The New York Times found that the broad contours of the plan were first discussed in late 2023, at private meetings of like-minded officials, military officers and business people with close ties to the Israeli government.
The group called itself the Mikveh Yisrael Forum, after a college where members convened in December 2023. Its leading figures gradually settled on the idea of hiring private contractors to distribute food in Gaza, circumventing the United Nations.
The planning documents anticipated public skepticism and preemptively prepared talking points in case the GHF encountered allegations likening its food distribution hubs and residential compounds to “‘concentration camps’ with biometrics” or comparing the organization to Blackwater, a former U.S. mercenary firm implicated in violence against civilians in Iraq.
(…)
In mid-2024, Israeli officials shared their plans with a group of private-sector American consultants led by Phil Reilly, a retired CIA paramilitary officer and former agency station chief in Afghanistan. Reilly’s group, said five of the Israeli and American individuals, took over the planning and determined that a new company led by Reilly, named Safe Reach Solutions, would be the future subcontractor that would provide security and logistics for the hubs.
Waltz, who previously served as a Florida congressman and as a decorated combat Green Beret, has come under fire from Democrats and critics since March, when the Atlantic magazine‘s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg published a firsthand account of getting added to a Signal group chat with top national security leaders, including Waltz, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, while they discussed strikes against Yemen terrorists. Trump and his administration have repeatedly defended the national security leader amid criticisms over the chat leak.
Signal is an encrypted messaging app that operates similarly to texting or making phone calls, but with additional security measures that help ensure communications are kept private to those included in the correspondence.
The statements by Hegseth, Gabbard, Ratcliffe, and Trump—combined with the assertions made by numerous administration officials that we are lying about the content of the Signal texts—have led us to believe that people should see the texts in order to reach their own conclusions. There is a clear public interest in disclosing the sort of information that Trump advisers included in nonsecure communications channels, especially because senior administration figures are attempting to downplay the significance of the messages that were shared. (…)
At 2 p.m., Waltz responded: “Typing too fast. The first target – their top missile guy – we had positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend’s building and it’s now collapsed.”
Vance responded a minute later: “Excellent.” Thirty-five minutes after that, Ratcliffe, the CIA director, wrote, “A good start,” which Waltz followed with a text containing a fist emoji, an American-flag emoji, and a fire emoji.
Ein Journalist des US-Magazins The Atlantic wurde in eine Chatgruppe eingeladen. In der diskutierten 18 hochrangige Vertreter der US-Regierung über die Angriffe auf die Huthi-Miliz im Jemen, die nur wenige Stunden darauf ausgeführt wurden. Eine Panne, die vor allem bei den Demokraten für massive Empörung sorgt, in den Reihen der Republikaner wird abgewiegelt.
According to the lengthy Hegseth text, the first detonations in Yemen would be felt two hours hence, at 1:45 p.m. eastern time. So I waited in my car in a supermarket parking lot. If this Signal chat was real, I reasoned, Houthi targets would soon be bombed. At about 1:55, I checked X and searched Yemen. Explosions were then being heard across Sanaa, the capital city.
I went back to the Signal channel. At 1:48, “Michael Waltz” had provided the group an update. Again, I won’t quote from this text, except to note that he described the operation as an “amazing job.” A few minutes later, “John Ratcliffe” wrote, “A good start.” Not long after, Waltz responded with three emoji: a fist, an American flag, and fire.
(today)
Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Director Sergey Naryshkin and Chief of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the United States John Ratcliffe agreed on regular contact to reduce confrontation between Moscow and Washington, the SVR press office reported on Wednesday, following a phone talk between the heads of both intelligence agencies.
(February 11, 2025)
Now we discover that its vetting and releasing of documents under the 1992 Assassination Records Collection Act has been of a piece with the moment in 1963 when Dallas FBI agent James Hosty flushed a threatening note from Lee Harvey Oswald down the john. (…)
We’ve been fooled by what we thought was the sound of ice cracking on all of this too often to make me sanguine about anything coming of it. But the situation, at least to my mind, pits the FBI against the CIA, which traditionally has dragged its feet on releasing what it knows about Oswald—which is considerable. Joannides, for example, was a CIA psyop officer. If the FBI releases its files on him, the folks at Langley are going to have their mellows harshed considerably. About damn time.
(January 23, 2016)
In addition to Saudi Arabia’s vast oil reserves and role as the spiritual anchor of the Sunni Muslim world, the long intelligence relationship helps explain why the United States has been reluctant to openly criticize Saudi Arabia for its human rights abuses, its treatment of women and its support for the extreme strain of Islam, Wahhabism, that has inspired many of the very terrorist groups the United States is fighting. The Obama administration did not publicly condemn Saudi Arabia’s beheading this month of a dissident Shiite cleric, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, who had challenged the royal family.
(January 30,2025)
“It was shocking and a betrayal to me and every person who was killed on 9/11, their families, and my brothers and sisters in uniform.” She continued, “When as a member of Congress, I learned about President Obama’s, dual programs that he had begun, really to overthrow the regime of Syria and being willing to, through the CIA’s Timber Sycamore program that has now been made public, of working with and arming and equipping Al Qaeda in an effort to overthrow that regime, starting yet another regime change war in the Middle East.”
I have now determined that the continued redaction and withholding of information from records pertaining to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy is not consistent with the public interest and the release of these records is long overdue. And although no Act of Congress directs the release of information pertaining to the assassinations of Senator Robert F. Kennedy and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I have determined that the release of all records in the Federal Government’s possession pertaining to each of those assassinations is also in the public interest.
The announcement, made during his victory rally in Washington, D.C., was met with thunderous applause from supporters.
„As the first step toward restoring transparency and accountability to government, we will also reverse the over-classification of government documents,“ Trump declared to a packed Capital One Arena. „And in the coming days, we are going to make public remaining records relating to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert Kennedy, as well as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.“
(January 12, 2025)
The hype about Iran’s nuclear program is focused on the enrichment of some uranium at 60% purity, which is still below the 90% needed for weapons-grade. Iran took the step to enrich at 60% in response to an Israeli covert attack on its Natanz nuclear facility in 2021.
Iran is also a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, unlike Israel, which never signed the NPT and has a covert nuclear stockpile that’s not officially acknowledged by the US.
(January 10, 2025)
Kelly: Iran, which had a pretty lousy 2024, weakened internally, mounting pressures externally. We interviewed Jake Sullivan, the national security, the national security adviser at the White House the other day. He told me the big question on his mind is, given the losses Iran has sustained, will it make it more likely, more likely that Iran tries to go for a nuclear weapon? Director Burns, will it?
Burns: It‘s something we watch very intently, because you‘re right, Iran has it‘s strategic position has suffered considerably over the course of the last six or seven months. You know, two failed efforts to launch significant ballistic missile strikes against Israel, the collapse of its leading proxy, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the severe degradation of Hamas in Gaza, and then the fall of the Assad regime in Syria. All of that, I think, strategically puts the Iranian regime in a much weaker position. And so Jake Sullivan was right to express the concern that, you know, the Iranian regime could decide in the face of that weakness that it needs to restore its deterrence as it sees it and, you know, reverse the decision made at the end of 2003 to suspend their weaponization program. We do not see any sign today that any such decision has been made, but we obviously watch it intently.
(December 16, 2023)
Israeli leaders believed that Hamas was more interested in governing than fighting. By the time the agents discovered the ledgers in 2018, the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was encouraging the government of Qatar to deliver millions of dollars to the Gaza Strip. He gambled that the money would buy stability and peace.
Mr. Levy recalled briefing Mr. Netanyahu personally in 2015 about the Hamas portfolio.
On July 22, 2004, immediately after the 9/11 Commission report was released, I found myself with 9/11 commissioner (and former senator from Washington) Slade Gorton in the BBC blue room in Washington. I had the temerity to remind him that it was far from the case that “no one was in charge” of the intelligence community; that Tenet had all the authority he needed.
Gorton turned to me, smiled and said: “Of course we know all that; but we in the Commission and in Congress just had to do something so the American people would see that we were doing something.”
Yuck.
The national intelligence director, and the newly created bureaucracy, is what it is. Maybe Tulsi Gabbard can take the reins and make the community work. It will take a miracle; let’s hope for one.
Streamed live on Nov 15, 2024 #Reuters #News #Live
Civil-rights attorney Ben Crump holds press conference to announce the filing of a lawsuit on behalf of Malcolm X’s family.
(November 15, 2024)
According to the lawsuit, the NYPD, coordinating with federal law enforcement agencies, arrested the activist’s security detail days before the assassination and intentionally removed their officers from inside the ballroom where Malcolm X was killed. Meanwhile, it adds, federal agencies had personnel, including undercover agents, in the ballroom but failed to protect him.
The lawsuit was not brought sooner because the defendants withheld information from the family, including the identities of undercover “informants, agents and provocateurs” and what they knew about the planning that preceded the attack.
Days after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the Pentagon quietly dispatched several dozen commandos to Israel to help advise on hostage recovery efforts, U.S. officials said.
Those troops from the Joint Special Operations Command were quickly joined by a group of intelligence officers, some working with the commandos in Israel and others back at the C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Va.
(January 5, 2024)
In 1988, the Central Intelligence Agency did discover that Riyadh bought SS-2 medium-range missiles from China but only after the deal was sealed. In 2003, when China exported DF-21 ballistic missiles to the Kingdom, the CIA again found out and was even allowed to verify the missiles were not nuclear-capable, but only after the missiles were delivered.
Several years later, when intelligence finally leaked out that China secretly built missile factories for the Saudis, the Trump administration was mum on whether there was an intelligence failure and allowed speculation that it had blessed the transaction. Then, in 2020, when US intelligence confirmed China was helping the Kingdom mill uranium domestically, it did so, again only after the mining and milling were well underway.
This track record of studied inadvertence, then, brings us to the next worry: MBS wants Washington to green-light the Kingdom enriching uranium…
Die venezolanischen Behörden haben sechs Ausländer aus den USA und Europa wegen angeblicher Pläne zur „Destabilisierung“ des Landes festgenommen und der US-Regierung eine Beteiligung an Umsturzplänen vorgeworfen. Wie die Regierung in Caracas mitteilte, wurden drei US-Bürger, zwei Spanier und ein Tscheche festgenommen.
Die Verdächtigen hätten „Gewaltakte“ gegen Präsident Nicolás Maduro und dessen Regierung geplant, sagte Innenminister Diosdado Cabello bei einer Pressekonferenz
“They went with this tropicalized character,” Cabello said in relation to the US intentions to use a person with the same Latin American phenotype, seeking not to repeat the gringo mercenaries of Caucasian morphology.
“It is important to know that this person worked in special Navy SEAL units focused on Latin America, because they are made up of people who speak Spanish perfectly, like this person,” he explained.
The Minister of the Interior, Justice and Peace added that two citizens of Spanish origin, a Czech citizen and an American expert in computer hacking are also in custody.
„We know that the United States Government is linked to this operation because during the investigation we have found out how, in Orlando, Florida, in one of these parcel services, in the warehouses, the FBI was there and we have that video (…) they allowed that operation to continue,“ he said.
(…)
“A few days ago we captured some people who were talking about throwing grenades and explosives at the Argentine Embassy, where some terrorists and criminals from the opposition are taking refuge. This perfectly reversed the fact that if the Argentine Embassy, where some gentlemen and ladies from the opposition are, were attacked, it was immediately obvious that the person who would be blamed would be the Government of Venezuela,” he warned.
“The CIA is at the forefront of this operation,” Cabello said in the news conference, claiming that Spain’s National Intelligence Center was also involved. “That does not surprise us at all,” he said.
He alleged that the operation had “very clear objectives of assassinating President Nicolás Maduro” and other high-ranking Venezuelan politicians including himself and the vice president.
The State Department denied the claims. A spokesperson confirmed on Saturday a member of the US military had been arrested in Venezuela, and that the department was “aware of unconfirmed reports of two additional US citizens detained” in the country.
(2 September 2024)
US President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were scheduled to hold a meeting Monday with hostage negotiators, …
(Nov 4, 2023)
President Biden has been deeply involved in the U.S. response to the Israel-Hamas war — one of the thorniest challenges of his presidency so far — receiving briefings at least once per day and speaking with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu several times a week.
The big picture: Biden is leaning on a tight circle of trusted aides and officials. Here‘s a look at who‘s in the room when major decisions are being made.
(December 16, 2023)
Israeli leaders believed that Hamas was more interested in governing than fighting. By the time the agents discovered the ledgers in 2018, the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was encouraging the government of Qatar to deliver millions of dollars to the Gaza Strip. He gambled that the money would buy stability and peace.
Mr. Levy recalled briefing Mr. Netanyahu personally in 2015 about the Hamas portfolio.
Unnamed senior officials tell Channel 12 news that mediators in ceasefire-hostage deal talks have decided to set aside the thorny issue of Israel’s presence in two Gaza corridors under a potential agreement, and are focusing on other matters.
Egypt stressed to all concerned parties its rejection to any Israeli presence in Rafah Border Crossing or Philadelphi Corridor, a high-profile source told Egyptian media Monday.
Gen. Erik Kurilla, commander of the U.S. Central Command, is expected to meet Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and senior Israel Defense Forces officials.
Israeli officials say they are preparing for a possible unprecedented direct attack from Iranian soil using ballistic missiles, drones and cruise missiles against Israeli targets.
In such a scenario, Israel will retaliate with a direct attack against Iran, the officials said.
The US has been tight-lipped in its public reaction to the Apr 1 strike, saying it has not determined whether Israel struck a diplomatic facility, which would breach international agreements on the inviolability of embassies and consulates.
The US and its allies believe major missile or drone strikes by Iran or its proxies against military and government targets in Israel are imminent, in what would mark a significant widening of the six-month-old conflict, according to people familiar with the intelligence.
(14.09.2023)
When CIA-trained terrorists tried to overthrow the Sandinista government in the 1980s, the left erupted in protest. Now the left is cheering for the CIA.
A copy of the „90-page psychological warfare manual“ produced by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency for Nicaraguan rebels in the late 1970s or early 1980s
(18.12.2017)
During the U.S. government‘s decade-long support of the Contra rebels who waged an armed campaign against Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista regime in the 1980s, the CIA funneled all manner of assistance to the anti-socialist “freedom fighters,” from training and financial assistance to covert operations. The original “advise and assist” mission was a disaster in retrospect, spurring all manner of human rights violations as well as the modern crack cocaine scourge. But the CIA aid program’s most fascinating product might be the batshit crazy psychological warfare manual cooked up for the Nicaraguan counter-revolutionaries.
(Nov. 26, 2010)
In the aforesaid period Netanyahu served as deputy to Moshe Arens, when he was Israel‘s ambassador to Washington, D.C. (1982-83 ).
(…)
The recently revealed documents deal with an operation dubbed „Tipped Kettle,“ involving weapons the Israel Defense Forces looted from the Palestine Liberation Organization during Operation Peace for Galilee in Lebanon, and their transfer to the Contras – opponents of the socialistic Sandinista regime in Nicaragua.
(…)
Part II was patently illegal – a blatant effort by the White House to violate a Congressional order and to cook up a strange deal involving the sale of American weapons (originally supplied to the IDF ) to anti-American Iran, for use in its war with Iraq; the release of Western hostages being held in Lebanon by Iranian-controlled Hezbollah; and the financing of Contras‘ activities thanks to the difference between the sum paid by the Iranians and the true value of the weapons – minus a profit for those engaged in the deal.
(…)
The CIA had direct intelligence connections with the Mossad, but in the affair of the captured weapons the American agency preferred to hide behind the Pentagon.
(18.11.2021)
An exiled Iranian arms dealer named Manucher Ghorbanifar claimed to have contacts with a moderate faction inside Iran, and further alleged that weapons sales would improve that faction’s standing. Ghorbanifar collaborated with Israel, which proved to be an important intermediary. While Israel was no ally of Iran, it was also no ally of Iraq, and the ongoing war between the two countries kept them both distracted. Israel began selling U.S.-made weapons to Iran in 1981, even after the U.S. State Department began an effort to end arm sales, known as Operation Staunch, in 1983.
The Republic of Nicaragua v. The United States of America (1986)[2] was a case where the International Court of Justice (ICJ) held that the U.S. had violated international law by supporting the Contras in their rebellion against the Sandinistas and by mining Nicaragua‘s harbors. The case was decided in favor of Nicaragua and against the United States with the awarding of reparations to Nicaragua.
(no date / presumably 2004)
The protest at U.S. exemption of individuals from criminal jurisdiction has been widely reported. The continued refusal of the United States to subject its own actions, especially the use of force against others, to judgment by the ICJ has been treated as a non-event.
The president who turned America‘s back on judgment under international law was Ronald Reagan. His action resulted from fear (especially after prominent condemnation by Senators Barry Goldwater and Daniel Patrick Moynihan) of an adverse Court ruling in Nicaragua‘s case against the U.S.