Free Republic

A Texas politician has claimed that he worked with a senior member of Ronald Reagan's 1980 presidential campaign to convince Iran to delay releasing its hostages during the crisis of 1979 in a bid to derail Jimmy Carter's re-election bid. Ben Barnes, Texas's former lieutenant governor, has claimed in an interview with The New York Times that John Connally Jr – once a governor of the same state and a high-ranking member of Reagan's election team – took him on a secret diplomatic tour of the Middle East as part of a scheme to damage Carter by convincing Iran to...

WASHINGTON — It has been more than four decades, but Ben Barnes said he remembers it vividly. His longtime political mentor invited him on a mission to the Middle East. What Mr. Barnes said he did not realize until later was the real purpose of the mission: to sabotage the re-election campaign of the president of the United States.

<p>Jeffrey Epstein was a Mossad asset who was used by Israeli intelligence to blackmail politicians, according to a former Israeli spy.</p> <p>Ari Ben-Menashe, a former Israeli spy and alleged “handler” of Robert Maxwell, told the authors of a new book, Epstein: Dead Men Tell No Tales, that Epstein ran a “complex intelligence operation” at the behest of Mossad.</p>

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Zimbabwe's main opposition leader was involved in a plot to assassinate or overthrow Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, a consulting firm with ties to Mugabe's government claimed Wednesday. An official at Dicksen & Madson said he secretly taped a meeting with Morgan Tsvangirai, president of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, where they discussed removing Mugabe from power. Tsvangirai was apparently unaware of the firm's connection to the government. The grainy footage was broadcast on Australian television Wednesday night. Tsvangirai told The Associated Press the tape was "contrived." He refused to comment further, but opposition spokesman ...

Reagan's War, Not Charlie Wilson's Media Bias: Hollywood would have us believe that Democrats defeated the evil empire in Afghanistan, and that President Reagan played only a minor role and even helped pave the way to 9/11. If you think Hollywood's idea of a Christmas movie being one about the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan is strange, even stranger is the plot line. "Charlie Wilson's War," which opened Friday, manages to reduce the president who won the Cold War to a background footnote. Charlie Wilson was a pro-abortion, Equal Rights Amendment-supporting congressman widely known as "the liberal from Lufkin." To his...

Friday, November 16, 2007 SANTA BARBARA, Calif. -- It was a quiet ceremony on Veterans Day at the Reagan Ranch Center of Young America's Foundation. There, the family and friends of William J. Casey gathered for the presentation of an award on his behalf from The Honourable Company of Freedom Fighters. The international organization's charter states it was "founded to recognize and honor individuals and groups which have fought for freedom, participatory government and against fascism, communism, moral relativity and terrorism in all their forms." The citation for William J. Casey, who died in 1987, sums up a remarkable life...

Fred D. Thompson rose to national prominence in the mid-1970s. As chief counsel to the Republicans on the Senate Watergate Committee, he famously asked the question that revealed the existence of the White House taping system that ultimately led to President Richard M. Nixon's resignation. But Mr. Thompson was also an active participant in the White House's efforts to deflect blame from the president and discredit his accusers, plotting strategy with Mr. Nixon's lawyers and leaking information to them. (Continued for 9 more pages)

Vice-President Casey? After watching the Senate Hearings this week where Teddy Kennedy quizzed Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, a phoenix arose from the ashes of liberal angst that resulted from the Senator's inability to score any political points by attacking the administration's execution of the War on Terror. General William Casey's stellar performance in refuting Ted's outrageous claims about the lack of progress in the War on Terror and the lack of military success in Iraq prompted several people to contact us with the suggestion of General Casey as a potential running mate for Dr. Rice. (Click here to...

History professor Joan Hoff of Montana State University, an expert on the Watergate scandal, finds it interesting that Bob Woodward is claiming that he had a close relationship with former FBI official Mark Felt, now identified as Deep Throat, when Felt suffers from serious health problems, including dementia, and can't deny it. "It's just like when he said he interviewed [former CIA director Bill] Casey when Casey was comatose," she says. Len Colodny, co-author of Silent Coup, about the "removal" of President Nixon, finds the identification of Mark Felt as Deep Throat to be rather remarkable: "A Deep Throat who...

INTELLIGENCE OPERATIONS: Ronald Reagan's CIA Legacy June 11, 2004: Since his death on June 5th, former President Ronald Reagan has received a lot of accolades for winning the Cold War. However, one of his most critical decisions in winning the Cold War was not really commented on. It was made very early in Reagan’s first term, when William F. Casey was nominated to serve as Director of Central Intelligence. Casey, who had not really operated in the intelligence community since leaving the OSS after World War II, seemed to be a political choice. However, he quickly set about changing things...

As president of the United States, Ronald Reagan initiated a sweeping and unprecedented program of covert actions and economic-warfare initiatives that acted to greatly weaken the Soviet economy, its support for "wars of liberation," and its hold on its power in Eastern Europe, former top Reagan administration officials said. The elements of these programs were contained in top-secret national-security directives signed by Reagan in 1982 and 1983, these sources told United Press International. "Any kind of covert-action program had to be expressed in a presidential finding," after consultations with attorneys, a former Reagan White House official explained. He said one...