Free Republic

She's b-a-a-a-ck! Remember Dr. Barbara Hatch Rosenberg? She's the tenured Marxist activist who from circa October 2001 until August, with the media's consent, manipulated coverage of last fall's anthrax attacks, in which five people were murdered and over a dozen sickened by anthrax-contaminated letters. She also engineered the smear campaign that sought to railroad scientist Dr. Steven J. Hatfill for the anthrax attacks. On September 22, 2002, Rosenberg published a long op-ed essay in the Los Angeles Times, in which she sought to resurrect her discredited theory, according to which the anthrax killer was an insider from the American biodefense...

...A political magazine, The American Conservative will presumably comport itself with a bit more dignity than the average tabloid -- or maybe not, given the crew behind it. Executive editor Scott McConnell was formerly editorial page editor of the New York Post, and right-wing fulminator Pat Buchanan will serve as an advisor and contributor. Backed by millionaire New York Press columnist Taki Theodoracopulos, the new biweekly is expected to be more conservative than either The Weekly Standard or the National Review. It launches in September.... (snip)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. Senate panel has begun an inquiry to determine what a top official in Saddam Hussein's government told the CIA about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction in late 2002 as the Bush administration made its case for war. ADVERTISEMENT The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence said in a September 8 report that it launched the investigation after the CIA's former chief of European clandestine operations appeared on the CBS' "60 Minutes" news magazine in April. The official, Tyler Drumheller, told CBS that the Iraqi government source had said Iraq had no active unconventional weapons program. Drumheller's...

BECKLEY, W.Va. (AP) -- A congressman skeptical of the need for U.S. military action against Iraq says he is flying to Baghdad, hoping to answer questions about a possible invasion and seeking a meeting with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., said he wants to reassure Iraqi citizens that Americans are ``not out to wage war for war's sake.'' ``I'm not going as a secretary of state,'' Rahall said Tuesday. ``I'm not going as a weapons inspector. And I'm not calling upon this administration to do one thing or another. I just have a lot of questions.'' Rahall,...

September 27 - October 3, 2002 Separate and Unequal On the Mideast controversy, Georgia Democrat Cynthia McKinney and our own Dana Rohrabacher are virtually identical. So why’d the media roast McKinney and let Dana walk? by R. Scott Moxley At a casual glance, Congress members Cynthia McKinney and Dana Rohrabacher have nothing in common. McKinney is a 47-year-old liberal, black Democrat from rural Georgia. She wears her hair in cornrows, enjoys hip-hop and talks about the federal government’s neglect of the underclass. Rohrabacher, 55, is a conservative, pale-skinned Republican from coastal Huntington Beach. He barely has hair, sings folk...

The publication yesterday of Paul Volcker's fifth and final report on the U.N.'s Oil for Food program tells us little we didn't know about the broad outlines of the $100 billion scandal. But, oh, are the details ever instructive. The Volcker report confirms that Saddam Hussein demanded, and got, some $1.8 billion in illegal surcharges, kickbacks and bribes from companies doing business in Iraq. It confirms that he steered billions in oil and humanitarian contracts to his politically preferred clients, particularly Russia and France, and smaller sums to agents of influence (or their associates) such as British MP George Galloway,...

ROME (Reuters) - The Italian government denied on Wednesday reports that its secret services passed fake documents to the United States to help bolster claims about Baghdad's pre-war nuclear ambitions. Italian newspaper La Repubblica has been running daily articles since Monday alleging that Sismi intelligence officials helped pass-off forged documents that accused Iraq of trying to buy 500 tons of "yellowcake" uranium from Niger. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's office said in a statement the government and Sismi had no "direct or indirect role in the fabrication and the transmission of the 'fake dossier on Niger uranium."' La Repubblica accuses Sismi,...

While trying to cope with the worst humanitarian crisis in the West Bank and Gaza Strip since 1948, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) faces a budget deficit of $17 million this year, its chief told a meeting of 27 countries in Amman this week. UNRWA Commissioner General Peter Hansen said the fallout from the regular budget crisis was being compounded by the fact that fully half of the Agency’s Emergency Appeal for the occupied Palestinian territory this year remains unfunded. This year UNRWA asked the international community to provide it...

A NEWSWEEK article by investigative reporters Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball about the memo linking Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein dismisses a recent WEEKLY STANDARD report as "hype" and concludes, the "tangled tale of the memo suggests that the case of whether there has been Iraqi-al Qaeda complicity is far from closed." While it's refreshing to see the establishment media pick up the story, the Newsweek article is less than authoritative. The authors write: "The Pentagon memo pointedly omits any reference to the interrogations of a host of other high-level al Qaeda and Iraqi detainees--including such notables as Khalid...

MILAN, Sept 8 (AFP) - Mohammed Atta consulted Saddam Hussein prior to leading the suicide attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, according to Richard Perle, an advisor to the US defense secretary. "Mohammed Atta met Saddam Hussein in Baghdad prior to September 11. We have proof of that, and we are sure he wasn't just there for a holiday," Perle told Italy's business daily "Il Sole 24 Ore". "The meeting is one of the motives for an American attack on Iraq," added Perle, who is chairman of the Defense Policy Board and consultant to US Defense...

The Italian businessman at the centre of a furious row between France and Italy over whose intelligence service was to blame for bogus documents suggesting Saddam Hussein was seeking to buy material for nuclear bombs has admitted that he was in the pay of France.The man, identified by an Italian news agency as Rocco Martino, was the subject of a Telegraph article earlier this month in which he was referred to by his intelligence codename, "Giacomo". His admission to investigating magistrates in Rome on Friday apparently confirms suggestions that - by commissioning "Giacomo" to procure and circulate documents - France...

Press Release Source: Newsweek NEWSWEEK: Case Closed Against Syrian-Owned Business in Germany to Avoid Antagonizing Syrian Government, Officials Suggest Sunday January 18, 10:11 am ET Police Reports Show Employees Had Al Qaeda Connections; One Believed to Have Recruited Muhammad Atta in Hamburg # NEW YORK, Jan. 18 /PRNewswire/ -- After a September 2002 raid near Hamburg, Germany, of a Syrian-owned textile business called Tatex that was suspected of terrorist ties, German prosecutors began preparing their case and the U.S. considered freezing Tatex's bank accounts, as it had done in dozens of other companies suspected of financing terrorism. Then last summer,...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 12 — A former Iraqi intelligence officer who was said to have met with the suspected leader of the Sept. 11 attacks has told American interrogators the meeting never happened, according to United States officials familiar with classified intelligence reports on the matter. Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, the former intelligence officer, was taken into custody by the United States in July. Under questioning he has said that he did not meet with Mohamed Atta in Prague, according to the officials, who have reviewed classified debriefing reports based on the interrogations. American officials caution that Mr. Ani may...

Agency says it remains committed to solving the 5-year-old mystery WASHINGTON - The top FBI official in charge of the investigation into the deadly anthrax attacks has left the case, NBC News has learned. Richard "Rick" Lambert had been the inspector of the so-called AMERITHRAX case since September 2002, and had run every aspect of the five-year-old investigation. Just last month, he was transferred to the Knoxville, Tenn., field office of the FBI as its special agent in charge, according to the FBI. Lambert was the public face of the case, and his transfer is sure to fuel speculation that...

The CIA learned in late September 2002 from a high-level member of Saddam Hussein's inner circle that Iraq had no past or present contact with Osama bin Laden and that the Iraqi leader considered bin Laden an enemy of the Baghdad regime, according to a recent Senate Intelligence Committee report. Although President Bush and other senior administration officials were at that time regularly linking Hussein to al-Qaeda, the CIA's highly sensitive intelligence supporting the contrary view was apparently not passed on to the White House or senior Bush policymakers.

A former Iraqi intelligence officer who was said to have met with the suspected leader of the Sept. 11 attacks has told US interrogators the meeting never happened, according to US officials familiar with classified intelligence reports on the matter. Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, the former intelligence officer, was taken into custody by the US in July. Under questioning he has said that he did not meet with Mohamed Atta in Prague in the Czech Republic, according to the officials, who have reviewed classified debriefing reports based on the interrogations. US officials caution that Ani may have been lying...

I have been a lurker here for literally years. This is my first time doing anything here but reading your wonderful insights, which I do daily! I am trying to elect a conservative US Congressman in my state. He is in a primary with a RINO. I am sure that this RINO has been a guest in the Clinton White House. I need the proof but have hit a brick wall finding the smoking gun. I think this visit would have happened in '97 or '98. Does anyone know a source to this information? Thanks!

WASHINGTON - A new book on the government's secret anti-terrorism operations describes how the CIA recruited an Iraqi-American anesthesiologist in 2002 to obtain information from her brother, who was a figure in Saddam Hussein's nuclear program. Dr. Sawsan Alhaddad of Cleveland made the dangerous trip to Iraq on the CIA's behalf. The book said her brother was stunned by her questions about the nuclear program because — he said — it had been dead for a decade. New York Times reporter James Risen uses the anecdote to illustrate how the CIA ignored information that Iraq no longer had weapons of...

Before he was alleged to have become a spy for Saddam Hussein's regime, Muthanna Al-Hanooti's charity work and political activism provided him with access to the highest echelons of government. Newsletters collected by the Investigative Project on Terrorism, some published now for the first time, show Al-Hanooti photographed with dignitaries ranging from First Lady Hillary Clinton in 1996 and Vice President Al Gore along with significant members of Congress. That may explain why Iraqi intelligence agents had confidence that Al-Hanooti would be able to persuade Congress to lift economic sanctions against Iraq. A federal indictment unsealed Wednesday accuses him of...

Document ISGQ-2003-0044 ISGQ-2003-00044390 390 contains a November/27/2002 Top Secret and Urgent memo from the Baath Party Command in Fallujah and in relation to another letter from the office of the Presidential Secretariat (Saddam Hussein Personal Secretary) and it is addressed to all the People Commands in the Anbar Province (The Western Desert) asking them to watch for Americans or Zionists (Israelis) forces that can potentially bury prohibited materials, WMD, in the Anbar province so it will frame Iraq and find an excuse to punish Iraq according to the memo. The Anbar province which is the hot bed of the terrorists...