Free Republic

Militaries around the world spend countless hours training, developing policies, and implementing best operational security practices, so imagine the size of the egg on the face of the Dutch navy when journalists managed to track one of its warships for less than the cost of some hagelslag and a coffee. The security snafu was reported by Dutch regional broadcaster Omroep Gelderland. In a Thursday report, Omroep Gelderland journalist Just Vervaart said the broadcaster was able to track HNLMS Evertsen, a Dutch air-defense frigate deployed to help protect France’s aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle against missile threats, by mailing a Bluetooth...

The identity of the journalist who first broke the sensitive story about a missing American airman has now been revealed. An Israeli journalist has come out and admitted to being the first to drop the bombshell details on the second missing U.S. airman in Iran, the New York Post reported. The Gateway Pundit previously reported on President Trump’s explosive White House comments slamming “somebody” for leaking sensitive details about the missing fighter pilot. Trump made it crystal clear that reckless disclosure put hundreds of U.S. troops, including elite SEAL Team 6 operators, in mortal danger during the high-stakes rescue deep...

President Trump vowed Monday to catch the “leaker” who revealed that US forces were not immediately able to rescue the second F-15 pilot shot down over Iran — as he retold of the wounded airman’s dramatic weekend rescue. “We’re looking very hard to find that leaker,” Trump said in the White House briefing room. “They basically said that we have one and there’s somebody missing. Well, [Iran] didn’t know there was somebody missing until this leaker gave the information.” “We think we’ll be able to find it out, because we’re going to go to the media company that released it,...

An American F-15E navigator has been successfully rescued from deep within Iran after using a specialized satellite device to transmit encrypted location data while hiding from enemy forces for two days. In what military officials are calling one of the most complex recovery missions in modern history, an American F-15E navigator was successfully extracted from Iranian territory this past Sunday. The airman had been hiding in hostile terrain for forty-eight hours after his aircraft was downed on Friday over southwestern Iran. The success of the daring operation is being credited to a specialized survival doctrine known as Combat Search and...

“A federal judge has struck down some of the Defense Department's strict controls on how journalists with access to the Pentagon are allowed to report — ending a policy that caused many news outlets to leave the Pentagon. U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman sided with the New York Times and a reporter at the newspaper, Julian E. Barnes, who sued in December, arguing the new Pentagon policy violated the First Amendment, Fifth Amendment and due process provision of the Constitution.”

In recent hours, Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) sources have reported a series of unprecedented flights carried out by U.S. Air Force (USAF) B-1B Lancer strategic bombers over the Caribbean — a region far from their usual deployment areas in Europe, the Middle East, and the Pacific. The aircraft, identified by the callsigns “BAT-21” and “BAT-22,” took off from the state of Florida accompanied by three KC-135 Stratotanker refueling aircraft (“MAINE-11,” “MAINE-12,” and “MAINE-13”), following a flight path that crossed Bahamian airspace heading south. Although the specific purpose of the exercise or operation has not been confirmed, such flights are typically...

A group of Navy SEALs emerged from the ink-black ocean on a winter night in early 2019 and crept to a rocky shore in North Korea. They were on a top secret mission so complex and consequential that everything had to go exactly right. The objective was to plant an electronic device that would let the United States intercept the communications of North Korea’s reclusive leader, Kim Jong-un, amid high-level nuclear talks with President Trump. The mission had the potential to provide the United States with a stream of valuable intelligence. But it meant putting American commandos on North Korean...

One of President Donald Trump’s biggest political strengths is his unpredictability. He refuses to follow the rules of the Washington establishment, and in doing so, he keeps both his domestic opponents and foreign adversaries constantly off balance.While most presidents telegraph their intentions months in advance, Trump often operates behind the scenes, distracting the media with comments that trigger hours of frenzied speculation on cable news panels. He has joked about buying Greenland, pondered serving a third term, and thrown barbs at world leaders, not as random outbursts, but as part of a deliberate strategy to shape and steer the political...

A DHS official was placed on leave and may have their security clearance revoked for ‘accidentally’ adding a reporter to an email chain about an upcoming ICE raids in greater Denver area. According to NBC News, a DHS worker included a Washington-based reporter in an email chain detailing an upcoming ICE raids back in January. The email did not include classified material, however, the information was still considered sensitive because it detailed time, location and target of raids. The DHS worker called the reporter and told them that they were ‘accidentally’ added to the email. The reporter promised to disclose...

The magazine said that it decided that “there is a clear public interest in disclosing” the information. The Atlantic on Wednesday released the screenshots of messages sent between top Trump administration officials through the encrypted app Signal detailing the timing and weapons used in airstrikes against the Iran-backed Houthi militant group in Yemen, arguing that spin from the White House warranted as full a release as possible. In a piece published Wednesday, the magazine said that it decided that “there is a clear public interest in disclosing the sort of information that Trump advisers included in nonsecure communications channels,...

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters Monday that “nobody was texting war plans” following news breaking that Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, gained access to a Signal group chat featuring Trump administration officials talking about plans for an attack against Houthi rebels in Yemen. “Nobody was texting war plans, and that’s all I have to say about that,” Hegseth said outside a plane in Hawaii after being asked about Goldberg’s access to the chat.Hegseth also called Goldberg “a deceitful and highly discredited, so-called journalist who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again.”Goldberg gained access to...

Anti-Trump bureaucrats are working to sabotage the Trump Administration’s efforts to rid America of criminal aliens. What they did late last week should have you enraged. The Trump Administration secretly devised a bold plan to carry out a massive ICE operation in the nation’s second-most populous city, Los Angeles, beforemonth. As The Gateway Pundit has previously reported, large-scale raids have been Team Trump’s modus operandi the end of the since Day One. But this raid will be the first to hit LA. But now illegal aliens have PLENTY of advance notice of what is coming and can go into hiding...

A US Navy leader was demoted for installing an illegal WiFi network on a warship, a new report says. Grisel Marrero installed a Starlink network on the USS Manchester and named it "STINKY." She lied to and misled her commanding officer at least three times when questioned about the network, per the report. A senior US Navy enlisted leader who was demoted after she was caught running illegal WiFi on a warship used a leadership association's debit card to pay for its monthly bills and named it "STINKY," according to a new report. Grisel Marrero, who was the command senior...

The White House press team posted a photo Wednesday night showing President Joe Biden shaking hands with U.S. special operators during his visit to Israel. The operators, whose faces were not blurred out in the photo posted to the official White House Instagram page, are presumably in the country to help rescue American hostages being held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

A group of American and British military veterans called “The Mozart Group” is a team of special operations vets who are training and equipping Ukrainian soldiers. NBC News’ Ken Dilanian spoke with a retired Marine Colonel who intended to cover the conflict as a journalist but established the organization after witnessing the devastation in Bucha.

A network of "hundreds of thousands" of people, including analysts using satellite imagery to locate Taliban checkpoints surrounding the Kabul airport, are coordinating to evacuate Afghan interpreters from the country, an Afghanistan war veteran and member of the coalition told Fox News. These interpreters, now targeted by the Taliban, were essential U.S. allies during the Afghanistan war and played roles much larger than simply acting as translators, according to Matt Zeller. The Biden administration has faced fierce criticism that the U.S. hasn’t made their evacuation more of a priority. "These people that we’re talking about … they were our eyes...

The deadly riot at the US Capitol bore the markings of an organized operation planned well in advance of the January 6 joint session of Congress. A small number of cadre used the cover of a huge rally to stage its attack. Before it began, I saw from my vantage point on the West Front of the Capitol, what appeared to be four separate cells or units: Plainclothes militants. Militant, aggressive men in Trump and MAGA gear at a front police line at the base of the temporary presidential inaugural platform; Agents-provocateurs. Scattered groups of men exhorting the marchers to...

As I said yesterday, this was a perfectly foreseeable PR catastrophe for the Navy. It’s one thing to reprimand Capt. Brett Crozier for circulating his letter to the Navy begging for help to quarantine sick sailors onshore.It’s another to humiliate him by relieving him of command. Yesterday the acting Secretary of the Navy complained that the letter created “a little bit of a panic on the ship.” Is that right? I’m not getting a strong vibe from these clips of Crozier’s send-off yesterday that his crew is relieved to see the panic-monger go. Watch this video of the send...

The US Navy fired the commanding officer of the USS Theodore Roosevelt, an aircraft carrier stuck in port and dealing with a severe coronavirus outbreak, Navy leaders said Thursday afternoon. "Today, at my direction, the commanding officer of the USS Theodore Roosevelt, Capt. Brett Crozier, was relieved of command," Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly told reporters at the Pentagon Thursday. "I did not come to this decision lightly." Modly said he lost confidence in the commanding officer. The Navy's decision to relieve Crozier came after he wrote a letter to Navy leadership begging the military branch to take...

Yesterday brought stunning news of yet another security lapse by our Navy. As reported by The Washington Post, Chinese hackers in the first two months of this year penetrated the computers of an unnamed defense contractor, “stealing massive amounts of highly sensitive data related to undersea warfare” from the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Newport, Rhode Island. NUWC (“new-ick”), as it’s called by sailors, handles sensitive and classified projects for the Navy’s submarine force, which just happens to be one of the few areas where the U.S. Navy still holds important advantages over its Chinese rival. As China’s rapidly expanding...