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LONDON (from compiled intelligence briefs) - Al-Qaida had extensive contacts with Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security, as well as with an elite military unit which helped the terrorists train and plot attacks against Americans, according to a former intelligence officer who recently fled Iran. Hamid Reza Zakeri, a former inspector and director of Iran's Revolutionary Guards and Ministry of Intelligence, or MOIS, member said models of the World Trade Center, the White House, Pentagon and other United States government buildings "were in our headquarters." In an explosive interview with a London-based Arabic newspaper last week, Zakeri stated that...

They were loyal conservatives, and Bush appointees. They fought a quiet battle to rein in the president's power in the war on terror. And they paid a price for it. A NEWSWEEK investigation. Feb. 6, 2006 issue - James Comey, a lanky, 6-foot-8 former prosecutor who looks a little like Jimmy Stewart, resigned as deputy attorney general in the summer of 2005. The press and public hardly noticed. Comey's farewell speech, delivered in the Great Hall of the Justice Department, contained all the predictable, if heartfelt, appreciations. But mixed in among the platitudes was an unusual passage. Comey thanked "people...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 1 - Scientific tests have led American intelligence agencies and government scientists to conclude with near certainty that North Korea sold processed uranium to Libya, bolstering earlier indications that the reclusive state exported sensitive fuel for atomic weapons, according to officials with access to the intelligence. The determination, which has circulated among senior government officials in recent weeks, has touched off a hunt to determine if North Korea has also sold uranium to other countries, including Iran and Syria. So far, there is no evidence that such additional transactions took place. Nonetheless, the conclusion about the uranium transfer...

Ezzat Ebrahim Al Douri served as vice president during Saddam Hussain's regime.Baghdad: The US military in Baghdad on Thursday denied that Ezzat Ebrahim Al Douri, Saddam Hussain's former vice president, had been arrested in Salaheddin.Iraqi army officers also denied the report, although Iraq's national security adviser Muwaffaq Al Rubaie said the army had arrested a group of terrorists and will conduct DNA tests."We can say at this stage that he is not under arrest for the coalition forces and we do not have any reports about the arrest by Iraqi security forces," the US military said in a statement.Al Douri...

WASHINGTON - As Sen. John Kerry narrows his list of possible running mates, it appears Florida Sen. Bob Graham is still a contender. People familiar with the selection process say the leading candidates are Rep. Richard Gephardt of Missouri, Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina and Graham. It appears Kerry has ruled out Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack and Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana. Graham has met with Kerry several times recently and has appeared with him at many Florida events. Graham also has provided documents to the Kerry campaign for the vetting process. People close to Graham say that he...

U.S. military forces have discovered a smuggling ring moving copious quantities of explosives and weapons from Iraq to terrorist training camps constructed by the Saddam Hussein regime inside Syria prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). The Pentagon also announced that the structure bombed by U.S. warplanes last week, described by many major media outlets as a wedding celebration at a private ranching operation, was actually a "dormitory-like" facility used as a "safe house" to facilitate the clandestine movement of foreign terrorists into Iraq from Syria. According to Pentagon officials, small arms, explosives, and bomb making materials are being removed from...

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) - Suspected assassins killed a university lecturer and her husband in the latest attacks on prominent Iraqis in the northern city of Mosul, police said on Tuesday. Relatives said Layla Abdullah Saad, the dean of the college of law at Mosul University, had received threats but had refused to hire security guards to protect her house where she was shot and stabbed to death on her doorstep. Residents said the murders -- which followed the killing of a lecturer from the same university in January -- appeared to fit a pattern of attacks designed to intimidate voices...

Is it really true that Saddam Hussein had no "stockpiles" of weapons of mass destruction before the U.S. invaded in March 2003? Not exactly - at least not if one counts the 500 tons of uranium that the Iraqi dictator kept stored at his al Tuwaitha nuclear weapons development plant. The press hasn't made much of Saddam's 500-ton uranium stockpile, downplaying the story to such an extent that most Americans aren't even aware of it. But it's been reported - albeit in a by-the-way fashion - by the New York Times and a handful of other media outlets. And one...

WASHINGTON // A Pakistani immigrant who hosted fundraisers for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is being sought by the FBI on allegations that he funneled illegal contributions to Clinton's political action committee and to Sen. Barbara Boxer's 2004 re-election campaign. Authorities say Northridge, Calif., businessman Abdul Rehman Jinnah, 56, fled the country shortly after being indicted on charges of engineering more than $50,000 in illegal donations to the Democratic committees. A business associate charged as Jinnah's co-conspirator has entered a guilty plea and is scheduled to be sentenced in Los Angeles next week. ...The case has transformed Jinnah from a political...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 29 - The International Committee of the Red Cross has charged in confidential reports to the United States government that the American military has intentionally used psychological and sometimes physical coercion "tantamount to torture" on prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The finding that the handling of prisoners detained and interrogated at Guantánamo amounted to torture came after a visit by a Red Cross inspection team that spent most of last June in Guantánamo. The team of humanitarian workers, which included experienced medical personnel, also asserted that some doctors and other medical workers at Guantánamo were participating in planning...

Sting operation by FBI- Press Conference just on FOX: 17 of 18 defendents arrested for attempting to purchase weapons from an undercover FBI agent. One wanted to buy uranium to make a nuclear device in a subway system. FBI spokesperson emphatically stated that did not come to fruition, but the suspect did ask the question. FBI was not involving itself in the end user, the sting operation was focusing on the people who were attempting to purchase the weapons for further sale/distribution. FBI taped over 15,000 phone calls made by the men trying to purchase. Very Dangerous weaponry including: grenade...

Detail by painful detail, the CIA is coming to grips with one of the most devastating episodes in its history, a botched cloak-and-dagger flight into China that stole two decades of freedom from a pair of fresh-faced American operatives and cost the lives of their two pilots. In opening up about the 1952 debacle, the CIA is finding ways to use it as a teaching tool. Mistakes of the past can serve as cautionary tales for today's spies and paramilitary officers taking on al-Qaida and other terrorist targets. At the center of the story are two eager CIA paramilitary officers...

Major Update Below!As I posted yesterday, there was a disturbing blurb in a NY Times article that indicated Faisal Shahzad, the now infamous Times Square Bomber, was under surveillance as a potential terrorist during the Bush administration. George LaMonica, a 35-year-old computer consultant, said he bought his two-bedroom condominium in Norwalk, Conn., from Mr. Shahzad for $261,000 in May 2004. A few weeks after he moved in, Mr. LaMonica said, investigators from the national Joint Terrorism Task Force [JTTF] interviewed him, asking for details of the transaction and for information about Mr. Shahzad. It struck Mr. LaMonica as unusual, but...

BASRA, Iraq (Reuters) - British forces said on Friday there had been "an incident" in the northern Arabian Gulf after an Iraqi fisherman reported seeing up to seven British or American military personnel being seized by an Iranian ship. "There has been an incident somewhere in the north of the Persian Gulf," British military spokesman Major David Gell said in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, without elaborating. He said he did not know whether any British or American servicemen were involved. The fisherman said the incident took place early on Friday in the Shatt al-Arab waterway that marks the...

FBI agents yesterday raided the suburban Detroit headquarters of LIFE for Relief and Development (LRD), the largest Islamic charity in the country. I first wrote about the group for The Post in 2003. Back then, FBI Director Robert Mueller was set to give an award to Imad Hamad, who heads the Midwest chapter of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC). But, after my Post article pointed out that Hamad was a subject in over a dozen terrorism-related investigations, the FBI revoked the award. One of those investigations concerned Hamad's close ties to LRD. Both the FBI and the then-U.S. Customs...

A French national was arrested after tossing a package over a White House gate, sparking a security alert, although the object was found to be harmless, the US Secret Service said. Cyrille Mourotte, 36, who was arrested for "disorderly conduct" immediately after Wednesday's incident, had been arrested and deported following a similar occurrence in June 2004, Secret Service spokesman Jonathan Cherry said. Mourotte is accused of tossing a package over a gate at the White House on Wednesday, causing security forces to call in a bomb squad and cordon off the surrounding area, Cherry said. He would not specify the...

(Source: Debka.com from Deutsche Welle, Sept. 15, 2004) The German daily newspaper Die Welt claims that Syria tested chemical weapons on civilians in Sudan's Darfur region in June resulting in the deaths of dozens of people. The newspaper says that "unnamed western security sources" indicated that the weapons tests were undertaken following a military exercise between Syria and Sudan. The accusations appear in an advance release of its Wednesday edition. The United States has accused Syria in the past of trying to acquire materials and the know-how to develop chemical weapons and claims that Sudan has been seeking to improve...

THE editor of Melbourne's The Age newspaper has defended Australia's Journalist of the Year, Paul McGeough, in the wake of revelations that he may have erred in two significant reports he filed from Iraq. McGeough claimed in an article published in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald that former Iraqi interim leader Iyad Allawi shot dead as many as six prisoners in June last year. But the story was discredited by a report yesterday that Iraqi officials and US special forces bodyguards assigned to Allawi had passed lie detector tests in denying the murder allegations. "My view is that...