Free Republic

WASHINGTON, April 27 — In January 2002, George J. Tenet, the man who oversaw all American spy agencies, was asked by a visiting Italian intelligence official what he knew about United States officials making contact with exiled Iranian opposition figures. “I shot a look at other members of my staff in the meeting,” Mr. Tenet writes in his newly published memoir. “It was clear that none of us knew what he was talking about. The Italian quickly changed the subject.” The embarrassed Mr. Tenet, then director of central intelligence, had stumbled upon a quixotic effort by a few Pentagon officials...

A High-Risk Nuclear Stakeout The U.S. took too long to act, some experts say, letting a Pakistani scientist sell illicit technology well after it knew of his operation. By Douglas Frantz, Times Staff Writer WASHINGTON — Nuclear warhead plans that Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan sold to Libya were more complete and detailed than previously disclosed, raising new concerns about the cost of Washington's watch-and-wait policy before Khan and his global black market were shut down last year. Two Western nuclear weapons specialists who have examined the top-secret designs say the hundreds of pages of engineering drawings and handwritten notes...

When experts from the US and the IAEA came upon blueprints for a 10-kiloton atomic bomb in the files of the Libyan weapons program earlier this year, they found themselves caught between gravity and pettiness. The discovery gave the experts a new appreciation of the audacity of the rogue nuclear network led by A. Q. Khan, a chief architect of Pakistan's bomb. Intelligence officials had watched Dr. Khan for years and suspected that he was trafficking in machinery for enriching uranium to make fuel for warheads. But the detailed design represented a new level of danger, particularly since the Libyans...

NBC Nightly News’ Andrea Mitchell has a thing about the CIA and Director George J. Tenet. We have previously reported that her coverage of Tenet’s appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee in early March represented some of the most distorted, dishonest reporting we had seen in some time. She was at it again in her March 24th coverage of Tenet’s appearance before the National 9/11 commission.