Free Republic

Now that Republicans have narrow control of the House of Representatives, the GOP is investigating the Biden administration with gusto. Still, Republicans seem not to have noticed one major foreign policy scandal that's hiding in plain sight. As I recently reported , the rising scandal surrounding retired FBI senior official Charles McGonigal is perhaps the worst in the bureau’s history. Multiple sources have told me that McGonigal, while still serving with the FBI as head of counterintelligence in New York, shook down Balkan business people, most of them Albanian, in an audacious political corruption scheme worth many millions of dollars....

Airborne troops from Russia and the Untied States would hold joint anti-terror drills in the U.S. state of Colorado between May 24 and 31, spokesman of the Russian Defense Ministry Col. Alexander Kucherenko said on Thursday. According to the spokesman, it will be the first time that the Russian airborne forces have held exercises with the U.S. airborne forces on the U.S. territory. "According to the exercise scenario, soldiers of the two countries will hold a tactical airborne operation, including the reconnaissance of imaginary terrorists' camp and a raid," Kucherenko said. "After the operation, a helicopter will evacuate the soldiers,"...

The CIA claims that it never saw the storm coming, but Canadian intelligence sure did. Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird landed in Vladivostok, Russia, earlier this month for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit and had barely stepped off the plane when he announced that Canada would be pulling its diplomats out of Iran and closing its embassy while kicking all Iranian diplomats out of Canada. At the time, some thought that maybe the minister had a few too many mini vodkas on the ride over. Several days later, when protests and embassy attacks erupted in Islamic nations, and the...

Russia said on Wednesday that restrictions imposed by Norway were blocking the transport of goods to Russian-populated settlements on the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and called on Oslo to resolve the issue as soon as possible or face consequences. The ministry said that it summoned Norway's Chargé d'Affaires to protest the restrictions, which it said were blocking the transport of food and medical equipment. Svalbard is part of Norway, although Russia has the right to exploit the archipelago's natural resources under a treaty signed in 1920 and maintains a diplomatic presence in the largely Russian- and Ukrainian-populated settlement of Barentsburg.

Operator of what is the world’s northernmost fiber optic subsea cable, Space Norway, has located the disruption to somewhere between 130 to 230 kilometers from Longyearbyen in the area where the seabed goes from 300 meters down to 2700 meters in the Greenland Sea. The error happened on Friday morning, January 7. Svalbard Undersea Cable System is a twin submarine fiber optic communication cable connecting Longyearbyen with Andøya north of Harstad in northern Norway. The two cables are 1,375 and 1,339 km respectively, and Space Norway informs in a press release that there is good connection in the cable still...

The stretch between Svalbard and the North Cape of mainland Norway constitutes the Bear Gap, which is the Arctic Circle analogue to the better-known Greenland-Iceland-UK Gap.4 Svalbard’s proximity to the Kola Peninsula and Novaya Zemlya—home to Russia’s Northern Fleet and its nuclear weapons test site, respectively—further helps explain Moscow’s enduring interest in Svalbard. The archipelago’s importance is likely to grow as maritime trade increases in the Arctic. The Pentagon’s 2024 Arctic Strategy notes, “Reduction in sea ice due to climate change means chokepoints such as the Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia and the Barents Sea north of Norway are...

Microsoft was breached in the massive suspected Russian campaign that has hit multiple U.S. government agencies, including those responsible for maintaining America's nuclear weapons stockpile, according to people familiar with the matter. The sprawling attack, which targeted critical government infrastructure using a Trojan horse hidden in network management software from SolarWinds Corp, also compromised broad swathes of the private sector, likely including most of the Fortune 500, it emerged on Thursday. Officials say the attack went undetected for nearly nine months, allowing the hackers free range in the affected agencies and companies, and that the true scale of the stolen...

The leaders of the coup that ousted Mali's President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita spent most of the year training in Russia before returning to boot out the democratically-elected leader at gunpoint, according to sources in the Malian military. The rebels took control of Mali's largest military base in Kati, just outside the capital, Bamako, on Tuesday before storming Keita's official residence, seizing the president and forcing him to resign as leader of the West African nation. Numerous media outlets, including the BBC, immediately reported that the coup was led by Malick Diaw and Sadio Camara, two army colonels who hold top...

A Russian former escort has claimed disgraced former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer used to smuggle her into his apartment in a suitcase. “He used to sneak me into his Fifth Avenue apartment in a black suitcase … when his wife was away,” Svetlana Travis Zakharova told The New York Post in an interview published on Thursday. “My knees would be up by my face. When the doorman would ask if he could help, Eliot would say, ‘No, thanks,’” she added, noting that she was sneaked in this way at least 15 times. The woman first became known in 2016...

The 11 arrests so far are the tip of iceberg. Many more to follow, many in South Florida.” “The “South American country” where Vicky Pelaez picked up her payments from Russia’s SVR was Venezuela.” “Russia’s SVR, Castro’s DGI (Directorio General de Inteligencia) and Chavez’ SEBIN, (Servicio Bolivariano de Inteligencia) are all linked. They all share agents and information. Castro-Cubans run Chavez’ intelligence agency practically lock, stock and barrel.” “Vicky Pelaez was frequent traveler to Cuba where she met with Castro’s DGI. Pictures exist of those meetings.”

Strong intelligence has begun to emerge that US President Jimmy Carter attempted to demand financial favors for his political friends from the Shah of Iran. The rejection of this demand by the Shah could well have led to Pres. Carter’s resolve to remove the Iranian Emperor from office. 1 GIS. The linkage between the destruction of the Shah’s Government — directly attributable to Carter’s actions — and the Iran-Iraq war which cost millions of dead and injured on both sides, and to the subsequent rise of radical Islamist terrorism makes the new information of considerable significance. Pres. Carter’s anti-Shah feelings...

Reeling from years of regional conflict and subjected to superior electronic warfare effects, Iran can no longer hide its poor defense posture.From the outset of the campaign, the US and Israel almost immediately achieved air superiorityThe IRGC is believed to have expended a lot of its missile stockpiles during the 12-Day War in June 2025Experts tell Army Technology how “efficient” and “capable” the EW effort of both countries has been at this point in the conflictUS-Israeli strikes, now in their fourth day, have exposed the deeply rooted failure of Iran’s integrated air defense network.From the outset of the campaign, the...

Russian airlines Rossiya and Nordwind, which regularly connect Moscow with Cuban destinations such as Havana, Varadero, and Holguín, have decided to suspend their flights to the island due to a critical shortage of aviation fuel. The decision was confirmed this Wednesday by the Russian federal aviation agency Rosaviatsia. In an official statement published on Telegram, the agency explained: "Due to the difficulties in supplying aircraft fuel in Cuba, the airlines Rossiya (part of the Aeroflot group) and Nordwind were forced to modify their flight schedules to the airports in this country." According to the agency, Rossiya will operate only repatriation...

Korean War hero Royce Williams is being awarded the Medal of Honor, and his actions are something not even Hollywood could have dreamed up. Congressman Darrell Issa announced on Wednesday that President Donald Trump officially informed Williams of his MoH. The Medal of Honor is the nation's highest military award. It is only awarded for actions so heroic that oftentimes, the person earning it is killed. Williams is still with us in 2026, and his once-secret actions are now out in the public. Buckle up for one of the most insane war stories you'll ever hear.

he oil tanker Marinera, seized by the United States, had been chartered by a private trader under the flag of Guyana.It changed its flag to Russian while in the Atlantic, already being escorted by a U.S. Coast Guard vessel, Caliber.Az reports, citing REN TV.The U.S. Coast Guard began pursuing the tanker off the coast of Venezuela after failing to obtain confirmation from Guyanese authorities that the ship was sailing under their flag.U.S. officials demanded that the captain proceed to a U.S. port, but he refused and steered the vessel into the Atlantic. En route, the tanker requested temporary registration under...

January 21, 2022 With inflation at a record high, millions of its citizens fleeing the country, and a political opposition recognized by most Western democracies as the legitimate government of Venezuela, the regime of Nicolás Maduro seemed to be on the brink of collapse in 2019. But Maduro regime survived, thanks to a number of factors — among them the external support it received from malign state actors such as Russia and China. Moscow and Beijing never wavered in their political support of the Venezuelan regime, or of Maduro himself, including by refusing to recognize the constitutionally mandated interim presidency...

WASHINGTON — A bombshell FBI informant file containing a $10 million bribery allegation against President Biden and his son was released Thursday by Sen. Chuck Grassley, showing that a Ukrainian oligarch claimed he was “coerced” into making the payoff. The owner of Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings, Mykola Zlochevsky, told the FBI informant in 2016 during a meeting at a coffee shop in Vienna, Austria, that “it cost 5 [million] to pay one Biden, and 5 [million] to another Biden,” according to the redacted FD-1023 form. “Zlochevsky made some comment that although Hunter Biden ‘was stupid, and his (Zlochevsky’s) dog...

Fresh turf marks spot where poisoned Russian spy and his daughter were found slumped on a bench as sealed off Salisbury businesses reopen for first time since nerve agent attack Thoroughfare near bench has been closed since nerve agent attack 11 weeks ago Sergei Skripal and daughter Yulia were found unconscious on bench on March 4 Businesses are preparing to reopen today as Salisbury makes steps in recovery Shoppers were avoiding area over health and safety fears, harming businessesFresh turf marks the spot where former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found slumped on a bench after...

As Russian tanks rumble through Georgia, and Western pundits talk of the "new Cold War," one trope keeps reappearing in their discourse. Russia's newly aggressive stance, we are told, is partly our fault: After the fall of Communism, the West went out of its way to humiliate and trample Russia instead of treating it as a partner--and now, an oil-powered Russia is striking back. "Russia's litany of indignities dates to the early 1990s when the Soviet empire collapsed," Samantha Power, a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and former Barack Obama adviser, wrote in Time. "A bipolar universe gave...

In the early morning hours of Thursday, Syria’s al-Tala’i military research facility located in Masyaf was reduced to ash and flames. The Jerusalem Post reports that contemporaneous with the strike on al-Tala’I, a Hezbollah weapons convoy in the vicinity was also hit and destroyed. According to Western intelligence sources, al-Tala’i is a center for the production of chemical weapons. Syria blamed Israel and claimed that at least two regime soldiers were killed in the attack. The regime issued a banal and somewhat hypocritical warning of the “dangerous repercussions of this aggressive action to the security and stability of the region.”...