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Update: Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA), who asked Clinton about the War Powers Act during a classified briefing, said Clinton and the administration are sidestepping the measure's provisions giving Congress the ability to put a 60-day time limit on any military action. "They are not committed to following the important part of the War Powers Act," he told TPM in a phone interview. "She said they are certainly willing to send reports [to us] and if they issue a press release, they'll send that to us too." The White House would forge ahead with military action in Libya even if Congress...

The US national intelligence director has predicted embattled Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi will defeat the rebels challenging his grip on power. James Clapper told the US Senate that Col Gaddafi's superior military force would prevail over the long term. And Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the US would not act in Libya without international authorisation. Meanwhile, Libyan rebels are fleeing the port of Ras Lanuf after sustained attacks by Col Gaddafi's forces. In Washington, Gen Clapper, who is the top intelligence adviser to US President Barack Obama, told the Senate he saw no evidence Col Gaddafi would step...

On Feb 10, while addressing a question about the Muslim Brotherhood from the House Intelligence Committee, James Clapper Director of National Intelligence responded, “The term ‘Muslim Brotherhood’ …is an umbrella term for a variety of movements, in the case of Egypt, a very heterogeneous group, largely secular, which has eschewed violence and has decried Al Qaeda as a perversion of Islam. In the case of Egypt, [it is] a very heterogeneous group, largely secular, which has eschewed violence and has decried Al Qaeda as a perversion of Islam…” This isn’t the first Gen Clapper’s public faux pas. In an interview...

With this comeback, Ronald Reagan famously ridiculed the foolish statements made by Jimmy Carter in the 1980 election campaign. For the past several days I’ve been pointing out how the inexplicable and contradictory policies of President Obama can be explained, once you understand that his main purpose in life is to transfer our wealth and power to peoples in the third world because of his anti-colonialist obsession. This explains his stubborn commitment to Cap & Trade even though manmade global warming has been disproved. This explains his loan of $2 billion to help Brazil develop its oil while shutting down...

This is the caliber of personnel we have come to expect from the Obama Administration. From Josh Gerstein at Politico : "During a House Intelligence Committee hearing Thursday, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper called Egypt's branch of the Muslim Brotherhood movement 'largely secular.' "In response to questioning from Rep. Sue Myrick (R-N.C.) about the threat posed by the group, Clapper suggested that the Egyptian part of the Brotherhood is not particularly extreme and that the broader international movement is hard to generalize about. "'The term 'Muslim Brotherhood'...is an umbrella term for a variety of movements, in the case of...

  WASHINGTON — On Thursday morning, the heads of America's intelligence services went to Capitol Hill to testify before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on worldwide threats to the United States. We won't know what was said in the committee's closed sessions until it's leaked by one of the participants. But to paraphrase former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, based on their public testimony, what we now know about what our intelligence services don't know ought to alarm us.The director of national intelligence, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper, stunned the committee by describing Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood...

The Obama administration took the rare step Thursday of correcting its own intelligence chief after the official claimed Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood is "largely secular." Director of National Intelligence James Clapper discussed the Islamist group during a hearing on Capitol Hill earlier Thursday. He testified that the organization has "pursued social ends" and a "betterment of the political order," and downplayed its religious underpinnings. "The term 'Muslim Brotherhood' ... is an umbrella term for a variety of movements, in the case of Egypt, a very heterogeneous group, largely secular, which has eschewed violence and has decried Al Qaeda as a perversion...

State Department Confirms American Embassy in London Was Target of British Terror Plotters The U.S. State Department confirms that the 12 terrorism suspects arrested in the United Kingdom last week had targeted the American Embassy in London. British authorities arrested 12 men Dec. 20 for suspicion of terrorism. Few details of a possible plot emerged until a court hearing in London today for the nine men still in custody. A British police statement released earlier in the day did not provide a list of targets but said the men had conspired to cause "explosions of a nature likely to endanger...

The fallout from the Dept. of Homeland Security's interview with Diane Sawyer keeps getting worse. Following Janet Napolitano's "364 days a year" gaffe (funny if not all that worrisome) Sawyer asked Director of National Intelligence James Clapper about the arrests of 12 suspected terrorists in London earlier that morning. Said Sawyer: "First of all, London. How serious is it? Any implication that it was coming here?" He didn't know what she was taking about.

After initially suggesting that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper’s inability to answer a question from ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer about the arrests of 12 suspected terrorists in London was because her question was too “ambiguous,” the Obama administration acknowledged Wednesday morning that retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Clapper had not been briefed about the arrests at the time of the interview. “Director Clapper had not yet been briefed on the arrests in the United Kingdom at the time of this interview taping,” said ODNI spokeswoman Jamie Smith in a statement. Clapper, she explained, had been “working throughout the...

Want to see something scary? Here is Obama's Director of National Intelligence, Mr. James Clapper, looking like a deer caught in the headlights when Diane Sawyer asks him about the terror arrests in London: [VIDEO AT SITE] or HEREOk, so follow along....the Obama administration appears to have not been briefed that their Directior of National Intelligence hadn't been briefed so their first statement was that he HAD been briefed, but Sawyer screwed up with an ambiguous question. Then today they admitted that yeah, he hadn't been briefed. ...the Obama administration acknowledged Wednesday morning that retired Air Force Lt. Gen....

WASHINGTON, Oct. 28 — The director of a top American spy agency said Tuesday that he believed that material from Iraq's illicit weapons program had been transported into Syria and perhaps other countries as part of an effort by the Iraqis to disperse and destroy evidence immediately before the recent war. The official, James R. Clapper Jr., a retired lieutenant general, said satellite imagery showing a heavy flow of traffic from Iraq into Syria, just before the American invasion in March, led him to believe that illicit weapons material "unquestionably" had been moved out of Iraq. "I think people below...

<p>A senior military intelligence chief suggested Tuesday that Iraqi officials, perhaps working without the knowledge of Saddam Hussein, moved evidence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs outside the country before this year's war.</p> <p>James R. Clapper, who heads the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, described his theory as an educated hunch.</p>