minister Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei was quoted as telling Iranian radio. State radio did not say how many people had been arrested or give any other details. Iran often accuses Israel and the United States of seeking to undermine the Islamic republic. Last year, an Iranian...

MARJAYOUN, Lebanon (AFP) – Lebanese authorities arrested three people on suspicion of spying for Israel on Saturday, the latest in a series of such arrests, a security official said. He linked the suspects -- two Lebanese and a Palestinian -- to a retired general who was charged on Thursday with spying for the Jewish state -- a crime that can lead to the death sentence. "Initial information indicates that they were spying for Israel and had ties to retired general security officer Adib al-Alam," the official said. The suspects were arrested separately at their homes in various locations in south...

Note: The following text is a quote: Arms Trafficker Sentenced to 20 Years in Prison for Plot to Smuggle Shoulder-Fired Surface-to-Air Missiles, Rocket-Propelled Grenades, and Other Military Weapons LEV L. DASSIN, the Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced that CHRISTIAAN SPIES, a leader of an international arms trafficking operation, was sentenced today to 20 years in prison for plotting to smuggle shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles ("SAMs"), rocket-propelled grenades ("RPGs"), anti-tank guided missiles, and other high-powered military weapons into the United States for sale. United States District Judge RICHARD J. HOLWELL imposed the sentence today in...

WASHINGTON — Computer spies have broken into the Pentagon's $300 billion Joint Strike Fighter project — the Defense Department's costliest weapons program ever — according to current and former government officials familiar with the attacks. Similar incidents have also breached the Air Force's air-traffic-control system in recent months, these people say. In the case of the fighter-jet program, the intruders were able to copy and siphon off several terabytes of data related to design and electronics systems, officials say, potentially making it easier to defend against the craft. The latest intrusions provide new evidence that a battle is heating up...

WASHINGTON — Computer spies have broken into the Pentagon's $300 billion Joint Strike Fighter project — the Defense Department's costliest weapons program ever — according to current and former government officials familiar with the attacks. Similar incidents have also breached the Air Force's air-traffic-control system in recent months, these people say. In the case of the fighter-jet program, the intruders were able to copy and siphon off several terabytes of data related to design and electronics systems, officials say, potentially making it easier to defend against the craft. The latest intrusions provide new evidence that a battle is heating up...

Even as average Americans were planning to get out in towns and cities to demonstrate against Big Government and Big Taxes, Federal Bureau of Intelligence Investigation (FBI) surveillance was being unleashed upon them. In fact, unsuspecting Tax Day TEA Party participants were being closely watched during the demonstration planning stages in a covert operation that began on or about March 23, 2009. If you one of the estimated 750,000 Americans who attended one of about 600 TEA parties last week, you might have seen media cameras covering the event. Media cameras, however, were not the only cameras taking video at...

A former Lebanese security officer and his wife have been arrested on suspicion of spying for Israel. The intelligence branch of Lebanon's Internal Security Forces (ISF) have locked up a retired brigadier general identified only as "Adib A." and his wife on suspicion of belonging to an Israeli spy network, local media is reporting. The general was described as a “valuable catch” in the left-leaning daily Al Akhbar by an unnamed high-ranking security official. Though retired, he continued to maintain an office at the general directorate of the ISF, which he allegedly turned into a communications center for passing information...

U.S. concerns about the potential for cyber-attacks on critical infrastructure extended to the American electrical power grid on Wednesday and experts pointed the finger anew at Chinese hackers, among others. As a result, electric utilities are likely to face new pressures from the U.S. Congress and government regulators to tighten security and preparations against computer intrusions that would wreak widespread havoc. U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told reporters the power grid is vulnerable to potentially disabling computer attacks, while declining to comment on reports that an intrusion had taken place. "The vulnerability is something that the Department of Homeland...