Free Republic

(IsraelNN.com) Three boxes of documents belonging to Israel Kastner, whose negotiations with Eichmann for Jews remain controversial to this day, were presented to Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem this week. The private archives, comprising three boxes of letters of correspondence with Nazi officials, Jewish organizations and families, were presented in an official ceremony on Sunday. In attendance were Kastner's daughter, his granddaughter Merav Michaeli (a popular television personality who MC'ed the event), survivors of the “Kasztner Train,” and others. The papers, which also document Holocaust rescue efforts of the Relief and Rescue Committee in Budapest, were given to the...

WASHINGTON - The CIA released hundreds of pages of internal reports Tuesday on assassination plots, secret drug testing and spying on Americans that triggered a scandal in the mid-1970s. The documents detail assassination plots against foreign leaders such as Fidel Castro, the testing of mind-altering drugs like LSD on unwitting citizens, wiretapping of U.S. journalists, spying on civil rights and anti-Vietnam war protesters, opening of mail between the United States and the Soviet Union and China and break-ins at the homes of ex-CIA employees and others. The 693 pages, mostly drawn from the memories of active CIA officers in 1973,...

In a 2005 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, epidemiologist John Ioannidis showed that among the 45 most highly cited clinical research findings of the past 15 years, 99 percent of molecular research had subsequently been refuted. Epidemiology findings had been contradicted in four-fifths of the cases he looked at, and the usually robust outcomes of clinical trials had a refutation rate of one in four. The revelations struck a chord with the scientific community at large: A recent essay by Ioannidis simply entitled "Why most published research findings are false" has been downloaded more than 100,000...

WASHINGTON - Republican activists Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed landed more than 100 meetings inside the Bush White House, according to documents released Wednesday that provide the first official accounting of the access and influence the two presidential allies have enjoyed. The White House released the Secret Service visit records to settle a lawsuit by the Democratic Party and an ethics watchdog group seeking visitors logs for the two GOP strategists and others who emerged as figures in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal. Earlier this month, the White House suggested to the judge in that lawsuit that such records need...

China gives Rumsfeld secret papers on friend's mystery death By Francis Harris (Filed: 20/07/2006) When communist Chinese jets shot down an American surveillance aircraft 50 years ago, the Beijing government did not care that the co-pilot was a close friend of a young US naval officer called Donald Rumsfeld. But now China cares so much that when it sent its most senior military officer to the United States for a visit this week, Gen Guo Boxiong handed over previously classified papers on the incident to Defence Secretary Rumsfeld. An American official said the documents had yet to be translated, but...

Papers from Jefferson office raid in limboBy MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press Writer 15 minutes ago WASHINGTON - Prosecutors and investigators building a bribery case against Rep. William Jefferson have been unable to examine the documents and computer files seized in a search of the lawmaker's Capitol Hill office. The materials were placed off limits by President Bush for 45 days, a cooling-off period that ended Sunday. Yet there has been no resolution of the court fight or talks between congressional leaders and the Justice Department. The president acted after congressional leaders denounced the FBI's search on May 20 and May...

Top editors from the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times, responding to criticism over publishing stories about a government program that tracked millions of financial records in search of terrorists, on Saturday defended their decisions to publish government secrets. "We weight the merits of publishing against the risks of publishing," wrote Dean Baquet, Los Angeles Times editor, and Bill Keller, New York Times executive editor, in an op-ed piece that ran in both newspapers. "There is no magic formula, no neat metric for either the public's interest or the dangers of publishing sensitive information," the piece continued. "We...

UK police hunt for "dirty" chemical bomb -papersSat Jun 3, 2006 02:39 PM BST By Michael Holden LONDON (Reuters) - British anti-terrorist police are hunting for a "dirty" chemical bomb that could be used in an attack in Britain after a major raid failed to uncover a device they believe exists, newspapers reported on Saturday. More than 250 officers, some wearing chemical, biological and radiological protection suits, shot one man and arrested another during a dawn raid on an east London house on Friday. Police made no official comment on the reports but said nothing suspicious had been found in...

[ . . . ] The publication of cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad by the Danish newspaper in September eventually sparked violent demonstration in the Islamic world, where millions were offended by the caricatures. . . Then things quieted down again and the crisis seemed to have passed. But has it? A special issue of the online journal of Ansar al-Sunna, which means "Supporters of Sunni Islam," could respark the flames. The online journal has taken the unprecedented step of listing dozens of European newspapers that reprinted the Muhammad cartoons. . . Terrorism experts who follow the site believe the...

WASHINGTON - Not long after columnist Jack Anderson's funeral, FBI agents called his widow to say they wanted to search his papers. They were looking for confidential government information he might have acquired in a half-century of investigative reporting. The agents expressed interest in documents that would aid the government's case against two former lobbyists for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, who have been charged with disclosing classified information, said Kevin Anderson, the columnist's son. In addition, the agents told the family they planned to remove from the columnist's archive — which has yet to be catalogued...

Lott Lawyer: State Farm Destroying Papers Monday April 10, 2006 11:31 PM By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN Associated Press Writer BILOXI, Miss. (AP) - A lawyer for U.S. Sen. Trent Lott said Monday that State Farm Insurance Co. is destroying documents that could show the insurer has fraudulently denied thousands of claims by Lott and other policyholders whose homes were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. Zach Scruggs, one of Lott's attorneys, says his client has a ``good faith belief'' that several State Farm employees in Biloxi are destroying engineering reports that gave conflicting conclusions about whether wind or water was responsible for storm...

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N.-established panel that investigated the Iraq oil-for-food program will stay open until the end of the year to allow prosecutors access to its documents, the United Nations said on Friday. Investigators and prosecutors from 28 countries have already requested documents from the Independent Inquiry Committee since it released its final report on October 27, said Michael Holtzman, spokesman for the IIC, whose Manhattan office has been reduced to a skeletal staff. The IIC had been scheduled to close at the end of this month. The panel, headed by former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker,...

Pentagon papers offer insight into al-Qa'eda's hidden world of terror By Anton La Guardia (Filed: 22/02/2006) It could be any employment contract setting out salary, paid holidays, home leave and grievance procedures - except in this case the employer is al-Qa'eda and the recruit's job is "carrying out jihad". By signing the contract, the recruit commits himself to al-Qa'eda's objectives: "Support God's religion, establishment of Islamic rule, and restoration of the Islamic Caliphate, God willing." Osama bin Laden with Ayman al- Zawahiri, leaders of al-Qa'eda An al-Qa'eda "mujahed brother" is paid a monthly wage of 1,000 Pakistani rupees (about £10...

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Archivists released documents from Dwight Eisenhower's administration that historians say could help refine their understanding of the president's positions on national security and civil rights. The Eisenhower Presidential Library in Abilene, Kan., announced Thursday the release of 40,000 pages of previously classified documents on subjects including J. Edgar Hoover's domestic intelligence operation, construction of the Berlin Wall and Middle East policy. Chester Pach, an Ohio University professor who authored "Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower," said historians have many unanswered questions about the president, including his role in planning the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion. "There...

More European papers defy Muslim protests Gwladys Fouché Thursday February 2, 2006 More newspapers across Europe today reprinted the 12 cartoons of the prophet Muhammad that have sparked protests across the Middle East - although most refrained from publishing them on their websites. Earlier this week hackers attacked the website of Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, which first published the controversial pictures last September, and the site became unavailable for a time. When the website reappeared it published a statement in Danish, Arabic and English stating that the cartoons "were not intended to be offensive, nor were they at variance with Danish...

WASHINGTON - Hundreds of available trucks, boats, planes and federal officers were unused in search and rescue efforts immediately after Hurricane Katrina hit because FEMA failed to give them missions, new documents show. Additionally, the Federal Emergency Management Agency called off its search and rescue operations in Louisiana three days after the Aug. 29 storm because of security issues, according to an internal FEMA e-mail given to Senate investigators. The documents, released by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, are further evidence of lapses in FEMA's response to Katrina. They also detail breakdowns in carrying out the National...

In 1971, the New York Times published the top secret "Pentagon Papers" which resulted in much angst in government. Years ago, I read that the reason for that angst was that the publishing of the papers blew the cover of a extremely valuable CIA spy. As I remember it, one comment in the Pentagon Papers could be traced back to a conversation that could have only come from the interior of Nikita Khrushchev's limo. The CIA had recruited Khrushchev's chauffeur and he had planted a bug in the limo. When the Russians read the Pentagon Papers in the Times, they...

Contemporary Military Issue Papers - Army War College Many, Many documents to read. Far too many to post each one. Have fun.

Meet Deborah Davis. She's a 50 year-old mother of four who lives and works in Denver, Colorado. Her kids are all grown-up: her middle son is a soldier fighting in Iraq. She leads an ordinary, middle class life. You probably never would have heard of Deb Davis if it weren't for her belief in the U.S. Constitution. This is not America. When honest, law-abiding citizens can't commute to work on a city bus without a demand for their 'papers', something is very, very wrong. One morning in late September 2005, Deb was riding the public bus to work. She was...

UNITED NATIONS - The United States urged the U.N. Wednesday to prevent any destruction of documents collected during the investigation that found massive corruption in its Iraq oil-for-food program. U.S. Ambassador John Bolton asked Secretary-General Kofi Annan to direct the Independent Inquiry Committee, which just completed its yearlong probe of the $64 billion program, "to preserve the integrity of the files" so law enforcement officials can pursue criminal cases against companies and individuals named in the report. The United States is very concerned that if documents are returned to the countries that provided them, they could disappear, complicating prosecutions, he...