Free Republic

A small private intelligence company that monitors Islamic terrorist groups obtained a new Osama bin Laden video ahead of its official release last month, and around 10 a.m. on Sept. 7, it notified the Bush administration of its secret acquisition. It gave two senior officials access on the condition that the officials not reveal they had it until the al-Qaeda release. Within 20 minutes, a range of intelligence agencies had begun downloading it from the company's Web site. By midafternoon that day, the video and a transcript of its audio track had been leaked from within the Bush administration to...

SUMMARY: Diagnosed in June with acute myeloid leukemia, the activist and documentarian of many Washington gay rights campaigns dies Tuesday at 49. Washington, D.C., lesbian activist Cheryl Ann Spector died Tuesday after a battle with acute myeloid leukemia. She was 49. She was diagnosed with the disease in June and hospitalized for 10 weeks with two rounds of chemotherapy, the Washington Blade reported. Spector sat on the board of directors for the Rainbow History Project and was an LGBT activist for 20 years, involved with the Human Rights Campaign, Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, Queer Nation and the Mautner Project, among...

Former Washington Times reporter Rowan Scarborough on Sabotage: American's Enemies within the CIA.

RS: Well, about three years ago John McCain became probably the first politician who declared the CIA a 'rogue agency.' And it is because inside the CIA, the bureaucracy at Langley had a priority of leaking and stopping Bush administration programs, rather than following the policy directives of the White House. And we’ve seen that in countless leaks about terrorist surveillance programs, the prisons where they were trying to interrogate top-ranking al Qaeda prisoners, in station reports from Baghdad. When Porter Goss took over the CIA in 2004, really trying to reform it, what happened? He died by a million...

On July 20, the CIA issued the most extraordinary press release. Director of Public Affairs Mike Mansfield wrote: We generally don't comment on books, but we have departed from that on occasion, and have decided to do so in connection with Rowan Scarborough's new book, "Sabotage: America's Enemies Within the CIA."

Is Plame to Blame? by: Bethany Stotts, August 16, 2007 The Valerie Plame Affair, which resulted in the conviction of White House aide Louis “Scooter” Libby, serves as rallying point for many opponents of the Bush Administration. However, some conservatives remain skeptical of Plame’s alleged victim status. While her job description was listed on the CIA rolls as an agent with “no official cover” (NOC), Plame had in reality had been performing administrative duties at Langley for at least five years. She remains willing to pose for the cameras as a starlet ex-agent, and continues participating in high-level lawsuits. Rowan...

The CIA last week released a heavily redacted version of a 1973 report what it considers its fathers' sins.... Because this faction succeeded, important changes took place in the CIA. Beginning in 1975, counterintelligence - which was principally quality control of operations - became the responsibility of those conducting the operations. Freed from independent scrutiny, CIA officers gullibly accepted more information than ever from "walk-in" sources and from foreign governments' intelligence services. Since then, whenever we have had a intelligence windfall (e.g., access to the East German Stasi files after 1989) we have learned that all or nearly all CIA...

The latest case of intelligence leaks actually makes past leaks to the press look good. In this case, CIA personnel who opposed the secret prisons for terrorists program, proceeded to assist an investigation run by the Council of Europe into the program. This is not only going to render American personnel more vulnerable to lawfare, but it will also make gathering intelligence harder – both with sources recruited by American agencies, and cooperation with other countries' intelligence agencies. One facet of these problems is lawfare in Europe. Already, there has been a lawsuit filed in Germany by the Center for...

WASHINGTON - President George W Bush has given the CIA approval to launch covert "black" operations to achieve regime change in Iran, intelligence sources have revealed. Mr Bush has signed an official document endorsing CIA plans for a propaganda and disinformation campaign intended to destabilise, and eventually topple, the theocratic rule of the mullahs. Under the plan, pressure will be brought to bear on the Iranian economy by manipulating the country's currency and international financial transactions. Details have also emerged of a covert scheme to sabotage the Iranian nuclear programme. Security officials in Washington have disclosed that Teheran has been...

George J. Tenet, the former director of central intelligence, has lashed out against Vice President Dick Cheney and other Bush administration officials in a new book, saying they pushed the country to war in Iraq without ever conducting a “serious debate” about whether Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat to the United States. The 549-page book, “At the Center of the Storm,” is to be published by HarperCollins on Monday. By turns accusatory, defensive, and modestly self-critical, it is the first detailed account by a member of the president’s inner circle of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the decision...

WASHINGTON — In a "60 Minutes" interview on April 23, Tyler Drumheller, a former chief of the CIA's Europe division, made a sensational charge. He claimed that President Bush and his White House ignored intelligence before the invasion of Iraq indicating that Saddam Hussein had no had weapons of mass destruction. On the CBS-TV show, and in subsequent media interviews that appeared throughout the world, Drumheller said that the White House was excited about the fact that the CIA was getting information straight from Naji Sabri, the then Iraqi foreign minister. But when the White House found out this source...

In the spring of 2002 Dick Cheney made one of his periodic trips to CIA headquarters. Officers and analysts were summoned to brief him on Iraq. Paramilitary specialists updated the Vice President on an extensive covert action program in motion that was designed to pave the way to a US invasion. Cheney questioned analysts about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. How could they be used against US troops? Which Iraqi units had chemical and biological weapons? He was not seeking information on whether Saddam posed a threat because he possessed such weapons. His queries, according to a CIA officer...

A high-ranking Republican congressman has exposed what he sees as a dissident faction within the CIA that he says "intentionally undermined" the policies of US President George W Bush. Rumours about the existence of such a group have circulated in the US capital for a long time, but the comments by Representative Peter Hoekstra, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, marks the first time they were confirmed by an official with intimate knowledge of the intelligence community. "In fact, I have been long concerned that a strong and well-positioned group within the agency intentionally undermined the administration and its policies,"...

Here we go again???

George Crile III, 61, a longtime producer for CBS's "60 Minutes and "60 Minutes II" and the author of a best-selling book about a rogue Central Intelligence Agency operation in Afghanistan during the Reagan administration, died May 15 of pancreatic cancer at his home in New York City. Mr. Crile was perhaps best known as the producer, with Mike Wallace, of "The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception," a controversial 1982 documentary that accused Gen. William C. Westmoreland, the U.S. commander of forces in Vietnam, of being involved in "a conspiracy at the highest levels of American intelligence" to deliberately distort...

Rumsfeld's "Heckler"The story line was compelling: A face-off between a beleaguered secretary of defense and a brave former intelligence professional. "Rumsfeld Heckled by Former CIA Analyst" blared the headline on the ABC News website. The AP reported that a "former CIA analyst, Ray McGovern, asked [Donald Rumsfeld], 'Why did you lie to get us into a war that caused these kind of casualties and was not necessary?'" When we Nexised "Ray McGovern and Rumsfeld" last Friday, the day after their confrontation during Rumsfeld's appearance in Atlanta, 50 stories turned up. What all but one failed to report was the relevant...

Goss Resignation is a frightening sign Porter Goss was brought into the CIA to try to reform the organization. Mr. Goss was expected to bring about badly needed changes in the U.S. spy organization that is increasingly at the center of so many controversies. However, Goss never had a chance. Rarely reported by the very biased media, much of the CIA and the U.S. Justice Department was "cleared out" during the Clinton Administration. Many of the key legal organizations responsible for America's security and stability were then staffed by Hillary Clinton handpicked staffers. Some of them hired from the outside,...

Mary McCarthy is the fourth Clinton NSC member to assault the Bush White House. Ms. McCarthy, who was dismissed for leaking national security secrets to the press, is not the first Clintonite to undermine and assault the Bush White House. The biggest raging bulls attacking the White House have been former Clinton National Security characters. Mary McCarthy was one. So was Joe Wilson – and his wife Val Plame, who presumably cooked up the phony Niger uranium documents scam, which now has Scooter Libby facing jailtime. Then we had Richard Clarke, who ran interference for the Clintonistas during the 9/11...

Democrats Suggest Double Standard on Leaks White House Aides' Actions Are Cited By Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, April 24, 2006; Page A02 Key Democratic legislators yesterday joined Republicans in saying they do not condone the alleged leaking of classified information that led to last week's firing of a veteran CIA officer. But they questioned whether a double standard exists that lets the White House give reporters secretly declassified information for political purposes. "I don't know this woman and I do not condone leaks of classified information," said Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), ranking Democrat on the House Permanent...

Here is the announcement of McCarthy's appointment as a Special Assistant to President Bill Clinton: THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary June 16, 1998 STATEMENT BY THE PRESS SECRETARY National Security Advisor Samuel R. Berger announced today the appointment of Mary O'Neil McCarthy as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Intelligence Programs. Mrs. McCarthy succeeds Rand Beers. Mary McCarthy had been Director of Intelligence Programs on the National Security Council Staff since July 1996. Previously, Mrs. McCarthy served as the National Intelligence Officer for Warning from 1994-1996 and as the Deputy National Intelligence Officer...