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MADRID — A Spanish court absolved four men and upheld the acquittal of a fifth on Thursday in the convoluted legal proceedings relating to the 2004 Madrid commuter train bombings that killed 191 people in the deadliest attack by Islamic militants on European soil. The rulings followed appeals of some of 21 convictions by a lower court after a five-month trial that ended in October. Seven other people were acquitted at that time. Most dramatically, the court on Thursday upheld the acquittal of one of the bombing’s accused masterminds, Rabei Osman, an Egyptian, who was found guilty in 2006 in...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. lawmakers defied a White House veto threat on Wednesday and voted to bar CIA contractors from interrogating suspected terrorists, in the latest clash over detainee treatment in the U.S.-declared war on terrorism. The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives approved the provision in adopting a broad measure to authorize funding of U.S. intelligence agencies for the 2009 fiscal year. A related bill awaits action in the Senate. Passage of the multibillion dollar bill came on a voice vote, indicating broad assent, despite the White House veto threat issued earlier in the day. In addition to the contractor ban,...

Ending Politically Tainted Intelligence Gathering and Analysis Jim Kouri, CPP Closely tied to the question of how best to set intelligence requirements are the larger questions of how to improve analysis by the intelligence community and how to increase its impact. Many policymakers and lawmakers are critical of the analysis they receive, and both intelligence consumers and producers often share a frustration over its perceived lack of utility and hence lack of impact. This includes local law enforcement commanders who - more than ever - depend on solid information in order to deploy their resources in post-9/11 America. The best...

Former CIA agent: "We do not face a global jihadist 'movement'" Glenn L. Carle "was a member of the CIA's Clandestine Service for 23 years and retired in March 2007 as deputy national intelligence officer for transnational threats." In "Overstating Our Fears" in the Washington Post, July 13, he says this: We do not face a global jihadist "movement" but a series of disparate ethnic and religious conflicts involving Muslim populations, each of which remains fundamentally regional in nature and almost all of which long predate the existence of al-Qaeda. In a circulating e-mail, LTC Joseph Myers, who has served...

Going public for the first time in an article and interview on Pajamas Media, an Iranian who infiltrated Iran's Revolutionary Guard for the CIA accuses the mullahs of orchestrating — among other things — the 1988 explosion of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

Washington: Two officials of the US intelligence agency CIA have claimed that Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden was on death bed as he suffered from a terminal kidney disease, and may live only for a few months. The intelligence agency also managed to get the names of some of the medications Bin Laden was taking. One of the two CIA officials familiar with the report that came out six-nine months ago, quoted it as saying, “Based on his current pharmaceutical intake we would expect that he has no more than 6-18 months to live and impending kidney failure.” Pakistan...

As of 12:45 EST this morning, Drudge was still advertising a developing story posted hours earlier: “Sources: Bush anger at coming New York Times Story detailing hunt for Bin Laden…The newspaper is planning to expose a “highly classified Pentagon order” authorizing Special Operations forces to hunt al-Qaida leader in mountains of Pakistan. ‘Operation Cannonball’. Operation Cannonball was the code name given to the Al Qaeda hunt in Pakistan by the C.I.A. in 2006.

Defence Minister: Poland not 51st US state Created: 23.06.2008 12:30 Poland’s Defence Minister Bogdan Klich has expressed outrage at an article in The New York Times alleging that “Poland has been the 51st state” of the USA acting as host to a secret CIA prison for terrorists. "That is unacceptable. The sheer fact that we are in tough negotiations with the Americans regarding the anti-missile defence shield suggests that we are indeed an independent state,” Minister Klich said on Radio ZET, Monday morning. The Saturday issue of The New York Times reopened the topic of the secret prison camp for...

For 30 years Jim Woolsey has been a hawkish guardian of American national security. As director of the CIA under Bill Clinton he lived every day with the terrorist threats to his homeland. Yet in his view, the greatest danger to the country now is not nuclear and chemical weapons but climate change and the American dependence on oil which is partly blamed for causing it. Mr Woolsey believes the greatest weapon in America's arsenal is not the stealth bomber, the Abrams tank or the F-16 jet – but the humble plug-in hybrid car that will let most people do...

British Nazi-Al Qaeda Links? They are unmistakable and definite The Independent reported on July 10, 2005 that Al Qaeda may have hired a gang of “white mercenary terrorists� to carry out the London bombings.The Daily Mirror reported on July 16, 2005 that the four bombers may have been “duped� into carrying their bomb-laden backpacks on to the Underground and a bus. There is also intelligence that points to Italian neo-fascist, Pentagon Task Force 121, and Balkan Islamic fundamentalist links to the London bombers. French counter-terrorism official have reported that Balkans or Eastern European-origin military grade explosives were used in the...

In an astonishing stroke of irony, the New York Times has outed the name of the CIA operative who interrogated 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, over the objections of CIA Director Michael V. Hayden and a lawyer representing the operative. Agency officials and legal counsel told the Times that publishing the agent's name would "invade his privacy and put him at risk of retaliation from terrorists or harassment from critics of the agency." In an Editor's Note linked from the story on KSM's interrogation, the Times defended its decision by stating that "other government employees" had been "named publicly in...

WASHINGTON: In a makeshift prison in the north of Poland, Al Qaeda's engineer of mass murder faced off against his Central Intelligence Agency interrogator. It was 18 months after the 9/11 attacks, and the invasion of Iraq was giving Muslim extremists new motives for havoc. If anyone knew about the next plot, it was Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. The interrogator, Deuce Martinez, a soft-spoken analyst who spoke no Arabic, had turned down a CIA offer to be trained in waterboarding. He chose to leave the infliction of pain and panic to others, the gung-ho paramilitary types whom the more cerebral interrogators...

Scott McClellan appeared before the House Judiciary committee yesterday. When asked about Joseph Wilson and the defamation of Wilson’s character by Sheila Jackson- Lee McClellan seemed to sympathize with the harm that had been done by the evil forces in the White House during and before his tenure as Press Secretary. Jackson-Lee asked McClellan specifically about the Uranium in Niger that Wilson reported on. Later in his testimony Scott was confronted by Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) with some disturbing facts via a declassified CIA report. McClellan visually surprised with these facts began to backtrack. (Video Included)

7:00 PM (et) 1 hr, 39 min Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA's Spytechs from Communism to Al-Qaeda Author: Robert Wallace and Keith Melton

A year ago in July, a National Intelligence Estimate warned that al Qaeda had "protected or regenerated key elements of its Homeland attack capability," meaning it could be poised to strike America again. The political reaction was instantaneous and damning. "This clearly says al Qaeda is not beaten," said Michael Scheuer, the former CIA spook turned antiterror scold. What a difference 10 months – and a surge – make. CIA Director Michael Hayden painted a far more optimistic picture in an interview yesterday in the Washington Post. "On balance, we are doing pretty well," he said. "Near strategic defeat of...

CIA Director Michael Hayden gave a noteworthy interview to the Washington Post this week. According to the Post: Less than a year after his agency warned of new threats from a resurgent al-Qaeda, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden now portrays the terrorist movement as essentially defeated in Iraq and Saudi Arabia and on the defensive throughout much of the rest of the world, including in its presumed haven along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. In a strikingly upbeat assessment, the CIA chief cited major gains against al-Qaeda’s allies in the Middle East and an increasingly successful campaign to destabilize the group’s core...

CIA director Michael Hayden came under stiff challenge for portraying Al-Qaeda as on the defensive after global setbacks, even in its safe havens along the Afghan-Pakistani border.Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, Jay Rockefeller, said Hayden's upbeat appraisal was not consistent with intelligence assessments provided his committee over the past year."In fact, I have seen nothing, including classified intelligence reporting, that would lead me to this conclusion," Rockefeller said in a scathing letter to the Central Intelligence Agency director.Hayden's assessment -- one of the most positive since the September 11, 2001 attacks -- comes less than a year after US intelligence warnings...

Download this latest episode of Covert Radio to find out. Bill Roggio from the Long War Journal reacts to CIA Director Hayden on his claims that AQ is largely defeated. Bill raises questions about the claim including issues of Al Qaeda fundraising in the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia–the so called Golden Chain. Bill looks at Al Qaeda ascendancy in other areas including Somalia and Egypt. It is l10 minutes of critical analysis.

CIA chief Michael Hayden warned that al-Qaeda remains a serious threat. (By Kevin Wolf -- Associated Press) Less than a year after his agency warned of new threats from a resurgent al-Qaeda, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden now portrays the terrorist movement as essentially defeated in Iraq and Saudi Arabia and on the defensive throughout much of the rest of the world, including in its presumed haven along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. In a strikingly upbeat assessment, the CIA chief cited major gains against al-Qaeda's allies in the Middle East and an increasingly successful campaign to destabilize the group's core leadership....

WASHINGTON - A turf war is being waged in the closed world of U.S. intelligence agencies that could disrupt how spy operations are carried out around the world, according to former and current CIA officials. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which for the past four years has overseen U.S. intelligence agencies, is angling for more power over and insight into spy operations worldwide. At stake is the authority of the CIA's legendary station chiefs, who for 60 years have enjoyed a great deal of autonomy in overseas intelligence operations. In 2005, the director designated an intelligence officer...

‘My son died with honor.” These words struck this writer like a bolt from the blue. Captured by a television news crew, they were spoken with quiet dignity by Johnny Spann to reporters at the front gate of his home in Winfield, Alabama, upon learning of the death of his son, Johnny Mike Spann, the first American to die on a foreign field of battle in the War on Islamic Terror. Mike, as he was known to his friends and family, was killed on November 25, 2001, during a combined al-Qaeda–Taliban uprising at a temporary prison in Qala-i Jangi, not...

The government ordered the destruction of documents on an alleged international nuclear smuggling network involving three Swiss engineers, it has been confirmed. The head of a parliamentary control committee said the material was shredded last November. The father and sons – Friedrich, Marco and Urs Tinner - are suspected of helping to supply parts for Libya's nuclear weapons programme between 2001 and 2003 through a trafficking ring run by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's atom bomb. Reports say the three worked as undercover agents for the United States intelligence service. There is widespread media speculation that Washington asked...

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Thursday defended tough interrogation techniques for terrorism suspects approved by the Bush administration in the wake of 9/11, saying they were necessary to protect America from new attacks. In her most extensive public comments about how the administration dealt with detainee interrogations in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, and the anthrax attacks that followed, Rice insisted the methods of questioning complied with both U.S. law and treaty obligations. But she acknowledged that those rules had since changed and that the United States was a "different place" then, adding that the administration's top priority...

DETROIT - A former federal agent who pleaded guilty to faking a marriage to gain U.S. citizenship and improperly searching FBI databases was sentenced Tuesday to pay $975 in fines and other fees, but will serve no prison time. U.S. District Court Judge Avern Cohn said Nada Nadim Prouty, 38, "erred in judgment" 19 years ago when she lied to enter the U.S. in 1989 from her native Lebanon, but has provided "exemplary service to the country" as a federal agent. Cohn also signed an order revoking Prouty's citizenship, but Prouty's attorney Thomas Cranmer said after the hearing she will...

The CIA is having a growing problem with their analysts and spies being recruited away by corporations. One unpleasant, for government intelligence agencies, development of the last few decades has been the growing popularity of "competitive intelligence" (corporate espionage.) It's a really big business, with most large (over a billion dollars of annual sales) corporations having separate intelligence operations. Spending on corporate intel work is over $5 billion a year, and is expected to more than double in the next four years. The corporate recruiters have a pretty easy time of it, as they can offer higher pay, better working...

The CIA has posted the full text of one of its guidebooks, "Psychology of Intelligence Analysis." The 1999 book was published by the CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence.

For over a year, we have been waging a relentless, nearly solitary battle in apprising the Congress and the American public about a billion dollar boondoggle and scandal: the lack of credible Arabic translators for our national security and intelligence agencies. As a result hundreds have been killed in Iraq from infiltration of our military and civilian intelligence agencies by agents of Islamist terrorists. Our FBI and CIA have been infiltrated by Muslim linguists who have successfully evaded polygraph tests and been able to pass on vital information to terror groups in the Middle East such as Hezbollah. Tens of...

"The Central Intelligence Agency and other agencies blocked a Bush Administration plan to deliver sharp new warnings this week about Syria's efforts to develop unconventional weapons," a July 18, 2003 New York Times article began. It continued by noting that the "CIA and other agencies raised strong objections to testimony" that former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, then an undersecretary of state, was planning to deliver to Congress that week. The controversial testimony that Bolton was scheduled to deliver in the summer of 2003 dealt with the scope of Syria's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs. According to the aforementioned New...

Madness -- politically correct madness. The FBI showed it wasn't anti-Arab by hiring Nada Prouty, and she handsomely repaid them for it, too. Nada Nadim Prouty Update: "Fake citizen worked on major terror cases," by David Ashenfelter for the Detroit Free Press (thanks to Sr. Soph): Nada Prouty, the Lebanese immigrant who parlayed a sham marriage into U.S. citizenship and key jobs at the FBI and CIA, worked on several counter-terrorism investigations, including the 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen, her lawyer said in court documents Thursday. "Nada Nadim Prouty accepts full responsibility for her actions and is...

Swelling populations and a global tide of immigration will present new security challenges for the United States by straining resources and stoking extremism and civil unrest in distant corners of the globe, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said in a speech yesterday. ...Hayden, speaking at Kansas State University, described the projected 33 percent growth in global population over the next 40 years as one of three significant trends that will alter the security landscape in the current century. By 2050, the number of humans on Earth is expected to rise from 6.7 billion to more than 9 billion, he said....

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. intelligence community, in an about-face from an assessment of less than a year ago, has concluded that Syria was close to becoming a nuclear power. "In the course of a year after they got full up they would have produced enough plutonium for one or two weapons," CIA director Michael Hayden said. The new assessment was that Syria was weeks away from operating a North Korean-built plutonium production plant near the Turkish border. That facility, the intelligence community assessed, could have procuced up to two bombs in the first year of operation...

Former Rep. Charles Wilson played no official role in the making of last year's film "Charlie Wilson's War," which chronicled how he helped the Mujahedeen repel the invading Soviet army in the 1980s. If the Texas Democrat had participated, it's clear he would have cast an actor to portray a figure all but ignored in Mike Nichols' production — President Reagan. "He was absolutely essential to the victory," over the Soviets in Afghanistan, Mr. Wilson says during a phone interview to promote "War," out on DVD this week. ... Mr. Wilson's work, by all accounts, helped bring about the Soviet's...

The Justice Department has told Congress that American intelligence operatives attempting to thwart terrorist attacks can legally use interrogation methods that might otherwise be prohibited under international law. The legal interpretation, outlined in recent letters, sheds new light on the still-secret rules for interrogations by the Central Intelligence Agency. It shows that the administration is arguing that the boundaries for interrogations should be subject to some latitude, even under an executive order issued last summer that President Bush said meant that the C.I.A. would comply with international strictures against harsh treatment of detainees. While the Geneva Conventions prohibit “outrages upon...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Syria's ambassador to the United States said Friday that the CIA fabricated pictures allegedly taken inside a secret Syrian nuclear reactor and predicted that in the coming weeks the U.S. story about the site would "implode from within.""The photos presented to me yesterday were ludicrous, laughable," Ambassador Imad Moustapha told reporters at his Washington residence.However, he refused to say what the building in the remote eastern desert of Syria was used for before Israeli jets bombed it in September 2007.Senior U.S. intelligence officials said Thursday they believe it was a secret nuclear reactor meant to produce plutonium,...

Officials will tell Congress members this week that North Korea was helping Syria build a reactor last year when it was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike, a U.S. official says. WASHINGTON — CIA officials will tell Congress on Thursday that North Korea had been helping Syria build a plutonium-based nuclear reactor, a U.S. official said, a disclosure that could touch off new resistance to the administration's plan to ease sanctions on Pyongyang. The CIA officials will tell lawmakers that they believe the reactor would have been capable of producing plutonium for nuclear weapons but was destroyed before it could do...

The CIA will tell Congress today that the North Koreans had begun to build a nuclear reactor at a site in Syria bombed by the Israelis last year. The timing of the briefing appears related to the expected resolution of the six-nation plan to disarm the DPRK in the next few weeks, according to the Los Angeles Times. It may create new political difficulties for the Bush administration, but more likely it is intended to fulfill a Congressional demand for information to clear hurdles for ratification of the agreement with North Korea: CIA officials will tell Congress on Thursday that...

Before Dick Cheney passes from this life to the next, he ought to receive another Presidential Medal of Freedom for boldly protecting this country while interminably catching holy hell for doing so. (He already got it once, for his exceptional service as Secretary of Defense.) But you know he won’t. It is a measure of Cheney’s selfless devotion to the United States that he obviously does not care. Headlines blared on Friday that Cheney made the call – in consultation with the highest-ranking White House staff, but excluding the president for what I guess were reasons of plausible deniability –...

Bush administration officials from Vice President Dick Cheney on down signed off on using harsh interrogation techniques against suspected terrorists after asking the Justice Department to endorse their legality, The Associated Press has learned. The officials also took care to insulate President Bush from a series of meetings where CIA interrogation methods, including waterboarding, which simulates drowning, were discussed and ultimately approved. A former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the meetings described them Thursday to the AP to confirm details first reported by ABC News on Wednesday. The intelligence official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not...

ABC News has reported that a government official was voluntarily waterboarded (he survived, apparently none the worse for wear). In 2004, Daniel Levin "was the top Department of Justice official in charge of deciding which interrogation techniques could be used in the War on Terror" and "decided to experience" waterboarding "first-hand." "It would be inappropriate for me to comment about that," Daniel Levin said in response to ABC News' questions about his experience while seen...

CIA director Michael Hayden said today al-Qaeda was training operatives who "look western" and could enter the United States undetected to conduct terrorist attacks. General Hayden said the terror network over the past 18 months has established a safe haven in tribal areas along the Afghanistan-Pakistan where they are preparing militants for attacks against the West. "They are bringing operatives into that region for training - operatives that, a phrase I would use, wouldn't attract your attention if they were going through the customs line at Dulles (airport near Washington DC) with you," Gen Hayden told NBC television. The new...

Politicians and human rights groups want to go on board US-registered planes that are believed to be carrying terror suspects when they land in Norway for refueling. Planes believed to be chartered by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have landed at the Sola Airport outside Stavanger as many as 15 times since 2003, reports local newspaper Stavanger Aftenblad. It's also believed that the planes, officially owned by Aviation Specialties Inc of the US, have landed for refueling at airports in Bergen and Evenes as well. A report to the European Parliament in 2006 claimed that Aviation Specialties is a...

“We knew that there had been a call from someplace that was known to be a safe house in Afghanistan and we knew that it came to the United States. We didn’t know precisely where it went. We’ve got 3,000 people who went to work that day, and didn’t come home, to show for that.” — Attorney General Michael Mukasey, speaking last week “in Nancy Pelosi’s hometown.” AG Michael Mukasey revealed new, stunning information: he now knows precisely to whom that call was made. As 13 of the 15 muscle hijackers came late and knew little, that call undoubtedly was...

Four decades after the Central Intelligence Agency hired thousands of jungle warriors to fight Communists on the western fringes of the Vietnam War, men who say they are veterans of that covert operation are isolated, hungry and periodically hunted by a Laotian Communist government still mistrustful of the men who sided with America. “If I surrender, I will be punished,” said Xang Yang, a wiry 58-year-old still capable of crawling nimbly through thick bamboo underbrush. “They will never forgive me. I cannot live outside the jungle because I am a former American soldier.”

The appearance of nuclear weapons materials on the black market is a growing global concern, and it is crucial that the United States reinforce its team of nuclear forensics experts and modernize its forensics tools to prepare for or respond to a possible nuclear terrorist attack. Large quantities of nuclear materials are inadequately secured in several countries, including Russia and Pakistan. Since 1993, there have been more than 1,300 incidents of illicit trafficking of nuclear materials, including plutonium and highly enriched uranium, both of which can be used to develop an atomic bomb. And these are only the incidents we...

Bush's War Monday, March 24 and Tuesday, March 25, 2008 9 P.M. (check local listings) From the horror of 9/11 to the invasion of Iraq; the truth about WMD to the rise of an insurgency; the scandal of Abu Ghraib to the strategy of the surge-for six years, FRONTLINE has revealed the defining stories of the war on terror in meticulous detail, and the political dramas that played out at the highest levels of power and influence. Now, on the fifth anniversary of the Iraq invasion, the full saga unfolds in the two-part FRONTLINE special Bush's War, airing Monday, March...

by Jim Kouri There is a far-reaching scandal brewing for presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama, thanks to a radio talk show host based in Oregon. Syndicated talk host Laurie Roth’s revelations make the news story about Obama’s relationship with a racist, anti-American pastor look like child’s play. A top official at the Pentagon during former-President George H. W. Bush’s Administration and a former CIA intelligence officer maintain that Barack Obama and former Weather Underground honcho William Ayers funneled money to Professor Rashid Khalidi, a known terrorist sympathizer. Khalidi serves on the faculty of Columbia University in New York and is...

SPIEGEL INTERVIEW WITH IRAQ WMD SLEUTH DAVID KAYDavid Kay was charged by the Bush administration with finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq after the invasion. Instead of finding weapons, though, he found what he told SPIEGEL was 'the biggest intelligence fiasco of my lifetime.' SPIEGEL: As head of the Iraq Survey Group, you led the effort to follow up on the claims made by 'Curveball,' the asylum seeker from Iraq who told German intelligence that Saddam Hussein was building mobile biological weapons laboratories. Do you remember the first time you began to doubt his story? Kay: The real shock...

WASHINGTON — In the days immediately after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, members of President Bush’s war cabinet declared that it would be impossible to deter the most fervent extremists from carrying out even more deadly terrorist missions with biological, chemical or nuclear weapons. Since then, however, administration, military and intelligence officials assigned to counterterrorism have begun to change their view. After piecing together a more nuanced portrait of terrorist organizations, they say there is reason to believe that a combination of efforts could in fact establish something akin to the posture of deterrence, the strategy that helped protect...

Anti-Bush Richard Immerman, the assistant deputy director of national intelligence for analytical integrity, has written a journal article harshly critical of President Bush and his administration for what he charges is their role in the "politicization" of intelligence. The article echoes liberal academic criticism of the president and his advisers, but with one significant difference: Mr. Immerman is now the top U.S. intelligence official in charge of checking politicization within 16 U.S. intelligence agencies. The appointment of Mr. Immerman as the analysis' "ombudsman" is raising questions among intelligence analysts about whether the office of Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell...

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon says authorities have captured a high-level Al Qaeda figure who helped Usama bin Laden escape from Afghanistan in 2001. Officials declined to say when or where Mohammad Rahim was captured -- announcing only that he was handed over by the CIA to the Pentagon earlier this week and is being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman says Rahim is a close associate of bin Laden and has ties to al-Qaida organizations throughout the Middle East. Whitman says Rahim helped prepare the hideout at Tora Bora, a mountain area used by bin Laden...