Free Republic

Last month, Senator Dianne Feinstein and other Democrats on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released the executive summary of their final report investigating the CIA's controversial detention and interrogation program. As part of their study, the Democrats compiled twenty case studies, which were intended to address claims made by the CIA regarding the efficacy of its interrogations. One of those case studies focused on the identification and arrest of Ali Saleh Kahlah al Marri, who was freed from a US prison just days ago. Al Marri served as a "sleeper" operative for al Qaeda inside the US in 2001....

Nearly six years ago, President George W. Bush declared Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri an enemy combatant and had him swept out of federal court and into a U.S. Navy brig so he could be interrogated without the legal protections afforded by the criminal justice system. Bush said the Qatari national, arrested as a material witness in Illinois in December 2001, possessed critical intelligence that "would aid U.S. efforts to prevent attacks by al-Qaeda on the United States." In an agreement Marri entered Thursday in Peoria, Ill., he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to provide material support to al-Qaeda and admitted to...

Long War Journal reports that the Obama administration has released Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri from a U.S. prison – not from Gitmo, but from a civilian jail after a federal terrorism conviction. Al-Marri is an al-Qaeda operative who was planted as a “sleeper” in the United States by Khalid Sheikh Mohamed to await instructions on carrying out a second wave of attacks after the 9/11 atrocities – against water reservoirs, the New York Stock Exchange, U.S. military academies, and other targets. The Justice Department quietly sprung him on Friday so he could return to his native Qatar, a country the...

Mauritanian national Mohamedou Ould Slahi has been held at Guantanamo for 12 years now without trial and despite a dearth of evidence. A diary he kept of his torture is now being published around the world. […] He was accused of having been acquainted with the perpetrators of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and of having provided them with support and sending them to Afghanistan to receive training. He has also been accused of involvement in the Millennium Plot, the foiled terrorist attack targeting the Los Angeles International Airport. At least that’s the claim made by Ahmed Ressam, the...

On September 25, the 23rd Arab-American Candidates’ Night Dinner was held in Virginia, attended by 46 Democrats and Republicans seeking office, with former governor and current Democratic Senate candidate, Tim Kaine, as a major speaker. The dinner honored a top Muslim Brotherhood official affiliated with Hamas named Jamal Barzinji, an inconvenient and overlooked fact for Kaine’s campaign team. Tim Kaine was the governor of Virginia from 2006 to 2010 and then was the chairman of the Democratic National Committee. He was on the short-list to become President Obama’s running mate. He is now running for Senate and will likely face...

The Clinton-Reno Justice Department refused to allow two veteran FBI agents assigned to the anti-terrorist probe to investigate a key figure tied to Osama bin Laden. According to ABC News correspondent Brian Ross today, the two agents told him they were ordered to stop investigations into a suspected terror cell linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network and the Sept. 11 attacks. FBI special agents Robert Wright and John Vincent told Ross they were called off criminal investigations of suspected terrorists linked to the deadly bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa. U.S. officials say al-Qaeda was responsible for...

WASHINGTON, June 22 - Under a secret Bush administration program initiated weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, counterterrorism officials have gained access to financial records from a vast international database and examined banking transactions involving thousands of Americans and others in the United States, according to government and industry officials.

A former CIA officer was arrested on Thursday on charges of illegally disclosing national defense information about Iran to a New York Times reporter who wrote a book. The U.S. Justice Department said Jeffrey Sterling, 43, was charged with six counts of unauthorized disclosure of national defense information and one count of unlawfully keeping national defense information, mail fraud, unauthorized conveyance of government property and obstructing justice.

In document ISGP-2003-00026334 there are two top secret memo dated September 24 2001 one of them (page 57 of the pdf document) talks about military urgent preparations for a US attack against Iraq and the other (page 6 of the pdf document) talks for urgent military preparations in case of US attacks against Afghanistan. These memos which came from the Iraq Air Force Command asked their troops to prepare as if “There is no way but a US attack against the country” and of course by country they mean Iraq. Beginning of Translation of page 57 of document document ISGP-2003-00026334...

Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has released a video coinciding with the anniversary of the September 11 attacks, confirming for the first time the death of his deputy, US monitors said. The 42-minute video is Zawahiri's first release in three months, and confirms that Abu Yahya al-Libi was killed in a drone strike in Pakistan's Waziristan tribal area on June 4, according to SITE and IntelCenter. **SNIP** Zawahiri does single out US President Barack Obama for being a "liar" who was elected to "trick" Muslims around the world, but who nevertheless is "being defeated in Afghanistan". He also mentions Warren Weinstein,...

A war of words erupted in the city’s 911 call center Saturday over allegations two operators made “anti-police” remarks after the assassinations of two cops, the Daily News has learned. The fracas occurred when news broke that Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu had been shot execution-style by a deranged gunman, sources said. The remarks were allegedly made by a couple of the 911 operators who handle NYPD calls — and two Fire Department dispatchers in earshot got heated in response, sources said.

Saddam, the ATM of Al Qaeda By Christopher S. Carson FrontPageMagazine.com | November 15, 2004 The Report of the 9/11 Commission has been digested, and the news media outlets have seized upon it as confirmation of their view that al Qaeda is a kind of purely stateless entity that never had "operational links" with rogue states like Iraq. Somehow, goes the thrust of the Report, Osama bin Laden was for years able to finance, train and supply an international terrorist corporation that had ongoing jihad operations in fifty countries - by himself, on no more than a $30 million personal...

Last week’s furore over the US senate’s report into the CIA’s torture of detainees was a reminder that since 9/11, America’s decision-makers have been a little like Darren Wilson, the Missouri policeman who shot and killed the unarmed black teenager Michael Brown last August. By his own account, Mr Wilson had been mortally afraid. Brown, he said, “looked like a demon”, and he feared the young man might punch him to death. In his own mind therefore, he had acted in self-defence when he shot Brown dead. The 2001 terror attacks left US leaders making decisions in a climate of...

The reprehensible Rosie O’Donnell continued her rantings about the interrogation of terrorist suspects by the CIA on Thursday’s “The View,” but in-house conservative Nicole Wallace was on hand to put O’Donnell in her place. (VIDEO-AT-LINK)Wallace, who was director of media affairs in the Bush White House, was at work on 9/11 and vividly recalled fleeing the office after the attacks and calling her parents. She said the intelligence officers who did the interrogations necessary to prevent another attack had her gratitude. “I don’t think anyone is defending brutal tactics. That’s why they don’t happen anymore. But I have never been...

It is a pack of lies and misrepresentations. It is dishonest to the core and makes little effort to seem otherwise. It discredits heroes who have sacrificed to keep our nation safe. It is, to quote the best Vice President of my lifetime, “full of crap.” To give it a fitting title, it is the Smear Report Solely From The Side of A Committee That Cannot Handle What It Takes To Fight Terrorists. News reports have referred to it fraudulently as a “Senate report” as if it were a collaborative effort of both parties. It is the exclusive handiwork...

We have now had 13 years without another terrorist attack on United States soil. Do you think the end justified the means? Can anyone NOT remember where they were or what they were doing on September 11, 2001, the day the two planes hit the twin towers in New York? Will we ever be able to forget the images of innocent civilians jumping hundreds of floors to their death to avoid being consumed by flames? Who could imagine that when 125 people left their homes for work at the Pentagon that they would never return home to their families? What...

There are those who conduct themselves with a clear penchant for humility, pragmatism, and those so-called leaders who yell "fire" in church because it’s the only way they can be saved. Mrs. Feinstein, I have neither the stomach nor the inclination to aid your vindictive campaign to politically exploit and berate our intelligence community, those patriots who tirelessly toil to protect ignorant and ungrateful hypocrites like yourself, so I instead would like to embark on a brief history lesson. Do you recall, Senator, when your accomplice and savior, Barack Obama, “spiked the football” and referenced (knighted) himself for the umpteenth...

Out of a clear blue sky, stock brokers and janitors rained. Contorted bodies approached terminal velocity in wind-whipped business suits. Forced to decide between the slow agony of fire and the sudden — O, God I hope it’s sudden –slam against cement, they laid out upon the atmosphere, wishing for the whisper of angel wings to whisk them ever upward. Yet. Plummeting. I called a database vendor to get a project update. He said, “Do you know what’s happening?” “No, what?” “We’re under attack,” he said. “America is under attack.”

China and Iran have slammed the United States after a Senate report revealed that the CIA brutalised terror suspects after the 9/11 attacks. The fallout has reached well beyond the US. China - a country often accused by rights groups of using torture - on Wednesday called on the US to "correct its ways and earnestly respect and follow the rules of related international conventions". Iran, where America was famously called the "Great Satan", said the report showed the US government is a "symbol of tyranny against humanity". President Barack Obama said the techniques "did significant damage to America's standing...

The UN and human rights groups have called for the prosecution of US officials involved in what a Senate report called the "brutal" CIA interrogation of al-Qaeda suspects. UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter-Terrorism Ben Emmerson said that senior officials from the administration of George W Bush who planned and sanctioned crimes must be prosecuted, as well as CIA and US government officials responsible for torture such as waterboarding. "As a matter of international law, the US is legally obliged to bring those responsible to justice," Mr Emmerson said in a statement made from Geneva. "The US attorney...