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Detail by painful detail, the CIA is coming to grips with one of the most devastating episodes in its history, a botched cloak-and-dagger flight into China that stole two decades of freedom from a pair of fresh-faced American operatives and cost the lives of their two pilots. In opening up about the 1952 debacle, the CIA is finding ways to use it as a teaching tool. Mistakes of the past can serve as cautionary tales for today's spies and paramilitary officers taking on al-Qaida and other terrorist targets. At the center of the story are two eager CIA paramilitary officers...

Justice Stevens has in recent days become the Justice To Watch, namely because rumors continue to swirl that the 89-year old will soon step down, paving the way for another President Obama appointment.

George W. Bush's State of the Union address must have baffled anyone who voted for him based on his pledge to cut the size of government. That speech has been properly and efficiently pilloried by Joseph Stromberg, Alan Bock, and others. The speech was both Wilsonian and Clintonian, which is to say that it proposed a political solution for all human problems and backed this idea with a promise of massive increases in federal spending on just about everything. But should we really be so surprised? Contrary to popular myth, every Republican president since and including Herbert Hoover has increased...

Understanding the opposition to the Health Care Bill (H.R. 3200) is actually rather easy and can be achieved using bipartisan support. In a 1974 address to Congress, Republican President Gerald Ford stated: “Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have … The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases.”

FORT WORTH, Texas – The Charles Manson follower convicted of trying to assassinate President Gerald Ford was released Friday from a Texas prison hospital after more than three decades behind bars, a prison official said. Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme was just 26 years old when she pointed a semiautomatic .45- caliber pistol at Ford in September 1975 in Sacramento, Calif. Secret Service agents grabbed her and Ford was unhurt. Fromme, now 60, left the Federal Medical Center Carswell in Fort Worth at about 8 a.m. Friday, spokeswoman Dr. Maria Douglas said in a statement.

The woman who tried to assassinate President Gerald Ford is expected to be released from prison on August 16 after serving her sentence. Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, a one-time follower of mass murderer Charles Manson, has been serving a life sentence . Fromme has been incarcerated at a prison in Fort Worth, Texas. Fromme had told her defense attorney she staged the attack because she "wanted to get some attention for a new trial" for Manson and members of his gang.

The president she tried to assassinate has been dead for nearly three years, and her longtime idol and leader, Charles Manson, remains in prison. However, Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme is about to get her first taste of real freedom in more than three decades. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Fromme, now 60, is set to be released on parole August 16. Fromme is housed at the Federal Medical Center at Carswell, Texas. For years, she was one of Manson's few remaining followers, as many other "Manson Family" members have shunned him. A prison spokeswoman would not say whether Fromme...

Swine Flu Epidemic Of 1976 inspired the vaccination of 40 Million people a little known fact was that those vaccinations caused devastating side effects to over 4000 victims. The frightening revelations about this event are the similarities today. A company by the name of Baxter international has the contract to vaccinate 4 billion worldwide. The problem is very few know that Baxter recently was caught sending tainted Bird Flu vaccines to 18 countries. This vaccination that KILLED the host it was tested on was caught just in time.

The death of Pol Pot, 23 years to the day after he and the Khmer Rouge seized control of Cambodia, occasioned long backward glances at one of the 20th century's most horrific genocides. It was noted everywhere that the communist reign of terror in Cambodia lasted nearly four years and that at least 1 million human beings -- by some estimates as many as 2 1/2 million -- were murdered in an orgy of executions, torture, and starvation. "In the name of a radical utopia," The New York Times recalled in its long obituary, "the Khmer Rouge regime had turned...

NEW YORK – The woman who fired a gun at President Gerald Ford in 1975 and spent the next 32 years in prison said in an interview Thursday that she believed the country would change only through a violent revolution. Sara Jane Moore told NBC's "Today" that she now realizes that her actions, stemming from her involvement in radical politics, were "wrong ... a serious error." In Sept. 22, 1975, Moore, then around 45, fired on Ford as he waved to a crowd in San Francisco. A man near her knocked the pistol out of her hand and the shot...

No, she’s not planning to attend a fundraiser for the president . . . Sara Jane Moore, who in 1975 attempted to assassinate then President Gerald Ford, is out on parole after serving 32 years in prison. Asked by Matt Lauer on Today this morning what she would say to people who think that an attempted presidential assassin should spent the rest of her life in jail, her response began with this cryptic remark: “Well, I’m going to go to the Obama thing.” View video here.

With Pres. Obama about to meet Queen Elizabeth, the Early Show decided to focus on gaffes various past presidents have committed when encountering Her Majesty. Surprise! All the socially maladroit moves mentioned were by Republicans. Katie Couric sniped from London . . . KATIE COURIC: She’s met with every president since Harry Truman and many of them by the way have committed a few faux pas along the way. The first President Bush apparently sat before Queen Elizabeth, which was a real no-no. But my favorite story was at a state dinner during the Ford administration. When the Queen started...

Do you believe that the November 22, 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy was the result of shots fired by a lone assassin from the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository? Or are you one of many who believe it was a conspiracy that involved the highest levels of our government? The case is not closed regarding what actually happened on that fateful day. The late President Gerald R. Ford, the last surviving member of the commission admitted that the CIA destroyed pertinent documents, covering up the investigation of the assassination, in a recently published book....

REAGAN at CPAC: “Our people look for a cause to believe in. Is it a third party we need, or is it a new and revitalized second party, raising a banner of no pale pastels, but bold colors which make it unmistakably clear where we stand on all of the issues troubling the people?” “A political party cannot be all things to all people. It must represent certain fundamental beliefs which must not be compromised to political expediency, or simply to swell its numbers.”

General Election Campaign In presidential trial-heat matchups between Ford and Carter, Ford trailed the eventual Democratic nominee by small margins in March, April, and early May. By late May, Carter opened up a double-digit lead and maintained it until late September. Carter's lead swelled to as much as 33 points, 62% to 29% among registered voters, after the Democratic convention that year. Ford cut into the margin after the Republican convention, reducing a 25-point (57% to 32%) early August deficit to 13 points (50% to 37%). ... In a poll conducted immediately after their first debate, Carter maintained a double-digit...

WASHINGTON — Former President Ford secretly advised the FBI that two of his fellow members on the Warren Commission doubted the FBI's conclusion that John F. Kennedy was shot from the sixth floor of the Texas Book Depository in Dallas, according to newly released records from Ford's FBI files. Ford, still a congressman at the time, also told a senior FBI official about internal panel disputes over hiring staff, Chief Justice Earl Warren's timetable for completing the final report on the assassination and what panel members said about the FBI. In turn, Assistant FBI Director Cartha "Deke" DeLoach confidentially advised...

Looking back over the last 40 years, the presidential campaign that most closely resembles this year's is the contest between Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter in 1976. The Republicans were the incumbent presidential party that year, as they are now, but the Democrats had a big advantage in party identification -- on the order of 49 percent to 26 percent then, far more than today. The Republican president who had been elected and re-elected in the last two campaigns, Richard Nixon, had dismal favorability ratings, far lower than George W. Bush's. His name could scarcely be mentioned at the Republican...

THE NEW YORK TIMES VS. HELMS, PART 529,876July 9, 2008 Last Friday, on the Fourth of July, the great American patriot Jesse Helms passed away. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson also went to their great reward on Independence Day, so this is further proof of God. Helms is now the second great American patriot I've always wanted to meet and never will, at least in this lifetime. The only other one is the magnificent Reagan aide Lyn Nofziger. (Wikipedia quote: "I sometimes lie awake at night trying to think of something funny that Richard Nixon said.") After a week of...

Thank you very much. Mr. President, Mrs. Ford, Mr. Vice President, Mr. Vice President to be -- the distinguished guests here, and you ladies and gentlemen: I am going to say fellow Republicans here, but also those who are watching from a distance, all of those millions of Democrats and Independents who I know are looking for a cause around which to rally and which I believe we can give them. Mr. President, before you arrived tonight, these wonderful people here when we came in gave Nancy and myself a welcome. That, plus this, and plus your kindness and generosity...

(12-31) 13:17 PST Dublin - -- Sara Jane Moore, the 1970s radical and FBI informant who attempted to assassinate President Ford outside a San Francisco hotel in 1975, was released from a federal prison facility in Dublin today after serving nearly 32 years in custody. Moore, who is 77, was released sometime during the morning from the Federal Correctional Institution and it was not immediately known where she went, according to Mike Truman, a spokesman for the federal Bureau of Prisons. On Sept. 22, 1975, Moore fired a shot at Ford from a .38-caliber handgun outside the St. Francis Hotel...