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Cables Portray Expanded Reach of Drug Agency By GINGER THOMPSON and SCOTT SHANE WASHINGTON — The Drug Enforcement Administration has been transformed into a global intelligence organization with a reach that extends far beyond narcotics, and an eavesdropping operation so expansive it has to fend off foreign politicians who want to use it against their political enemies, according to secret diplomatic cables. In far greater detail than previously seen, the cables, from the cache obtained by WikiLeaks and made available to some news organizations, offer glimpses of drug agents balancing diplomacy and law enforcement in places where it can be...

Boyle was previously married to the sister of Omar Khadr, a Canadian imprisoned for 10 years at the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after fighting US troops in Afghanistan. A senior official said Boyle refused to board an American military plane over concerns he could face arrest. Boyle said his family had been delayed due to a medical emergency surrounding one of his children. According to Canadian media reports, the charges include: - Eight counts of assault - Two counts of sexual assault - Two counts of unlawful confinement - One count of uttering death threats - One...

The U.S. killed an Afghan Taliban leader in a drone strike in Pakistan’s tribal agency of Kurram today, according to reports from the region. The commander, Jamiuddin, was a “trusted man” within the Haqqani Network, a subgroup of the Afghan Taliban, who helped fighters move from Pakistan to Afghanistan. An unmanned aerial vehicle, likely a Reaper operated by the CIA, fired two missiles at a vehicle as it stopped in the Mata Sanghar area of Kurram, sources told Reuters. A Pakistani official also said an unnamed “associate” was also killed in the attack. A Haqqani Network leader told Reuters that...

“For too long has Pakistan provided safe haven to the Taliban and many terrorist organisations, but those days are over. President Trump has put Pakistan on notice. As the President said, so I say now: Pakistan has much to gain from partnering with the United States, and Pakistan has much to lose by continuing to harbor criminals and terrorists.” Bravo. We can only hope that these don’t prove to be empty words. Pakistan for years has collected billions from the U.S. in order to fight al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and has given much of it to al-Qaeda and the Taliban....

WASHINGTON, DC — The U.S.-NATO coalition in Afghanistan has pulverized 25 Taliban labs used to process opium and its deadly heroin derivative, depriving the narco-jihadists of $80 million in illegal drug proceeds in the first three weeks of an unprecedented counternarcotics air campaign. Since November 20, U.S. troops and their Afghan allies have been targeting the Taliban jihadists’ opium business in their Helmand stronghold, the top-poppy producing province in Afghanistan. Watch a M142 HIMARS conduct an artillery strike on a Taliban narcotics production facility in Helmand province Dec. 8, destroying nearly $1 million in direct Taliban revenues. "In the face...

The Fighting Irish have a bone to pick with Christopher Columbus. Notre Dame students are calling for the removal of 12 iconic murals, which honor the famous explorer and have been on campus since 1884. The students have reportedly teamed up with alumni, faculty and staff in an effort to get rid of the 19th Century paintings. “In this era of political divisiveness and a renewed rise of dangerous nationalism, it is time for Notre Dame to remove its own version of a Confederate monument,” the group wrote in an open letter last week that was published in the school...

KABUL (Reuters) - The commander of the Taliban’s “special forces” branch, known asthe “Red Unit,” was killed last week in Helmand province by Afghan forces, according to Afghanistan’s main intelligence agency. The National Directorate of Security (NDS) said Mullah Shah Wali, also known as Mullah Naser, was killed in an air operation in Helmand. The province is a Taliban stronghold in the heartland of Afghanistan’s lucrative drug trade. [snip]

While Nicholson acknowledged that the Pakistanis had taken military action against other violent extremist groups, he said that Islamabad needed to act against the Afghan Taliban, which has found sanctuary inside Pakistan since 2001. "The offensive operations against sanctuaries would be in other areas that we've identified with the Pakistani leadership on a number of occasions," he said. The general would not say how much time the US would allow for Pakistan to change its behavior before taking additional actions to compel Islamabad to crack down on Afghan Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan. "As you've heard our president say, as you've...

The US military and Afghan Air Force hit a Taliban command and control center and seven “drug labs” in what the Coalition described as “previously untargeted safe havens in south and southwest” Afghanistan. With a shift in strategy, strikes such as these will become the new normal, the top US commander in Afghanistan said.The coordinated airstrikes took place over the last day in three Taliban controlled or contested districts in northern Helmand province: Musa Qala (four strikes), Kajaki (three), and Sangin (one). Musa Qala and Sangin are controlled by the Taliban, while Kajaki is hotly contested, according to ongoing...

U.S. and Afghan forces have launched a series of attacks on narcotics laboratories in southern Afghanistan, marking the start of what could become a long, expanded air war there under President Trump.The initial strikes, which began Sunday and were ongoing Monday, represent the first significant use of new legal authorities granted by the Trump administration in August that enable the Pentagon to target Taliban revenue streams, said Army Gen. John W. Nicholson Jr., the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan. Previously, the U.S. military conducted strikes only when facing imminent threat or working directly with the Afghans.Speaking to the Pentagon press...

A Staff Sgt. in the Marines has just had his 2012 conviction for urinating on dead terrorists overturned. The shocking reversal comes after the revelation that an Obama official railroaded the soldier. Staff Sgt. Joseph Chamblin, one of several Marine Corps soldiers convicted in 2012 for having recorded themselves urinating on the dead bodies of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, had his conviction overturned this week because an Obama-appointed official had attempted to rig his trial.

A military appeals court has overturned the conviction of a former Marine Corps scout sniper involved in desecrating the bodies of enemy fighters in Afghanistan in 2011, finding that the actions of the service's top officer at the time tainted the case.The decision, by the Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals, was handed down Wednesday, five years after the original conviction.In December 2012, Staff Sgt. Joseph Chamblin was sentenced to 30 days' confinement, docked in pay, and demoted to sergeant for participating in an incident in which multiple Marine snipers attached to 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines, urinated on enemy corpses...

A former US Marine who was caught urinating on the corpses of dead Taliban fighters got his conviction thrown out this week thanks to the unlawful actions of a retired general — who “severely and systematically” interfered with the case, a report says. Staff Sgt. Joseph W. Chamblin had been reduced in rank for the infamous 2011 incident, sentenced to 30 days confinement and ordered to pay a $500 fine after he pleaded guilty to wrongful desecration, failure to properly supervise junior Marines, and posing for photographs with battlefield casualties. What he didn’t know at the time was that the...

Bowe Bergdahl's Sentence: No Prison Time November 3, 201711:44 AM ET Merrit Kennedy A military judge sentenced Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who has pleaded guilty to charges of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy, to no prison time at a sentencing hearing Friday in Fort Bragg, N.C.

Former Taliban captive Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl has symptoms similar to schizophrenia and is suffering from severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), according to a forensic psychiatrist who testified in the soldier's trial on Wednesday. Bergdahl's lawyers called upon forensic psychiatrist and professor Dr. Charles Morgan, who specializes in working with prisoners of war and examined Bergdahl in 2016, in the trial's third day of witness testimony. Bergdahl, 31, faces up to life in prison after he pleaded guilty to desertion and misbehavior before the enemy for abandoning his Army post in Afghanistan in June 2009. The closing arguments in the...

PITTSBURGH — The Pittsburgh Art Commission voted Wednesday to recommend the Stephen Foster statue in Oakland be removed. The recommendation is that the statue is removed from the public and placed in a place in private and "properly contextualized." The Pittsburgh Art Commission will recommend removal of the statue within six months. Foster, a Pittsburgh native who died in 1864, is famous for classic songs including “Oh! Susanna” and “Camptown Races.” Many of his songs were used in minstrel shows in which actors performed in blackface. The statue depicts Foster sitting above shoeless, banjo-playing “Uncle Ned,” a slave character from...

The admission is in; the sentence awaits us. Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl admitted deserting his Afghan post and endangering fellow troops. By all accounts this is the most serious betrayal of presidential authority in my life time. In 2014 President Obama attempted to cover Bergdahl with the achievement of a war hero, even inviting his Idaho based parents to the Rose Garden to celebrate news of his release. President Obama pointed out at the time that five Taliban leaders were freed from Guantanamo so that Bergdahl could be released from captivity. To gild the lily, National Security Adviser, Susan Rice,...

Bowe Bergdahl, the U.S. Army sergeant who pleaded guilty Monday to deserting his post in Afghanistan in 2009, says his Taliban captors were more “honest” with him than the Army has been since his release three years ago. “At least the Taliban were honest enough to say, ‘I’m the guy who’s gonna cut your throat,’ ” Bergdahl tells British TV journalist Sean Langan in an interview with the Sunday Times Magazine of London headlined "The Homecoming from Hell." Langan, too, is a former Taliban hostage. Bergdahl, 31, from Hailey, Idaho, says he never quite knew where he stood with the...

The Taliban terrorist organization has claimed responsibility for an attack directed at Secretary of Defense James Mattis who was making an unscheduled visit to Afghanistan. No casualties were reported at Kabul International Airport on Wednesday morning in the wake of the attack. Mattis had left before the shooting began. Locals said that two missiles were fired at the airport at approximately 11:00 a.m. local time. The American embassy in Kabul warned that the attack may have yet to end. "At about 11.36 am two missiles were fired on Kabul International Airport from Deh Sabz district, damaging the air force hangers...

The Taliban released a statement attributed to its emir, Hibatullah Akhundzada, earlier today. The propaganda message was clearly crafted with a Western audience in mind. Like other statements published by the jihadist group, Akhundzada’s message should be subjected to scrutiny and not taken at face value, especially given that parts of it are directly contradicted by the Taliban’s own words and deeds. Akhundzada explains that “peace” is only possible if the US and its Western allies, referred to as “occupation” forces, retreat from the country. “The main obstacle in the way of peace is the occupation,” Akhundzada’s statement reads. “Peaceful...