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Video at link. The nation's top intelligence official confirmed Tuesday that the Islamic State has succeeded in making and deploying chemical agents in Iraq and Syria -- calling it the first such attack by an extremist group in more than two decades. The confirmation of mustard gas use came during Director of National Intelligence James Clapper's testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, where he spoke to the Islamic State's growing sophistication online and in the battlefield. He did not elaborate on where and when the chemical attacks occurred, though there has been mounting evidence the terror group was experimenting...

Don't say he didn't tell you so. Speaking at a U.S. intelligence community conference back in September, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper warned Americans about the possibility of Syrian terrorists infiltrating the United States and other Western countries disguised as refugees. ...

US National Intelligence Director James Clapper on Thursday warned that America must be ready for a “large, Armageddon-scale” cyber attack, in remarks made at an annual conference of members of the US intelligence community in Washington DC. “Cyber threats to US national and economic security are increasing in frequency, scale, sophistication and the severity of impact,” Clapper warned. “Although we must be prepared for a large, Armageddon-scale strike that would debilitate the entire US infrastructure, it’s not our belief that that’s the most likely scenario.” […] In a sign of the rising concern over the trend of cyber warfare in...

Top U.S. intelligence officials are running out of patience with the State Department's reluctance to turn over emails from Hillary Clinton's private email server, which have already been shown to have included top secret communications, Fox News has learned. The Intelligence Community's Inspector General has requested some 30,000 emails from Clinton in order to conduct its own review. An intelligence source told Fox News the State Department has pushed back on the government intelligence watchdog's request, and that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper is considering intervening. The flurry of activity came after Charles McCullough, the inspector general, notified senior...

Recently released emails detail then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's interest in arming Libyan opposition groups using private security contractors before the fall of Muammar Qaddafi in 2011 – though at the time, the opposition was not formally recognized by the U.S. or United Nations, which prohibited arming without following strict guidelines and oversight. The issue remains so sensitive that the emails recently released by the State Department redacted a key line on the matter. But the unredacted version of the same email, released to the congressional Benghazi Select Committee and first posted by The New York Times last Thursday, showed...

Republican Senator Ted Cruz skipped two Senate Armed Services committee hearings earlier this year in favor of speeches and TV appearances, a BuzzFeed News review has found. On February 26, the Texas senator missed an Armed Services committee hearing about worldwide threats, which featured testimony from National Intelligence Director James Clapper. The discussion covered an array of national security issues, including the threat of the Islamic State and the Iranian nuclear talks. Cruz mentioned many of the same issues when he spoke at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference that afternoon.

The National Security Agency's massive data collection program has prompted lawsuits, internal reviews and a fierce congressional debate over whether to scrap it. But Director of National Intelligence James Clapper apparently forgot the program even existed during a key hearing two years ago. ....

BEIRUT: The U.S. has omitted Iran and Hezbollah from its list of terror threats, according to an annual security assessment published by the Times of Israel Monday. The unclassified report, titled ‘Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community’ was presented to the U.S. Senate by James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence on February 26. The report has excluded Iran and Hezbollah from its list of terror threats to U.S. interests, after both had been included as threats in previous years. In a 2014 report the National Intelligence director said that Iran and Hezbollah continue to directly threaten the...

The director of national intelligence for the United States says China is expanding and accelerating its buildup of outposts in the South China Sea. James Clapper tells the Senate Armed Services Committee that those outposts now include stationing for ships and potential airfields. …

For those left unsatisfied with the media’s uncritical and shallow coverage of the recently released Benghazi report from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, I wanted to pass along this just-published article, 10 major takeaways from the House Benghazi report that the media is completely ignoring, based on a careful read of the actual text of the report and appended documents. The media’s unwillingness to actually study the report given the political value of the “headline” takeaways, not to mention its uncharacteristic lack of skepticism at an investigation conducted by a committee led by Republicans almost completely absolving the...

White House: No diplomatic outreach in Clapper’s visit to North Korea By Kyle Balluck - 11/09/14 06:30 AM EST Director of National Intelligence James Clapper went to North Korea with the “sole purpose” of obtaining the release of Americans Kenneth Bae and Matthew Todd Miller, according to a senior administration official. The official spoke to reporters traveling with President Obama early Sunday morning before Air Force One took off for the president’s Asia trip. “It was not to pursue any diplomatic opening,” the official said, according to a pool reporter, adding that Clapper was selected for the secret mission because...

During his appearance on 60 Minutes Sunday, President Barack Obama had the chance to admit that he got a whole lot about Iraq wrong.He could have admitted that he got the surge wrong in 2007, when he denounced it and declared that there is no military solution to the problems in Iraq and never was. That was wrong. Obama opposed that surge, which worked and bequeathed a quiescent Iraq to him in 2009. He later implemented a surge of his own in Afghanistan — half-hearted though it was.Obama could also have admitted that he withdrew U.S. troops from Iraq...

...[C]urrent U.S. intelligence and defense officials who spoke to The Daily Beast on Monday say the process for exchanging Taliban for Bergdahl this time was rushed and closely held, in some instances leaving little room for any push back against a policy clearly favored by the White House. “This was an example of forcing the consensus,” one U.S. military official said. “The White House knew the answer they wanted and they ended up getting it.” The White House did not even consult or inform Congress until after the prisoner release had begun. Dianne Feinstein, the Democratic chairwoman of the Senate...

A few weeks back, I read a Washington Post story "Inside the admissions process at George Washington University" and noted this interesting tidbit towards the end: GW also asks students to list a role model and two words to describe themselves. As for herself, Freitag said, she would list “Martha Stewart/Tina Fey” and “sassy/classy.” This year, she’s seeing a lot of Edward Snowden citations. I had thought about writing it up, but decided it was a pretty small thing, really. It's not secret that, as a group, younger people have a much more favorable impression of Snowden than older people....

Employees of U.S. intelligence agencies have been barred from discussing without authorization any intelligence-related matter - even if it isn’t classified - with journalists, under a new directive issued by Director of National Security James Clapper. Intelligence agency employees who violate the policy could suffer career-ending losses of their security clearances or out-right termination, and those who disclose classified information could face criminal prosecution, according to the directive signed by Clapper on March 20. Under the order, only the director or deputy head of an intelligence agency, public affairs officials and those authorized by a public affairs official may have...

Former FBI Counterterrorism expert John Guandolo, known for his controversial calls for Americans to “expose Al Qaeda agents” in their neighborhoods, has reiterated his calls to the public to pressure officials to prosecute the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) for supporting terrorism. In an interview with Arutz Sheva, the author of the book explained how CAIR—which claims to be a “civil liberties” organization representing moderate Muslims in the US—was established by Islamist leaders closely linked to the radical Muslim Brotherhood, of which Hamas is an offshoot. The organization was set up specifically to provide propaganda and other forms of nonviolent...

In less than one week, top officials in the Obama administration have contradicted one another about the threat al Qaeda poses to the United States today. On Friday, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson spoke at the Woodrow Wilson Center is Washington, D.C., where he credited President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama for putting the terrorist group “on the path to defeat.” “Through our government’s counterterrorism efforts in both the Bush and Obama administrations, we have put al Qaeda’s core leadership on the path to defeat,” Johnson said. On Tuesday, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said,...

Iran now has all the technical infrastructure to produce nuclear weapons should it make the political decision to do, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper wrote in a report to a Senate intelligence committee published Wednesday. However, he added, it could not break out to the bomb without being detected. Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories Free Sign up! In the “US Intelligence Worldwide Threat Assessment,” delivered to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Clapper reported that Tehran has made significant advances recently in its nuclear program to the point where...

Obama's National Intelligence Director, James Clapper, blatantly lied to Congress last Spring when in response to a question stated the NSA does not "not wittingly" collect information on Americans in bulk. The lie was revealed thanks to American hero and true patriot, Edward Snowden. Proven a liar, Clapper now freely admits he gave the "least untruthful" answer he could without revealing classified information. The Hill reports Patriot Act author says "Obama’s intel czar should be prosecuted" Rep. James Sensenbrenner Jr., the original author of the Patriot Act, says Director of National Intelligence James Clapper should be prosecuted for lying to...

The nation’s top spymaster said on Tuesday that the White House had long been aware in general terms of the National Security Agency’s overseas eavesdropping, stoutly defending the agency’s intelligence-gathering methods and suggesting possible divisions within the Obama administration. The official, James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, testified before the House Intelligence Committee that the N.S.A. had kept senior officials in the National Security Council informed of surveillance it was conducting in foreign countries. He did not specifically say whether President Obama was told of these spying efforts, but he appeared to challenge assertions in recent days...