Free Republic

By LTC Joseph Myers and Patrick Poole 28 April 2006: From the Article: "It is too early to predict how the current diplomatic crisis over Iran’s nuclear weapons program will play out, but Americans should assume that any potential military hostilities could result in Hezbollah striking American interests across the globe and here in the US Homeland. Possibly the Iranian ayatollahs may decide that preemptive Hezbollah suicide attacks against America might serve as a deterrent to U.S. military action against their nuclear facilities. A strategic wave of Hezbollah suicide bombings, and well coordinated military attacks in America could very well...

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 18, 2006--HarperCollins has acquired a book from former CIA Director George Tenet. The deal was negotiated by Jonathan Burnham, Senior Vice President and Publisher of HarperCollins, and Tenet's attorney, Robert Barnett. The book, tentatively titled, "At the Center of the Storm," will be co-edited by Kathryn Huck-Seymour, Executive Editor, Collins and David Hirshey, Senior Vice President, Executive Editor, HarperCollins. Never before has there been so much interest in - and debate about - U.S. intelligence. Now, for the first time, readers will be able to find out what happened during the most challenging times in recent history...

Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy. Alexandria: Nov/Dec 2005.Vol.33, Iss. 11/12; pg. 3, 1 pgs Highly-placed NATO sources have confirmed the reason behind the US air strike - with three Tomahawk cruise missiles - against the Embassy of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in Belgrade, (then) Yugoslavia, on May 7, 1999. The then-Clinton Government of the United States said at the time that the strike was accidental, due to faulty maps and intelligence, but this has been disproven by the NATO sources. The NATO sources told Defense & Foreign Affairs that the attack was based on intelligence that then...

James Jesus Angleton explains it all. "Oh, come on! You expect me to believe that?" I was recently back at the ouija board with my old friend, the late James Jesus Angleton, once upon a time the head of CIA Counterintelligence. I had wanted to talk to him about the latest warnings from the interminable 9/11 Commission, a.k.a. The Monologue That Will Not Die, that we hadn't done enough with homeland security. I knew his view of the commission was much like mine — namely that these guys need a day job. Or maybe a Caribbean cruise. Or maybe a...

Elected representatives in Washington are intended to be the mouthpieces of the people who elect them. Though they are constitutionally obligated to the will of the people, most Americans feel unrepresented by either political party today. That’s because politicians are no longer beholden to the people who elect them. They are instead, beholden only to those who control their power (their money), namely the two major political parties, their respective political platforms and their agendas of division. The press is supposed to be the eyes and ears of the people, keeping a close watch on our elected officials and reporting...

At the beginning of October 2002, George Tenet, a Clinton appointee who was then director of central intelligence, delivered a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs to Congress. The NIE, which had been requested by Sen. Richard Durbin (D.-Ill.), concluded that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons and was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. As it turned out, only a handful of senators bothered to read the report before the Senate voted on Oct. 11, 2002, to authorize war in Iraq. If President Bush misled with claims that Saddam Hussein had reconstituted his nuclear program...

Mike Kelly, a columnist for the Bergen Record of New Jersey, had Curt Weldon’s staff arrange an interview with a member of Able Danger. He uncovers a few tidbits we haven't heard before: For a year before the 9/11 attacks, the Wayne Inn was home to Mohammed Atta, the al-Qaida mastermind behind the hijacking plot that killed almost 3,000 people... A former member of the military intelligence team told me in an interview that it had enough data to raise suspicions. "But we were blocked from passing it to the FBI." The connect-the-dots tracking by the team was so good...

It was a powerful argument for war made by a politician with long years of experience in the White House. "(I)ntelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability and his nuclear program," said this national leader. "(I)f left unchecked," the politician argued, "Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capability to wage biological and chemical warfare and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons. Should he succeed in that endeavor, he could alter the political and security landscape of the Middle East, which as we know all too...

The following article from The American Thinker puts in perspective the totality of the situation faced by President Bush as he contemplated his oath to preserve and protect us. It also gives some excellent background as to what is really going on with the Wilson-Plame-Libby situation and reveals more fully what hyenas Democrat leaders like Senators Reid, Kennedy and Durbin really are. They would destroy everyone and everything to get back their power, which is so rightfully theirs. "Suppose you were president of a country that had been hit by a massive terrorist attack that had killed 3,000 of your...

Finally, the spotlight has started to swing away from Lewis Libby and his allegedly perjurous grand-jury testimony toward where that spotlight should have focused all along: on the CIA’s incompetent, weird – and possibly treasonous—response to Vice President Cheney’s inquiry about Iraq’s interest in purchasing yellowcake from Niger. Perhaps an outline of how we did things at the CIA during the Reagan Administration will help to illustrate just how appalling the agency’s handling of Mr. Cheney’s query really was: One of the first lessons you learn in the intelligence business, is that top-level officials rarely bother to ask for intelligence....

Washington (AP) - Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff is learning one Washington lesson the hard way: Don't do battle with people who run covert operations for a living. The bad blood between the White House and CIA has been known for some time. But the 22-page indictment Friday of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby displays - in black and white - just how nasty relations had become between senior White House officials and the nation's spy chiefs. [snip] ...former CIA official Lee Strickland, who was responsible for all disclosure activities at the CIA as chief of its information...

The ultimate source of information identifying Leakgate accuser Valerie Plame as a CIA employee my turn out to be the CIA itself, the New York Times reported Tuesday. Notes obtained by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald identify then-CIA Director George Tenet as the person who gave up Plame's secret to the White House, with the Times reporting that Tenet tipped Vice President Dick Cheney to her identity. However the notes - taken by Cheney's chief of staff Lewis Libby - "contain no suggestion that either Mr. Cheney or Mr. Libby knew at the time of Ms. Wilson's undercover status or that...

Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2005 12:03 p.m. EDT NY Times: CIA Leaked Plame's Name The ultimate source of information identifying Leakgate accuser Valerie Plame as a CIA employee my turn out to be the CIA itself, the New York Times reported Tuesday. Notes obtained by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald identify then-CIA Director George Tenet as the person who gave up Plame's secret to the White House, with the Times reporting that Tenet tipped Vice President Dick Cheney to her identity. However the notes - taken by Cheney's chief of staff Lewis Libby - "contain no suggestion that either Mr. Cheney or...

Cheney May Be Source in CIA Leak, Report Says Prosecutor Is Thought to Be Close to Ending Investigation NEW YORK (Oct. 25) - Notes in the hand of a federal prosecutor suggest the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney first heard of the covert CIA officer central to a leak investigation from Cheney himself, The New York Times reported. The newspaper said notes of a previously undisclosed June 12, 2003, conversation between I. Lewis Libby and Cheney appear to differ from Libby's grand jury testimony that he first heard of Valerie Plame from journalists. The newspaper identified its...

The consummate diplomat, Ambassador Wilson chooses his words carefully. He was fed up, though, with the specious reasons adduced to justify the unprovoked U.S.-U.K. attack on Iraq — the same reasons that prompted three courageous colleagues to leave their careers in the foreign service in protest. With the Times article, Wilson threw down the gauntlet. At the same time, he permitted himself the comment to Washington Post reporters that the Iraq-Niger hoax "begs the question as to what else they are lying about." .... So far the intimidation has worked. But a test case is waiting in the wings. Alan...

Former CIA director George Tenet, said to be the target of what the Washington Times called "a scathing report by Inspector General John Helgerson” - may go public with embarrassing disclosures about the Bush administration and its actions leading up to Sept. 11, 2001. The CIA report, prepared as the result of a 17-month investigation by a team of 11 CIA officials, blames Tenet and several top CIA officials for its failure pre-9/11 to deal with al-Qaida. But former Reagan White House aide and intelligence expert John B. Roberts II, quoting an anonymous source close to Tenet, wrote in Thursday's...

George Tenet is not going to let himself become the fall guy for the September 11 intelligence failures, according to a former intelligence officer and a source friendly to Mr. Tenet. A scathing report by Inspector General John Helgerson criticized the former CIA director and a score of other agency personnel for their failure to develop a strategy against al Qaeda. The report, delivered to Congress this week, recommends punitive sanctions for Mr. Tenet, former Deputy Director of Operations James L. Pavitt and former counter-terrorist center head J. Cofer Black. Mr. Tenet's response to the report is a 20-page, tightly...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - An internal CIA report reportedly criticizes ex-CIA chief George Tenet and several other former and current CIA officials for not dealing effectively with Al-Qaeda before the September 11 attacks. Tenet, who resigned in July 2004 after seven years at the top, was censured for failing to develop and carry out a strategic plan to take on Al-Qaeda in the years before the attacks, two people familiar with the report told The New York Times. The highly classified report, put together by Central Intelligence Agency inspector general John Helgerson, described systemic problems at the CIA before the 2001...

The former CIA director George Tenet is among more than a dozen current and former officials who could be subject to disciplinary proceedings over the agency's performance before the September 11 attacks. A classified report by the CIA's independent watchdog, delivered to the US Congress on Tuesday night, sharply criticised more than a dozen senior officials at the CIA, including Mr Tenet, former clandestine service chief Jim Pavitt and former counterterrorism centre head Cofer Black. The report, the fruit of a two-year investigation by CIA inspector-general John Helgerson, recommended that the officials be placed before accountability boards - the agency's...

Porter J. Goss, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, delivered a long-awaited internal report to Congress on Monday night that is said to give a harsh assessment of the agency's performance before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Mr. Goss, who was chairman of the House Intelligence Committee before his appointment last year as head of the C.I.A., hand-delivered two copies of the classified report to staff members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. The copies of the report, which is several hundred pages, were placed in committee safes and were not to be opened at least until...