Free Republic

Chad Pergram �@ChadPergram 2m Deputy CIA Director Mike Morell resigns.

Editor's Note: This column was coauthored by Bob Morrison. President Obama's choice to be Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) was approved by the Senate on a vote of 63-34, with thirteen Republicans voting to confirm him. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) created quite a stir with his 13-hour filibuster against the Brennan nomination. Not until he received written assurances from Attorney General Eric Holder that U.S. citizens would not be targeted for killing by drones on U.S. soil would the doughty Kentuckian stand down. Good for him. John Brennan then proceeded to take the Oath of Office, as administered by Vice...

LIVE on C-SPAN2: Senate Session

Sen. Rand Paul told USA Today Wednesday that he is prepared to put a "hold" on John Brennan's nomination to head the CIA and to filibuster it if necessary until the administration responds to his questions about the use of drones in the United States. The Kentucky Republican said he would do "whatever it takes" to block Brennan's confirmation until he directly answers whether American citizens legally can be killed by drone strikes within U.S. borders. ...

Brandon Webb, a former Navy SEAL, and Jack Murphy, a former Green Beret, reveal the new claims in their book EXCLUSIVE: David Petraeus was brought down after betrayal by vengeful CIA agents and his own bodyguards who made sure his affair was exposed, claims new book 'Benghazi: The Definitive Report' Petraeus was humiliated after a 'palace coup' by high-level intelligence officers who did not like the way he was running the CIA, authors say The book also claims that Petraeus and Ambassador Chris Stevens were caught off guard by Benghazi consulate attack because they weren't briefed about on-going U.S. military...

Prior to President Obama's first inauguration in 2009, a controversy erupted over reports that he intended to appoint John Brennan as CIA director. That controversy, in which I participated, centered around the fact that Brennan, as a Bush-era CIA official, had expressly endorsed Bush's programs of torture (other than waterboarding) and rendition and also was a vocal advocate of immunizing lawbreaking telecoms for their role in the illegal Bush NSA eavesdropping program. As a result, Brennan withdrew his name from consideration, issuing a bitter letter blaming "strong criticism in some quarters prompted by [his] previous service with the" CIA. This...

Capitol Hill sources tell me President Obama intends to nominate John Brennan to be the next Director of the #CIA. Told as soon as tomorrow.

This doesn't quite qualify as breaking news for those who tracked the extraordinary labyrinth of intelligence that emerged in the days following the 2011 Abbottabad raid, but the subject of US interrogation policy is again generating controversy in advance of the release of 'Zero Dark Thirty,' a film that dramatizes the bin Laden mission.  Writing in today's Washington Post, a former top CIA counter-terrorism officer sets the record straight on what measures were, and were not, employed to help bring down the world's most infamous terrorist.  Jose Rodriguez -- who made headlines last year when his book exposed Nancy Pelosi's...

How accurate and realistic is the portrayal of CIA interrogation in the film? The movie, after all, opens with a statement saying “based on firsthand accounts of actual events"; then goes on to show the fictionalized brutal abuse and torture of a fictional high value terrorist, including waterboarding. Well, one "firsthand account" not utilized as an expert consultant to the movie is Jose Rodriguez, former head of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, author of Hard Measures, and unapologetic defender of the CIA's "torture" program.... When I reviewed Zero Dark Thirty, the focus of my review was on whether or not political...

**SNIP** A real scandal broke out when it became known that the family of a GRS agent who was killed during the attack on the embassy in Benghazi, Glen Doherty, hasn’t yet received any compensation from the CIS. The CIS officials say that Doherty was not employed permanently, and, according to the CIS’s regulations, pensions and compensations are provided only to the agency’s permanent employees and their families. Now, because Doherty’s family has received no compensation, it has to pay large debts. This story may undermine not only the CIA’s prestige, but also that of the US government. After all,...

Once considered severe security threats within the nation's intelligence service, homosexuals are now being actively recruited to join the CIA. CIA Recruiting Within "LGBT" Community for Spy Agency Staffing The New American 08 December 2012 Apparently the Central Intelligence Agency is looking for a new style of agent. According to a National Public Radio report, as “part of the CIA's efforts to diversify its workforce, the spy agency is reaching out to a group that once was unable to get security clearance — lesbians and gay men.” In late November the CIA partnered with Florida's Miami-Dade Gay and Lesbian...

It seems interesting this CBS scoop comes shortly before both the current and former directors of the CIA will testify as to what they know about the terrorist attack on our consulate and CIA annex in Benghazi.  Why, it’s almost as if someone at the White House or State Department wanted to follow up on Barack Obama’s defense of Susan Rice during yesterday’s press conference and pre-empt any potential fallout from whatever Mike Morell and David Petraeus have to say today and tomorrow.Naah.  I’m sure this is just another in the series of amazing coincidences regarding timing of revelations over...

(via Instapundit): In David Petraeus’s final days at the helm of the Central Intelligence Agency, his relations with chiefs of other U.S. agencies, including his boss, National Intelligence Director James Clapper, took a contentious turn. At issue was whether the CIA should break its silence about its role in Benghazi, Libya, to counter criticism that increasingly was being leveled at the agency and Mr. Petraeus, said senior officials involved in the discussions. Mr. Petraeus wanted his aides to push back hard and release their own timeline of the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi and a...

CBS News has obtained the CIA talking points given to U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice on Sept. 15 regarding the fatal attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, four days earlier. CBS News correspondent Margaret Brennan says the talking points, which were also given to members of the House intelligence committee, make no reference to terrorism being a likely factor in the assault, which left U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans dead. "Available information suggests that the demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault... There are indications...

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...

Retired Gen. David Petraeus, who resigned as CIA director last week after admitting an extramarital relationship, could possibly face military prosecution for adultery if officials turn up any evidence to counter his apparent claims that the affair began after he left the military. The affair between Petraeus and his biographer, Paula Broadwell, both of whom are married, began several months after his retirement from the Army in August 2011 and ended four months ago, retired U.S. Army Col. Steve Boylan, a former Petraeus spokesman, told ABC News. Broadwell, 40, had extraordinary access to the 60-year-old general during six trips she...

By Meghashyam Mali - 11/12/12 08:12 AM ET House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Pete King (R-N.Y.) on Monday said he found the FBI investigation that uncovered former CIA Director David Petraeus’s extramarital affair a “crisis” of “major proportions.” “This is a crisis of, I believe, major proportions. It’s not a usual political thing,” said King on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” King’s remarks come as lawmakers have raised questions about why they or President Obama were not informed sooner that the nation’s top intelligence officer was being investigated by the FBI.

This seems like a pretty good reason to push the David Petraeus-Paula Broadwell affair from a boys-club peccadillo into a resignation-worthy event. According to a transcript of a speech by Broadwell at the University of Denver the week before the election, Broadwell told an audience that the reason for the September 11 attack on the Benghazi consulate was neither a YouTube video nor a celebration of the anniversary of 9/11, but a prison escape for jihadis secretly held by the CIA in its nearby annex. Late last night, the CIA denied this report of a secret prison in its now-abandoned...

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...

David Petreaus took his mistress with him on a government funded trip to Paris after he was named director of the Central Intelligence Agency, according to news reports. Petraeus made the trip with 40-year-old Paula Broadwell, who has written a fawning biography of him, in July 2011, an unnamed source told Buzzfeed. Petraus was heading to his new job as chief of the CIA at the time. Sixteen months later, the four-star general has resigned from his post after his affair with Broadwell was uncovered by the FBI. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2231568/Petraeus-flew-mistress-Paris-trip-funded-government-named-CIA-chief.html#ixzz2ByvdfzPq Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

Breaking now.

As details emerge of serious security issues before the attack on Sept. 11, Fox News is also beginning to hear more frustration from sources both on the ground in Benghazi and in the U.S. Multiple British and American sources insist there were other capabilities in the region and are mystified why none were used. Fox News was told there were not only armed drones that monitor Libyan chemical weapon sites in the area, but also F-18's, AC-130 aircraft and even helicopters that could have been dispatched in a timely fashion. British intelligence sources said that unarmed drones routinely flew over...

Former CIA officer predicted Obama administration’s calamity, deception in LibyaBy: Christopher Collins October 28, 2012 **SNIP** Clizbe pointed out, ”Obama and his clique love covert operations. They've demonstrated that in the Global War on Terror (or “overseas contingency operations building bridges to Islamic extremists”). Instead of actually pursuing the war in Afghanistan with the tools in place—soldiers and Marines—they prefer Predator strikes in the hinterlands of Pakistan. The number of these covert action killings has soared from 2009 to 2011—with estimates of 5 dead in 2009 under Bush growing to several hundred dead in 2010 under Obama.” Clizbe stated, “No...

The U.S. military did not get involved during the attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, last month because officials did not have enough information about what was going on before the attack was over, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said Thursday. At a Pentagon news briefing, Panetta said there was no "real-time information" to be able to act on, even though the U.S. military was prepared to do so. "You don't deploy forces into harm's way without knowing what's going on," Panetta said. "(We) felt we could not put forces at risk in that situation." A defense official...

In a ritual as old as the existence of the modern intelligence community, leaks are beginning to spill out protecting the CIA from having to take the fall for Obama’s Libya cover-up.

Where is CIA Director Gen. David Petraeus? He seems to be the missing man in the unfolding Benghazi debacle. It is his agency, among others, which is being fingered by the White House for getting the Libya attack wrong. However, we know that within a very short time after the murder of our ambassador (an extraordinary occurrence) and others, our intelligence community did have the story straight: This was an organized al-Qaeda attack. Is he to preside over a witchhunt? Or is he, who to date has been one of the most respected national security officials, going to be instrumental...

Where is CIA Director Gen. David Petraeus? He seems to be the missing man in the unfolding Benghazi debacle. It is his agency, among others, which is being fingered by the White House for getting the Libya attack wrong. However, we know that within a very short time after the murder of our ambassador (an extraordinary occurrence) and others, our intelligence community did have the story straight: This was an organized al-Qaeda attack. Is he to preside over a witchhunt? Or is he, who to date has been one of the most respected national security officials, going to be instrumental...

When House Republicans called a hearing in the middle of their long recess, you knew it would be something big, and indeed it was: They accidentally blew the CIA’s cover.

You already knew that the White House had reason to believe that Benghazi was a bona fide terror attack within 24 hours of it happening, no matter what Susan Rice said four days later, but I want you to watch this for two reasons. One: After the post on media bias, let’s give credit where it’s due. CNN has followed this story, and on primetime shows like this one and Anderson Cooper’s too. Two: Per Eli Lake’s piece in Newsweek today, someone has started leaking preliminary intel assessments made by the CIA that pointed to a spontaneous attack. (I wrote...

The sheer incompetence of our State Department and the Obama administration is once again being trotted out for the world to see. The tip of the iceberg was exposed last week when CNN reported on the journal of slain US Ambassador Christopher Stevens that one of its news crews had recovered from the smoking rubble of the former US consulate in Benghazi. One had to wonder what possessed a US ambassador to carry a paper journal outside the US embassy in this day and age and how in the name of heaven such a document was left unattended after the...

One of the centerpieces of the Democratic case for Barack Obama‘s reelection in Charlotte last week was the President’s record on national security – specifically, his decision to pursue the operation that eventually led to the death of Osama bin Laden. That impressive achievement, however, may be blunted by the force of revelations by former Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen in today’s Washington Post. Thiessen writes: President Obama is touting his foreign policy experience on the campaign trail, but startling new statistics suggest that national security has not necessarily been the personal priority the president makes it out to be. It...

The rightwing transparency group, Judicial Watch, released Tuesday a new batch of documents showing how eagerly the Obama administration shoveled information to Hollywood film-makers about the Bin Laden raid. Obama officials did so to enable the production of a politically beneficial pre-election film about that "heroic" killing, even as administration lawyers insisted to federal courts and media outlets that no disclosure was permissible because the raid was classified.

Just a week ago the establishment media was aflutter with news that a CIA double-agent had thwarted a new type of underwear bomb attack targeting U.S. flights in a plot devised by al-Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula. But as the week progressed, a developing bombshell story got buried under President Obama’s gay marriage announcement. Not only is the supposed CIA asset not a CIA asset at all, but the entire operation was exposed prematurely and the double-agent’s life was immediately threatened by an intelligence leak that very well may have come out of the White House for political gain. As...

The heat is on a U.S. official responsible for leaking details of al Qaeda's disrupted bomb plot to the Associated Press. On the Sunday talk shows, high-ranking officials in both chambers of Congress across both parties called for investigations and the prosecution of the man or woman who leaked details about the infiltration of al Qaeda's Yemen branch. Unlike previous situations, where government crackdowns on leakers has been criticized, this is appears to be a fairly clear-cut case of improper leaking. The mission, which resulted in the recovery of a sophisticated underwear bomb, was leaked to the AP before it...

The man with the nicotine habit is in his late 50s, with stubble on his face and the dark-suited wardrobe of an undertaker. As chief of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center for the past six years, he has functioned in a funereal capacity for al-Qaeda. Roger, which is the first name of his cover identity, may be the most consequential but least visible national security official in Washington — the principal architect of the CIA’s drone campaign and the leader of the hunt for Osama bin Laden. In many ways, he has also been the driving force of the Obama administration’s...

<p>The body of Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden was not buried at sea, according to leaked emails of intelligence firm Stratfor, as revealed by WikiLeaks. Stratfor’s vice-president for intelligence, Fred Burton, believes the body was “bound for Dover, [Delaware] on [a] CIA plane” and then “onward to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Bethesda [Maryland],” an email says. The official version is that the body of Al-Qaeda’s top man, who was killed by a US raid in Pakistan on May 2, 2011, was buried at an undisclosed location at sea in a proper Muslim ceremony. "If body dumped at sea, which I doubt, the touch is very Adolph Eichman like. The Tribe did the same thing with the Nazi's ashes," Burton commented in another email. Eichman was one of the masterminds of the Holocaust by Nazi Germany. He was captured by Mossad agents in Argentina and, tried in Israel, found guilty and executed in 1962. His body was cremated and his ashes were scattered at sea over the Mediterranean.</p>

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...