Free Republic

The Justice Department has backed away from a court battle over its authority to classify and restrict the discussion of information it has already released, handing a local advocacy group a victory by granting it explicit permission to publish letters written by two senators that contain the contested information. The case was considered a potential test of limits to the government's power to restrict access to information in the public domain on national security grounds. Former attorney general John D. Ashcroft had strongly defended the practice in this case by likening it to putting "spilt milk" back in a jar...

French connection armed Saddam By Bill Gertz THE WASHINGTON TIMES The United States stood by for years as supposed allies helped its enemies obtain the world's most dangerous weapons, reveals Bill Gertz, defense and national security reporter for The Washington Times, in the new book "Treachery" (Crown Forum). In this excerpt, he details France's persistence in arming Saddam Hussein. First of three excerpts New intelligence revealing how long France continued to supply and arm Saddam Hussein's regime infuriated U.S. officials as the nation prepared for military action against Iraq. The intelligence reports showing French assistance to Saddam ongoing in the...

Foreign Office Minister Tobias Ellwood is being hailed as a hero after trying to save the life of the police officer stabbed in the Westminster terror attack. Mr Ellwood, a former soldier, ran to the officer when he was stabbed just inside the gates of Parliament. He gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and stemmed the blood flow, before waiting with him until the air ambulance landed in Parliament Square. The police officer sadly died at the scene. He was later pictured with blood on his face as he spoke to emergency services. Mr Ellwood has been a Minister in the Foreign...

AMID western world celebrations of the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaida chieftain in Iraq, there seems little certainty about who will succeed the brutal killer. Egyptian-born, Afghanistan-trained Abu al-Masri is likely to take the helm, according to U.S. military predictions. Major-General William Caldwell said al-Masri - whose name is an obvious alias and means father of the Egyptian - was the "most logical" successor, but he offered no details on why. General Caldwell, the chief U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, said al-Masri was thought to have come to Iraq in 2002 after training in Afghanistan. His mission, General Caldwell...

Newly released FBI documents say a 15-year-old boy who stole a plane and crashed it into a skyscraper might have originally targeted MacDill Air Force Base in his suicide mission. An FBI review of Charles Bishop's Internet activity showed the teen sought maps of the base and information about it. He also sent an e-mail to a classmate asking where Central Command was located on the base. Bishop died on Jan. 5, 2002, when he flew a Cessna stolen from a flight school into the Bank of America building in downtown Tampa. He left a note expressing sympathy for Osama...

AAAN has long been tied to President Obama. In 2001 and 2002, the Woods Fund of Chicago, with Obama on its board, made grants totaling $75,000 to the AAAN—about a fifth of AAAN’s overall budget. Obama served in that role alongside Bill Ayers and received $6,000 a year from 1999-2002. AAAN’s founder Rashid Khalidi and his wife Mona hosted Obama in their home on at least one occasion. Obama praised Khalidi’s insights, which had been “consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases.” Khalidi returned the compliment, telling a mostly Arab audience, that Obama is...

On Tuesday, March 26, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments on whether gay couples have a constitutional right to marry. But major American corporations have already heard the arguments—and in their own way, decided it's OK. Beginning in 2002, a leading gay-rights group, the Human Rights Campaign, began systematically rating corporate America's commitment to gay rights. The effort was born in large part out of frustration with the political process.

BACKSTORY 11-08-2002 Dateline: PARIS American billionaire investor George Soros, on trial in a 14-year-old insider trading case, told a court Friday that he didn't have privileged information when he bought shares in French bank Societe Generale. Soros and two other businessmen are on trial at the Paris Criminal Court, accused of benefiting from insider knowledge when they bought the bank's stock in 1988 before a failed takeover that pushed up the price. "I have been in business all my life and I think I know what is insider trading and what isn't," said the president of Soros Fund Management, in...

Long before Jim Messina became a trusted aide to President Barack Obama and one of the most powerful men in Washington, he was just a simple boy from Boise. Now, after working in politics for just over a decade, he lives in a lavish D.C. estate. How this happened is a classic Washington Cinderella story. Raised in Idaho by a single mother, Messina moved to Washington in 1995, in his mid-20s, to take a job as a legislative aide for Max Baucus, the conservative Democratic senator from Montana (now ambassador to China). Baucus supported George W. Bush-era personal and corporate...

A document filed in federal court this week by the Justice Department offers new evidence that former vice president Richard B. Cheney helped steer the Bush administration's public response to the disclosure of Valerie Plame Wilson's employment by the CIA and that he was at the center of many related administration deliberations. The administration's discussion of Wilson's link to the CIA was meant to undermine criticism by her husband of administration allegations that Iraq attempted to acquire uranium, a matter that her husband had probed for the CIA, according to testimony presented in a 2007 trial. *snip* He mentioned in...

It has been confirmed across the board that 18-wheelers were seen going into Syria before the war, crossing the border soon after Iraqi intelligence replaced the border guards and cleared nearby areas for their passage. There are also eyewitness reports of the trucks going into Syria, and eyewitness reports of their burial in Lebanon. The trucks with the weapons were tracked to three locations in Syria and Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, currently controlled by the Syrians, Iranians, and Hezbollah. Sources I've spoken with that have seen satellite photos of the movements confirm that the WMD in Syria are at military bases,...

Newly declassified documents from the FBI show Brazoria County is home to an alleged Islamist training compound. Papers obtained by the Clarion Project reveal a camp near Sweeny known as “Mahmoudberg” -- one of 22 owned by the group Muslims of the Americas. Local residents have reported hearing gunfire, and police investigated a shooting involving MOA members in 2002. “Until authorities get some information that they're planning to engage in violence to carryout their ideas, there is nothing illegal about it,” says terror expert Jeffrey Addicott at St. Mary's University in San Antonio. However, MOA members in the past have...

IN URUGUAY, A WEIRD MONEY GAME INVITES U.S. BROKERS by Mark Scheinbaum American Reporter Correspondent August 7, 2002 LAKE WORTH, Fla., Aug. 7. 2002 -- I'm not an investment banker in Uruguay nor do I play one on television. But what if - just what if, I'm on to something here? I literally shook my head upon awakening at my usual 4 a.m. the other morning to check international markets, to clear the cobwebs and my ear drums when I heard that U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill was enroute to the capital of Uruguay with a $1.5 billion bailout check...

''People will understand that we are serious about going after government corruption,'' he added. ``There is a very selfish reason for this: We end up paying for the bill when these people steal the money, because we have to provide aid, or accept the citizens as refugees or as migrants.'' The Bush administration says it is about to unveil a new weapon to help fight corruption in Latin America: a list of corrupt government officials from the region who will be denied entry visas to the United States. The anti-corruption drive is being led by Otto J. Reich, the...

Aragoncillo admits spying for Arroyo foes Estrada, Lacson named co-plotters vs President NEWARK, New Jersey—A Filipino-American intelligence analyst admitted Thursday that for five years he passed top secret information gleaned from White House and Federal Bureau of Investigation computers to conspirators he said were trying to overthrow President Macapagal-Arroyo. Leandro Aragoncillo, 47, a naturalized US citizen who was born in the Philippines, pleaded guilty to a four-count indictment. The conspirators used code words to refer to various people, including calling Ms Arroyo "The Penguin," Aragoncillo admitted. Aragoncillo, shackled at the feet and wearing green jail garb, himself did not...

Excerpt - NEWARK, New Jersey (Reuters) - A former White House official who took top secret documents from U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney's office and gave them to opposition figures in the Philippines was sentenced on Wednesday to 10 years in prison. Philippine-born Leandro Aragoncillo, a U.S. citizen and former Marine, pleaded guilty last year to taking the documents that included details on threats against U.S. government interests and military personnel in the Philippines. Aragoncillo worked on the security detail assigned to the vice president from 1999 to 2002, where he held a top security clearance. He later took a...

Sen. John McCain is right. Code Pink protesters are low-life scum as he called them Thursday morning when the group disrupted a Senate hearing to protest former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Saddam Hussein, Ayatollah Khamenei, Fidel Castro, Raul Castro, al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Taliban. These are some of the terrorists and state sponsors of terrorism Code Pink has given political, financial and/or material aid to since the group’s founding in late 2002. All that time Code Pink has also worked with and funded the Democratic Party,...

A Saudi national who served as director of the Virginia office of the Muslim World League (MWL) has been deported by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on immigration charges. ICE spokesman Dean Boyd said Abdullah Alnoshan, 44, of Falls Church, was returned to Saudi Arabia over the weekend. He was arrested in July by ICE and FBI agents assigned to the Joint Terrorism Task Force. A criminal complaint charged Alnoshan with conspiring to commit immigration fraud by using fake employment documents to enter, exit and live in the United States. Alnoshan also was accused of seeking to deter...

Dec 20, 2002 (AP WorldStream via COMTEX) -- Examples of omissions from Iraq's declaration to the U.N. Security Council about its weapons arsenal, according to the U.S. State Department: Anthrax and Other Undeclared Biological Agents -A previous U.N. inspection commission concluded that Iraq did not verifiably account for, at a minimum, 2,160 kg (4,752 pounds) of growth media. -This material, still unaccounted for, is enough to produce 26,000 liters of anthrax - three times the amount Iraq declared; 1,200 liters of botulinum toxin; and 5,500 liters of clostridium perfrigens - 16 times the amount Iraq declared. --- Ballistic Missiles...

<p>The former number two official in Saddam Hussein's Iraqi air force claims the former Iraqi dictator moved weapons of mass destruction from Iraq to Syria in the months preceding the current Iraq war.</p>