Free Republic

Retired agent says bureau’s Obama-era leaders ignored privacy, cost warnings, may have retained program for ‘political espionage’ The FBI agent who ran the bureau’s warrantless spying program said Wednesday he warned ex-Director James Comey and his deputy, Andrew McCabe that the program was a useless waste of taxpayer money that needlessly infringed Americans’ civil liberties but his bosses refused to take action. Retired Special Agent Bassem Youssef ran the FBI’s Communications Analysis Unit from late 2004 until his retirement in late 2014. He told Just the News he fears the deeply flawed program, which was started in response to the...

An official in Egypt says complaints already have been filed against a popular television satirist, less than 24 hours after returning to air following a coup in the country. Bassem Youssef, often compared to U.S. comedian Jon Stewart, mocked the new pro-military fervor gripping Egypt in his program aired Friday night. …

Deep Thoughts by Thomas Friedman But don’t worry, the term “admits” is a bit strong. It’s more like the weatherman who predicted there wouldn’t be a flood for a month straight clinging to an antenna on the roof of his house and trying to find reasons why he was right all along even while the sharks are circling his chimney. The standard fallback position for Tahrir’s international cheerleaders is to argue that we were expecting positive results too quickly. The term “Arab Spring” has to be retired. There is nothing springlike going on,” Friedman says. “It’s best we now speak...

The Muslim Brotherhood-led Egyptian government has arrested six of its most prominent opponents, including popular comedian Bassem Youssef that is known as the Egyptian counterpart of Jon Stewart. The political persecution follows the formation of Islamist militias, new actions to control the media and President Morsi’s threat to prosecute opposition leaders. Youssef’s popularity in Egypt is immense, making him one of the most influential media figures in the country. His mockery of political figures, especially President Morsi and Islamists, has struck a chord. About 250,000 people try to get tickets every single week to the filming of his show. The...

WASHINGTON - Bassem Youssef is the FBI's highest-ranking Arab-American agent. He's fluent in Arabic, ran the FBI's offices in Saudi Arabia and is a terrorism expert. In fact, Youssef's undercover work helping to infiltrate the terror organization of the so-called "blind sheik," Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman, earned him the intelligence community's most-prestigious award, the National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal. But now, for the first time, Youssef is speaking out against the agency he loves. "I don't believe that the FBI's doing everything it can to combat terrorism," the 18-year FBI veteran tells NBC News.

Discrimination against Arab-American agent alleged WASHINGTON - The Senate Judiciary Committee is calling for an investigation into whether the FBI retaliated against its highest-ranking Arabic-speaking agent, a new letter reveals. The public airing of the private workplace squabble is a potential embarrassment for the FBI, which faced criticism after 9/11 for its failure to hire many Arab-speaking agents and for failing to better understand the radical Islamic community inside the United States. Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and the committee’s top Democrat, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., asked the Justice Department's inspector general to investigate whether the FBI's treatment of agent...