Free Republic

[Subtitle: “I hope that my story will help you understand the methods of Russian operatives in Washington and how they use U.S. enablers to achieve major foreign policy goals without disclosing those interests,” Browder writes.]The financier Bill Browder has emerged as an unlikely central player in the ongoing investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 elections. Sergei Magnitsky, an attorney Browder hired to investigate official corruption, died in Russian custody in 2009. Congress subsequently imposed sanctions on the officials it held responsible for his death, passing the Magnitsky Act in 2012. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government retaliated, among other ways,...

On January 3, 2020, near Baghdad's airport, a U.S. air raid targeted Qasem Soleimani, commander of Quds Force, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (“IRGC’s”) terrorist arm. He was killed instantly. To understand how important this is, one needs to understand who Qasem Soleimani (1957-2020) was. Soleimani, a one-time construction worker and weightlifter, joined the IRGC after the 1979 revolution and soon headed one of the IRGC’s main cadres. Khomeini assigned Soleimani to suppress a Kurdish movement in Mahabad, Western Azerbaijan. Soleimani's brutality earned him command over a Quds Guard Corps unit in Kerman. The Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) gave Soleimani opportunities...

This month’s announcement from Party City that it’s closing more than 40 stores as it grapples with new challenges, including diminishing helium supplies, likely came as unwelcome news to customers who count on the store for their balloon and event planning needs. But for scientists like Mark Elsesser, the announcement was something of a relief, inflating hopes that the public, and the government, might start paying closer attention. “When it comes to helium, we’re at a tipping point,” said Elsesser, who is the associate director of government affairs at the American Physical Society, a nonprofit association of physicists. “Party City...

Richard A. Jewell, whose transformation from heroic security guard to Olympic bombing suspect and back again came to symbolize the excesses of law enforcement and the news media, died Wednesday at his home in Woodbury, Ga. He was 44. The heavy-set Mr. Jewell, with a country drawl and a deferential manner, became an instant celebrity after a bomb exploded in Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta in the early hours of July 27, 1996, Only minutes earlier, Mr. Jewell, who was working a temporary job as a guard, had spotted the abandoned green knapsack that contained the bomb, called it to...

When people think of heroes, they typically think of a big man, and laugh at little guys. And while in seeking to subdue a violent character without recourse to a deadly weapon, bigger, as a rule, is better, there is no correlation between physical strength and physical courage. For instance, I’m fond of the late John Wayne, who was the most popular actor in screen history. And yet, when World War II came, the 6’4 ½” Wayne got himself a deferment from the draft, and stayed home. Meanwhile, America’s most decorated soldier was 5’5, 110 lb. Audie Murphy. Forty-four-year-old Richard...

The Washington Post has angered some conservative Christians by quoting a so-called terrorism expert as saying accused bomber Eric Rudolph is a "Christian terrorist." A more accurate description would be "doper." The Post had previously noted in passing that Rudolph had traveled to Holland to procure high-quality marijuana seeds for the marijuana he raised and smoked. http://www.aim.org/publications/media_monitor/2003/06/13.html Attorney General John Ashcroft applauded the apprehension of Eric Rudolph, who had been eluding law enforcement for five years, by saying, "American law enforcement's unending efforts to capture Eric Robert Rudolph have been rewarded. Working with law enforcement nationwide, the FBI always gets...

A friend of mine called this morning who’d seen Clint Eastwood’s Richard Jewell last night in Hollywood. She knew I was seeing it this morning in New York. “It’s going to upset your apple cart of an Oscar list,” she said. She was right. Eastwood, at 90, has made a jewel of a film in “Richard Jewell,” a real masterclass in filmmaking. Eastwood will have to be nominated for Best Director. The screenplay and music (by Arturo Sandoval) will have to be nominated. And the actors, the actors now roll right into the top 5 in their respective categories. Paul...

Link to Video claiming that the Trump administration handed over Ukraine documents implicating Clinton colluding with Ukraine in the 1996 election and implicating Biden in payback scheme.

Clint Eastwood points a stern finger at FBI investigators and the media in the first trailer for his new fact-based drama “Richard Jewell,” which explores the security guard who reported finding an explosive device at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics — and then was falsely accused of planting it himself.

If there was a reason President Donald Trump chose the small Pennsylvania town of Montoursville to hold a campaign rally, no one in the media is saying what it is. In the absence of any answers, let me suggest one, admittedly more speculative than proven but a possibility nonetheless. In 1996, during the midst of Bill Clinton's desperate drive to become president, 16 French club members from the Montoursville high school and five of their chaperones died in the crash of TWA Flight 800 off the coast of Long Island.

A New Jersey man is accused of being a secret Hezbollah operative in the United States for more than a decade, surveilling potential attack sites in New York City, Boston and Washington, prosecutors said Thursday. Alexei Saab, 42, from Morristown, was charged under a nine-count indictment in connection with a range of alleged terror activities. They included providing material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization (FTO) and receiving military-style training from that group, the Justice Department said. “Even though Saab was a naturalized American citizen, his true allegiance was to Hezbollah, the terrorist organization responsible for decades of terrorist...

DNC coordinated with activists to 'infiltrate' talk radio The Democratic party developed an elaborate, multi-year operation in the 1990s that deployed thousands of activists to covertly mold public opinion using talk radio, according to documents from the Clinton Presidential Library. The Democratic National Committee (DNC), with the blessing of the Clinton White House, launched the Talk Radio Initiative (TRI) ahead of the 1996 campaign. The program trained thousands of operatives to call in to radio shows, conduct surveillance of their contents, and secretly disseminate Democratic talking points while posing as ordinary listeners. "Volunteers must be able to keep the project...

Fifteen summers ago, America's news media informed us that black churches throughout the South were being torched by white racists. The purported wave of arsons dominated the airwaves and generated thousands of newspaper articles. Pundits, politicians and preachers decried the terrorism and the hate it represented. In fact, it never happened. Here is the little-known story of how an obscure radical group teamed up with a leftist national church organization, an unprincipled President and a legion of compliant news outlets to create a media firestorm -- one based entirely on lies.

ANSWER's Steering CommitteeBy Ryan Anderson O’DonnellFrontPageMagazine.com | March 12, 2003 The group at the forefront of the recent anti-war rallies, International A.N.S.W.E.R (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) is in reality a front organization designed to further the radical agenda of several extremist movements from the political Left. Despite the media’s assertions to the contrary, present incarnation of the peace movement, led by ANSWER, is anything but representative of mainstream America. ANSWER’s steering committee reads like a "Who’s Who" of radical political organizations. The most influential member of ANSWER’s steering committee, Ramsey Clark’s pet project known as the...

Ukraine’s foreign policy body will announce Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov and political strategist Gleb Pavlovsky personae non gratae for their support of pro-Moscow presidential candidate, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich. The two political leaders, in a formal statement to be released Monday, are accused of “inciting nationalist strife, war, propaganda of fascism, and making statements discrediting the democratic process in the Ukraine,” the Russki Kurier daily reported. Yuri Luzhkov earlier traveled to the Russian-speaking Donetsk region to endorse Yanukovich, as did President Vladimir Putin in several statements. Speaking at the All-Ukrainian Congress of Deputies in Severodonetsk, Luzhkov criticized the opposition for...

Russia's capital city is a golden egg. The Kremlin aims to seize it in yet another play for power and privilege. Dec. 19, 2005 issue - Moscow is not merely Russia's capital. It is a treasure chest. The city is home to four fifths of the country's national wealth. It boasts more billionaires than New York or London. Everything and everyone is here: banks, businesses, trade. Whoever rules Moscow, Russians like to say, rules the country. The undisputed master of Moscow just now is its current mayor, Yuri Luzhkov. For more than a decade he has ruled the city...

On the Friday after Thanksgiving 1962, Cuban agents planned to detonate 500 kilos of TNT inside Macy's, Gimbel's, Bloomingdale's and Manhattan's Grand Central Terminal. Che Guevara was the head of Cuba's "Foreign Liberation Department" at the time. On September 11th 2001, roughly 50,000 people worked at the World Trade Center. Macy’s alone gets roughly 50,000 shoppers on Black Friday. Castro and Che planned their Manhattan holocaust short weeks after Nikita Khrushchev foiled their plans for an even bigger one. "Say hello to my little friends!" Castro had dreamed of yelling at us in October of 1962, right before he imagined...

John Kerry's Fellow TravellersA 5-part series exposing John Kerry's Communist connections.Part 4: Subversion in the Senate: Kerry's Communist ConstituencyBy Fedora *NOTE: The term "fellow traveller" as used in this article series refers to someone who is not a member of the Communist Party (CP) but regularly engages in actions which advance the Party's program. Some apparent fellow travellers may actually be "concealed party members": members of the CP who conceal their membership. Which of these classifications is applicable to the Kerrys is a question this series leaves unresolved. This series does not argue for any direct evidence of Richard or...

<p>STRANGE CELL-FELLOW: Ramzi Yousef, mastermind of the '93 WTC bombing, in 1996, when he began spilling to a jail "friend."</p> <p>April 11, 2004 -- The 9/11 commission has been given an FBI report detailing mobster-turned-spy Gregory Scarpa Jr.'s 1996 prison exchanges with terrorist Ramzi Yousef. The Post's Al Guart reports how a Brooklyn hood became America's unlikely agent in the war on terror.</p>

U.S. Links Charity to Chechen RebelsBy Nabi Abdullaev Staff Writer The head of a U.S.-based Islamic charity who is suspected of having ties to Osama bin Laden is in jail facing a grand jury investigation after the FBI showed he had lied about his support for Chechen rebels. Federal officials accused Enaam Arnaout, a Syrian-born U.S. citizen, and his Benevolence International Foundation of perjury last month for claiming they did not provide support to "people or organizations known to engage in violence, terrorist activities or military operations of any nature." Arnaout, 39, was arrested April 30. He had been under...