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BOGOTA, Colombia - Documents that Colombia says it recovered from a slain guerrilla leader give the clearest indication yet that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez sought to arm and finance insurgents across the border. The documents — more than a dozen internal rebel messages — detail several years of close cooperation between top officials in Venezuela's government and military and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, including the construction of rebel training facilities on Venezuelan soil. They also suggest Venezuela was preparing to loan the rebels at least US$250 million (euro190 million), provide them with Russian weapons and possibly...

Have you ever been to a government office to pick up a document -- your driver's license, say -- only to be sent to another window, where the clerk sends you to another window, where a clerk sends you back to the first to start all over again? That's what it feels like these days asking Bill and Hillary Clinton about their White House records. Last weekend, USA Today reported that it had finally received some records from the Clinton Presidency four years after making a Freedom of Information Act request. Except that hundreds of pages pertaining to the handling...

WASHINGTON – Two more Iraqis with false Bulgarian passports were detained by Mexican officials in Monterrey – bringing the total to four this month. Wisam Gorgies, a 34-year-old man, and Rana Nazar Peyoz, a 26-year-old woman, reportedly flew from Madrid and landed in Monterrey, according to reports in two Mexican newspapers today. Following questioning, the pair admitted they intended to reach the United States. They were taken to Saltillo in the state of Coahuila, for final determination of their status. Mexican officials said the are investigating "a network that could be made up of Mexicans operating in Greece who are...

DALLAS (Reuters) - A batch of old documents linked to the slaying of President John F. Kennedy has reportedly been unearthed, including a highly suspect transcript of a conversation between assassin Lee Harvey Oswald and Oswald's killer Jack Ruby, the Dallas Morning News said on Sunday. The newspaper said the Dallas County district attorney's office, which uncovered the documents, would display its discovery at a news conference on Monday morning. The Morning News said the items found in an old safe in a Dallas courthouse included personal letters from former District Attorney Henry Wade, the prosecutor in the Ruby trial....

A team of historians scours the country for any scrap or document written by or to the 16th president. Even the tiniest message can be a revelation.LINCOLN COUNTY, ARK. — Bouncing down an empty country road, past browning cotton fields lined with signs advertising church services and cheap guns, historian John A. Lupton hunches over a minivan's steering wheel and ignores his aching back. He has been traveling for six days -- covering five states and more than 1,400 miles -- in a mentally exhilarating and physically exhausting pursuit of anything handwritten by Abraham Lincoln, as well as documents addressed...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 10, 2008 – Documents released by U.S. military officials in Iraq detail the deterioration of al Qaeda in Iraq, as hundreds of its fighters have deserted to fight alongside the coalition or have been killed or captured. Navy Rear Adm. Gregory J. Smith, a Multinational Force Iraq spokesman, briefed reporters today on a letter and a diary recovered in raids by coalition forces, both thought to be written by senior leaders of al Qaeda in Iraq. The documents are believed to have been written last year, and detail a shift in support as citizens who formerly supported al...

Judicial Watch has tried to gain access to the records from Hillary Clinton's task force on revamping the American health-care system, and has been met with considerable resistance. After seeing the first batch released by the Clinton library, one can certainly understand why. In a press release from Judicial Watch earlier this evening, they excerpted some explosive passages within the documents, passages which will create some uncomfortable questions for Hillary on the campaign trail. First, an internal critique of Hillary's plan marveled at the unprecedented scope of government control over a private industry -- at least in peacetime: A June...

AUSTIN — Toll road critics were turned down in their request for wide-ranging transportation department documents, but a judge gave them more time to narrow their request as part of a lawsuit against the state. Texans Uniting for Reform and Freedom, led by San Antonio resident Terri Hall, sued the Texas Department of Transportation in September to fight the department's toll road efforts. The group claims the "Keep Texas Moving" promotional campaign violates a ban on state officials using their authority for political purposes. It also wants to stop agency officials from lobbying Congress to allow more tolling. On Thursday,...

Federal immigration agents say they have uncovered another phony immigration document mill in Virginia Beach, according to court documents made public Monday. From an apartment complex in the Pembroke section, illegal immigrants could pay $110 to get papers that looked legitimate enough to gain employment, agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in the court filing. The suspected ring leader of the operation, Armando Gutierrez-Tlaczani, known to friends as "Luis," was ordered jailed without bond Monday after an appearance in U.S. District Court. Gutierrez-Tlaczani was arrested last week and charged with selling phony immigration documents from his apartment, which...

Hillary Clinton’s top advisers charge that the presidential candidate was unfairly targeted by moderator Tim Russert during Tuesday night’s Democratic debate in Philadelphia. Russert asked Clinton a number of tough questions during the MSNBC-sponsored debate, including one on Social Security and another on the release of documents from the Bill Clinton administration, as she sought to fend off attacks from her Democratic rivals. Mark Penn, Clinton’s senior strategist, said: “Russert made it appear that President Clinton had done something new or unusual” in regard to the release of documents. “I think there will be further clarification.” Penn and Jonathan Mantz,...

HILLARY DOCUMENTS WHILE FIRST LADY ARE SEALED UNTIL AFTER THE ELECTION SANDY BERGER LETTER re: 911 MOVIE Because no Freedom of Information Act request will be effective in having Hillary's first lady documents released until after the next election, perhaps we can get some help for someone with a certain expertise in acquiring documents. That person would, of course, be Sandy Berger. The following appeal of help was sent today via facsimile to Berger at his office at 202.637.8615. Doug from Upland Contributor to FreeRepublic.com www.FreeRepublic.com Mr. Samuel R. Berger Chairman Stonebridge International LLC 555 13th Street, NW Suite...

Fake documents can buy dirty bomb material 12:03 21 July 2007 NewScientist.com news service With all the security measures in place against terrorist attacks, you might think it would be difficult to obtain enough radioactive material from within the US to build a dirty bomb. It turns out that all you need is a little ingenuity and one fake fax. Posing as staff from a construction firm, members of the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for a licence to purchase small amounts of substances such as caesium-137, which is found in moisture meters used...

UNITED NATIONS -- In a wide-ranging compendium on Saddam Hussein's secret weapons programs, the U.N. Monitoring, Observation, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) reveals that in late 1989, Saddam's military launched a modified Scud missile that could have carried a nuclear warhead. In a document released on Thursday, UNMOVIC states . . . Iraq's deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, repeatedly waved off Western concerns about the missile program. Now, it has become clear that such concerns were justified . . .

WASHINGTON - Little-known documents now being made public detail illegal and scandalous activities by the CIA more than 30 years ago: wiretappings of journalists, kidnappings, warrantless searches and more. The documents provide a glimpse of nearly 700 pages of materials that the agency plans to declassify next week. A six-page summary memo that was declassified in 2000 and released by The National Security Archive at George Washington University on Thursday outlines 18 activities by the CIA that "presented legal questions" and were discussed with President Ford in 1975. Among them: _The "two-year physical confinement" in the mid-1960s of a Soviet...

Chain's use of database to fire employees who don't check out angers advocates for immigrants You may have already seen the signs popping up at your local Dunkin' Donuts shop: ``We follow the law! This company hires lawful workers only. " The signs, which have begun appearing in shops around Boston, make public the company's participation, starting June 1, in a voluntary federal program that enables employers to quickly check the immigration status of new hires. Dunkin' Donuts is requiring all of its franchisees to participate in the Basic Pilot Program, which allows employers to verify a worker's status using...

I think we should keep track of those companies who are doing a splendid job of NOT hiring illegals! This morning in our local edition of The Arizona Republic Business section there was an article re: the firm stance that Dunkin Donuts/Baskin Robbins has taken with ensuring that NO illegal aliens are hired on at any of their franchises. They are utilizing the federal government's Basic Pilot program to conduct electronic background checks. Franchise owners who don't follow this policy are taken to court.

A spokesman for President Bush says a demand by Republicans for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to follow through on former White House insider Sandy Berger's promise to take a polygraph test regarding the classified documents he took from the National Archives will be studied. The response from Tony Snow came on a question from Les Kinsolving, WND's correspondent at the White House. "Congressman Tom Davis and 17 other Republican House members have called on Attorney General Gonzales, Department of Justice, to administer the polygraph test that Sandy Berger agreed to in paragraph 11 of his plea agreement. And my question,...

A private investigator who worked to get condemned inmates off death row pleaded guilty Monday to forging documents to support their appeals. Kathleen Culhane, 40, admitted that she forged documents to try to stop the executions of four condemned inmates since 2002, including Michael Morales, who was sentenced to death for the 1981 rape and murder of a Central Valley teenager. The plea agreement by the San Francisco-based investigator was entered in Sacramento County Superior Court and settles a case that the state attorney general called the largest fraud ever against the state's criminal justice system. "This case is not...

WASHINGTON - The Justice Department released a list of internal documents Thursday focusing on lawmakers' concerns and media questions about the firings of eight federal prosecutors, but the department resisted congressional demands for copies of the memos. The list of 159 e-mails and memos, spanning nearly three months, at the least demonstrates concern about how the dismissals were being publicly received before they erupted into a firestorm that has resulted in calls for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resign. The small pile of documents, sent to Capitol Hill on Thursday night, also included e-mails about articles published in The Washington...

Testimony in the case of a Chinese-born engineer accused of stealing U.S. defense secrets revolved Thursday around whether he needed government approval to export a document on a quiet submarine propulsion system to China. Authorities believe Chi Mak, a naturalized U.S. citizen, stole thousands of pages of defense documents from his defense contractor employer, Power Paragon, and gave them to his brother, who passed them along to Chinese authorities over a number of years. He was arrested in 2005 in Los Angeles after FBI agents stopped his brother and sister-in-law as they boarded a flight to Hong Kong. Investigators said...