Free Republic

An American businessman arrested in Communist China over a decade on apparently flimsy charges of drug trafficking will be put to death, Chinese government officials have announced. Mark Swidan, a Houston, Texas businessman, was arrested in November 2012 and sentenced to death in 2018 on charges he was in China to smuggle illegal drugs. John Kamm, chairman of the Dui Hua human rights foundation, tells Newsweek “the only ‘evidence’ against him is that Swidan once visited a factory where Chinese authorities allege the meth was manufactured, and that he had been in a room rented by another person where drugs...

The reelection of President Barack Obama and the convening of China’s 18th National Congress marks a new era for U.S.-China relations. On November 29, the Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy hosted Jeffrey Bader for a public forum to discuss these and related issues facing the Obama and Xi administrations. Bader is the John C. Whitehead senior fellow in international diplomacy at the Brookings Institution. He served as senior director for East Asian affairs on the National Security Council during President Obama’s first term, and is the author of Obama and China’s Rise: An Insider’s Account of America’s Asian Strategy. In...

Rep. Eric Swalwell is famous for yelling about Russian influence with outrageous claims against President Trump, even calling for a 'presidential crimes commission,' but based on a year-long investigation from Axios, he's the one who has some spy problems, and they ought to be embarrassing. He was China's idea of the perfect fool.According to a year-long investigation from Axios:A suspected Chinese intelligence operative developed extensive ties with local and national politicians, including a U.S. congressman, in what U.S. officials believe was a political intelligence operation run by China’s main civilian spy agency between 2011 and 2015, Axios found in a...

A fugitive Chinese billionaire who has previously met with U.S. President Donald Trump's former senior counselor Steve Bannon said internal weakness in the Chinese Communist Party raises concerns about its long-term stability. Guo Wengui, who lives in New York and has pledged to expose political corruption in China, said he has privately met with Chinese Communist Party officials who voice doubts about the future, Taiwan's Liberty Times reported Monday. Guo, who made his fortune in Chinese real estate before fleeing the country, said one "senior member" is skeptical the annual Beidaihe summit will take place next year, citing political upheaval...

[Subtitle: “I hope that my story will help you understand the methods of Russian operatives in Washington and how they use U.S. enablers to achieve major foreign policy goals without disclosing those interests,” Browder writes.]The financier Bill Browder has emerged as an unlikely central player in the ongoing investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 elections. Sergei Magnitsky, an attorney Browder hired to investigate official corruption, died in Russian custody in 2009. Congress subsequently imposed sanctions on the officials it held responsible for his death, passing the Magnitsky Act in 2012. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government retaliated, among other ways,...

<p>TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iran's vice president said Monday that Tehran will break the `grasping hands' of newly re-elected President Barack Obama, the official IRNA news agency reported.</p> <p>Mohammad Reza Rahimi also said Iran will overcome U.S.-led sanctions against the country.</p>

Former NBA player Dennis Rodman expressed his regret over controversial comments he made regarding imprisoned Christian missionary Kenneth Bae in North Korea, blaming them on drinking and stress. "I want to apologize. I take full responsibility for my actions," Rodman said on Thursday through his publicist Jules Feiler in an email to The Associated Press. "It had been a very stressful day. Some of my teammates were leaving because of pressure from their families and business associates. My dreams of basketball diplomacy was quickly falling apart. I had been drinking. It's not an excuse but by the time the interview...

Seventy hours ago, at this writing, while on Air Force One, President Barack Obama issued a press release that has been utterly ignored by the Western Press. The president has openly announced a move against violent plotters inside the US government and espionage agents. He does not use the terms “AIPAC” or “the Israel lobby” but it is highly unlikely he could be referring to anything else. In fact, we can think of no other group. http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/11/24/274332/aipac-decapitators-inside-us-govt/ Presidential Memorandum — National Insider Threat Policy and Minimum Standards for Executive Branch Insider Threat Programs MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS...

Reacting to Donald Trump’s fury over a New York Times report that said the FBI investigated whether the president was working for Russia after he fired James Comey, Comey himself tweeted a quote by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. “I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made,” the former FBI director wrote on Saturday, adding an attribution: “FDR.” It soon became clear the tweet almost exactly matched one by Trump, issued on 21 November 2012, when the then reality TV star was digesting the re-election of Barack Obama....{snip} But it seems Comey might have been making a sharper...

At first the FBI probed the e-mails of Paula Broadwell and CIA Director David Petraeus from a suspicion of cyberstalking and harassment. They then dropped the probe after determining that the biographer of Petraeus had a personal relationship with him, even though they discovered that Broadwell had classified documents on her computer. After the entire probe went public and forced Petraeus to resign, FBI agents suddenly conducted a seizure of materials from Broadwell’s home — which the Washington Post reports comes from a belated curiosity into her possession of those classified documents: The FBI is making a new push to...

It now seems clear what occurred to bring down CIA Director David Petraeus: some months ago his paramour Paula Broadwell sent threatening emails to another woman warning her to keep away from Petraeus, seemingly unaware that computers and emails have signatures that can be identified by investigators. The woman, identified by the Associated Press as Jill Kelley, became alarmed over being threatened and notified the FBI, which got into the emails to discover that there was an affair in progress, leading to an investigation of Petraeus to determine if any classifed information had been leaked. Broadwell was subsequently interviewed by...

While Secretary of State Hillary Clinton boozes it up in Australia and the Pentagon grapples with more floozy eruptions, outraged military families are still waiting for answers about the forgotten 9/14 attack on Camp Bastion. Muckrakers and distraction engineers are having a front-page field day with the so-called "sex scandal." But for surviving relatives and colleagues of heroic Marine Lt. Col. Christopher Raible and Sgt. Bradley Atwell, it's the national security scandal at Afghanistan's Camp Bastion that deserves headline coverage. There's been a virtual blackout of the alarming story in the national press. As I reported last month, the meticulously...

A Turkish court has ordered the arrest of four Israeli commanders who were allegedly involved in the raid on the the Mavi Marmara aid ship off Gaza in 2010. The Istanbul 7th Court of Serious Crimes also decided May 26 to request an Interpol Red Notice for the arrest of former Israeli Chief of Staff, Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, former Naval Forces Cmdr. Eliezer Alfred Marom, former Military Intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlinir and former Air Forces Intelligence head Brig. Gen. Avishai Levi, who are all being tried in absentia. The court argued that an arrest warrant had become necessary...

Four days of meetings in Doha, the capital of Qatar, of Western-backed elements backing the overthrow of the Syrian government began in disarray Sunday, following last week’s demand by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for a shakeup within the so-called rebel leadership. Clinton gave the Syrian oppositionists their marching orders last Wednesday, declaring that the Syrian National Council (SNC), formed barely a year ago and recognized by Washington as the “legitimate representative” of the Syrian people, had lost US backing. She dismissed the leadership that the US had previously supported as a gang of irrelevant exiles who had not...

ZAGREB, Croatia — The Obama administration on Wednesday renounced the proclaimed leaders of the Syrian political opposition and said any group seeking to oust President Bashar al-Assad must reject attempts by extremists to “hijack” a legitimate revolution. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the Syrian National Council, or SNC, should no longer be considered the “visible leader” of the opposition. That made official what has been the increasingly obvious sidelining of an opposition group led mostly by middle-age Syrian expatriates.

"New State Department Emails Reveal Blumenthal Advised Clinton that former Rep. Eric Cantor Committed a Possible ‘Felony’ by Disclosing Petraeus Classified Information".... ‘Will a grand jury be empaneled by the Justice Department? When will Senator Patrick Leahy, chair of the Judiciary Committee… begin an investigation of this matter?’ – November 13, 2012 Blumenthal advised top Obama debate advisor that Romney would ‘falsify, distort, and mangle facts;’ advised Clinton on Libya turmoil disclosed in ‘internal govt discussions high level’ (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that on January 7, 2016, it obtained a new batch of documents from the Department...

Petraeus Scandal: An affair that was known to the FBI for months and kept from congressional oversight committees might explain his complicity in a false narrative of the Benghazi terrorist attack and the order to "stand down." The addition of sex to Benghazigate adds a dimension sure to keep the scandal going and one that does indeed make Watergate seem like a third-rate burglary. The affair admitted to by Gen. David Petraeus, now our former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, might have attached blackmail or the potential for blackmail to a scandal we have already called a case of...

Weeks before he was abducted, alleged members of a kidnapping network tied to ISIS were busted in London. Syrian extremists saw it as a reason to accelerate abductions. American journalist James Foley was captured in Syria in November 2012, just weeks after the British government arrested and charged three British citizens, who were alleged members of a group of foreign fighters associated with the Islamic State, for the kidnapping of two other Western journalists. It remains unclear whether these accused terrorists who later slipped through the fingers of the British legal system were part of the same extremist cell that...

As the plot thickens in the San Bernardino massacre, the FBI is trying to decipher several issues from abuse of the marriage and immigration system and whether these terrorists had Jihadi brides. Also who are these Russian girls involved in the marriage scheme. Also the FBI believes Farook had ties to a group of jihadists in California who were arrested in 2012 (which caused a previous attack to be thwarted that Farook was planning) for attempted to travel to Afghanistan to join al Qaeda. Then we have the possible main ringleader, second man, Mohamed Abdullahi Hassan (aka Miski, Malik John,...

SNIPPET: "They are: Soheil Omar Kabir, 34, a Pomona man who is an American citizen from Afghanistan; Ralph Deleon, 23, an Ontario man who was born in the Philippines; Miguel Alejandro Santana Vidriales, 21, an Upland man who was born in Mexico and whose was U.S. citizenship was pending; and Arifeen David Gojali, 21, of Riverside." SNIPPET: "The three men followed the essays of the now-deceased al-Qaida leader Anwar Al-Awlaqi, who led terrorist operations in the Arabian Peninsula." SNIPPET: "Santana and Deleon told the plot to a confidential informant working for the FBI, according to the complaint." SNIPPET: "In order...