Free Republic

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the latest star of the Democrat effort to undo the 2016 election, is still at work on the National Security Council. While Trump supporters on the NSC like Rich Higgins and Ezra Cohen-Watnick were forced out, Vindman won't be. NSC staffers who criticized Obama holdovers or sought to expose their misbehavior are gone, but Vindman is still there while undermining Trump. And that’s the SNAFU of things on the NSC. The National Security Council has been ground zero in the campaign against President Trump from the beginning. General Flynn’s appointment as National Security Advisor had touched...

The study, which was published on Monday in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, used a special type of MRI called diffusion tensor imaging to scan white matter in the 47 participants’ brains, and made several alarming finds — particularly relating to the development of language, literacy and cognitive skills. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that kids have limited screen use due to the possible cognitive behavioral risks, including language delay, poor sleep and impaired executive function, according to the study. The study was conducted from August 2017 to November 2018 on participants recruited at a U.S. children’s hospital, and took...

On Sunday’s broadcast of CNN’s “State of the Union,” former National Intelligence Director James Clapper commented on the reported death Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS. Clapper warned the death could “galvanize” ISIS. Clapper said, “What is going to be interesting is to the extent to which this negatively affects ISIS or does it galvanize ISIS, the remnants of ISIS, which still survives as an ideology and has franchises in other places besides Syria.” He added, “ISIS is more than just Baghdadi, as important as he was. 14,000 to 18,000 fighters yet remaining and the franchise are branches in...

Smith continued, “He was going to get the entire senior intelligence service to hand in their resignations. Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean he was going to fire everyone. What it means, though, is he wanted everyone to prove what they were doing, that they were doing their jobs, they were doing good for the country, they weren’t wasting money, they weren’t wasting time, and they weren’t running operations like the one they ran against General Flynn.” “The intelligence community, at that point — what has correctly and colorfully became known as the deep state — they rose nearly as one...

Government watchdog group Judicial Watch last week filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the State Department. The group believes prominent conservative journalists, public figures and those with ties to President Donald Trump were being monitored by the State Department in Ukraine under the direction of ousted U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, who was appointed to her post by President Barack Obama. "Judicial Watch has obtained information indicating Yovanovitch may have violated laws and government regulations by ordering subordinates to target certain U.S. persons using State Department resources," the watchdog group said in a press release. "Yovanovitch reportedly ordered...

A Defense Intelligence Agency official was arrested Wednesday and charged with leaking classified intelligence information to two journalists, including a reporter he was dating, the Justice Department said. Henry Kyle Frese, 30, was arrested by the FBI when he arrived at work at a DIA facility in Virginia. He was charged with willfully disclosing national defense information. Frese, who has a top secret government security clearance, is alleged to have accessed at least five classified intelligence reports and provided top secret information about another country's weapons systems to the reporter with whom he was having a relationship.

The Garbage Party and their media sycophants have often lambasted President Trump over his criticisms of the U.S. intelligence community and its motivation behind the release of so-called ‘intelligence’ information that has turned out to be false. The entire “Russian collusion” scandal was allegedly based on ‘hard data’ from the intelligence community that the FBI discovered in its harmless, ‘just doing our jobs’ counterintelligence investigation of the president’s 2016 campaign. Now it’s “Ukrainegate.” The intel community is trotting out one liar after another to discredit Trump and create the impression he committed an impeachable offense in talking to the Ukrainian...

Ask Internet entrepreneur and Silicon Valley venture capitalist Reid Hoffman how he decides which companies to invest in, and he’ll tell you he has a simple litmus test to determine whether to give the idea a closer look. “I want to invest in companies that play to one or more of the seven deadly sins,” Hoffman said. For those a bit rusty, those sins would be: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride. Hoffman, best known as co-founder of LinkedIn, says the business-professional networking-platform most embodies the deadly sin of greed. “In the end, LinkedIn is helping someone earn...

On Monday, the intelligence community inspector general (ICIG) admitted that it did alter its forms and policies governing whistleblower complaints, and that it did so in response to the anti-Trump complaint filed on Aug. 12, 2019. The Federalist first reported the sudden changes last Friday. While many in the media falsely claimed the ICIG’s stunning admission debunked The Federalist’s report, the admission from the ICIG completely affirmed the reporting on the secretive change to whistleblower rules following the filing of an anti-Trump complaint in August.The ICIG also disclosed for the first time that the anti-Trump complainant filed his complaint...

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Joseph Wilson, the former ambassador who set off a political firestorm by disputing U.S. intelligence used to justify the 2003 Iraq invasion, died Friday, according to his ex-wife. He was 69. Wilson died of organ failure in Santa Fe, said his former wife, Valerie Plame, whose identity as a CIA operative was exposed days after Wilson’s criticism of U.S. intelligence that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was attempting to purchase uranium. The leak of Plame’s covert identity was a scandal for the administration of President George W. Bush that led to the conviction of vice presidential...

Federal records show that the intelligence community secretly revised the formal whistleblower complaint form in August 2019 to eliminate the requirement of direct, first-hand knowledge of wrongdoing. Between May 2018 and August 2019, the intelligence community secretly eliminated a requirement that whistleblowers provide direct, first-hand knowledge of alleged wrongdoings. This raises questions about the intelligence community’s behavior regarding the August submission of a whistleblower complaint against President Donald Trump. The new complaint document no longer requires potential whistleblowers who wish to have their concerns expedited to Congress to have direct, first-hand knowledge of the alleged wrongdoing that they are reporting....

The Australian federal police have raided the Canberra home of intelligence officer Cameron Gill... Cameron Gill was also listed as an adviser to then defence materiel minister, Mal Brough, in defence documents recording a meeting with former US ambassador John Berry in 2015. It is unclear whether Wednesday’s raid is connected to the Smethurst story, which reported that the heads of the defence and home affairs ministries had discussed draconian new powers to allow the Australian Signals Directorate to spy on Australian citizens for the first time.

President Donald Trump announced Thursday night that Joseph Maguire, the leader of the National Counterterrorism Center, is his new pick to be the acting director of national intelligence. "I am pleased to inform you that the Honorable Joseph Maguire, current Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, will be named Acting Director of National Intelligence, effective August 15th," Trump tweeted. The announcement came not long after Trump tweeted that Sue Gordon, the country's number two intelligence official and an intelligence veteran of more than 30 years, would resign. White House officials had been signaling such a move for days, saying Trump...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s pick for national intelligence director, Texas Rep. John Ratcliffe, withdrew from consideration Friday after just five days as he faced growing questions about his experience and qualifications. The move underscored the uncertainty over his confirmation prospects. Democrats openly dismissed the Republican congressman as an unqualified partisan and Republicans offered only lukewarm and tentative expressions of support. The announcement will leave the intelligence community without a permanent, Senate-confirmed leader at a time when the U.S. government is grappling with North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, the prospect of war with Iran and the anticipated efforts of Russia...

The long knives are coming out for the highly respected Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas), President Trump's pick to replace outgoing Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, as Dems signal that they will fight his nomination.Trump announced on Sunday that he had chosen Ratcliffe as his nominee for DNI. I am pleased to announce that highly respected Congressman John Ratcliffe of Texas will be nominated by me to be the Director of National Intelligence. A former U.S. Attorney, John will lead and inspire greatness for the Country he loves. Dan Coats, the current Director, will.... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July...

Mary Anne Marsh, a political analyst for Fox News, raised concerns on Monday that President Donald Trump appeared to be consolidating his control over the U.S. intelligence community with the nomination of GOP Representative John Ratcliffe to replace Dan Coats as director of national intelligence. "It's more about protecting Trump than America," Marsh, who previously served as a senior adviser to Democratic Senator John Kerry, warned during a segment of Fox News' America's Newsroom on Monday. "John Ratcliffe has been all over the investigate the investigators [probe], who's doing that right now? [Attorney General] Bill Barr, so Donald Trump has...

Since its invention by a Hungarian architect in 1974, the Rubik’s Cube has furrowed the brows of many who have tried to solve it. DeepCubeA, a deep reinforcement learning algorithm, can find the solution in a fraction of a second, without any specific domain knowledge or in-game coaching from humans. This is no simple task considering the cube has completion paths numbering in the billions but only one goal state—each of six sides displaying a solid color—which apparently can’t be found through random moves. For the new study, researchers demonstrated that DeepCubeA solved 100 percent of all test configurations, finding...

The word “allegedly” can’t be stressed enough here. But the Daily Beast is a credible publication and reporter Vicky Ward has been on the Epstein beat for a long time: Epstein’s name, I was told, had been raised by the Trump transition team when Alexander Acosta, the former U.S. attorney in Miami who’d infamously cut Epstein a non-prosecution plea deal back in 2007, was being interviewed for the job of labor secretary. The plea deal put a hard stop to a separate federal investigation of alleged sex crimes with minors and trafficking.“Is the Epstein case going to cause a...

A couple of years ago, I was interviewing a former senior White House official when the name Jeffrey Epstein came up. Unaware of my personal history with Epstein, this person assured me that the New York financier was no serious harm to anyone. He was a good guy. A charming guy. Useful, too. He knew a lot of rich Arabs, including the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, and, further, he had clever ideas about creating bond issues for them. “OK, so he has a girl problem,” this person threw on, almost as an afterthought. Epstein’s name, I was told, had...

Last month, when Trump dispatched the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group to the Persian Gulf region, it was reportedly the Israeli Mossad that tipped off the U.S. “on an Iranian plan to attack either a US or a US-allied target.”If so, the warning has already been borne out as just a week later Iran—trying to bully and threaten its way out of the Trump administration’s economic chokehold—attacked Norwegian, Emirati, and Saudi oil tankers, and last week attacked a Japanese and a Norwegian oil tanker.It’s not the first time Israeli intelligence has warned of impending attacks by Iran or...