Free Republic

Top US State Department negotiator Christopher Hill was spotted yesterday at Washington's Dulles International Airport by Japanese TV reporters and crews.When pressed, he indicated that he would be going to "one additional stop" on the way to China from Japan.Later it was confirmed he is going to Pyongyang, North Korea. He will meet his counterpart, Kim Gye Gwan, Kim Jong il's chief negotiator.He will apparantly be in the "Peoples Paradise" between 3-5 December, to work out details facilitating the removal of North Korea from the US Government's list of "Terrorist Countries", which is expected within the next few weeks...

China's intelligence service gained access to a secret National Security Agency listening post in Hawaii through a Chinese-language translation service, according to U.S. intelligence officials. The spy penetration was discovered several years ago as part of a major counterintelligence probe by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) that revealed an extensive program by China's spy service to steal codes and other electronic intelligence secrets, and to recruit military and civilian personnel with access to them. According to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity, China's Ministry of State Security, the main civilian spy service, carried out the operations by...

'Waterboarding broke al Qaeda captive in 35 seconds,' says former CIA agent defending tortureUse of the interrogation technique known as "waterboarding" was approved by the White House and gets results, a former CIA agent admitted yesterday. The technique - which simulates drowning - was used against Al Qaeda captives with success, John Kiriakou told a U.S. TV network. The one-time CIA interrogator is the first to speak out about the "torture" methods that have earned President George Bush's administration worldwide condemnation. The White House has denied torture is used on terror suspects, but Mr Kiriakou said waterboarding "broke" one stubbornly...

The Qatar government in the mid-1990s invited al Qaeda operative Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his family to live in Qatar, the 9/11 commission found. Mr. Mohammed was given a job at the Qatar Ministry of Electricity and Water. At the time, Mr. Mohammed was under indictment in the Southern District of New York for his role in a plot to blow up U.S.-bound jetliners. He was also wanted for questioning in connection with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. In 1996, FBI agents arrived in Qatar to arrest Mr. Mohammed. But the Qataris resisted handing him over, and Mr. Mohammed...

Indian born, New York raised, Harvard educated, Deepak Bhargava may have seldom crossed paths with Barack Obama-but he is a key player in 44th president's movement to transform America. Deepak Bhargava is connected to almost every aspect of the Obama movement-from George Soros to ACORN, to Democratic Socialists of America, to The Nation, to the communist dominated United for Peace and Justice, to a whole raft of "progressive" non profits. In the video below, Deepak Bhargava opens the Heartland Democratic Presidential Forum December 10 2007 - a forum exclusively for thousands of community organizers including ACORN personnel. Note that Obama...

The gut-wrenching slide of the 2008 stock market crash is unforgettable for those caught in it. In the six weeks from the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy on Sep. 17, the stock market lost over 40 percent of its value. A quarter of trading days had plunges of 4 percent or more. Investors saw life’s savings dissipate. Traders saw a year’s work and bonus compensation vaporize. The Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury, which had been scrambling to cope with the developing financial crisis, accelerated their efforts to a frenetic pace, developing program after program to stem the panic. A chart of the...

Jean Duley testified that she was "scared to death" of Bruce Ivins after he left her a string of harassing phone messages, according to an audio recording taken during a July 24 peace order hearing. Duley, 45, told Judge Milnor Roberts that Ivins planned to "go out in a blaze of glory," had bought a bulletproof vest and a gun and planned to kill his co-workers. The audio recording was obtained by The Frederick News-Post on Monday. Duley told the court she got to know Ivins while running group and individual counseling sessions at the Comprehensive Counseling Associates in Frederick...

<p>Mike Huckabee is being backed by a bizarre upstate group that has been denounced as a cult, The Post has learned.</p> <p>Records show Huckabee raked in $20,000 from Sara Bronfman, the Seagram liquor heiress and high-profile devotee of the NXIVM group.</p>

WASHINGTON – Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley is asking whether a suspected former Russian intelligence officer-turned U.S. lobbyist and the firm behind the unsubstantiated anti-Trump dossier should have registered as foreign agents for their efforts to bring down a U.S. law on behalf of the Kremlin. According to a complaint filed with the Justice Department, Fusion GPS, which was also involved in the creation of the unsubstantiated dossier alleging collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians, was involved in the pro-Russia campaign to kill the Global Magnitsky Act around the same time. In 2012, President Obama signed into...

On December 19, 2007, a U.S.-based law firm succeeded in freezing the funds of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) in France on behalf of American clients who, in the judgment of U.S. courts, were victims of terrorist attacks sponsored by the Islamic Republic of Iran.  Iran has been using its state institutions as agents of the terror activity it perpetrates throughout the world. The funding for this terror activity is partly provided via Bank Melli and sometimes also via Bank Saderat. Bank Melli also played a pivotal role in financing the 1994 AMIA bombing in Argentina. AMIA was...

Former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto names the 16-year-old son of Usama Bin Laden as the leader of one of four gangs of “designated assassins” sent to kill her in a posthumous autobiography excerpted in The Times of London on Sunday. Bhutto, who was assassinated as she left a rally in Rawalpindi in December, revealed she was warned by both President Pervez Musharraf and a “friendly Muslim government” that Hamza Bin Laden was planning her murder. The naming of Bin Laden’s teenage son appears to bolster intelligence claims that Hamza is being groomed as a future leader of Al Qaeda....

Osama bin Laden's 16-year-old son led a suicide bomb squad sent to kill Pakistan opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, according to her own claims. Before she was assassinated in December the former prime minister claimed she had been warned that four such death teams would try to kill her. And the naming of bin Laden's teenage son, Hamza, could now strengthen claims that he is being groomed as a future leader of the al Qaeda terror group. In 2001, he appeared in a joint Taliban and al Qaeda video of a militant attack on a Pakistan army camp in South Waziristan,...

A Minnesota community college has "a Muslim place of worship" featuring "a schedule for Islam's five daily prayers," according to a local newspaper columnist who visited the campus. Tax-supported Normandale Community College in Bloomington, Minn., also has a "sign requesting that shoes be removed" and a barrier that divides men's and women's "prayer spaces," writes Katherine Kersten of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. College officials denied it was anything more than a "meditation" room available for "all faiths." The description of the facility, however, led one faculty member to tell Kersten the room is "unprecedented" and "goes beyond religious toleration." "For all...

Chris Matthews reported back on December 18th, 2007 that 2008 presidential candidate Barack Obama was born in Indonesia and has an Islamic background. Video at link

CARACAS, Venezuela — A mysterious Venezuelan air force flight came under attack from vigilantes when it touched down last week at an airfield in northern Bolivia amid fears that the transport plane was delivering weapons. Suspicions were only deepened when officials confirmed that a Venezuelan banking official on board the flight had been carrying a briefcase stuffed with $160,000 in cash. The airfield, at Riberalta, is located near a Bolivian uranium-mining area, adding to long-standing suspicions that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is trying to purchase uranium from his Latin American neighbor for transshipment to Iran.

Saddam VP's hideout found 07/12/2007 16:07 - (SA) Baghdad - Security forces stormed a hideout belonging to Izzet al-Douri, the former Iraqi vice president under Saddam Hussein, in a village near Tikrit, 170km north of Baghdad, an Iraqi official said on Friday. They broke into the hideout based on confirmed intelligence that al-Douri was using it to hold meetings with his aides, said the source who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The forces did not find al-Douri, but seized documents with information on the al-Qaeda terrorist network and other militias, their activities and the techniques used to conduct their...

The sudden death of an exiled Georgian billionaire may have been another "Alexander Litvinenko-style" murder, it is feared. A major crime squad is investigating the death of 52-year-old Badri Patarkatsishvili, whose body was found at his country mansion in Surrey at about 11pm last night. His family said he suffered a heart attack - but Surrey Police have launched an investigation to confirm the exact cause of death after reports of a plot to kill him. Sky News' home affairs correspondent Mark White said: "The police want to leave no stone uncovered. "In the light of Litvinenko's death in 2006...

Salah Osman Ahmed, 26, pleaded guilty in federal court today to providing material support to terrorists, according to his attorney. Ahmed, a part-time security guard from Brooklyn Park, is accused of traveling to Somalia in December 2007, allegedly to train with al-Shabaab, an Islamic militant group that federal officials say has links to al-Qaida. Ahmed's attorney, James Ostgard, said late Monday night that his client will plead guilty to a single count -- providing material support to terrorists -- before U.S. District Judge James Rosenbaum. In exchange for the guilty plea, Ostgard said three other counts will be dismissed at...

LA PAZ, Dec 6 (Reuters) - In a violent show of anti-Venezuela sentiment, a crowd of about 200 Bolivians hurled stones at a Venezuelan military plane and prevented it from refueling after it landed on Thursday, local radio reported. After hearing the incoming plane, the mob seized control of the airport in the Amazonian city of Riberalta and attacked the aircraft. Regional leaders had said they suspected it was carrying arms and not humanitarian supplies, according to the radio reports. "We won't put up with these Venezuelans who come to the country and do whatever they want. We won't let...

As the cliche goes, there are no coincidences in politics. Obama fundraiser group Code Pink just happened to have arrived in Cairo last week for the group’s ninth visit there in two years as part of its campaign to undermine the Mubarak government and help Hamas, the terrorist group that controls Gaza. Code Pink and the media are trying to portray the leftist group's 'sudden' appearance in Cairo Wednesday as an act of courageous support for a democratic revolution. Nothing could be further from the truth.Code Pink protests the Mubarak government in Tahrir Square, Cairo, Egypt. February 2, 2011. Code...