Free Republic

Former CIA operative and New Mexico congressional candidate Valerie Plame, who continues to draw criticism for retweeting an anti-Semitic article in 2017, says she has joined a Jewish congregation. Plame, in a recent interview with an Israeli journalist, said she is a member of Temple Beth Shalom in Santa Fe, where she has lived for several years. In videotaped portions of the interview now posted online, Plame said she became interested in her family history after having her twin boys in 2000 and discovered that her great-grandfather was a rabbi in Ukraine. “I’ve always been drawn to that aspect of...

October 3, 2004 How the White House Embraced Disputed Iraqi Arms IntelligenceBy DAVID BARSTOW, WILLIAM J. BROAD and JEFF GERTH his article was reported by David Barstow, William J. Broad and Jeff Gerth, and was written by Mr. Barstow. In 2002, at a crucial juncture on the path to war, senior members of the Bush administration gave a series of speeches and interviews in which they asserted that Saddam Hussein was rebuilding his nuclear weapons program. In a speech to veterans that August, Vice President Dick Cheney said Mr. Hussein could have an atomic bomb "fairly soon." The next month,...

VIDEO It is the name that dares not speak its name around Valerie Plame. Although Plame falsely (according to a Washington Post fact check) accused Scooter Libby of leaking her name, the true culprit was Deep State insider Richard Armitage of the State Department. Just the sound of his name makes Valerie Plame very very uncomfortable.

Officials have confirmed that a German-flagged ship was carrying parts to build a nuclear bomb from a Persian Gulf country to Libya in October. Investigators seized the shipment before it reached its destination. Just a few months before Libya declared it would cease its efforts to create weapons of mass destruction, American and British agents seized a German freighter ship loaded with centrifuges and other parts that are used to create enriched uranium, the material needed to build nuclear bombs. The seizure is believed to have influenced Tripoli’s decision to suspend its weapons program last month. On Wednesday, U.S. State...

WALLACE: ...in October of 2002 in which you authorized the use of force, you went further than the president ever did. Let's watch:(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)ROCKEFELLER: I do believe that Iraq poses an imminent threat, but I also believe that after September 11th that question is increasingly outdated.(END VIDEO CLIP)WALLACE: Now, the president never said that Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat. As you saw, you did say that. If anyone hyped the intelligence, isn't it Jay Rockefeller?ROCKEFELLER: No. I mean, this question is asked a thousand times and I'll be happy to answer it a thousand times. I took a...

GENEVA (AP) — A Swiss man suspected of being involved in the world's biggest nuclear smuggling ring claims he supplied the CIA with information that led to the breakup of the black market nuclear network led by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan. In a documentary airing Thursday on Swiss TV station SF1, Urs Tinner says he tipped off U.S. intelligence about a delivery of centrifuge parts meant for Libya's nuclear weapons program. The shipment was seized at the Italian port of Taranto in 2003, forcing Libya to admit and eventually renounce its efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. The 43-year-old Tinner...

A ship quietly intercepted in the Egyptian port of Alexandria was carrying aluminium tubes destined for North Korea, authorities say, increasing fears that Pyongyang is stepping up efforts to buy nuclear weapons materials. French and German authorities were said to have tracked the ship, Ville de Virgo, to the eastern Mediterranean and to have seized the tubes on April 12. German police arrested the owner of a small export company and said they had uncovered a scheme to acquire up to 2000 such pipes. Investigators said they had concluded that that amount of aluminium in North Korean hands could have...

The government ordered the destruction of documents on an alleged international nuclear smuggling network involving three Swiss engineers, it has been confirmed. The head of a parliamentary control committee said the material was shredded last November. The father and sons – Friedrich, Marco and Urs Tinner - are suspected of helping to supply parts for Libya's nuclear weapons programme between 2001 and 2003 through a trafficking ring run by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's atom bomb. Reports say the three worked as undercover agents for the United States intelligence service. There is widespread media speculation that Washington asked...

U.S. scientists have discovered traces of enriched uranium on smelted aluminum tubing provided by North Korea, apparently contradicting Pyongyang's denial that it had a clandestine nuclear program, according to U.S. and diplomatic sources. The United States has long pointed to North Korea's acquisition of thousands of aluminum tubes as evidence of such a program, saying the tubes could be used as the outer casing for centrifuges needed to spin hot uranium gas into the fuel for nuclear weapons. North Korea has denied that contention and, as part of a declaration on its nuclear programs due by the end of the...

Report: Swiss Had Role in S. African Nukes Friday October 28, 2005 4:01 AM GENEVA (AP) - Switzerland played a key role in building the nuclear weapons of the former apartheid regime of South Africa, a government-sponsored report said Thursday. More than a decade ago, then-South African President F.W. de Klerk announced that his country had dismantled its nuclear weapons program. Peter Hug, the author of a report in the Swiss National Science Foundation's six-year investigation into Swiss-South African relations, said Switzerland and other countries provided technical support for South Africa's uranium enrichment efforts. Hug, a history professor at the...

This document CMPC-2004-004404 contains memos dated from 1999 and 2000 about Saddam regime procurements of 81 mm in Diameter, 900 mm in Lenght HIGH STRENGTH AND HIGH QUALITY ALUMINUM TUBES. As many of you know the issue of 81 mm High Strength, High Quality Aluminum Tubes were subject for an intensive debate since 2002 because this type of tubes can be used in GAS CENTRIFUGES FOR URANIUM ENRICHMENT. Although the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) said in its final report in 2004 the following about the procurement of these tubes “ Baghdad’s interest in high-strength, high-specification aluminum tubes—dual-use items controlled under...

Bush Aides Gave One-Sided View of Iraqi Data -- NYT October 2, 2004 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Bush administration officials, in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, gave a one-sided view of the case for believing Saddam Hussein had a nuclear arms program that ignored the doubts of their own experts, the New York Times said on Saturday. The newspaper made the charge in an article about thousands of high-strength aluminum tubes ordered by Iraq that leading administration officials said were intended for use in uranium centrifuges. "As the only physical evidence the United States could brandish of (Saddam's) revived...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A fired CIA agent, who a newspaper says told superiors in 2001 that Iraq had abandoned part of its nuclear program, is asking the FBI to investigate allegations that the spy agency dismissed him for refusing to falsify intelligence. A July 11 letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller from the former agent's attorney suggests CIA officials may be guilty of criminal violations involving intelligence he produced on weapons of mass destruction in 2000 that contradicted an official agency position. The former agent's attorney, Roy Krieger, said his client initially asked the CIA's inspector general to investigate charges...

Reuters is off to the races with the NYT-inspired conspiracy theory regarding Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld supposedly suppressing information about the non-existence of Saddam's nuke program: WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Top U.S. officials were aware some pre-war evidence cited to make the case against Iraq's Saddam Hussein was questionable but U.S. intelligence officials nonetheless deemed the threat of his developing nuclear weapons credible, top White House aides said on Sunday. President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, one top aide who cited the claims about aluminum tubes seized in Jordan in June 2001 in urging that Saddam was attempting to revive a nuclear program,...

"How the White House Used Disputed Arms Intelligence" NYT 10/3/04

<p>CANBERRA, Australia (CNN) -- The heat being generated over Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction has moved to Australia with a former senior intelligence officer accusing Canberra of exaggerating the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's regime.</p> <p>Speaking to an inquiry called by the Australian Senate, Andrew Wilkie said Friday information in intelligence reports had been distorted by the prime minister's office and "sexed up" to suit the government's political agenda.</p>

nothing furthur breaking

HAMBURG, Germany (AFP) - A former North Korean diplomat is accused of ordering material from a German firm that could be used in the production of nuclear weapons, Germany's Der Spiegel reported in its Monday edition. The news magazine said a German businessman would go on trial in Stuttgart, southwest Germany, next month in connection with the case. The diplomat was named by Spiegel as Yun Ho Jin. It said he used to work as a Pyongyang representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna. According to Der Spiegel, Yun Ho Jin ordered special aluminium tubes from...

Foreign Affairs Correspondent Australian intelligence played a key role in presenting controversial claims that aluminium tubes were destined for Iraq's nuclear weapons program. Last night ABC's Four Corners program revealed that the tubes were ordered by an Australian firm, manufactured by the Chinese parent company of the Australian firm and details of the shipment were passed to the United States by the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, leading to its seizure. The revelations came as the Government rejected comments of Australian weapons expert Brigadier-General Stephen Meekin to The Washington Post. He said the tubes were innocuous and destined for rocket casings,...

This slide released 05 February 2003 by the US State Department shows an aluminum tube found in Iraq that could be used to enrich uranium for use in weapons of mass destruction.(AFP-HO/File) WASHINGTON (AFP) - US experts hunting for elusive weapons of mass destruction in Iraq have ignored depots containing much-publicized aluminum tubes that the administration of President George W. Bush used to illustrate alleged Iraqi nuclear ambitions. The The Washington Post reported Sunday that in their march to Baghdad on April 8, US Marines charged past rows of warehouses at Ash Shaykhili that stored machine tools, consoles and instruments...