Deadly Incompetence: White House Leaks Identity of CIA head Of Station For Afghanistan

President Obama's Memorial Day trip to Afghanistan was a well-executed propaganda coup, especially with the VA scandal still in the news.

And then somebody screwed up. Someone at the White House accidentally leaked the name of the CIA station chief in Kabul, Afghanistan on a list of people the president was going to meet with to some 6,000 members of the press, and there's no telling whom it could have gone to from there.

This is dangerous not only for the individual involved, but for anyone he talks to, as this person's movements are are likely one of a number of others being monitored by al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Only NBC out of the three major alphabet networks even mentioned this story, although they found considerable air time to devote to stories on Michelle Obama's school lunch program.

And as you'll notice, the NBC reporter, Peter Alexander mentioned the leaking of part-time agent Valerie's Plame's identity by "Bush administration officials" and took care to equal the two.

Actually, there's not much of a comparison except in one major detail...in both cases, it's a felony. The Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 makes revealing the name of a covert CIA agent a crime.

In the Plame outing,the story became a major firestorm and made national headlines after the late columnist Robert Novak published a piece revealing that revealing that prominent Democrat Iraq War critic Joseph C. Wilson's wife Valerie Plame was a CIA employee. The dinosaur media were all over the story. A Special Counsel was appointed to investigate the leak, and charges of political retribution by the Bush White House over Wilson’s opinions on the Iraq War (and as it turned out later, his wholesale lies) were the story for months. Figures within the Bush administration including Karl Rove were targeted and investigated.

Eventually, Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff Scooter Libbey was charged, mostly because in the months between his first statements to the FBI and subsequent ones and his later testimony under oath some of his details weren't correlated and didn't match up. He became the Official Designated Victim,and got 30 months in federal prison, a fine of $250,000, and two years of supervised release, including 400 hours of community service. He was spared prison but remains a convicted felon because President Bush commuted only his 30-month prison sentence and left his conviction and the rest of his punishment intact.

And in the end, the person who gave Novak the leak was not a 'Bush Administration official' but Colin Powell's deputy Richard Armitage, who readily admitted that he was the source but claimed he didn’t know Plame was covert. He,of course, was never punished, most likely because it would have reflected on Colin Powell, who sat back, said nothing and let Libbey take the rap.

Now as bad as releasing Valerie Plame's name was, let's remember that she was essentially a clerical employee who worked in Washington DC, not in Kabul, one of the most dangerous posts in the world. Yet there's no media frenzy, no call to investigate Obama appointees in the White House, no calling for a special counsel, nothing.

It remains to be seen if members of Congress and the dinosaur media are going to go after this story, report indignantly about this latest example of the Obama White House's sheer incompetence and insist that whomever leaked this CIA station head's name be punished.

Spy Vs. Spy...US And China In Major Confrontation

China has summoned U.S. Ambassador Max Baucus ( you remember, the guy who admitted in his confirmation hearings he didn't know much about China) over criminal charges the U.S. government filed against five Chinese military officers, accusing them of hacking into American nuclear, metal and solar companies to steal trade secrets.

Formally 'summoning' the ambassador of a foreign country is a fairly serious diplomatic step, signifying major displeasure and designed as a message to the diplomat's country that all is definitely not well.

The fact that Baucus was summoned by the assistant foreign minister, Zheng Zeguang rather than the foreign minister Wang Yi is another message from the face conscious Chinese:

Zheng "protested" the actions by the United States, saying the indictment had seriously harmed relations between both countries, the foreign ministry said in a statement on its website.

Zheng told Baucus that depending on the development of the situation, China "will take further action on the so-called charges by the United States".

It was the first criminal hacking charge that the United States has filed against specific foreign officials, and follows a steady increase in public criticism and private confrontation, including at a summit last year between U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Zheng also accused the United States of being 'overbearing' and 'hypocritical', which is probably a pretty fair statement given what's come out about the Obama Administration's spying on other nations and even world leaders as well as its own citizens.

China's defense ministry also followed up with a fairly blunt statement denying the accusations and demanding that the charges be dropped.

China has also made its displeasure felt by suspending its cooperation with a joint group working on cyber-security.

The reality is that this was yet another abysmally stupid move by the Obama Administration, although at least no one appears to have gotten killed because of it - yet.

Is China spying on the U.S.? Undoubtedly. Are we spying on them? Of course we are. Great powers, even allies let alone enemies have used spies in all likelihood since the tribal days of the old Stone Age.
It's simply how things have been done for thousands of years.

The normal procedure for most nations when such spies are found out is simply to expel them from the country if they're foreigners or try them under espionage laws if they're citizens of the host country. And it happens all the time, under the euphemism of this or that military attache or diplomat being 'reassigned' or declared 'persona non grata' for whatever reason, or simply by having a foreign national's visa revoked.

Criminal charges, especially against foreign nationals of a nation we're not at war with, who are not in U.S. custody and whom China is certainly not going to extradite is an amateur and futile move that simply ratchets up tension for no good reason. It's especially a bad move when thanks to the debt the Obama Administration has racked up in 5 years, China now holds $1.27 trillion of our U.S. Treasury bonds and is our biggest foreign creditor.

Perhaps someone in the Obama regime will realize how stupid and futile this is and it will be allowed to fade away. One can always hope.

A Few Words About Jonathan Pollard...

Jonathan Pollard has surfaced as part of the imploding peace talks, with a great deal of speculation about him being released as a bargaining chip by the Obama Administration to wrest further concessions out of Israel.


This is Pollard's 29th year in prison on charges of spying for Israel, and the Obama Administration is essentially offering a hostage swap, Pollard for a boatload of Palestinian murderers convicted in Israeli courts.

I doubt the deal would happen, and Pollard himself - with a great deal more of a sense of right and wrong than the people holding him - has refused to be swapped for terrorists. He actually boycotted his own parole hearing today in protest.

So what did Jonathan Pollard do, and why is he serving a life sentence? Pollard spied for Israel, specifically passing on information related to artillery developments in several Arab countries and other secrets directly related to Israeli security, including Arab and Pakistani nuclear secrets and capabilities of the Soviet weapons in Arab hands. Normally, this is stuff one ally would share with another, but somehow that's not how it happened.According to the CIA's 1987 damage assessment of Pollard's crimes, declassified on December 14, 2012, Pollard was specifically not asked by his Israeli handlers to gather information on U.S. military activities, but rather to collect U.S. intelligence on Arab states, Pakistan and the Soviet Union, and their weapons systems.

Pollard's no angel. He did what he did for money and apparently had delusions of grandeur,trying to shop intel to other countries on his own, although all of them were U.S. allies. But one also can't say he really hurt the United States, although there are some intel sources that differ on that.Allies routinely spy on allies.We do it to them and they do it to us, not that it makes any difference. Pollard was a spy,and he was caught.

It's the way he was treated after that that's curious.

Pollard was arrested with his wife Anne in 1985, and agreed to a plea bargain that would have allowed his wife to go free. The U.S. prosecutor in charge of the case was willing to comply with the plea agreement and asked for "only a substantial sentence" rather than life imprisonment, which was unprecedented for what Pollard actually did. At that point, Secretary of defense Casper Weinberger intervened personally with the judge, Aubrey Robinson, Jr., showing him a memorandum that was not shred with the defense, in violation of discovery. The judge subsequently reneged on the plea bargain and sentenced Pollard to life imprisonment. In the end, Anne Pollard ended up serving three years and Pollard is still there. He remains the only person in US history to receive a life sentence for spying for an ally, and the only American citizen convicted of this kind of crime to be sentenced to more than 10 years in prison. The usual sentence for what Pollard did is 2-4 years.Even some spies working for governments that were definitely not U.S. allies, like Iran, got off much lighter than Pollard.

The closest Pollard came to being released was in 1998, when his release was supposed to be part of the Wye River agreement then Israeli PM Netanyahu signed with President Bill Clinton making concessions to Arafat and the Palestinians. Once the agreement was signed, Pollard stayed behind bars anyway.

Should Pollard be freed? Well, that's another curious thing. At the time of Pollard's sentencing there was a law that mandated parole eligibility for Federal inmates who had served 30 years out of a life sentence provided they had maintained a clean record in prison. Pollard is currently scheduled to be released anyway on November 21, 2015.

So what this smacks of is the Obama Administration attempting to get something for a man they appear to be holding hostage while they still can.

Netanyahu is unlikely to go along with it,however, simply because he already had the experience with Bill Clinton of being promised Pollard would be a part of a deal concerning the Palestinians and then having that part 'canceled' at the last moment.

Should Pollard be freed? Perhaps, perhaps not. But there's no way he should be used in what amounts to human trafficking just to get some Palestinian murderers released.

NSA Dodges; Refuses To Say It Doesn't Spy On Congress

Senator Bernie Sanders,an Independent from Vermont, sent a letter to the NSA Friday, asking whether it has or is "spying" on members of Congress and other elected American officials.

In his letter, Sanders specifically defined "spying" as "gathering metadata on calls made from official or personal phones, content from websites visited or e-mails sent, or collecting any other data from a third party not made available to the general public in the regular course of business."

The NSA didn't answer the Senator's question, but their response was most revealing: "Members of Congress have the same privacy protections as all U.S. persons."

In other words, they have none. And of course in the process of hoovering up data on virtually every call, internet customer and e-mail in America, the calls members of Congress and other elected officials are being scooped up as well.

Attorney General Eric Holder pulled the same stunt at a congressional hearing last summer when he responded to Senator Mark Kirk, (R-Illinois) by saying that the NSA had no "intent" to spy on Congress, but that this was something that needed to be discussed privately..and of course, not under oath.

What the Attorney General undoubtedly had in mind was James Clapper, director of National Intelligence being caught in a blatant lie to Senator Ron Wyden(D-Oregon) while testifying to Congress last March that the NSA was not collecting data on millions of Americans:



That was before Edward Snowden's leak on exactly what the NSA was doing, and before the news on how internet and cell providers were being forced to cooperate.

The idea of the NSA recording and storing metadata on the communications of members of Congress and other elected officials gives rise to some interesting possibilities, especially since we're talking about the Obama Administration.

Remember, this is the man who won his senate seat by getting his people to shop for a judge who would unseal the sealed divorce records of his Republican opponent Jack Ryan, which contained some of the usual wild, unproven accusations one finds in a contentious divorce where child custody is involved.

And let's not forget the suspicious timing of the leak on General David Petraeus' extramarital affair...after he testified before Congress backing up the Administration's fairy tale on Benghazi, something he did a 180 on a month later, once the president's re-election was safely in the bag and the leak was used to discredit him.The data used to find out about his affair came from phone records that were used to match up with certain hotel bills.

And dare we mention the way the IRS was used to go after President Obama's perceived political enemies?

The same techniques can be used to sway members of Congress to vote a certain way, or to 'persuade' a popular senator or governor not to run for office.

In spite of what the Obama Administration and tools like Clapper and Holder might say, we do have an expectation of privacy. It's called the Fourth Amendment, something I'm sure President Obama has little familiarity with:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Our Founders put this in the Constitution for a good reason, and they would be would be amazed at how tamely we've repeatedly allowed this right to be violated.

Mystery Explosion At Iran's Arak Heavy Water Plant?

There's a great deal of chatter from various sources about a mysterious explosion at Iran's heavy water plant in Arak late last week.The blast reportedly occurred during preparations for a test of the reactor with real nuclear fuel, and damage was said to be extensive.

The Arak plant is an important part of Iran's quest for nuclear weapons, as the heavy water reactor, known as IR-40, can be used to produce plutonium, an alternative route to centrifuges and enrichment for the production of nuclear weapons. The Arak plant has no non-military applications.

Iran had already informed the UN's IAEA that the test with real fuel would be the last stage before the reactor entered its beginning stages prior to going fully online. If the explosion occurred as reported, it appears that test may be delayed for quite some time.

The Iranians are said to be speculating that the cause of the blast could either be sabotage, a virus planted in the computers that run the facility, or miscalculation and/or inferior materials used in construction.

Needless to say, the Iranian regime is doing their best to keep any problems with their nuclear weapons program quiet. This particular story was leaked by dissident factions within Iran who've been right most of the time before. After all, they were the ones who busted the Ayatollahs for their illegal nuclear weapons program in the first place, not the CIA or other western intelligence outfits.

Snowden Granted Asylum In Russia

Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden has left his improvised quarters at Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow after the Russian government granted him temporary asylum for one year.

The U.S., of course, wanted him extradited for revealing the details of secret and highly intrusive NSA domestic surveillance programs as well as a number of other details on how the agency operates. And they had been pressing the Russian government hard to send Snowden back.

Nicaragua, Bolivia and Venezuela offered Snowden refuge, but there are no direct commercial flights to Latin America from Moscow and he was concerned the United States would intercept his flight.Especially after the Obama Administration pressured four U.S. allies in Europe to refuse to let a plane carrying Bolivia's president home from Moscow to use their airspace because Snowden might have been on the plane.

Needless to say, that did not win us any friends in Latin America.

However, the Russians said 'nyet' and Snowden has now taken up residence in a secret location.He's going to need to stay very under the radar to avoid a convenient accident, although I have a feeling he may have informed the feds that there are a number of highly classified and juicy items that will come out if anything happens to him...sort of a personal insurance policy.

His residence permit allows him to live anywhere in Russia. His Russian lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena told the press that he gave Snowden his certificate and that he left in a taxi accompanied by Sarah Harrison of WikiLeaks.

According to his lawyer,Snowden has been passing the time while he was holed up in the airport learning Russian. Another incentive for him to do this is pictured here:



Yes, it's Anna Chapman, the gorgeous Russian spy with the 180 IQ who was arrested by the U.S. back in 2010 and later deported back to Russia in a prisoner swap..and who has already said publicly she finds Snowden "very attractive."

So the question remains...why would Russian leader Vladimir Putin agree with this, at the risk of straining ties with the U.S.? Because there is no risk.

Here's something that's not exactly a secret to anyone with any knowledge of foreign affairs. President Obama is not exactly regarded with much in the way of respect by either our allies or our foes.

In fact, as he's proven on numerous occasions, he's regarded as amateurish, arrogant, easily manipulated and downright deceitful when it comes to anything he says, no matter what public niceties are mouthed before the cameras in the photo-ops.

There is hardly one U.S. ally who now has better relations with the U.S. than they did back in 2009, and in many cases the relationship is far worse.

Putin in particular has every reason to regard him in this way.From the ridiculous START treaty to his cynical abandonment of Poland and the Czech Republic after they went out on a limb and committed themselves to helping our missile defense system to the Russians simply laughing at the Iran sanctions, he's more than proven he's flexible when Putin cracks the whip. Not only that, but the one time Putin actually tried working on something serious with him, a diplomatic resolution to the Syrian Civil War, the entire project collapsed when Putin found out that President Obama had secretly shipped 1,800 U.S. Marines behind his back to the Jordan-Syria border.

Aside from destroying any vestige of trust between Putin and Obama, the president's actions also torpedoed an agreement between Putin and the Israelis not to introduce certain advanced weapons systems like the S-300 missile defense systems into the region in exchange for an Israeli pledge not to attack Assad's troops and facilities in Syria.

So in Putin's eyes this is just one more way to twist the knife as payback. And who knows...if Snowden becomes a Russian citizen, (especially if he gets together with the fetching Ms. Chapman) Vladimir Putin may find a way to put his knowledge and talents to use.

Predictably, Bradley Manning Found Not Guilty Of Treason

One of the things that bothers me most in our modern political discourse is the gratuitous use of the term 'traitor'.

According to our Constitution treason is strictly defined as aid and comfort to the enemy in wartime. 'Wartime' clearly implies a declared war. That's why Tokyo Rose rotted in prison after WWII, while Jane Fonda and John Kerry did not for their activities during the Vietnam era, which included meeting with the North Vietnamese in Paris during the war to plot political strategy to use at home to hamper the U.S. war effort.

Bradley Manning might be a despicable, disloyal little worm, but he is legally no traitor, which is exactly what the military judge, Col. Denise Lind, ruled in his trial over at Fort Meade.

However, he's by no means off the hook.

He was found guilty of a number of other charges including five espionage counts, five theft charges, a computer fraud charge and other military infractions that carry a potential sentence of over 100 years.

The sentencing phase of his trial begins tomorrow. I hope this creep gets the book thrown at him.

How The Obama Administration Uses Your Car To Spy On You

In yet another infringement on our liberties, Big Government has been using your car to spy on you, withlittle or no judicial oversight or warrants.

And no, this is not tinfoil hat stuff.

According to a new study by the ACLU, the increased use of automated scanners has amassed a huge data base of digital records on the location and movement of every vehicle with a license plate. Affixed to police cars, bridges or buildings, the scanners capture images of passing or parked vehicles and note their location, cross referencing it with the information the DMV has on you. This normally includes your address, your Social Security number, your fingerprints, a complete physical description as well as your address. Since this is all the information needed to run a complete credit report on you, a trained expert can do a pretty good idea of piecing together your financial information as well.

Not only is your personal data accessible. Th enew technology enables the powers that be to check your habits and your daily routine. They can see which bar someone might be frequenting, whom your friends are whether you're joining a protest, getting medical or mental help, cheating on your spouse spouse and much more. The records can be digitally stored and kept for weeks or years, sometimes indefinitely.

And just like PRISM, the technology casts a wide net. It scoops up records the plates of everyone in the vicinity, not just some one whom might be a suspect under investigation.

The Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that a judge's approval is needed to track a car with a GPS, no such judicial oversight is needed for the plate scanners. There's also nothing stopping the feds or other government agencies from accessing it either, and you can rest assured they have.

Land of the free my eye.

An Amazing Interview With Edward Snowden, The NSA Whistle Blower

What we're seeing here is the scooping up of an incredible amount of personal data that was thought to be private from ordinary Americans and its storage for later use.

And not just for security purposes..but to identify political enemies.

Given how the Obama regime has used the IRA, HHS, and other agencies as weapons against what it perceives as its political adversaries, does anyone doubt that this data could be used the same way?

Picture this - you're a Republican candidate for senator whose running ahead in the polls, but the regime has access to all your personal data - your private e-mails, your internet activity, your communications with your doctor,your lawyer, your accountant, your family, everyone.

All of it can be scanned and examined to provide dirt for your opponent to use.

Or let's say you had a divorce a few years ago where the records were sealed because certain allegations were made, certain things were said between you and your ex that neither of you wanted your child to be affected by and both of you agreed it was better to just move on. All of those records could be unsealed and used against you, even things you might have said or written in anger that you latter apologized for or repudiated.

Far fetched? Unlikely?

In fact, that's exactly what Barack Obama did to Jack Ryan to win his senate seat, with the aid of some judge shopping and the Chicago Tribune. And that was without the assistance of the NSA and the power of the presidency behind him.

This is tyranny unfolding, and this is a very big deal.

Tyranny By Stealth

The recent scandals on far reaching and intrusive data gathering are far more serious and pervasive than most Americans dream.

The NSA and the FBI have been caught out mining internet providers for private data on millions of Americans, and coercing telecom giants like Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T to over data on every call, text, e-amail or other internet usage to them.

The private data of millions of Americans was scanned and almost certainly digitally archived.

This was all done in secret, and was only found out because the British Guardian published a scoop on it.

And it gets worse. We've now being told about a top secret project known as PRISM. What essentially happened is that someone in the intelligence community was so revolted and concerned by what he or she saw everyday that they went to the Washington Post with a PowerPoint slide presentation, talked to the Post and their reporters, and the Post wrote the story up and put it out. And the story is that practically every major company involved in digital usage in America is being forced to allow the Obama regime access to their servers and all the date contained on them...all of the E-mails, texts, tweets, phone calls, online sales, photographs, everything done via the Apple, Microsoft or Google servers, which the NSA is able to look at in real time. The Post quoted their source as saying, "It was so scary. They can watch us as we type."

And they're hoovering it up by the truckload.

This is so far beyond the scope of anything that's ever been done before that the inevitable comparisons by the Left with the Bush warrantless wiretaps borders on ludicrous.

The Bush Administration program, which was outed by the New York Times a year after the Times found out about it was an entirely different animal. It involved not a blanket dragnet of American citizens and the pillaging of their privacy but the concentration on calls by individual and select suspects in the United States to suspect numbers overseas in countries like Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

As Stephen Hayes' superb biography of former Vice President Dick Cheney relates, the Times was fully briefed by the administration when they first got hold of the story via leaks, and the Times agreed to keep the program confidential.

That changed on year later in the run up to the 2004 election, when getting John Kerry elected and defeating George W. Bush became more important to the people running Pravda-on-the-Hudson than keeping a program vital to our national security secret from our country's enemies.

President Obama's sole comment on this is to reaasure Americans that no one is 'litening to your telephone.



After Benghazi, after Fast and Furious, after the AP scandal, the use of the IRS, HHS and Department of Justice as weapons against the Obama regime's political enemies, does anyone seriously believe that anymore?

Even the New York Times doesn't believe it, and that's simply amazing given how they've covered for this president at every turn. Although true to form, they exercised their usual hypocrisy and bias selectively 'edited' their original harsh criticism to tone things down.

Meanwhile,Obama's Department of Justice is fighting tooth and nail to keep secret an 86-page court opinion that determined that the government had violated federal surveillance laws and engaged in unconstitutional spying.

What we are seeing is no less than progressive fascists resorting to type. It is tyranny by stealth.

Take a few minutes and go to the above link. It may ring some bells.

I'll have more on this later.

ATF Creating 'Massive' Database of Personal Info: 'Assets, Relatives, Associates and More'

The same Federal Bureau that did such a sterling job providing Mexican drug cartels with illegally purchased firearms and shipping them across the border in the 'Fast and Furious' operation has a brand new project.

According to a notice posted by the agency on FedBizOpps.gov, entitled "Investigative System" they're seeking corporate contractors to help create what they describe as a 'massive' new data base system on private citizens they deem worthy of surveillance.

The new system is to be used by ATF staff "to provide rapid searches on various entities for example; names, telephone numbers, utility data and reverse phone look-ups, as a means to assist with investigations, and background research on people, assets and businesses."



The proposed system will utilize "a number of internal databases as well as external sources to provide timely and relevant information and intelligence products to law enforcement agencies at the federal, state and local levels."

The system "provides a means to rapidly check records across the country" and is "necessary in assisting investigators, agents and analyst to find people, their assets, relatives, associates and more."

And it will allow ATF to "obtain exact matches from partial source data searches such as, incomplete social security numbers, address, VIN numbers, etc."

Keep in mind that the data entered into this database isn't necessarily on criminals, or even people suspected of a crime. And there are no court orders or warrants involved.

The database can cover a ton of private information for anyone the ATF - or the Obama Justice Department, who controls ATF - feels like putting into the system, for reasons they needn't disclose to anyone.

One of the applications is obvious, and the ATF being used as the Federal Agency involved is a clue. Universal background checks aren't legal under federal law yet, and neither is gun confiscation. The new system is an extra-legal tool that could facilitate both when the time is right, perhaps in response to a White House declared 'national emergency' that involves new, sweeping powers to the occupant of the Oval Office.

Sort of like what Hitler did with the Reichstag Fire.

Drone Wars - Israeli Air Force Vs. Iran

The Israeli Air Force shot down a drone aircraft yesterday that penetrated deep into Israeli air space.

The drone originated in Lebanon, but flew over the Mediterranean and then backtracked to give the appearance it was coming via Gaza.

It then proceeded into Israeli air space over the IDF’s southern bases, the city of Beersheba and the IAF base at Nevatim before it was shot down over the Yatir forest south of Mt. Hebron.

Its mission was certainly to test Israel's response and may very well have been to record the electronic 'signatures' of Israel's air defense systems for its Dimona nuclear reactor and the American X-band radar station in the Negev. The drone unfortunately managed to sty airborne and transmitting for almost a half hour before IAF pilots scrambled and shot it down.

While the drone was spotted promptly, my sources tell me there was an unfortunate glitch between the drone being spotted and actual orders being given to take it out that allowed the drone to stay airborne far longer than it should have. From what I've managed to hear, a few reprimands went out and certain steps have been taken to prevent a recurrence. The drone could very well have been carrying explosives.

Contrary to what you see above, the drone didn't disintegrate into a fireball but yielded a number of fragments that were quite valuable in determining the drone's technology, navigation system and Iranian origin.

It was almost certainly launched by Hezbollah, probably with Iranian technicians handling the actual mechanics.

General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, a senior commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s ground forces said just a couple of weeks ago that Iran was preparing to carry out preemptive operations against the US and Israel.

This could very well have been an opening gambit.

Ahmadinejad's Personal Cameraman Defects to US

 

It's been confirmed that Hassan Golkhanban, Iranian President Ahmadinejad's personal photographer has defected to the U.S., after sending his family out of the country to Turkey to ensure their safety.

Golkhanban and his family are now in an undisclosed location.

Golkhanban's U.S. attorney Paul O’Dwyer told CNN that Golkhanban is seeking asylum because “He’s perceived as not being a supporter, or being an opponent of the Iranian regime… somebody who has betrayed the regime and who can no longer be trusted by them.”

According to O'Dwyer, Golkhanban's application for asylum has been filed with the State Department.

It's worth noting that Golkhanban is no ordinary photographer. As Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's personal photographer, he followed the president everywhere, quite likely including a number of Iran's secret nuclear facilities.

There are a number of unconfirmed reports that Golkhanban  brought with him a treasure trove of up-to-date photographs and videos of top Iranian leaders showing up-to-date details of those facilities. 

I wouldn't call these sources especially reliable, but it's quite possible, in fact, almost certain that Golkhanban did bring something valuable with him to trade.Or to be accurate, something that at first look appears to be valuable.

Given that Golkhanban was considered a fairly solid member of the Iranian regime until he jumped ship, it's highly doubtful his request for asylum would even have been considered as a mere defector under ordinary circumstances unless  he brought some kind of information or material with him that would have made it worthwhile for the feds to consider letting him stay in America. Since this is his second time in America, it's also possible that he was turned then and he has been an American agent since last year.

What's likely happening right know is that whatever information or materials he's brought with him are being vetted and tested to the degree they can be for accuracy and value.He's also likely being questioned by our CIA to see if his story holds together and if the intel he brought with him seems accurate and holds together.

If Golkhanban is an actual defector and not just a  U.S. agent coming in from the cold. his situation is a dicey one. There are three possibilities.  (a) he's a real defector who brought something valuable  with him and will be allowed to stay as an intelligence asset, (b) he's a real defector but what he brought with him is worthless or doctored or (c) he's a double agent who knowingly came here as a 'defector' with the full knowledge of the Iranian regime to spread disinformation.

That's the call the CIA will have to make.Again, it usually involves checking whatever information was brought with other sources to see how accurate it might be and how it holds together.  And it also involves going over the person's story over and over again, looking for inconsistencies.

If the CIA determines that Golbakhan is a real defector who brought something worth having, his application for asylum will be pushed through, and he'll be assigned a CIA 'manager ' to continue his debriefing.

If he's a real defector but brought something with him that's essentially worthless,  he'll either  be sent home or allowed to stay on humanitarian grounds depending on what the consensus is on how likely he is to be a double agent.It's unlikely that  it can be proved he definitely is a double agent unless some additional intel pops up,  but if that happens, he'll likewise be assigned a /manager' and interrogated.

I may have more for you on this later.

Did The State Department Have Advance Knowledge Of The Attack On The Libyan Consulate?

The Independent, normally a fairly left wing British outlet has published an embarrassing report claiming exactly that:

The killings of the US ambassador to Libya and three of his staff were likely to have been the result of a serious and continuing security breach, The Independent can reveal.

American officials believe the attack was planned, but Chris Stevens had been back in the country only a short while and the details of his visit to Benghazi, where he and his staff died, were meant to be confidential.

The US administration is now facing a crisis in Libya. Sensitive documents have gone missing from the consulate in Benghazi and the supposedly secret location of the "safe house" in the city, where the staff had retreated, came under sustained mortar attack. Other such refuges across the country are no longer deemed "safe".

Some of the missing papers from the consulate are said to list names of Libyans who are working with Americans, putting them potentially at risk from extremist groups, while some of the other documents are said to relate to oil contracts.

According to senior diplomatic sources, the US State Department had credible information 48 hours before mobs charged the consulate in Benghazi, and the embassy in Cairo, that American missions may be targeted, but no warnings were given for diplomats to go on high alert and "lockdown", under which movement is severely restricted.

According to security sources the consulate had been given a “health check” in preparation for any violence connected to the 9/11 anniversary. In the event, the perimeter was breached within 15 minutes of an angry crowd starting to attack it at around 10pm on Tuesday night. There was, according to witnesses, little defence put up by the 30 or more local guards meant to protect the staff. Ali Fetori, a 59-year-old accountant who lives near by, said: “The security people just all ran away and the people in charge were the young men with guns and bombs.”

Okay. Let's take a good look at this in the light of what we already know happened.

It is apparently a fact that Ambassador Stevens' return to Benghazi was confidential and not generally known, and that the attack occurred shortly after he returned. It's also a fact that the attack was quite obviously premeditated and planned.

Our own Under-Secretary at the State Department Patrick Kennedy along with a number of other officials has said he was convinced the assault was planned due to the extensive nature and the proliferation of weapons.And Imight add, the concentration on a specific target. Even in Benghazi, you can't just get people to show up brandishing RPGs and automatic weapons at a moment's notice.

Another interesting factoid that's come up is that this might have been a revenge attack for the drone killing of Abu Yahya al-Libi a while ago, who was recently eulogized in a video released by the current head of al-Qaeda, Aymanal-Zawahiri. Al-Libi's stage name indicated that he was of Libyan origin. That video was released on jihadi websites on 9/11, and may very well have been the signal for the festivities to start.

There remains the possibility that Stevens simply happened to just be in Benghazi on 9/11, but that would seem to be a huge coincidence, given that Benghazi is well known as a salafist and al-Qaeda stronghold. You would think of all days to steer clear of the unfortified consulate, it would be 9/11, which many Muslims regard as a day to celebrate a victory over the west and America.

The bit about the 'health check' is also puzzling. You have to wonder exactly what they checked and why. The security was limited to one locked door, the Libyan security people ran away and according to several reports actually told the rioters where the Americans were hiding after they were taken to a supposedly secret safe house. There were a few marines ( two were murdered) but they apparently weren't armed or able to defend themselves.

And if a 'health check' was performed prior to 9/11, it does seem to suggest that there was at least some credible info that had surfaced. Why weren't the personnel put into lockdown at a place they could be better defended?

As far as the other allegations, that there was a major security breech that secret documents were stolen and that the jihadis now know exactly whom in Libya was working with the Americans - well, if it wasn't true before, it certainly is now.

What convinces me more than ever that this was a massive screw up is the way the Obama Administration denied it.

Here's their statement:

Shawn Turner, spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, emailed: “This is absolutely wrong. We are not aware of any actionable intelligence indicating that an attack on the U.S. Mission in Benghazi was planned or imminent.”

Notice a couple of things. First, the 'we are not aware' leaves far too much wiggle room for plausible deniability. If there was no intel and they were certain of it, they would have had no problems saying so.

Second,the story from the Independent never said the U.S. had “actionable intelligence" about a planned attack on the Benghazi consulate. It said that there was credible information 48 hours before that American missions might be targeted on 9/11.

To those familiar with intelligence lingo, the two are night and day, and I expect that whomever crafted this nonsense knows it quite well. “Actionable intelligence" is intel gold, usually from a reliable spy or informant or intercepted communications that gives specific details of an ongoing, active operation.Credible information is a step down the ladder, is much more generalized and merely indicates the possibility that one or more targets might be hit or at risk.

Actionable intelligence, as its name implies, is information that is specific enough to lead to proactive remedies like arrests, raids, or a drone strike. Credible information is a warning signal that normally leads to extra precaution, vigilance and the avoidance of obvious risks.

This 'denial' strikes me as nothing less than an attempt at CYA, because someone should have made sure that the American personnel were not left at risk in a vulnerable unsecured consulate in a place like Benghazi guarded by unreliable Libyan security.

The media obviously won't investigate what looks like a massive screwup unless they're forced to by events, and the Obama Administration definitely won't.

It will be left to congress to get to the bottom of this swamp.

Hillary Clinton's Hidden Ties To Egypt's New Muslim Brotherhood President

In view of the aiding and abetting of the Muslim Brotherhood takeover of Egypt by the Obama Administration, it's worth looking at another close, direct tie between the White House and the new Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood president, Mohammed Morsi.

This one concerns Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Mrs. Clinton's Deputy Chief of Staff and her closest adviser is Huma Abedin, recently in the news as the unfortunate wife of disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner.The relationship between the two women is extraordinarily close, and it is an open joke in Washington to refer to Ms. Abedin as 'Hillary's shadow'.

As I revealed previously, Huma Abedin also has very close family ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.Her entire immediate family are well known in hard line Islamist circles.

For instance, her mother, Saleha Abedin is listed as a leader of the female division of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Ikhwan, also known as the International Women's Organization (IWO) both by al Jazeera and by Al-Liwa Al-Arabi (translated here).

Also part of this group? None other than Najla Ali Mahmoud, the wife of new Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood president Mohammed Morsi. Both are members of the Guidance Bureau, meaning they were part of the top leadership, rather than mere timeservers or followers.

It's no stretch at all for me to see Huma Abedin working over time to influence Secretary Clinton as to the beneficence of the Brotherhood and or to ask her to use her influence as part of the Obama Administration on behalf of the husband of her mother's old comrade-in-arms.

Another aspect of this I mentioned before has to do with Huma's marriage to then-Congressman Anthony Weiner, who is Jewish. Ms. Abedin is described frequently as a 'pious Muslim.'

Such a marriage is entirely haram ( forbidden) in Islam by all four major fiqhs, schools of Islamic thought and jurisprudence. A Muslim man is permitted to marry a Christian or a Jewish woman since the children are mandated to belong to the husband and raised as Muslims, but a Muslim woman may only marry a non-Muslim man if he recites the shehadah and accepts Islam.

Weiner apparently did not convert, and in any event Huma Abedin's Islamist family would have denounced her for marrying a Jew. Yet, they did not. Which leads me to believe there is some higher goal here.

There's a distinct possibility that Huma Abedin may be an intelligence mole, which would account for a number of things, including a lifestyle that seems far beyond her current salary.

As Secretary Clinton's close adviser, she already has access to quite a bit of classified information, as well as having the sympathetic ear of the U.S. Secretary of State and the ability to influence policy on a very personal level.

Also, as a Muslima, she has the religious flexibility to practice takiyah, or Muruna as it is more commonly known among Sunnis, deception to advance Islam.

This is speculation, but for the Muslim Brotherhood leadership, can you imagine a better placed mole than Huma Abedin?

More National Security Leaks - And Where They Might Have Come From

There have been another series of national security leaks that appear to be aimed at helping President Obama politically by bolstering his national security credentials. As the WAPO reveals, these primarily deal with joint cyberwarfare ventures with Israel aimed at Iran's nuclear program:

The United States and Israel jointly developed a sophisticated computer virus nicknamed Flame that collected intelligence in preparation for cyber-sabotage aimed at slowing Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon, according to Western officials with knowledge of the effort.

The massive piece of malware secretly mapped and monitored Iran’s computer networks, sending back a steady stream of intelligence to prepare for a cyberwarfare campaign, according to the officials.

The effort, involving the National Security Agency, the CIA and Israel’s military, has included the use of destructive software such as the Stuxnet virus to cause malfunctions in Iran’s nuclear-enrichment equipment.

The emerging details about Flame provide new clues to what is thought to be the first sustained campaign of cyber-sabotage against an adversary of the United States.

“This is about preparing the battlefield for another type of covert action,” said one former high-ranking U.S. intelligence official, who added that Flame and Stuxnet were elements of a broader assault that continues today. “Cyber-collection against the Iranian program is way further down the road than this.”

Flame came to light last month after Iran detected a series of cyberattacks on its oil industry. The disruption was directed by Israel in a unilateral operation that apparently caught its American partners off guard, according to several U.S. and Western officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

There has been speculation that the United States had a role in developing Flame, but the collaboration on the virus between Washington and Israel has not been previously confirmed. Commercial security researchers last week reported that Flame contained some of the same code as Stuxnet. Experts described the overlap as DNA-like evidence that the two sets of malware were parallel projects run by the same entity.

Spokesmen for the CIA, the NSA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, as well as the Israeli Embassy in Washington, declined to comment.

The article goes on to give details on how the programs work that will undobtedly be of great interest to the Iranians.

One could certainly question the judgment of the reporters involved in running this story, but the big question remains...where are the leaks coming from?

Obviously from the White House..and one interesting possibility points the finger at none other than Secretary of defense and former CIA head Leon Panetta.

Apparently Secretary Pannetta was a prime suspect in another leak that took place during the Nixon Administration.

After the 1968 campaign, Nixon hired Pat Moynihan–who had served as assistant secretary of labor for policy in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations–as his urban-affairs adviser and all-around White House intellectual. Moynihan was already a somewhat controversial figure, having authored a report called “The Black Family: Then and Now,” which attributed the disproportionate poverty in the black community to rising illegitimacy. The liberal intelligentsia pilloried Moynihan for this conclusion, and he left the Department of Labor not long after his authorship of the report became public. ...

The memo was leaked to the press, and on March 1, the New York Times ran an article headlined “‘Benign Neglect’ on Race Is Proposed by Moynihan.” The White House was swamped with criticism from civil-rights leaders and editorial pages, and Moynihan had to hold a press conference to defend himself. ...

Although memos leak all the time, and the leakers are rarely identified, The New Republic’s John Osborne reported in a March 1970 profile of Moynihan that Leon Panetta was a prime suspect in the leak.

There was certainly some reason for the suspicion. In February, Panetta had resigned from HEW because he opposed the Nixon administration’s approach to desegregation. Panetta later went to work for New York mayor John Lindsay, switched parties, and successfully ran for Congress as a Democrat in 1976. The leaker has never been definitively identified.

It's important to emphasize that this is speculation, and there's no direct evidence that Panetta is the source of the leaks. But he is a very partisan and loyal Democrat with a long history in DC who knows how this sort of thing works, who was fingered, correctly or incorrectly in a prior leak, and who might not be adverse to making a try at manipulating the odds on re-election in Obama's favor.

One thing that's undoubtedly true is that the leaks have severely hurt America's national security ability to carry out covert operations like this in tandem with other countries. Can you imagine the Israelis or any of our other allies trusting us on confidentiality or wanting to work with us on joint ventures after this? I can't. At least not until after the present regime is out of power.

Cobra Vs. Mongoose - Michellle Malkin/Juan Williams Slugfest Gets Personal

In a discussion over the recent national security leaks that appear to be designed to help President Obama by improving his national security creds in the coming election, ex-NPR mouthpiece and FOX news commentator Juan Williams attempted to defend President Obama by comparing this to the Plame non-scandal and chanting the all purpose 'Bushie did it' mantra.

Michelle Malkin wasn't having any of that:

“All you can say is Plame, Plame, Plame; blame, blame, blame; Bush, Bush, Bush,” Malkin told Williams as he argued that the current national security White House leaks were not different from what had transpired in other White Houses. Williams took offense to that, telling Malkin that he was a “real reporter, not a blogger out in the blogosphere somewhere,” which in turn visibly offended Malkin, who retorted, “right, because I’m not a real reporter.” Williams completed his point that reporters “did not get any classified information,” over both Hannity and Malkin, before Hannity gave Malkin the last word.

She used that last word against Williams. “The American people are sick of the kind of snotty condescension from liberal elite journalists like Juan Williams who tell us that the rest of us are not doing our jobs, when the point is that when Eric Holder was shamefully approved and nominated and approved to be Attorney General–” At this point, after a heavy eyeroll and mouthing “Oh my God,” Williams interrupted to inform her that she was “way off topic” and “not talking about what we’re debating here tonight on Sean’s show.”

Williams is wrong of course, because the leaks were classified information, and as Sean Hannity points out, are going to create major problems if intel professionals in foreign countries like Israel decide they can't work with us any more because we can't be trusted.

But I suppose, to Juan Williams, having the president's back transcends all.

Pakistani Who Helped Locate Bin-Laden Gets 30 Years For Treason - After Being Outed By SecDef Panetta

A Pakistani physician who helped the CIA locate Osama bin-Laden in Pakistan has been sentenced to over 30 years in prison for treason.

Dr. Shakeel Afridi was arrested three weeks after US Navy Seal Team Six assassinated bin-Laden at his hideaway in Abbottabad, only 30 miles from Islamabad.

Dr Afridi was not present in court on Wednesday nor was he represented by a lawyer:

“He has been sentenced for 33 years on treason charges and has been moved to Peshawar central jail after the verdict was announced by the local court,” said Mohammad Siddiq, spokesman for the administrative head of Khyber, where the case was heard.

Dr. Afridi set up Dr Afridi set up a hepatitis vaccination campaign in March last year, according to residents of Abbottabad.

The CIA had seen an al-Qaeda courier enter bin-Laden's compound there, they weren't sure that bin-Laden was actually present. Dr.Afridi's role was to attempt to obtain a DNA sample from a tall figure the CIA knew was inside because of satellite imagery.

Although he wasn't able to get a blood sample, Dr.Afridi was able to secure a telephone number for Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, bin Laden’s trusted courier, enabling the CIA to confirm his identity.

What evidence did the Pakistanis have against Dr. Afridi? Simple. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta outed him (on 'Sixty Minutes', no less) and gave the Pakistanis an open and shut case:



I seem to recall the Angry Left going absolutely berserk over someone allegedly outing Valerie Plame. I guarantee you that won't happen to Leon Panetta.

More to the point,imagine you're a CIA agent trying to recruit assets in a foreign country. How successful do you think you're going to be after potential informants see the Secretary of Defense performing on national TV and shooting his mouth off like this?

If we were actually in a declared war, this would be treason, by definition.

Senior Aide to Democrat Senator Kerry Charged With Leaking Classified Information

The Justice Department has charged John Kiriakou, a former CIA officer and former senior Democrat Senate aide to John Kerry with being the source of major media leaks compromising national security, disclosing the identity of an undercover officer and lying to the CIA about the origin of other sensitive material he published in a book. He faces up to 30 years in prison if convicted.

Kiriakou is also a popular Huffington Post columnist.Or was, at any rate.

He first surfaced in the public eye in a 2007 interview with ABC News, where he claimed to have played a major role as a CIA agent in the capture and interrogation of al-Qaeda terrorist Abu Zubaydah, who was waterboarded. He was a huge source for the 'waterboarding is torture' crowd.

Three years, when he published a book about his CIA experiences (and presumably after he cashed his advance check), he admitted on the second to last page that he hadn't participated at all in the capture and interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, but just relied on what he'd heard about it.

The charges of disclosing the identity of an undercover officer came about because information Kiriakou supplied to journalists at Guantanamo Bay enabled defense attorneys there to obtain photographs of CIA operatives suspected of being involved in interrogations. Some of the pictures were subsequently discovered in the cells of terrorist detainees.

A real prince, no?

I can't help but wonder if the Obama Administration is planning on prosecuting the journalists and defense attorneys who aided and abetted - not to mention the editors and publishers. I doubt it, but it would certainly be fair and just to do so.

Do you get the feeling Kiriakou learned about ethics and patriotism from his old boss Senator Kerry, who met with the North Vietnamese in Paris during the Vietnam War to plot strategy on how to undermine the US war effort?

Iran Beclowns Obama Again Over Downed Drone - Responds With War Games In Gulf

An event took place which is worth looking at in detail...just in case President Obama trots out the tall tale again that's he's not an appeaser and is decisive when it comes to foreign policy.

This latest episode started when a top secret American RQ-170 Sentinel drone went down over Iran a few days ago.

The Obama Administration's first impulse was to deny it...until the Iranians showed it on state television.

The RQ 170 is a fairly complex piece of gear, and stories differ as to what happened. The DoD says it malfunctioned. The Iranians say they used a top secret technique to bring the drone down electronically.

Such things happen, and knowing what I know about Iran's state of technology, my personal leaning is towards a malfunction.But the real malfunction apparently occurred afterwards, in the White House.

This is a perfect example of the 3 AM call scenario. For whatever reason, we had a top secret piece of equipment on the ground in the hands of our enemies. As ex-VP Dick Cheney relates below, President Obama was presented with 3 options to get the drone back in our hands including destroying it before the Iranians could plumb it's intelligence and the technology involved. His response? To do nothing, because he was afraid Iran might be mad at us...so he just asked for it back politely:



As if the Iranians were going to comply! The first part of their response was to openly mock the president and the US:

"The Americans have perhaps decided to give us this spy plane," Ahmadinejad said. "We now have control of this plane."

Speaking through an interpreter, Ahmadinejad said: "There are people here who have been able to control this spy plane, who can surely analyze this plane's system also. ... In any case, now we have this spy plane."

(ed. note..in Farsi, this could also have been translated as "This plane is now our property.")

He added, "Very soon, they're going to learn more about the abilities and possibilities of our country."

On Tuesday, a semi-official Iranian news agency said authorities have shrugged off the U.S. request. Defense Minister Gen. Ahmad Vahidi said the United States should apologize for invading Iranian air space instead of asking for the return of the unmanned aircraft.

Cheney of course asks the ultimate question..why not simply destroy the ground, ideally when there are a crowd of Iranian technicians poking around it? If our unmanned drones aren't engineered to explode when a certain radio signal or computer code is transmitted to them, a cruise missile would have done the job quite nicely. Instead, the president once again allowed a valuable piece of technology to fall into enemy hands because he was scared Iran,who has been in a state of war with us for thirty years and has been openly guilty of hostile action might take it the wrong way!

The Iranians didn't content themselves with just ridicule. They announced a sequence of 'war games for their navy with the explicit purpose of practicing maneuvers to shut down the Persian Gulf at the Strait of Hormuz, a four mile wide channel though which most of the crude exported from Saudi Arabia, Iran, the Emirates, Kuwait and Iraq passes through.

The Iranian energy minister told Al Jazeera television last month that Tehran was making plans to use oil as a political weapon if there were any future conflicts over its nuclear rogue program.

They have absolutely no reservations of provocative actions of this sort. You see, the Iranians know very well exactly what sort of man they're dealing with in President Obama.

One final word about the re-engineering, courtesy of Wired...it's unlikely the Iranians can pull it off:

“Someone will figure out the [materials'] composition,” the Boeing engineer explains, “but producing them is entirely a different matter.”

For the drone vivisectionists, it only gets worse. After examining the (alleged) RQ-170′s airframe, they will likely focus on its sensors. We don’t know for sure what devices the Sentinel carries, but it could include video cameras and a ground-mapping radar. The Darpa robot designer says the RQ-170′s radar — if it carries one — could share subsystems with the radars on the latest F-22 and F-35 stealth fighters, which might give U.S. adversaries some insight into how those planes operate, too.

But the designer isn’t too worried. “Even if [the radar] showed up completely intact, they may not know how to use it because they don’t know how to use the software.”

Moreover, the software includes classified anti-tamper measures. At least, it’s supposed to, according to the Boeing engineer. “Dumbest thing in the world if it didn’t.”

So maybe we got lucky. Or maybe we didn't. Blowing up the drone certainly would have made sure, and denied the Mullahs a propaganda coup.

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