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For the second time in less than a month, senior Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard officers have been killed in a suspected Israeli airstrike in Damascus, Syria. Iran's unofficial Mehr news agency said, "The Revolutionary Guards' Syria intel chief, his deputy, and two other Guards members were martyred in the attack on Syria by Israel." Updated reports say that five IRGC officers, plus some of their Syrian counterparts, were killed in the attack. The icons are already circulating. The intelligence chief, Sadegh Omidzadeh, was a close associate of Brigadier General Sayyed Reza Mousavi, the IRGC commander in Syria, who, along with...

Peter Lance's new book, Triple Cross, (the complete title is: Triple Cross, How Bin Laden's Master Spy Penetrated the CIA, the Green Berets and the FBI -- And Why Patrick Fitzgerald Failed to Stop Him) is out in bookstores on 11/21/2006. This is a link to the Able Danger Blog's review of the book. Here is the text of the Harper Collins' press release for the book: TRIPLE CROSS How Bin Laden's Master Spy Penetrated the CIA, the Green Berets and the FBI -- And Why Patrick Fitzgerald Failed to Stop Him By Peter Lance In TRIPLE CROSS, five-time Emmy-award...

Tehran, Aug. 13: One of Osama bin Laden’s sons, Saad, together with a number of top Al Qaeda commanders, including Seif al Adel, are hiding in Iran and are not in Syria as reported by several Western papers this week, a well informed source said. The source, a top Iranian intelligence official until a few months ago, said Al Qaeda and members of Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard, the Pasdaran, are negotiating coordinated actions against the United States and Israel. The Al Qaeda members had been living for the past four years in a neighbourhood in northern Tehran under the surveillance...

I should've known that something interesting was coming on CNN when I saw that the violent-nihilistic movie, "V for Vendetta" was advertising itself earlier today on "CNN Sunday Night." You might remember that film; audiences were supposed to cheer terrorists as they blow up Big Ben in London. Happily, audiences shunned the film--Hollywood seems to have overestmated the public appetite for terror-philic films. And that was just the commercial. Host Carol Lin didn't let me down, either--even as she ran down the USA....

John McCain has been hammering rival Barack Obama for being little more than a vapid "celebrity" and "elitist." But The Nation has obtained a photo revealing just how star-struck a straight-talking maverick can become when offered the chance to celebrate his birthday aboard a yacht filled with celebrities--even if one of those celebrity types turns out to be an A-list con man. The photograph substantiates reports that in late August, 2006, McCain celebrated his 70th birthday aboard a yacht, the Celine Ashley, rented by A-list con man Raffaello Follieri and his then-movie star girlfriend Anne Hathaway. In the current edition...

WASHINGTON — When Sen. Barack Obama heads to Africa for a five-nation tour this week, he will take with him a credential no other U.S. senator can claim — and one that may make Africans listen to what he has to say. Obama departs Friday on a 15-day tour that will take him not only to his father's homeland, but also to South Africa, Congo, Djibouti and Sudan. While he has visited Africa twice before, this trip is certain to be different. (snip) Earlier this year, Obama attached an amendment to a pending bill that would provide up to $52...

KINSHASA, Congo (AP) -- The U.N. said Monday it had launched a military operation to rescue foreign diplomats inside the besieged home of a Congo presidential candidate.

A.J. Strata informs us that Sidney Blumenthal has leaked the fact that NSA is assisting Israel in tracking weapons shipments from Iran and Syria to Hezbollah, gaining him anti-Israel supporters and (one hopes) a chance to talk to the grand jury investigating NSA leaks: Why would Sydney Blumenthal risk everything to publicize the fact he has been leaked – and is publicizing – classified information? The leftwing, anti-Israel sites are lapping this up. But my guess is Sidney just won himself an invite to a Grand Jury looking into leaks at the NSA:

SNIPPET: "The Tablighi Jamaat (TJ) name has come up before in connection with terrorism plots, including the October 2002 Portland Seven and the September 2002 Lackawanna Six cases in the United States, as well as the August 2006 plot to bomb airliners en route from London to the United States, the July 7, 2005, London Underground bombings and the July 2007 attempted bombings in London and Glasgow, Scotland. Over the past several years we also have received several queries about TJ from U.S. law enforcement officials who are concerned about the group’s presence and activities in the United States. U.S....

Agency says it remains committed to solving the 5-year-old mystery WASHINGTON - The top FBI official in charge of the investigation into the deadly anthrax attacks has left the case, NBC News has learned. Richard "Rick" Lambert had been the inspector of the so-called AMERITHRAX case since September 2002, and had run every aspect of the five-year-old investigation. Just last month, he was transferred to the Knoxville, Tenn., field office of the FBI as its special agent in charge, according to the FBI. Lambert was the public face of the case, and his transfer is sure to fuel speculation that...

N'DJAMENA, Aug 26 (Reuters) - Chad ordered U.S. energy giant Chevron and Malaysia's Petronas on Saturday to leave the country within 24 hours for failing to honour tax obligations, a move apparently aimed at increasing control over its oil output. "From tomorrow, the representatives of Chevron and Petronas must leave Chad and close their offices," President Idriss Deby told a government meeting. The companies had been asked this month to honour corporate tax obligations. "Unfortunately the government has received no reaction from the two partners," Deby said. The surprise move followed Chad's decision to create a new national oil company...

IRAN is seeking to import large consignments of bomb-making uranium from the African mining area that produced the Hiroshima bomb, an investigation has revealed. A United Nations report, dated July 18, said there was “no doubt” that a huge shipment of smuggled uranium 238, uncovered by customs officials in Tanzania, was transported from the Lubumbashi mines in the Congo. Tanzanian customs officials told The Sunday Times it was destined for the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas, and was stopped on October 22 last year during a routine check. The disclosure will heighten western fears about the extent of Iran’s presumed...

On August 4, 2006, Al-Qaeda released a video in which Ayman Al-Zawahiri claimed that the Egyptian Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiyya group had joined its ranks. Later, in his videotape on the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Al-Zawahiri repeated his claim that Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiyya - together with the Algerian GSPC (Groupe salafiste pour la predication et le combat) - had joined Al-Qaeda. Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiyya was quick to deny this claim. One of its leaders, Najih Ibrahim, told the London daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat that they had refused to join Al-Qaeda "because their goal is jihad, whereas our goal is Islam." [1] Indeed, Al-Gama'a...

We are told by careful pollsters that half of the American people believe that American troops should be brought home from Iraq immediately. This news discourages supporters of our efforts there. Not me, though: I am relieved. Given press coverage of our efforts in Iraq, I am surprised that 90 percent of the public do not want us out right now. Between January 1 and September 30, 2005, nearly 1,400 stories appeared on the ABC, CBS, and NBC evening news. More than half focused on the costs and problems of the war, four times as many as those that discussed...

Note: The following text is a quote: Former State Department Official and Wife Arrested for Serving as Illegal Agents of Cuba for Nearly 30 Years Couple Allegedly Conspired to Provide Classified Information to Cuban Government A former State Department official and his wife have been arrested on charges of serving as illegal agents of the Cuban government for nearly 30 years and conspiring to provide classified U.S. information to the Cuban government. The arrests were announced today by David Kris, Assistant Attorney General for National Security; Channing D. Phillips, Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia; Joseph Persichini, Jr.,...

(Richland) August 16, 2006 - Four Marines were arrested along with 14 other young men and boys after law enforcement got a tip about a gang meeting at Pine Grove Park Sunday night. "They were probably the major focal point of this meeting," says gang investigator David Soto. Soto thinks they wanted to put their military experience to use in the plot, "You learn how to shoot, come in and move out. And those are things you also bring back to the general public. And these are things they'll also give the same training to their fellow gang members." Officers...

Amsterdam, Aug. 23 (AP): Dutch police arrested 12 passengers who aroused the crew's suspicion on a U.S. airline flight to India after it returned on Wednesday to Amsterdam escorted by two F-16 jet fighters, a spokesman said. Police spokesman Rob Staenacker said he could not disclose the nationalities of the people taken from the Northwest DC-10 after it was diverted over German airspace, or the nature of the suspicions against them. ``I can tell you 12 people have been arrested,'' he said. It was not immediately clear if they had been charged. An American passenger, who identified herself only as...

BOSTON (AP) — A woman on a trans-Atlantic flight diverted to Boston for security concerns passed several notes to crew members, urinated on the cabin floor and made comments the crew believed were references to al-Qaida and the Sept. 11 attacks, according to an affidavit filed Thursday. Catherine C. Mayo, 59, of Braintree, Vt., was to appear in federal court later Thursday on a charge of interfering with a flight crew after disrupting United 923 as it flew from London to Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. The flight, with 182 passengers and 12 crew members, landed safely with the escort of...

Cindy Sheehan, Tom Hayden, and the Hate America Left meet with pro-Ba'athist members of the Iraqi parliament to discuss “peace.” TO FIND PEOPLE WHO HATE AMERICA AS MUCH AS THEY DO, the Fifth Column Left had to go halfway around the world to meet with Iraqi political leaders who call terrorism “honorable national resistance” and say foreign jihadists “are guaranteed Paradise” – and at least one of whom has ties to militia leader Muqtada al-Sadr. By the end of the trip, the American leftists would echo these sentiments. Somehow most of the media – occupied with interminable coverage of Hurricane...

N.Korea claims capture of U.S. submersible By KWANG-TAE KIM, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 36 minutes ago North Korea claimed it has captured an unmanned U.S. submersible and put it on display in Pyongyang, a pro-North Korean newspaper in Japan said Monday. The U.S. dismissed the report. The small vessel was captured during a reconnaissance mission in waters off North Korea's eastern city of Hamhung, said the Choson Sinbo newspaper, which is published by a pro-North Korean association linked to the Pyongyang government. The newspaper report on its Web site, which is monitored in Seoul, was accompanied by a picture...