Free Republic

After 9-11, as talk of war against Iraq picked up in Washington, the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) became jittery. On Oct. 29, 2002, a memo from Directorate 14 (in charge of special operations and “wet work” like assassinations) reported that “one of our sources in the United States, with a high level of reliability, says the CIA and the so-called opposition have a joint plan to bring ‘quislings’ to Iraq from the north and south to gather information and await future missions. Our informant will be one of them.” The memo suggests, disturbingly, that Saddam had a mole somewhere inside...

BASRA, IRAQ--The bookkeepers of the police state were meticulous. Payoffs to tribal leaders, quotas for cheering crowds on Saddam Hussein's birthday, long lists of "bonuses" paid out to party members on every state occasion, reports on suspicious families and pro-Iranian Shiite "traitors" in their midst -- at the Mother of All Battles Branch of Iraq's ruling Baath Party, they wrote it all down. Here at the chief party headquarters for Iraq's second city, near the party villas and the date palm groves and the decayed elegance of the Shatt-al-Arab waterway, officials kept a hand in nearly every aspect of daily...

U.S. Finds Cache of Data in Baghdad By CHRIS TOMLINSON .c The Associated Press BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - U.S. troops discovered thousands of microfilm cartridges and hundreds of paper files in two residential buildings in a Baath Party enclave Monday in central Baghdad in what could be a major intelligence discovery. Four specially designed safes, with thousands of microfilm cartridges filled one room of one house. The film showed official Iraqi documents written in Arabic. The cartridges were numbered in a cataloging system. ``They are archives of some kind, whose and what it's an archive of is the mystery,'' said...

Meanwhile, the Mail on Sunday reported that "Russian sources" had said that Saddam had been smuggled out of Baghdad in a convoy to Syria led by the Russian ambassador and bombed unsuccessfully by the US last Sunday. Quoting "senior military sources", the tabloid also reported that Moscow envoys held a series of meetings with Saddam before war broke out on March 20 in which the Iraqi president tried to arrange safe passage for himself, his family and for secret files out of Iraq. Last Updated: 04:53 UK, Sunday April 13, 2003

New York to scrap files on anti-war protesters By David Usborne 11 April 2003 Police in New York City have agreed to destroy records of the past political affiliations of people arrested over recent weeks in anti-war demonstrations. Constitutional scholars and civil libertarians have argued that demanding the data from detainees violated rights of protest and free speech. The row is a severe embarrassment to the police department, which has often been accused of violating constitutional rights. A spokesman said, however, that the Police Commissioner, Raymond Kelly, had been unaware that the data was being collected and had ordered that...

<p>HAMBURG, Germany - The hijacking conspiracy spawned in this northern port city likely was broader and deeper than previously reported, according to investigative files amassed by German authorities since Sept. 11, 2001.</p> <p>At least five and possibly seven presumed al-Qaida operatives appear to have fled Hamburg in the days before Sept. 11, tracing a hurried route through Turkey, Pakistan or the United Arab Emirates to what they believed was the sanctuary of an al-Qaida camp in Afghanistan.</p>

<p>MEMPHIS -- A Memphis High School senior is suing the school district to get a grade overturned, a restraining order on class rankings and $25,000.</p> <p>Brian Delekta filed the lawsuit Friday claiming he wasn't given the grade he had earned, which could keep him from being class valedictorian. Delekta ended the 11th grade in 2002 ranked top in his class.</p>

Report: Gov't Shares Personal Data Wed Oct 30, 5:39 PM ET By D. IAN HOPPER, AP Technology Writer Student aid applicants, check the fine print. That information you put on your application to the U.S. Department of Education is being shared with the Pentagon, Justice Department and other agencies — even private companies like debt collectors. A report released Wednesday by congressional investigators found government agencies frequently share information gleaned from various federal applications — sometimes without the applicant's knowledge of where it might go. And it's legal. "People are generally unaware of all of the sharing," said Ari Schwartz...

<p>Key public records that justify the recent award of millions of dollars worth of consultant contracts by the state's public housing agency are missing from official files, according to a review by The Advertiser.</p> <p>State law requires that the records be available for public inspection and officials of the Housing and Community Development Corp. of Hawaii (HCDCH) can't explain why the documents are missing from contract files.</p>

The Colorado Freedom Report--www.co-freedom.com Self-Defense Groups Subject of Denver Police Files by Ari Armstrong, September 20, 2002 At least I'm in good company. The Denver Police kept files on me and the Colorado Freedom Report, Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, the Tyranny Response Team, and the Libertarian Party (see http://www.co-freedom.com/2002/09/spyfiles.html and http://www.co-freedom.com/2002/09/lpfiles.html). What do these groups have in common? They all advocate the right to keep and bear arms, a fundamental human right guaranteed by the U.S. and Colorado constitutions. While the LP is involved in many other issues, the Denver police were interested in the fact that it is "pro...

The two Clintons destroyed the FBI and Hillary used it as her own personal muckraking agency, effectively made it an arm of her personal staff. While Bill was eviscerating, Hill was collecting, amassing, creating her own little black book of blackmail as the need arose. And arise it would and will continue, as this power mad socialist shoots for the highest office in the land. The lowest among us runs for the highest position and what a kick in the head that is. I would sooner trust a crack whore than this evil woman who means only to enslave...

Why doesn't the Pentagon, and particularly General Franks, encrypt the "war plans" and other secret information? It could then be stored, not on a computer's hard drive, but on something like a Zip Drive and locked up in a safe place.Is this too difficult for the Feds to figure out?

Archaeologists find thousands of 2,000-year-old files Chinese archaeologists have found thousands of official files from over 2,000 years ago. The 20,000 ancient bamboo slips have details about the political, economic and cultural life of the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC). The information on the bamboo slips includes details about army food consumption and relations between different ethnic groups. Xinhua says they were unearthed in southern China's Hunan province. Experts are comparing the find to that of the Qin Dynasty terracotta soldiers and horses unearthed in Shaanxi province in the 1970s. Researchers say only 2,000 bamboo slips were unearthed during the last...

<p>WASHINGTON -- On a day last month when her boss, FBI Director Robert Mueller, was telling Congress about the agency's crippling computer problems, office assistant Alice Liberto offered a case study of just how antiquated the system is.</p> <p>To open a file on a bank robbery here, Ms. Liberto filled out an initial incident report in neat longhand, got out a manila binder and inserted the form using a two-hole punch. From her desktop computer, she roused the Federal Bureau of Investigation's aging mainframe and got a number assigned to the new case. She wrote the number on the folder, got a supervisor's signature, then filed it in a long white cabinet with scores of other recent bank jobs.</p>