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As recriminations fly among Biden officials over who bungled the Afghanistan withdrawal, some are questioning the responsibility of Russell Travers, who was fired by the Trump administration as acting head of the National Counterterrorism and subsequently rehired by President Joe Biden to lead the interagency process on the evacuation operation. In March 2020, then-Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell fired Travers as acting head of the NCTC as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to streamline a bloated agency and remove ineffective individuals. The move was decried by former officials as a “purge” of career professionals, the Washington Post...

The coronavirus death rate in the US is just over 1.25 percent of cases but first.... North Korea firing two short range missiles Saturday morning local time.... Saying the fight against Islamic State has made progress and out of concern for the coronavirus pandemic the US-led coalition in Iraq is reducing its military presence... At least two dozen Afghan police and military killed with others missing following an attack by Taliban connected forces.... The troubled US aircraft maker Boeing is getting a bailout from the federal government.... Moving to distance herself from the situation is the former UN Ambassador and...

"Sworn in .. August 7, 2019....... Most recently, Ms. Gordon served as the Deputy Director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) from 2015 to 2017. ..... Prior to her assignment with NGA, Ms. Gordon served for 27 years at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), rising to senior executive positions in each of the Agency’s four directorates: OPERATIONS, analysis, science and technology, and support...... In 1998, she designed and drove the formation of In-Q-Tel, a private, non-profit company whose primary purpose is to deliver innovative technology solutions for the agency and the IC..... ....Ms. Gordon holds a Bachelor of Science degree...

Despite knowing the Hamas ties of Kifah Mustapha, the FBI gave him a guided tour of a top-secret counterterrorism center and access to classified investigative techniques.Court documents filed last month by the Department of Justice in a federal civil rights lawsuit shows that Special Agent in Charge (SAC) Robert Grant of the FBI Chicago field office had warned the Illinois State Police: newly appointed Muslim chaplain Kifah Mustapha would never pass an FBI background check. Mustapha’s long association with terrorist group Hamas occurred at virtually the same time that Mustapha was admitted into the FBI Citizens’ Academy sponsored by SAC...

I served 6 Presidents, 3 Rs & 3Ds. I directly supported Clinton, Bush 43, and Obama. While I didn't agree with all their policy choices, I admired and respected all of them, as they put country above their personal interests. Not so with you, as your self adoration is disgraceful https://t.co/A1brb0HW3V— John O. Brennan (@JohnBrennan) April 5, 2018

The top U.S. counterterrorism official is leaving the federal government at the end of the year, National Intelligence Director Dan Coats said Wednesday. When President Donald Trump took office in January, administration officials asked Nick Rasmussen to stay on as director of the National Counterterrorism Center through the transition. […] Russ Travers, the deputy director of the counterterrorism center, will be acting chief until Trump nominates a successor. …

US security agencies warned Spain in May that the Islamic State group was planning an attack in Barcelona, where the jihadists claimed a deadly van rampage earlier this month, local media said Thursday. The daily El Periodico de Cataluna reported that the US National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) alerted Spanish intelligence officers to the threat weeks before a man ploughed his vehicle into crowds of tourists along Barcelona’s Las Ramblas boulevard on August 17, killing 14 people. “Unsubstantiated information of unknown veracity from late May 2017 indicted that the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (IS) was planning to conducted unspecified...

Regulations recently signed into effect by Attorney General Eric Holder allow the National Counterterroism Center (NCTC) to monitor records of citizens for any potential criminal activity, without a warrant and without suspicion. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, the records that will be subject to seizure and examination by the NCTC include “flight records, casino-employee lists, the names of Americans hosting foreign exchange students and many others.” Prior to the promulgation of these new regulations, such records were stored on only those citizens suspected of terror-related activity or as part of ongoing criminal investigations. Furthermore, this information...

Top U.S. intelligence officials gathered in the White House Situation Room in March to debate a controversial proposal. Counterterrorism officials wanted to create a government dragnet, sweeping up millions of records about U.S. citizens—even people suspected of no crime. ~ snip ~ The rules now allow the little-known National Counterterrorism Center to examine the government files of U.S. citizens for possible criminal behavior, even if there is no reason to suspect them. That is a departure from past practice, which barred the agency from storing information about ordinary Americans unless a person was a terror suspect or related to an...

NOTE: Excerpting does not do the article justice. Read the whole thing. # SNIPPET: "He was a fundraiser for a group convicted of providing material support to Hamas, yet Kifah Mustapha recently received tours of secure FBI facilities in and around Washington. Mustapha's two-day trip earlier this month was arranged by the FBI's Chicago office, whose officials escorted Mustapha and about two dozen others on tours of the National Counterterrorism Center, the FBI facility in Quantico, Virginia and FBI headquarters at the J. Edgar Hoover Building. A news report noted that Mustapha "asked some of the most pointed questions" during...

Note: This is the Whitehouse channel on YouTube. # Video: "Celebrating Ramadan at the White House" Video Description - Quote: Free Download | whitehouse | August 13, 2010 The President hosts an Iftar dinner celebrating Ramadan in the State Dining Room. Category: News & Politics Tags: • Ramadan Iftar Dinner President Barack Obama Muslim Islam Download this video for offline viewing. Public Domain. Download High Quality MP4 Learn more

In a big speech today, the POTUS cited "unacceptable" failures in the American intelligence system that allowed an accused terrorist to board a U.S.-bound Northwest Airlines flight on Christmas Day, and promised changes to avert future plots. He also said that officials in some unnamed federal agencies have taken "responsibility for what went wrong" in their operations while avoiding blame for any one individual or department in particular. He said of the slip-ups "That's not acceptable, and I will not tolerate it," Obama said. "We have to do better, and we will do better. And we have to do it...

There's a massive conflict of interest -- along with ideological problems -- in Barack Obama's questionable pick to head the review of the failing watch-list "system" that carelessly allowed terrorist Abdulmutallab to get on board the flight to Detroit to try and blow it up. The questionable pick is one John Brennan, and here are his two biggest flaws as they relate to his ability to be able to conduct a competent and ethical review of the watch-list "system."

The finger-pointing began in earnest on Wednesday over who in the alphabet soup of American security agencies knew what and when about the Nigerian man charged with trying to blow up an airliner. But the harshest spotlight fell on the very agency created to make sure intelligence dots were always connected: the National Counterterrorism Center. The crown jewel of intelligence reform after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the center was the hub whose mission was to unite every scrap of data on threats and suspects, to make sure an extremist like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the would-be bomber, would never penetrate...

The CIA on Wednesday rejected accusations that it failed to share vital information with other US intelligence agencies that might have helped prevent last week's attempted plane bomb attack. The intelligence agency rejected charges that it possessed, but failed to disseminate, information about Nigerian suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab that might have led to his being placed on a no-fly list. "We learned of Abdulmutallab in November, when his father came to the US embassy in Nigeria and sought help in finding him. We did not have his name before then," said CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano. "Also in November, we worked...

The State Department investigation into how and why the passport files of three presidential candidates were breached is scrutinizing an employee at a Virginia-based company, which is headed by an adviser to Barack Obama’s campaign. The Washington Times, which broke the news Thursday that Obama’s files were improperly accessed, reported Saturday that the State Department inspector general’s internal probe will include polygraph tests of supervisors to determine whether there was a political motive behind the breaches. The article said a focal point of the probe will be an employee who works for The Analysis Corporation and is still with the...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The CEO of a company whose employee is accused of improperly looking at the passport files of presidential candidates is a consultant to the Barack Obama campaign, a source said Saturday. John Brennan, president of the Analysis Corp., advises the Illinois Democrat on foreign policy and intelligence issues, the source said. Brennan briefed the media on behalf of the campaign this month. The executive is a former senior CIA official and former interim director of the National Counterterrorism Center. He contributed $2,300 to the Obama campaign in January.

Al Qaeda has an active plot to hit the West. The United States knows about it but doesn’t have enough tactical detail to issue a precise warning or raise the threat level, says Vice Admiral (ret.) John Scott Redd, who heads the government’s National Counterterrorism Center. In an interview at his headquarters near Washington, D.C., Redd told Newsweek’s Mark Hosenball and Jeffrey Bartholet that the country is better prepared than ever to counter such threats. But he also believes another successful terror attack on the U.S. homeland is inevitable. Excerpts: NEWSWEEK: People in various agencies have said that since Tora...

Al Qaeda has an active plot to hit the West. The United States knows about it but doesn’t have enough tactical detail to issue a precise warning or raise the threat level, says Vice Admiral (ret.) John Scott Redd, who heads the government’s National Counterterrorism Center. In an interview at his headquarters near Washington, D.C., Redd told Newsweek’s Mark Hosenball and Jeffrey Bartholet that the country is better prepared than ever to counter such threats. But he also believes another successful terror attack on the U.S. homeland is inevitable. -snip- NEWSWEEK: People in various agencies have said that since Tora...

Every weekday at 8 a.m., Kevin Brock hefts a thick white ring binder onto a sleek, oval conference table. Labeled "Read Book," the deceptively plain folder houses the "Threat Matrix," a top-secret compendium of the most troubling reports of possible terrorist activity, drawn from the nation's 16 intelligence agencies. It is thicker than usual on a recent Monday morning, packed with 66 separate items that came in over the weekend. Brock, the principal deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center, is about to brief some of the government's most senior officials on the latest threat information. -snip- Facing a wall...