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WASHINGTON, (AP) -- John R. Bolton, nominated to be U.N. ambassador, vastly overrated the military might of Syria and Cuba and had to be talked into toning down his assessments, a former senior intelligence official told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff Friday. Robert L. Hutchings, who was responsible for coordinating American intelligence assessments in 2003, told the committee staff he felt Bolton was intent on drawing conclusions in public speeches that were "politicized" and exceeded U.S. intelligence on both countries, said a committee source, speaking on condition of anonymity. In another interview, former Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief...

The Romanian hacker known as “Guccifer” who hacked into Hillary Clinton’s private email server told Fox News that “it was easy.” “For me, it was easy … easy for me, for everybody,” Marcel Lehel Lazar, also know as “Guccifer,” told Fox News’ Catherine Herridge in a phone interview. Lazar said that he first hacked into Sidney Blumenthal’s AOL account in March of 2013 and used it to get into Clinton’s server that he says he accessed twice. He explained that he did research on the internet and then guessed the answers to Blumenthal’s security questions. Lazar said that the security...

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who endorsed President Obama in 2008 and 2012, told the Washington Ideas Forum that there’s a special reason why he doesn’t change his party affiliation. Powell confirmed that he’s still a registered Republican. “I want to continue to be a Republican because it annoys them,” he quipped. “I think the party has shifted much further right than where the country is and it should be obvious to party leaders that they cannot keep saying and doing the things that they were doing and hope to be successful in national-level election in the future, not...

Retired US Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson is no stranger to controversy, with a legacy of questionable statements on Israel and the US government. In 2013 the former chief of staff for then-Secretary of State Colin Powell suggested that Israel was responsible for the use of chemical weapons in Syria. In 2007 Wilkerson appeared in a Dutch documentary, claiming that American foreign policy was dominated by “the Jewish lobby”. Despite his history of inflammatory rhetoric and frequent conspiracy theories, Wilkerson was tapped to serve as a military and foreign policy adviser for the Bernie Sanders campaign in 2015. In the wake...

aded on Jun 12, 2007 Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, appearing on the June 10, 2007, edition of "Meet The Press," reiterated and expanded on his claim that he was misled by unknown forces in the intelligence community who failed to reveal vital information to him before his infamous February 5, 2003, speech before the

Cowboy president is courting disaster, says Powell's man By Francis Harris (Filed: 21/10/2005) Colin Powell's right-hand man has launched a blistering attack on the White House, describing President George W Bush as "cowboyish", his secretary of state Condoleezza Rice as "extremely weak" and American foreign policy as "courting disaster". The attack came from Col Larry Wilkerson, who for four years was Mr Powell's chief of staff at the state department during the first Bush administration. In a sometimes savagely phrased speech at a Washington think-tank, the former US marine said that the Bush team had so damaged the country's foreign...

State Department officials have determined that classified information was sent to the personal email accounts of former Secretary of State Colin Powell and the senior staff of former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, NBC News has learned. The IG came upon the material during the course of a review of how current and past secretaries of state deal with classified material and with email. The review was prompted by the current controversy over Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's use of a personal computer server to conduct government business while secretary of state. Linick's findings will be seen as helpful to...

FAYETTEVILLE (WTVD) -- A 24-year-old Fayetteville man is charged in the shooting his mother. Kevin Tyrone Powell faces charges of attempted first-degree murder and assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill inflicting serious injury. Thursday afternoon, police say he walked into his mother's nail salon and spa and shot 44-year-old Derema "Miss "Dee" Burch in the face.

Emails released by the State Department on Friday show that Hillary Clintons longtime friend Sidney Blumenthal reached out to her on behalf of a former United Kingdom diplomat who was interested in setting up secret channels between insurgents and governments. Clinton was receptive to the idea which came via Blumenthal from Jonathan Powell, former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blairs chief of staff. (Quote) Hillary, Jonathan Powell has launched a new NGO that has already initiated some very interesting work below the radar, (Unquote) Blumenthal wrote in the March 18, 2012 email. (Quote)Sid We are trying to replicate what we did...

WASHINGTON -- President Bush and his top advisers have decided, for now, against launching a war to overthrow Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in the next phase of the U.S.-led war on terrorism, according to senior U.S. officials and Western diplomats. With the al-Qaeda terrorist network all but vanquished in Afghanistan, speculation has been growing that Bush would turn his sights on Hussein, a longtime U.S. nemesis who is known to have chemical and biological weapons. Iraq also is believed to be working on obtaining nuclear weapons. But the officials and diplomats, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Bush's ...

President Obama’s Iran nuclear deal on Sunday got some largely unexpected support -- from former Secretary of State Colin Powell and Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz. The deal, which is expected to receive a vote this week in the Republican-led Congress, has essentially no other GOP support. Still, Obama late last week secured enough support from Senate Democrats to ultimately complete the deal, despite the Republican opposition. Powell, who served in the Republican administration of President George W. Bush, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the international agreement is "a pretty good deal" that would reduce the threat...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Let's go to General Powell, General Powell on Meet the Depressed yesterday with David Gregory. First question that we have from Gregory: "This time about a year ago, General Powell, you were in a feud with former Vice President Cheney, with Rush Limbaugh about the nature of the Republican Party, and this is what you said in May of 2009: 'Rush Limbaugh says, "Get out of the room."' [sic] The Republican Party was talking to you. Dick Cheney says, 'He's already out,' speaking about you. (SNIP) I have a question regarding all of the illegals running around...

Liz Cheney said Sunday that some of the stories in print about her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, were "fantasies" cooked up by some of his old Bush administration rivals. Responding to a question about Dick Cheney's role in pushing for aggressive interrogations, Liz Cheney pointed to Lawrence Wilkerson, the chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, for spreading inaccurate information about her father. Wilkerson "has made a cottage industry of fantasies about the vice president," she said on ABC's "This Week." "It's important to look at the source" of media reports, Cheney said. "Nobody talking about...

Lawrence Wilkerson is a contradictory figure. Wilkerson is a career military man, who served as chief of staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell; but he has also voiced reluctance to involve American forces in foreign conflicts, and slammed the Bush administration for its handling of the Iraq War. He is also a lifelong Republican who, far from just criticizing his party, has actually gone on the warpath against it at times. When Powell was attacked by conservatives in 2012 for endorsing Barack Obama for reelection — Mitt Romney surrogate John Sununu famously suggested that the endorsement was motivated by...

Updated March 27 to include responses from the FBI and the State Department. Emails disclosed by a hacker show a close family friend was funneling intelligence about the crisis in Libya directly to the Secretary of State’s private account starting before the Benghazi attack. Starting weeks before Islamic militants attacked the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya, longtime Clinton family confidante Sidney Blumenthal supplied intelligence to then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gathered by a secret network that included a former CIA clandestine service officer, according to hacked emails from Blumenthal’s account. The emails, which were posted on the internet...

The Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation accepted millions of dollars from a former deputy prime minister of Lebanon known for defending Hezbollah, according to a Washington Free Beacon analysis. Issam Fares, a Lebanese billionaire who has established himself in the United States as a prominent philanthropist, has given between $1 and $5 million in donations to the Clintons’ foundation with donations coming as recently as last year, according to a public donor disclosure list on the foundation’s website.. *SNIP* “It seems the Zionist lobby in the United States and its agents in the region were displeased and worried that...

The Talk Shows March 8th, 2015 Guests to be interviewed today on major television talk shows: FOX NEWS SUNDAY (Fox Network): Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga. ; former Gov. Mike Huckabee, R-Ark.MEET THE PRESS (NBC): Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Claire McCaskill, D-Mo.; Lewis.FACE THE NATION (CBS): Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; Sens. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Tim Scott, R-S.C.; Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C.; Benjamin Crump, lawyer for the family of Michael Brown, the unarmed black 18-year-old shot to death by a white police officer in Ferguson.THIS WEEK (ABC): Mayor James Knowles of Ferguson, Missouri;...

The US First Lady, Laura Bush, had tears in her eyes yesterday as she listened to a performance by the Watoto children's choir - made up mainly of children orphaned by HIV/Aids. Laura, and her husband, US President George W. Bush, were at The Aids Support Organisation clinic in Entebbe on the last stop of their four-hour visit to Uganda. During the emotional presentation, where President Yoweri Museveni was also present, Ms Bush wiped tears from her eyes as the children sang Christian songs of hope in English. Later, President Bush promised more support to Uganda in the fight...

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...