Free Republic

Aaron Berman, a 17-year veteran of the CIA who already held a senior position in Facebook’s “misinformation” team during the 2020 election, has been promoted to “Head of Elections Policies” at the company now known as Meta. Berman served at the CIA between March 2002 and July 2019. During that time, he wrote for and edited the President’s Daily Brief, an influential top-secret document prepared by the U.S. intelligence community given to the president each morning. According to Berman’s Linkedin, he enjoyed positions of considerable influence at the agency, including “supervising teams of dozens of analysts and with multi-million-dollar budgets,”...

With far more political acuity than critics expected, President George Bush disarmed world government proponents while promising more aid to developing nations. The U.N.'s High Level Panel on Financing Development concluded its four-day conference in Monterrey, Mexico, without explicit authorization for U.N. taxes on currency exchange, fossil fuels and a host of other tax targets. The conference, publicized as a poverty-reducing initiative, was, in fact, another effort by the U.N. to gain taxing authority. Ernesto Zedillo, head of the U.N. panel, issued a report on June 28, calling for the new taxing authority. U.S. delegates to the conference made it...

Al-Qaida had extensive contacts with Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security, as well as with an elite military unit which helped the terrorists train and plot attacks against Americans, according to a former intelligence officer who recently fled Iran. Hamid Reza Zakeri, a former inspector and director of Iran's Revolutionary Guards and Ministry of Intelligence, or MOIS, member said models of the World Trade Center, the White House, Pentagon and other United States government buildings "were in our headquarters." In an explosive interview with a London-based Arabic newspaper last week, Zakeri stated that al-Qaida leader and Egyptian terrorist Ayman al-Zawahiri,...

HARARE, Zimbabwe - Government claims that the opposition leader plotted to assassinate President Robert Mugabe have left many Zimbabweans puzzled about how they should vote in next month's hard-fought presidential elections. Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has vehemently denied claims his party, the Movement for Democratic Change approached a Canadian political consultancy to arrange a hit. Voters like Caleb Dambiti said the nonstop coverage of the alleged assassination plan in the state-run media has perplexed him. "I don't know what to believe any more. If he did it, why isn't he in jail?" Dambiti said. Mugabe himself, campaigning for the ...

True Pundit has verified the Arkansas Judiciary has reinstated Hillary Clinton’s suspended law license, just days ago — 17 years after it was suspended. Hillary announced last week she would not seek the presidency in 2020 but the quiet mysterious reinstatement of her law license sets the stage for a possible Attorney General post, according to Clinton and DC insiders. Or perhaps the Supreme Court? Revenge personified. Hillary’s law license was reinstated on March 4, 2019, according to Arkansas officials. It had been suspended since March 14, 2002, according to records. The Arkansas Judiciary lists Clinton’s address as a PO...

President Donald Trump has awarded the Medal of Honor to a Navy SEAL who oversaw a daring assault and rescue mission on a snowy Afghanistan mountaintop in 2002. Trump presented the nation's most prestigious honor for battlefield bravery to Master Chief Special Warfare Operator Britt K. Slabinski at the White House Thursday. Trump says Slabinski is a "special man" and a "truly brave person." The White House says Slabinski repeatedly exposed himself to enemy fire from more heavily armed al-Qaida forces during the March 2002 assault. Slabinski later carried a seriously wounded teammate down a sheer cliff face while leading...

Former University of South Florida Professor Sami Al-Arian was on the inside of an elaborate international network designed to conceal funding for terrorist organizations, a federal investigator claims in a newly released court document. The network used ``a convoluted web of multiple transactions'' by a network of companies, trusts and charities - mostly run by the same few people - to hide money going to two militant Palestinian groups, Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the investigator says. The suspect organizations were part of ``a complex coalition of overlapping companies in northern Virginia controlled by individuals who have shown support...

The Justice Department has backed away from a court battle over its authority to classify and restrict the discussion of information it has already released, handing a local advocacy group a victory by granting it explicit permission to publish letters written by two senators that contain the contested information. The case was considered a potential test of limits to the government's power to restrict access to information in the public domain on national security grounds. Former attorney general John D. Ashcroft had strongly defended the practice in this case by likening it to putting "spilt milk" back in a jar...

As one of the hundreds of thousands who has proudly worked for the National Security Agency either directly or as a subcontractor, I believe the New York Times missed the real story under its Dec. 16 headline "Bush lets U.S. spy on callers without courts." Here is why. The New York Times concedes the story starts with the CIA capture of top al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan in March 2002. With Zubaydah's capture came a treasure trove of eavesdropping intelligence sources -- e-mail addresses, cell phone numbers, and personal phone directories. These are prime intelligence sources that may...

WASHINGTON (AP) - An American accused in court papers of having ties to Osama bin Laden is now working for the Iraqi government's Foreign Ministry, U.S. officials and a former CIA counterterrorism chief say. Iraqi-born Tarik A. Hamdi was the ``American contact'' for one of bin Laden's front organizations and gave a satellite telephone battery to a bin Laden aide in Afghanistan for a phone used by the terrorist leader, according to an affidavit from Customs Agent David Kane.The affidavit was unsealed this week in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., along with a federal indictment charging Hamdi with lying...

British man accused of breaking into military, NASA computers LONDON - A British man accused by the United States of hacking into scores of military computers and disrupting operations was arrested in London on Tuesday to face an extradition hearing, police said. Unemployed programmer Gary McKinnon, 39, is accused of gaining illegal access to 53 computers owned by the Pentagon, NASA and the U.S. Army and Navy between February 2001 and March 2002. He was taken to a central London police station and is due to appear in court on Wednesday for an extradition hearing brought on behalf of the...

<p>WASHINGTON -- Sensitive national-security information was mistakenly released by the Treasury Department to former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, but no criminal statutes were violated, records show.</p> <p>Mr. O'Neill drew on some of the material -- part of a cache of 19,000 documents -- for a memoir released in January that was critical of President Bush. When a document stamped "Secret" was displayed on a CBS "60 Minutes" episode concerning the book, the Treasury Department sought an investigation.</p>

WASHINGTON -- Nine days after the federal government raided their homes and businesses, leaders of an alleged terror financing operation were given the opportunity to question the agency investigating them. The meeting on March 29, 2002, in the office of Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) is an example of the political clout of what the government calls the "Safa Group," a web of companies and nonprofits based in northern Virginia. One week later, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill met with Muslim leaders with connections to the Safa Group to hear complaints about the raids. The leaders are suspected of running more...

Gainesville -- Officials at Mar-Jac Poultry said they were shocked to find out Thursday that federal officials suspect the company might have ties to terrorist funding. Company Vice President Doug Carnes said at least a half-dozen U.S. Customs agents spent all day Wednesday gathering financial records and charitable contribution files. They were "real nice, professional and complimentary," he said, but they didn't disclose the nature of their visit. It was only on Thursday that Carnes was alerted by company officials in Virginia as to what the agents were looking for. "I'm shocked. I'm in disbelief. I've worked for them for...

CAIRO, March 21, (IslamOnline) - The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation raided several Muslim organizations Wednesday morning, in Virginia, Georgia, and Washington D.C., a prominent Muslim American told IslamOnline Thursday. In an exclusive interview with IslamOnline, Dr. Mohamed S. Omeish, President of the Success Foundation, said that several organizations had been raided, including the Success Foundation, a not-for-profit, charity foundation set up for educational and humanitarian work. The Muslim World League offices were also raided, as well as several Muslim-owned businesses, such as MAR-JAC companies, and Sterling Management. "The raids were all carried out at approximately the same time,...

ROME Italian investigators are looking into a second ring of suspected terrorists who may have been plotting a chemical weapons assault on Rome. An Algerian, a Pakistani, a Tunisian and three Iraqis were arrested in early morning raids Friday. A group of Moroccans was arrested last month with a map of the U.S. Embassy and large quantities of a cyanide compound that experts say could have been turned into a deadly gas. The ring busted Friday is thought to be completely independent of the Moroccans, officials said, although both likely have ties to Al Qaeda's network of terror. Investigators said ...

WASHINGTON, March 15 — A former EgyptAir pilot told American investigators two years ago that the co-pilot of EgyptAir 990 crashed the plane into the Atlantic Ocean to take revenge on a company executive who had just demoted him and was riding as a passenger, a person involved in the investigation said today. American aviation investigators say they do not know whether the explanation given by the pilot, which was first reported today in The Los Angeles Times, is true. Since the crash of the Boeing 767, Egyptian officials have argued that there was no evidence that the co-pilot, Gamil...

President Bush had many important foreign policy issues to discuss when he went to Lima, Peru, last weekend, but you wouldn't have known it from watching NBC's weekend "Today" show on Sunday. Because while Bush was talking about narcotics trafficking, trade and international terrorism with Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo, "Today" and other Sunday news shows led with the case of convicted American terrorist Lori Berenson. American media coverage of President Bush's trip to Mexico, Peru and Central America revealed how our media establishment views Latin America. Basically, our journalistic agenda-setters in New York and Washington ignore our neighbors to the...

I never give time frames, because you never know where you'll have sufficient evidence to go public with a prosecution, " Mueller said.

Washington — An unusually warm period a millennium ago may have been part of a natural planetary cycle, researchers say in a study of tree rings that scrutinizes the link between human activity and climate change. The study, appearing Friday in the journal Science, analyzed ancient tree rings from 14 sites on three continents in the Northern Hemisphere. It concluded that temperatures in an era known as the Medieval Warm Period about 800 to 1,000 years ago closely matched the warming trend of the 20th century. In recent years, many climate scientists have said an unprecedented warming spell that began...