Free Republic

The Soviet Union had won the gold medal in five of the six previous Winter Olympic Games, and were the favorites to win once more in Lake Placid. The team consisted primarily of professional players with significant experience in international play. By contrast, the United States' team—led by head coach Herb Brooks—consisted exclusively of amateur players, and was the youngest team in the tournament and in U.S. national team history. Equally well-known was the television call of the final seconds of the game by Al Michaels for ABC, in which he declared: "Do you believe in miracles?! YES!" In 1999,...

The Trump administration is in the beginning stages of forming an adversarial "red team" to play devil's advocate in a plan to debate the facts behind global warming and take on what skeptics call climate alarmism. The White House and the Environmental Protection Agency are recruiting scientists by enlisting the help of the Heartland Institute, considered to be the lead think tank for challenging the majority of scientists on climate change. The institute has its own red team, which is the antithesis to the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which it calls, unabashedly, the Nongovernmental International Panel on...

Spy Case May Offer Clues How Chinese Missile Ended Up in Hezbollah's Arsenal by Ed TimperlakePosted Jul 26, 2006In February 1999, Dr. Ronald N. Montaperto was identified by PBS’ News Hour during a segment on “human rights in China” as “a senior fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies at National Defense University.” He was also said to be “advising the Pentagon on Chinese military issues.” At the same time he was preening for PBS, however, he was an espionage agent for the People’s Republic of China. A joint Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) and FBI investigation nailed Montaperto’s...

<p>Sen. John Kerry boasts how he "sounded the alarm on terrorism years before 9/ 11," referring to his 1997 book "The New War." Too bad he didn't blast it when it really counted - four months before the hijackings, when he was hand-delivered evidence of serious security breaches at Logan International Airport, with specific warnings that terrorists could exploit them.</p>

Official: Kerry failed to act on pre-9/11 tip 3rd agent to say he warned security lapses made Boston airport ripe for 'jihad' attack WASHINGTON - A third federal aviation-security agent, one still with the government, has stepped forward to say he also warned Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry about security lapses at Boston's Logan International Airport before the 9/11 hijackings there. Earlier this week, two former FAA agents said the Democratic presidential hopeful failed to take effective action after they gave him a prophetic warning that his home airport was vulnerable to multiple hijackings. Brian Sullivan, a retired special agent from...

Celebrated FBI whistle-blower Coleen Rowley knows it was the fame which accompanied her national-security complaints about bureaucratic bumbling in the run-up to Sept. 11 — not the good will of FBI management — that kept her career alive. In the now-famous memo that blistered the FBI's hidebound senior management, Rowley took note of the "culture of fear" pervading the FBI, a climate that she said caused her many sleepless nights before she decided to act. In an open letter to Congress she wrote earlier this month, Rowley admitted that prior to her own experience, "I did not fully appreciate...