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The captured archives are starting to show that post-Soviet Russia hadn't stopped its old Soviet ways in Iraq. Among the initial revelations: Russia's SVR foreign-intelligence service recently spied on British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, eavesdropping on their conversations and passing the information to Saddam Hussein's regime. As recently as last fall, Russia was continuing to train the Iraqi secret police. Rooting through an office of the Mukhabarat secret police, Robert Collier of the San Francisco Chronicle discovered documents showing that the SVR trained five Iraqi officers in "phototechnical and optical means" and "acoustic-surveillance means"...

The US secretly agreed to give the Russians sensitive information on Britain’s nuclear deterrent to persuade them to sign a key treaty, The Daily Telegraph can disclose. Information about every Trident missile the US supplies to Britain will be given to Russia as part of an arms control deal signed by President Barack Obama next week. Defence analysts claim the agreement risks undermining Britain’s policy of refusing to confirm the exact size of its nuclear arsenal.

a prominent FBI official, Charles McGonigal, was sentenced to a prison stint. He was convicted of conspiracy and bribery involving a Russian oligarch who is known for being an extremely close associate of Vladamir Putin. While this is being widely reported on today there is a very notable omission seen from the various major news outlets covering this sentencing. To set the stage correctly we need to flash back briefly over what we have been told over the past seven or so years. With the rise of Donald Trump in Republican circles, one of the earliest complaints leveled against him...

Sen. John McCain on Monday strongly disputed a U.S. diplomatic cable that said he pushed to help Muammar Qadhafi’s regime obtain military hardware two years ago, calling the notion “outrageous.” The 2009 cable, released by the open information group WikiLeaks and written by staff at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, said in particular that McCain, at a meeting with Qadhafi and one of his sons, promised to help Libya obtain C-130 Hercules military cargo aircraft. (snip) On Monday, McCain told Foreign Policy magazine that the diplomatic cable was incorrect, and that he had never pledged any help to Libya in...

A former British soldier has been arrested for allegedly helping Russia assassinate Ukrainian politicians in exchange for money, intelligence officials said. Ross David Cutmore was detained by Ukraine’s state security service in October after he was accused of importing and doling out weapons that were used in the slayings of three prominent Ukrainians, the Kyiv Independent reported. Months after he arrived, he allegedly quit the job and started acting as a spy for the Kremlin. He later provided the weapons used to murder politician, Andriy Parubiy, as well as activists, Demian Hanul and Iryna Farion, officials alleged. Cutmore, who had...

UK Sailors-Iran Arrests Former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray Monday supported Iran's decision to arrest 15 UK marines in the Persian Gulf last week. "In international law the Iranian government were not out of order in detaining foreign military personnel in waters to which they have a legitimate claim," Murray said, who was also a previous head of Foreign Office's maritime section, carrying out negotiations on the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. "For the Royal Navy, to be interdicting shipping within the twelve mile limit of territorial seas in a region they know full well is...

EXCLUSIVE: Ex-British ambassador who is now a WikiLeaks operative claims Russia did NOT provide Clinton emails - they were handed over to him at a D.C. park by an intermediary for 'disgusted' Democratic insiders Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan and associate of Julian Assange, told the Dailymail.com he flew to Washington, D.C. for emails He claims he had a clandestine hand-off in a wooded area near American University with one of the email sources The leakers' motivation was 'disgust at the corruption of the Clinton Foundation and the 'tilting of the primary election playing field against Bernie Sanders'...

The United States is in the process of creating a new embassy in Lebanon that is far larger than any government facility in the nation. In fact, the 19 building, 43-acre compound is 2.5X larger than the White House and accompanying land and 10X the size of Nine Elms in London. The only larger embassy is the one the US built in Iraq. “The Land of Plenty,” as the structure will be called, will cost US taxpayers an estimated $1.2 billion. Why does the US government need a mega compound in Lebanon? It is all about Israel. The site in...

Washington — Two Russian nationals working for a news network controlled by Vladimir Putin's government funneled millions of dollars to an American media company that paid right-wing influencers for videos pushing narratives favorable to the Kremlin, U.S. prosecutors alleged on Wednesday.An indictment unsealed in the Southern District of New York charged Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, both based in Moscow, with conspiracy to launder money and conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The indictment came as the Justice Department unveiled sprawling allegations accusing the Russian government of meddling in the 2024 U.S. elections. (snip) Attorney General Merrick Garland...

President Joe Biden on Thursday hailed the complex prisoner-swap deal with Russia that freed unjustly imprisoned Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, and two others in exchange for prisoners including Russian assassin Vadim Krasikov as a prodigious “feat of diplomacy.” Biden said all four of the recovered prisoners were “convicted in show trials” by Russia “for absolutely no legitimate reason whatsoever.” In addition to Gershkovich and Whelan, the freed detainees included Russian American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva and Vladimir Kara-Muza, a U.S. green-card holder and Washington Post contributor who was sentenced to 25 years in prison...