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The call from the Central Intelligence Agency came on a December afternoon in 2009 while Gary Anderson was skiing with his three children. It’s about your wife, the agency man said. Standing inside Eagle Rock ski lodge in Pennsylvania, Anderson pleaded for details. The CIA official said simply: Where are you? We’ll meet you. Anderson suspected dreadful news about Jennifer Matthews, his college sweetheart, his wife of 22 years and a CIA operative on assignment almost 7,000 miles away in Afghanistan. With several hours until the CIA meeting, Anderson and his three children — then 12, 9 and 6 —...

A university lecturer and nuclear scientist has been killed in a car explosion in north Tehran, reports say. Iranian media sources named the casualty as Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, an academic who also worked at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility. The blast happened when a motorcyclist stuck a magnetic bomb on the car, said Iran's semi-official Fars news agency. Several Iranian nuclear scientists have been assassinated in recent years, with Iran blaming Israel and the US. Both countries deny the accusations. Local sources said Wednesday's blast took place at a faculty of Iran's Allameh Tabatai university. Two others were reportedly also injured...

As the U.S. military departs Iraq, the CIA is looking at secret counterterrorism and intelligence programs run inside that country for years by the Joint Special Operations Command. The programs involve everything from the deployment of remote sensors that scan the wireless spectrum of terrorist safe havens to stealth U.S.-Iraqi counterterrorism commando teams. National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said “As we complete the drawdown, we will continue to have discussions about how to meet their security needs in a manner that meets our mutual interests,” he said. “Possibilities could include training, exchange programs, tactical exercises, and regular coordination. The...

Outside the U.S. government, President Obama's order to kill American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki without due process has proved controversial, with experts in law and war reaching different conclusions. Inside the Obama Administration, however, disagreement was apparently absent, or so say anonymous sources quoted by the Washington Post. "The Justice Department wrote a secret memorandum authorizing the lethal targeting of Anwar al-Aulaqi, the American-born radical cleric who was killed by a U.S. drone strike Friday, according to administration officials," the newspaper reported. "The document was produced following a review of the legal issues raised by striking a U.S. citizen and involved...

Nothing else just thought I'd post the breaking news.

President Barack Obama will continue to tout the U.S. mission that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden with a visit Friday to Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Va. Mr. Obama will meet with intelligence officials to thank them for their efforts, “specifically for their excellent work in tracking down Osama bin Laden,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said Wednesday. Mr. Carney said the president decided shortly after Mr. bin Laden’s death that he wanted to meet with intelligence officials at CIA headquarters. “I actually happened to be in his presence when he said he wanted to...

WASHINGTON — US President Barack Obama will visit the Central Intelligence Agency on Friday to honor the work of agents who helped find an elusive Osama bin Laden, the White House said. Obama will head to CIA's Langley, Virginia headquarters to thank officers "for the work they do every day to keep America safe and specifically for their excellent work in tracking down Osama bin Laden," White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters Wednesday aboard Air Force One. He said Obama made the decision to visit the CIA "in the wake of the successful bin Laden mission," in which elite...

The American government secretly backed leading figures behind the Egyptian uprising who have been planning “regime change” for the past three years, The Daily Telegraph has learned. The American Embassy in Cairo helped a young dissident attend a US-sponsored summit for activists in New York, while working to keep his identity secret from Egyptian state police. On his return to Cairo in December 2008, the activist told US diplomats that an alliance of opposition groups had drawn up a plan to overthrow President Hosni Mubarak and install a democratic government in 2011. The secret document in full He has already...

Egypt's military announced on national television that it has stepped in to "safeguard the country" on Thursday and assured protesters that President Hosni Mubarak will meet their demands in the strongest indication yet that Egypt's longtime leader has lost power. In Washington, the CIA chief said there was a "strong likelihood" Mubarak will step down Thursday. The dramatic announcement showed that the military was taking control after 17 days of protests demanding Mubarak's immediate ouster spiraled out of control. Gen. Hassan al-Roueini, military commander for the Cairo area, told thousands of protesters in central Tahrir Square, "All your demands will...

The CIA has recalled it top officer from Pakistan after his cover was blown and his life threatened. The alleged name of the CIA's station chief in Islamabad was revealed by a Pakistani man, Kareem Khan, who has threatened to sue the intelligence agency over the death of his son and brother in a U.S. missile strike. Khan and his lawyers told a news conference in November that they would seek a $500 million payment for his family members' deaths and warned they may sue CIA director Leon Panetta, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and the man they identified as...

(Oct. 26, 2010) — The evidence is all there for anyone to see if they take the time to look. Zbigniew Brzezinski has “spoon-fed” Obama ever since he took him under his wing from Occidental College in 1980, apprenticed him through his first job in Pakistan and Afghanistan to his second job at Business International Corp. and ultimately, by manufacturing a background, faking his academic credentials and resume’, to the top job in America. Read more at:http://www.thepostemail.com/2010/10/26/obama-can-do-anything-he-wants-because-the-cia-has-his-back/ Is the article another conspiracy theory or is there an element of truth in it?

Four of the nation's most highly valued terrorist prisoners were secretly moved to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2003, years earlier than has been disclosed, then were whisked back into overseas prisons before the Supreme Court could give them access to lawyers, The Associated Press has learned. The transfer allowed the U.S. to interrogate the detainees in CIA "black sites" for two more years without allowing them to speak with attorneys or human rights observers or challenge their detention in U.S. courts. Had they remained at the Guantanamo Bay prison for just three more months, they would have been afforded those...

The reported defection of an Iranian scientist to the United States has renewed speculation about a CIA plot to sabotage Iran's nuclear program through covert action. But it remains unclear whether Shahram Amiri, the young physics researcher who reportedly joined forces with the US spy agency, represents an intelligence coup for Washington or a minor setback for Tehran, former CIA officers said. ABC television reported that Amiri, who went missing without explanation in Saudi Arabia last year, had defected and resettled in the United States in cooperation with the Central Intelligence Agency. Amiri, in his thirties, worked at Tehran's Malek-Ashtar...

Impeach Bush. War criminals. Cheney, Halliburton and torture. Illegal war. Spying on Americans. Secret prisons. shredding of our Constitution. Sacrificed our values. Bush lied, people died. Waterboarding is torture. Rather than seeing things in terms of "policy differences", those further to the left of President Obama (hard to believe that's possible, I know- but now he has to govern) still seek to appease their moveon.org base by prosecuting persecuting those they believe participated in criminal activity under the Bush Administration. They believe that Bush hurt America's moral standing in the world. A bit over a week ago, Bush lawyers Yoo...

Climate Change: We can't stop terrorists from boarding planes with explosive undies, but the CIA has assets sufficient to monitor Arctic ice and look for signs of global warming? Is al-Qaida recruiting polar bears? One wouldn't think that the increasing polar bear population and the increasing rate of recidivism of former Guantanamo detainees released into the wild were related, but they are. At the urging of Al Gore, the administration is signing on to a plan to task vital intelligence assets to protect not the people of the United States, but the environment. The program, shot down by President Bush,...

Republicans stopped a provision that establishes criminal penalties for CIA officers that use cruel, inhuman or degrading interrogation methods from making it into the Intelligence bill passed Friday — but the leading Republican on the House intelligence committee said that provision is hardly dead. “This is not the last time we’ll see the McDermott stuff,” Rep. Pete Hoekstra told The Daily Caller of the legislation authored by Democratic Rep. Jim McDermott. “It will come back. They will find every way that they can to make it law.” Hoekstra said the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Intelligence chairman Rep. Silvestre Reyes,...

Liberal Democrats may tout openness, reform and transparency on the campaign trail but those promises never seem to make it past the Beltway when they return to Washington. In one of the more egregious examples of this truism, one needs to look no further than the efforts by Representative Jim McDermott (D-Washington) to pull a fast one and slip into the intelligence budget a provision that, in a backdoor way, impose fines and prison terms on intelligence officers who "abuse" captured terrorism suspects. The House Democratic leadership stopped a vote Thursday night on the $50 billion classified intelligence budget after...

Earlier today while the nation was focused on health care Oba-Kabuki, Andy McCarthy sounded the alarm on a Democrat sneak attack on CIA interrogators: The Obama Democrats have outdone themselves. While the country and the Congress have their eyes on today’s dog-and-pony show on socialized medicine, House Democrats last night stashed a new provision in the intelligence bill which is to be voted on today. It is an attack on the CIA: the enactment of a criminal statute that would ban “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.” The provision is impossibly vague — who knows what “degrading” means? Proponents will say...

Today was the beginning of the era of reckoning for Nancy Pelosi's claims about the CIA briefings on water boarding You may remember that Pelosi first denied being briefed about enhanced interrogation techniques, then said she was briefed but was never told they would be used, and finally she was told but didn't say anything because there was nothing she could do about it. And throughout it all, she claimed that the CIA lied to her. For his part, Leon Panetta, Democrat, former Bill Clinton Chief of Staff, and head of the CIA, sent a letter to his troops that...

Pelosi Renews Dispute With CIA Over Interrogation Techniques Prodded by the release of dozens of declassified CIA documents, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi renewed her long-running dispute with the Central Intelligence Agency about the use of harsh interrogation practices. Prodded by the release of dozens of declassified CIA documents, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi renewed her long-running dispute with the Central Intelligence Agency about the use of harsh interrogation practices. "I have never been briefed by the CIA or anyone else on the subject of those interrogations, to the extent that they were being used," the California Democrat told reporters Tuesday. "We...

Keep your eyes on Leo Panetta.

WASHINGTON — America’s top intelligence official told lawmakers on Tuesday that he was “highly certain” that Al Qaeda or one of its affiliates would attempt a large-scale attack on American soil within the next six months. The assessment by Dennis C. Blair, the director of national intelligence, was much starker than his view last year, when he emphasized the considerable progress in the campaign to debilitate Al Qaeda and said that the global economic meltdown, rather than the prospect of a major terrorist attack, was the “primary near-term security concern of the United States.” Citing a recent wave of terrorist...

<p>Share a NiteCap and an interview LIVE with HonestConservative, fellow freepers on this live thread and Marc Thiessen, aurthor of the earthshaking new book "Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack" . Candidate for the Republican Nomination for Lt. Gov. of PA Bob Guzzardi returns for a discussion on the Republican Party machine and candidates who respect our constitution. We have the further honor having Mr. Herman Cain of WSB radio 7 pm to 10 pm as our guest as he lets us in on his most important project at present, "The State of the Union; The Voice of the People", a project that requires YOUR participation! Tuesday evening 8 pm est, a live event on the web! See links below!</p>

The US spy chief, Mr. Leon Edward Panetta, left Kenya on Sunday after a four-day visit during which he is said to have held talks with President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga, The Standard daily reported here on Monday. Panetta, who is the Director of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the world's leading spying agency, arrived in Kenya a day before controversial Muslim cleric, Sheikh Abdullah Faisal, was secretly put on a chartered South African gulfstream jet and deported to his native country. However, the police were said to reluctant to link the spymaster's presence in the country to...

In mid-2004, then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi learned something from a CIA briefing that made her blood boil. Pelosi reportedly "came unglued" at the revelation and had "strong words" with national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, demanding that the CIA abandon its plans. As a result, a top-secret finding that President George W. Bush signed to authorize the CIA's activities was revised. Pelosi succeeded in stopping the agency from moving forward with the controversial operation. What drove Pelosi to action? Not the CIA's waterboarding of suspected al-Qaeda terrorists. In a 2009 interview, a former senior Bush administration official directed me to...

"My impression is that his instincts are probably good but he's still kind of feeling his way," former vice-chairman of the 9/11 Commission Lee Hamilton said Tuesday. See video: HERE

I follow national security news stories pretty closely, but I have to admit to being shocked by Human Events magazine’s publication of an excerpt from a new book. It is Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack, by Marc Thiessen. Thiessen was a top speechwriter for President George W. Bush. For that reason he had access to very highly classified national security documents and information. One excerpt about information gathered from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (“KSM”) is astounding, mind-boggling: [KSM’s] resistance is described by one senior American official as “superhuman.” Eventually,...

A group led by anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan rallied Saturday near the CIA's headquarters and former Vice President Dick Cheney's home in Northern Virginia to protest the use of unmanned drone aircraft for attacks on al Qaeda and Taliban targets.

WASHINGTON (AFP) – US spy agencies in recent months picked up clues pointing to an Al-Qaeda attack out of Yemen and were moving to disrupt it, but a crucial piece of information fell through the cracks. Intelligence officials describe a trail of warning signs for the botched Christmas Day attack on a US-bound airliner dating back to August, when the National Security Agency reportedly intercepted chatter among Al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen. The NSA, which runs an elaborate global eavesdropping operation, heard conversations from Al-Qaeda figures describing a plot to recruit a Nigerian man for a terrorist attack, the New York...

A former director of the CIA has been chosen to uncover how the U.S. failed to prevent the Christmas Day bombing attempt on a passenger plane, and the Fort Hood Army base shooting. National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair said in a statement Friday John McLaughlin is "especially well-qualified" for the task... McLaughlin was the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency for four years, including during the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. He was also briefly the acting director of the CIA in 2004. He will head a team of national security experts to investigate the series of events that...

Could The CIA Have Achieved What al-Qaeda Did? The audacious al-Qaeda attack in Khost, Afghanistan and the failures to detect the Detroit bomb plot are indications of a broken CIA, writes Toby Harnden in Washington Toby Harnden 09 Jan 2010 At the George Bush Center for Intelligence – better known as CIA headquarters – in Langley, Virginia there is a crisis of confidence. Last week, seven of its personnel returned to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware in flag-draped coffins. They were killed in an audacious attack in which a triple agent detonated a suicide bomb as he was debriefed...

January 09, 2010 CIA Director Defends Agency in Suicide Attack CIA Director Leon Panetta says the Jordanian man who killed seven CIA employees and himself in a bombing in Afghanistan was about to be searched before the explosion. The bomber was cultivated by the CIA in the fight against Al Qaeda, but apparently was a double agent. Panetta writes in Sunday's Washington Post that it wasn't a question of trusting a potential intelligence source and that no one ignored the potential danger in dealing with this man. Panetta, whose article was posted on the newspaper's Web site Saturday, says the...

It could be said that the U.S. government can run by remote control. On the day that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempted to blow up a Northwest airline flight headed for Detroit, several key government players were on holiday and didn't immediately return to their posts in Washington, D.C. President Obama was on vacation in Hawaii, golfing and enjoying time with his family. He returned to the White House on Jan. 4. A source told CBS News that Leon Panetta, director of the CIA, was on holiday in Monterey, Calif. when Abdulmutallab was apprehended, and didn't return to CIA headquarters in...

In terms of loss of life, the bombing of the CIA base in Khost, Afghanistan, may be the costliest mistake in the agency's history. So it's important to look carefully for clues about how it happened, and lessons for the future. CIA veterans cite a series of warning signs that the agency wasn't paying enough attention to the counterintelligence threat posed by al-Qaida. These danger signals weren't addressed because the agency underestimated its adversary and overestimated its own skills and those of its allies. The time to fix these problems is now — not with a spasm of second-guessing that...

President Obama: No more 'finger-pointing' By: Josh Gerstein and Carol E. Lee January 5, 2010 03:30 AM EST President Barack Obama will deliver a stern warning to his appointees at a meeting Tuesday afternoon that he won’t tolerate efforts by the CIA, the State Department and others to shift blame for the recent intelligence foul-up to other parts of the government, said spokesman Robert Gibbs. “We are going to move beyond agency finger-pointing,” Gibbs told reporters. “The president will not find acceptable a response where everybody gets in a circle and points at someone else. The American people won’t accept...

After the single most deadly day for the CIA since eight officers were killed in Beirut in 1983, an official tells the Daily Mail he's tired of the double standard: One day the President is pointing the finger and blaming the intelligence services, saying there is a systemic failure,’ said one agency official. ‘Now we are heroes. The fact is that we are doing everything humanly possible to stay on top of the security situation. The deaths of our operatives shows just how involved we are on the ground.’ But CIA bosses claim they were unfairly blamed at a time...

Spy chiefs turn on President Obama after seven CIA agents are slaughtered in Afghanistan By David Gardner excerpt: Barack Obama was accused of double standards yesterday in his treatment of the CIA. The President paid tribute to secret agents after seven of them were killed by a suicide bomber in Afghanistan. In a statement, he said the CIA had been ‘tested as never before’ and that agents had ‘served on the front lines in directly confronting the dangers of the 21st century’. He lauded the victims as ‘part of a long line of patriots who have made great sacrifices for...

Barack Obama was accused of double standards yesterday in his treatment of the CIA. The President paid tribute to secret agents after seven of them were killed by a suicide bomber in Afghanistan. In a statement, he said the CIA had been ‘tested as never before’ and that agents had ‘served on the front lines in directly confronting the dangers of the 21st century’. He lauded the victims as ‘part of a long line of patriots who have made great sacrifices for their fellow citizens and for our way of life’. Yet the previous day he had blasted ‘systemic failures’...

While the painstaking process of unearthing the "systematic failures" of intelligence on the "underwear bomber" continues, Obama again performs on script. Just as he's done with virtually every past crises - and always while armed with only the bare essentials of information - the now infamous POTUS finger of blame moves away from anyone remotely connected with Obama, his decisions or performance of his appointees, and falls once again on his favorite scapegoat, the CIA. And the CIA spy chiefs are none to happy about the accusations. It seemed especially harsh when, in an apparent moment of political expedience, Obama...

The pressure on Obama continues to build! Wayne Simmons says the “catch and release” policy of the administration has reduced CIA morale to a level he describes as “pathetic, low, horrible.” Here’s the Video Link

KABUL--The suicide bomber who killed eight Americans, including seven CIA officers, this week might have been able to get through multiple layers of security at the U.S. compound aided by an Afghan informant with the agency, a Western official said Friday. If this is true, it suggests insurgents had turned the tables on the CIA and been able to place their own agents close to the facility the CIA used to cultivate informants.On Wednesday, CIA officials had invited the attacker onto the base with the hopes of recruiting him as an informant. They used an Afghan intermediary to arrange the...

The bombing, just as President Barack Obama's surge is gathering pace, represented the biggest loss of life suffered by the US intelligence agency since an attack in Beirut in 1983. The CIA said on Thursday a further six agents had been injured in the attack. Claiming credit for the attack, a Taliban spokesman said the bomber was "an Afghan national army officer wearing a suicide vest".

AP Sources: CIA Base Chief Killed In Attack By PAMELA HESS and ADAM GOLDMAN, Associated Press WASHINGTON – The CIA said Thursday that seven of its employees were killed and six others wounded in a suicide bombing at a base in Afghanistan. The Associated Press has learned that one of them was the chief of the CIA's post in Afghanistan's southeastern Khost Province. CIA Director Leon Panetta said in a message to agency staff that the casualties sustained in Wednesday's strike at Forward Operating Base Chapman were the result of a terrorist attack. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the bombing....

KABUL, Afghanistan — A suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest killed at least eight American civilians, most of them C.I.A. officers, at a remote base in southeastern Afghanistan on Wednesday, according to NATO officials and former American intelligence officials. The attack at the C.I.A. base, Forward Operating Base Chapman, in Khost Province appeared to be the single deadliest episode for the spy agency in the eight years since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. It also dealt a significant blow to the often insular, tight-knit organization, which has lost only 90 officers in the line of duty since its founding in...

Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- A senior U.S. official tells CNN that the attack at a military base in eastern Afghanistan by a suicide bomber Wednesday killed eight Americans believed to be CIA employees.

Sources tell CBS News that it appears the CIA information on "the Nigerian" was limited including his actual identity because it was coming from sub-sourcing. That means the information was one or two steps removed from the origin source who had contact with Abdulmutallab or who eyeballed him associating with individuals with suspected or known links to al Qaeda. The sub-source apparently told the CIA that the person of interest dubbed "the Nigerian" held extremist views, had the ability to travel outside the region, and was being embraced and groomed by those who ascribe to al Qaeda. Information provided by...

The CIA on Wednesday rejected accusations that it failed to share vital information with other US intelligence agencies that might have helped prevent last week's attempted plane bomb attack. The intelligence agency rejected charges that it possessed, but failed to disseminate, information about Nigerian suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab that might have led to his being placed on a no-fly list. "We learned of Abdulmutallab in November, when his father came to the US embassy in Nigeria and sought help in finding him. We did not have his name before then," said CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano. "Also in November, we worked...

The U.S. government had intelligence from Yemen before Christmas that leaders of a branch of Al Qaeda there were talking about "a Nigerian" being prepared for a terrorist attack, the New York Times reported Tuesday. A senior official told the Times that President Obama was told in a private meeting Tuesday while vacationing in Hawaii that the government had a variety of information in its possession before the failed bombing on a Detroit-bound flight last week that would have been a clear warning sign had it been shared among intelligence agencies. The newspaper said the information did not include the...

Blackwater Guards Tied to Secret Raids by the C.I.A. By JAMES RISEN and MARK MAZZETTI WASHINGTON — Private security guards from Blackwater Worldwide participated in some of the C.I.A.’s most sensitive activities — clandestine raids with agency officers against people suspected of being insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan and the transporting of detainees, according to former company employees and intelligence officials. The raids against suspects occurred on an almost nightly basis during the height of the Iraqi insurgency from 2004 to 2006, with Blackwater personnel playing central roles in what company insiders called “snatch and grab” operations, the former employees...

A new one from CNS featuring Kent Conrad, who’ll be spared a “worst person in the world” award on Olbermann’s show for this bit o’ demagoguery solely by virtue of his party affiliation. Consider this a sequel to Lindsey Graham’s grilling of Holder last week: In both cases, we’ve got a Democrat who’s (a) absolutely confident that civilian trials are the way to go and (b) plainly unprepared to address the rather significant constitutional implications of his preference. The search warrant question here is bait but the underlying point isn’t: FrumForum interviewed former FBI and CIA agents to get their...