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The Pentagon is under fire for making a ransom payment to an Afghan earlier this year as part of a failed bid to win the release of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, according to U.S. officials. Sgt. Bergdahl was released in May after nearly five years in captivity as part of a controversial exchange for five terrorists held at the U.S. military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The ransom payment was first disclosed by Rep. Duncan Hunter in a Nov. 5 letter to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. Mr. Hunter stated in the letter that Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) made...

While many questions remain unanswered surrounding the reported kidnapping of U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, one crucial fact overlooked by the establishment media is not debatable: The Taliban-aligned Haqqani network that held him is closely linked with the Pakistani government’s intelligence agency, which in turn has been a close ally of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Indeed, the Islamist terror group has at various points been openly supported by the CIA and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) since it was founded with U.S. government backing in the mid-1970s — and top American officials know it. Based on news reports, it appears...

Yesterday I wondered if Democrat Rep. Jacki Speier of California had gone off the deep end by musing that the Taliban aren't really terrorists, but rather "part of the fabric of Afghanistan." It turns out she was basically mangling the new talking points from the Obama Administration, which is going all-in for the reinvention of the Taliban butchers as legitimate battlefield opponents. CNN reports on Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel's testimony before Congress today: Bergdahl was held by the Haqqani network, a Taliban wing designated a terrorist group in 2012. However, Hagel noted Bergdahl was a war captive, not a...

The MSM are not the only ones missing the distinction between the Taliban and Haqqani networks. There's Jay Carney, in the clip John Hayward posted, claiming Bergdahl was being held by the Taliban. And National Security Advisor Susan Rice - who like Hagel and Carney, also refused to admit that the Obama administration negotiated with terrorists in her interview with Candy Crowley on Face the Nation, Sunday. Rice repeatedly asserted that Bergdahl had been held captive by the Taliban (who have not been designated a terrorist organization even though they routinely engage in terror-like activities.) ... most people were skeptical...

U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl at one point during his captivity converted to Islam, fraternized openly with his captors and declared himself a "mujahid," or warrior for Islam, according to secret documents prepared on the basis of a purported eyewitness account and obtained by Fox News. The reports indicate that Bergdahl's relations with his Haqqani captors morphed over time, from periods of hostility, where he was treated very much like a hostage, to periods where, as one source told Fox News, "he became much more of an accepted fellow" than is popularly understood. He even reportedly was allowed to carry...

The Obama administration gave the parents of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl extraordinary insider access to the military’s hunt for their son by having them take part in a series of secure video conferences with senior commanders as well as White House and State Department officials. A former government official involved in American hostage issues said he had never heard of giving a family such access and questioned whether sensitive information could have been conveyed to Robert and Jani Bergdahl and somehow leaked out. A family spokesman said he knows of no such breach. Soon after Sgt. Bergdahl went missing in...

<p>Reported details of the high-profile prisoner swap that freed Bowe Bergdahl over the weekend are not telling the full story ... The Haqqani Network, a terrorist group operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan ... the details of that exchange do not add up.</p>

Can’t be true. Ransoms are paid for hostages, and Jay Carney assured me Bergdahl was a prisoner, not a hostage. This isn’t out-of-left-field speculation. Fox News reported two days ago that a ransom for Bergdahl was on the table inside U.S. intelligence circles as recently as December. The key point to grasp here, writes Lachlan Markay, is that the Haqqani Network, which was holding Bergdahl, and the Taliban are two different outfits. The Taliban are true jihadis, bent on reconquering Afghanistan. The Haqqanis are more of an Afghan mafia, bent on enriching themselves. Both have killed lots of American soldiers...

The White House countered Rep. Steve Stockman, R-Clear Lake, in a statement Friday after the congressman had questioned whether President Barack Obama paid ransom for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s release. “The United States did not provide money in return for Sgt. Bergdahl,” National Security Staff spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said. Stockman, who has previously threatened to file articles of impeachment against Obama, sent a letter to the White House on Thursday asking if the administration offered money to the Haqqani network, the terrorist organization that held Bergdahl captive. The congressman claimed the Islamist insurgent group would use such ransom money to fund...

The Haqqani Network, the terrorist group that the U.S. command in Afghanistan says is its most formidable enemy — worse than the Taliban or al Qaeda — has operated for a dozen years across the border in Pakistan’s North Waziristan tribal area with little to fear other than sporadic drone strikes. Now, even the drone strikes have stopped for the family-run gang that held Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl for five years. ... The Haqqani network maintains a safe haven in North Waziristan, Pakistan, across Afghanistan’s southeastern border. The Pakistani Army has consistently refused to launch a military operation in North...

WASHINGTON -- Congressman Steve Stockman (R-TX 36) transmitted a letter to President Barack Obama Thursday asking if the Obama administration authorized any payment to the Haqqani Network terrorist group in exchange for U.S. Army Spc. Bowe Bergdahl. The Haqqani Network, which held Bergdahl for five years, funds its terrorist activities in part by ransoming prisoners. The ransom for a uniformed American service member would greatly benefit the group’s terrorist activities. “The Haqqani Network generally does not release Westerners unless they receive a large payment. It would be hard to believe they would release Bergdahl in an exchange that does not...

In the last 17 months since the U.S. government financially blacklisted the Haqqani Network, one of the deadliest insurgent groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan, not a single dollar associated with the group has been blocked or frozen, according to U.S. officials and one of the Congressman who oversees the Treasury Department’s financial war on terrorism. But it’s not just the Haqqanis—an ally today in the Taliban’s fight against U.S. troops and the Afghan government—who seem to have been spared from America’s economic attacks. According to a Treasury Department letter written in late November, not a single dollar been seized from...

The Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan has sent "experts in warfare and information technology" to Syria to establish a base and monitor the fighting there. The disclosure of the existence of the Pakistani Taliban's Syrian cell occurred just two days after a group that bears the same name as an al Qaeda unit in Pakistan claimed to have executed an attack on Hezbollah in Beirut. The Pakistani Taliban sent 12 "experts in warfare and information technology" to Syria in the past two months to aid Syrian jihadists, while the base was established in Syria six months ago, the BBC...

Private Bergdahl - assuming he's still alive - is spending Christmas as a captive of the Taliban. His captors spent the last day or two uploading a video showing Private Bergdahl reading a statement. The video was divided into four segments and uploaded to YouTube on 25 December 2009. The YouTube account is:

[As the anniversary of that horrifying holocaust on 9/11 approaches, I just witnessed the most riveting first hand account of Seal Tea 6's heroic raid on Bin Laden's compound on 60 Minutes. He revealed no top secret info, yet, at this time, he is under threat by enemies at home and abroad, including the Pentagon for telling the story every American should hear. An Obama spokesperson has already threatened the Seal author, so lets support him by buying his book "No Easy Day."] Joe Biden: " I'll give you two good reasons why we should reelect President Obama - General...

A U.S. soldier held by Afghan militants will not be harmed despite the Obama administration's decision to declare his alleged captors a terrorist group, a senior member of the Pakistan-based Haqqani network told The Associated Press on Saturday. However, the United States and NATO can expect stepped up attacks, he said. The commander, who spoke by telephone from an undisclosed location, denied that the Haqqanis held the only American prisoner of war of the Afghan conflict, Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, as the U.S. believes. He did however say that Bergdahl was a captive of another branch of the Taliban, and...

After announcing the upcoming designation of the Haqqani Network, two anonymous senior State Department officials gave a briefing on the action, and were challenged by reporters Justin Fishel from FOX News and Adam Entous from The Wall Street Journal on the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence agency's support of the Haqqani Network: Note how the State Dept. officials dance around the issues of Pakistan's support for the Haqqani Network and why the US isn't even considering adding Pakistan as a state sponsor of terrorism: ------------------------snip----------------------------- QUESTION: Yeah, thank you very much. I just wanted to follow up on Justin's question. When you...

MIRAMSHAH: A US drone attack targeting a militant compound killed 10 insurgents in a troubled Pakistani tribal region on Wednesday, security officials said. Moreover, a BBC Urdu report quoted local authorities as saying that those killed in the strike were militants from the Haqqani network. Two missiles hit the compound located in Tappi, 10 kilometres southeast of Miramshah, the main town in volatile North Waziristan near the Afghan border, a military official in Peshawar said. “The attack triggered fire in the compound and 10 militants were killed,” the official told AFP on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised...

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Friday that the United States had held a preliminary meeting with representatives of the Haqqani network, a group of militants Washington has blamed for a series of attacks in Afghanistan. The revelation came soon after Clinton, in Islamabad with a heavyweight team of U.S. military and intelligence leaders, warned that tough action would have to be taken against Afghan and Pakistani militants if they did not cooperate in efforts to stabilize Afghanistan and pursue peace. Clinton was asked at a roundtable with journalists about reports that U.S. officials had met with Haqqani representatives directly,...

The AP reported last week that "U.S. officials from the State Department and White House plan to continue a series of secret meetings with Taliban representatives." The AP report went on to say that "one member of the Taliban negotiating team has been publicly identified as Tayyab Aga [Agha], an emissary of Pakistan-based Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar." But sadly, and ironically, while the Obama administration is desperately reaching out to Mullah Omar, Mr. Omar is strengthening his resolve to kill US troops and to wreak havoc upon Afghanistan. From the Times of India: Taliban militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan...