Free Republic

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 perfect storm of idiocy led to a frightening 9/11 flashback for thousands of New Yorkers Monday when a jumbo jet and an F-16 fighter jet buzzed lower Manhattan without warning. (video -- flyby) (video -- panic) (video -- Ground Zero) A "furious" Mayor Bloomberg denounced the dunces who dreamed up the stunt. Bloomberg said, "Why the Defense Department wanted to do a photo-op right around the site of the World Trade Center catastrophe defies imagination. Poor judgment would be a nice ways to phrase it, but they did. I also think that once they had told us, we should...

The lowest-ranking enlisted persons in the Armed Forces of the United States who are expected to handle sensitive matters in the scores of jobs involving classified equipment or written material must be investigated before obtaining their security clearance. Could Barack Obama gain such a clearance? To begin, the clearance applicant would have to complete a detailed personal history form that includes, if necessary, government access to all health and education files. This is the starting point of all security investigations. Top Secret clearance involves a field investigation rather than the Secret version that is usually limited to a "name check"...

Keith Weissman and Steven Rosen Are PhDs and Middle East Experts Who Did Some Lobbying. They Thought They Were Doing What Washington Insiders Always Do. Thomas O’Donnell didn’t reveal his job when he phoned Keith Weissman in 2004 and got the policy analyst’s wife. He says he didn’t want to scare her. When Weissman returned the call and found out O’Donnell was an FBI agent, his first reaction was to attempt a joke: “What did I do?” “I’m sure you didn’t do anything,” O’Donnell told him. He wanted to meet that day, for five or ten minutes, and get Weissman’s...

Still in Control Pervez Musharraf was calm, confident and—despite a flurry of rumors—not about to announce his resignation. Instead, the Pakistani president's "concession" to his troubled nation was an announcement that he would allow Britain's Scotland Yard to help local law enforcement agencies with their investigation into last week's assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. Speaking in a nationally televised address two hours after Pakistan's election commission announced the postponement of the ballot to Feb. 18, six weeks later than had been scheduled, Musharraf was notably deferential in his remarks about Bhutto, often invoking her "martyrdom" and extolling...

Israelis hit Syrian ‘nuclear bomb plant’ Uzi Mahnaimi in Tel Aviv and Michael Sheridan in Seoul ISRAEL’S top-secret air raid on Syria in September destroyed a bomb factory assembling warheads fuelled by North Korean plutonium, a leading Israeli nuclear expert has told The Sunday Times. Professor Uzi Even of Tel Aviv University was one of the founders of the Israeli nuclear reactor at Dimona, the source of the Jewish state’s undeclared nuclear arsenal. “I suspect that it was a plant for processing plutonium, namely, a factory for assembling the bomb,” he said. “I think the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of...

The United States is helping Pakistan keep its nuclear weapons secure in a top-secret program that has cost Washington almost 100 million dollars since 2001, The New York Times reported Sunday. But Pakistan still refuses to allow US experts into its nuclear sites, the newspaper said, revealing information it first obtained three years ago but, due to a White House request, had not reported until now.

Deep in the recesses of the National Archives in Washington, D.C., hidden for nearly four decades lie thousands of pages of yellowing and dusty documents stamped "Top Secret." These documents, now declassified, are the plans for Operation Downfall, the invasion of Japan during World War II. Only a few Americans in 1945 were aware of the elaborate plans that had been prepared for the Allied Invasion of the Japanese homeislands. Even fewer today are aware of the defenses the Japanese had prepared to counter the invasion had it been launched.

Two top secret National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) ocean surveillance spacecraft were fired into the wrong orbit June 15 when the 200-foot-tall Atlas V rocket they were riding on stopped firing too early in space following launch from Cape Canaveral, Fla. The top secret satellites separated safely from the malfunctioning booster, however, and have enough rocket propellant to continue their mission, an official said on background. The U.S. Air Force, which managed the Atlas V launch, and the NRO have begun an official investigation into the launch and malfunction. The $83 million Atlas V used in the launch is a model...

WASHINGTON -- In a rare rebuke of a public official by name, the Senate Select Intelligence Committee has issued a scathing report blasting former Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV. The report claims Wilson mislead the public and the intelligence committee about his trip to Niger in 2002 on behalf of the CIA to investigate claims that Iraq was seeking to purchase uranium in Africa. Best know as the husband of former CIA officer Valerie Plame, Ambassador Wilson was catapulted to the limelight after he published an Op-Ed in The New York Times on July 6, 2003, that accused the Bush administration...

FBI Director Robert Mueller said this week that his agency busted a smuggling ring organized by the terrorist group Hezbollah that had operatives cross the Mexican border to carry out possible terrorist attacks inside the U.S. "This was an occasion in which Hezbollah operatives were assisting others with some association with Hezbollah in coming to the United States,” Mueller told a House Appropriations subcommittee during a Tuesday hearing on the FBI's budget. In a stunning revelation, Mueller admitted that Hezbollah had succeeded in smuggling some of its operatives across the border, telling the House committee: "That was an organization that...

In a break with his party, Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR) wants to approve $122 billion in funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ? but without requiring that troops be withdrawn by March 31, 2008. It?s not that he doesn?t want a firm date to bring our soldiers home, it?s that he wants the timetable for withdrawal to be classified and known only to the White House, Congress and the Iraqi government. Pryor tells The Washington Post: "My strong preference would be to have a classified plan and a classified timetable that should be shared with Congress," Pryor said...

A photograph taken in Beavercreek has some hoping it's proof of top-secret 'pulse jet' tests. BEAVERCREEK — A Beavercreek man's photograph of an unusual aircraft condensation trail has sparked a high-flying debate among scientists and aviation fans over whether the Air Force or NASA is flying an aerospace vehicle with an exotic new propulsion system. The photo of the vapor trail, taken Nov. 10 by amateur meteorologist Bill Telzerow from his backyard, shows a distinctive "doughnuts-on-a-rope" shape. The photo has raised questions about whether an experimental propulsion system that uses pulse detonation engine technology is being tested here. The propulsion...

Writing the history of our time in song. MIDI - I WANT TO KNOW WHAT LOVE IS The docs were marked TOP SECRET Sandy had been intently reading Billy Boy Clinton sent him There was a favor he was needing There was evidence in there Set for the 9-1-1 commission It can't see the light the day That had been their final decision In my life, I've seen dangerous scum But they're nothing like what all these traitors have done For far too long...they've gotten away When is judgment day? What did you stuff in your pants...it's time that we...

DEFENDING AMERICA David H. Hackworth 17 March 98 LOOSE LIPS, SINK SHIPS.. While at the Pentagon, Monica Lewinsky traveled with Defense Secretary William Cohen, sat in on briefings where the highest secrets were discussed and routinely handled highly classified documents ­ top-secret documents, which, if they fell in the wrong hands, could put America at high risk and cost the lives of our warriors. But no sweat. Lewinsky had all the appropriate clearances, right? No doubt her background had been thoroughly checked out by investigators. Or perhaps she'd been given a top-secret clearance in a hurry on order of a...

Saying the information is too sensitive, NASA announced Friday that it will not release its report on the failed rendezvous of two spacecraft in what would have been the first such maneuver without human intervention. [snip] From the DART web-site: After a successful rendezvous, acquisition of the target spacecraft, and approach to within approximately 300 feet, DART placed itself in the retirement phase before completing all planned proximity operations, ending the mission prematurely. From the original AP article: An initial analysis found that DART suffered a fuel problem, but engineers did not detect a fuel leak. The mission manager also...

SAN FRANCISCO – The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California on Wednesday filed a request for information about alleged government spying during student-led protests at two universities. The Freedom of Information Act request was filed with the government on behalf of UC Santa Cruz Students Against the War and Berkeley Stop the War Coalition at the University of California, Berkeley, according to Dorothy Ehrlich, executive director of the ACLU-Northern California.

“Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts.” Thus ran the headline of a front-page news story whose repercussions have roiled American politics ever since its publication last December 16 in the New York Times. The article, signed by James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, was adapted from Risen’s then-forthcoming book, State of War.1 In it, the Times reported that shortly after September 11, 2001, President Bush had “authorized the National Security Agency [NSA] to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States . . . without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying.” Not since Richard Nixon’s misuse...

WASHINGTON - CIA Director Porter Goss said Thursday that the disclosure of President Bush's eavesdropping-without-warrants program and other once-secret projects had undermined U.S. intelligence-gathering abilities. "The damage has been very severe to our capabilities to carry out our mission," Goss told the Senate Intelligence Committee. He said a federal grand jury should be empaneled to determine "who is leaking this information." His testimony came after National Intelligence Director John Negroponte, who directs all intelligence activities, strongly defended the program, calling it crucial for protecting the nation against its most menacing threat. "This was not about domestic surveillance," Negroponte said. Leaders...

The US government is poised to propose rules that could restrict the ability of Chinese and other foreign nationals to engage in high-level research in the country, a plan that is generating fierce opposition from companies and universities. The move comes amid growing fears in the US that its relatively open rules allowing foreign nationals to work with sensitive technologies leave the country open to espionage.

If President Bush is upset that former national security advisor Sandy Berger destroyed top secret terrorism documents in a bid to obstruct the 9/11 Commission investigation, he sure has a strange way of showing it. In June, two months after Berger pled guilty to what some say is the most serious crime ever committed by a senior White House official - Bush invited him to the White House, where, according to the Associated Press, the disgraced former Clinton advisor was trotted out to voice support for CAFTA legislation. Yesterday D.C. Magistrate Judge Deborah Robinson rejected a plea worked out for...

How long are we going to tolerate senators and congressmen who divulge our most closely-held secrets to the public in search of cheap political gain? We have laws that make those leaks serious federal crimes. We're spending enormous resources on finding out who leaked Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA agent to the press. Leaks that are vastly more important -- and which should be pursued with no less determination and resources -- are regularly ignored because the culprits are sitting members of Congress. These leakers should be thrown out of office and prosecuted. It's been about two years...

Will Justice Indict Berger? Posted Jul 23, 2004 If a bank teller walked out of the vault with a few hundred dollars stuffed in his pants, took the money home, and kept it until the authorities came looking for it, would you believe him if he said it was an accident? Of course not. Would you be surprised if the authorities discovered the teller no longer had all the money he took--and that he claimed he "accidentally discarded" some of it? Of course not. That is the sort of far-fetched story you would expect from a thief. And that is...

Kerry Adviser Sandy Berger Sees Potential 3 Year Force Presence in Iraq WASHINGTON, Jul. 09, 04 /PRNewswire/ -- WASHINGTON, July 9 /PRNewswire/ -- In a wide-ranging and exclusive interview with Bisnow on Business released today, former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, now a chief foreign policy adviser to Senator John Kerry, says, in answer to a question about how long a "substantial U.S. force presence" might remain in Iraq: "I can certainly imagine us having a force there in three years. I hope it will be a smaller force." In answer to a question about whether the U.S. is better...

Not a surprise. Interviewed by Katie Couric who was suited up in her softball uniform, David Gergen blithely dismissed Berger's actions in a featured segment at the top of the Today show, July 20. Ourtageously, Gergen called the Clintonoid who made off with top secret documents a "hero." Gergen even suggested that the accusations were politically motivated to stave off criticisms of GWB being generated in an election year. Little or no mention was made of Berger's post as Kerry's adviser except to say he might have to go on hiatus from the job. Berger, a former top US gov't...

9/11 Panel Outs CIA Spymaster Raising further questions about whether it's doing more harm than good, the commission probing the Sept. 11 attacks has revealed the identity of the CIA's top spymaster, a position considered so sensitive that in the entire history of the agency the anonymity of the person who holds it has never before been breached. Called to testify on Wednesday, James L. Pavitt, head of the CIA clandestine operations unit, told the panel, "I am not a public person." In a story headlined "Clandestine, Or at Least He Was Until Yesterday," the New York Times noted that...

The tons of Iraqi government records are yielding a lot of embarrassing secrets. Data has been obtained identifying many, if not most, of the 50,000 senior Baath party members. There were about 1.5 million Iraqis who belonged to the Baath party, but only the senior, or "full" members, obtained most of the benefits, and committed most of the crimes. Some 28,000 Baath party members have been identified and barred from government work. Another 20-30,000 are expected to receive the same treatment. There are complaints that many of these people are key professionals and technical experts that are needed to rebuild...

WASHINGTON -- Ever wonder what's in the Pentagon's old war plans? Why, for instance, "Project Cornflakes" was a go in World War II, but Cold War-era plans dubbed "Dropshot," "Broiler," "Sizzle," "Trojan" and "Shakedown" stayed on the drawing board? An upcoming "Top Secret" exhibit at the National Archives building, which houses the revered copies of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, may answer some questions. Using a new interactive computer program, visitors will be able to inspect spy documents and war plans once limited to officials with special security clearances. While the exhibit itself won't open until next year,...

The document, labeled "top secret", a plan for Israel's return to '67 borders in exchange for peace. It happened, as far as I can reconstruct it from memory, in January 1994. At the time, I was the correspondent in Israel of the New York weekly Forward and had an assistant, Abby Wisse. One day Abby called me with an odd story. She had gotten a telephone call from an American Jew who refused to give his name. He would only say that he lived in a settlement in the territories and had an astounding document to show her. It had...

Report: CIA Seizes Iraqi Intelligence Records A published report says the U.S. Central Intelligency Agency has seized a large cache of records in Iraq about its intelligence service, weapons procurement and paid foreign agents. The Washington Post says the documents are spurring U.S. investigations into how Iraq purchased weapons and paid foreign nationals to work on behalf of Saddam Hussein's government. The newspaper quotes unidentified U.S. officials as saying Iraqi files include names of nearly every Iraqi intelligence officer, names of foreign agents, agent reports and evidence of payments made to buy influence in the Arab world and elsewhere. The...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US intelligence experts are examining tonnes of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s intelligence files hoping to trace the regime's alleged weapons of mass destruction, press reports said. The documents seized after the fall of Baghdad were a trove comparable to the files of Stasi, the secret police of East Germany, which collapsed in 1989, an anonymous source told The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. The Central Intelligence Agency (news - web sites) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation refused to comment on the reports. According to The Wall Street Journal, some information gleaned from...

The US is investigating weapons procurement networks and agents of influence who took money from Saddam Hussein's regime after the CIA reportedly seized an extensive cache of files from the former Iraqi Intelligence Service. The files contain "almost as much as the Stasi files", said one American official, referring to the vast archives of the former East German intelligence service seized after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989...The recipients of the Iraqi funds were described by US officials not as formal intelligence agents, but as prominent personalities and political figures who accepted money from Iraq as they defended...

The assassination of a leading Shia cleric who cooperated with the U.S. military in Iraq follows a secret postwar plan by Saddam Hussein to destabilize the U.S. occupation, a former Army intelligence analyst told WorldNetDaily. A Jan. 23 memo classified Top Secret and found in Iraqi intelligence files orders Saddam's agents to carry out acts of sabotage in the event of the collapse of his regime. They include infiltrating mosques and assassinating imams – specifically in the holy city of Najaf, a key religious center for Shia Muslims oppressed by Hussein's deposed Sunni Muslim regime. Among other things, the 11-point...

<p>The Treasury Department said Monday that it would decline to provide the Senate with a list of Saudi individuals and organizations the federal government has investigated for possibly funding al-Qaida and other terrorist groups.</p> <p>The action was the second in two weeks to set the White House and Congress at odds over the Saudis and federal intelligence-gathering related to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.</p>

<p>The Treasury Department rejected a request from senators Tuesday and refused to release a classified list of Saudi individuals or organizations suspected of financing terrorist groups.</p> <p>A Treasury spokesman, Rob Nichols, said a department official misspoke when he told senators last week the list was unclassified, which would mean it was not restricted information.</p>

A Top Secret Document Dated January 23, 2003 From Iraqi Intelligence: A Plan for Action in the Event of a Regime Downfall The London-based Saudi daily Al-Hayat published a top secret document [1] found in the archives of the Iraqi intelligence services. The document is a plan to be acted upon in the event of a regime collapse. The events which have taken place in Iraq since the occupation carry a striking resemblance to the instructions detailed in the plan. The following is a translation of the document; click here to view a copy of the document as it appeared...

Document ordered officials to destroy buildings, nation's infrastructureThe discovery of a secret memo to Saddam's intelligence agencies suggest the mayhem that followed the fall of the dictator in April – including the looting and destruction of government buildings and infrastructure as well as assassinations of Muslim clerics – were not spontaneous, but had been planned by Hussein months ago in the event he were overthrown. The Middle East Media Research Institute translated the secret document after it appeared in the London-based Saudi daily Al-Hayat. Dated Jan. 23, the document was found in the archives of the Iraqi intelligence services, MEMRI...

A Top Secret Document Dated January 23, 2003 From Iraqi Intelligence: A Plan for Action in the Event of a Regime Downfall The London-based Saudi daily Al-Hayat published a top secret document [1] found in the archives of the Iraqi intelligence services. The document is a plan to be acted upon in the event of a regime collapse. The events which have taken place in Iraq since the occupation carry a striking resemblance to the instructions detailed in the plan. The following is a translation of the document; click here to view a copy of the document as it appeared...

Special Dispatch Series - No. 538 July 17, 2003 No.538 A Top Secret Document Dated January 23, 2003From Iraqi Intelligence: A Plan for Action in the Event of a Regime Downfall The London-based Saudi daily Al-Hayat published a top secret document [1] found in the archives of the Iraqi intelligence services. The document is a plan to be acted upon in the event of a regime collapse. The events which have taken place in Iraq since the occupation carry a striking resemblance to the instructions detailed in the plan. The following is a translation of the document;click here to...

LONDON, July 14 (AFP) - Britain cannot tell the United States how it knew that Iraq tried to get uranium from Niger because the information originated from a third country, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said Monday, without identifying the country. His statement seemed likely to add to an embarrassing rift between London and Washington -- allies in the war to overthrow Saddam Hussein -- over the way intelligence was used in the run-up to the conflict. The issue is liable to cloud talks in Washington on Thursday when British Prime Minister Tony Blair -- en route to East Asia --...

<p>Top-secret Iraqi intelligence documents found in Baghdad show that Russia funneled spy secrets to Saddam Hussein and that Moscow was still training Iraqi spies last fall, in violation of U.N. sanctions, reports say.</p> <p>The captured documents also show that the Kremlin gave Saddam lists of assassins who could do "hits" in the West and that Iraq and Russia signed deals to share intelligence and help get "visas" so agents could go to Western countries, the London Telegraph reported.</p>

Top Secret Gaffe Terror Suspect Moussaoui Given Sensitive Information W A S H I N G T O N, Sept. 6 — The government mistakenly gave alleged terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui classified documents related to al Qaeda, ABCNEWS has learned. The material — both on disk and as hard copy documents — was sent to Moussaoui as part of discovery for his legal defense, said several legal sources, including one at the Justice Department. Moussaoui is awaiting trial in federal court in Virginia on six charges of conspiracy in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks. Sent In Connection With Court Case...