Free Republic

Murdered Russian ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko passed documents to former Yukos CEO in Israel months before his death - report November 25, 2006, 9:10 AM (GMT+02:00) Leonid Nevzlin, former CEO of the oil giant and current chairman of the Diaspora Museum in Tel Aviv, says the former Russian spy came to Israel with classified documents on Yukos which may be damaging to Russian leaders. Nevzliln estimates that Litvinenko’s death was connected with this information, which he has handed to London police investigators of the murder. DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources add that the Russian ex-spy is believed to have been a double agent,...

11/10/06 COURT REVERSES ACQUITTAL IN MOSCOW MURDER By Dan Rattiner In July of 2004, Paul Klebnikov of Sagaponack [Long Island, NY] was on his way home from a long day at the office in Moscow where he worked as editor of Forbes Magazine (Moscow) when a car pulled up, the window rolled down and somebody fired a gun that shot him dead. The news of this event was received particularly hard here in the Hamptons because Paul was a member of a well-respected family living in this community, where they had been summering for nearly half a century. Paul, a...

Group: Lab breach bigger than thought By Deborah Baker, Associated Press Writer 11/2/06 SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) - A former nuclear weapons lab contract worker took home not only classified information on a portable computer storage drive, but also about 200 pages of printed documents, her lawyer said Thursday. The confirmation of the papers follows a watchdog group's report that an internal memo from the Los Alamos National Laboratory indicates the amount of classified information found at the woman's home is substantially larger than first thought. Nuclear Watch New Mexico, an activist organization, reported that the memo appeared to be...

Via Drudge: Russian News Agency Itar-Tass Executive Killed in Moscow By Sebastian Alison Oct. 16 -- The business chief of Russian news agency Itar-Tass, Anatoly Voronin, was killed last night in his apartment in central Moscow, the agency reported. Death was the result of multiple knife wounds, according to police, Itar-Tass reported. Several theories are being investigated, the agency said. The body of 55-year-old Voronin was found at his home by his driver, the news agency said. He had worked at the agency for 23 years. His death is the latest in a spate of high-profile killings in Russia in...

Putin Gets Away with Murder It's time to confront the Russian leader. by Anders Åslund 10/23/2006, Volume 012, Issue 06 IN RUSSIA, gangsters have the macabre custom of making a birthday present of a murder. On Vladimir Putin's 54th birthday, one of his fiercest domestic critics, the journalist Anna Politkovskaya, was shot to death in her apartment building in central Moscow. She worked for the weekly Novaya Gazeta, Russia's last independent newspaper. Its deputy editor was murdered a couple of years ago, and the killer was never found. Although Politkovskaya had been tailed by the FSB for years and her...

Chinese computer hackers target US Commerce Department Oct 06 2:41 PM US/Eastern via AFP Computer hackers based in China have launched sustained attacks on the computers of a US Commerce Department technology export office, a department official said. The official, who requested anonymity, said the attacks had originated from websites registered with Chinese Internet service providers. Chinese-based hackers, especially in the Chinese province of Guangdong, have mounted systematic efforts to penetrate US government and industry computer networks in order to access secret information, according to computer security experts. The experts and some US lawmakers believe the attacks are sanctioned by...

Israeli-Palestinian prisoners swap 'imminent' - Saudi paper By DPA Sep 16, 2006, 19:00 GMT Tel Aviv/Ramallah - A Saudi newspaper reported Saturday that an Israeli Palestinian prisoner swap was set for Sunday. Okaz newspaper said a deal struck Friday in Amman through backroom negotiations by senior Palestinian, Egyptian and Israeli officials would see the release of Hamas ministers and lawmakers - captured and held by Israel - ahead of the release of Israeli Corporal Gilad Shalit on Sunday by his Palestinian captors. Shalit was taken hostage in a cross-border raid by militants from Hamas and two other allied groups in...

'Chatbot' king George looks for human friends on the internet Sep 15 6:00 AM US/Eastern George, who is 39, single and light-hearted, is looking for friends on the Internet. He has gifts -- the ability to speak in 40 languages and with 2,000 people at the same time. And one quirk: he doesn't really exist. George is a piece of software, arguably the best of the speaking "chatbots" or talking robots, and he's recently received the Loebner prize in Britain, a scientific award recognising the machines best capable of matching the most realistic human dialogues with their own. Seven years...

August 24, 2006Some in G.O.P. Say Iran Threat Is Played Down By MARK MAZZETTI WASHINGTON, Aug. 23 — Some senior Bush administration officials and top Republican lawmakers are voicing anger that American spy agencies have not issued more ominous warnings about the threats that they say Iran presents to the United States. Some policy makers have accused intelligence agencies of playing down Iran’s role in Hezbollah’s recent attacks against Israel and overestimating the time it would take for Iran to build a nuclear weapon. The complaints, expressed privately in recent weeks, surfaced in a Congressional report about Iran released Wednesday....

NBC, ANDREA MITCHELL: Carter was told no former presidents were going to pope funeral... Developing...

The prospect of Donald Rumsfeld leaving his job is very much alive, the NYT is planning to report on Thursday Page Ones, newsroom sources tell DRUDGE... Developing... --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

FBI Eyes Copper Theft at Brookhaven Lab By Dawn Wotapka October 7, 2003, 10:50 PM EDT It's not unusual for people to purloin bits of copper from Brookhaven National Laboratory to sell for cash. But authorities say they can't figure out how one of the biggest thefts of copper at the lab even happened. Somehow, 150,000 pounds of cable coiled onto oversized spools and thousands of pieces of copper equipment with a value of about $86,000 vanished from the lab. And officials aren't even sure when. During a Sept. 17 inventory, authorities noticed 100 of the copper spools missing. Further...

PBS Airdate: Thursday, October 3, at 9pm (EST), 90 minutes The Man Who Knew When the Twin Towers fell on September 11, 2001, among the thousands killed was the one man who may have known more about Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda than any other person in America: John O'Neill. The former head of the FBI's flagship antiterrorism unit in New York City, O'Neill had investigated the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Africa and the USS Cole in Yemen. For five years, he led the fight to track down and prosecute Al Qaeda operatives throughout the world. But...

Hey Freepers! Below is from a circulating e-mail. It is terrific! Perhaps a Freeper wrote the editorial? I searched FR and I didn't find it posted -- so I am posting it. And even if it was posted previously, more people are bound to read it for the first time now, I hope. From the circulating e-mail: "After hearing that the state of Florida changed its opinion and let a Muslim woman have her picture on her drivers license with her face covered, I believe this is even more appropriate. Read on, please! This is an Editorial written by an...

BEWARE: Read this article from January 2001 only if you are prepared to get really steamed! It concerns the 2000 Cole Bombing and the FBI and CIA intelligence lapses that failed to prevent it even though one Islamic dude was arrested and started singing 2 years before the Cole Bombing happened. In this case, it seems there were no dots to connect, the singing Islamic bird was straightforward. This article is actually very specific, citing failure by the FBI & CIA bureaucracy except, curiously, I see no mention of clintoon, the country's commander in chief at that time. Hmmmm. No...

Folks: Here is an interesting read ( or shall I say, reread ) from 7/01 detailing the general terror threat made public in or before June 2001 and again in July 2001 pertaining to Islamic terrorists. The article copied below (and there are many other ones bearing different pre-911 dates) shows that the general threat of terrorism wasn't kept under lock and key like many are claiming today. Even though this specific article focuses on the threat in the Arabian peninsula in particular, I remember reading other articles that took the focus off that region of the world, and instead...

Man Dies of West Nile Virus -- East Meadow resident struggled with disease for two months An East Meadow (Long Island, New York) man infected with West Nile virus died early yesterday, according to Nassau County health officials. Karl Fink, 77, who became ill in mid-September, was the second person in the county to die from complications of the disease this year. A 70-year-old woman, also from East Meadow, who was diagnosed with the disease just days after Fink, died about three weeks ago, said Dr. Abby Greenberg, director of disease control for the Nassau County Health Department. Two other ...

I was watching MSNBC about an hour ago and Nora O'Donnell said that the police are checking out a tip in the Chandra Levy case. However, she made it clear that the police expect to rule this tip out before the end of the day; and that this is one of many, many tips the police have been routinely checking. If I heard correctly, Nora said that a 24 year old named Eric Storm claims he knows where Chandra is. Supposedly, Eric is in some mental care facility in Trenton, New Jersey. Again, if I heard right, Nora said the ...

We need to pray hard for Chandra Levy and her family. Of course, we want Chandra back alive and well. However, this may not happen. But we must find out exactly what happened to Chandra and who was involved. What our nation does not need is another unsolved mystery ala Nicole Simpson, Jonbenet Ramsey, etc. We all want condit & company caught if there is guilt here. I know many of us have added Chandra and the Levy family to our prayers. I think we should start some type of prayer chain because of the power of praying collectively. Tonight, ...

Now that the Washington DC police are almost ready to pull resources away from the search for Chandra Levy, perhaps it is time for DC area freepers to start freeping the DC police. Join the Levy family to keep the pressure on the dimwit DC cops! The DC police are surely acting like they don't want to discover the truth as much as condit & staff and their cadre of lawyers do not want to reveal the truth. It is pathetic. P.S. Kudos to the DC area freepers who successfully freeped condit; now it is time to freep the DC ...