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Israel shared three cell phone numbers used by Qasem Soleimani with U.S. intelligence in the hours before American drones unleashed Hellfire missiles on the Iranian general last year, Yahoo News reported Saturday. The revelation sheds new light on the role that Israel played in the killing of Soleimani, who the State Department says was responsible for hundreds of U.S. troop deaths as the head of the Revolutionary Guard's elite Quds Force. The drone strike occurred shortly after midnight on Jan. 2, 2020, as Soleimani and his entourage were leaving Baghdad's international airport. As three Delta Force sniper teams monitored Soleimani...

Keith talks to Howard Fineman about Sy Hersh's claim that Cheney was running a secret assassination ring. Red State reports: Cownell alum Keith Olbermann has a tough job. Imagine going on TV every night and trying to outdo your own prior outrage. I mean, once you’ve called someone worse than the Nazis you really got nowhere to go but down. So it is that, with the audacity of a dope, our intrepid Cownell grad Keith went on the air two nights in a row hissy-fitting that Dick Cheney was running an “assassination ring” out of his office. Yes, seriously. An...

The legendary FBI agent in charge of New York’s counterterrorism division, Carlos T. Fernandez, is retiring after 21 years. Fernandez, 50, was posted in Yemen after the USS Cole bombing, in Afghanistan after 9/11 and in Libya after Benghazi. He is joining Viacom as their global head of security at their Times Square headquarters. Insiders say the media giant has hired him to lead all of their security teams on a global basis, protect their offices and digital systems, and ensure the safety of Viacom staff and guests who attend their events.

Diplomatic revolt. Over 50 U.S. diplomats have signed an internal State Department memo sharply critical of the Obama administration’s Syria policy, in which they call for airstrikes against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The memo says Washington’s Syria policy has been “overwhelmed” by the continuing slaughter of civilians in Syria, and demands “a judicious use of stand-off and air weapons, which would undergird and drive a more focused and hard-nosed U.S.-led diplomatic process.” The memo, sent along an established “dissent channel” within State that allows officials to vent frustrations and suggest changes in policy, would flip the existing...

McChrystal and a few other key figures converted JSOC from a Ferrari in the garage to the long-haul truck of the war on terror. The targeting of low-level insurgents continued when JSOC shifted resources from Iraq to Afghanistan in 2009. But the enemy’s continual replacement of losses with recruits from Pakistan and unpacified eastern Afghanistan eventually eroded JSOC’s morale. One Ranger officer tells Mr. Naylor that, by 2011, morale had sunk to the point that he had to yell at his noncommissioned officers just to go out on operations.

Former DIA director: Obama White House made “willful decision” to support Al-Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood in Syria. Mehdi Hasan is a highly suspect analyst and Foreign Policy Journal appears to be a pro-jihad paleocon publication, and Al Jazeera is certainly a pro-jihad propaganda outlet. All that is noted, but if this transcript is accurate, former DIA director Michael Flynn is confirming that the Obama Administration knowingly decided to support al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, and directly enabled the rise of the Islamic State. And given the Obama Administration’s general stance toward the global jihad and Islamic supremacism, what...

The Pentagon has scaled back its plan to assemble an overseas spy service that could have rivaled the CIA in size, backing away from a project that faced opposition from lawmakers who questioned its purpose and cost, current and former U.S. officials said. Under the revised blueprint, the Defense Intelligence Agency will train and deploy up to 500 undercover officers, roughly half the size of the espionage network envisioned two years ago when the formation of the Defense Clandestine Service was announced. The previous plan called for moving as many as 1,000 undercover case officers overseas to work alongside the...

When U.S. Special Operations forces raided several houses in the Iraqi city of Ramadi in March 2006, two Army Rangers were killed when gunfire erupted on the ground floor of one home. A third member of the team was knocked unconscious and shredded by ball bearings when a teenage insurgent detonated a suicide vest. Who, the relative asked, was this man — the one represented by a blue dot and nearly killed by the suicide bomber? After some hesi­ta­tion, the military briefers answered with three letters: FBI. The wounded agent in Iraq was Jay Tabb, a longtime member of the...

Obama gave his chief counterterrorism advisor, John Brennan, who is now the nominee to be the next leader of the CIA, a blank check. Brennan could do just about whatever he needed to do in North Africa and the Mideast, contend Murphy and Webb. Brennan chose to conduct a dangerous classified war without looping in Stevens, who paid with his life for his ignorance, according to the book. The Joint Special Operations Command, which Brennan controls, is a collection of special forces outside of the regular military command originally formed as a hostage-rescue team. But in the middle of last...

Today, a Defense Department official confirmed to Breitbart News that there is advance planning for a “substantial air package” against targets in Libya. Military sources suggest that this means that flight missions against Libyan targets will include manned flights, not merely drones. The New York Times reported yesterday that the Obama administration is preparing an operation to “kill or capture militants” involved in the Benghazi attack resulting in the murder of our ambassador to Libya and three other Americans. According to the Times, the Joint Special Operations Command is putting together “so-called target packages of detailed information about the suspects.”...

In the space of three years, the administration has built an extensive apparatus for using drones to carry out targeted killings of suspected terrorists and stealth surveillance of other adversaries. The apparatus involves dozens of secret facilities, including two operational hubs on the East Coast, virtual Air Force­ ­cockpits in the Southwest and clandestine bases in at least six countries on two continents. The rapid expansion of the drone program has blurred long-standing boundaries between the CIA and the military. Lethal operations are increasingly assembled a la carte, piecing together personnel and equipment in ways that allow the White House...

Left-wing Columbia Professor Jeffrey Sachs has accused US special operations forces of committing "high-tech murder on a large scale" for their targeted campaign of killing or capturing Al Qaeda Taliban forces in Afghanistan. Sachs made his contemptible accusation on today's Morning Joe in the course of a discussion of the PBS Frontline documentary "Kill/Capture" on the JSOC operations. Stephen Grey, a producer of the documentary, was a guest. View video here.

In 2009, leftoids Keith Olbermann and Jonathan Alter were shocked by Seymour Hersh’s claims that Dick Cheney ran assassination squads using military personnel to take out enemy targets – you know, just like the current President... “There’s a lot more that happened in that Bush administration, directly out of the vice-president’s office, that we don’t know about yet,” warned Alter, adding that once the full details become known, they “will curl our hair.” That last line would carry greater power if Alter weren’t bald. And also a screaming hypocrite. Now that Barack Obama is running an assassination squad – directly...

The view from (some) on the right in regard to the Bin Laden news is: waterboarding is vindicated. One GOP Congressman tweeted: Wonder what President Obama thinks of water boarding now? The reason is that there's a direct line to be traced from the big news to data collected at GITMO -- data that was almost certainly collected under duress. Here's the key interrogation note regarding a courier going to Abottabad: Rest @ link

Now that a Democratic President has employed JSOC to take out Osama bin Laden, will the fever swamps of the left continue to assert that it's just a Bush/Cheney plot to run around unjustifiably killing people?

From Ghazi Air Base in Pakistan, the modified MH-60 helicopters made their way to the garrison suburb of Abbottabad, about 30 miles from the center of Islamabad. Aboard were Navy SEALs, flown across the border from Afghanistan, along with tactical signals, intelligence collectors, and navigators using highly classified hyperspectral imagers. After bursts of fire over 40 minutes, 22 people were killed or captured. One of the dead was Osama bin Laden, done in by a double tap -- boom, boom -- to the left side of his face. His body was aboard the choppers that made the trip back. One...

U.S. forces finally found al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden not in the rugged mountains of Afghanistan's border, but in a million-dollar compound in an upscale suburb of Pakistan's capital, with his youngest wife, U.S. officials said early on Monday. They were led to the fortress-like three-story building after more than four years tracking one of bin Laden's most trusted couriers, whom U.S. officials said was identified by men captured after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. "Detainees also identified this man as one of the few al Qaeda couriers trusted by bin Laden. They indicated he might be living with...

JSOC. I heard one TV talking head tonight mention that we will be hearing a great deal in the coming hours and days about the Joint Special Operations Command, and how this agency was instrumental in the death of Osama bin Laden.

Seymour Hersh says that Dick Cheney headed a secret assassination wing and the head of the wing has just been named as the new commander in Afghanistan. Hersh said that there is a special unit called the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) that does high-value targeting of men that are known to be involved in anti-American activities, or are believed to be planning such activities. According to Hersh, the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) was headed by former US vice president Dick Cheney and the former head of JSOC, Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal who has just been named the new...

General Wayne Downing served in a variety of command assignments in infantry, armored, special operations, and joint units, culminating in his appointment as the Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Special Operations Command. He served two combat tours in Vietnam as a junior infantry officer. As a general officer, Wayne Downing commanded the special operations of all services during the 1989 invasion of Panama and commanded a joint special operations task force operating deep behind the Iraqi lines during Operation DESERT STORM. Following retirement, General Wayne Downing was appointed by the President to assess the 1996 terrorist attack on the U.S....