Free Republic

A faux pax by Senator Diane Feinstein outed the presence of Mossad chief Tamir Pardo in Washington to discuss a possible strike on Iran. Mossad director Tamir Pardo is in Washington for talks about a possible attack on Iran's nuclear installations, Israel's Channel 2 reported on Tuesday. Pardo's visit, which would normally be conducted in secret, was revealed by US Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, 78, who made the faux pax at committee hearing. The hearing was being broadcast live by US television. Feinstein said she had spoken with Pardo, who also met with CIA director David Petraeus, adding...

A former staffer for Bay State Sen. John F. Kerry has been charged with leaking the names of CIA operatives, including one who was involved in the interrogation of terror suspects held at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, according to the U.S. Department of Justice and Kerry’s office.

A former Wikileaks spokesman claims to have deleted thousands of unpublished files that had been passed to the whistleblowing site. Daniel Domscheit-Berg told the German Newspaper Der Spiegel that the documents included a copy of the complete US no-fly list. He said he had "shredded" them to avoid their sources being compromised. Mr Domscheit-Berg previously worked alongside Julian Assange until the pair had a high profile falling-out. It is understood that he took the files off Wikileaks' servers at the time of his departure. Wikileaks confirmed the claims on its Twitter feed, saying: "We can confirm that the DDB claimed...

The breakdown in the talks at such an early stage has led to recriminations and claims that the details of the meetings and the identity of the Taliban's chief negotiator were deliberately leaked by 'paranoid' Afghan government figures. Absolute confidentiality had been a key condition for the meetings which were held in Germany and Qatar earlier this year between Tayeb Agha, Taliban leader Mullah Omar's former private secretary, and senior officials from the US State Department and Central Intelligence Agency. The meetings were chaired by Michael Steiner, Germany's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. The talks were described as a...

Well isn't this something...you think Fox News hacked into someone's computer to get these transcripts? Oh, I forgot, it's a Conservative so getting some transcripts isn't really that big a deal: The Huffington Post was passed Perry's transcripts from his years at Texas A&M University by a source in Texas. The future politician did not distinguish himself so much in the classroom. While he later became a student leader, he had to get out of academic probation to do so. He rarely earned anything above a C in his courses -- earning a C in U.S. History, a D...

DEVELOPING: NEW CASTLE, Del. -- Police on Friday afternoon came to the home of a 17-year-old high school junior to ask her about direct online communications she has had with Rep. Anthony Weiner. Two officers from the New Castle County Police Department arrived at the girl's home around 4:30 p.m. and asked to speak with the girl's mother about the daughter's contact with Weiner. Another officer appeared at the home a short time later. A FoxNews.com reporter was at the home when the police arrived. The girl, whose name is being withheld because she is a minor, told FoxNews.com, "I'm...

In a major blow to the Justice Department, one of its biggest leak prosecutions in years all but collapsed late Thursday when federal prosecutors withdrew all their felony charges against a former National Security Agency official accused of providing classified information to a journalist. Instead, under a plea deal reached with prosecutors, former NSA official Thomas Drake has agreed to plead guilty in federal court on Friday to a single misdemeanor count of "exceeding authorized use of a computer" -- a minor charge for which he will receive no jail time, a senior administration official told NBC. “This is close...

A series of messages forwarded to The Daily Caller show a top aide to former Alaska Gov. and possible presidential candidate Sarah Palin mocking top political figures and even her boss’s own daughter, Bristol Palin. RedState.com founder and CNN contributor Erick Erickson is “a total douchebag,” wrote Palin speechwriter and domestic policy adviser Rebecca Mansour in a May 22, 2010, message. “Greasy dumb ass with a talent for self-promotion. He threw himself in at the Gov’s SC rally. Self-promotion.” (Erickson said South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley invited him to the rally). Mitt Romney supporters are “wacky as hell,” Mansour wrote,...

In the hours and days after Osama bin Laden was killed by Navy SEALs, it was agreed upon by higher-ups in the White House that they would try to keep as many details about the operation as secret as possible. Quickly, as CIA head Leon Panetta said, it "fell apart" the next day. Trying to stop leaks, Mr. Panetta sent an internal memo to government employees Wednesday warning them to cease giving out sensitive information. If not, those who did not listen would be "investigated and possibly prosecuted." The memo was then promptly leaked to the press. Panetta wrote the...

Waving an iPad while questioning an official from the Obama White House, House Oversight and Government Reform committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said that administration employees could "circumvent" federal law on presidential record-keeping by using such electronic devices to send official emails from private accounts. Back in 1978, in the post-Watergate era, Congress passed the Presidential Records Act to preserve White House communications. But a lot has changed in the past 33 years, and on Tuesday the committee held a hearing about updating the law in an era of texting, instant messaging and social networking. The legislation "never envisioned...

The Army said Wednesday it has filed 22 additional charges against Pvt. 1st Class Bradley E. Manning, the soldier suspected of providing classified government documents published by the WikiLeaks anti-secrecy group. Army officials said the charges accuse Manning of using unauthorized software on government computers to extract classified information, illegally download it and transmit the data for public release by what the Army termed "the enemy."

Washington, D.C.–Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, released the following findings from the investigation by the Commerce Department’s Inspector General on emails from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) related to the “climategate” scandal. --SNIP-- Emails ‘Warrant Further Investigation’ “We found eight emails which, in our judgment, warranted further examination to clarify any possible issues involving the scientific integrity of particular NOAA scientists or NOAA’s data. As a result, we conducted interviews with the relevant NOAA scientists regarding these eight emails, and have summarized their responses and explanations in the...

Raymond A. Davis, center, is escorted to court by Pakistani security official in Lahore, Pakistan on Jan. 28, 2011. The American arrested in Pakistan after shooting two men at a crowded traffic stop was part of a covert, C.I.A.-led team of operatives conducting surveillance on militant groups deep inside the country, according to American government officials. Working from a safe house in the eastern city of Lahore, the detained American contractor, Raymond A. Davis, a retired Special Forces soldier, carried out scouting and other reconnaissance missions as a security officer for a Central Intelligence Agency task force of case...

So much for all of the White House’s efforts to keep the details of President Barack Obama’s second State of the Union address under wraps until delivery. At 7:14 p.m. – almost two hours before Obama was scheduled to speak in the House chamber – The National Journal posted a draft of the speech, making the secrecy, calculated leaks and embargoed background briefings seem quaint. The White House, furious over the leak, responded by releasing an un-embargoed copy of Obama’s speech. It landed in reporters’ in-boxes shortly before 8 p.m. National Journal editor in chief Ron Fournier told POLITICO he...

The Palestinian leaks show the Palestinian Authority leadership trying to work their way to the answer that "everybody knows." But the secrecy surrounding the documents -- and the reaction to the leak -- confirms the Israelis' worst fear: The Palestinian population does not, in fact, "know" what "everybody knows." And a Palestinian leadership that did "know" what "everybody knows" is now being reviled by its own population as traitors and sell-outs. What, after all, are the big, shameful concessions contained in the documents? Where are the wounds to Palestinian national pride? • The documents as reported demand Palestinian sovereignty over...

The offshore bank account details of 2,000 "high net worth individuals" and corporations – detailing massive potential tax evasion – will be handed over to the WikiLeaks organisation in London tomorrow by the most important and boldest whistleblower in Swiss banking history, Rudolf Elmer, two days before he goes on trial in his native Switzerland. British and American individuals and companies are among the offshore clients whose details will be contained on CDs presented to WikiLeaks at the Frontline Club in London. Those involved include, Elmer tells the Observer, "approximately 40 politicians". Elmer, who after his press conference will return...

Report: Israel used centrifuges identical to those in Iran to test out worm that set Teheran's nuclear program years back; virus was authorized by Bush administration, rather than allow an Israeli attack. Israel tested the Stuxnet virus in Dimona, according to a Sunday report by The New York Times. Israel reportedly has centrifuges that are identical to those at the Iranian nuclear site in Natanz, which were used to test the Stuxnet computer worm. In 2008, the Times reported, German company Siemens cooperated with the Idaho National Laboratory, allowing it to identify problems in the comany's computer controllers, which are...

Ex-CIA Officer Indicted for Leaking Classified Info to New York Slimes Reporter Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA officer, was indicted today for leaking classified information to New York Times reporter James Risen. The indictment shows that the federal government had access to their e-mail and phone contacts going back several years. Sterling served on the Iran desk of the CIA in the 1990s, and oversaw a classified program aimed at sabotaging the development of its nuclear programming. He left the CIA in 2000 and sued for racial discrimination (he is African American) in a case that went all the way...

LONDON — Lawyers acting for Julian Assange, the founder of the WikiLeaks antisecrecy group, said on Tuesday they would argue against a demand for his extradition to Sweden on the grounds that he might subsequently face “illegal rendition” to the United States, risking imprisonment at Guantánamo Bay, or even the death penalty. [snip] Prosecutors have gone to court to demand records of the Twitter account activity of several people linked to WikiLeaks, including Mr. Assange, according to the group and a copy of a subpoena made public late last Friday. The subpoena is the first public evidence of a criminal...

Wikileaks cannot survive further losses: AssangeForeign 2011-01-11 18:00 PARIS, Tuesday 11 January 2011 (AFP) - Wikileaks founder Julian Assange said the besieged whistleblower website "cannot survive" if it continues to haemorrhage money, in an interview broadcast in France on Tuesday. Assange, who has enraged the United States by leaking US diplomatic cables that embarrassed world leaders, has said his site has been losing almost half a million euros (650,000 dollars) a week since those leaks began. "We cannot survive the way things are going," he told the French radio station Europe 1, complaining that the organisation's ability to garner online...

The chemicals were stored in vats in the basement of an Egyptian restaurant in downtown Brussels. The suicide bomber, a former soccer player who had fallen into drug use and petty crime, had been selected. The target, the American Embassy in Paris, had been scouted. All that remained was the signal from Osama bin Laden's operatives in Afghanistan to strike. The nod was to come from a Frenchman of Algerian origin who was on his way back from training in Afghanistan. But he was arrested in transit, and he talked, spilling to French interrogators details of what could have been ...

A former CIA officer was arrested on Thursday on charges of illegally disclosing national defense information about Iran to a New York Times reporter who wrote a book. The U.S. Justice Department said Jeffrey Sterling, 43, was charged with six counts of unauthorized disclosure of national defense information and one count of unlawfully keeping national defense information, mail fraud, unauthorized conveyance of government property and obstructing justice.

We are told by careful pollsters that half of the American people believe that American troops should be brought home from Iraq immediately. This news discourages supporters of our efforts there. Not me, though: I am relieved. Given press coverage of our efforts in Iraq, I am surprised that 90 percent of the public do not want us out right now. Between January 1 and September 30, 2005, nearly 1,400 stories appeared on the ABC, CBS, and NBC evening news. More than half focused on the costs and problems of the war, four times as many as those that discussed...

      WASHINGTON — It's a tough time to be a member of the U.S. armed forces. Those serving in our all-volunteer military — and their families — are stretched and stressed by more than nine years of war. Unfortunately, our commander in chief — supposedly the champion of our soldiers, sailors, airmen, guardsmen and Marines — isn't doing anything to make serving in uniform any easier. President Barack Obama — fresh from his 3 1/2-hour "visit" to Afghanistan — continues to insist that the U.S. Senate act immediately to allow active homosexuals to serve in the military....

WASHINGTON — In most administrations, "leaks" of classified information precipitate presidential ire. Nearly all such unauthorized disclosures are the consequence of disgruntled government employees deciding that a "leak" is the best way to stop some activity they have decided should not continue. To justify their unlawful actions, they call themselves "secret whistle-blowers." The so-called "mainstream media" love them. Most American presidents do not. That's what makes the current commander in chief's reactions to a whole series of "leaks" so unusual. President Barack Obama doesn't seem to be concerned at all. President Ronald Reagan was infuriated by the publication and broadcast...

LAS VEGAS -- A security researcher involved with the Wikileaks Web site was detained by U.S. agents at the border for three hours and questioned about the controversial whistleblower project as he entered the country on Thursday to attend a hacker conference, sources said on Saturday. He was also approached by two FBI agents at the Defcon conference after his presentation on Saturday afternoon about the Tor Project. Jacob Appelbaum, a Seattle-based programmer for the online privacy protection project called Tor, arrived at the Newark, New Jersey, airport from Holland flight Thursday morning when he was pulled aside by customs...

Whistleblowing outfit Wikileaks has been flogging secret information which it has been collecting to make cash on the side. According to a co-founder, who left the organisation, John Young, Wikileaks has a lucrative sideline flogging intelligence information the site had obtained. Young said he left the site in 2007 because he was worried by the fact that the outfit was mismanaging its funds and that Wikileaks was engaged in the selling of documents. Speaking to WND senior reporter Aaron Klein on his radio program on New York's WABC Radio Young claimed that Wikileaks was a money-making operation and follows the...

The story on the surface makes for a script for a new Oliver Stone Hollywood thriller. A 39-year old Australian hacker holds the President of the United States and his State Department hostage to a gigantic cyber “leak,” unless the President leaves Julian Assange and his Wikileaks free to release hundreds of thousands of pages of sensitive US Government memos. A closer look at the details, so far carefully leaked by the most ultra-establishment of international media such as the New York Times, reveals a clear agenda. That agenda coincidentally serves to buttress the agenda of US geopolitics around the...

The CIA has recalled it top officer from Pakistan after his cover was blown and his life threatened. The alleged name of the CIA's station chief in Islamabad was revealed by a Pakistani man, Kareem Khan, who has threatened to sue the intelligence agency over the death of his son and brother in a U.S. missile strike. Khan and his lawyers told a news conference in November that they would seek a $500 million payment for his family members' deaths and warned they may sue CIA director Leon Panetta, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and the man they identified as...

Exclusive: Sarah Palin Under Cyber-Attack from Wikileaks Supporters in 'Operation Payback'* December 08, 2010 5:12 PM Political Punch Power, pop, and probings from ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper The website and personal credit card information of former Gov. Sarah Palin were cyber-attacked today by Wikileaks supporters, the 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate tells ABC News in an email.

It's known that Julian Assange, the Wikileaks chief, has Guantanamo files, however this sounds fairly explosive. Reuters (via The Nation): WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, jailed in Britain this week, has told media contacts he has a large cache of U.S. government reports about inmates at the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, known as GITMO, the last of four major tranches of U.S. government documents which WikiLeaks had acquired and at some point would make public. "He's got the personal files of every prisoner in GITMO," said one person who was in contact with Assange earlier this year.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Sunday that President Obama and the White House deserve a large share of the blame for the massive amounts of classified information revealed through WikiLeaks.Gingrich said the leaks are "a scandal of the first order" and that they demonstrate the Obama administration is "shallow" and "amateurish" when it comes to national security."You have a private first class who downloads a quarter million documents, and the system doesn't say, 'Oh, you may be over extended?' I mean, this is a system so stupid

Bradley Manning may have leaked classified info out of anger at US military’s gay policy. What many media outlets—especially the broadcasters and even cable news (shame on you, Fox News)—are hiding is the fact that the traitorous soldier at the heart of the Wikileaks scandal is a homosexual. It’s not like people won’t be able to find the information about Manning—all it takes is a few, quick Internet searches, but the fact that many are trying hard not to mention his sexual orientation speaks volumes about the political correctness disease in society. Even if news organizations are scared that his...

Some of the diplomatic papers stolen from the State Department and leaked Sunday by Wikileaks show more than just potentially embarrassing revelations about U.S. views of allies but disturbing developments among alleged friends as well as foes and competitive states. The details from the cables being released -- among 250,000 illegally taken from secret State Department records -- include discussions on the U.S. being unable to stop Syrian arms to Hezbollah, its disappointment in Qatar to stop funding terrorism and hacking by the Chinese government of U.S. computers Samples of some of the thousands of documents that were to be...

NEW YORK: The US has warned India and other key governments across the world about a new potentially embarrassing release of classified documents by the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks which may harm the American interests and create tension in its ties with its "friends". "We have reached out to India to warn them about a possible release of documents," state department spokesman P J Crowley said. "We do not know precisely what WikiLeaks has or what it plans to do. We have made our position clear. These documents should not be released," Crowley said, ahead of the expected release by the...

Wikileaks is about to drop its biggest-ever bombshell – some 2.7-million confidential diplomatic cables from US embassies around the world – and, although US credibility is likely to take the worst hit, much of the collateral damage may end up in Moscow. "Among the countries whose politicians feature in the reports are Russia, Afghanistan, and former Soviet republics in Central Asia. But other reports also detail potentially embarrassing allegations reported to Washington from US diplomats in other regions, including East Asia and Europe," Reuters reported Thursday, noting that this huge document dump is expected as early as next week. Dispatches...

President Obama and his friends in the media want the public to think Americans serving in uniform are just fine and dandy with homosexual conduct in the military. This view is being spread through a series of selective leaks from the Pentagon's Comprehensive Review Working Group, which is putting the finishing touches on a report regarding the future of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. Mr. Obama has promised the fringe special-interest activists who helped him win the 2008 election that he will deliver what for them is the symbolic victory of opening barracks to lesbians, gays, bisexuals and the...

The latest Wiki Leaks exposure on the war in Iraq reveals Islamic Jihad and Iran teamed up for deploying a camera-operated suicide vest that can cause maximum deaths and be detonated by remote control. Wiki Leaks, which has no connection with Wikimedia, has been charged by American officials of risking the lives of soldiers in Iraq by exposing the documents dealing with war operations. The leaked material outlines American charges of Iranian backing for anti-Iraqi government terrorist militias. Intelligence information reveals the connection between Iran and the Islamic Jihad, a major competitor to Hamas in Gaza. Cooperation between Islamic Jihad,...

A huge trove of secret field reports from the battlegrounds of Iraq sheds new light on the war, including such fraught subjects as civilian deaths, detainee abuse and the involvement of Iran. The secret archive is the second such cache obtained by the independent organization WikiLeaks and made available to several news organizations. Like the first release, some 92,000 reports covering six years of the war in Afghanistan, the Iraq documents provide no earthshaking revelations, but they offer insight, texture and context from the people actually fighting the war.

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...

It would seem that Robert Gibbs broke the first rule of the Professional Left, which is, you do not talk about the Professional Left. Well what is this secret thing? It’s a network of people who have are gainfully employed in negotiating, finding funding for and advancing the Leftist agenda. It’s not just a cause, it’s a job. “There is a class of people with radical leftist views who have made it their job – with the help of abundant grants, foundations, and trusts – to carry out propaganda campaigns, indoctrinate, subvert, and plant the seeds of the leftist worldview...

A group of human-rights organizations is pressing WikiLeaks to do a better job of redacting names from thousands of war documents it is publishing, joining the list of critics that claim the Web site's actions could jeopardize the safety of Afghans who aided the U.S. military. The letter from five human-rights groups sparked a tense exchange in which WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange issued a tart challenge for the organizations to help with the massive task of removing names from thousands of documents, according to several of the organizations that signed the letter. The exchange shows how WikiLeaks and Mr. Assange...

Adrian Lamo, the ex-hacker who turned in suspected Afghan war-logs leaker Bradley Manning, says he helped the Pentagon connect the dots in the case. Philip Shenon reports. The former California computer hacker who first raised the alarm weeks ago about a massive leak of classified documents to the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks said he provided the Pentagon this week with technical information that almost certainly proves that the leaker was 22-year-old Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning. And he said he hopes he helped the Pentagon figure out what secrets WikiLeaks will reveal next. Adrian Lamo, the former hacker, told The Daily...

Investigators have found concrete evidence on computers used by Pfc. Bradley Manning that link him with the leak of classified Afghanistan war reports, a U.S. defense official said. The disclosure came as Defense Secretary Robert Gates pledged Thursday to "aggressively investigate the leak" and find ways to prevent further breaches, and told reporters that he had invited the Federal Bureau of Investigation to assist the probe. Defense officials said the FBI was investigating whether civilians aided Pfc. Manning in providing the information to WikiLeaks, a Web-based group that this week released 76,000 secret reports from Afghanistan. Pfc. Manning already was...

US authorities have known for weeks that they have suffered a haemorrhage of secret information on a scale which makes even the leaking of the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam war look limited by comparison. The Afghan war logs, from which the Guardian reports today, consist of 92,201 internal records of actions by the US military in Afghanistan between January 2004 and December 2009 – threat reports from intelligence agencies, plans and accounts of coalition operations, descriptions of enemy attacks and roadside bombs, records of meetings with local politicians, most of them classified secret. The Guardian's source for these is...

A casting call sheet for the fourth series of Torchwood has apparently been leaked. The sheet says filming on the ten episode series will begin January 12th 2011. It then reveals details on three key new characters, one of which will be a regular cast member. Character descriptions below. REX MATHEON, CAUCASIAN, Late 20s, CIA agent, a fast-tracked high-flyer. And he knows it! Rex is fast, sharp, smart, clever, and when the situation demands it, ruthless. He’s got a lethal sense of humour – he doesn’t care if he makes enemies, he’s too busy enjoying himself. But when Rex’s life...

In the old days, people who wanted to leak confidential national-security documents had to find an interested journalist and hope his publisher would go with the story. This often came after journalistic soul-searching on the balance between national security and the public's right to know.

Yesterday, The New York Times published another front-page article based on a leaked classified document. This time, it was an order signed by Gen. David Petraeus authorizing black operations against adversaries and such dubious friends as Iran, Syria, Yemen and Saudi Arabia. Gee, thanks. We really needed to know that. The world's a better place now. Yet the Times' sin was the lesser one. The paper has long since given up any pretense of patriotism. (Ugh! Yuck!) Its editors are just publishing and perishing as citizens of the world. It's whoever leaked the document that bears the burn-in-hell blame. We...

Obama to aides: 'Plug the damn hole' By Eric Zimmermann - 05/25/10 11:48 AM ET As critics question whether the White House is being tough enough with BP, Obama is reportedly showing his frustration behind closed doors: Since the oil rig exploded, the White House has tried to project a posture that is unflappable and in command. But to those tasked with keeping the president apprised of the disaster, Obama's clenched jaw is becoming an increasingly familiar sight. During one of those sessions in the Oval Office the first week after the spill, a president who rarely vents his frustration...

In his most recent interview with an Al Qaeda media outlet terrorist “Anwar Al Awlaki” the US born Al Qaeda terrorist said that he stopped his communications when he read in the Washington Post that he is being tracked by US intelligence. He said that once he stopped his communications he left the area in Yemen where he was hiding and then this area was bombed by US airstrikes. He also said that both terrorists “Nidal Hassan” who killed 13 of our troops at Fort Hood and “Omar Farouk Abd Al Moutaleb” who had the failed terrorist attack on the...