GEORGE HERBERT WALKER BUSH - FORMER US PRES DEAD AT 94 (R.I.P.):
BORN - JUNE 12, 1924 (MASSACHUSETTS)
DIED - NOV 30, 2018 (TEXAS)
SERVED AS 43rd VICE-PRES - 1981 to 1989
SERVED AS 41st PRES - 1989 to 1993.
Post Sources: CNN, Wikipedia, Youtube
Congressional leaders announced that an arrival ceremony will be held for Bush on Monday at 5 p.m. ET. The public will then be invited to pay their respects from 7:30 p.m. until 7:00 a.m. Wednesday. The statement said that the Bush family will provide additional details regarding arrangements beyond the ceremony at the Capitol.
President Trump on Wednesday followed through on threats to strip the security clearance of former CIA director John Brennan, igniting a firestorm of criticism that the president was recklessly attempting to distract from his own political problems and silence high-profile critics.
Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced the decision at a White House briefing, reading a statement from Trump that accused Brennan of making “a series of unfounded and outrageous allegations — wild outbursts on the internet and television — about this Administration.”
Brennan, who led the CIA during most of President Barack Obama’s second term, has emerged as one of Trump’s fiercest critics, denouncing his performance at a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin last month as “treasonous.” On Tuesday, Brennan lambasted Trump’s personal character after he derided former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman as a “dog.”
“Any benefits that senior officials might glean from consultations with Mr. Brennan are now outweighed by the risk posed by his erratic conduct and behavior,” Trump said in his statement. “Mr. Brennan has a history that calls into question his objectivity and credibility.”
Trump added that he is reviewing the security clearances of nine other former officials, including former FBI director James B. Comey, all of whom have criticized the president or been targeted by congressional Republicans seeking to discredit the Russia probe.
The move sent shock waves through Washington’s political class and the nation’s intelligence community, which has traditionally sought to avoid public partisanship but has been dragged into the debate as Trump has accused what he calls the “deep state” of seeking to undermine his presidency through leaks of sensitive material.
The president also has lashed out repeatedly against the ongoing investigation led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III into possible contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives accused of tampering in the 2016 presidential election.
Brennan was a longtime intelligence official who briefed three presidents and served as CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia, CIA chief of staff, director of the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, and assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism.
His former colleagues rallied to his defense, hailing his service to the nation, including a key role in the 2011 operation that killed Osama bin Laden.
In a tweet Wednesday, former vice president Joe Biden said Trump’s decision was “unbecoming of a President” and praised Brennan as someone who “has never been afraid to speak up.”
“If you think it will silence John, then you just don’t know the man,” he wrote.
Brennan reacted to the news by comparing Trump’s actions to those of “foreign despots and autocrats.”
“I never, ever thought I’d see it here in the United States,” Brennan said on MSNBC. “I believe all Americans need to take stock of what is happening right now in our government — how abnormal and how irresponsible and how dangerous these actions are. If Mr. Trump believes this is going to lead me to just go away and be quiet, he is very badly mistaken.”
Sanders cast Trump’s decision as the outcome of an ongoing review of former and current officials whose conduct has led the president to question their willingness to “protect classified information.”
But since aides first raised the specter of Trump’s stripping Brennan and several others of their clearances, security experts have described such a move as unprecedented and warned that words and actions protected by the First Amendment are not grounds to take a clearance away.
“As far as we know, this is the first time that a president of the United States has individually taken action against somebody’s security clearance,” said Mark Zaid, an attorney who represents government employees in security-clearance disputes.
Last month, the White House said that along with Brennan and Comey, the president was scrutinizing former CIA director Michael V. Hayden, former national security adviser Susan E. Rice, former director of national intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. and former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe.
On Wednesday, Sanders expanded that list to include former acting attorney general Sally Q. Yates, former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, former FBI agent Peter Strzok and Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, who was recently demoted.
Yates was fired by Trump last year after she defied the president and ordered federal attorneys not to defend his controversial travel ban. Strzok and Page, two of Trump’s favorite targets on Twitter, became the centerpiece of Republicans’ efforts to discredit Mueller’s Russia probe after anti-Trump texts between the two were revealed last year. Strzok was fired over the texts this week.
Ohr is also a frequent object of GOP criticism; he was named by Republicans in a memo earlier this year that targeted his ties to the former British intelligence officer who wrote the controversial dossier on the Trump campaign’s alleged contacts with Russian officials.
The timing of the announcement suggested that the president may also have been trying to distract public attention from saturation media coverage of accusations in Manigault Newman’s new book that Trump made racist statements before he took office that were captured on tape.
After Sanders’s briefing Wednesday, the White House released the written statement from Trump bearing the date July 26 — before quickly releasing an identical statement with the date removed. That led some of Trump’s critics to conclude that he had made the decision on Brennan’s security clearance weeks ago but that the White House strategically delayed an announcement for maximum political benefit.
“This might be a convenient way to distract attention, say from a damaging news story or two,” Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) said on Twitter. “But politicizing the way we guard our nation’s secrets just to punish the President’s critics is a dangerous precedent.”
Some Republicans, including Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.), applauded Trump’s move. In a statement, Paul sought to take credit for the idea of revoking Brennan’s clearance.
“I urged the President to do this,” Paul said. “I filibustered Brennan’s nomination to head the CIA in 2013, and his behavior in government and out of it demonstrate why he should not be allowed near classified information.”
Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian, called Trump’s action unprecedented, saying he knew of no historical example of a president’s trying to “dehumanize and embarrass an outstanding intelligence officer like John Brennan. There has always been a bipartisan spirit of support since the CIA was created in the Cold War.”
Brinkley suggested that the closest antecedent was President Richard Nixon’s attempts to use the Internal Revenue Service to harass people on his “enemies list” and Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s congressional hearings to try to identify and punish suspected communists inside the U.S. government in the 1950s.
“The public outcry of Brennan being stripped will echo long and far in the annals of American history,” Brinkley said. “It will be seen like McCarthyism — a dark stain on our democracy.”
Nearly 4.1 million Americans have federal government security clearances of varying levels up to “top secret,” according to government estimates. In some cases, former officials retain their clearances and are called on to provide advice or input on classified or highly sensitive matters, experts said. Some former officials also have jobs that require a security clearance.
It is not clear how much of an impact Trump will have if he seeks to strip others of their clearances. Comey and McCabe have said their security badges were automatically demagnetized after they were fired.
But the action was the latest in a long battle between Trump and top members of the intelligence and national security communities. During the 2016 campaign, a bipartisan group of national security experts, including Hayden, signed a pair of “Never Trump” letters asserting that he “lacks self-control and acts impetuously,” has demonstrated “erratic behavior” and is “fundamentally dishonest.”
Since taking office, Trump has faced criticism that he has been reckless in his own handling of sensitive information, including disclosing highly classified material during an Oval Office meeting last year with the Russian foreign minister and ambassador to the United States. And at his Florida retreat, Mar-a-Lago, Trump appeared to discuss the U.S. response to a North Korean missile launch in full view of patrons.
Questions also have been raised about Trump’s staff, including son-in-law Jared Kushner, whose security clearance was downgraded in February before he was granted a permanent clearance in May. Former White House staff secretary Rob Porter was granted clearance despite allegations that he had been violent toward two ex-wives, which he has denied.
“This is not merely erratic, it’s somewhat dangerous, using clearances to get at political opponents,” Eliot Cohen, a former State Department counselor during the George W. Bush administration who organized one of the “Never Trump” letters, said of the president’s decision on Brennan.
Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said on Twitter that Trump’s move demonstrates “how deeply insecure and vindictive he is — two character flaws dangerous in any President.”
“An enemies list is ugly, undemocratic and un-American. I also believe this action to silence a critic is unlawful,” Schiff said in a tweet.
Republican reactions were more muted. Last month, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.) minimized Trump’s threats, suggesting that the president was merely “trolling people.” Ryan’s office declined to comment Wednesday.
Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who, after tangling with Trump on foreign policy issues, is not seeking reelection called the president’s action a “banana republic kind of step.”
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said Brennan has been “far too political” in his commentary about Trump. But she added that recently retired intelligence officials generally have worthwhile expertise to offer and called Trump’s move “unwise.”
OBAMA & HIS OPERATIVES FIGHTING AGAINST TRUMP ADMIN (PROTESTS & LEAKS):
TRUMP ACKNOWLEDGES THIS BUT WON'T LET OBAMA'S OPPOSITION STOP HIM FROM HEALING THIS NATION.
TRUMP SAYS IT'S "JUST POLITICS".
Sources: CNN, Fox News, YouTube
****** Trump: Obama and former aides behind protests, leaks
President Trump said in an exclusive interview Tuesday that he believes former President Barack Obama and his top aides are behind the protests and leaks that have tormented the new administration – and he doesn’t expect it to stop anytime soon.
Trump, during an interview with “Fox & Friends,” blamed Obama acolytes and the ex-president himself for the organized demonstrations that have sprung up nationwide since the Nov. 8 election, and also for the politically embarrassing leaks that have hindered Trump’s messaging.
“I think that President Obama’s behind it because his people are certainly behind it,” Trump said. “And some of the leaks possibly come from that group, you know, some of the leaks – which are very serious leaks, because they’re very bad in terms of national security.”
Trump didn’t provide evidence to support the charge.
He certainly is not alone, though, in his view that top Obama administration officials could be involved. A former senior intelligence official told Fox News earlier this monththat he suspects ex-CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper – among others – were connected to leaks.
Some of those officials have pushed back. A Clapper spokesman, in a recent statement, appeared to distance the former intel boss from any leaks, voicing support for a probe while urging the new administration to take a sober approach to the investigation.
“Leaks need to be investigated, but those investigations should be conducted in a manner that is not disparaging of our dedicated IC professionals, nor destructive to the entire community,” spokesman Shawn Turner said.
Ben Rhodes, former deputy national security adviser, also denied any involvement in leaks in an email to The Atlantic.
“It’s totally absurd and doesn’t make any sense,” he wrote.
But the assertion that Obama – who began his political career as a community organizer – is actively aiding protests against Trump is new. Though, Trump added, it doesn’t necessarily bother him.
“But I also understand that’s politics,” Trump said. “And in terms of him being behind things, that’s politics. And it will probably continue.”
He added: “I’m not really surprised because I understand the way the world works. It’s politics. I mean I’m changing things that he’s wanted to do.”
It doesn't take rocket science to figure out where these damaging leaks originate. They're coming from the White House plain & simple!
While its true NO White House Administration has ever operated without Leaks, this string of Seriously Damaging Leaks from 2009 to 2012 are much more frequent than usual.
I've long Suspected ever since the Underwear Bomber incident, that Information being leaked to Media Sources was coming directly from the White House.
Such Extremely Sensitive Highly Classified Information could NOT have come from Congress Members or lower level White House Employees.
It had to come from ONLY those Executive Employees closest to Pres. Obama.
Thus the Information is coming from someone within Pres. Obama's Inner Circle.
The Leaks may be helping Pres. Obama politically but its Hurting America's National & International Security.
These Leaks are also putting our Troops in Danger & hurting our Relationships with other World Leaders.
The FBI is looking into what is believed to be leaks of top secret details about cyberattacks against Iran, as the White House and GOP trade barbs over the release of sensitive national security data.
The tense sparring underscored how the handling of classified information and national security has suddenly escalated into a presidential campaign-season issue, like no time in recent memory.
Georgia Sen Saxby Chambliss, one of the Republicans leading the charge against the Obama administration regarding the leaks, told CNN that the FBI investigation has begun.
In a joint statement to the network from the leadership of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, lawmakers said: 'In recent weeks, we have become increasingly concerned at the continued leaks regarding sensitive intelligence programs and activities, including specific details of sources and methods.'
The statement came from Sen Chambliss; Sen Dianne Feinstein of California; Rep Mike Rogers of Michigan and Rep C.A. 'Dutch' Ruppersberger, of Maryland. The statement went on: "These disclosures have seriously interfered with ongoing intelligence programs and have put at jeopardy our intelligence capability to act in the future.
'Each disclosure puts American lives at risk, makes it more difficult to recruit assets, strains the trust of our partners and threatens imminent and irreparable damage to our national security in the face of urgent and rapidly adapting threats worldwide.'
The group also announced a news conference on the subject for Thursday.
Meanwhile, the White House and Republican Sen John McCain of Arizona, were embroiled in a war of words yesterday, as each side accused the other of being 'grossly irresponsible' in connection with leaks of national security data.
White House spokesman Jay Carney denied allegations made by McCain a day earlier that the apparent leaks by administration officials must have been politically motivated to boost President Obama's stature ahead of his attempted re-election this fall.
McCain fired back with a heated statement repeating his suspicions, declaring 'this is not a game' and 'laws have apparently been broken.'
He called for prosecution of whoever is responsible for the leaks, which have included information about a U.S. cyber warfare program aimed at thwarting Iran's nuclear program.
Congressional intelligence chiefs also expressed deep unease about the recent leaks and said they would press the Obama administration to investigate, as well as considering how laws could be strengthened to stop it happening again.
'The accelerating pace of such disclosures, the sensitivity of the matters in question, and the harm caused to our national security interests is alarming and unacceptable,' the leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees from both political parties said in a statement.
'These disclosures have seriously interfered with ongoing intelligence programs and have put at jeopardy our intelligence capability to act in the future,' the lawmakers said.
McCain, who challenged Obama in the 2008 presidential campaign, took to the Senate floor on Wednesday along with Chambliss to call for a special counsel to investigate the recent string of leaks, saying they appeared to have been made for political advantage.
The leaks have included detailed reports on a classified counterterrorism 'kill list' of militants targeted in drone strikes, and an undercover investigation targeted on Yemen-based militants involved in building underwear bombs designed to foil airport security.
Carney, on Obama's plane on a flight to San Francisco on Wednesday, said the administration 'takes all appropriate and necessary steps to prevent leaks of classified information or sensitive information that could risk ongoing counter terrorism or intelligence operations.'
'Any suggestion that this administration has authorized intentional leaks of classified information for political gain is grossly irresponsible.'
'No, what is grossly irresponsible is U.S. officials divulging some of the most highly classified programs involving the most important national security priorities facing our nation today,' McCain shot back in his statement.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who charged members of Obama administration of leaking classified information for political gain, Wednesday called those who leaked the info "grossly irresponsible," using the same words that White House spokesperson Jay Carney levied at McCain. Earlier in the day, Carney told reporters, "Any suggestion that this administration has authorized intentional leaks of classified info for political gain is grossly irresponsible," Carney said.
McCain, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, fired back: "No, what is grossly irresponsible is U.S. officials divulging some of the most highly classified programs involving the most important national security priorities facing our nation today."
McCain first called attention to the issue with a fiery speech on the Senate floor Tuesday evening, pointing to a new book by New York Times journalist David Sanger that reveals U.S.-Israeli cybercampaigns used against Iran.
McCain charged members of the administration with leaking classified information and called for an investigation by a special counsel. He also called for people to be prosecuted if guilt is found. His Democratic counterpart on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., agreed to hold a hearing to investigate.
"It is difficult to escape the conclusion that these recent leaks of highly classified information, all of which have the effect of making the President look strong and decisive on national security in the middle of his re-election campaign, have a deeper political motivation," Mcain said.
McCain added: "Over the course of these congressional hearings and other investigations, I would hope that the motivations for these leaks is fully examined and discussed. These leaks clearly were not done in the interest of national security or to reveal corrupt or illegal actions about which the public has a right to know, as in the case of legitimate whistleblowers."
A bipartisan group of lawmakers that lead the House and Senate intelligence committees also expressed concern, calling possible leaks "unacceptable."
"In recent weeks, we have become increasingly concerned at the continued leaks regarding sensitive intelligence programs and activities, including specific details of sources and methods. The accelerating pace of such disclosures, the sensitivity of the matters in question, and the harm caused to our national security interests is alarming and unacceptable," Sens. Diane Feinstein, D-Calif., and Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., and Reps. Mike Rogers, R-Mich. and Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md.
The four members of the intelligence committees also called the leaks "damaging and intolerable." They plan to modify and strengthen legislation regarding leaks. "We believe that significant changes are needed, in legislation, in the culture of the agencies that deal with classified information, in punishing leaks, and in the level of leadership across the government to make clear that these types of disclosures will not stand," the lawmakers said in the statement.
Sources: CBS News, CNN, Daily Mail, Fox News, Youtube
A group of Secret Service agents and officers sent to Colombia ahead of President Barack Obama were relieved of duty and returned home amid allegations of misconduct that involved prostitution, according to two U.S. government sources familiar the investigation.
The 11 Secret Service members -- both agents and uniformed officers -- were interviewed Saturday at the agency's Washington headquarters, after which they were placed on administrative leave, Assistant Director Paul Morrissey said in a statement.
They are under investigation after preliminary findings revealed that they brought back several prostitutes to the Hotel Caribe in Cartagena, sources told CNN on Saturday.
Also Saturday, the U.S. military announced that five service members assigned to support the Secret Service in its assignment have been "confined to quarters" in Colombia after they violated curfew and "may have been involved in inappropriate conduct" at the same hotel. The statement, from U.S. Southern Command, did not offer more details, including whether prostitution was involved.
The command's leader, Gen. Douglas Fraser, said he is "disappointed by the entire incident and that this behavior is not in keeping with the professional standards expected of members of the United States military," according to the statement.
The alleged misconduct overshadowed the start of the sixth Summit of the Americas, where the president was to focus on trade, energy and regional security.
None of the agents or officers being investigated was part of the president's personal protective detail and Obama isn't based at the hotel. But dignitaries and journalists reporting on the hemispheric meeting were staying there, a U.S. government official said.
Obama: 'Hemisphere is very well positioned in the global economy' Rep. Peter King, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, was briefed on the matter and told CNN that the government personnel brought prostitutes back to their rooms Wednesday night and "one of the women did not leave the room in the morning."
A hotel manager tried to get in the room, and eventually the woman emerged and said "they owed her money," according to King. Similarly, U.S. government sources said there was a dispute between at least one Secret Service member and a woman brought back to his hotel over a request to be paid.
At least one of the women brought to the hotel talked with police, and complaints were filed with the U.S. Embassy, the sources said.
"The Secret Service saw that report, and they immediately began an investigation," King said.
A hotel staffer gave Colombian security personnel the entire list of U.S. government personnel staying there, said a U.S. military official who couldn't speak for attribution because of the ongoing investigation.
A spokesman for Colombia's National Police declined to comment, referring questions to the Secret Service.
King, the Republican from New York, said the issue isn't about any "criminal allegations but a dereliction of duty."
"My understanding is that there are no allegations of any crime being committed," he told CNN's Don Lemon. "It violates the Secret Service code of conduct." Secret Service spokesman Edwin Donovon said that the group of agents in Cartegena were relieved of duty Thursday -- prior to the president's arrival in Colombia -- and replaced after "allegations of misconduct."
The U.S. government sources said that, because the trip already had a large security detail, only some of the recalled agents and officers were replaced. Still, the sources said there was no threat to the president.
Morrissey, the assistant director from the Secret Service, noted his agency's "zero tolerance policy on personal misconduct." He said that putting the accused employees on leave is "standard procedure" as the agency conducts a "full, thorough and fair investigation."
"This incident is not reflective of the behavior of our personnel as they travel every day throughout the country and the world performing their duties in a dedicated, professional manner," Morrissey said. "We regret any distraction from the Summit of the Americas this situation has caused."
The U.S. military is conducting its own investigation and will mete out "punishment, if appropriate ... in accordance with established policies and the Uniform Code of Military Justice," the Southern Command said in its statement.
A senior military official and senior Secret Service official decided the five U.S. service members would stay in Colombia, confined to their hotel except for work-related business, because their "special skills" were still needed, according to a U.S. military official. Barred from contacting others about the matter, they will return to the United States with the rest of their unidentified unit at the end of the mission, according to the military.
Ronald Kessler, a former Washington Post reporter who has written a book about the Secret Service, called the incident "clearly the biggest scandal in Secret Service history."
The Washington Post, which was the first to report the story, said it was alerted to the investigation by Kessler.
Jon Adler -- president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, which represents Secret Service agents and other federal law enforcement officers -- urged caution in jumping to conclusions, characterizing the incident as "isolated" and not necessarily a scandal.
"That's just sort of an overdramatic interpretation of an isolated incident," he said. "We have to trust the process of the internal review."
While soliciting prostitution is legal in certain areas of Colombia, it is considered a breach of the agency's conduct code, the government sources said. High-level officials in the Secret Service and the Department of Homeland Security were outraged over the incident, the sources said, noting that the investigation indicated the prostitutes were brought back to a hotel that had been secured for the summit.
The president arrived in Cartagena on Friday, the same day he first learned about the incident, White House press secretary Jay Carney said from the coastal resort city.
Obama will spend more time in Colombia, where security concerns had limited previous presidential trips, than any other U.S. president.
Two nearly back-to-back explosions in Cartagena -- which caused only minor damage and no casualties, Colombia National Police spokesman Cantihho Toncell said -- were a reminder of the violence that has gripped Colombia as its government has battled powerful drug cartels. Violence has significantly fallen off in recent years as the Bogota-based government, aided by U.S. extradition efforts, has successfully picked apart the cartels.
Still, there is an extensive security presence in the walled colonial city of Cartagena for the summit -- including more than 7,600 police officers and thousands more troops.
His assassination in Kandahar removes an embarrassment but leaves behind an even bigger headache: how to fill the political and security vacuum left behind.
He had long been Kandahar’s power broker and a crucial pillar in the web of personal alliances that his half-brother, President Hamid Karzai, relied upon to project his influence.
As a result, it is impossible to overstate his importance in the south of Afghanistan and his central role in Nato efforts to see off the Taliban in their spiritual home.
His death removed an ally in a key region just as America begins withdraw some 33,000 troops.
At one stage, though, Nato commanders hoped to persuade President Karzai to dump his half-brother, and so rid his regime of the non-stop allegations of corruption and vice emanating from the head of Kandahar’s provincial council.
In the end – like elsewhere in Afghanistan - they were forced to do a grubby deal, accepting him warts and all in return for the influence he could wield among the local Pashtun population.
“He’s the proverbial 800lb gorilla and he’s in the middle of a lot of rooms. He’s the mafia don, the family fixer, the troubleshooter,” said one Nato officer describing the pragmatic approach.
Last year, he proved himself a staunch supporter of Nato and the US, as international forces cleared the Taliban from around Kandahar.
Now, his death with only encourage the Taliban, who already have one eye on the calendar and the eventual withdrawal of Nato forces in 2014.
The timing could not be worse, just as the US begins searching for a political solution after a decade of war.
Hasan Askari Rizvi, a Pakistani analyst, said the death of an ally in such a crucial city would hugely disrupt Nato strategy.
“At the end of the day, he was very close to the president. Kandahar is hugely important and President Karzai needed someone there he could trust,” he said.
“If Kandahar cannot be controlled then the withdrawal schedule will be thrown out.”
When Afghan security forces found an enormous cache of heroin hidden beneath concrete blocks in a tractor-trailer outside Kandahar in 2004, the local Afghan commander quickly impounded the truck and notified his boss.
Before long, the commander, Habibullah Jan, received a telephone call from Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of President Hamid Karzai, asking him to release the vehicle and the drugs, Jan later told American investigators, according to notes from the debriefing obtained by The New York Times. He said he complied after getting a phone call from an aide to President Karzai directing him to release the truck.
Two years later, American and Afghan counternarcotics forces stopped another truck, this time near Kabul, finding more than 110 pounds of heroin. Soon after the seizure, United States investigators told other American officials that they had discovered links between the drug shipment and a bodyguard believed to be an intermediary for Ahmed Wali Karzai, according to a participant in the briefing.
The assertions about the involvement of the president's brother in the incidents were never investigated, according to American and Afghan officials, even though allegations that he has benefited from narcotics trafficking have circulated widely in Afghanistan.
Both President Karzai and Ahmed Wali Karzai, now the chief of the Kandahar Provincial Council, the governing body for the region that includes Afghanistan's second largest city, dismiss the allegations as politically motivated attacks by longtime foes.
"I am not a drug dealer, I never was and I never will be," the president's brother said in a recent phone interview. "I am a victim of vicious politics."
But the assertions about him have deeply worried top American officials in Kabul and in Washington. The United States officials fear that perceptions that the Afghan president might be protecting his brother are damaging his credibility and undermining efforts by the United States to buttress his government, which has been under siege from rivals and a Taliban insurgency fueled by drug money, several senior Bush administration officials said. Their concerns have intensified as American troops have been deployed to the country in growing numbers.
"What appears to be a fairly common Afghan public perception of corruption inside their government is a tremendously corrosive element working against establishing long-term confidence in that government — a very serious matter," said Lieutenant General David Barno, who was commander of coalition military forces in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005 and is now retired. "That could be problematic strategically for the United States."
The White House says it believes that Ahmed Wali Karzai is involved in drug trafficking, and American officials have repeatedly warned President Karzai that his brother is a political liability, two senior Bush administration officials said in interviews last week.
Numerous reports link Ahmed Wali Karzai to the drug trade, according to current and former officials from the White House, the State Department and the United States Embassy in Afghanistan, who would speak only on the condition of anonymity. In meetings with President Karzai, including a 2006 session with the United States ambassador, the Central Intelligence Agency's station chief and their British counterparts, American officials have talked about the allegations in hopes that the president might move his brother out of the country, said several people who took part in or were briefed on the talks.
"We thought the concern expressed to Karzai might be enough to get him out of there," one official said. But President Karzai has resisted, demanding clear-cut evidence of wrongdoing, several officials said. "We don't have the kind of hard, direct evidence that you could take to get a criminal indictment," a White House official said. "That allows Karzai to say, where's your proof?"
Neither the Drug Enforcement Administration, which conducts counternarcotics efforts in Afghanistan, nor the fledgling Afghan anti-drug agency has pursued investigations into the accusations against the president's brother.
Several American investigators said senior officials at the DEA and the office of the Director of National Intelligence complained to them that the White House favored a hands-off approach toward Ahmed Wali Karzai because of the political delicacy of the matter. But White House officials dispute that, instead citing limited DEA resources in Kandahar and southern Afghanistan and the absence of political will in the Afghan government to go after major drug suspects as the reasons for the lack of an inquiry.
"We invested considerable resources into building Afghan capability to conduct such investigations and consistently encouraged Karzai to take on the big fish and address widespread Afghan suspicions about the link between his brother and narcotics," said Meghan O'Sullivan, who was the coordinator for Afghanistan and Iraq at the National Security Council until last year.
Humayun Hamidzada, press secretary for President Karzai, denied that the president's brother was involved in drug trafficking or that the president had intervened to help him. "People have made allegations without proof," Hamidzada said.
Spokesmen for the Drug Enforcement Administration, the State Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment.
An Informant's Tip
The concerns about Ahmed Wali Karzai have surfaced recently because of the imprisonment of an informant who tipped off American and Afghan investigators to the drug-filled truck outside Kabul in 2006.
The informant, Hajji Aman Kheri, was arrested a year later on charges of plotting to kill an Afghan vice president in 2002. The Afghan Supreme Court recently ordered him freed for lack of evidence, but he has not been released. Nearly 100 political leaders in his home region protested his continued incarceration last month.
Kheri, in a phone interview from jail in Kabul, said he had been an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration and United States intelligence agencies, an assertion confirmed by American counternarcotics and intelligence officials. Several of those officials, frustrated that the Bush administration was not pressing for Kheri's release, came forward to disclose his role in the drug seizure.
Ever since the American-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, critics have charged that the Bush administration has failed to take aggressive action against the Afghan narcotics trade, because of both opposition from the Karzai government and reluctance by the United States military to get bogged down by eradication and interdiction efforts that would antagonize local warlords and Afghan poppy farmers. Now, Afghanistan provides about 95 percent of the world's supply of heroin.
Just as the Taliban have benefited from money produced by the drug trade, so have many officials in the Karzai government, according to American and Afghan officials. Thomas Schweich, a former senior State Department counternarcotics official, wrote in The New York Times Magazine in July that drug traffickers were buying off hundreds of police chiefs, judges and other officials. "Narco-corruption went to the top of the Afghan government," he said.
Suspicions of Corruption
Of the suspicions about Ahmed Wali Karzai, Representative Mark Steven Kirk, an Illinois Republican who has focused on the Afghan drug problem in Congress, said, "I would ask people in the Bush administration and the DEA about him, and they would say, 'We think he's dirty.' "
In the two drug seizures in 2004 and 2006, millions of dollars' worth of heroin was found. In April 2006, Jan, by then a member of the Afghan Parliament, met with American investigators at a DEA safe house in Kabul and was asked to describe the events surrounding the 2004 drug discovery, according to notes from the debriefing session. He told the Americans that after impounding the truck, he received calls from Ahmed Wali Karzai and Shaida Mohammad, an aide to President Karzai, according to the notes.
Jan later became a political opponent of President Karzai, and in a 2007 speech in Parliament he accused Ahmed Wali Karzai of involvement in the drug trade. Jan was shot to death in July as he drove from a guesthouse to his main residence in Kandahar Province. The Taliban were suspected in the assassination.
Mohammad, in a recent interview in Washington, dismissed Jan's account, saying that Jan had fabricated the story about being pressured to release the drug shipment in order to damage President Karzai.
But Khan Mohammad, the former Afghan commander in Kandahar who was Jan's superior in 2004, said in a recent interview that Jan reported at the time that he had received a call from the Karzai aide ordering him to release the drug cache. Khan Mohammad recalled that Jan believed that the call had been instigated by Ahmed Wali Karzai, not the president.
"This was a very heavy issue," Mohammad said.
He provided the same account in an October 2004 interview with The Christian Science Monitor. Mohammad said that after a subordinate captured a large shipment of heroin about two months earlier, the official received repeated telephone calls from Ahmed Wali Karzai. "He was saying, 'This heroin belongs to me, you should release it,' " the newspaper quoted Mohammad as saying.
Languishing in Detention
In 2006, Kheri, the Afghan informant, tipped off American counternarcotics agents to another drug shipment. Kheri, who had proved so valuable to the United States that his family had been resettled in Virginia in 2004, briefly returned to Afghanistan in 2006.
The heroin in the truck that was seized was to be delivered to Ahmed Wali Karzai's bodyguard in the village of Maidan Shahr, and then transported to Kandahar, one of the Afghans involved in the deal later told American investigators, according to notes of his debriefing. Several Afghans — the drivers and the truck's owner — were arrested by Afghan authorities, but no action was taken against Karzai or his bodyguard, who investigators believe serves as a middleman, the American officials said.
In 2007, Kheri visited Afghanistan again, once again serving as an American informant, the officials said. This time, however, he was arrested by the Karzai government and charged in the 2002 assassination of Hajji Abdul Qadir, an Afghan vice president, who had been a political rival of Kheri's brother, Hajji Zaman, a former militia commander and a powerful figure in eastern Afghanistan.
Kheri, in the phone interview from Kabul, denied any involvement in the killing and said his arrest was politically motivated. He maintained that the president's brother was involved in the heroin trade.
"It's no secret about Wali Karzai and drugs," said Kheri, who speaks English. "A lot of people in the Afghan government are involved in drug trafficking."
Kheri's continued detention, despite the Afghan court's order to release him, has frustrated some of the American investigators who worked with him.
In recent months, they have met with officials at the State Department and the office of the Director of National Intelligence seeking to persuade the Bush administration to intervene with the Karzai government to release Kheri.
"We have just left a really valuable informant sitting in jail to rot," one investigator said.
Or Is This Report About Saif Al-Adel Being Named As Osama's Replacement Nothing More Than A Farce, In Al-Qaeda's Attempt To Confuse CIA Officials & Get More Money For The Organization Via Creating Another Global "War On Terror"?
Who Knows??
I Just Know That I Will Continue To Pray & Plead The Blood Of Jesus Over America, My Family & The Obama Administration.
And I Would Advise The Rest Of American Citizens To Pray As Well.
An Egyptian who was once a Special Forces officer has been chosen "caretaker" leader of al Qaeda in the wake of Osama bin Laden's death, according to a source with detailed knowledge of the group's inner workings.
Al Qaeda's interim leader is Saif al-Adel, who has long played a prominent role in the group, according to Noman Benotman. Benotman has known the al Qaeda leadership for more than two decades. He was once a leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), a militant organization that used to be aligned with al Qaeda, but in recent years renounced al Qaeda's ideology.
Benotman told CNN that based on his personal communications with militants and discussions on jihadist forums, al-Adel, also known as Muhamad Ibrahim Makkawi, had been chosen interim chief of al Qaeda because the global jihadist community had grown restive in recent days about the lack of a formal announcement of a successor to bin Laden.
According to Benotman, this was not a decision of the formal shura council of al Qaeda, because it is currently impossible to gather them in one place, but was rather the decision of six to eight leaders of al Qaeda in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area. Al-Adel was already one of the top leaders of the group.
However, Benotman said, the choice of an Egyptian may not sit well with some Saudi and Yemeni members of al Qaeda, who believe bin Laden's successor should come from the Arabian Peninsula, a region that is holy to all Muslims. Bin Laden was from a wealthy Saudi family.
The presumed successor to bin Laden is his long-time deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who is also Egyptian. Benotman, who has long been a reliable source of information about al Qaeda, said the temporary appointment of al-Adel may be a way for the leadership to gauge reaction to the selection of someone from beyond the Arabian Peninsula as the group's leader.
Al-Adel fought the Soviets in Afghanistan during the 1980s. After the fall of the Taliban in the winter of 2001 he fled to Iran. According to senior Saudi counterterrorism officials, from there al-Adel authorized al Qaeda's branch in Saudi Arabia to begin a campaign of terrorist attacks in the Saudi kingdom that began in Riyadh in May 2003, a campaign that killed scores.
Some reports in the past year have suggested that al-Adel had left Iran for Pakistan.
Pakistan announces key al Qaeda arrest
One of the key issues that al-Adel has to reckon with now is the fallout from the large quantities of sensitive information that was recovered by U.S. forces at the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where bin Laden was shot on May 2. That information is likely to prove damaging to al Qaeda operations.
The selection of an interim leader allows al Qaeda to begin the process of collecting allegiance, or baya, from al-Qaeda affiliates such as the Yemen-based al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and the North Africa-based al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.
Baya was a religious oath of allegiance to bin Laden rather than to the organization itself, in the same way that Nazi Party members swore an oath of fealty to Hitler rather than to Nazism. That baya must now be transferred to whomever the new leader of al Qaeda is going to be, which is likely to be al-Zawahiri, given his long role as bin Laden's deputy.
However, there is scant evidence that al-Zawahiri has the charisma of bin Laden, nor that he commands the respect bordering on love that was accorded to bin Laden by members of al Qaeda.
Now that bin Laden is dead there is a real opportunity for the Taliban to disassociate itself from al Qaeda, as it was bin Laden who, sometime before the 9/11 attacks, swore an oath of allegiance to Taliban leader Mullah Omar as the Amir al-Muminin, "commander of the faithful," a rarely invoked religious title that dates from around the time of the Prophet Mohammed.
Mullah Omar could now take the position that the new leader of al Qaeda does not need to swear an oath of allegiance to Omar as commander of the faithful.
Such a move would satisfy a key condition for peace talks with the U.S. and Afghan governments: that the Taliban reject al Qaeda, something that they have so far not done.
Al-Adel has been involved in militant activities since the late 1980s, according to an interview with him published in spring 2005 in the Arabic-language London-based daily Al-Quds al-Arabi.
In the article, written by Fuad Husayn, a Jordanian journalist and writer, al-Adel recalled that he was detained for militant activities in Egypt on May 6, 1987.
"The case pertained to the assassination attempt against ex-Egyptian Interior Minister Hasan Abu-Basha. ... I was then a colonel in the Egyptian Special Forces," he said.
Al-Adel also has been involved for years in anti-American activities, other sources indicate.
Mohamed Odeh, one of the bombers of the U.S. Embassy in Kenya in August 1998, told FBI interrogators that in 1993 he was ordered by al-Adel to go to Somalia to link up with local tribes and train them to fight and attack U.S. forces who were then serving there in a humanitarian mission to feed starving Somalis.
And a British-Ugandan, Feroz Ali Abbasi, who had trained in an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan before 9/11, recalled in a memoir that Adel instructed him and other recruits to fight U.S. forces around Kabul or in the southern city of Kandahar during the American invasion of Afghanistan in the fall of 2001
In the interview published in Al-Quds al-Arabi, al-Adel also explained al Qaeda's motivations for the 9/11 attack: "Our main objective, therefore, was to deal a strike to the head of the snake at home to smash its arrogance."
After the fall of the Taliban, Adel recalled that he and other members of al-Qaeda found refuge in Iran: "We began to converge on Iran one after the other," he said. "...We began to rent apartments for the fraternal brothers and some of their families. The fraternal brothers of the group of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar" -- an Afghan militant then living in exile in Iran who is now a leader of the insurgency in Afghanistan -- "offered us satisfactory help in this field. They provided us with apartments and some farms that they owned."
But Al-Adel said that the Iranians subsequently arrested a large number of these "brothers."
Yes! It Was W. Bush Who Spent More Than $1 Trillion Dollars, While Risking The Lives Of Thousands Of U.S. Troops On This ONE Man!
A Man Whose ONLY Plan Was To Bring Our Nation To Its Knees Financially In The Form Of W. Bush's "War On Terror"!!
Pres. W. Bush's Administration Claimed It Couldn't Find Osama Even Though He Spent The Last 6 1/2 Years Of His Life Residing In A $1 Million Palatial Mansion , Less Than 1000 Yards Away From The Pakistani Capital.
Sounds Strange To Me But Than Again What Do I Know?
I'm Just A Regular U.S. Citizen.
I'm NOT The CIA, FBI, U.S. Dept Of Defense Secretary Or U.S. Secretary Of State!
So What Do I Know???
What I Do Know Is That It Took Pres. Obama's Administration 2 Years To Locate And Kill Osama & 8 Years For W. Bush's Administration To NEVER Find Him At All!!
Was The Purpose Of Choosing NOT To Capture Or Harm Osama Bin Laden For The U.S. To Have Continued Access To Saudi Arabia's Oil Or For Personal Capital Gain?
Did Osama bin Laden win? No. Did he succeed? Well, America is still standing, and he isn’t. So why, when I called Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a counterterrorism expert who specializes in al-Qaeda, did he tell me that “bin Laden has been enormously successful”? There’s no caliphate. There’s no sweeping sharia law. Didn’t we win this one in a clean knockout?
Apparently not. Bin Laden, according to Gartenstein-Ross, had a strategy that we never bothered to understand, and thus that we never bothered to defend against. What he really wanted to do — and, more to the point, what he thought he could do — was bankrupt the United States of America. After all, he’d done the bankrupt-a-superpower thing before. And though it didn’t quite work out this time, it worked a lot better than most of us, in this exultant moment, are willing to admit.
Bin Laden’s transition from scion of a wealthy family to terrorist mastermind came in the 1980s, when the Soviet Union was trying to conquer Afghanistan. Bin Laden was part of the resistance, and the resistance was successful — not only in repelling the Soviet invasion, but in contributing to the communist super-state’s collapse a few years later. “We, alongside the mujaheddin, bled Russia for 10 years, until it went bankrupt,” he later explained.
The campaign taught bin Laden a lot. For one thing, superpowers fall because their economies crumble, not because they’re beaten on the battlefield. For another, superpowers are so allergic to losing that they’ll bankrupt themselves trying to conquer a mass of rocks and sand. This was bin Laden’s plan for the United States, too.
“He has compared the United States to the Soviet Union on numerous occasions — and these comparisons have been explicitly economic,” Gartenstein-Ross argues in a Foreign Policy article. “For example, in October 2004 bin Laden said that just as the Arab fighters and Afghan mujaheddin had destroyed Russia economically, al Qaeda was now doing the same to the United States, ‘continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy.’ ”
For bin Laden, in other words, success was not to be measured in body counts. It was to be measured in deficits, in borrowing costs, in investments we weren’t able to make in our country’s continued economic strength. And by those measures, bin Laden landed a lot of blows.
Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz estimates that the price tag on the Iraq War alone will surpass $3 trillion. Afghanistan likely amounts to another trillion or two. Add in the build-up in homeland security spending since 9/11 and you’re looking at yet another trillion. And don’t forget the indirect costs of all this turmoil: The Federal Reserve, worried about a fear-induced recession, slashed interest rates after the attack on the World Trade Center, and then kept them low to combat skyrocketing oil prices, a byproduct of the war in Iraq. That decade of loose monetary policy may well have contributed to the credit bubble that crashed the economy in 2007 and 2008.
Then there’s the post-9/11 slowdown in the economy, the time wasted in airports, the foregone returns on investments we didn’t make, the rise in oil prices as a result of the Iraq War, the cost of rebuilding Ground Zero, health care for the first responders and much, much more.
But it isn’t quite right to say bin Laden cost us all that money. We decided to spend more than a trillion dollars on homeland security measures to prevent another attack. We decided to invade Iraq as part of a grand, post-9/11 strategy of Middle Eastern transformation. We decided to pass hundreds of billions of dollars in unpaid-for tax cuts and add an unpaid-for prescription drug benefit in Medicare while we were involved in two wars. And now, partially though not entirely because of these actions, we are deep in debt. Bin Laden didn’t — couldn’t — bankrupt us. He could only provoke us into bankrupting ourselves. And he came pretty close.
It’s a smart play against a superpower. We didn’t need to respond to 9/11 by trying to reshape the entire Middle East, but we’re a superpower, and we think on that scale. We didn’t need to respond to failed attempts to smuggle bombs onto airplanes through shoes and shampoo bottles by screening all footwear and banning large shampoo bottles, but we’re a superpower, and our tolerance for risk is extremely low. His greatest achievement was getting our psychology at least somewhat right.
In the end, of course, bin Laden was just another bag of meat and bones, hiding in a walled compound in Pakistan, so deeply afraid of death that he tried to use his wife as a shield when the special forces came for him. But he understood the mind of the superpower well enough to use our capabilities against us. He may not have won, but he did succeed, at least partially.
But then, we can learn from our mistakes. He can’t.
43 Years Ago Today Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Was Assassinated By Some Government Paid Fool!
"Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!"
Forty-three years ago Monday, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tenn. He was there to support a garbage collectors' strike, and on the night before his death gave what would be his final sermon. Amid the call for for African-Americans to boycott businesses that mistreated workers, he delivered a sermon, without notes, that focused on his life and disavowed any concern that he might be killed for his role in the fight for civil rights.
"Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now,” the Rev. Mr. King said that evening. “I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!”
Now known as "I've Been to the Mountaintop,” the sermon was called King's "most apocalyptic" by King scholar James Washington. It was not the first time King had spoken publicly about his possible early death, though those close to him say King certainly did not expect the April 3 sermon to be his last.
"He always knew some speech would be his last," wrote Andrew Young, who was with King in Memphis. "Was he afraid? Not on your life!"
King had received death threats for years and had already survived one assassination attempt. In 1958, a black woman who apparently suffered from mental illness stabbed him at a book signing, nearly killing him. In its report on the incident, The New York Times wrote, momentously, that the wound was so severe that King would have died had he sneezed.
In his last sermon, King reflected on that experience, recalling that a ninth-grade girl wrote him afterward to say she was glad he hadn’t sneezed. King used that experience to reflect on his career and the civil rights movement.
"I too am happy that I didn't sneeze. Because if I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around here in 1960, when students all over the South started sitting-in at lunch counters," said King. "If I had sneezed I wouldn't have been here in 1963, when the black people of Birmingham, Alabama, aroused[OR ROUSED?] the conscience of this nation, and brought into being the Civil Rights Bill. If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have had a chance later that year, in August, to try to tell America about a dream that I had had."
After the sermon, King took His seat. His friend Benjamin Hooks recalled that King's words had elicited surprising emotions in both listeners and speaker.
"To my surprise, when I got a little closer, I saw tears streaming down his face," Mr. Hook said in a speech a decade later. "Grown men were sitting there weeping openly because of the power of this man who spoke on that night."
I'll Admit I Was Probably Wrong About Pres. Obama & Hillary Clinton's No-Fly Zone Strategy. Such Military Action Appears To Be Working. On Wednesday Gadhafi's Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa Resigned.
No Doubt This Was Definitely A Significant Blow To Gadhadi's Regime.
If The Obama Administration Is Able To Force Col. Gadhafi & His Sons From Their Seats Of Power, It Will Certainly Prove To Be A Tremendous Leadership & Political Victory For Barack Obama
However Without More Help From U.S. Troops, Removing Gadhafi Will Only Be A Distant Fantasy!
Notions of a cease-fire in Libya quickly faded Saturday as a battle raged for control of the oil town of al-Brega, where rebel fighters claimed they had lost fighters and vehicles to NATO airstrikes.
Airstrikes hit several rebel vehicles and killed at least 13 rebel fighters, spokesmen for the Libyan opposition said Saturday. Seven others were wounded.
NATO was investigating the incident, a spokeswoman said Saturday.
"NATO takes any reports of civilian casualties very seriously, but exact details are hard to verify as we have no reliable sources on the ground," NATO's Oana Lungescu said. "Clearly, if someone fires at one of our aircraft, of course they have the right to defend themselves."
Rebel spokesman Abdul Hafiz Ghoga said opposition fighters had retaken al-Brega after a night of heavy fighting with Moammar Gadhafi's forces.
But it was not immediately clear who commanded control Saturday of the coastal city that has now changed hands six times in as many weeks under the dramatically shifting circumstances of the Libyan war.
In a fresh offensive Friday, Libyan opposition forces led by army units that defected from Gadhafi's forces were able to push back Gadhafi's troops, rebel spokesman Shamsiddin Abdulmolah said.
Rebels were fighting with newly refurbished rocket launchers and artillery delivered to the frontlines Thursday night by the army units that switched sides, Abdulmolah said.
Meanwhile, forces loyal to Gadhafi showed no signs of backing down after officials spurned an opposition cease-fire proposal.
Government spokesman Musa Ibrahim told reporters in Tripoli on Friday that rebels were not "really serious" about the offer, which he said included "silly conditions."
"They are asking us to withdraw from our own cities and open our cities to people, who are holding up arms, who are tribal, violent, no unified leadership, al Qaeda links, and no one knows who they are. If this is not mad, then I don't know what it is," he said. "We will not leave our cities. We will not stop protecting our civilians."
His comments came after Libyan opposition leader Mustafa Abdul Jalil laid out cease-fire conditions that included freedom of expression for the Libyan people and the removal of snipers, mercenaries and militias from western cities.
Ultimately, he said, the opposition's goal remains regime change in Libya.
Ghoga sought to clarify the opposition's position Saturday.
"There is no, and was no, negotiation on a cease-fire with Colonel Gaddafi's dictatorship," he said at a Bengahzi news conference.
He repeated the opposition demands that Gadhafi halt all military action, end the sieges laid on cities like Misrata and allow free speech and assembly.
Sources close to Gadhafi told CNN that political solutions are still possible but that the Libyan leader would relinquish power only to others within his inner circle.
They said there is still time for dialogue but expressed doubts about who would represent the opposition.
Any transition, they said, would involve Gadhafi's second son, Saif al-Islam Gadhafi, and for such a transition to take place there would first have to be an end to the fighting.
The Libyan sources told CNN that for now, Gadhafi remains confident the regime can withstand any challenge from the rebels.
U.S. officials claim Gadhafi's military capabilities have been steadily eroded since the onset of U.N.-sanctioned airstrikes.
The dictator's forces, however, still outnumber rebels by about 10 to 1 in terms of armor and other ground forces, according to Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman.
CIA operatives are providing intelligence from Libya, where opposition forces are on the run and the defiant government suffered the embarrassing defection of its foreign minister Wednesday.
The NATO-led coalition, which is enforcing a no-fly zone and protecting civilians from the intense fighting, got no help from the weather in its ongoing efforts to protect the fragile opposition movement.
"The weather conditions did not allow close combat support by aircraft in the last couple of days," said Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
Moammar Gadhafi's government, for its part, kept up the war of words.
State-run Libyan TV late Wednesday quoted a military source as saying a "civilian location was shelled tonight in the city of Tripoli by the colonizing crusader aggression."
Amid debate on whether the allies will arm the retreating and undertrained rebels, a U.S. intelligence source told CNN the CIA is in the country to increase the "military and political understanding" of the situation.
"Yes, we are gathering intel firsthand and we are in contact with some opposition entities," said the source.
The White House refused to comment on a Reuters report that President Barack Obama has signed a secret order authorizing covert U.S. government support for rebel troops.
"I will reiterate what the president said yesterday -- no decision has been made about providing arms to the opposition or to any group in Libya," said White House press secretary Jay Carney in a statement. "We're not ruling it out or ruling it in. We're assessing and reviewing options for all types of assistance that we could provide to the Libyan people, and have consulted directly with the opposition and our international partners about these matters."
According to the Reuters report, Obama signed the covert aid order, or "finding," within the past few weeks. Such findings are required for the CIA to conduct secret operations, the report said.
A U.S. official not authorized to speak publicly could not confirm the finding, but noted when there are crises like this, "you look at all instruments of national power."
In early March, a U.S. official told CNN "the intelligence community is aggressively pursuing information on the ground" in Libya.
British Prime Minister David Cameron told the House of Commons that he has not ruled out arming the Libyan opposition, but added that Britain has not made the decision to do so.
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