Free Republic

WASHINGTON Intelligence shortcomings, as we see, have a thousand fathers; secret intelligence triumphs are orphans. Here is the unremarked story of "the Farewell dossier": how a C.I.A. campaign of computer sabotage resulting in a huge explosion in Siberia — all engineered by a mild-mannered economist named Gus Weiss — helped us win the cold war.Weiss worked down the hall from me in the Nixon administration. In early 1974, he wrote a report on Soviet advances in technology through purchasing and copying that led the beleaguered president — détente notwithstanding — to place restrictions on the export of computers and software...

Two prominent senators proposed yesterday a bipartisan alternative to President Bush's immigration initiative, including the prospect of permanent legal status for undocumented workers who fulfill residency, employment and other requirements. The proposal by Democratic leader Thomas A. Daschle (S.D.) and Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel (Neb.) differs in key respects from Bush's plan, but they pledged to work with the White House to ensure passage of a new immigration law. "We can tighten and bring common sense to a patchwork of immigration law that make no sense," Hagel said at a news conference as he and Daschle unveiled their bill. The...

The owner of a home construction company bragged to me that he used to have to pay carpenters $20 an hour plus benefits but now gets carpenters for $12, no benefits, because of the ready supply of illegal immigrants. According to the Center for Immigration Studies, in the last decade alone, illegal immigration has increased 400 percent. Today, at least five million of California's residents are illegal. That's not surprising. The US government now barely enforces its immigration laws and provides ever-increasing rewards to illegal border crossers. For example, US taxpayers now provide illegals and their families with emergency- and...