Free Republic

Imagine a vast ledger, chronicling the transactions of a mighty republic, now riddled with deliberate gaps and omissions, gaps no auditor may probe, no citizen may question. This is no fanciful dystopia, but the present reality, quietly authorized by what is known as Statement of Federal Financial Accounting Standards 56 (SFFAS 56). While initially crafted, perhaps, with honorable intentions to shield 'classified' operations from hostile eyes, SFFAS 56 now threatens the very transparency and public accountability that sustain a free government. Federal agencies are allowed to use SFFAS 56 to hide spending they desire to be 'classified' from the American...

The Pentagon has ordered a sweeping audit of how it conducts clandestine information warfare after major social media companies identified and took offline fake accounts suspected of being run by the U.S. military in violation of the platforms’ rules.According to the researchers’ report, the accounts taken down included a made-up Persian-language media site that shared content reposted from the U.S.-funded Voice of America Farsi and Radio Free Europe. Another, it said, was linked to a Twitter handle that in the past had claimed to operate on behalf of Centcom.One fake account posted an inflammatory tweet claiming that relatives of deceased...

Clandestine 20 hrS ago For those that don’t understand why it had to be this way, think about the optics in 2017 juxtaposed to 2022. I think many of you forgot what it was like in 2017. Trying to wake up normies was a tough business. My friends and family looked at me like I was an eight-headed monster when I told them that a global Deep State entity infiltrated the US government to include the White House, nearly all of Congress, the highest echelons of the DOJ, FBI, CIA, DNI, State Dept, the mainstream media, big tech, social media,...

The largest undercover force the world has ever known is the one created by the Pentagon over the past decade. Some 60,000 people now belong to this secret army, many working under masked identities and in low profile, all part of a broad program called "signature reduction." The force, more than ten times the size of the clandestine elements of the CIA, carries out domestic and foreign assignments, both in military uniforms and under civilian cover, in real life and online, sometimes hiding in private businesses and consultancies, some of them household name companies.SNIPNewsweek's exclusive report on this secret world...

I have been interested in clandestine manufacture of firearms on the Indian subcontinent since my close friend and associate, Norman Whisler, brought them to my attention in the early 1980's.  Finding articles is much easier now, with the Internets.  Illicit, black market pistols are commonly available in India for about $10-$15.  These pistols show a level of sophistication a bit higher than most, but hand craftsmen have been making semi-autos for as long as they existed.  Many Belgian and Spanish semi-autos were hand crafted.  Semi-autos are routinely handcrafted in small Philippine shops.  From newindianexpress.com: TALCHER: An illegal small arms...

As we slip into more socialism and totalitarianism with the TARP bailout (with 78 billion unaccounted for) and the obscene "Porkulus Package", at what point will true Patriots attempt a change? Personally, I believe that Joe-Six-Pack-Soccor-Mom doesn't know and cares not even if they do know! I also believe that the small rural gun-toting folks won't make a difference, which would be quickly put down by the authorities - think Ruby Ridge and WACO. That said, the only legal chance this Republic has is "term limits" and "reduced congressional sessions". The less they are in session, the less harm they...

CIA Director Michael V. Hayden yesterday named Michael J. Sulick to head the National Clandestine Service, bringing back to government service a veteran covert operator who left almost three years ago after a confrontation with aides to Hayden's predecessor, former congressman Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.). In announcing the appointment, Hayden described Sulick as "a familiar figure to many of you" and "a seasoned operations officer" who "earned a reputation for superior tradecraft and sound judgment." In November 2004, Stephen R. Kappes, then CIA deputy director of operations, the top spy position, and Sulick, then his deputy, became involved in a...

The CIA will declassify hundreds of pages of long-secret records detailing some of the intelligence agency's worst illegal abuses -- the so-called "family jewels" documenting a quarter-century of overseas assassination attempts, domestic spying, kidnapping and infiltration of leftist groups from the 1950s to the 1970s, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said yesterday. The documents, to be publicly released next week, also include accounts of break-ins and theft, the agency's opening of private mail to and from China and the Soviet Union, wiretaps and surveillance of journalists, and a series of "unwitting" tests on U.S. civilians, including the use of drugs....

As President George W. Bush returns to Washington from his Asian tour, he will be confronted with newly released information that Iran is building nuclear-warhead capable missiles with help from North Korean experts in a vast underground complex near Tehran. The project, initiated at the end of the Iran-Iraq war in 1989, involves dozens of immense tunnels and facilities built under the mountains near Tehran, Iranian opposition sources reported Monday. The information was first released in September, but the involvement of North Korean experts, and the report that Iran's missile production has reached an advanced stage, brings a new twist...

The final item in the Sept. 30, 1944 "Activity Report of Virginia Hall," American intelligence agent, was No. XV: "Were you decorated in the Field?" "No," she had typed, "nor any reason to be." The answer was typical of her matter-of-fact sense of duty. But William J. Donovan, known to a generation of spies as "Wild Bill," begged to differ. On May 12, 1945, Maj. Gen. Donovan, director of the U.S. Office of Strategic Services, informed President Harry Truman that Hall was, for her extraordinary heroism, to receive the Distinguished Service Cross -- second only to the Medal of Honor....

The newly appointed CIA Director Porter Goss, believes that terrorists may bring urban warfare techniques learned in Iraq to our homeland. If he is right, we could have a whole new war on our hands. The prospect is indeed scary. The idea of terrorist cells operating clandestinely in the United States, quietly amassing handguns and assault rifles, and planning suicide shooting rampages in our malls, is right out of Tom Clancy’s most recent novel. If not for the fact that the 9/11 attacks were also foreshadowed in a Clancy novel, I would have given the idea no further thought. However,...

Sunday, Jan. 30, 2005 At Los Angeles International Airport two weeks ago, FBI agents arrested an Irish businessman they had spent a week tailing all over California's Silicon Valley, from the offices of two electronics manufacturers in Sunnyvale to a hotel in Mountain View and down a quiet cul-de-sac to a suburban house in San Jose. The technology exporter, according to court papers, had purchased sophisticated computer components in the U.S. to send to Russia through Ireland. He now stands to be charged in mid-February with "unlawful export of 'defense articles.'" U.S. officials point to this little-noticed case as one...

Throughout the 1990s, Turkish foreign policy analysts had an easy job. After all, Turkish foreign policy was predictable. Ankara cooperated enthusiastically with Washington, whether in the Middle East or in the Balkans. Turkey aligned itself with Israel and kept at arms length from Middle Eastern neighbors such as Syria and Iran. In Europe, Ankara traded heavily with the European Union (EU) but did not allow the EU to dictate foreign policy. The European Union's frequent allegations and criticism of human rights abuses in Turkey, especially with regard to Turkey's fight against Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK, Partiya Karkaren Kurdistan) terrorists, soured...

NOTE: If I know anything about the rabid naysayers on FR, at least some of the RELIGIOUS [vs spiritual] types will wail and rant that ANYTHING having to do with numbers and The Bible has to be crossing the line into dealing with Biblically forbidden NUMEROLOGY. This is nonsense. The dictionary definition of “numerology” makes clear that numerology is the study of numbers, as the figures designating the year of one’s birth, “to determine their supposed influence on one’s life, future, etc.” [Quix color, bold emphasis on the definition from: HERE: http://www.infoplease.com/ipd/A0562554.html Clearly, the Biblically prohibited issue is INTEREST IN,...

WASHINGTON -- The British submarine skipper Bill Jewell, 90, who died Aug. 18 in suburban London, had a vital role in one of the more macabre and celebrated clandestine operations of World War II -- using a corpse planted with fake documents to fool Nazi intelligence. Operation Mincemeat, as the wartime plan was known, was shrouded in such secrecy that not even Mr. Jewell's after-the-fact memoir noted the caper.

Those who say that art and politics should not be mixed are right, but don’t bother discussing that with the owner of the biggest plantation 90 miles south of Florida. Back in the beginning, June 1961, Castro boomed in a menacing tone for all the Cuban intellectuals and artists to hear, “WITH THE REVOLUTION EVERYTHING, WITHOUT THE REVOLUTION, NOTHING!” The statement might be considered plagiarism since fascist Italian dictator Benito Mussolini had already said “With the state everything, without the state, nothing!” So much for Castro’s artistic creativity. But, welcome a new, succulent, tropical concoction, some sort of a “Cuba...

Like any other group, Communists come in a lot of shapes, sizes and colors. This time they’re wearing pink, they’re on the nightly news, and more than anything, they want the mothers and grandmothers of America to identify with them. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think the leaders of the women’s anti-war group Code Pink got lost on their way to the carpool line. Since October, these hot pink-clad "marching moms" have been spinning the same tale to reporters from coast to coast, the one about how concern for their families moved them to trade their oven mitts...