Pentagon’s use of taxpayers’ money under scrutiny after special watchdog finds contracts to train and mentor Afghan soldiers fell short of stated objectives A $457m (£345m) Pentagon-funded programme to develop the intelligence capacity of Afghan defence and security forces has failed to meet its aims, according to a US watchdog. The claim comes weeks after […]

Exclusive: He is also facing questions over a £116m US contract to train Afghan security forces in counterinsurgency A defence contractor run by one of Britain’s best-known military figures is under criminal investigation by the US government’s watchdog against fraud and waste in Afghanistan, The Independent can reveal. It can also be revealed that the […]

A memoir by a former CIA operative that details the broad daylight killing of two Pakistanis and the alleged government role in spiriting him away from murder charges is stirring outrage in this politically polarized country. The startling revelations by Raymond Davis have proven to be a major embarrassment for many in the government and […]

CIA contractor Raymond Davis was held captive in Lahore, Pakistan after killing Faizan Haider, 22, and Faheem Shamshad, 26, in self-defense January 2011 The former security contractor had been driving in the city area when two men in a motorbike brandished a gun at him and in fear he fired back He was followed an […]

When wayward contract employees at the CIA began pilfering snacks from vending machines back in 2013, the Office of the Inspector General sprang into action. Surveillance cameras went up, the culprits were nabbed, and all lost their jobs. From start to finish, the case of the $3,314.40 in stolen snacks lasted two months. When more […]

Not long after Tamerlan Tsarnaev bombed the Boston Marathon, investigative reporter Michele McPhee went looking for answers. What she discovered, detailed in this exclusive excerpt from her new book, Maximum Harm, might just change how you think about our government and law enforcement forever. As darkness descended over the village of Utamysh, Russia, one mid-July […]

Last May, a weird story made the news: the FBI killed a guy in Florida who was loosely linked to the Boston Marathon bombings. He was shot seven times in his living room by a federal agent. What really happened? Why was the FBI even in that room with him? A reporter spent six months […]

Names you know… Dhovar Tsarnev and Tamerlen Tsarnaev… Two young Chechen born brothers, raised in the United States, radicalized through the internet, and responsible for the deadly Boston Bombing attack. That is the story media has told you but what about the story they have all but ignored? About another Chechen with a lesser known […]

Waltham, September 11, 2011: Three men, throats slit, cash and drugs left on the bodies. Two years later, two dead suspects: Tamerlan Tsarnaev, and a friend who the FBI says was about to confess. One haunting question: Could solving this case have prevented the Boston Marathon bombings? waltham-triple-homocide It’s nearly midnight in a nondescript condo […]

Questions are mounting over whether U.S. security officials failed to heed warnings that could have foiled the bombing of the Boston Marathon. After news emerged that the older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was on the intelligence radar in the United States. As a result, there have been growing calls for federal agencies to re-examine their priorities, […]

The British spy Stakeknife – described by an Army general as “our golden egg” – is now the subject of a £35m criminal inquiry called Operation Kenova. The inquiry has been triggered by a classified report which Northern Ireland’s Director of Public Prosecutions Barra McGrory QC has told Panorama “made for very disturbing and chilling […]

Panorama documentary claims agent who leaked secrets to British army is linked to 18 murders in 1980s and 90s One of Britain’s most important agents inside the IRA has been linked to 18 murders and was provided with an alibi by a senior police officer to avoid getting him arrested during the Troubles, it has […]

The U.S. government segregates terrorism cases into two categories — domestic and international. This database contains cases classified as international terrorism, though many of the people charged never left the United States or communicated with anyone outside the country. Since the 9/11 attacks, most of the 796 terrorism defendants prosecuted by the U.S. Department of […]

Trial and TerrorTrial and Terror Part 1 The U.S. government has prosecuted almost 800 people for terrorism since the 9/11 attacks. Most of them never committed an act of violence. OVER THE LAST 15 years, the U.S. government has quietly released more than 400 people convicted on international terrorism-related charges, according to a data analysis […]

Trial and TerrorTrial and Terror Part 2 The U.S. government has prosecuted almost 800 people for terrorism since the 9/11 attacks. Most of them never committed an act of violence. ˅ EXPAND ALL PARTS SINCE THE 9/11 attacks, at least 30 people convicted of international terrorism-related offenses have become informants and/or cooperating witnesses in exchange […]

Trial and TerrorTrial and Terror Part 3 The U.S. government has prosecuted almost 800 people for terrorism since the 9/11 attacks. Most of them never committed an act of violence. ˅ EXPAND ALL PARTS BOSTON POLICE CAPT. Robert Ciccolo was one of the first responders to the Boston Marathon bombings. When his 23-year-old son, Alexander, […]

Trial and Terror Part 4 The U.S. government has prosecuted almost 800 people for terrorism since the 9/11 attacks. Most of them never committed an act of violence. WHILE THE TRUMP administration has struggled to provide evidence to support the need for a travel ban targeting Muslims, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has been working since […]

Le Monde reveals how Israeli espionage agency allegedly exploited a successful chemical weapons operation to get French counterparts to become sources; former head of French counterintelligence agency being questioned as suspect in case. PARIS – An internal report written by French intelligence, parts of which were published in the daily newspaper Le Monde on Sunday, […]

Le Mossad aurait tenté d’infiltrer le service de contre-espionnage français dans le cadre de l’opération visant à lutter contre le programme d’armes chimiques syrien, à partir de 2010. Dans le monde de l’espionnage, si des services décident d’unir leurs efforts, cela n’en fait pas pour autant des amis. Rien ne les empêchera de s’espionner. Jamais. […]

A la lumière de notes déclassifiées de la DGSI, «Libération» retrace le parcours d’Ismaël Omar Mostefaï, l’un des assaillants du 13 Novembre, sous-estimé par les services français. Rétrospectivement, c’est peut-être sur le parcours d’Ismaël Omar Mostefaï, l’un des trois kamikazes du Bataclan, que la faillite du renseignement intérieur s’avère la plus crue dans le dossier […]

Exclusive: Documents obtained by the Guardian reveal details of how police posed as protesters amid unrest following the death of Eric Garner People protest after a grand jury decided not to indict officer Daniel Pantaleo in the Eric Garner case. Undercover officers in the New York police department infiltrated small groups of Black Lives Matter […]

Exclusive: Watchdog investigates claim that secretive unit worked with Indian police to obtain campaigners’ passwords An anonymous letter claimed the Scotland Yard unit accessed activists’ email accounts for ‘a number of years’. The police watchdog is investigating allegations that a secretive Scotland Yard unit used hackers to illegally access the private emails of hundreds of […]

The whistleblower lists damning claims of spying on innocent individuals by a secretive Scotland Yard unit. It’s now vital that we hold the police to account ‘When the police act with impunity all of our private lives are put at risk’ As the only Green party peer I receive a lot of post to my […]

POLICE Scotland has confirmed that a secret file was created on the activities of a disgraced undercover unit at the G8 summit at Gleneagles. The “intelligence briefings” on the National Public Order Intelligence Unit, whose officers had sex with the protestors they spied on, will now be examined by a watchdog as part of its […]

THE DEPARTMENT OF Homeland Security announced an unprecedented new restriction on travelers from 10 airports in eight Muslim-majority countries on Tuesday. The DHS restriction states “that all personal electronic devices larger than a cell phone or smart phone be placed in checked baggage at 10 airports where flights are departing for the United States.” It’s […]

A new Homeland Security rule will ban electronics on flights from airports in Muslim-majority countries. Is this protectionism or prudence? Well, it’s complicated. Travelers from eight different Muslim-majority nations will no longer be allowed to carry laptops, tablets, or certain other electronic devices with them in the cabin on flights inbound to the U.S., according […]

The question of whether political operative Roger Stone helped Russian hackers break into the email of Democratic politicians, to some people, invites another: Who says the hackers were Russian? The FBI does, and so do several U.S. intelligence agencies, as they’ve declared repeatedly over the past five months. But among private-sector computer security companies, not […]

Russia, we are told, breached the servers of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), swiped emails and other documents, and released them to the public, to alter the outcome of the U.S. presidential election. How substantial is the evidence backing these assertions? Hired by the Democratic National Committee to investigate unusual network activity, the security firm […]

THERE ARE SOME good reasons to believe Russians had something to do with the breaches into email accounts belonging to members of the Democratic party, which proved varyingly embarrassing or disruptive for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. But “good” doesn’t necessarily mean good enough to indict Russia’s head of state for sabotaging our democracy. There’s a […]

On the May 13, 2016, Lebanese people were surprised when the Hezbollah’s leading man Hassan Nasrallah was seen mourning the death of his most senior militia commander Mustafa Badreddine. No sooner did the news of Badreddine demise in Syria broke out, the Lebanese media adopted the story perpetuated by Hezbollah on the circumstances surrounding his […]

Killing of Mustafa Amine Badreddine last year shows the ‘depth of the internal crisis within Hezbollah,’ Gadi Eisenkot says. Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot said reports that Mustafa Amine Badreddine was killed by Hezbollah officers are in accordance to “intelligence we have.” The incident “indicates the depth of the internal crisis within Hezbollah,” and “the extent […]

Israel’s military chief said Tuesday that a top Hezbollah commander who died last year was assassinated by members of his own group, the Iran-backed Lebanese Shiite militia. Mustafa Badreddine died near the Syrian capital, Damascus, in May 2016, and Hezbollah said that Syrian rebel shelling caused his death. But recent Arab media reports have alleged […]

The General Directorate of General Security announced Wednesday that it has arrested two Lebanese men, two Nepalese women and a Palestinian man on charges of “spying for Israeli embassies abroad.” “During interrogation, the detainees confessed to the charges, admitting that they had called phone numbers belonging to the Israeli enemy’s embassies in Turkey, Jordan, Britain […]

Hezbollah has confirmed its military commander, Mustafa Badreddine, was killed in Syria this week in what it described as a “major explosion” at Damascus airport. Media reports in Lebanon and Israel quickly suggested the blast had been caused by an Israeli airstrike, a suggestion to which Hezbollah gave weight, announcing it was investigating whether a […]

Elias Saab. Sami Issa. Safi Badr. Zul Fikar. All were aliases of Hezbollah’s secretive military commander, Mustafa Amine Badreddine, described in court records as an “untraceable ghost”. Few details are known about Badreddine, who was killed this week in a mysterious explosion at a Hezbollah base near Damascus airport. This despite him being one of […]

BEIRUT, Lebanon — When the youngest son of the former Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, was arrested in Lebanon last week in connection with the unsolved disappearance of Moussa al-Sadr, an exalted Lebanese Shiite cleric who vanished while visiting Libya in 1978, speculation sprouted about new information concerning one of the biggest whodunits in the […]

The relatives of one of the victims of the twin suicide attacks in Beirut mourned during a funeral procession in the city’s Burj al-Barajneh neighborhood. Credit Wael Hamzeh/European Pressphoto Agency BEIRUT, Lebanon — Ali Awad, 14, was chopping vegetables when the first bomb struck. Adel Tormous, who would die tackling the second bomber, was sitting […]

A Sunni Islamist group claims responsibility for a suicide bombing in Beirut The group, ISIS, says it’s the “first small payment” in a bigger push against Hezbollah Thursday’s car bomb detonated in a Beirut suburb known as a Hezbollah stronghold Lebanon has seen a surge in violence as tensions are exacerbated by Syria’s civil war […]

The CIA found itself in some rough waters in the Middle East last week. On Thursday, an influential member of Iran’s parliament announced that the Islamic republic had arrested 12 “CIA agents” who had allegedly been targeting Iran’s military and its nuclear program. The lawmaker didn’t give the nationality of the agents, but the presumption […]

In a significant failure for the United States in the Mideast, more than a dozen spies working for the CIA in Iran and Lebanon have been caught and the U.S. government fears they will be or have been executed, according to four current and former U.S. officials with connections to the intelligence community. The spies […]