Free Republic

Who is Paul Pillar? By Michelle Malkin   ·   September 27, 2006 11:14 AM Drip, drip, drip? In its original report leaking details of the National Intelligence Estimate on the Iraq war, the New York Times relied on anonymous, unnamed leakers to spin its contents and embarrass the White House. Today, the Times includes comments from some named sources. Pay attention to this one: What was most remarkable about the intelligence estimate, several experts said, was the unremarkable nature of its conclusions. “At one level it is unsurprising stuff,’’ said Paul Pillar, who was the national intelligence officer for the...

The neocon Washington Post wants an even bigger U.S. military intervention in Syria, ignoring the tenets of international law and assuming that more bombing will somehow make things better, observes ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar. ___ Among the latest in the Washington Post editorial page’s unrelenting drumbeat of criticism on Syria — which often does not make clear exactly what the United States should be doing there, except that whatever it does should involve more military force than it is using now — is a signed column by deputy editorial page editor Jackson Diehl, who says President Obama ought to...

The CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies have become bastions of political liberals and the pro-Democratic Party views of intelligence personnel have increased under President Donald Trump, according to a journal article by a former CIA analyst. John Gentry, who spent 12 years as a CIA analyst, criticized former senior intelligence leaders, including CIA Director John Brenan, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and former deputy CIA director Michael Morell, along with former analyst Paul Pillar, for breaking decades-long prohibitions of publicly airing their liberal political views in attacking Trump. The institutional bias outlined in a lengthy article in the...

We are having enough problems in the war with Islam, just dealing with Muslims. Then on top of that, we have to deal with naive non-Muslims of the world, that help advance Islam. Muslims constantly play the victim card, and people like Stein fall for it over and over. Stein you are part of the problem. Smarten up. About Jeff Stein: SpyTalk columnist Jeff Stein is a longtime investigative reporter specializing in U.S. intelligence, defense and foreign policy issues. An Army Intelligence case officer in Vietnam, Stein has authored three highly regarded books and has been a frequent contributor to...

Hint to reporters whose shtick is exposing the ignorance of government leaders: keep your facts straight yourselves.There's been a rash of stories in recent days about the shocking ignorance of various government officials when it comes to bread 'n butter facts about the war on terror. First there was a report by Lisa Myers of NBC revealing how little some top FBI officials knew about various terrorist groups and leaders.Just in the last couple days, Jeff Stein the National Security Editor at Congressional Quarterly, has been getting a lot of play with his story of similar ignorance on the part...

Michael Ledeen, the controversial national security journalist, scholar and schemer who died at age 83 on May 17 from complications following a stroke, played a significant covert role leading up to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, as well as other productions of false intelligence for political ends. Ledeen was featured prominently in The Italian Letter, a 2007 book by SpyTalk Contributing Editor Peter Eisner and Knut Royce, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter at Newsday. Obituaries published this week gave scant attention to the key role Ledeen played in fabricating intelligence to justify the eventually disastrous military campaign to oust...

The Department of Justice official who pushed for the armed raid on Mar-a-Lago, which ended up with documents that were available for the asking and a chance to riffle through Melania's underwear drawer, has retired. Jay Bratt, a 30-plus-year veteran of the Department of Justice, has tendered his resignation, saying staying on "wasn't worth it." But three sources familiar with the move described it to SpyTalk as a significant and even chilling event previewing a potential exodus of seasoned government lawyers and FBI agents who fear the wrath of Pam Bondi, Trump ’s pick for attorney general, Kash Patel, his...

Jack Smith’s top hatchet man, Jay Bratt, abruptly resigned from the Justice Department last week, according to Deep State reporter and fake Trump-Russia dossier peddler Michael Isikoff. Jay Bratt was one of the main prosecutors who spearheaded the Mar-a-Lago raid, he threatened a lawyer defending Trump’s valet driver and admitted the DOJ tampered with evidence. Via Michael Isikoff for SpyTalk: A top Justice Department national security prosecutor has become an early casualty of the incoming Trump administration, abruptly resigning from the department last week before incoming appointees can retaliate against him for his key role in special counsel Jack Smith’s...

LIKE MANY GREAT SPY STORIES, this one begins with a brief, mundane scene whose significance only becomes apparent later on. Around lunchtime on February 1, 2000, a man dropped a piece of paper near a table in a Middle Eastern restaurant outside Los Angeles and paused long enough to strike up a conversation with two Arabic-speaking men dining nearby. It would take FBI agents nearly 20 years to understand the full meaning of that small event. The man who dropped the piece of paper was Omar al-Bayoumi, a Saudi intelligence asset, recently declassified FBI documents show. And the two Arabic-speaking...

Dong Jingwei, who has been rumored to be a high-ranking defector to the United States, attended a meeting in Beijing on June 23, according to the Chinese Ministry of Public Security (MPS). The MPS announced on its website that Dong participated in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) security meeting in Beijing on Wednesday, as a member of the China team which was led by Zhao Kezhi, China’s public security minister. In the announcement, the ministry released a photo, in which Dong was sitting at the right end of the table. This is the first time that the Chinese regime has...

As the media laments being totally wrong about the COVID lab leak theory, more details are coming out about the Chinese defector who has been taken into US custody. The man alleges that he has knowledge about a slew of chinse bioweapons programs and COVID. He alleges that the current pandemic was caused by a lab leak, and that bats were the real cover-up story. The defector alleges that while the lab leak was an accident, it was allowed to spread. Our friends at RedState wrote about this first, but Jen Van Laar has a new development. The identity of...

We now know the name of the Chinese defector who has been working with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) for a few months and what his position within the Chinese military and government was, among other details.Matthew Brazil and Jeff Stein at Spy Talk reported on the “rumor,” and gave the name and background of the rumored defector:Chinese-language anti-communist media and Twitter are abuzz this week with rumors that a vice minister of State Security, Dong Jingwei (董经纬) defected in mid-February, flying from Hong Kong to the United States with his daughter, Dong Yang.Dong is, or was, a longtime official...