Free Republic

In a front page story about a major FBI terrorism investigation, The Washington Post has reported that the targets include “Chicagoans who crossed paths with Obama when he was a young state senator and some who have been active in labor unions that supported his political rise.” The implication is that the trail could lead to the White House. This is an unusual investigation that does not primarily involve Islamists. Instead, it is focused on elements of the old international communist networks that many people mistakenly thought had faded away with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Those under investigation...

Leon Panetta While a Southern California based congressman in the 1970s and ’80s, CIA director and Obama Secretary of Defense nominee Leon Panetta, was close to a pro-communist, Santa Cruz based “peace activist” named Lucy Haessler. In spite (or perhaps because of) Haessler’s involvement with the Women’s International Democratic Federation, Panetta placed a tribute in the Congressional Record, April 11, 1984, to mark Haessler’s 80th birthday. Panetta noted that Lucy Haessler attended several conferences of the East German based organization in France, the Soviet Union, Poland and East Germany. He did neglect to mention however that the W.I.D.F. was...

Media blackout: CIA director accused of links to Communist spy contact -- scandal ignored Wes Vernon June 13, 2011 If you have been depending on the mainstream media for your news the past few days, you are probably learning here for the first time that CIA Director Leon Panetta has been called out for his links to an important open member of the Communist Party. Some background When this writer first arrived in Washington, D.C., as a reporter in 1968, one of my assignments was to cover the congressional delegation from Washington State. Occasionally, both Democrat and Republican members of...

New research from writers and researchers Trevor Loudon and Cliff Kincaid shows that Leon Panetta, the CIA director being considered on Thursday for the position of Secretary of Defense, had a previously undisclosed personal and friendly relationship with Hugh DeLacy, a prominent member of the Communist Party USA. DeLacy visited such countries as China and Nicaragua and was himself a personal contact of identified Soviet spies Solomon Adler and Frank Coe and accused spy John Stewart Service. Panetta spoke at DeLacy’s memorial service, directed a series of letters to him personally as “Dear Hugh,” and placed a tribute to him...