Free Republic

At least one foreign government has gained access to sensitive data collected by the National Security Agency from U.S. telecommunications companies in dragnet court warrants demanding the secret transfer of U.S. customers’ calling records.

The New Republic has quietly dropped at least five prominent Jewish writers from its masthead in a move that may signal the publication’s continued drift away from a staunchly pro-Israel standpoint. The magazine has launched an aggressive new editorial direction under the ownership of wealthy socialite Chris Hughes, who is best known for sharing a room with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg at Harvard University. The names of several prominent Jewish writers from both the left and right of the political spectrum were dropped from TNR’s masthead in the latest issue. They include: Daily Beast reporter Eli Lake, longtime TNR columnist...

....Even before the attack on the U.S. compound, according to an Oct. 2, 2012 report in The Washington Post, the White House held a series of secret meetings that came out of a growing concern that "al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb" (AQIM) was gaining strength after it took control of the northern parts of the African state of Mali, where it created a new Afghan-like sanctuary. In the last year it has begun to spread its influence across the Sahara. AQIM's weaponry came from post-Gadhafi Libya, whose arsenal was boosting the arms trade from Morocco to Sinai. Israeli sources have...

When chess grand champion and Russian opposition leader Garry Kasparov showed up Friday at the sentencing of Russian punk band Pussy Riot, he didn’t expect to spend the next five hours in the custody of the Moscow police, recovering from a severe beating. Now, he says, after being punched in the genitals, thrown in a van and beaten by several police, Kasparov says the police have accused him of biting one of them—an allegation he denies. “They act like animals and they accuse me of biting them,” Kasparov told the Daily Beast in his first interview since being arrested. “Can...

Exclusive: CentCom commander’s call for third Persian Gulf carrier group was rejected, reports Eli Lake. * As Western diplomats meet this week in Baghdad to try to coax Iran’s leaders to disclose its full nuclear program, Gen. James Mattis will be keeping an eye on the Persian military. Mattis wanted to send a third aircraft-carrier group to the Persian Gulf earlier this year, The Daily Beast has exclusively learned, in what would have been a massive show of force at a time when Iranian military commanders were publicly threatening to sink American ships in the Strait of Hormuz. The four-star...

Pakistani news outlets reported Tuesday that al Qaeda had selected Saif al-Adel, an Egyptian former special forces commander, to be the interim head of the Islamist terrorist group. According to the News International, an English-language newspaper, “the issue of the succession of Osama bin Laden was resolved in a meeting of al-Qaeda held at an undisclosed location.” The reports in the Pakistani press said al-Adel will be the interim leader of al Qaeda while Muhammad Mustafa Yamni, a Yemeni living somewhere in Africa, is being groomed for the top post. U.S. intelligence officials on Tuesday could not confirm the reports....

Shortly before Barack Obama took office, leaders of a prominent Iranian-American group in Washington began to fret. If the new president were to tap former Middle East envoy Dennis Ross to oversee the nation's Iran policy, they feared their long-running effort to persuade American officials to lift sanctions could wind up in tatters. Patrick Disney, acting policy director of National Iranian American Council (NIAC), summed up the strategy: "Create a media controversy" concerning Mr. Ross, whose support for a tough line on Iran was well known. "Those groups that feel comfortable being more aggressive in opposing Ross publicly (possibly Voters...

Iran's 'Nightmare Scenarios' Mulled American Intelligence Analysts Work Overtime as Israel Sends Signals By ELI LAKE, June 24, 2008 WASHINGTON — An attack on the U.S. 5th Fleet, exploding Saudi oil refineries, and a Hezbollah operation against a soft target in the Americas, Asia, or Europe. These are scenarios America's intelligence analysts are now poring over as Israel signals its preparedness to deal with Iran's race for the A-bomb. The disclosure Friday in the New York Times of Israel's aerial training mission earlier this month over the Greek Mediterranean prompted America's intelligence chiefs to task analysts with developing contingency plans...

Vindicating Larry Franklin ELI LAKE January 16, 2007 When President Bush announced the new Iraq strategy Wednesday evening, acknowledging that Iran was effectively at war with us in Iraq by supplying terrorists with advanced improvised explosives, my thoughts turned to Lawrence Franklin. Nearly a year ago, Judge T.S. Ellis III, sentenced this Pentagon Iran analyst to almost 13 years in a federal prison after he pleaded guilty to discussing classified information with two former lobbyists from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. The case, which is thus far the Bush administration's only successful anti-leaking prosecution, illustrates the strategic confusion of...

U.S. Deadlocked on Whether To Free Iranian Terror Suspects ELI LAKE January 19, 2007 WASHINGTON — The American government is deadlocked on the issue of whether to allow five Iranians captured last Wednesday in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil to return home, according to three administration officials. While the five individuals picked up in last week's raid have been determined not to have diplomatic immunity, as Iran's Foreign Ministry has insisted, it is still unclear whether Tehran might prevail in the standoff. The military has said those detained were members of Iran's elite al-Quds force, a unit of the...

President Bush says we are effectively at war with Iran. Mr. Bush, in a much-anticipated televised speech to the nation last night, accused the Islamic Republic of "providing material support for attacks on American troops." Eschewing advice from his father's secretary of state, James Baker, to open a dialogue with Iran and Syria, the president said American forces in Iraq would "disrupt" attacks from Syria- and Iran-backed terrorists, "interrupt" the supply lines reaching back to those countries, and "seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq." That last sentence is the closest...

Determined Foes Mount Challenge To Iran's Mullahs BY ELI LAKE - Staff Reporter of the Sun May 25, 2006 CAIRO - While foreign ministers met in London to finalize measures to persuade the Iranian regime to suspend uranium enrichment, the country's ruling clerics will be facing the most determined opposition they have seen in three years. In Tehran, university students staged a second day of strikes over the firing of eight professors and the new policies enacted by Tehran University's president. In Tabriz, the regime tried to quell riots earlier this week over a cartoon depicting members of the Azeri...

The Iranian Havel New York Sun Staff Editorial July 6, 2005 When the leaders of the world's industrialized nations meet today in Scotland, they would do well to take time out from their policy debates to focus on the fate of Akbar Ganji, who is becoming known as the Iranian Vaclav Havel. He is the journalist and dissident entering his 27th day of a hunger strike inside Tehran's Evin Prison. Over the July 4th weekend, the chief of Iran's society of journalists told the Islamic Republic News Agency that Mr. Ganji was in critical condition. If President Bush meant anything...

New York ON A THURSDAY they had the book party. It was a simple affair: just family, friends, coworkers, and journalists. They came to Ambassador Joseph Wilson's house, nestled in the ritzy Palisades neighborhood of Northwest Washington, to celebrate the release of his first book, The Politics of Truth. One thing Joe Wilson keeps track of is his "Notoriety Quotient," or the amount of attention he receives from the media. And that Thursday it seemed to be on the rise. For the past week The Politics of Truth was mentioned in the same breath as Ron Suskind's The Price of...