Free Republic

Carmine J. Persico, the unpredictable leader of the New York-based Colombo crime family who the authorities believe had a strong hand in the assassinations of the mob bosses Albert Anastasia and Joey Gallo, died a prisoner on Thursday in a hospital in Durham, N.C. He was 85. His lawyer, Benson Weintraub, confirmed the death, at Duke University Medical Center, but said he did not know the cause. Mr. Persico was serving a combined 139-year sentence at a nearby federal prison, in Butner, N.C. Mr. Weintraub had been representing Mr. Persico in litigation against the Bureau of Prisons. Mr. Persico contended...

Sen. Marco Rubio called out Sen. Ted Cruz by name Monday night for voting to "weaken U.S. intelligence programs," escalating their increasingly intense rivalry for the Republican presidential nomination. Calling it a distinctive issue in the campaign for the White House, the Florida senator said, "At least two of my colleagues in the Senate aspiring to the presidency, Sen. Cruz in particular, have voted to weaken the U.S. intelligence programs just in the last month and a half. And a weakening of our intelligence gathering capabilities leaves America vulnerable." Rubio, speaking before The Wall Street Journal CEO Council at the...

Convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard is to be released from US prison on Friday after serving 30 years.   Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter  Attempts to get Pollard freed over the years have failed, as have requests to ease the terms of his release. He is to be released by the federal parole board but remain under strict conditions. Among other things, Pollard will be banned from flying to Israel and forbidden from accessing the internet.   Jonathan Pollard (Photo: AP)  Pollard, 61, will also have to live and work in New York and regularly report to a parole officer....

During the "Cuban Missile Crisis"in 1962 we were led to believe that President John F. Kennedy was standing up to the Soviet Union by demanding that their missiles be pulled out of Cuba and imposing a blockade. But in a backroom in Washington, Attorney General Robert Kennedy was meeting Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin. They cut a deal to withdraw Soviet missiles from Cuba in exchange for US missiles being pulled out of Turkey. Also apparently in the deal a winding down of Cuban exile raids on Cuba and a pledge to not invade Cuba to overthrow the Castro regime like...

Longtime prisoner Jonathan Pollard has just left the Federal Correction Complex in Butner, North Carolina, after over 30 years of being held on espionage charges, his wife Esther announced shortly after 11 a.m. Friday. Esther and a number of Pollard's closest confidantes were waiting to greet Pollard as he first tasted freedom, at 4:15 a.m. EST; from there they will set off for New York to begin their lives anew. There in New York, a probation officer will be assigned to Pollard by the US Department of Justice, and will inspect to make sure the 61-year-old stays within all of...

Jonathan Pollard, an American convicted of spying for Israel, is set to be released on parole from a US prison. The former US Navy intelligence officer, now 61, was caught selling classified documents in 1985 and given a life sentence two years later. Pollard has been serving his sentence at a prison in North Carolina. His parole terms bar him from leaving the US without permission for five years. He has said he wants to move to Israel to be united with his second wife. Successive Israeli governments have tried to secure Pollard's freedom, in a case that has caused...

I really feel like slamming some of the chickens**t American Jews who regularly comment - both on this blog and on Twitter and Facebook - that Jonathan Pollard should rot in jail because what he did was so terrible they're afraid of being accused of having 'dual loyalties' if they actually question Pollard's life sentence. Much of the infamous Cap Weinberger memo (that Pollard's lawyers were never allowed to see) has been declassified, and it shows that much of the US government argument for keeping Pollard imprisoned is based on lies and mischaracterizes what Weinberger (an anti-Semite in his...

"On January 7, 2002, former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu stepped through the two-doored entry chamber of a prison sallyport. After the first fudge-brown steel and armored glass door slowly closed right-to-left behind him, Netanyahu passed his hand beneath a black light reader along the left wall. It illuminated a small security stamp on his hand, not unlike the type disco clubs use. Behind opaque, silver-tinted windows, watchful security officers in the control room completed their checklist, approving Netanyahu's access....... The prison was not in Israel, it was in North Carolina. Netanyahu had flown to Raleigh Durham and then driven...