Free Republic

Startling revelations by French intelligence experts back David Shayler's alleged 'fantasy'about Gadaffi plot Martin Bright, home affairs editor Sunday November 10, 2002 The Observer British intelligence paid large sums of money to an al-Qaeda cell in Libya in a doomed attempt to assassinate Colonel Gadaffi in 1996 and thwarted early attempts to bring Osama bin Laden to justice. The latest claims of MI6 involvement with Libya's fearsome Islamic Fighting Group, which is connected to one of bin Laden's trusted lieutenants, will be embarrassing to the Government, which described similar claims by renegade MI5 officer David Shayler as 'pure fantasy'. The...

Steven Kim, who worked as an employee of a contractor, was named in a federal indictment unsealed Friday. He was charged with illegally disclosing national defence information, which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison, and with making false statements to the FBI, which has a maximum five-year sentence. Steven Kim It comes only a month after an Army official was arrested for allegedly leaking classified documents to the Wikileaks whistle-blower website. The Justice Department said in June 2009 Kim knowingly passed information about US intelligence concerning a foreign country to a national news organisation and in September...

A white, unmarked Boeing 737 landed in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, before dawn on a CIA mission so secretive, many in the nation's war on terrorism were kept in the dark. Four of the nation's most highly valued terrorist prisoners were aboard. *snip* Then, months later, they were just as quietly whisked away before the Supreme Court could give them access to lawyers. *snip* It also shows how insistent the Bush administration was that terrorists must be held outside the U.S. court system.

WASHINGTON (AFP) – A top US lawmaker on Monday blasted the source of a huge cache of leaked military documents on the Afghan war and said such leakers belong in the "orange jump suits" of jailed criminals. "It is shocking that any American, much less someone in the Pentagon, would betray his country and possibly put our soldiers at risk by leaking information on the ongoing war in Afghanistan," said the senior Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Kit Bond. "The damage to our national security caused by leaks like this won't stop until we see more perpetrators in orange...

The Obama administration’s crackdown on leaks to the press has snared a high-profile conviction of an FBI linguist, who was sentenced to 20 months in prison Monday after pleading guilty to giving classified information to a blogger. The sentence for Shamai Leibowitz is likely to become the longest ever served by a government employee accused of passing national security secrets to a member of the media. His case represents only the third known conviction in U.S. history for a government official or contractor providing classified information to the press. And it reflects a surprising development: President Barack Obama’s Justice Department...

EN ROUTE TO OSHKOSH, Wis., Nov. 12, 2009 – Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates today condemned a spate of leaks regarding both the Afghanistan strategy deliberations and last week's shootings at Fort Hood, Texas, threatening to fire anyone in the Defense Department he finds is involved. "I am appalled by the amount of leaking that has been going on," Gates told reporters traveling with him today in the wake of media reports following yesterday's national security session on Afghanistan, President Barack Obama's eighth in the past two months. Gates said he has little doubt that some of those leaks have...

8:40am PT (11:40am ET): During a break, Edmonds and the attorneys stepped outside. DoJ still a no-show, so the questioning has proceeded, and Edmonds has been able to say "everything that she hasn't been able to say so far, implicating many members of Congress in a criminal conspiracy," according to interviews with Fein and others. Edmonds' attorney, Michael Kohn said: "The Justice Department decided not to show. Therefore, the deposition has gone much more smoothly than we had anticipated." There are apparently a handful of mostly independent and foreign media outlets present outside the NWC. No corporate MSM, from the...

On Friday, the CIA busted one of its own and charged him — or her — with leaking classified information. While this guy or gal goes to jail, over at The Washington Post, reporter Dana Priest is still admiring the brand new Pulitzer Prize sitting on her mantle, for writing about what this very leaker told her: the secret prison story. It was last November when Priest published a story in The Washington Post that the U.S. was maintaining a secret array of prisons where American intelligence could interrogate Al Qaeda-types who had been captured on the field of battle...

How upset are you over the CIA “secret prison scandal”? Maybe you said, “What scandal?”, or maybe you’ve glanced at stories about it carried in the back pages of your newspaper. Here in Europe, it’s the giant screaming front page headline story on every paper you pick up from England to Germany. The Europeans are in a state of high emotional froth over CIA “renditions” of Moslem terrorists seized in one of their countries and taken to a “secret prison” in Poland or elsewhere. The Euroweenies are far more concerned with the “human rights” of the terrorists than they are...

A civil servant who leaked a secret memo about George W. Bush wanted it to be seen by US presidential candidate John Kerry, the Old Bailey heard. David Keogh, 50, from Northampton, is said to have passed a highly sensitive document detailing talks between Mr. Bush and Tony Blair to Leo O'Connor. Mr. Keogh told jurors the contents of the memo had preyed on his mind. Mr. Keogh and Mr. O'Connor, 44, also of Northampton, deny three charges under the Official Secrets Act. Mr. Keogh had been asked to copy out the memo for distribution to high-ranking UK officials. The...

A civil servant and an MP's researcher have been found guilty of leaking a secret memo about talks between George Bush and Tony Blair. David Keogh, 50, from Northampton, has been found guilty of two offences under the Official Secrets Act. MP's researcher Leo O'Connor was found guilty of one Official Secrets offence. It recorded Oval Office talks between Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair about Iraq in 2004, the Old Bailey was told. Sentencing was adjourned for reports........

The New York Sun's Josh Gerstein is trying to find out what the Bush administration is and isn't doing to stop the drip-drip-dripping of the information faucet. He has gone to court and won a newsworthy ruling. Via the NYSun (hat tip - Betsy Newmark): A New York Sun reporter won an unusual victory in federal court in San Francisco last week, when a federal judge ordered the Department of Justice and other government agencies to respond to the reporter's request for a variety of documents that could show what efforts the Bush administration has made to investigate leaks to...

The Supreme Court ruled against The New York Times on Monday, refusing to block the government from reviewing the phone records of two Times reporters in a leak investigation of a terrorism-funding probe. snip...The current dispute stems from Shenon and Miller calling two charities for comment after learning of the planned freeze on their assets from confidential sources. The Justice Department says the reporters' calls tipped off the charities of upcoming government raids.

What if the CIA leakers were tasked by bin Laden to analyze the US reponse to the 9/11 attacks. From bin Laden's top intel people, January 2001 Al Qaeda NIE: "The 9/11 attacks will become the 'cause celebre' for Americans, breeding a deep resentment of radical muslim involvement in the Western world and cultivating supporters for the global democracy movement. Should Americans responding to the 9/11 attacks perceive themselves, and be perceived, to have failed, we judge fewer fighters will be inspired to carry on the fight. We assess that the underlying factors fueling the spread of the movement outweigh...

ABC News is reporting that Current and former CIA officers speaking to ABC News on the condition of confidentiality say the United States scrambled to get all the suspects off European soil before Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived there today. The officers say 11 top al Qaeda suspects have now been moved to a new CIA facility in the North African desert. The disgrunted intelligence officers even disclosed an actual list of 12 high-value targets allegedly held by the CIA, and ABC is reporting it : Abu Zubaydah: Held first in Thailand then Poland Ibn Al-Shaykh al-Libi: Held in...

The disruption of an alleged terrorist plot to blow up airliners shows the importance of intelligence gathering and the need to pursue the "traitors" who recently leaked information about classified government programs, Sen. Rick Santorum said Friday. Those classified programs "were important for us to be able to confront an enemy in time of war," Santorum said. "When people leak that kind of information, to me, that is traitorous activity." Santorum, the No. 3 Senate Republican, acknowledged that he did not know whether classified programs recently brought to light by leaks, such as a National Security Agency warrantless wiretapping program,...

The New York Times may not withhold reporters' phone records from a federal grand jury investigating an alleged leak of a pending government raid on two Islamic charities suspected of supporting terrorism, a federal appeals court ruled yesterday. A three-judge panel of the New York-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit ruled 2 to 1 that the Times has no First Amendment or other legal right to refuse a demand for the records from the grand jury in Chicago, which was empaneled by U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald. The government's interest in rooting out a possible crime outweighs...

Finally some reports are coming out regarding the NSA leak investigation and their prime target for the leaks: Capitol Hill. Jay Rockefeller, who was interviewed for the NY Times story which exposed our efforts to identify terrorists here in the US ready to attack us, is probably on the interview list. From the sounds of the reporting it does not appear to be a pleasant exercise for these all powerful men and women in Congress: There are also indications from at least one Senator, Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), that the FBI is asking Members about comments of theirs that appeared in...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration was running several intelligence programs, including one major activity, that it kept secret from Congress until whistle-blowers told the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, the committee's chairman said on Sunday. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, a Michigan Republican who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, said on Fox News Sunday he had written a four-page to President George W. Bush in May warning him that the failure to disclose the intelligence activities to Congress may be a violation of the law. In doing so, he confirmed a story that first ran in Sunday editions of the New...

Politically biased U.S. Customs agents lay in wait for Rush Limbaugh to arrive at Palm Beach International Airport. They eagerly pounced on him and spread the word far and wide that he had committed a crime that was not a crime at all. That's what Limbaugh says happened when he arrived back in the United States last week, after a trip to the Dominican Republic. He told his national radio audience Wednesday that U.S. Customs agents were waiting to spring a trap for him and embarrass him in the national media. According to Limbaugh, when he got back from three...