Puppet Masters
© AP
Morten Storm claims to have worked for six years as an informant for the CIA, Britain's MI5 and MI6 and D
enmark's security service, PET.
Morten Storm claims to have worked for six years as an informant for the CIA, Britain's MI5 and MI6 and D
enmark's security service, PET.
This is the incredible story being told to the press and sold in a new book by Morten Storm, a 37-year-old Dane who claims to have worked on several secret missions with intelligence groups from several Western nations.
Storm tells the Associated Press that "he worked for six years as an informant for the CIA, Britain's MI5 and MI6 and Denmark's security service, PET."
"Could they just say 'he never worked for us'? Sometimes silence is also information," Storm told the AP in Copenhagen. "I know this is true, I know what I have done."
© AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin
Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh III, left, and Air Force Gen. Edward Rice, Jr., testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 23, 2013, before a House Armed Services Committee hearing on sexual misconduct by basic training instructors at Lackland Air Force Base
Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh III, left, and Air Force Gen. Edward Rice, Jr., testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 23, 2013, before a House Armed Services Committee hearing on sexual misconduct by basic training instructors at Lackland Air Force Base
The Washington hearing comes after nearly 60 current and former personnel, including two men, came forward with what the Air Force considered credible reports that they were sexually abused by their drill sergeants at the base in San Antonio.
Six drill sergeants have been convicted and six more Lackland Military Training Instructors are awaiting court martial in the case. The probe also recently expanded to a recruiting sergeant who was charged with sexually assaulting women who were discussing joining the Air Force.
© AFP Photo / Atta Kenare
Iranian Intelligence Minister Heidar Moslehi
Iranian Intelligence Minister Heidar Moslehi
American and international media outlets had jumped in the report's claim that Iranian intelligence was employing 30,000 people, a figure called "ill-supported" by ProPublica, a New York-based non-profit reporting on public interest matters.
The report had been produced by a Pentagon office and posted to a US government intranet site before leaking to the public in early January.
And a massive Iranian intel staff wasn't the only dubious claim brought to light by ProPobulica: the report also alleged, without much evidence, that Vienna was the European hub for the Iranian foreign spy network and that Tehran was gathering information by way of "signals intelligence stations" throughout the Middle East, with many of them in Syria.
© Photograph: Simela Pantzartzi/EPA
Police officers investigate after a bomb explosion in Athens: the government is said to be 'very, very concerned' about the surge in violence
Police officers investigate after a bomb explosion in Athens: the government is said to be 'very, very concerned' about the surge in violence
In the space of just a couple of weeks Greece's largest shopping mall has been targeted in a bomb attack, gunmen have fired on the headquarters of the ruling New Democracy party, and gas canisters have been set off outside an array of political party offices, banks and the homes of journalists.
Now three days after the attack on the shopping centre - which sent counter-terrorist officials on a painstaking hunt that has, as yet, borne little fruit - fears are mounting that Greece's fragile political stability could be shattered by extremists determined to exploit fury over unpopular austerity.
"The government is very, very concerned," said a senior aide to one of the coalition's tripartite leaders. "Political stability is essential to getting through the year."
Jamie Dimon in Davos Switzerland today explaining why people don't need to know what's going on in the banking world. It's too "complex." Just know that their fee comes from managing this ball of financial confusion. And that's all you need to know.
There, don't you feel better? I mean it's not like the world bailed out the whole banking system or anything. We should have faith.
There, don't you feel better? I mean it's not like the world bailed out the whole banking system or anything. We should have faith.
Hillary Clinton questioned by Congress on Algeria and Mali
Hillary Clinton has called for increased US military and political intervention in north Africa, and warned of a long, difficult but necessary struggle against a "spreading jihadist threat" in the region.
The US secretary of state singled out the French-led intervention against armed Islamists in Mali as the most urgent crisis, but said that al-Qaida in the region, newly armed and invigorated by the fallout of the Arab revolutions, also threatens important allies such as oil-rich Nigeria, as well as the fledgling government in Libya.
Clinton, who is expected to leave office shortly, told the Senate foreign relations committee that jihadists in north Africa pose a direct threat to the US, and called for an increased role for the American military command for Africa, known as Africom, as well as providing the resources for governments in the region to defend themselves.
"We now face a spreading jihadist threat. We have driven a lot of the AQ [al-Qaida] operatives out of Afghanistan, Pakistan. We have killed a lot of them, including, of course, Bin Laden. But we have to recognise that this is a global movement," she said.
© Gallo/Getty
Lavrov says the West ignored the wider implications of training fighters to oust Gaddafi
Lavrov says the West ignored the wider implications of training fighters to oust Gaddafi
Back in the 1970s, it was none other than the US that armed the Taliban "freedom fighters" fighting against the USSR in the Soviet-Afghanistan war, only to see these same freedom fighters eventually and furiously turn against the same US that provided them with arms and money, with what ended up being very catastrophic consequences, culminating with September 11.
Fast forward some 30 or more years and it is again the US which, under the guise of dreams and hopes of democracy and the end of a "dictatorial reign of terror", armed local insurgents in the Libyan war of "liberation" to overthrow the existing regime (and in the process liberate just a bit of Libya's oil) - the same Libya where shortly thereafter these same insurgents rose against their former sponsor, and killed the US ambassador in what has now become an epic foreign policy Snafu.
But it doesn't end there as according to Russia, it is the same US weapons that were provided to these Libyan "freedom fighters" that are now being used in what is rapidly becoming a war in Mali, involving not only assorted French regiments, but extensive US flip flops and boots on the ground.
© Photograph: Jason Reed/Reuters
The Government Accountability Office found the Pentagon 'unauditable' due to mismanaged records and a lack of transparency.
The Government Accountability Office found the Pentagon 'unauditable' due to mismanaged records and a lack of transparency.
No matter how much Congress softens the sequestration's austerity footprint, everyone in government will have to nip-and-tuck in order to balance budgets. And that will include the Pentagon - something that Secretary of Defense nominee Chuck Hagel and even the Bowles-Simpson commission support.
We cannot afford to continue a clear and present double-standard in Washington, DC while also keeping the government accountable to its taxpayers. On one side of the discretionary spending spectrum, Republicans are absolutely religious about each government dollar doled out, and are quite keen to see sequestration cuts - to "entitlement" programs. On the other side, cuts to defense spending and oversight of the Pentagon is not up for discussion.
In fact, Republicans, joined by some conservative Democrats, are now going further. They will fight to ensure that no defense cuts whatsoever be included in any deal to forestall the automatic sequestration.
© Photograph: Philipp Ebeling
Mark Kennedy, an undercover police officer who infiltrated a group of environmental protesters.
Mark Kennedy, an undercover police officer who infiltrated a group of environmental protesters.
A senior United Nations official has called on the British government to launch a judge-led public inquiry into the "shocking" case of Mark Kennedy and other undercover police officers who have been infiltrating protest groups.
Maina Kiai, a UN special rapporteur, said the scandal involving undercover police cultivating intimate sexual relationships with political activists over long periods of time had been as damaging as the phone-hacking controversy that prompted the Leveson inquiry.
He said he was "deeply concerned" about the UK's use of undercover police officers in non-violent groups exercising their democratic rights to protest.
Comment: Storm's story is not too hard to believe as stated. There is a wealth of evidence pointing to Al qaeda being essentially a CIA operation that enables perpetuating of the War of TerrorTM.