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Three Americans released by North Korea on Wednesday have thanked President Donald Trump and his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for securing their freedom. The men are flying to Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, where Mr Trump will welcome them early on Thursday. The White House said they had been freed as a gesture of goodwill ahead of the planned meeting between Mr Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Mr Trump said the venue for the talks would be announced "within three days".

North Korea has released three US detainees in the country, according to media reports, and it meets some of President Donald Trump demands for Pyongyang to demonstrate sincerity before its upcoming US summit. Kim Dong-cheol, Kim Sang-deok, and Kim Hak-seong — three US citizens detained in North Korea for years — have been released from a suspected labor camp and given health treatment and ideological education in Pyongyang. The news follows Trump's hawkish National Security Adviser, John Bolton, calling for the release of the detainees as a way for North Korea to demonstrate its sincerity in talks. North Korea has...

WASHINGTON – Countering resistance to President Donald Trump's pick for CIA director, the spy agency gave lawmakers a declassified memo Friday showing she was cleared years ago of wrongdoing in the destruction of videotapes showing terror suspects being waterboarded after 9/11. Gina Haspel is facing opposition from some Democrats and rights groups critical of her activities related to the shredding of 92 videotapes in 2005 and her overall role in the CIA's harsh interrogation program, which critics have portrayed as one of the shadiest chapters in the agency's history. Friday's release, however, did not satisfy opponents who want to know...

Former CIA chief John Brennan is a liar. And he’s not the kind of garden variety dissembler that we see in Washington all the time, either. Rather, Brennan is the kind of man who feels comfortable brazenly misleading the American people about an attack on democracy, and then shamelessly lecturing them about civic decency. You may recall, as director of the CIA, Brennan oversaw an operation of illegal spying on a staffer of the legislative branch of the United States government. At least five agency officials under his watch broke into Senate computer files, viewing drafts of a report on...

Hey, remember when Obama closed Gitmo? Remember how he couldn't stop telling us how great it was that he'd closed Gitmo? He actually listed "closing Gitmo" as one of his achievements. To him, making a promise was the same as keeping it. And if he didn't actually keep it, so what? All because on January 22, 2009, two days after being sworn in, Obama signed the first of his many executive orders: Before Obama even knew how to find all the bathrooms in the White House, he'd signed that executive order to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. It was...

President Trump is well known for his brash and confrontational style of governing – but it could be the more diplomatic side of his administration generating some of the biggest victories in 2017. Amid all the debate over issues like the travel ban, the border wall and health care, senior officials in the White House and State Department have quietly worked behind the scenes to resolve a major concern of the president: securing the release of American citizens detained by foreign governments and terror groups. “Immediately after President Trump took office, he told Secretary [of State Rex] Tillerson to prioritize...

Pentagon battles college trying to sell art by ‘terrorists’ A New York City college is at war with the Pentagon over exhibiting and helping to hawk artwork created by suspected al Qaeda terrorists at Guantanamo Bay. Thirty-six paintings and sculptures by Gitmo detainees have been on display at John Jay College, but the Department of Defense now wants them destroyed, and administrators at the taxpayer-funded school are bracing for a possible seizure of the works.

A criminal justice college in New York City is embroiled in a battle with the Pentagon over exhibiting and helping to sell artwork by suspected al Qaeda terrorists at Guantanamo Bay. John Jay College of Criminal Justice is displaying 36 pieces of art by Gitmo detainees but the Department of Defense wants the paintings and sculptures destroyed. The school is funded by tax payers. Families of 9/11 victims were particularly upset to learn about the artwork. 'I can't understand how this college in particular would allow such a thing. Where's their decency? Where's their dignity? . . . It's denying...

A career civil servant with that kind of money ought to be surprising, especially in lieu of his subsequent outreach efforts to proven Muslim Brotherhood outfits. UPDATE: During the years when Republicans controlled the levers of power, Johnson worked for a law firm that represented the Guantanamo Bay detainees — very vigorously. Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison attorneys went so far as to smuggle in materials to the detainees. “If I’d gotten caught passing war news to detainees,” one former DOD official said, “my security clearance would have been pulled.” This week has seen the release of many incriminating...

Two psychologists who devised the CIA’s brutal interrogation program have settled a lawsuit with several victims less than three weeks before a jury trial was set to begin in a federal court in Spokane, Wash. The settlement, reached Wednesday, caps a remarkable case in which for the first time former top CIA officials were forced to testify about their roles in the program launched after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The case unearthed CIA records that shed new light on the program’s creation and how controversial it was within the agency.

War in the White House: attorney general Eric Holder and top Obama adviser David Axelrod 'had to be separated' Eric Holder, Barack Obama's attorney general and David Axelrod, his top political adviser had to be separated after squaring up during a furious row over attempts to impose White House operatives in the justice department. By Jon Swaine, Washington 6:22PM BST 03 Jun 2012 Eric Holder, who heads Mr Obama's justice department, is said to have become "incensed" after being accused by David Axelrod of complaining publicly about political interference in his office. "That's bull****," Mr Holder said in a confrontation...

A busy Supreme Court on Monday ruled, in a vote of 4-2, that former September 11 detainees do not have the right to sue government officials for money damages. This is an issue for Congress, not the judiciary, Justice Anthony Kennedy argued in the court’s opinion. Furthermore, he said, the Second Circuit “erred” in allowing respondents’ detention policy claims to move forward under the context of Bivens v. Six Unknown Fed. Narcotics Agents, which determined that federal officers would need to pay damages to compensate individuals who were subjected to unconstitutional conditions. Expanding Bivens is a “disfavored” judicial activity,...

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s email scandal didn’t stop the head of the CIA from using his own personal AOL account to stash work-related documents, according to a stoner high school student who claims to have hacked into them. CIA Director John Brennan’s private account held sensitive files — including his 47-page application for top-secret security clearance — until he recently learned that it had been infiltrated, the hacker told The Post. Other emails stored in Brennan’s non-government account contained the Social Security numbers and personal information of more than a dozen top American intelligence officials, as well as a government letter...

What happened in Uzbekistan? The government and opposition protesters are sharply at odds in Uzbekistan days after the eastern city of Andijan exploded into violence. A May 15 AP report claimed some 500 bodies had been laid out in a school in Andijan for identification by relatives, "corroborating witness accounts of hundreds killed" when soldiers opened fire on street protests. Medical authorities also reported some 2,000 wounded in local hospitals. However, a May 18 account on Russia's MosNews.com quotes Uzbek officials denying this very death toll. “Not a single civilian was killed by government forces there,” Prosecutor General Rashid Kadyrov...

Los Angeles City Atty. Mike Feuer said he spent several hours at Los Angeles International Airport on Saturday night into Sunday morning, but was repeatedly denied access to federal detainees or an attorney who could discuss the situation with him. "My goals in going were to get information as to whether customs officials were complying with the federal order ... and to try and secure the release of the detainees," he said on Sunday morning. Feuer said he was concerned that federal officials were not complying with an emergency stay granted by a federal judge on Saturday night that was...

Whole title:EXCLUSIVE: At least 18 MORE Guantanamo detainees to be freed within days as Obama starts mass transfer of fanatics who have threatened to bomb and behead AmericansPresident Obama is planning to transfer at least 18 more Guantanamo Bay detainees within days after announcing that four prisoners are being sent to Saudi Arabia, DailyMail.com has learned. snip FREED DETAINEES WHO RETURNED TO TERROR A series of those already freed from the Cuban facility have gone straight back to jihad. They include:Ibrahim Sen: Held in Guantanamo Bay from February 2002 until November 8, 2003. Released to Turkey because U.S. officials reportedly...

Four Gitmo detainees are slated to be transferred to Saudi Arabia in the next 24 hours, the first of the final wave of up to 20 transfers expected before Inauguration Day, two U.S. officials tell Fox News. The identities of the four detainees are not immediately known. The transfers are proceeding despite renewed opposition from President-elect Donald Trump, who tweeted on Tuesday: “There should be no further releases from Gitmo. These are extremely dangerous people and should not be allowed back onto the battlefield.”

The Department of Defense and the Office of Military Commissions will allocate seats for news media aboard military chartered aircraft for travel from Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland to Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to cover military commission pre-trial proceedings scheduled for United States v. Khalid Shaikh Mohammad et. al., Jan. 25 - Feb. 3, 2017. Travel originates at Andrews AFB, Maryland on Monday, Jan. 23, 2017; return flight from Guantanamo to Andrews AFB, Saturday, Feb. 4, 2017. Due to a limited number of seats aboard the flight and limited accommodations at Guantanamo Bay, selection is not guaranteed. However, there...

The tiny Pacific island of Nauru has spent weeks completely cut off from the outside world after its telecommunications network collapsed. Its isolation is so complete that no one is even sure who the country's president is any more. Nauru, an isolated speck in the southwest Pacific with a population of 12,000, is in a "critical situation", according to the last message received by the outside world. That came via an address given three weeks ago by the man last believed to be running the country, President Bernard Dowiyogo, details of which were given on Friday by Radio Australia....

British spies will be cleared in a number of cases of alleged complicity in the torture of detainees abroad, the BBC understands. Scotland Yard and the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) are to issue a joint statement on Thursday. It follows an investigation into the conduct of officers from MI5 and MI6. Although it is expected that no charges will be brought in some cases it is understood the statement will contain other significant information. The BBC's home affairs correspondent, Danny Shaw says the fact that the statement has been prepared by the DPP, together with Scotland Yard, is highly...