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Retired Marine Gen. John Allen has been selected to coordinate the international effort against the Islamic State militant group, Secretary of State John Kerry announced Saturday. "General Allen is a patriot and a remarkable leader," Kerry said in a statement issued late Saturday. "His extraordinary career in the military speaks for itself." Allen's official title is Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL. ISIL is another name for the Islamic State, which is also known as ISIS. Allen, who has been serving as a security adviser to Secretary of State John Kerry, is expected to work with...

Retired Marine Gen. John Allen will coordinate the broad international effort to battle the Islamic State militants, as the campaign against the extremist group ramps up and nations begin to determine what role each will play, U.S. officials said Thursday. Allen, who has been serving as a security adviser to Secretary of State John Kerry, is expected to work with the almost 40 nations around the world who have agreed to join the fight and help them coordinate what each will contribute, several officials told The Associated Press. The officials spoke about Allen's expected appointment on condition of anonymity because...

Gen. John Allen recently retired from the military following his post as the commander of the International Security Assistance Force, but the memories of the 561 troops who died under his command - and the many thousands who were wounded - have not retired from his mind. "I think about them every day; I think about them at night," Allen told On the Radar. "And there's a moment of reflection about those 561 empty chairs around dinner tables." He described the war in Afghanistan as "a conflict of sacrifice" and said his focus now is to make sure the country...

BANGKOK — Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta has ordered the Pentagon to find out why so many generals and admirals have become embroiled in legal and ethical problems, a trend exacerbated by recent investigations of two of the military’s best-known commanders. The Pentagon disclosed Panetta’s directive on Thursday after he arrived in Thailand as part of a visit to Asia. But aides insisted that he had been considering the review for some time and that it was not prompted by revelations that the FBI has been investigating former CIA director David H. Petraeus, a retired Army general, and Marine Gen....

TAMPA — The emails were anguished, pleading and sent straight to the mayor. "Bob, hope all is well," Jill Kelley wrote at 5:57 a.m. Tuesday to Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn, whom she knows socially. What came next offers a glimpse into Kelley's state of mind as a national scandal blew up in her front yard. "My kids are scared, and need their 'home' back," she wrote, asking for help with "paparazzi" at her Bayshore Boulevard mansion. At 6:18 a.m. Wednesday, she emailed again. "Dear Mayor Bob," she wrote, saying that her name, along with those of former CIA director David...

The resignation of CIA Director David Petraeus over an extramarital affair has raised and will continue to raise a number of questions. First among them (OK, maybe not first, national security being more important, but stay with me) is why should he have resigned? I am always amused when journalists use the words "sex scandal" when writing about such things. Having abandoned most standards for what used to be called "upright behavior," culture now "tsk-tsks" when someone is caught in a compromising position. Bill Clinton didn't have to resign after the Monica Lewinsky scandal. He lied about their assignations under...

This is the biography of Grayson Wolfe husband of Natalie Khawam the twin sister of Jill Kelley Khawam who was receiving a virtual data dump from Gen Allen. Is there some connection here to some sort of clandestine intelligence gathering operation on the part of the the interestingly named Akkadian Private Ventures ? Allen routinely received large quantities of highly sensitive intelligence relating to the entire Id East-SW Asia area. Who or why he was sending such huge amounts of data to is the real mystery of this convuluted drama. Grayson is a founding partner of Akkadian Private Ventues, LLC...

While Secretary of State Hillary Clinton boozes it up in Australia and the Pentagon grapples with more floozy eruptions, outraged military families are still waiting for answers about the forgotten 9/14 attack on Camp Bastion. Muckrakers and distraction engineers are having a front-page field day with the so-called "sex scandal." But for surviving relatives and colleagues of heroic Marine Lt. Col. Christopher Raible and Sgt. Bradley Atwell, it's the national security scandal at Afghanistan's Camp Bastion that deserves headline coverage. There's been a virtual blackout of the alarming story in the national press. As I reported last month, the meticulously...

Here we go again. Obama is taking down the leadership of Americas military.(my words) According to a senior U.S. defense official, the FBI has uncovered between 20,000 and 30,000 pages of “potentially inappropriate” emails between Allen and Jill Kelley, a 37-year-old Tampa woman whose close friendship with Petraeus ultimately led to his downfall. Allen, a Marine, succeeded Petraeus as the top allied commander in Afghanistan in July 2011.

"The FBI probe into the sex scandal that prompted CIA Director David Petraeus to resign has expanded to ensnare Gen. John R. Allen, the commander of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, the Pentagon announced early Tuesday," the Washington Post reports.

The FBI probe into the sex scandal that prompted CIA Director David Petraeus to resign has expanded to ensnare Gen. John R. Allen, the commander of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, the Pentagon announced early Tuesday. According to a senior U.S. defense official, the FBI has uncovered between 20,000 and 30,000 documents — most of them e-mails — of “potentially inappropriate” communications between Allen and Jill Kelley, a 37-year-old Tampa woman whose close relationship with Petraeus ultimately led to his downfall. Allen, a Marine, succeeded Petraeus as the top allied commander in Afghanistan in July 2011. He also served...

ABOARD A U.S. MILITARY AIRCRAFT — The FBI probe into the sex scandal that led to the resignation of CIA director David Petraeus has expanded to ensnare Gen. John R. Allen, the commander of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, the Pentagon announced early Tuesday. According to a senior U.S. defense official, the FBI has uncovered between 20,000 and 30,000 pages of “potentially inappropriate” emails between Allen and Jill Kelley, a 37-year-old Tampa woman whose close friendship with Petraeus ultimately led to his downfall. Allen, a Marine, succeeded Petraeus as the top allied commander in Afghanistan in July 2011. The...

(CNSNews.com) - Gen. John Allen, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, says he's "mad as hell" about the increasing number of insider attacks, in which Afghan soldiers and police murder the Americans who are trying to train them. "You know, we're willing to sacrifice a lot for this campaign. But we're not willing to be murdered for it," Gen. Allen told CBS' "60 Minutes" in a segment that aired on Sunday. Gen. Allen told CBS Correspondent Lara Logan that the insider attacks will continue: "The enemy recognizes this is a vulnerability. You know, in Iraq, the signature weapon system that...

An air strike by NATO-led forces in Afghanistan killed Taliban fighters, including a local leader, who were responsible for a weekend helicopter crash that killed 38 troops, the worst single incident in 10 years of war. "We dealt with them in a kinetic strike," General John Allen, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, told reporters at the Pentagon. Gen. Allen said the military tracked the Taliban fighters for several days after the helicopter went down. Forces reportedly trailed the fighters to a position in Chak District, Wardak Province, and then US F-16s struck and killed them Tuesday....

For all of us at this "small newspaper in South Texas" or as the host of MSNBC's "The Situation" Tucker Carlson says "podunk paper," it's enlightening — and sometimes embarrassing — to look at our big brothers and sisters in the national media on a story we each are covering. The first step we could all see coming. Someone should have given White House press secretary Scott McClellan a blindfold as he stood at the podium Monday afternoon. The White House press corps spent the previous day stewing about how the White House had failed to deliver a press conference...

Code: ZE05122523 Date: 2005-12-25 Opus Dei on John Allen's New Book We're "Neither Angels nor Demons," Says Spokesman ROME, DEC. 25, 2005 (Zenit.org).- An Opus Dei spokesman has expressed satisfaction with a new book on the personal prelature written by an American journalist. Marc Carroggio, who oversees Opus Dei's relationship with international journalists in Rome, said he was satisfied with the book just published by John Allen. "Opus Dei: An Objective Look Behind the Myths and Reality of the Most Controversial Force in the Catholic Church" has been published so far in English, Portuguese and Korean. Carroggio told ZENIT that...

    Cover story The Vatican’s enforcer By JOHN L. ALLEN JR. NCR StaffCardinal Joseph Alois Ratzinger was born in rural Bavaria on April 16, exactly 72 years ago. Perhaps it is fate that the day was Holy Saturday and his parents were Joseph and Mary -- eerie foreshadowing for a child who would grow up to become a stark sign of contradiction in the world’s largest Christian church.Like so much else about Ratzinger, how far to press that biblical parallel is contested. Some say his 18 years as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,...

Interview with Jesuit Fr. Robert Taft of the Pontifical Oriental Institute February 4, 2004 By John L. Allen, Jr. Rome Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, is scheduled to travel to Moscow Feb. 16-20, 2004 for a meeting with the Patriarch of Moscow, Alexy II. In anticipation of Kasper's trip, NCR Rome correspondent, John L. Allen Jr. sat down with Jesuit Fr. Robert Taft of the Pontifical Oriental Institute. Taft, a pioneer in Eastern liturgical studies and a veteran of East/West dialogues, is one of the leading experts on Orthodoxy in the Catholic Church....