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Al-Qaida had extensive contacts with Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security, as well as with an elite military unit which helped the terrorists train and plot attacks against Americans, according to a former intelligence officer who recently fled Iran. Hamid Reza Zakeri, a former inspector and director of Iran's Revolutionary Guards and Ministry of Intelligence, or MOIS, member said models of the World Trade Center, the White House, Pentagon and other United States government buildings "were in our headquarters." In an explosive interview with a London-based Arabic newspaper last week, Zakeri stated that al-Qaida leader and Egyptian terrorist Ayman al-Zawahiri,...

On April 30, 2004 Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s book “The Politics of Truth” will be released. Wilson has been an opponent to the Iraq war, having proposed instead continued UN sanctions and inspections in a “containment” strategy. But his fame first derives from his well-known July 6, 2003 New York Times editorial piece “What I Didn’t Find in Africa”. Second, from the media exposure of his wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA employee connected to studying proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. In media reports Wilson is usually introduced as the person who disproved President Bush’s State of the Union speech...

The Saudi man arrested by the Joint Terrorism Task Force yesterday in Idaho has ties to close associates of terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden and to four Arab men charged at the same time with channeling funds to Iraq. Sami Omar Al-Hussayen – a University of Idaho doctoral candidate supported by the Saudi government – was a terrorist bagman, according to a federal criminal justice source quoted by a Seattle newspaper. Saudi student Sami Omar al-Hussayen "He's in touch with people who could pick up the phone, call [bin Laden], and he would take the call," the source told the...

Summary Norwegian authorities are dropping charges against Mullah Krekar, the founder of Ansar al-Islam, who had been charged with conspiracy to murder his political foes in Iraq. He is to be deported to Iraq after the government is handed over to the Iraqis on June 30. Analysis A Norwegian court threw out charges against Mullah Krekar, the founder of militant Islamist group Ansar al-Islam, on June 15, citing insufficient evidence. Krekar had faced charges of conspiring to murder political rivals in Iraq. He has lived in Norway since 2003, despite an expulsion order. Now that he no longer faces trial,...

His style was that of a celebrity lecturer, spreading "enlightenment" in a rich baritone with the help of jokes and references to pop stars as he addressed rapt audiences the length of Britain. News of the arrival of the extremist Muslim cleric Abdullah el-Faisal would spread by word of mouth, and he attracted crowds of up to 150 people at a time. But beneath his jocular manner lay a philosophy skewed by hatred of "kuffars", or unbelievers, and shared by a web of associates allegedly leading back to Osama bin Laden.Yesterday Faisal, 39, was convicted of soliciting murder and stirring...

Russian special forces troops moved many of Saddam Hussein's weapons and related goods out of Iraq and into Syria in the weeks before the March 2003 U.S. military operation, The Washington Times has learned. John A. Shaw, the deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, said in an interview that he believes the Russian troops, working with Iraqi intelligence, "almost certainly" removed the high-explosive material that went missing from the Al-Qaqaa facility, south of Baghdad.

Terrorism's Western Ally By Dale HurdCBN News Senior Reporter April 21, 2003 U.S. intelligence is still coming to grips with reports that Al Qaeda and other Muslim terrorist groups are setting up bases in Venezuela. CBN.com – WASHINGTON, D.C. — While America's attention has been focused on Iraq, it may have a growing terrorist threat in this hemisphere, and in a country you might never expect. On February 13 this year, at London's Gatwick Airport, a Muslim with suspected links to Al Qaeda was arrested after a grenade was found in his luggage. His ticket shows he flew in from...

She joined the FBI after watching the World Trade Center collapse before her eyes, leaving a lucrative job at a hedge fund.As a Special Agent in Miami, she worked on many high-profile cases and won awards and accolades for her hard work and diligence.Last year she resigned in disgust. The FBI had turned its sights from fighting crime to fighting Americans’ freedoms.Former FBI Special Agent Nicole Parker broke down in tears Thursday while testifying during a congressional hearing.Parker said during the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government’s inaugural hearing that she left her job at a hedge...

In the end, even his personal friendship with the President could not help the Professor save his job in New Delhi. Robert Blackwill, the US ambassador to India who announced his resignation today, was left with little choice but to take that return ticket to Harvard because of his constant and increasingly unpleasant run-ins with a US State Department that sought to openly wear its predilection for Pakistan on its sleeve. The last time a genteel exchange of views between India and the US — led, respectively, by foreign secretary Kanwal Sibal and US assistant secretary of state for South...

A closed-door meeting of left-wing non-governmental organizations (NGOs) was held on January 16, 2003, in Washington, D.C. to consider how to apply international financial pressure through a global tax on the U.S. Bruno Jetin, a representative of ATTAC France, spoke to the gathering and acknowledged in private conversation that his group works hand-in-glove with the French Communist Party and the "Socialist parties on the Left." A representative of the embassy of France in the U.S. was listed as a participant. ATTAC stands for the Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions for the Aid of Citizens. The International ATTAC Movement...

Iran initiated 9/11 attacks’ 22 January 2004 HAMBURG – The Iranian intelligence service was the initiator of the 11 September 2001 suicide-jet attacks on New York and Washington, according to a defector quoted Thursday by German police at the Hamburg terrorist trial.One Federal Crime Office interrogator said he had taken down a statement in Berlin on Monday from a former Iranian agent who insisted that Iran had employed Saudi radical Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network to carry out the attacks. The defector could not appear himself in court because he had been promised anonymity, two police officers told the trial...

A former Russian intelligence officer has been sentenced to 18 years' hard labour for treason and espionage. Colonel Alexander Zaporozhsky, 52, was found guilty of passing information about Russian overseas intelligence activities to foreign governments for five years. He was also suspected of revealing the identities of more than 20 Russian US-based spies. Since his retirement in 1997, Mr Zaporozhsky had been working for an American company in the state of Maryland, but he was arrested in Moscow in 2001. The court gave Mr Zaporozhsky a tougher sentence than the 16 years demanded by prosecutors. 'Secrets to CIA' He was...

It was a father's dilemma: What to do with a wayward son? In Saddam Hussein's case, the problem was his son Odai, who has been accused of murders and rapes too numerous to count.

<p>OSLO, Norway (AP) — The Nobel Peace Prize Committee has received 150 nominations for the 2003 award, with a majority of nominations coming from North America, committee secretary Geir Lundestad said Tuesday.</p> <p>Nominations, which had to be postmarked by Feb. 1, are made by past laureates, committee members, university professors and select organizations. They're kept secret for 50 years, although those making them often announce their choice.</p>

<p>JOHANNESBURG - In 1963, lawyer George Bizos saved anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela from the gallows, and Mr. Mandela went on to become president of South Africa. Forty years later, he is defending Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai on a capital charge of plotting to kill President Robert Mugabe.</p>

A former top aide to Colin Powell says his involvement in the former secretary of state's presentation to the United Nations on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was "the lowest point" in his life. "I wish I had not been involved in it," says Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, a longtime Powell adviser who served as his chief of staff from 2002 through 2005. "I look back on it, and I still say it was the lowest point in my life." Wilkerson is one of several insiders interviewed for the CNN Presents documentary "Dead Wrong -- Inside an Intelligence Meltdown." The program,...

The Moscow Military District Court has ruled that it was Colonel Aleksander Zaporozhsky who gave up Robert Hanssen to the CIA. The court ended up giving the former intelligence officer an even stiffer sentence than the prosecutor had demanded. On Wednesday the former Colonel of the Foreign Intelligence Service Aleksander Zaporozhsky was found guilty of high treason in the form of revealing state secrets to the USA. Zaporozhsky was sentenced to 18 years in a high security labour camp and stripped of his military rank and all state decorations, though his property will not be confiscated. During his service, Zaporozhsky...

Bad morning for Pelosi @ 9:53 am by Eric Zimmermann Two new developments in the "what did Pelosi know about waterboarding" series spell trouble for the Speaker. First, CNN reports that an aide told Pelosi in February 2003 that waterboarding had been used on Abu Zubaydah. This contradicts Pelosi's assertion that she only knew about the legal rationale for waterboarding, not that it had been used. Sheehy attended a briefing in which waterboarding was discussed in February 2003, with Rep. Jane Harman, D-California, who took over Pelosi's spot as the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. This source says...

JERUSALEM -- The U.N. agency that provides food for Palestinian refugees warns it will have to stop emergency aid next month unless it receives $94 million. The chronically cash-strapped United Nations Relief Works Agency, or UNRWA, said in a statement that it needs the money to continue its assistance after late March. "We are scraping the bottom of every barrel and stretching every dollar we have, but without immediate donations our emergency operations are going to grind to a halt," said agency director, Peter Hansen.

Nigergate: The shadow of the French inspector After yesterday’s posting, a close look at Ambassador Wilson, today’s the turn of Mr Jacques Baute. The following article raises some incredible questions and reveals some amazing facts. Mr Baute, a Frenchman, seemed to know all about the the Niger forgeries and kept very quiet about them. The result: the Bush administration was ridiculed. The day after Baute’s organisation, the International Atomic Energy Agency, declared the documents to be forgeries the French Government made a startling announcement..... The Bush administration was decieved by it’s presumed allies and the blame was placed on the...