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Snowden is a Fraud 




AP Top News at 12:04 a.m. EDT

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AP Top News at 12:04 a.m. EDT
US airstrike targets al-Qaida-linked militant in LibyaWASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S military launched weekend airstrikes targeting and likely killing an al-Qaida-linked militant leader in eastern Libya who has been charged with leading the attack on a gas plant in Algeria in 2013 that killed at least 35 hostages, including three Americans. The Libyan government said warplanes targeted and killed Mokhtar Belmokhtar and several others in eastern Libya. A U.S. official said two F-15 fighter jets launched multiple 500-pound bombs in the attack. The official was not authorized to discuss the details of the attack publicly so spoke on condition of anonymity.
10 Things to Know for MondayYour daily look at late-breaking news, upcoming events and the stories that will be talked about Monday: 1. REFUGEES FLEE INTENSE FIGHTING IN NORTHERN SYRIA
2 teens are severely injured in shark attacks in N. CarolinaOAK ISLAND, N.C. (AP) - Two teenagers were seriously injured in two separate shark attacks in the same North Carolina town on Sunday, terrifying beach goers and prompting one shocked witness to compare the scene to the movie "Jaws." Oak Island Mayor Betty Wallace told WECT-6 (http://bit.ly/1IdIpaN) that the first victim, a girl, lost part of her arm and could lose her left leg. Just over an hour later, a 16-year-old boy also was attacked by a shark and was airlifted to a hospital, Wallace said. He lost an arm.
China's senior officials find comfort in mythical mastersBEIJING (AP) - The former Chinese security czar recently convicted of leaking state secrets did not pass classified documents to a foreign spy or a political rival. Rather, Zhou Yongkang, a former member of the all-powerful Standing Committee of the ruling Communist Party's Politburo, shared the documents with his qigong master, who claims supernatural abilities, according to a verdict made public last week and which also convicted Zhou of massive corruption.
Warriors withstand James, take 3-2 lead over Cavs in finalsOAKLAND, Calif. (AP) - Stephen Curry came off a screen, dribbled behind his back and crossed over Matthew Dellavedova. He stepped back and swished a 3-pointer, then pounded his chest and pointed to the roof, seemingly controlling the sellout crowd of 19,596 on his fingertips. One more win, and the MVP will really have a moment to celebrate.

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AP Top News at 4:16 a.m. EDT

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AP Top News at 4:16 a.m. EDT
Libyan Islamist says US strike missed al-Qaida-linked leaderBENGHAZI, Libya (AP) - The U.S military says it launched weekend airstrikes targeting and likely killing an al-Qaida-linked militant leader in eastern Libya charged with leading the attack on a gas plant in Algeria in 2013 that killed at least 35 hostages, including three Americans. An Islamist with ties to Libyan militants, however, said the airstrikes missed Mokhtar Belmokhtar, instead killing four members of a Libyan extremist group the U.S. has linked to the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.
After 6 months of consideration, Jeb Bush ready for '16 raceWASHINGTON (AP) - Jeb Bush is ready to launch a Republican presidential bid months in the making on Monday by asserting his commitment to the "most vulnerable in our society," an approach targeting the broader American electorate even as he faces questions about his policies from conservatives in his own party. Six months after he got the 2016 campaign started by saying he was considering a bid, the 62-year-old former Florida governor will formally enter the race with a speech and rally near his south Florida home at Miami Dade University, an institution selected because it serves a large and diverse student body that's symbolic of the nation he seeks to lead.
Vast data warehouse raises health overhaul privacy concernsWASHINGTON (AP) - A government data warehouse stores personal information forever on millions of people who seek coverage under President Barack Obama's health care law, including those who open an account on HealthCare.gov but don't sign up for coverage. At a time when major breaches have become distressingly common, the vast scope of the information - and the lack of a clear plan for destroying old records - have raised concerns about privacy and the government's judgment on technology.
Relatives: Man tied to Dallas shooting was mentally unstableDALLAS (AP) - James Boulware told family members that he had foreseen a deadly Japanese tsunami and the Newtown, Connecticut, school shooting in his dreams. Police say he choked his mother. And he seethed at police, blaming them for the lost custody of his son. Boulware, the man authorities have linked to a weekend shooting outside Dallas police headquarters showed signs of violence and mental instability for years beforehand, according to accounts from authorities and family members.
Spokane NAACP head under pressure over racial-identity flapSPOKANE, Wash. (AP) - The leader of the NAACP in Spokane is facing calls to step aside after her parents said the 37-year-old activist falsely portrayed herself as black for years. Rachel Dolezal canceled a chapter meeting Monday where she was expected to speak about the furor sparked over her racial identity. But other members of the organization said they still planned to gather Monday evening.
Crowdfunding for kids' summer programs takes offNEW YORK (AP) - This summer, thousands of young people will go to camp, attend prestigious academic programs and even study filmmaking in Paris thanks to online crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo. Donors can help middle schoolers learn computer programming in Pennsylvania, support a leadership academy for Virginia teens or send children of incarcerated California parents to sleepaway camp.
Tiny tuna crabs wash up in masses on Orange County beachesDANA POINT, Calif. (AP) - Tiny tuna crabs have been washing up by the thousands on some Orange County beaches. The Orange County Register reports (http://bit.ly/1BcoMTBhttp://bit.ly/1BcoMTB ) that the crustaceans, which look like tiny lobsters or crawfish, created a bright red rim along the shoreline of Dana Point, San Clemente, Newport Beach and Huntington Beach on Sunday.
Up 3-2 in NBA Finals, Warriors expect Cavs' punch in Game 6OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) - Stephen Curry received treatment for dehydration following Game 5 of the NBA Finals, a little worn out after carrying Golden State to the brink of its first championship in 40 years. The Warriors will need him at his best Tuesday, knowing what's coming from LeBron James in Cleveland.

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AP Top News at 8:33 a.m. EDT

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AP Top News at 8:33 a.m. EDT
US targets al-Qaida-linked leader in Libya; unclear if hitCAIRO (AP) - The U.S military says it launched weekend airstrikes targeting and likely killing an al-Qaida-linked militant leader in eastern Libya charged with leading the attack on a gas plant in Algeria in 2013 that killed at least 35 hostages, including three Americans. An Islamist with ties to Libyan militants, however, said the airstrikes missed Mokhtar Belmokhtar, instead killing four members of a Libyan extremist group the U.S. has linked to the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.
US archbishop quits after archdiocese charged with cover-upVATICAN CITY (AP) - The embattled archbishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis and a deputy bishop resigned Monday after prosecutors there charged the archdiocese with having failed to protect children from unspeakable harm from a pedophile priest. The Vatican said Pope Francis accepted the resignations of Archbishop John Nienstedt and Auxiliary Bishop Lee Anthony Piche. They resigned under the code of canon law that allows bishops to resign before they retire because of illness or some other "grave" reason that makes them unfit for office.
10 Things to Know for TodayYour daily look at late-breaking news, upcoming events and the stories that will be talked about today: 1. DEAD OR ALIVE - DID U.S. STRIKE HIT OR MISS AL-QAIDA-LINKED LEADER
Search on for people, zoo animals missing in Georgia floodTBILISI, Georgia (AP) - Rescue workers in the Georgian capital were still searching Monday for more than 20 people and an undetermined number of potentially dangerous animals missing after severe flooding ravaged the area around the zoo and left at least 12 people dead. None of the people who died was killed by the zoo animals that ran off after the floodwaters destroyed their enclosures, Tbilisi zoo director Zurab Gurielidze said. Three zoo employees were among those who drowned.
Sudan state news agency says al-Bashir is en route to SudanKHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) - Sudan's official news agency says President Omar al-Bashir has left South Africa and will land in Khartoum on Monday night. It says a news conference will be held at the airport upon his arrival at 6 p.m. (1500 GMT, 11 a.m. EDT), along with Sudanese Minister of Foreign Affairs Ibrahim Ghandour.
Mayor: Not enough time to close beach between shark attacksOAK ISLAND, N.C. (AP) - After two young people lost limbs in separate shark attacks in costal North Carolina this weekend, the beaches were open Monday and the mayor said she didn't think emergency workers had enough time between incidents to close the beaches. A 12-year-old girl was attacked just after 4 p.m. Sunday in Oak Island, and a 16-year-old boy was attacked less than two hours later about two miles away.
DALLAS (AP) - James Boulware told family members that he had foreseen a deadly Japanese tsunami and the Newtown, Connecticut, school shooting in his dreams. Police say he choked his mother. And he seethed at police, blaming them for the lost custody of his son. Boulware, the man authorities have linked to a weekend shooting outside Dallas police headquarters, showed signs of violence and mental instability for years beforehand, according to accounts from authorities and family members.

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AP Top News at 12:35 p.m. EDT

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AP Top News at 12:35 p.m. EDT
Libya: Unclear if US strikes killed al-Qaida leaderCAIRO (AP) - The military spokesman of the internationally-recognized Libyan government says three foreigners were among 17 killed in U.S. airstrikes in eastern Libya, adding that it is too early to determine if an al-Qaida-linked militant leader was among them. Algerian militant Mokhtar Belmokhtar was earlier reported killed by the Libyan government, which is based in the country's east.
Head of Spokane NAACP quits amid furor over racial identitySPOKANE, Wash. (AP) - The president of the NAACP's Spokane, Washington, chapter has resigned as furor mounted over her racial identity, after her parents said she has falsely portrayed herself as black for years even though she is actually white. The announcement that Rachel Dolezal was stepping down was posted Monday on the civil rights group's Facebook page.
VATICAN CITY (AP) - Pope Francis has started making good on his promise to not let even the most senior churchmen get away with sex abuse or cover-up. On Monday, he accepted the resignation of the embattled archbishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis and his deputy bishop after prosecutors there charged the archdiocese with having failed to protect children from unspeakable harm from a pedophile priest who was later convicted of molesting two boys.
TBILISI, Georgia (AP) - The death toll from flooding around Tbilisi Zoo in Georgia rose to 13 on Monday, while the search continued for 10 people still missing and an undetermined number of potentially dangerous exotic animals. The Interior Ministry said cleanup crews found the body of an elderly man in his home on Monday afternoon. Many others who had been missing after the muddy floodwaters swamped parts of the former Soviet republic's capital turned up safe.
Jeb Bush set for '16 race; campaign logo omits Bush surnameMIAMI (AP) - Jeb Bush is ready to launch a Republican presidential bid months in the making Monday by asserting his commitment to the "most vulnerable in our society," an approach targeting the broader American electorate even as he faces questions about his policies from conservatives in his own party. Six months after he got the 2016 campaign started by saying he was considering a bid, the 62-year-old former Florida governor will formally enter the race with a speech and rally near his south Florida home at Miami Dade College, an institution selected because it serves a large and diverse student body symbolic of the nation he seeks to lead.
Vacationing shark-attack victims were in shallow waterOAK ISLAND, N.C. (AP) - Two young people vacationing in the beach town of Oak Island were swimming in waist-deep water when they lost limbs in separate life-threatening shark attacks, town officials said Monday. A 12-year-old girl from Asheboro lost part of her arm and suffered a leg injury, and a 16-year-old boy from Winston-Salem lost his left arm less than 90 minutes later and about 2 miles away late Sunday afternoon, officials said. The victims were each about 20 yards offshore, in waist-deep water.
Colorado court: Workers can be fired for using pot off-dutyDENVER (AP) - Pot may be legal in Colorado, but you can still be fired for using it. The state Supreme Court ruled 5-1 Monday that a medical marijuana patient who was fired after failing a drug test cannot get his job back. The case was being watched closely by employers and pot smokers in states that have legalized medical or recreational marijuana.
Prison worker charged with aiding escapees appears in courtDANNEMORA, N.Y. (AP) - A woman charged with helping two convicted murderers escape from a maximum-security prison in far northern New York made another court appearance Monday as the manhunt for the men hit its 10th day. Prosecutors say Joyce Mitchell, a prison tailoring shop instructor who had befriended the inmates, had agreed to be the getaway driver but backed out because she still loved her husband and felt guilty for participating.
WASHINGTON (AP) - A government data warehouse stores personal information indefinitely on millions of people who seek coverage under President Barack Obama's health care law, including those who open an account on HealthCare.gov but don't sign up for coverage. At a time when major breaches have become distressingly common, the vast scope of the information - and the lack of a clear plan for destroying old records - have raised concerns about privacy and the government's judgment on technology.
Sudan's al-Bashir returns home from South AfricaKHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) - Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir has arrived in Khartoum to cheers of supporters after leaving South Africa, where a court had ordered his arrest based on an international warrant for war crimes charges. Al-Bashir raised a stick in the air as he stepped out of the plane Monday, waving to a few hundred supporters who greeted him at the airport. Some chanted "God is Great" while others cried in joy.

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China’s Spies Hit the Blackmail Jackpot 

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With each passing day the U.S. government’s big hacking scandal gets worse. Just what did hackers steal from the Office of Personnel Management? Having initially assured the public that the loss was not all that serious, OPM’s data breach now looks very grave. The lack of database encryption appears foolhardy, while OPM ignoring repeated warnings about its cyber vulnerabilities implies severe dysfunction in Washington.
To say nothing of the news that hackers were scouring OPM systems for over a year before they were detected. It’s alarming that intruders got hold of information about every federal worker, particularly because OPM previously conceded that “only” 4 million employees, past and present, had been compromised, including 2.1 million current ones. Each day brings worse details about what stands as the biggest data compromise since Edward Snowden stole 1.7 million classified documents and fled to Russia.
Then there’s the worrisome matter of what OPM actually does. A somewhat obscure agency, it’s the federal government’s HR hub and, most important, it’s responsible for conducting 90 percent of federal background investigations, adjudicating some 2 million security clearances every year. If you’ve ever held a clearance with Uncle Sam, there’s a good chance you’re in OPM files somewhere.
Read the rest at The Daily Beast …

Filed under: CounterintelligenceEspionageUSG  

Snowden is a Fraud 

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In the two years since the Edward Snowden saga went public, a handful of people who actually understand the Western signals intelligence system have tried to explain the many ways that the Snowden Operation has smeared NSA and its partners with salacious charges of criminality and abuse. I’ve been one of the public faces of what may be called the Snowden Truth movement, and finally there are signs that reality may be intruding on this debate.
No American ally was rocked harder by Snowden’s allegations than Germany, which has endured a bout of hysteria over charges that NSA was listening in on senior German officials, including Chancellor Angela Merkel. Although these stories included a good deal of bunkum from the start, they caused a firestorm in Germany, particularly the alleged spying on Merkel, which was termed Handygate by the media.
In response, Germany
tasked Federal prosecutors with looking into the matter and, they if determined there was sufficient evidence, to press charges against NSA for breaking stringent German privacy laws. The investigation, led by Harald Range, Germany’s attorney general, has been slow and diligent, examining all possible evidence about NSA spying on Germany. Here Snowden’s purloined information would play a key role.
However, the matter has become politically fraught. In the first place, senior German security officials were circumspect about the case, since Berlin is heavily dependent on NSA for intelligence on vital matters like terrorism. Worse, follow-on Snowden revelations showed that the BND, German’s foreign intelligence service, and NSA are close partners, and the BND has itself been spying on EU neighbor states that are friendly to Germany such as AustriaBelgium, and the Netherlands.
To top it off, last month’s major hack of the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament, turns out to have been the work of Russians, apparently state-sponsored. In reality, the major spy threats to Germany are not NSA, but Russians and Chinese, as I’ve been saying for some time — and, to be fair, so have German security officials, though they got drowned out in the public hysteria over Snowden.
Now we learn that Range’s prosecutors are dropping their year-long Handygate inquiry, for want of hard evidence. Federal prosecutors in Karlsruhe aren’t saying much, beyond that they simply don’t have evidence of spying that would stand up in court. Back in December, Attorney General Range offered a warning about the dubious nature of much of the “evidence” against NSA:
The document presented in public as proof of an actual tapping of the mobile phone is not an authentic surveillance order by the NSA. It does not come from the NSA database. There is no proof at the moment which could lead to charges that Chancellor Merkel’s phone connection data was collected or her calls tapped.
Got that? That’s the polite, legalistic way of saying the Snowden claims are backed by faked NSA documents, as has been clear for some time to anybody who understands counterintelligence and the SIGINT system. This should surprise no one, since using fake or doctored Western intelligence documents to embarrass democracies isa venerable tradition for Russian intelligence — the proper espionage term is Active Measures — and since Snowden’s been in Moscow for the last two years and shows no signs of going anywhere else anytime soon, two and two can be added together here.
To make matters worse for Snowden’s fans, a report about the Handygate inquiry being dropped in the magazine Der Spiegel, which has been a key player in the Snowden Operation, includes the painful truth. While some have clamored to get Snowden out of Moscow to testify before prosecutors, Berlin understood how politically tricky that would be. Moreover, prosecutors determined that Ed simply didn’t have much to say.
As a prosecutor explained, Snowden provided no evidence that he has his own knowledge” (keine Hinweise dafür, dass er über eigene Kenntnisse verfügt). In other words, Ed doesn’t actually know what he’s talking about. This is not news to anybody who understands how NSA and the Allied SIGINT system actually work.
Snowden was an IT guy, not a SIGINT analyst, and in his final position he was working as a contracted infrastructure analyst for NSA’s Information Assurance arm, i.e. the Agency’s defensive side, which protects classified U.S. communications networks. Snowden was never a SIGINTer, working on the intelligence collection side of the house, and he doesn’t seem to understand how that complex system, built over decades, actually functions.
This is why Snowden has made so many odd, contradictory, and even outlandish statements over the past couple years about SIGINT, which have caused those who actually understand how NSA works
to scratch their heads … Ed doesn’t know any better.
It’s been obvious for some time to insiders that, for reasons we still don’t fully understand, Snowden decided to steal something like 1.7 million classified documents from NSA servers through internal hacks. About 900,000 of those documents came from the Pentagon and have nothing to do with intelligence matters.
There’s no way Snowden could have read more than a tiny fraction of what he stole, nobody has that much time, and it’s clear now that Ed, an IT guy and a thief, who was never any sort of “spy” as he portrays himself, would not have understood all those NSA documents he made off with anyway.
Snowden’s been living under the protection of Putin’s Federal Security Service now for two years, functioning as a pawn of Russian intelligence. When his secret relationship with the Kremlin started remains an open question, but that he has one now can only be denied by the foolish (witness theweak lies told by his supporters about Ed’s FSB ties), since when you defect, you wind up in the care of that country’s security service. That’s how it works in America, and I don’t hear anybody seriously suggesting that Putin’s Kremlin is more liberal in these matters than the FBI or CIA.
In light of these revelations from Germany, it’s worth pondering whether Ed was always just a pawn, a talking head, for others with agendas to harm Western security. As we’re now in theCold War 2.0with Russia that I warned you about after Putin’s theft of Crimea, this seems like a more than academic question.
For two years now, I’ve been trying to inform the public about what’s really going on behind the Snowden Operation, using my understanding of how the SpyWar actually functions, and I’ve gotten a lot of grief for it from Ed’s hardcore fans. News out of Germany can’t help
but lead me to point out that, well … I told you so.

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OPM Hack Is Serious Breach Of Worker Trust 

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“We cannot undo this damage. What’s done is done, and it will take decades to fix.”
This morning National Public Radio had me on to discuss the impact of the mega-hacks of OPM, which I’ve written about herehere and here this week. I discussed several things, including the grave violation of the trust (and the personal secrets) of millions of Americans that this failure has caused.
I said from the outset that this incident was a very big deal, indeed disastrous, from any security or counterintelligence perspective, and sadly this week’s ever-worse revelations have demonstrated that my pessimism was correct.
You can listen to my interview with NPR’s Scott Simon here.

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China’s Hack Just Wrecked American Espionage

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The mega-hack of the Office of Personnel Management continues to get worse for Washington. Revelations of a second, even deeper intrusion into OPM servers bring distressing news that Pentagon employees, including intelligence personnel, are among the millions of Americans whose personal and security data have been compromised.
As The Daily Beast reported, this hack constitutes a disaster for Washington’s counterintelligence operatives. Armed with very private information about the personal lives of millions of security clearance holders, foreign intelligence services can blackmail and coerce vulnerable officials. To make matters worse, foreign spies can use data purloined from OPM background investigations to head American mole-hunters off at the pass. For Beltway counterspies, the OPM breach will take decades to set right.
But there’s an even more serious aspect of this compromise: the threat it poses to American intelligence operations abroad, particularly to officers serving under various false identities, or “covers,” overseas. The Intelligence Community employs myriad cover mechanisms to protect the true identity of its spies posted outside the United States. Cover protects our officers and allows them to conduct their secret work without drawing as much attention to themselves. While many intelligence officers pose as diplomats, that is only one option, and some covers are deeper than others.
Read the rest at The Daily Beast …

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The Snowden Story Slowly Unravels 

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I am grateful to the German newspaper BILD for running this piece as “Wie Snowdens schöneGeschichte langsam zerfällt” For the benefit of readers who don’t know German, I’m providing the English version — enjoy!
Exactly two years after Edward Snowden went public with his exposure of Western intelligence secrets, causing a global sensation, the basic facts of his case are unraveling. Many who welcomed his exposure of National Security Agency domestic operations, for instance metadata collection, were nevertheless troubled by his move to Moscow.
Taking up residency under Putin’s roof, which Snowden shows no signs of leaving, was never a good fit with his status as a freedom-loving “whistleblower.” Russia, run by a former KGB man, spies on its citizens far more aggressively than any of the Western countries whose secrets have been exposed by Snowden – to say nothing of the mysterious deaths of politicians, journalists and others who fall afoul of Putin and his Kremlin.
Ironically, given the intense debate over the Snowden revelations in Germany, it has been this country where the real unraveling of the storyline has begun. The end of the year-long Federal inquiry into Snowden’s allegation’s led by Attorney General Harald Range, without any charges against NSA, has disappointed many admirers of Snowden. Yet this inquiry failed due to a lack of hard evidence. Some of the documents offered as “proof” of NSA espionage against Chancellor Angela Merkel are copies, not originals, and therefore lack probative value.
Moreover, Snowden does not seem to really understand much of what he has exposed. As a Federal prosecutor explained, Snowden provided “no evidence that he has his own knowledge” (keine Hinweise dafür, dass er über eigene Kenntnisse verfügt). He is in no position to actually explain what NSA does.
Although Snowden has presented himself as a “spy” at the heart of NSA’s global espionage network, the mundane truth is that he was an IT contractor who never actually worked on NSA’s signals intelligence program. In his last assignment, Snowden analyzed Chinese cyber capabilities against the United States – which may appear suspicious given the recent unprecedented hacking of U.S. Government databases, an apparent Chinese operation – but that job was on the Agency’s defensive side, protecting sensitive government communications. Snowden is no expert on NSA’s collection of foreign communications.
Worse news for Snowden’s admirers comes with a report that Western secret services have been badly harmed by his compromise. Western intelligence has pulled agents out of “hostile countries,” fearing for their safety, after both the Russian and Chinese intelligence services have cracked into Snowden’s cache of some 1.7 million purloined documents and learned their vast secrets. “We have now seen our agents and assets being targeted,” explained a British official. The result, said a British intelligence source, has been “incalculable damage.”
Although London is not commenting on the report’s details, as Foreign Secretary Phillip Hammond explained, “nobody should be in any doubt that Edward Snowden has caused immense damage.”
This is commonsensical as the Snowden compromise represents the greatest loss in the history of Western intelligence. It included some of the most closely guarded secrets of numerous Western intelligence agencies. Worse, among those 1.7 million documents are 900,000 files stolen from the Pentagon, military secrets that have nothing to do with protecting civil liberties.
This British report does immense harm to the Snowden cause because from the outset Ed and his journalist partners have repeatedly stated that his huge data cache is safe. Snowden said he took no NSA documents to Russia, insisting a few months after his move to Moscow, “There’s a zero percent chance the Russians or Chinese have received any documents.” Although Snowden asserted he had not taken his NSA files to Russia with him, his close partner Glenn Greenwald stated, three weeks after Snowden’s arrival in Moscow, that the records were still in Ed’s possession.
The Snowden inner circle has been unable to keep their story straight about where these very sensitive documents are, yet they have insisted that the purloined secrets Snowden stole from NSA are safe — somewhere. Greenwald has openly mocked suggestions that the Russians or Chinese could get their hands on them.
This appears like vain silliness to anyone acquainted with the capabilities of the Russian and Chinese intelligence services. Where was Snowden during the last ten days of May 2013, after he left Hawaii but before he checked into Hong Kong’s Mira Hotel on June 1? It smacks of naïveté to think Beijing did not expect something in return for giving Snowden sanctuary en route to Moscow.
Moreover, it is surpassingly naïve not to think that Russian intelligence has secured Snowden’s cooperation in exchange for sanctuary. Putin’s FSB is not motivated by charity and access to those 1.7 million documents, a goldmine for the Kremlin, would be the normal quid pro quo for offering refuge to an American on the run with valuable secrets.
Defectors are always debriefed at length by the host’s security service, this is a constant in the real world of espionage. Russian defectors to the United States collaborate with American intelligence, and nobody is seriously suggesting that Putin’s FSB is more liberal.
Every Western intelligence defector to Moscow since 1917 has collaborated with the Kremlin. There is no choice, as Snowden has surely discovered. “Of course” Snowden is collaborating with the FSB,explained Oleg Kalugin, the former head of KGB foreign counterintelligence, over a year ago, stating the reality of how the spy game gets played.
It remains an open question when Snowden’s relationship with Russian intelligence began, but denying that he has one now, after two years in Russia, reflects a deep misunderstanding of how Putin, his Kremlin, and the FSB operate.
For two years, Edward Snowden and his advocates have spun an enticing yarn about a pure-hearted and heroic lover of freedom who “told the truth” about Western democracies. In reality, the “whistleblower” may be no more than a pawn of countries that seek to harm the West.
While discrediting the intelligence work of law-based democracies, Snowden’s efforts have enabled espionage by less free countries. We now have reports that the computer of Chancellor Angela Merkel was a victim of May’s massive cyberattack on the Bundestag, which German security officials believe was Russian in origin.
The BfV has repeatedly warned that Russian and Chinese espionage against Germany is rising fast, far outpacing the efforts of NSA or any Western spy services to learn Berlin’s secrets. Now that Snowden’s story has begun to unravel, it’s time to assess security threats more honestly.

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The Sunday Times’ Snowden Story is Journalism at its Worst — and Filled with Falsehoods 

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(updated below)
Western journalists claim that the big lesson they learned from their key role in selling the Iraq War to the public is that it’s hideous, corrupt and often dangerous journalism to give anonymity to government officials to let them propagandize the public, then uncritically accept those anonymously voiced claims as Truth. But they’ve learned no such lesson. That tactic continues to be the staple of how major
U.S. and British media outlets “report,” especially in the national security area. And journalists who read such reports continue to treat self-serving decrees by unnamed, unseen officials
 laundered through their media
 as gospel, no matter how dubious are the claims or factually false is the reporting.
We now have one of the purest examples of this dynamic. Last night, the Murdoch-owned Sunday Times published their lead front-page Sunday article, headlined “British Spies Betrayed to Russians and Chinese.” Just as the conventional media narrative was shifting to pro-Snowden sentiment in the wake of a key court ruling and a new surveillance law, the article (behind a paywall: full text here) claims in the first paragraph that these two adversaries “have cracked the top-secret cache of files stolen by the fugitive
U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden, forcing MI6 to pull agents out of live operations in hostile countries, according to senior officials in Downing Street, the Home Office and the security services.” It continues:
Western intelligence agencies say they have been forced into the rescue operations after Moscow gained access to more than 1m classified files held by the former American security contractor, who fled to seek protection from Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, after mounting one of the largest leaks in
U.S. history.
Senior government sources confirmed that China had also cracked the encrypted documents, which contain details of secret intelligence techniques and information that could allow British and American spies to be identified.
One senior Home Office official accused Snowden of having “blood on his
hands,”although Downing Street said there was “no evidence of anyone being
harmed.”
Aside from the serious retraction-worthy fabrications on which this article depends
 more on those in a minute
 the entire report is a self-negating joke.
It reads like a parody I might quickly whip up in order to illustrate the core sickness of
Western journalism.
Unless he cooked an extra-juicy
steak, how does Snowden “have blood on his hands” if there is “no evidence of anyone being harmed?” As one observer put it last night in describing the government instructions these Sunday Times journalists appear to have obeyed: “There’s no evidence anyone’s been harmed but we’d like the phrase ‘blood on his hands’ somewhere in the piece.”
The whole article does literally nothing other than quote anonymous British officials. It gives voice to banal but inflammatory accusations that are made about every whistleblower from Daniel Ellsberg to Chelsea Manning. It offers zero evidence or confirmation for any of its claims. The “journalists” who wrote it neither questioned any of the official assertions nor even quoted anyone who denies them. It’s pure stenography of the worst kind: some government officials whispered these inflammatory claims in our ears and told us to print them, but not reveal who they are, and we’re obeying. Breaking!
Stephen Colbert captured this exact pathology with untoppable precision in his 2006 White House Correspondents speech, when he mocked American journalism to the faces of those who practice it:
But, listen, let’s review the rules. Here’s how it works.The President makes decisions. He’s the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put ’em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration? You know, fiction!
The Sunday Times article is even worse because it protects the officials they’re serving with anonymity. The beauty of this tactic is that the accusations can’t be challenged. The official accusers are being hidden by the journalists so nobody can confront them or hold them accountable when it turns out to be false. The evidence can’t be analyzed or dissected because there literally is none: they just make the accusation and, because they’re state officials, their
media-servants will publish it with no evidence needed. And as is always true, there is no way to prove the negative. It’s like being smeared by a ghost with a substance that you can’t touch.
This is the very opposite of journalism. Ponder how dumb someone has to be at this point to read an anonymous government accusation, made with zero evidence, and accept it as true.
But it works. Other news agencies mindlessly repeatedthe Sunday Times claims far and wide.  I watched last night as American and British journalists of all kinds reacted to the report on Twitter: by questioning none of it. They did the opposite: they immediately assumed it to be true, then spent hours engaged in somber, self-serious discussions with one another over what the geopolitical implications are, how the breach happened, what it means for Snowden, etc. This is the formula that shapes their brains: anonymous self-serving government assertions = Truth. 
By definition, authoritarians reflexively believe official claims
 no matter how dubious or obviously self-serving, even when made while hiding behind anonymity
 because that’s how their submission functions. Journalists who practice this sort of primitive reporting
 I uncritically print what government officials tell me, and give them anonymity so they have no accountability for any of it — do so out of a similar authoritarianism, or uber-nationalism, or laziness, or careerism. Whatever the motives, the results are the same: government officials know they can propagandize the public at any time because subservient journalists will give them anonymity to do so and will uncritically disseminate and accept their claims.
At this point, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that journalists want it this way. It’s impossible that they don’t know better. The exact kinds of accusations laundered in the Sunday Timestoday are made
and then disproven
 in every case where someone leaks unflattering information about government officials.
In the early 1970s, Nixon officials such as John Ehrlichman and Henry Kissinger planted accusations in the U.S. media that Daniel Ellsberg had secretly given the Pentagon Papers and other key documents to the Soviet Union; everyone now knows this was a lie, but at the time, American journalists repeated it constantly, helping to smear Ellsberg. That’s why Ellsberg has constantly defended Snowden and Chelsea Manning from the start: because the same tactics were used to smear him.

The same thing happened with Chelsea Manning. When WikiLeaks first began publishing the Afghan War logs, U.S. officials screamed that they
 all together now
 had “blood on their hands.” But when some journalists decided to scrutinize rather than mindlessly repeat the official accusation (i.e., some decided to do journalism), they found it was a fabrication.
Writing under the headline “US officials privately say WikiLeaks damage limited,” Reuters’ Mark Hosenball reported that “internal U.S. government reviews have determined that a mass leak of diplomatic cables caused only limited damage to U.S. interests abroad, despite the Obama administration’s public statements to the contrary.”
An AP reportwas headlined “AP review finds no WikiLeaks sources threatened,” and explained that “an Associated Press review of those sourcesraises doubts about the scope of the danger posed by WikiLeaks’ disclosures and the Obama administration’s angry claims, going back more than a year, that the revelations are life-threatening.” Months earlier, McClatchy’s Nancy Youssef wrote an articleheadlined “Officials may be overstating the dangers from WikiLeaks,” and she noted that “despite similar warnings ahead of the previous two massive releases of classified U.S. intelligence reports by the website, U.S. officials concede that they have no evidence to date that the documents led to anyone’s death.”
Now we have exactly the same thing here. There’s an anonymously made claim that Russia and China “cracked the top-secret cache of files” from Snowden’s, but there is literally zero evidence for that claim. These hidden officials also claim that American and British agents were unmasked and had to be rescued, but not a single one is identified.There is speculationthat Russia and China learned things from obtaining the Snowden files, but how could these officials possibly know that, particularly since other government officials are constantly accusing both countries of successfully hacking sensitive government databases?
What kind of person would read evidence-free accusations of this sort from anonymous government officials
 designed to smear a whistleblower they hate
 and believe them? That’s a particularly compelling question given that Vice’s Jason Leopold just last week obtained and published previously secret documents revealing a coordinated smear campaign in Washington to malign Snowden. Describing those documents, he reported: “A bipartisan group of Washington lawmakers solicited details from Pentagon officials that they could use to ‘damage’ former NSA contractor Edward Snowden’s ‘credibility in the press and the court of public opinion.'”
Manifestly then, the “journalism” in thisSunday Times 
article is as shoddy and unreliable as it gets. Worse, its key accusations depend on retraction-level lies.
The government accusers behind this story have a big obstacle to overcome: namely, Snowden has said unequivocally that when he left Hong Kong, he took no files with him, having given them to the journalists with whom he worked, and then destroying his copy precisely so that it wouldn’t be vulnerable as he traveled. How, then, could Russia have obtained Snowden’s files as the story claims
 “his documents were encrypted but they weren’t completely secure ”
 if he did not even have physical possession of them?
The only way this smear works is if they claim Snowden lied, and that he did in fact have files with him after he left Hong Kong. The Sunday Times journalists thus include a paragraph that is designed to prove Snowden lied about this, that he did possess these files while living in Moscow:
It is not clear whether Russia and China stole Snowden’s data, or whether he voluntarily handed over his secret documents in order to remain at liberty in Hong Kong and Moscow.
David Miranda, the boyfriend of the Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald,was seized at Heathrow in 2013 in possession of 58,000 “highly classified” intelligence documents after visiting Snowden in Moscow.
What’s the problem with that Sunday Times passage? It’s an utter lie. David did not visit Snowden in Moscow before being detained. As of the time he was detained in Heathrow, David had never been to Moscow and had never met Snowden. The only city David visited on that trip before being detained was Berlin, where he stayed in the apartment of Laura Poitras.
The Sunday Times “journalists” printed an outright fabrication in order to support their key point: that Snowden had files with him in Moscow. This is the only “fact” included in their story that suggests Snowden had files with him when he left Hong Kong, and it’s completely, demonstrably false (and just by the way: it’s 2015, not 1971, so referring to gay men in a 10-year spousal relationship with the belittling term “boyfriends” is just gross).
Then there’s the Sunday Timesclaim that “Snowden, a former contractor at the CIA and National Security Agency (NSA), downloaded 1.7m secret documents from western intelligence agencies in 2013.” Even the NSA admits this claim is a lie. The NSA has repeatedly said that it has no idea how many documents Snowden downloaded and has no way to find out. As the NSA itself admits, the 1.7 million number is not the number the NSA claims Snowden downloaded
 they admit they don’t and can’t know that number
 but merely the amount of documents he interacted with in his years of working at NSA. Here’s then-NSA chief Keith Alexander explaining exactly that in a 2014 interviewwith the Australian Financial Review:
AFR: Can you now quantify the number of documents [Snowden] stole?
Gen. Alexander: Well, I don’t think anybody really knows what he actually took with him, because the way he did it, we don’t have an accurate way of counting. What we do have an accurate way of counting is what he touched, what he may have downloaded, and that was more than a million documents.
Let’s repeat that: “I don’t think anybody really knows what he actually took with him, because the way he did it, we don’t have an accurate way of counting.” Yet someone whispered to theSunday Timesreporters that Snowden downloaded 1.7 million documents, so like the liars and propagandists that they are, they mindlessly printed it as fact. That’s what this whole article is.
Then there’s the claim that the Russian and Chinese governments learned the names of covert agents by cracking the Snowden file, “forcing MI6 to pull agents out of live operations in hostile countries.” This appears quite clearly to be a fabrication by the Sunday Times for purposes of sensationalism, because if you read the actual anonymous quotes they include, not even the anonymous officials claim that Russia and China hacked the entire archive, instead offering only vague assertions that
Russia and China “have information.”
Beyond that, how could these hidden British officials possibly know that China and Russia learned things from the Snowden files as opposed to all the other hacking and spying those countries do? Moreover, as pointed out last night by my colleague Ryan Gallagher
 who has worked for well over a year with the full Snowden archive
 “I’ve reviewed the Snowden documents and I’ve never seen anything in there naming active MI6 agents.” He also said: “I’ve seen nothing in the region of 1m documents in the Snowden archive, so I don’t know where that number has come from.”
Finally, none of what’s in theSunday Times is remotely new.
U.S. and U.K. government officials and their favorite journalists have tried for two years to smear Snowden with these same claims. In June, 2013, theNew York Times gave anonymity to“two Western intelligence experts, who worked for major government spy agencies” who “said they believed that the Chinese government had managed to drain the contents of the four laptops that Mr. Snowden said he brought to Hong Kong.” The NYT‘s Public Editor chided the paper for printing that garbage, and as I reported in my book, then-editor-in-chief Jill Abramson told
The Guardian’s Janine Gibson that they should not have printed that, calling it “irresponsible.” (And that’s to say nothing of the woefully ignorant notion that Snowden
 or anyone else these days – stores massive amounts of data on “four laptops” as opposed to tiny thumb drives).
The GOP’s right-wing extremist Congressman Mike Rogers constantly did the same thing. He once announced with no evidence that “Snowden is working with Russia”
 a claim even former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell denies
 and also argued that Snowden should “be charged with murder” for causing unknown deaths. My personal favorite example of this genre of reckless, desperate smears is the Op-Ed which theWall Street Journal published in May, 2014, by neocon Edward Jay Epstein, which had this still-hilarious paragraph:
A former member of President Obama’s cabinet went even further, suggesting to me off the record in March this year that there are only three possible explanations for the Snowden heist: 1) It was a Russian espionage operation; 2) It was a Chinese espionage operation, or 3) It was a joint Sino-Russian operation.
It must be one of those, an anonymous official told me! It must be! Either Russia did it. Or China did it. Or they did it together! That is American journalism.
The Sunday Timestoday merely recycled the same evidence-free smears that have been used by government officials for years
 not only against Snowden, but all whistleblowers
 and added a dose of sensationalism and then baked it with demonstrable lies. That’s just how western journalism works, and it’s the opposite of surprising. But what is surprising, and grotesque, is how many people (including other journalists) continue to be so plagued by some combination of stupidity and gullibility, so that no matter how many times this trick is revealed, they keep falling for it. If some anonymous government officials said it, and journalists repeat it while hiding who they are, I guess it must be true. 
UPDATE: TheSunday Times has now quietly deleted one of the central, glaring lies in its story: that David Miranda had just met with Snowden in Moscow when he was detained at Heathrow carrying classified documents. By “quietly deleted,” I mean just that: they just removed it from their story without any indication or note to their readers that they’ve done so (though it remains in the print edition and thus requires a retraction). That’s indicative of the standard of “journalism” for the article itself. Multiple other falsehoods, and all sorts of shoddy journalistic practices, remain thus far unchanged.
Photo: Sean Gallup/Getty Images
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Former Army researcher pleads guilty in $750K fraud

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A former Army researcher at Aberdeen Proving Ground pleaded guilty Monday to steering millions of dollars of contracts to companies that he secretly controlled, netting himself and his alleged conspirators $750,000.
     

U.S. Airstrike in Libya Targets Planner of 2013 Algeria Attack

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Libyan officials said the strike killed Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a former Al Qaeda leader and the mastermind of a 2013
terrorist seizure of an Algerian gas plant that left 38
foreign hostages dead.
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Success of Kurdish Forces Is a Rare Bright Spot for U.S. Policy in Iraq 

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The ability of pesh merga forces to retake and defend territory has offered a glimmer of hope for the Obama administration’s policy of coordinating with local forces to battle the Islamic State.

Thousands Flee Syria as Kurds Gain on ISIS

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Refugees who had been gathering on the Syrian side of the border with Turkey broke through the crossing, passing babies and their belongings through a barbed-wire fence.

Kurds and Syrian Rebels Push to Evict ISIS From Border Town

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If the Islamic State loses Tal Abyad, a Syrian town on the Turkish border, it will lose its primary lifeline to Raqqa, a city it has ruled for more than a year.

2,954,5062,954,506Obama’s Justice Dept. Wants Names of Internet Commenters Who Trashed

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Obama’s Justice Dept. Wants Names of Internet Commenters Who Trashed Judge: Increasingly in America, it's not what you say that gets you in trouble, but who you are when you say it. | The OPM Hacking Scandal Just Got WorseObama’s Justice Dept. Wants Names of Internet Commenters Who Trashed Judge :  Increasingly in America, it's not what you say that gets you in trouble, but who you are when you say it. The OPM Hacking Scandal Just Got Worse EU Accents Trade, Better Ties in T...
Obama’s Justice Dept. Wants Names of Internet Commenters Who Trashed Judge: Increasingly in America, it's not what you say that gets you in trouble, but who you are when you say it. The OPM Hacking Scandal Just Got Worse ...
Record Number of Americans Renounced Their U.S. Citizenship in 2015: 1,336 Americans renounced their U.S. citizenship, according to a quarterly report by the Internal Revenue Service. | Hackers nabbed data on every federal employee, union claimsRecord Number of Americans Renounced Their U.S. Citizenship in 2015 :  1,336 Americans renounced their U.S. citizenship, according to a quarterly report by the Internal Revenue Service. Hackers nabbed data on every federal employee, union claims Friday June...
Record Number of Americans Renounced Their U.S. Citizenship in 2015: 1,336 Americans renounced their U.S. citizenship, according to a quarterly report by the Internal Revenue Service. Hackers nabbed data on every fe...

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2015-06-12» Does Obama Know There's a Cyberwar Going On? - Investor's Business

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» Does Obama Know There's a Cyberwar Going On? - Investor's Business Daily 12/06/15 19:01 from cyber warfare - Google News - U.S. National Security and Military News ReviewU.S. National Security and Military News Review us national security  |  national security  |  us military  |   US military news  |  D rug wars  |  »   Changing the World: How USAID’s 50 Years of Family Planning has Transformed People, Economies, and the Pl...
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Latest News & Headlines - 3:01 PM 6/12/2015»   House Deals Blow to Obama's Bid for Trade Deal 12/06/15 14:28 from  WSJ.com: World News »   Obama quest for fast-track trade bill defeated for now in House 12/06/15 14:25 from  Reuters: Top News »   Obama quest for fast-track trade bill defeated for now...
» House Deals Blow to Obama's Bid for Trade Deal 12/06/15 14:28 from WSJ.com: World News » Obama quest for fast-track trade bill defeated for now in House 12/06/15 14:25 from Reuters: Top News » Obama quest for fast-tra...
US Considers Opening Network of Bases in Iraq - Wall Street JournalUS Considers Opening Network of Bases in Iraq - Wall Street Journal Friday June 12 th , 2015  at  2:03 PM World - Google News 1 Share Wall Street Journal US Considers Opening Network of Bases in Iraq Wall Street Journal WASHINGTON—The Obama administration i...
US Considers Opening Network of Bases in Iraq - Wall Street Journal Friday June 12th, 2015 at 2:03 PM World - Google News 1 Share Wall Street Journal US Considers Opening Network of Bases in Iraq ...
Tens of thousands take part in Friday's Tel Aviv Gay Pride parade - HaaretzGay men from Russia pose for a photographers during the annual Gay Pride Parade in Tel Aviv, Israel, June 12, 2015.   Photo by AP Tens of thousands take part in Friday's  Tel Aviv Gay Pride parade Haaretz - 3 hours ago A man dances during the annual  Gay Pr...
Gay men from Russia pose for a photographers during the annual Gay Pride Parade in Tel Aviv, Israel, June 12, 2015. Photo by AP Tens of thousands take part in Friday's Tel Aviv Gay Pride parade Haaretz-3 hours ago A ...
The Isis militant group has seized enough radioactive material from government facilities to suggest it has the capacity to build a large and devastating “dirty” bomb, according to Australian intelligence reports. Isis declared its ambition to develop weapons of mass destruction in the most recent edition of its propaganda magazine Dabiq, and Indian defence officials have previously warned of the possibility the militants could acquire a nuclear weapon from Pakistan. - Isis's dirty bomb: Jihadists have seized 'enough radioactive material to build their first WMD' - U.S. National Security and Military News Review
Isis's dirty bomb: Jihadists have seized 'enough radioactive material to build their first WMD' - Middle East - World Friday June 12 th , 2015  at  4:38 PM 1 Share Isis declared its ambition to develop weapons of mass destruction in  the most recent edition...
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US, Russian aircraft came within 10 feet over Black Sea - CNN | U.S. and Russian Navies Hold Talks on Avoiding Accidental Clashes | Horrific Video Amplifies Bus Tragedy At Baku's European Games | » В Латвии арестовали проникших на военную базу россиян - РБК 12/06/15 12:50 from В мире – Новости Google - Russia News Review
US, Russian aircraft came within 10 feet over Black Sea - CNN U.S. and Russian Navies Hold Talks on Avoiding Accidental Clashes Horrific Video Amplifies Bus Tragedy At Baku's European Games US, Russian aircraft came within 10 feet over Black Sea - CNN Frida...
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Al Jazeera is anti-Israel and discriminates non-Arab members of staff, says former employee suing the network - Americas - World | Two U.S. men charged with beheading plot to help Islamic State | » President Obama is 'all-in' on trade, sees it as a cornerstone of his legacy - Washington Post 12/06/15 10:57 from Google News - Top Stories - World News Review
Five reasons we should celebrate Albert Einstein by Steven Gimbel Friday June 12 th , 2015  at  12:32 PM Network Front | The Guardian 1 Share From his radical thinking to his radical politics, his disavowal of celebrity to his wild hairstyle, the great phys...
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Volunteer Ukrainian unit includes Nazis - USA Today | U.S. House Passes 3 Amendments "to block the training of the Ukrainian neo-Nazi paramilitary militia “Azov Battalion,” and to prevent the transfer of shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles—otherwise known as Man-Portable Air-Defense Systems (MANPADS)—to Iraq or Ukraine." | DC Mansion Murder Housekeeper Adds New Details to Mysterious Timeline - 12/06/15 11:06 from Mike Nova's Shared Newslinks
Volunteer Ukrainian unit includes Nazis  - USA Today U.S. House Passes 3 Amendments By Rep. Conyers To Defense Spending Bill To Protect Civilians From Dangers Of Arming and Training Foreign Forces - Press Releases - News :  WASHINGTON—  Late yesterday eveni...
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2,959,5042,959,504New questions arise about House Democratic caucus’s loyalty to

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New questions arise about House Democratic caucus’s loyalty to Obama | » Democrats Stymie Obama on Trade 12/06/15 22:13 from WSJ.com: World News - World News ReviewNew questions arise about House Democratic caucus’s loyalty to Obama Friday June 12 th , 2015  at  10:24 PM 1 Share President Obama, with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi at his side, leaves a meeting where he made a last-ditch appeal to House Democrats f...
New questions arise about House Democratic caucus’s loyalty to Obama Friday June 12th, 2015 at 10:24 PM 1 Share President Obama, with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi at his side, leaves a m...
Lame duck: Democrats clip Obama's wings
Lame duck: Democrats clip Obama's wings Friday June 12 th , 2015  at  9:33 PM 1 Share Story highlights Trade deal is vital to the fruition of President Barack Obama's signature Asia rebalancing policy. White House engages in intensive lobbying that only yie...
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Lame duck: Democrats clip Obama's wings Friday June 12th, 2015 at 9:33 PM 1 Share Story highlights Trade deal is vital to the fruition of President Barack Obama's signature Asia rebalancing policy...

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2,967,8042,967,8042015-06-13» Hillary Clinton Outlines Populist Message at First Big Campaign

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» Hillary Clinton Outlines Populist Message at First Big Campaign Rally 13/06/15 15:10 from Mike Nova's Shared Newslinks | U.S. Poised to Put Heavy Weaponry in East EuropeU.S. Poised to Put Heavy Weaponry in East Europe by By ERIC SCHMITT and STEVEN LEE MYERS Saturday June 13 th , 2015  at  4:27 PM NYT > United States Defense And Military Forces 1 Share The proposal, if approved, would represent the first time since the end ...
U.S. Poised to Put Heavy Weaponry in East Europeby By ERIC SCHMITT and STEVEN LEE MYERS Saturday June 13th, 2015 at 4:27 PM NYT > United States Defense And Military Forces 1 Share The proposal, if app...
Headlines - 11:26 AM 6/13/2015BIG READ: Russia leading the way in the cyber arms race a reprint of: Russia's Greatest Weapon May Be Its Hackers BY OWEN MATTHEWS / MAY 7, 2015 1:20 AM EDT - Newsweek _______________________________________ World News Review »   Preventing Iran's Nuclear...
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White House Weighs Sanctions After Second Breach of a Computer SystemWhite House Weighs Sanctions After Second Breach of a Computer System Saturday June 13 th , 2015  at  1:58 PM 1 Share WASHINGTON — The White House on Friday revealed that hackers had breached a second computer system at the Office of Personnel Management, a...
White House Weighs Sanctions After Second Breach of a Computer System Saturday June 13th, 2015 at 1:58 PM 1 Share WASHINGTON — The White House on Friday revealed that hackers had breached a second com...

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2015-06-14Headlines - 6.14.15

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Headlines - 6.14.15»   UK spies 'moved over Snowden files' 14/06/15 07:55 from  BBC News - World UK intelligence agents have been moved because Russia and China have information from files stolen by whistleblower Edward Snowden, a newspaper claims. »   Britain pulls out spies...
» UK spies 'moved over Snowden files' 14/06/15 07:55 from BBC News - World UK intelligence agents have been moved because Russia and China have information from files stolen by whistleblower Edward Snowden, a newspaper claims...

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2,972,3552,972,3552015-06-14Jason Amerine, Green Beret aiming to free U.S. hostages, caught in

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Jason Amerine, Green Beret aiming to free U.S. hostages, caught in FBI web | CIA Reorganizes to Target Islamic State | » U.S. Airstrike Targets Qaeda Operative in Libya 15/06/15 00:00 from NYT > United States Defense and Military Forces - U.S. National Security and Military News ReviewJason Amerine, Green Beret aiming to free U.S. hostages, caught in FBI web Sunday June 14 th , 2015  at  11:32 PM 1 Share When  Lt. Col. Jason Amerine , a decorated Green Beret, took the big step last summer of contacting a member of  Congress  on the gnawi...
Jason Amerine, Green Beret aiming to free U.S. hostages, caught in FBI web Sunday June 14th, 2015 at 11:32 PM 1 Share When Lt. Col. Jason Amerine, a decorated Green Beret, took the big step last summe...
Jason Amerine, Green Beret aiming to free U.S. hostages, caught in FBI web - WTJason Amerine, Green Beret aiming to free U.S. hostages, caught in FBI web Sunday June 14 th , 2015  at  11:32 PM 1 Share When  Lt. Col. Jason Amerine , a decorated Green Beret, took the big step last summer of contacting a member of  Congress  on the gnawi...
Jason Amerine, Green Beret aiming to free U.S. hostages, caught in FBI web Sunday June 14th, 2015 at 11:32 PM 1 Share When Lt. Col. Jason Amerine, a decorated Green Beret, took the big step last summe...
Jason Amerine, Green Beret aiming to free U.S. hostages, caught in FBI web - WTJason Amerine, Green Beret aiming to free U.S. hostages, caught in FBI web Sunday June 14 th , 2015  at  11:32 PM 1 Share When  Lt. Col. Jason Amerine , a decorated Green Beret, took the big step last summer of contacting a member of  Congress  on the gnawi...
Jason Amerine, Green Beret aiming to free U.S. hostages, caught in FBI web Sunday June 14th, 2015 at 11:32 PM 1 Share When Lt. Col. Jason Amerine, a decorated Green Beret, took the big step last summe...
US hits 'al-Qaeda' militant in Libya | Hillary Clinton snubs Obama on trade deal | » The Sanctions Myth 15/06/15 02:00 from The National Interest - World News ReviewHillary Clinton snubs Obama on trade deal U.S. Airstrike Targets Qaeda Operative in Libya by ERIC SCHMITT Sunday June 14 th , 2015  at  9:49 PM NYT > World 1 Share The Pentagon provided few details about the strike, the first American aerial operation in Li...
Hillary Clinton snubs Obama on trade deal U.S. Airstrike Targets Qaeda Operative in Libyaby ERIC SCHMITT Sunday June 14th, 2015 at 9:49 PM NYT > World 1 Share The Pentagon provided few detai...

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2015-06-15Headlines - 6.15.15

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Headlines - 6.15.15»   South Africa argues in court against Bashir's arrest - Reuters 15/06/15 06:15 from  Google News - Top Stories Reuters South Africa argues in court against Bashir's arrest Reuters PRETORIA South Africa will on Monday argue against a court application to ...
» South Africa argues in court against Bashir's arrest - Reuters 15/06/15 06:15 from Google News - Top Stories Reuters South Africa argues in court against Bashir's arrest Reuters PRETORIA South Africa will on Monday argue ...
» Anger, confusion in Yemen's shell-shocked capital 15/06/15 10:00 from Home - CBSNews.com | » World Stocks Slip as Greek Debt Talks Falter 15/06/15 04:52 from ABC News: ABCNews - World News Review | » NATO supports first regional summer school for junior diplomats from Central Asia and Afghanistan 15/06/15 08:00 from NATO Latest News | » Major European Scientific Organization to Open Cybersecurity Center in Israel - TheTower.org 14/06/15 14:25 from cybersecurity - Google News - U.S. National Security and Military News ReviewWorld News Review »   Anger, confusion in Yemen's shell-shocked capital 15/06/15 10:00 from  Home - CBSNews.com Residents in Sanaa have seen their ancient city turned into a warzone, and many can't understand why the bombs are dropping »   Impasse in Greek ...

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2015-06-15"I was FBI informant, shouldn't be charged" | "The investigation into

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"I was FBI informant, shouldn't be charged" | "The investigation into Hillman has revealed that his then girlfriend, Angela Russell, had been allowed to work with the task force while Hillman was in charge where she chatted with would-be child predators and even handcuffed suspects in at least one instance. That series of events, which ultimately lead to Hillman’s suspension from the FBI and subsequent investigation from federal prosecutors, has delayed all of the cases currently hanging in the balance due to the domino effect of Hillman’s alleged transgressions." - Lead public defender says district attorney still stalling in FBI task force cases - FBI News ReviewJason Amerine, Green Beret aiming to free U.S. hostages, caught in FBI web Sunday June 14 th , 2015  at  11:32 PM 1 Share When  Lt. Col. Jason Amerine , a decorated Green Beret, took the big step last summer of contacting a member of  Congress  on the gnawi...
Jason Amerine, Green Beret aiming to free U.S. hostages, caught in FBI web Sunday June 14th, 2015 at 11:32 PM 1 Share When Lt. Col. Jason Amerine, a decorated Green Beret, took the big step last summe...
The Emerging Kurdish State - Middle East NewsKurds and Israel - Google Search Monday June 15 th , 2015  at  10:00 AM 1 Share Iraqi Kurdistan–Israel relations - Wikipedia, the free ...en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_ Kurdistan – Israel _relations Cached Similar Wikipedia Loading... The Iraqi  Kurdistan – ...
Kurds and Israel - Google Search Monday June 15th, 2015 at 10:00 AM 1 Share Iraqi Kurdistan–Israel relations - Wikipedia, the free ... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_Kurdistan–Israel_relations Cache...
Opinions Review:Cleaning out Uncle Sam America’s trouble with hackers. US Data Hack Potentially Exposed Sex, Lies, Debt Monday June 15 th , 2015  at  12:09 PM Voice Of America 1 Share WASHINGTON— When a retired 51-year-old military man disclosed in a U.S. security clearanc...
Cleaning out Uncle Sam America’s trouble with hackers. US Data Hack Potentially Exposed Sex, Lies, Debt Monday June 15th, 2015 at 12:09 PM Voice Of America 1 Share WASHINGTON— When a retired ...

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National Security-Related Congressional Hearings, June 15–19

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Below is a calendar of Congressional hearings on national security matters for this week. Monday, June 15, 2015 5:00pm – Senate Foreign Relations – Lifting Sanctions on Iran: Practical Implications – closed briefing (hereTuesday, June 16, 2015 10:00am – House Foreign Affairs – Advancing United States’ Interests at the United Nations (here) 10:00am – House Homeland Security – Subcommittee on Transportation Security – Safeguarding Our Nation’s Surface Transportation Systems Against Evolving Terrorist Threats (here) 10:00am – House Oversight and Government Reform – OPM: Data Breach (here) 10:30am – Senate Appropriations – Homeland Security Subcommittee – Markup: Homeland Security Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2016 (here) 2:00pm – House Energy and Commerce – Subcommittee on Communications and Technology – Progress Toward a Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network (here) 2:00pm – House Foreign Affairs – Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats – Reviewing the Administration’s FY 2016 Budget Request for Europe and Eurasia (here) 2:45pm – Senate Intelligence – Briefing: Intelligence Matters – closed briefing (here) 4:00pm – House Rules Committee – Meeting on H. Con. Res. 55: Directing the President, Pursuant to section 5(c) of the War Powers Resolution, to Remove United States Armed Forces Deployed to Iraq or Syria ... (hereWednesday, June 17, 2015 10:00am – House Armed Services – US Policy and Strategy in the Middle East (here) 10:00am – House Foreign Affairs – Assad’s Abhorrent Chemical Weapons Attacks (here) 10:00am – Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs – Governing Through Goal Setting: Enhancing the Economic and National Security of America (here) 2:00pm – House Armed Services – Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces – Capacity of US Navy to Project Power with Large Surface Combatants (here) 2:00pm – House Foreign Affairs – Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific – China’s Rise: The Strategic Impact of Its Economic and Military Growth (here) 2:00pm – House Foreign Affairs – Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa – The Iran, North Korea, and Syria Nonproliferation Act: State Department’s Non-Compliance (hereThursday, June 18, 2015 8:00am – House Armed Services – Subcommittee on Readiness – Optimized Fleet Response Plan (hereRead on Just Security »
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In surprise move, US Congress may slash funding for CIA ops in Syria 

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American Congressional lawmakers have voted to cut funding for the Central Intelligence Agency's secret operations in Syria, in a surprise move that indicates growing concern on Capitol Hill with Washington’s strategy on the Syrian Civil War. 

Prisoner manhunt in northern New York hits 10th day

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Woman charged with helping 2 convicted murderers escape from maximum-security prison makes another court appearance

NAACP official resigns amid race controversy

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Embattled chapter president, accused of being white by her family, says "a separation of family and organizational outcomes" is necessary

Russia's new 'microwave cannon' to disable enemy drones within 10 km radius

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Russia's United Instrument Manufacturing Corporation (UIMC) has developed a 'microwave cannon' capable of disabling enemy aircraft and drones within the range of 10 kilometres, a UIMC representative told TASS on Monday.

20 dead, 100 wounded in rocket attacks on Aleppo

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Foreign-backed Takfiri terrorists in Syria have carried out over 250 rocket attacks on residential areas of the strategic city of Aleppo, killing at least 20 people and wounding dozens others.

US Sent $140Mln Military Aid to Ukraine - Assistant State Secretary

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The United States has provided $140 million in 'defensive' military equipment to Ukraine as Washington continues to debate whether or not to supply lethal weapons to Kiev, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland said Monday.

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