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Federal law enforcement authorities have charged nearly 50 past or present Russian diplomats and their spouses in a $1.5 million Medicaid fraud scheme, an unusual twist in what has become a familiar criminal story line in New York. An F.B.I. investigation revealed “the systemic fraudulent submission of falsified applications for Medicaid benefits” by the diplomats and their spouses, according to a criminal complaint unsealed on Thursday in United States District Court in Manhattan. The diplomats and their spouses obtained the benefits for pregnancies, births and first-year-of-life medical needs, generally applying at the same New York hospital, which was not identified,...

A British security contractor said he repeatedly warned US officials that their diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, was inadequately protected before it suffered a deadly attack last year. He also described fighting off armed attackers during the al-Qaeda-linked assault, in an attempt to help rescue guards he had trained to man the gates of the compound. Speaking publicly about the attack for the first time, the contractor, a former British soldier using the pseudonym Morgan Jones "for his own safety", described the experience as "sheer hell". He claimed that having been employed to train the unarmed guards for the mission's...

Arrivederci, Newark. The home state of Frank Sinatra, Tony Soprano, Frankie Valli and Samuel Alito is losing its Italian consulate, leaving a state whose Italian roots run deep in the American consciousness without an official tie to Italy. … The news has raised the ire of Italians here in New Jersey, which has the fourth highest number of Italian-Americans of any state and the second highest number of Italian immigrants. …

A Taliban attack on a U.S. consulate in the early morning hours Friday initially highlighted longstanding fears in Congress of an accelerated withdrawal while President Obama insists that the war in the Afghanistan be ended by his hand. Local reports of damage in Herat and the response, though, raise questions about just how much diplomatic security has been improved in the wake of the four deaths at Benghazi a year ago. The feared repeat of a 9/11 Benghazi attack came two days after the anniversary when attackers deployed car bombs in an SUV and minivan at the gates to the...

Early reports stating a car bomb on the US Consulate in Herat Afghanistan. Injuries being reported.

Peshawar/New Delhi - Suicide bombers today detonated explosives-packed vehicle near the Indian Consulate in Afghanistan's Jalalabad city, bordering Pakistan, killing at least eight children and wounding 21 others. Confirming the blast by suicide bombers in front of the consulate, official sources in New Delhi said, "all Indians are safe and there was no major damage to the consulate." "The situation is still very fluid," sources told PTI. Nangarhar province Police Chief Gen Sharif Amin said the car bomb was set off near a mosque leading to the Indian consulate in the provincial capital Jalalabad. "Most of the victims were children...

SNIPPET: "On Tuesday, Bryan Underwood was sentenced to nine years for trying to pass secrets to China.   The irony is that the Chinese government didn’t put him up to it, and when Underwood went to a Chinese government building to sell photos of a U.S. consulate compound in Guangzhou, the Chinese turned him away. They were not interested, or didn’t understand what he was trying to convey.'

Accountability: As with Fast and Furious, the designated scapegoats for the deaths of Americans at the hands of administration bungling will merely be switching desks. Only the maker of that irrelevant video is in jail. Reports of the resignation of four State Department officials after the Accountability Review Board's (ARB) review of State Department actions before during and after the terrorist attack on our consulate in Benghazi, Libya, may have been greatly exaggerated. Eric Boswell, the assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security, has not resigned from the department, as a State Department spokeswoman indicated Dec. 19. Boswell is instead...

<p>Diplomacy: Egypt descends into chaos, Syria's chemical weapons are on the move, and Benghazigate's questions remain unanswered, but our outgoing secretary of state wants saving the African elephant to be her legacy?</p> <p>'Some of you might be wondering why a secretary of state is keynoting an event about wildlife trafficking and conservation," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Thursday in Washington, D.C., before a group of animal activists and several international ambassadors.</p>

Parallels: A mission was attacked after warnings, Americans were killed after security requests were denied, and a diplomat went on TV to explain it all — our current U.N. ambassador, after embassy bombings in 1998. 'What troubles me so much is the Benghazi attack in many ways echoes the attacks on both embassies in 1998, when Susan Rice was head of the African region for our State Department," Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said Wednesday after two hours with our U.N. ambassador. "In both cases, the ambassador begged for additional security." In both cases, Susan Rice was involved more than she...

Benghazi Scandal: "Her meeting with GOP senators begs the question that if all she can do is read talking points handed to her by the White House then perhaps she should be the next White House press secretary." The above observation, courtesy of Richard Grenell, who served as spokesman for four U.S. Ambassadors to the U.N., is the flip side of our view that Susan Rice, who was sent out on five Sunday talk shows to explain Benghazi by a president who says she had "nothing to do with Benghazi," is as qualified to be the next secretary of state...

Libya probe into consulate attack stallsAssociated Press Updated 10:49 p.m., Wednesday, November 21, 2012 Benghazi, Libya -- After more than two months, Libya's investigation into the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi appears in limbo. Key security commanders and witnesses say they were never questioned. No suspects have been named, and gunmen seen participating in the assault walk freely in the eastern Libyan city.

Leadership: Obama admits sending our U.N. ambassador, who had "nothing to do with Benghazi," to explain Benghazi on five Sunday talk shows "at the request of the White House" with talking points "provided to her." Considering this was President Obama's first press conference in eight months, his bluster that if "Sen. McCain and Sen. Graham and others want to go after somebody, they should go after me" regarding Benghazi is a bit odd. When the questions needed to be asked and answers needed to be given, both the president and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were nowhere to be found....

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...

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...

Scandal: The filmmaker blamed for the terrorist attack on our Libyan consulate and the murder of our ambassador goes to jail for an "unrelated" matter. If you believe that, you also believe al-Qaida is on its heels. If the Obama administration had heeded warnings from Ambassador Chris Stevens that, after two previous incidents, the consulate in Benghazi was surrounded by terrorist training camps and couldn't withstand an organized attack, Mark Basseley Youssef might still be a free man today. If requests for enhanced security had not been repeatedly denied, or if nearby help that was requested and denied three times...

Benghazi: In an astonishing display of media bias, CBS makes a mockery of journalistic ethics by hiding a portion of a "60 Minutes" interview proving the president lied from day one about calling Benghazi a terrorist attack. There must have been some knee-slapping guffaws at CBS when CNN's Candy Crowley corrected GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, falsely claiming President Obama did call Benghazi a terrorist attack on the very next day. CBS knew Obama was lying and had a tape to prove it. As part of a "60 Minutes" interview taped on Sept. 12, the day after the terrorist attack...

Bias: Call it the "October Suppress" as the so-called "mainstream" media provided less coverage to the current president's bungling of and lying about Benghazi than they did to another president's decades-old DUI arrest. Last Friday, Pulitzer Prize-winning former New York Times reporter Judith Miller and Kirsten Powers, a Daily Beast columnist, appeared on Fox News' "Happening Now" program to justifiably bash the mainstream media and its orchestrated suppression of coverage of the terrorist attack in Benghazi. Neither is a charter member of the "vast right-wing conspiracy," but both roundly condemned the shameful and politically motivated actions of their colleagues. Miller...

Bias: Call it the "October Suppress" as the so-called "mainstream" media provided less coverage to the current president's bungling of and lying about Benghazi than they did to another president's decades-old DUI arrest. Last Friday, Pulitzer Prize-winning former New York Times reporter Judith Miller and Kirsten Powers, a Daily Beast columnist, appeared on Fox News' "Happening Now" program to justifiably bash the mainstream media and its orchestrated suppression of coverage of the terrorist attack in Benghazi. Neither is a charter member of the "vast right-wing conspiracy," but both roundly condemned the shameful and politically motivated actions of their colleagues. Miller...

Scandal: A month before the terrorist attack, the State Department was warned Benghazi couldn't protect itself and was surrounded by Islamist militia and al-Qaida camps. It was 3 a.m. and the administration pressed "snooze." When the U.S. mission in Benghazi called an Aug. 15 emergency meeting, it wasn't to discuss an obscure Internet video. It was to discuss the lack of security for a consulate surrounded by at least 10 terrorist camps. An Aug. 16 cable to the office of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and obtained by Fox News reported that the State Department's senior security officer "expressed concerns...