Intelligence
January 5, 2013 — Scott Johnson
I think the following items will be of interest to Power Line readers. I’d like to bring them to your attention without much comment. While our attention was turned elsewhere this past October, the space shuttle Endeavour made its final journey: it traveled 12-miles from Los Angeles International Airport, through Inglewood, to the California Science Center in Exposition Park. Reader Zack Russ writes that he came across this wonderful time-lapse
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January 3, 2013 — Steven Hayward
Once upon a time over at my old blogging home at the Ashbrook Center’s NoLeftTurns site, I took note of the single most interesting document I came across in my ten years of research for my two Age of Reagan volumes: CIA deputy director Herbert Meyer’s November 1983 memo—in hindsight the key month of the Reagan story—to CIA director Bill Casey (and Reagan) on “Why Is The World So Dangerous?”
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December 17, 2012 — Scott Johnson
New York Post film critic Kyle Smith has seen two previews of Zero Dark Thirty, the Osama bin Laden manhunt thriller that is opening in New York and Los Angeles just in time for Oscar consideration. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow and written by Mark Boal, the team responsible for The Hurt Locker, the film promised to be something more than an advertisement for Barack Obama, although the filmmakers famously had
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November 14, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Edward Jay Epstein has a large and distinguished body of work on intelligence and intelligence-related issues. Among his books in the field are Legend: The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald and Deception: The Invisible War Between the KGB and the CIA. Ed has also taken to the ebook form. His ebooks on intelligence-related issues include Killing Castro and James Jesus Angleton: Was He Right? This morning Ed has forwarded
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November 12, 2012 — Scott Johnson
…and denies Paula Broadwell’s assertion (noted in my post here) that it held Libyan prisoners at its Benghazi annex. Neil Munro reports the CIA’s denial to the Washington Post and the Daily Caller. I have updated the post to note the CIA’s denial but wanted separately to add it here for readers who might otherwise miss it.
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November 11, 2012 — Scott Johnson
A reader points out that Paula Broadwell was the honored keynote speaker at a University of Denver event last month. The speech is obviously of interest in light of the revelation of her involvement with General Petraeus, whom she discusses in her speech. One of the questions following her speech alludes to her interest in becoming the National Security Advisor. At about 35:00, Broadwell herself specifically discusses the terrorist attack
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November 9, 2012 — John Hinderaker
David Petraeus resigned today as director of the CIA, explaining that he had shown “extremely poor judgment” by having an extramarital affair. It is a sad loss for the country. Petraeus’s services have been extraordinary and are too well-known to be recited here. That such a disciplined and dedicated public servant has been brought down by such a lapse seems shocking, but it should not be surprising. As Arthur Schopenhauer
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October 13, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Over at NRO, Patrick Brennan has posted yesterday’s statement by former CIA director Michael Hayden and former Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff on Vice President Biden’s whopper throwing the intelligence community under the bus during Thursday night’s debate: During the Vice Presidential debate, we were disappointed to see Vice President Biden blame the intelligence community for the inconsistent and shifting response of the Obama Administration to the terrorist attacks in
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October 1, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
Jack Goldsmith is a professor at Harvard Law School. During part of President George W. Bush’s first term, Goldsmith served as Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice. His is one of the best legal minds I know of. Goldsmith is the author of Power and Constraint: The Accountable Presidency After 9/11, published earlier this year. I have written a review of
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September 29, 2012 — Scott Johnson
The Obama administration is peddling a new line regarding its inability to hold the old line on the Benghazi murders: the bad dope came from the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who got everything wrong in the days following the attack. DNI spokesman Shawn Turner issued a statement reported by Reuters in the traditional Friday news dump in which scandals go to die. According to the statement: “[W]e revised
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September 24, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Ishmael Jones is the pseudonymous former Central Intelligence Agency case officer who focused on human sources with access to intelligence on terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. His assignments included more than 15 years of continuous overseas service under deep cover. Mr. Jones is also the author of The Human Factor: Inside the CIA’s Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture, published by Encounter Books. When it was issued in paperback he contributed the
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September 11, 2012 — Scott Johnson
The trail to Osama bin Laden started with the interrogation policies of George W. Bush, condemned as “torture” by Barack Obama. Yet Obama has hogged the credit for the operation that rendered justice to bin Laden. Former Director of the National Clandestine Service for the CIA, Jose Rodriguez is also the author of the memoir Hard Measures: How Agrressive CIA Actions After 9/11 Saved American Lives. Rodriguez is particularly unamused
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July 28, 2012 — Scott Johnson
The AP story on Israel’s purported intelligence threat to the United States — a story that is linked on Drudge — reads to me like an assault on Israel emanating from the upper reaches of the Obama administration and like minded supporters. According to the AP, with attribution to “current and former US officials,” Israel is the “number 1 counterintelligence threat” to the CIA’s Near East Division. If the AP
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June 30, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Edward Jay Epstein is the author of several fascinating books on the Kennedy assassination and related intelligence issues. Among these books are Legend: The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald and Deception: The Invisible War Between the KGB and the CIA. Also related to the subject are his ebooks Killing Castro and James Jesus Angleton: Was He Right? as well as his classic 1992 New Yorker article, “Epitaph for Jim
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June 25, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Mark Steyn cruelly recalls the wisdom of Obama administration Director of National Intelligence James Clapper regarding events as they were unfolding in Egypt last year. Mark writes: “[D]on’t worry, on the day Mubarak stepped down, America’s Director of National Intelligence, who presides over the most lavishly funded intelligence bureaucracy on the planet, was telling the world that the Muslim Brotherhood is ‘largely secular.’ So that’s okay.” Mark links to the
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June 23, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick agreed to sit down with me on Thursday afternoon at the Tomorrow 2012 edition of the Presidential Conference in Jerusalem. Caroline’s two most recent Post columns are “The Muslim Brotherhood’s useful idiots” and “Dreamy foreign policies.” When I caught up with her Caroline had just spoken on a panel addressing issues related to Israel’s future borders. Caroline wanted to talk about her satirical Hebrew-language Web
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June 18, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Edward Jay Epstein is the author, most recently, of the ebook Three Days in May. He is an incomparable investigative journalist. In his new book, he explores the mysteries surrounding the highly consequential scandal in which Dominique Strauss-Kahn ensnared himself. I had dinner with Ed in New York on Friday night. After dinner, we stopped at one of the bars in the lobby of the Waldrof Astoria, where I was
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