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U.S. spy agencies picked up intelligence in mid-June indicating Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeniy Prigozhin was planning armed action against the Russian defense establishment — which he has long accused of bungling the war in Ukraine — and urgently informed the White House and other government agencies so they were not caught off guard, several U.S. officials said Saturday. The exact nature and timing of Prigozhin’s plans were not clear until shortly before his stunning takeover of a military command and tank run toward Moscow on Friday and Saturday, officials said. But “there were enough signals to be able to tell...

Four days after the raid on former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, The Washington Post ran interference for the Biden Administration’s politicized FBI and DOJ by disseminating a whopper in an obvious attempt to tamp down the outrage. Not that they probably care, but the four reporters bylined on the story were punked. And Americans were deceived. On August 12, the Post breathlessly reported that, even though it had never been done before, the tossing of Melania’s under-lovelies at Mar-a-Lago by 30 FBI agents must have been totally legit because according to “people familiar with the investigation,” “experts in classified information,”...

Classified documents relating to nuclear weapons were among the items FBI agents sought in a search of former president Donald Trump’s Florida residence on Monday, according to people familiar with the investigation. Experts in classified information said the unusual search underscores deep concern among government officials about the types of information they thought could be located at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club and potentially in danger of falling into to the wrong hands.

Classified documents relating to nuclear weapons were among the items FBI agents sought in a search of former president Donald Trump’s Florida residence on Monday, according to people familiar with the investigation. Experts in classified information said the unusual search underscores deep concern among government officials about the types of information they thought could be located at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club and potentially in danger of falling into the wrong hands.

An Army officer’s promotion is in jeopardy over what some officials fear could be White House retaliation for his role in last year’s impeachment inquiry, raising the possibility that President Trump might again intervene in military affairs, according to officials familiar with the matter. Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who received a Purple Heart for his actions in Iraq and later served as a White House aide on European affairs, is among hundreds of officers selected to be promoted to full colonel this year. Such promotions are typically signed off on by Army and then Pentagon leaders before moving to the...

Sunday on CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” network political analyst Carl Bernstein said if President Donald Trump asked Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate 2020 presidential hopeful former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden, it is echoed of “Watergate.” Bernstein said, “Well, I think the first thing is to find out exactly what has happened here. And if the reporting of Shane Harris and The Wall Street Journal is accurate and it seems to be it clearly moves toward a grievance abuse of power by the president of the United States.”

Lawyers object to any attempt to ask Huma Abedin, Cheryl Mills, and others about how information was handled—and are dead set against Clinton testifying. Lawyers for the State Department want to limit the types of questions that a watchdog group can ask former aides to Hillary Clinton, and potentially the former secretary of state herself, about her creation and use of a private email system while she was in office. The department asked a federal judge Tuesday night to grant “limited discovery” to Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group that wants to depose some of Clinton’s closest associates and staffers....

The Kremlin isn’t sending just any troops to prop up the Assad regime. It’s dispatching units that spearheaded Russia’s slow-rolling invasion of Ukraine.Reuters confirmed Wednesday what The Daily Beast first reported last week—not only have Russian troops been deployed to Syria but they are indeed taking part in active combat operations, although against which of the manifold enemies of the Assad regime remains unclear.U.S. government sources told the news agency that two tank landing ships, aircraft and naval infantry forces have arrived in Syria in the past 24 hours, with the largest buildup occurring in Latakia, the northwest coastal province...

It’s being called a “revolt” by intelligence pros who are paid to give their honest assessment of the ISIS war—but are instead seeing their reports turned into happy talk. More than 50 intelligence analysts working out of the U.S. military's Central Command have formally complained that their reports on ISIS and al Qaeda’s branch in Syria were being inappropriately altered by senior officials, The Daily Beast has learned. The complaints spurred the Pentagon’s inspector general to open an investigation into the alleged manipulation of intelligence. The fact that so many people complained suggests there are deep-rooted, systemic problems in how...

The latest brilliant plan to curtail Isis in the Middle East? Give more weapons to current members of al-Qaida. The Daily Beast reported that former CIA director David Petraeus, still somehow entrenched in the DC Beltway power circles despite leaking highly classified secrets, is now advocating arming members of the al-Nusra Front in Syria, an offshoot of al-Qaida and a designated terrorist organization. Could there be a more dangerous and crazy idea?

To take down the so-called Islamic State in Syria, the influential former head of the CIA wants to co-opt jihadists from America’s arch foe. Members of al Qaeda’s branch in Syria have a surprising advocate in the corridors of American power: retired Army general and former CIA Director David Petraeus. The former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan has been quietly urging U.S. officials to consider using so-called moderate members of al Qaeda’s Nusra Front to fight ISIS in Syria, four sources familiar with the conversations, including one person who spoke to Petraeus directly, told The Daily Beast....

Looking for Patterns in Chaos Tilla Bradley, March 16, 2010 The government is constantly looking for ways to identify threats to national security before American citizens are threatened. Since the 1980s, the intelligence community has struggled with the challenges of monitoring electronic communication while protecting the privacy of its citizens. Journalist Shane Harris, the author of The Watcher: The Rise of the U.S. Surveillance State addresses these challenges and the solutions that the government is attempting to develop in his latest book. Also on the panel to comment on the book were former journalist, and analyst with the Cato Institute...