Free Republic

Peter Lance's new book, Triple Cross, (the complete title is: Triple Cross, How Bin Laden's Master Spy Penetrated the CIA, the Green Berets and the FBI -- And Why Patrick Fitzgerald Failed to Stop Him) is out in bookstores on 11/21/2006. This is a link to the Able Danger Blog's review of the book. Here is the text of the Harper Collins' press release for the book: TRIPLE CROSS How Bin Laden's Master Spy Penetrated the CIA, the Green Berets and the FBI -- And Why Patrick Fitzgerald Failed to Stop Him By Peter Lance In TRIPLE CROSS, five-time Emmy-award...

Egyptian presidential favourite and former army chief Abdul Fattah al-Sisi has vowed that the banned Muslim Brotherhood group "will not exist," should he win. In his first interview with Egyptian TV, he added that two assassination plots against him had been uncovered. Mr Sisi removed Egypt's first democratically elected President Mohammed Morsi from power last July. He is widely expected to win the presidential election on 26-27 May. Mr Sisi had denied he had any political ambitions when he ousted President Morsi and launched a crackdown on the Brotherhood - which supported him - last year. In a joint interview...

With Khairat el Shater and Omar Suleiman vying for the presidency, the long simmering conflict between the Brotherhood and the SCAF has turned into open warfare. Ever since Hosni Mubarak’s ouster conventional wisdom had it that there was some form of understanding between the army and the Brothers. The generals, accepting the fact that the Brotherhood was the main political force that would rule Egypt in the coming years, were keen to make a deal. The army would keep its special status and its immunity under the new regime—and in return would support the Brotherhood and let them draw up...

As I watched the making of history in Cairo, I noticed something. The Egyptian Army was moving into the city. A column of tanks was moving down one of the city’s broad avenues. They were M-1 Abrams, the same kind used by the U.S. Army. The Egyptian Army has around 1,000 M-1s built under license and which together with some 1,400 older M-60s and 2,500 M-113s constitute the core of that country’s conventional warfare capability. Moreover, if you looked up in the skies over Cairo you would see U.S. made F-16s. The Egyptian Air Force flies more than 200 of...

ASHINGTON, June 7— A re-examination of years of terrorist plots and attacks around the world, including the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, suggests that American intelligence agencies profoundly underestimated Al Qaeda's reach and aspirations for more than a decade as it grew from obscurity into a global terrorist threat, lawmakers and investigators said this week.As Congressional investigators look back far beyond the series of signals missed before the Sept. 11 attacks, they are seeking answers to many questions about Al Qaeda that law enforcement and intelligence agencies still cannot answer themselves, officials said.In particular, they said, Congressional investigators are trying...

The Egyptian Army has come under the steady domination of Islamists. Egyptian sources said Islamists have risen to mid- and high-level ranks in the Army and Navy. They said many of these officers pressure their soldiers to demonstrate a devotion and observance to the Muslim religion regardless of their faith. "There is an acceptance in most of the military that fundamentalist Islam is legitimate and becoming the dominating trend," a source familiar with the Egyptian military said. The sources said the Islamist trend in the military began in the Egyptian Navy during the 1990s. They said the Islamic influence spread...