Intelligence
September 28, 2024 — Scott Johnson
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the United Nations General Assembly yesterday. The prime minister’s office posted the YouTube video (below) on X Times of Israel has posted the text. Diplomats of unfriendly nations left the room when Netanyahu took the floor. Like northern Israel, the room was mostly depopulated. Hezbollah is responsible for the depopulation of northern Israel as a result of its attacks on every day since October 8,
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September 17, 2024 — Scott Johnson
Reports indicate that Israel has somehow penetrated Hezbollah’s encrypted pagers and set them off this morning to go kaboom. Reuters said that the attack was the “biggest intelligence breach yet,” citing a Hezbollah official. Avi Mayer is the former editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post. He brings the news in the tweet below. 🔴 BREAKING: Hundreds of Hezbollah operatives across Lebanon have reportedly been wounded, many seriously, when the pagers they
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September 15, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley
Back in February, the Biden-Harris administration appointed Sneha Nair as a “Special Assistant” at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). Nair is co-author with Louis Reitmann of “Queering nuclear weapons: How LGBTQ+ inclusion strengthens security and reshapes disarmament,” and as the authors contend: Governments cannot afford to lose out on the human capital and innovation potential of queer people. Informed by their life experiences, queer people have specific skills to
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September 14, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley
It was my first time voting in a presidential election, and, while only twenty-one years old, I was already disenchanted with the state of partisan politics in America. Entering the voting booth I had no idea for whom I was going to cast my vote, but I was thrilled at the opportunity to exercise my newfound citizenship privilege. I scanned the seven names listed and stopped at the Communist Party
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July 17, 2024 — Scott Johnson
Both CNN and the Washington Post reported yesterday that the Iranian regime is plotting to kill President Trump. Jewish World Review has posted the Washington Post story in accessible form here. Intelligence concerning the plot derives from a human source and is apparently unrelated to the attempted assassination of Trump over the weekend. NRO’s Jimmy Quinn quotes Rich Goldberg’s tweet on the rationale for such an operation: “Donald Trump is
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July 11, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley
Some Democrats demand that Joe Biden to step aside while others want the octogenarian to stay the course. Both sides might wonder what the deep state wants, particularly the Central Intelligence Agency. Consider Neutering the CIA: Why U.S. Intelligence Versus Trump Has Long-Term Consequences by John A. Gentry. According to the former CIA analyst, the politicization of CIA intelligence was “aimed at Trump” and the IC agencies are “available for reactivation
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June 6, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley
Hunter Biden’s laptop is back in the news but as Scott notes, John Brennan could not be reached for comment. In October of 2020, the former CIA boss joined 50 “intelligence community” veterans in a letter branding the laptop “Russian disinformation.” Hunter Biden also escaped notice in Brennan’s 2020 Undaunted: My Fight Against America’s Enemies at Home and Abroad, a confessional of sorts. “My deep religiosity as a young boy,”
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March 31, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley
Now on the scene of the fallen Francis Scott Key Bridge, the U.S. Naval Institute reports, is the Chesapeake, a crane barge with a 1,000-ton lift capacity. Originally called the SUN 800 the crane was built to assist in the construction of the Hughes Glomar Explorer, a deep-sea drill-ship platform, “built by the CIA to recover the 3,000-ton Soviet Golf II ballistic missile submarine K-129, which sunk in 1968.”As this account notes, “the
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March 18, 2024 — Steven Hayward
The Wall Street Journal has a feature news story in today’s edition detailing a fact long known about the success Cuban intelligence has enjoyed penetrating American government over the years, in particular their sophisticated and widespread recruitment efforts. “Cuba has ‘the best damn intelligence service in the world’ for cultivating agents, said Brian Latell, a former CIA analyst who led the agency’s Latin America division,” the story notes. There is
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March 17, 2024 — Scott Johnson
In his weekly NRO column yesterday, Andrew McCarthy urges readers to review the transcript of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s interview of President Biden. Hur interviewed Biden in the course of his investigation last year on October 8 and October 9. The Department of Justice did not see fit to release the transcripts until the day of Hur’s congressional testimony last week. As McCarthy puts it, “the transcript is such a
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March 14, 2024 — Scott Johnson
Special Counsel Robert Hur found that President Biden willfully mishandled documents subject to the Espionage Act provision set forth in 28 U.S.C. § 793(e). However, Hur clouded the “willfulness” element of the offense by resting his non-prosecution recommendation in part on Biden’s present senility. Hur presents his analysis of the element of “willfulness” under section 793 in Chapter Nine of his report. The relevant question is whether Biden committed the
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March 13, 2024 — Scott Johnson
The Biden administration obviously seeks to depose the government of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. The administration has released our intelligence community’s assessment that Netanyahu’s “viability as a leader” is “in jeopardy,” according to the annual report on the national security threats facing the United States that was presented to Congress on Monday. I assess that the wish is father to the thought. The assessment provides: “Distrust of Netanyahu’s ability to
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February 15, 2024 — Scott Johnson
President Biden hastily called a press event this past Thursday evening to proclaim his mental competence in the teeth of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report on Biden’s mishandling of classified documents. Having investigated Biden’s retention and disclosure of such documents, Hur recommended no charges. Hur predicated his recommendation on Biden’s incompetence, concluding either that the mental element of potential charges was lacking and/or that a jury would excuse his misconduct
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February 2, 2024 — Scott Johnson
Drawing on signals intelligence, interrogations of Hamas terrorists, and documents recovered in Gaza, the government of Israel has compiled a dossier of findings that establish UNRWA’s partnership with Hamas promoting terrorism. The Washington Free Beacon has posted it on Scribd along with its accompanying story. I have embedded it at the bottom. Following a briefing of American officials that included the dossier, the Biden administration temporarily suspended funding to UNRWA.
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January 26, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley
To the many fine people of the Central Intelligence Agency who still produce, unseen by outsiders and quietly, apolitical intelligence in support of American national decision-makers. That is the dedication to Neutering the CIA: Why U.S. Intelligence Versus Trump Has Long-Term Consequences by John A. Gentry, something of a company man. He started as a CIA analyst in 1986, took “another job” with the CIA soon after, and left the
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January 6, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley
“Ex-CIA analyst says intel agencies to be politically active again in 2024 election: ‘Significant problem,’” proclaimed the January 2 Fox News headline. The former CIA analyst is Georgetown professor John Gentry, who cites “ideology driven analytic errors” such as diversity, equity and inclusion policies. According to Gentry, Bill Clinton launched the DEI policy, formally established by an Obama executive order in 2011. Gentry flags former CIA boss John Brennan and
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January 4, 2024 — Scott Johnson
We can infer that it was Israel that took out Hamas deputy chief Saleh al-Arouri and several of his Hamas colleagues this past Tuesday evening. JNS reports that Arouri “was one of the top Hamas leaders on Israel’s target list following the terrorist group’s Oct. 7 massacre.” The Jerusalem Post has details of the strike here. Arouri was hit by precision guided missiles that struck the Hamas office in Hezbollah’s
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