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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department inspector general is investigating whether FBI agents involved in espionage and terrorism cases improperly used informants and subjects of investigation to benefit private businesses they were running on the side, according to officials and documents. The allegations, according to court documents reviewed by The Associated Press, include that agents' and intelligence assets' private companies were involved in business deals in China and the Middle East about the same time the FBI was investigating Chinese efforts to acquire sensitive technology. The FBI says it is cooperating with the investigation. "Any time there is a request...

These days, with the GOP in free-fall and America's 51st state (better known as Iraq) a bloody neocon nightmare, who's waiting in the wings polishing his halo and patting down his white horse? Well, AZ's own Senator John McCain, who expects to dispatch Democrat dragon-lady Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Presidential race with minimum bother. Thing is, McCain's meaner than the Biblical Cain, and has his share of Abel corpses in the closet to prove it. This dastardly duck was reminded of same in reading an advance copy of Senator Dennis DeConcini: From the Center of the Aisle. The pinto...

The Kerry Line: Fellow Senators Call For Kerry To Release Attendance At Private Intelligence Committee Hearings(title edited for length) "John Kerry served on the Intelligence Committee from 1993 to 2000, and according to official records, John Kerry missed 76 percent of the public Senate Intelligence Committee hearings during that time. This figure doesn’t include his attendance at closed door meetings. Those records can only be released to the public at John Kerry’s request. This is something that needs to be done, and I join Senator Roberts, Senator Chambliss, Senator Cornyn, and Senator Coleman and others in calling on him to...

In the 1990s, John Kerry served eight years on the Senate Intelligence Committee. Despite such incidents as the World Trade Center bombing in 1993 and the bombing of the Khobar Towers in 1996, Kerry proposed intelligence cuts throughout the 1990s and even asked his colleagues in 1997, "Now that [the Cold War] struggle is over, why is it that our vast intelligence apparatus continues to grow?" Fortunately, many of his liberal-Democratic colleagues understood that there were other threats, such as terrorism, that still abounded; it was rare for them even to agree with his proposed slashing of the intelligence budget....

EVEN FELLOW DEMOCRATS WARNED KERRY ABOUT HIS DANGEROUS CUTSKerry’s Senate Colleagues Warned His 1994 Six Billion Dollar Intelligence Cut Proposal Was Too Deep And Ignored Terrorist Threats_______________________________________________________________________FELLOW DEMOCRATS WARNED AND ADMONISHED KERRY Sen. Dennis DeConcini (D-AZ), Chairman Of Senate’s Select Committee On IntelligenceKerry Amendment Would Cut Intelligence Budget By Six Billion Dollars. “Mr. President, the Kerry amendment includes a $1 billion cut in fiscal year 1994 and $5 billion over the next 5 years from intelligence activities.” (Sen. Dennis DeConcini [D-AZ], Congressional Record, 2/10/94, p. S1360)Senate Already Slashed Intelligence For FY 1994. “Last year I was able to put the...

Former Intelligence Operative Says Author of Phoenix Memo Endangered His Life By Jacques Billeaud Associated Press Writer Published: May 23, 2002 PHOENIX (AP) - A former U.S. intelligence operative alleges in a court document that the FBI agent who wrote the memo warning about Arabs training in U.S. fight schools endangered his life three years ago by blowing his cover. Two Arizona congressmen and a former U.S. senator made inquiries on Harry Ellen's behalf about his complaints about the agency and Special Agent Kenneth Williams. The FBI reviewed the complaints but determined they did not warrant an investigation. Williams has...

CIA Director James Woolsey was fighting other bureaucratic battles — instead of [Osama] bin Laden. The CIA was critically short of translators who spoke or read Arabic, Farsi, Pashto and the other languages of the great "terrorist belt." That belt begins on the dirty beaches of Somalia, arcs up the river valleys of Sudan and Egypt, across the desert flats of Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf states, over the dry plateaus of Syria and Iraq, past the wastes of Iran, through the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and ends in the cold steppes of Central Asia. In the...

<p>CIA Director James Woolsey was fighting other bureaucratic battles &#8212; instead of [Osama] bin Laden. The CIA was critically short of translators who spoke or read Arabic, Farsi, Pashto and the other languages of the great "terrorist belt." That belt begins on the dirty beaches of Somalia, arcs up the river valleys of Sudan and Egypt, across the desert flats of Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf states, over the dry plateaus of Syria and Iraq, past the wastes of Iran, through the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and ends in the cold steppes of Central Asia. In the world's most terror-prone region, the CIA was essentially blind, deaf, and dumb.</p>