Explosive Revelation: DOZENS of CIA Operatives on the Ground DURING Benghazi Attack

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Photo Credit: Breitbart By Restoring Liberty. CNN is reporting this evening that, at the time of the Benghazi terrorist attack that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stephen, the Central Intelligence Agency had literally dozens of agents on the ground inside of Benghazi.

This explosive revelation was apparently leaked by a source who has also reported the CIA has undertaken an unprecedented effort to keep all knowledge of its actions on the ground secret. The Agency has even gone as a far as to require monthly polygraph tests of all agents with knowledge of the Benghazi operation.

CNN reports that the CIA has been using “pure intimidation” against its agents to ensure that none of them are talking to the press or Congress about what was happening on the ground in Libya. One agent reported, “You have no idea the amount of pressure being brought to bear on anyone with knowledge of this operation.”

Another source reportedly claimed that the CIA is threatening agents’ families, stating, “You don’t jeopardize yourself, you jeopardize your family as well.”

Representative Frank Wolf, a Republican from the district that includes the CIA’s Langley headquarters, said that immediately after the Benghazi attack a number of CIA employees approached his office to give information about what happened the night in question. Apparently, the CIA’s intimidation has worked because they aren’t talking at all, now.

Whatever the CIA Benghazi operation was remains a mystery, as CNN’s sources provide no information on why dozens of US operatives would be in Benghazi at the same time the Ambassador was murdered. The sources also fail to explain why the dozens of CIA operatives on the ground apparently did not render direct assistance to the Ambassador’s compound when it came under attack.

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Photo Credit: ReutersRep. Wolf: sources say CIA was moving guns in Benghazi

By Kerry Picket. “We’re getting calls from people who are close to people who were [in Benghazi at the time] that they were moving guns. So where are the guns?” asked Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), a sub-committee chairman of the Appropriations Committee. Wolf also wonders what Ambassador Chris Stevens was actually doing in Benghazi on that night. Stevens and three others were killed over the course of the attacks.

“Are they in a warehouse somewhere? Some people say they moved on to Turkey and then from Turkey to Syria,” Wolf told Breitbart News on Thursday. “Did they fall into the hands of some of the Jihadis?”

“Nobody knows, so I think there are so many questions from the failure to respond to where the guns went,” he stated.

Wolf is currently attempting to create a Select Committee to investigate the Benghazi attack by launching a discharge petition from committee. He needs 218 signatures to take the issue to a vote on the floor. Read more from this story HERE.

Hacker Publishes “Very Personal” Emails, Bikini Photos, Forces Colin Powell To Deny Affair with Foreign Diplomat

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As a notorious hacker seeks to distribute “very personal” e-mails sent to Colin Powell by a female Romanian diplomat, the retired general is denying that he engaged in an extramarital affair with the woman while he served as Secretary of State, though he recently advised her to delete all their online exchanges, The Smoking Gun has learned.

In a statement addressing his relationship with Corina Cretu, a member of the European Parliament who previously held a series of senior posts in the Romanian government, Powell, 76, wrote that he has known Cretu for about 10 years, having first met her “when I was the Secretary of State and she was an assistant to the President of Romania. We occasionally attended the same diplomatic and international meetings.”

Powell, who served in President George W. Bush’s cabinet for four years, said that he kept in touch with Cretu, 45, by e-mail after leaving the State Department in January 2005. “Over time the emails became of a very personal nature, but did not result in an affair. Those type of emails ended a few years ago. There was no affair then and there is not one now,” Powell added…

In the “very personal” correspondence cited by Powell, Cretu calls him the love of her life and describes a relationship that spanned more than a decade. The 2010-2011 e-mails would leave most readers with the clear impression that the forlorn Cretu is writing about the twilight of a lengthy romance…

Early this morning, “Guccifer” added a second update to the general’s Facebook page. It contained a new Google Drive link that led to e-mails and photos–some dating back eight years–that were lifted from Cretu’s newly hacked Yahoo e-mail account.

Read more from this story HERE.

Saudi Arabia Confirms More Deadly MERS Cases

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesThree more confirmed cases of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) coronavirus infections in the Kingdom have been recorded, the Ministry of Health said on Thursday…

The new cases bring to 92 the total number of people who have contracted the virus worldwide, including 71 in Saudi Arabia.

Of the 92 cases registered with the World Health Organization since last year, 46 have died, including 39 in Saudi Arabia…

Saudi and UK scientists studying MERS said the coronavirus is more deadly, unpredictable and has significant differences from severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) virus that erupted in Asia in 2003 and infected 8,273 people, nine percent of whom died.

Ziad Memish, Saudi deputy minister for public health, earlier said: “MERS coronavirus appears to be more deadly, with 60 percent of patients with co-existing chronic illnesses dying, compared with the one-percent toll of SARS.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Kerry Screws Up, Mistakenly Promises Pakistan to End Drone Strikes

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Photo Credit: Center for American Progress Action FundThe Obama administration was forced into damage control on Thursday as officials attempted to walk back Secretary of State John Kerry’s pledge to end armed drone operations in Pakistan.

During a diplomatic visit to Pakistan on Thursday, Kerry told Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif that Washington plans to severely curtail and eventually end armed drone operations in the country.

The move was geared toward an overall effort by the Obama administration to forge “a real partnership” between the White House and Islamabad, Kerry told reporters after his meeting with Sharif.

“I think the [drone] program will end as we have eliminated most of the threat and continue to eliminate it,” Kerry said in an interview with Pakistani television…

The Obama administration reacted quickly to Kerry’s comments, saying his statements did not reflect a coming change in the use of armed drones against terrorist targets or overall U.S. counterterrorism policy.

Read more from this story HERE.

Kurds Issue Ultimatum to Turkish Government

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesThe Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has given a September 1st deadline to the Turkish government, to advance the Kurdish-Turk peace process, the AFP has reported.

“A step must be taken. September 1 is the deadline”, Cemil Bayik, the PKK’s new leader, was quoted as saying by pro-Kurdish Firat news agency.

“If no step is taken before 1 September, it will be understood that the aim is not a solution,” he added. Without providing further detail, Mr Bayik said Kurds would then have to defend themselves.

The PKK, which is listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey and Western nations, had announced a ceasefire with the Turkish government back in March of this year.

The truce involved the PKK agreeing to remove its approximately 2000 fighters from Turkey back to northern Iraq, in return for greater constitutional rights for Turkey’s 15 million Kurds.

Read more from this story HERE.

Edward Snowden Asylum: US ‘Disappointed’ by Russian Decision

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Photo Credit: APBy Alec Luhn in Moscow, Luke Harding, and Paul Lewis. The White House expressed anger and dismay on Thursday after Russia granted temporary asylum to the American whistleblower Edward Snowden and allowed him to leave the Moscow airport where he had been holed up for over a month.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said the US was “extremely disappointed” by the decision, almost certainly taken personally by President Vladimir Putin. He said Moscow should hand Snowden back and hinted that Barack Obama might now boycott a bilateral meeting with Putin in September, due to be held when the US president travels to Russia for a G20 summit.

Carney added that Snowden had arrived in both China and Russia carrying with him thousands of top secret US documents. He said: “Simply the possession of that kind of highly sensitive classified information outside of secure areas is both a huge risk and a violation.

“As we know he’s been in Russia now for many weeks. There is a huge risk associated with … removing that information from secure areas. You shouldn’t do it, you can’t do it, it’s wrong.”

With US-Russian relations now at a cold war-style low, Snowden slipped out of Sheremetyevo airport on Thursday afternoon. His lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, said Russia’s federal migration service had granted him temporary asylum for one year. Snowden had left the airport to stay at an undisclosed location with expatriate Americans, he added. Read more from this story HERE.

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White House: Russia gave us no heads up on Snowden

By Lesley Clark. The Obama administration is “extremely disappointed” with Russia’s decision to allow Edward Snowden to leave a Moscow airport — a decision it made without giving the White House a heads up, Press Secretary Jay Carney said.

The decision came “despite our very clear and lawful requests in public and in private to have Mr. Snowden expelled to the United States to face the charges against him,” Carney said, reiterating the administration’s stance that Snowden is neither a dissident, nor a whistleblower.

“He is accused of leaking classified information and has been charged with three felony counts, and he should be returned to the United States as soon as possible, where he will be accorded full due process and protections,” Carney said.

He said the US would be in contact with Russian authorities, “expressing our extreme disappointment in this decision, and making the case clearly that there is absolute legal justification for Mr. Snowden to be returned to the United States.”

And he said the U.S. is evaluating whether Obama will attend a planned September meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: APSnowden Reportedly Receives Temporary Asylum in Russia, Leaves Airport

By Fox News. NSA leaker Edward Snowden reportedly has left the Moscow airport and entered Russian territory after receiving refugee status in the country.

His lawyer told The Associated Press on Thursday that Snowden had crossed into Russia. Anatoly Kucherena said Snowden was issued papers that allowed him to leave Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport where he was stuck since his arrival from Hong Kong on June 23.

The American fugitive reportedly has been granted a one-year temporary asylum. A Russian news service also quoted Kucherena as saying that Snowden went to a safe place, but his whereabouts would not be disclosed. Read more from this story HERE.

Senate Overwhelmingly Kills Rand Paul’s Bill to Cut Off Aid to Egypt and, Instead, Rebuild Nation’s Bridges

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Photo Credit: Life NewsThe Senate on Wednesday overwhelmingly rejected a proposal by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., to cut off aid to Egypt.

The Kentucky conservative proposed the measure as a way to override the Obama administration’s refusal to classify the recent political upheaval in Egypt as a “military coup” — a move that by law would’ve frozen aid to the north African country.

The proposal called for redirecting the $1.5 billion in mainly military assistance the U.S. provides Egypt each year to bridge-building projects in the U.S.

The measure, which failed by a vote of 83-13, was attached as an amendment to a transportation and housing spending bill.

Paul, who is mulling a 2016 presidential run, casted his debate in terms of refocusing U.S. government efforts to rebuild the nation’s crumbling infrastructure.

Read more from this story HERE.

Canada Warns Obama: It’s Trains or the Keystone Pipeline

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On 6 July, a Montreal, Maine & Atlantic train carrying 72 tank cars filled with oil exploded after its brakes apparently failed, sending it rolling into the small Quebec town of Lac-Megantic, where it derailed and then exploded. In the conflagration that followed, an estimated 47 people were killed.

Whether Canadians like it or not, the use of such trains has soared in recent years. The Railway Association of Canada reports that as recently as four years ago Canadian railways moved just 500 carloads of crude oil, but that number has now soared to about 140,000 carloads annually.

While currently only about three percent of Canadian crude is currently transported by rail, one industry predicts railway carriage of oil products rising to as high as 25 percent by 2035.

Now, in a breathtaking display of chutzpah, the Canadian ambassador to the U.S. is warning President Obama if he does not approve the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, then he can expect similar oil trains and even trucks to enter the U.S. Ambassador Gary Doer said, “His choice is to have it come down by a pipeline that he approves, or without his approval, it comes down on trains. That’s just the raw common sense of this thing, and we’ve been saying it for two years and we’ve been proven correct. At the end of the day, it’s trains or pipelines.”

Read more from this story HERE.

White House Now Calling Benghazi Phony Scandal

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Photo Credit: APThe White House said bluntly Wednesday that it considers the controversy over the Benghazi attack to be among the so-called “phony scandals” that President Obama has been complaining about in recent speeches — even as new questions were being raised about the lack of progress in the investigation.

Press Secretary Jay Carney was asked at the daily briefing about Obama’s repeated claim — which he asserted most recently during a speech in Tennessee on Tuesday — that Washington is getting distracted by phony scandals. Asked what the president was referring to, Carney listed the scandals over the IRS targeting of conservative groups and over Benghazi.

“What we’ve seen, as time has passed and more facts have become known, whether it’s about the attacks in Benghazi and the talking points or revelations about conduct at the IRS, that attempts to turn this into a scandal have failed,” Carney said.

Carney was specifically referring to claims by GOP lawmakers that the administration misled the public about the nature of the attack, by stressing the connection to an anti-Islam film. The administration denies this. But lawmakers continue to have concerns that extend far beyond the so-called Benghazi talking points.

Read more from this story HERE.

Pakistani Taliban Prison Attack Frees Hundreds of Inmates

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Photo Credit: Saood Rehman/EPAHundreds of prisoners have been freed by Islamists in Pakistan after a spectacular assault by extremists on a jail in the western city of Dera Ismail Khan.

The attack, at around 11.30pm on Monday, involved one large bomb – so loud it rattled windows miles away – to blow a hole in the jail’s walls, followed by a mortar bombardment.

Around 70 gunmen, many dressed in police uniforms, then rushed through the gaps, throwing grenades and firing rocket-propelled grenades, killing six policemen and opening cells to free around 250 prisoners. Authorities said these included 24 wanted terrorists.

The attack, which came on the eve of voting for a new president in the troubled south Asian state, underlines once again the weakness of the Pakistani state and the inability of the country’s law and order agencies to maintain security.

One strike last week targeted an office of the main spy agency, the ISI, while another killed more than 50 Shia Muslims. Six Shia Muslim prisoners – the vast majority of Pakistanis are Sunni – were killed in Monday night’s assault.

Read more from this story HERE.