Free Republic

In 1985, his dear friend Ronald Reagan was preparing for his first summit with Mikhail Gorbachev when a Ukrainian sailor named Miroslav Medvid twice jumped off a Soviet ship into the Mississippi River seeking political asylum. The Soviets insisted that Medvid had accidentally fallen off -- twice. The State Department did not want an international incident on the eve of the summit. But Helms believed it was wrong to send a man back behind the Iron Curtain -- no matter the cost to superpower diplomacy. He tried to block the ship's departure by requiring the sailor to appear before the...

Breaking!.... Britain's top spy in coma amid Russian poisoning fearsSpy MysteryFOX News - Sun Jul 6, 2008 (see "WATCH Fox News Video" at upper right of the FoxNews.com home page for video link.

Got this off some blog a while back, but the person makes some interesting observations. His central point is that, since the forgeries were such obvious fakes, were they 'planted' specifically to be exposed as frauds? (i.e., not to actually convince anyone)... July 13, 2003Niger Uranium - Why the Forgeries During the lead-up to the Iraq war, documents surfaced which purported to show an attempt by Saddam to buy Niger uranium. These documents turned out to be forgeries. Nobody is asking: Why were these forgeries made and who made them?They certainly served a purpose: they cast serious doubt on any...

Russian agents came close to carrying out the perfect assassination on British soil when they killed Alexander Litvinenko... Security sources have disclosed that the former Russian spy would have died within hours had the poisoned tea he was given been served hot. Litvinenko, a former KGB agent who had become a critic of the government of Russia's then president, Vladimir Putin... Security sources say that during the meeting Litvinenko took just a few sips of the tea but left the remainder of the cup because it was cold. "If Litvinenko had drunk all the tea he would have been dead...

MOSCOW On Nov. 9, 2007, during a special operation in the village of Chemulga, in the republic of Ingushetia, Russian special forces shot and killed an individual by the name of Rakhim Amriyev. Eyewitnesses said that they shot him in the head and placed an automatic rifle beside his body. Then, as dozens of villagers who had run out of their homes looked on, the troops used an armored personnel carrier to demolish a wall of the one-room house where Amriyev lived and announced that he had died in a shootout. You may ask how I can be sure that...

Quote:This poster design inspires you to learn about design history. There are a lot of interesting artists and art movements. The past is a rich design resource that can have a positive influence on your designs.It is a poster design inspired by an art movement called Russian Constructivism. I cut up some images and paste them together to create a stylized revolutionary design and then tied it all together by overlaying some texture to give it a vintage feel.

Despite renewed friction between Russia and the United States, the specter of open conflict has faded since the days of the Cold War. However, equipment designed by the two nations remains on opposite sides of 21st-century battlefields. This isn't surprising: America is the top vendor of major conventional weapons, and Russia ranks number two. Both countries share a legacy of making military equipment to counter the other's capabilities and a long history of parlaying arms sales into geopolitical influence. These deals, sanctioned by both national governments, are extensions of foreign policy. A resurgent Russia wants cash and international influence, while...

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has urged France to distance itself from America, comparing the US to a 'frightening monster'. "How can one be such a shining example of democracy at home and a frightening monster abroad?'' Putin said in an interview with French newspaper Le Monde in Paris released on Saturday. "France, I hope, will continue to conduct an independent foreign policy,'' said Putin. He said the US was creating a new Berlin Wall in Europe by pushing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to expand into ex-Soviet states Georgia and Ukraine. The former Russian President also voiced concern...

On February 22, 2008, Ben Smith of Politico reported a story that ran under the headline, “Obama once visited ‘60s radicals.” It concerned how, “In 1995, [Illinois] State Senator Alice Palmer introduced her chosen successor, Barack Obama, to few of the district’s influencial liberal at the home of two will known figures on the local left: William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.” Dr. Quentin Young, described as “a prominent Chicago physician and advocate for single-payers health care,” [1] was quoted as saying “I can remember being one of small group of people who came to Bill Ayers’ house to learn that...

Of Barack Obama’s contacts and associations with anti-American political figures, none is more controversial than Frank Marshall Davis, a writer an poet identified as a member of the Communist Party USA by several sources, including some sources sympatheitic to him. Obama and Davis met in Hawaii, at a time when a young Obama was in need of a black role model and mentor. Obama’s relationship with Davis, including subsequent associations with radical, communist and socialist figures in Chicago, should be investigated for the benefit of promoting the public interest and the public’s right to know. Indeed, America’s Survival, Inc. believes...

Today Barack Hussein Obama claimed that Kennedy talked with Kruschchev during the Cuban Missile Crises, and as a result,the the Russian removed these missiles from Cuba. Unfortunately for BHO, no such event ever took place. Quote "But when the world was on the brink of nuclear holocaust, Kennedy talked to Khrushchev and he got those missiles out of Cuba." It was Bobby Kennedy who gave Dobrynin the ultimatum to the Soviets to remove the missiles the Cuba. No one in the press ever challenged him.

FP: Paul Kengor, welcome back to Frontpage Interview. Kengor: Always great to be back, Jamie. FP: We’re here today to revisit Ted Kennedy’s reaching out to the KGB during the Reagan period. Refresh our readers’ memories a bit. Kengor: The episode is based on a document produced 25 years ago this week. I discussed it with you in our earlier interview back in November 2006. In my book, The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism, I presented a rather eye-opening May 14, 1983 KGB document on Ted Kennedy. The entire document, unedited, unabridged, is printed in the book,...

Asked during the question-and-answer period following his National Press Club speech on Monday [April 28, 2008] why he charged the U.S. Government with manufacturing the AIDS virus to kill black people, Barack Obama’s “former” pastor Jeremiah Wright cited a 1996 book by Leonard Horowitz, Emerging Viruses: AIDS and Ebola. This rang a bell. I had exchanged correspondences with Horowitz several years ago because I caught him promoting an old Soviet disinformation theme that has been disavowed by former Soviet and KGB officials.

Iowahawk Guest Opinionby Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY)From the earliest days of the campaign, the race for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination has been a hard fought, neck-and-neck struggle. But now, as the race enters its final stretch, it has become increasingly obvious that the eventual outcome is no longer in doubt. With a difficult general election looming, Democrats need to put our family squabbles aside and unite behind the eventual nominee. And so, in the interest of Party unity, and his own health, I am calling on Senator Obama to gracefully accept defeat.First, let me congratulate Senator Obama and his...

The weekly Wprost, (..), shows a politburo document, signed by Mikhail Gorbachev, which appears to warrant a KGB contract killing on John Paul II. So claims Polish journalist John O. Kohler in a book, also released tomorrow, Chodzi o papie¿a. Szpiedzy w watykanie - (About the Pope: Spies in the Vatican). The politburo document says: "Use all available possibilities to prevent a new political trend, initiated by the Polish pope." The document, which dates back to November 1979, - one year after Karol Wojtyla became pope - is signed by eight top Party officials including Konstantin Rusakov, who coordinated action...

MOSCOW (AFP) — Georgia has called on the United Nations to send more observers to the separatist Georgian region of Abkhazia to check on the increase in Russian troops there, a parliamentary spokesman said Saturday. "We have serious suspicions that there have been violations," said Nika Sturoua the vice-president of the defence and security committee, the Interfax news agency reported. Sturova said they believed that Moscow had exceeded the quota of troops allowed for its contingent in the pro-Russian province and that "illegal weapons" had been deployed there. Sturovas said that the UN was going to send extra observers to...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia has endured years of criticism over its human rights record but now it is hitting back by setting up watchdogs in New York and Paris to challenge the West over its own rights record. Natalya Narochnitskaya, one of the leaders of the project, said the Institute of Democracy and Cooperation will offer a fresh perspective on human rights that is not hostage to the political agenda of Western governments. "American policy under the flag of democracy and human rights in actual fact is a Trotskyist permanent revolution which serves the aim of giving them (political) mastery,"...

FBI files from 1976, recently made public under the Freedom of Information Act, confirm the connections between Weatherman, Havana, and Moscow. Weatherman [Weather Underground] leaders like Mark Rudd traveled illegally to Havana in 1968 to engage in terrorist training. There, camps set up by Soviet KGB Colonel Vadim Kotchergine were educating Westerners both in Marxist philosophy and urban warfare.

V&V Q&A: On the Zimmerman Affair By Dr. Paul Kengor April 18, 2008 Editor's Note: The "V&V Q&A" is an e-publication from the Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College. Each issue will present an interview with an intriguing thinker or opinion-maker that we hope will prove illuminating to readers everywhere. This latest edition is a fascinating blast from the past. Dr. Paul Kengor, executive director of the Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College, interviews Marc Zimmerman, former staff member to Senator Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), and a man whose name and face occupied all the...

Police probe 'new KGB poison attack' as defector Gordievsky is found unconscious in Surrey home 6th April 2008 Special Branch is investigating an alleged attempt to murder Oleg Gordievsky, the KGB double-agent who spied on Russia for British intelligence at the height of the Cold War. The former Soviet colonel, who escaped to Britain in 1985, says he was poisoned by a Russian assassin who visited him at his secret safe-house in Surrey. He fears he is the latest victim of revenge attacks by Russian intelligence on high-profile defectors. Alexander Litvinenko, another former Russian spy, was murdered in London in...

AN ALLEGED attempt to kill a former Russian spy who defected to Britain was being investigated by police last night. Oleg Gordievsky was admitted to a hospital in Guildford after falling ill in November last year. And yesterday he claimed he had been poisoned with the highly toxic metal thallium in a botched assassination attempt. Gordievsky, a KGB double agent who spied on Russia for British intelligence during the 1980s, claims he was targeted by a Russian assassin who visited him at his safe house in Surrey. The 69-year-old was unconscious for 34 hours after falling ill last year and...

German police and state security officers have launched a wide-scale hunt for a Russian artist and critic of Vladimir Putin's government who disappeared from her Berlin flat 10 days ago. Anna Mikhalchuk, 52, who has lived in the German capital since November, went for a walk on Good Friday and failed to return. At the weekend, police divers and sniffer dogs trawled a lake and searched allotments close to the home she shares with her husband, Michail Ryklin, a prize-winning philosopher and author. "On that afternoon she said goodbye to me and said she wanted to go for a short...

MOSCOW, March 26 (Reuters) - Russian firm Stroytransgaz has signed a protocol with Iraq to reactivate an oil export pipeline to Syria's Mediterranean terminal of Banias, the Russian firm said on Wednesday. It said it had signed the deal in Amman, Jordan, with Iraqi North Oil Company. "The participation of Stroytransgaz in this project will represent a substantial contribution by Russian firms to reconstruction and modernisation of Iraqi economic infrastructure," the statement said. Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin wrote a letter to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki calling on him to support Russian investments in the country. The letter...

Moscow has stepped up its attempts to become Washington's main rival in the Middle East with an audacious attempt to win a large stake of Iraq's oil wealth. Glossing over his opposition to the American-led invasion and a prolonged period of poor relations with Baghdad, President Vladimir Putin wrote to Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, this week setting out the case for Russian investment in the energy sector. The move comes at a time when Russia is aggressively expanding its influence in the Middle East, an offensive that some say echoes the Cold War competition for patronage once waged...

MOSCOW: The head of OAO Lukoil said Tuesday that the Russian oil company has come a step closer to renewing its work at Iraq's massive West Qurna-2 oil field. In a statement released by the company, Lukoil President Vagit Alekperov said the agreement was reached during a trip to Iraq where he met the nation's president, prime minister and other top officials. The agreement calls for forming a working group that will "actualize the terms for beginning the realization of the West Qurna-2 project." Lukoil — one of Russia's largest private oil companies — had a prewar deal to develop...

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Russia is prepared to help in the reconstruction and modernisation of Iraq’s economic infrastructure. Mr Putin has written to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki asking him to support Russian investment in Iraq’s oil industry. Putin said he would especially like Russian companies to become involved in replacing infrastructure in the Qurna oilfield and becoming involved in the rebuilding of a pipeline between the northern city of Kirkuk and the Syrian port of Baniyas. Russia’s large energy company Lukoil signed a multi-billion-dollar contract in 1997 to explore the West Qurna 2 oilfield but was expelled...

Wednesday, March 26, 2008 E-Mail this article to a friend Printer Friendly Version Share this story! del.icio.us digg Reddit Furl Fark TailRank Ma.gnolia NewsVine Simpy Spurl Russia and Egypt sign nuclear energy pact * Russia plans Middle East peace talks * Says it will not play ‘junior role’ to US after Annapolis NOVO-OGARYOVO: Russia and Egypt signed an agreement on Tuesday paving the way for Russian firms to bid for lucrative contracts to build nuclear power plants in Egypt. The nuclear energy deal was signed after Russian President Vladimir Putin and Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak met near the Russian capital...

An international manhunt was launched last night for a Russian-born British media magnate whose mysterious disappearance has possible links to the murder of former KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko.

Russian secret services have foiled an attack on President Vladimir Putin close to Red Square, it has been claimed. A man with a sniper rifle and Kalashnikov assault gun was found and detained in a rented apartment overlooking Moscow's St Basil's Cathedral, on March 2, the day of the Presidential election in Russia. Mr Putin and his president-elect, Dmitry Medvedev, appeared under the cathedral for a late-night pop concert once early results indicated that Mr Medvedev would win a landslide. The popular Tvoi Den newspaper, which broke the story, claimed that both men could have been killed from the flat...

MOSCOW (AP) - Prosecutors have charged a Russian blogger who wrote on a popular Internet site that police should be publicly incinerated in what is believed to be the country's first such case against a blogger. Savva Terentyev said Wednesday he was charged with inciting hatred in a court in the northern city of Syktyvkar. The charges filed Tuesday stemmed from his posting on a Web forum in February 2007 that criticized police in the wake of a raid on an opposition newspaper. "They're trash—and those that become cops are simply trash, dumb, uneducated representatives of the animal world," he...

By the third week of January this year, we heard Russia announce that it would not hesitate to be the first to use nuclear weapons in battle, that it would resume this May parading tanks and missiles through Red Square in the Soviet fashion, that it would reestablish the application of double jeopardy in criminal trials and would file criminal charges against former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, in order to stop him from running for president in March. Back in April of 2006, when I started little blog called La Russophobe with the goal of warning the world that, in...

Now The Fun Begins With Russia Over Bout's Arrest By Douglas Farah It did not take the Russian government long to the Russian government friends and lawyers for the recently-arrested Viktor Boutto begin working to protect him again. The tactic now is to seek the extradition of Bout, arrested in Thailand in an elaborate sting operation run by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), back to Russia, rather than the United States. Of course, Bout, who has armed rebels, criminals and terrorists from the Taliban in Afghanistan to the RUF in Sierra Leone to the FARC in Colombia, has always...

Snip..... In what could be the biggest State Department scandal since State Department official and United Nations founder Alger Hiss was exposed as a Soviet spy, a top Clinton State Department official and former Time magazine journalist has been identified as having been a trusted contact of the Russian intelligence service. Snip... The sensational charge against Strobe Talbott is made in a new book based on interviews with a Russian defector. Snip... Talbott has been and continues to be a major foreign policy thinker. Back in 2000, when he was named head of the Yale Center for the Study of...

"[T]he powers that be in Washington are threatening the course of world history, neither more nor less." -Grigori Dadyants, Sotsialisticheskaya Industriya, March 1983 "It is an Evil Empire. It's time to close it down." -Ronald Reagan, White House, March 1983 It was 25 years ago this month, March 1983, that the Soviet Union went into hysterics, both realizing and arguably beginning the terminal phase in its deadly life cycle.

Michael Sheridan of the Times of London interviewed the men who planned, financed, and conducted the 2002 Bali bombing that left 202 people dead, including many Muslims. Not surprisingly, none regret the terrorist attack, conducted to “help Muslims”. They do regret killing the Muslims, however, but blame the CIA and/or the Mossad — for building the bomb: Did he deny the charges? “People called me the mastermind of the Bali bombing,” he said. “Maybe right, maybe wrong. My only mission was to help the Muslims.”And then he said something extraordinary. He claimed the bombers had never meant to kill so...

Russians deserve better than the parody of an election in which they will be asked to choose President Vladimir Putin’s successor. The Kremlin has done everything to ensure that Dmitry Medvedev, Mr Putin’s nominee, will be elected by an overwhelming margin on Sunday. The ex-KGB men who dominate the administration have squeezed effective opposition from the political scene. Parliament, the courts, business and the media have all been bent to the president’s will. Only three candidates are allowed to run against Mr Medvedev: Gennady Zyuganov, the veteran Communist party chief, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the ultra-nationalist leader, and an unknown former public...

<p>One year ago, Kremlin critic Paul Joyal was gunned down in the driveway of his suburban Maryland home. The case remains unsolved — but some see the hand of Russia in the shooting.</p> <p>Joyal, 53, is the former chief of security for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and a former business partner of retired Soviet KGB Gen. Oleg Kalugin.</p>

Gerry Adams famously said about the IRA that "they never went away, you know", and researching the current BBC World Service series, After the KGB, left me with a very similar impression. As the BBC's Moscow correspondent in the late 1980s and early to mid-90s, I witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union and the outpouring of popular hatred for the regime's notorious secret police. I was in Lubyanka Square in front of the KGB's headquarters on 22 August 1991, as demonstrators toppled the statue of Feliks Dzerzhinsky, the organisation's founder. When a hawser was tied round Dzerzhinsky's neck and...

Russia's new ambassador to Nato has warned the west to expect no change in Moscow's tough foreign policy after the presidential elections next month - in part because Vladimir Putin, the outgoing president, would remain "as strong as ever". As Russia prepares for elections on March 2 that are almost certain to see Dmitry Medvedev elected president, there have been questions over whether he might soften Moscow's stance. But in an interview with the Financial Times, Dmitry Rogozin, a Russian nationalist, said: "Medvedev expects to have friendly relations with his neighbours. But he will defend Russia's national interests in the...

Vladimir Putin has delivered perhaps his most menacing tirade against the West yet, repeating threats to train nuclear missiles on Europe and warning of unspecified retalliation if Kosovo declared independence. Adressing his last press conference as Russian president, Mr Putin mounted a defiant display that demonstrated more emphatically than ever the widening gulf between Moscow and its former Cold War rivals. In a vintage performance, the former KGB spy laced almost five hours of invective with crude insults, threats and amonitions often expressed in the argot of the Russian street. Reserving his greatest ire for the United States, which he...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Vladimir Putin said on Thursday he saw no need to hang his successor's portrait in his office once he steps down as Russia's president. It is accepted etiquette in Russia for all officials to hang up a portrait of the head of state. But Putin's protege Dmitry Medvedev is expected to win next month's election while he stays on as a very influential prime minister. "In order to establish my relationship with Dmitry Anatolyevich (Medvedev) I won't need to hang his portrait on my wall if he is elected president," Putin said. "As for my relations with...

What killed Badri Patarkatsishvili? As the police scour his home for clues and a pathologist conducts a post-mortem examination, conspiracy theorists will point to the company he kept on the day he died. On Tuesday afternoon, hours before his death, Patarkatsishvili was with Boris Berezovsky at the law offices of Lord Goldsmith, the former attorney general, in the City. Berezovsky is at the centre of London-based opposition to Russian president Vladimir Putin's government and on Tuesday he, Patarkatsishvili and their friend Yuli Dubov swore witness statements related to various cases in the former Soviet Union involving seizure of assets and...

The sudden death of an exiled Georgian billionaire may have been another "Alexander Litvinenko-style" murder, it is feared. A major crime squad is investigating the death of 52-year-old Badri Patarkatsishvili, whose body was found at his country mansion in Surrey at about 11pm last night. His family said he suffered a heart attack - but Surrey Police have launched an investigation to confirm the exact cause of death after reports of a plot to kill him. Sky News' home affairs correspondent Mark White said: "The police want to leave no stone uncovered. "In the light of Litvinenko's death in 2006...

MOSCOW, Feb. 8 - President Vladimir Putin said Friday that "a new arms race has been unleashed in the world" as the United States moves forward with a missile defense system in Eastern Europe. Russia will field new weapons in response, he said, dismissing American assurances that the missile system is not directed against Russia as nothing more than "diplomatic cover." "It's not our fault. We didn't start it ... funneling multibillions of dollars into developing weapons systems," Putin declared in what may be his final major address before he leaves the Kremlin after presidential elections March 2, to become...

New NATO intelligence chief was trained by KGB A communist who trained with the Soviet security agency known as the KGB will head the National Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) intelligence committee and the powerful U.S. ambassador did nothing to stop the appointment which will undoubtedly compromise national security. NATO’s new intelligence chief (Sandor Laborc) heads the Hungarian secret services and spent six years at the KGB’s academy in Moscow during the 1980s, creating serious concerns among diplomats that national security will be compromised during his tenure. Based n Brussels Belgium, NATO is a military alliance of 26 countries from North...

New NATO intelligence chief was trained by KGB By Judy Dempsey Published: February 3, 2008 BERLIN: The new chief of the Hungarian secret services, who spent six years at the KGB's academy in Moscow during the 1980s, has become chairman of NATO's intelligence committee, a development that diplomats said could compromise the security of the alliance. Sandor Laborc, 49, was personally chosen by Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany of Hungary as director of the country's counterintelligence National Security Office in December, after a bitter dispute between the governing coalition led by the Socialists - the former Communists - and the main...

The new chief of the Hungarian secret services, who spent six years at the KGB's academy in Moscow during the 1980s, has become chairman of NATO's intelligence committee, a development that diplomats said could compromise the security of the alliance. Sandor Laborc, 49, was personally chosen by Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany of Hungary as director of the country's counterintelligence National Security Office in December, after a bitter dispute between the governing coalition led by the Socialists - the former Communists - and the main opposition party, Fidesz. Laborc, a former Communist who was trained at the KGB's Dzerzhinsky Academy from...

February 1, 2008 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - If we are to believe the Hillary Clinton campaign line, the main attribute which qualifies her above all others is that, "She is ready to lead on day one." She derives this alleged standing from what can only be called political osmosis, having been the wife of Bill Clinton, serving as his "co-president." This echoes a theme which Bill stated often during the 1992 presidential campaign, suggesting that a vote for him was a bargain because the lucky voter would get "two for the price of one," thus providing a...

Russia, island of stability, may save the world from global crisis 24.01.2008 Source: Pravda.Ru URL: http://english.pravda.ru/russia/economics/103625-russia_crisis-0 Russia’s Minister for Finance, Aleksey Kudrin, released a sensational statement Wednesday. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the Russian minister offered to mitigate the world credit crisis with the help of Russia’s reserves. Kudrin stated that Russia was an “island of stability in the sea of the world crisis.” “Investors will continue to invest billions of dollars in the rising Russian economy. Stock market crises and their consequences will not be utterly negative for us,” Kudrin said. “Our country managed to achieve...

Russia Issues Pre-Emptive Nuclear Threat By Sky News SkyNews - 27 minutes ago Russia's military chief of staff says Moscow would use nuclear weapons in pre-emptive strike if it felt threatened. (Advertisement) General Yuri Baluyevsky said there were no plans "to attack anyone" but reasserted Russia's right to defend itself. "To defend the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Russia and its allies, military forces will be used, including preventively, including with the use of nuclear weapons," Gen Baluyevsky said. The remarks do not represent a change in policy for Moscow. But they do come at a time of heightened tension...