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Pentagon Reveals Records On Operation That Could Have Prevented 9/11

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David B. Gleason from Chicago, IL, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

After nearly two decades of courtroom arguments, the Defense Department has finally turned over records on an intelligence program that could have prevented the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

The non-profit public interest law firm Judicial Watch announced in a statement after a nearly 19-year Freedom of Information Act battle, “the Department of Defense produced 62 pages of records out of hundreds of previously withheld documents regarding the U.S. intelligence program ‘Operation Able Danger.’ The Defense Department identified hundreds of pages of responsive records but withheld them, claiming the overwhelming majority are still classified to this day.”

“It shouldn’t take two decades to decide that the American people can’t see documents about a military investigation that could have prevented 9/11. What an insult to the American people and the victims of 9/11,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

“Able Danger was formed in 1999. It compiled publicly available information regarding al Qaeda and other targets,” Judicial Watch notes.”

“In August 2005 interviews, Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, and other experts reported that the operation identified four future September 11, 2001, hijackers as al Qaeda members in the United States well before the attacks,” Judicial Watch states, adding, “The Senate Intelligence Committee began its investigation of the program in August 2005. In September 2005, the Senate Judiciary Committee conducted a hearing on Able Danger, however, members of the data-mining team were blocked from testifying.”

That’s when Judicial Watch stepped in, submitting a FOIA request to Defense Department for related records, as well as information on “U.S. intelligence, law enforcement and/or counterterrorism projects and/or programs utilizing data mining software/techniques to search open-source records in the public domain.”

Judicial Watch lays out what they discovered, writing:

The Defense Department response on August 24 from U.S. Special Operations Command identifies hundreds of pages of responsive records but claims the overwhelming majority are still classified and, over 20 years later, remain exempted from disclosure:

[S]pecifically, Sections 1.4(a), military plans, weapon systems, or operations; 1.4(c), intelligence activities (including covert actions), intelligence sources or methods, or Cryptology; 1.4(g), vulnerabilities or capabilities of systems, installations, projects, plans, or protection services relating to the national security; and Section 1.7(e), for compilation of items of information that are individually unclassified, but may be classified if the compiled information reveals an additional association or relationship.

The records obtained by Judicial Watch include an unredacted, declassified Top Secret/SCI record contains a 17-page listing of unclassified, open-source internet resources listing websites and URLs for topics such as terrorism news stories; Office of the Coordinator of Counterterrorism; and “Albanian Terrorism in Kosovo,” among many others. Across the bottom of page three of the lists of open-source records is a statement: “Began to understand the status of ongoing efforts!” The author of the exclamation is not identified.

Small passages of what seem to be declassified Top Secret/SCI analytical reports (unnamed and undated) feature commentary such as:

Arab countries in North Africa especially, Algeria, Tunisia, Morrocco, Libya, Egypt, and almost all other Arab countries have been annoyed for the high profile of Osama bin Laden first in Pakistan and later in Afghanistan especially, when he publicly claims that he trains Arab fundamentalists to overthrow most of Arab regimes in the Middle East.

The records also cite journalist Jason Burke’s December 1998 reporting that Osama bin Laden decided to get into drug trafficking as a new weapon and approached (through intermediaries) major opium and heroin dealers, as well as major landowners in the opium-growing districts of Afghanistan, and offered to buy all of the opium they grow.

Drug trafficking was also featured in an undated/unsourced, declassified TOP SECRET/SCI record that stated:

In fact, heroin is the major source of income for the Taleban [sic] government that has seized power in Afghanistan. It is not the Taleban government alone; heroin is also a major source of earning for the Inter Service Intelligence ISI of Pakistan, which has been providing support and assistance for the Taleban government which has seized power in Afghanistan. The lion’s share of the funds earned through heroin smuggling is spent on intelligence service and also on subversive activities carried out by the ISI in neighboring countries.

Another undated/unsourced excerpt states:

Opium is traded at large bazaars in Afghanistan that are the treacherous domain of criminal syndicates. One of the more notorious is located in the town of Sangin, a three-hour drive west of the Taliban capital of Kandahar. ‘Sangin is known as a dangerous place,’ says Bernard Frahl, head of the U.N. drug-agency office in Islamabad, who visited the market town in October. “It is known for people going in and not coming out.” Of about 500 shopkeepers crowded along one main street, and two or three footpaths off it, he says, almost half sell opium.

“The records produced to Judicial Watch include the homepage of a Swedish construction firm and what appears to be a worker complaint from someone employed in Saudi Arabia,” Judicial Watch adds.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

Video Shows Biden Sent Troops To Border To Open Gates

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Construction continues on new border wall system project near Yuma, AZ. Recently constructed border wall near Yuma, Arizona on June 3, 2020. CBP photo by Jerry Glaser.

ANALYSIS – Please hold the door! Well, it can’t get more ironic or infuriating than this.

A new video appears to show a U.S. soldier, apparently, a female National Guard troop activated by Joe Biden, unlocking and opening a gate in Texas to allow a large group of illegal aliens to cross into the United States.

And Biden thinks it’s funny.

This, after Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas shamelessly said on ABC’s “This Week” that Team Biden had succeeded in getting the word out that the nation’s borders were not open.

The video tweeted by Fox News Channel (FNC) Los Angeles bureau reporter Bill Melugin, is dated May 15, just after Biden allowed the Trump-era Title 42 to expire. The specific location in Texas was Eagle Pass in the U.S. Border Patrol Del Rio Sector.

It is not an official Customs and Border Protection (CBP) entry point. In fact, the gate is part of a Texas state border barrier, and the land is reportedly private property.

And to be clear, the soldier was reported to be acting under orders, and the migrants were loaded on a U.S. government bus.

Texas officials quickly highlighted that the soldier is not a member of the Texas National Guard deployed by Governor Greg Abbott under Operation Lone Star.

Instead, she is a Missouri Army National Guard (ARNG) member deployed to “assist” Border Patrol agents under Title 10 by Team Biden.

But the joke is on us.

It seems Biden’s understanding of “assisting the Border Patrol” involves opening the gates to allow illegal migrants to enter the country before being symbolically “processed” and released into the country.

Many of the migrants are being given immigration court date appearances set so far into the future as to be meaningless. Others are let go without any specific court dates.

One Venezuelan told the Washington Examiner that his mother “was told to wait 10 years before she can see a judge.” Another Venezuelan man was told to appear in court in March – 2027.

When asked by reporters about how he believed things were proceeding after Title 42 expired, Biden responded with a laugh, saying: “Much better than you all expected.”

Of course, they are better than expected when you are facilitating their entry to avoid images of mass chaos at the border. “Thank God there’s a camera there so we can watch them all come through in a nice orderly fashion,” one Twitter user commented.

Even disgraced and fired liberal CNN host Chris Cuomo bashed Biden about this:

…we have our president laughing, “Ha ha ha. It’s not as bad as you expected.” Really? With record numbers being processed and released into America. It’s no laughing matter, but if it is a joke, the joke is on us, because the people in power are allowing this to continue.

And while the border looks less chaotic than in recent months, illegal migrants are filling processing centers to capacity, with an unbelievable backlog of two million pending court cases.

Meanwhile, Mayorkas also touted a 50% drop in illegal migrant encounters on the border since Title 42 was rescinded, with 6,300 encounters on Friday and about 4,200 on Saturday.

But their numbers had exploded right before the end of the pandemic-era restriction, topping more than 10,000 a day, so a big drop isn’t hard to achieve.

And with U.S. troops deployed, order is restored – because the border gates are now officially open. The joke really is on us.

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

‘Bidenomics’ – U.S. National Debt Passes $33 Trillion for First Time

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Image via Pixabay free images

ANALYSIS – In case some readers weren’t sure, this is a big reason the conservative GOP ‘Freedom Caucus’ is threatening a government shutdown. Thanks to Joe Biden’s massive spending orgy, the gross U.S. national debt has breached the $33 trillion mark for the first time.

To be precise, according to the U.S. Treasury Department, as of September 18, 2023 (just 12 days short of the end of our fiscal year), the national debt has risen to $33,053,950,837,720 or $33.05 trillion.

America’s runaway inflation, which is crushing everyone’s pocketbooks, is just one result of this part of ‘Bidenomics.’

This unprecedented debt is also fueling concerns that another fight over federal spending may trigger the first government shutdown since 2019.

Without drastic spending cuts, it’s only going to get worse, much worse.

Even accounting for newly passed spending cuts, the U.S. national debt is on track to top $50 trillion by the end of the decade, impacted by mounting interest and the cost of the nation’s social programs.

This is unsustainable; a looming catastrophe waiting to happen.

And, yes, while Donald Trump clearly overspent, especially due to the COVID-19 epidemic, this current staggering debt, and the debt going forward, is mostly Biden’s fault.

As David Winston explained in Rollcall back in April:

The president [Biden] and his White House have taken the 2020 COVID-19, one-time-only crisis budget as his administration’s working baseline, rather than the pre-Covid 2019 budget, which had a significant $4.4 trillion price tag.

In 2020, because of the pandemic, the budget jumped 47 percent to $6.5 trillion, as both Democrats and Republicans supported the need for emergency funding. That COVID funding was to sunset as the country returned to normal — as it did last year. Apparently, Biden decided to ignore that crucial point.

Instead, he saw that supersized budget in 2020 not as a crisis, but an opportunity that could be exploited going forward to pay for what amounted to a historic spending spree that kicked off with the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan and drove what became the worst inflation in 40 years. During Biden’s first two years in office, he oversaw spending that was 40 percent higher than the pre-COVID 2019 budget.

According to the CBO, Biden is going to match Trump’s addition to the national debt in just three years, reaching a total of $7.1 trillion over his four years. That would be $1.5 trillion more than Trump contributed during his term, which included the 2020 one-time COVID emergency spending. If Biden’s 2024 proposed budget actually passed, he would add as much to the national debt as Trump and Bush 43 combined. House Republican leaders have made clear his budget isn’t going anywhere; but it illustrates just how out of control Biden’s spending policies really are.

This is a big reason why the House Freedom Caucus is willing to shut down the government to try to impose some sort of fiscal discipline.

While much of the news has focused on the ‘intransigent’ MAGA conservatives undermining Speaker Kevin McCarthy and the rest of the House Republicans on this issue, Biden refuses to even discuss the House majority’s proposals.

Biden says he wants a “clean” debt ceiling vote without any provisions to control spending. This is not surprising since he just proposed a budget that will reach a record $10 trillion in spending by 2033. 

As horrible as a government shutdown will be, allowing this massive debt to keep growing is unacceptable. Without massive cuts, everyday Americans will still be paying the bill, long after Biden is gone.

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

GOP Governors Migrant ‘Stunt’ Working as Dem Mayors Plead for Help

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via Wikimedia Commons

ANALYSIS – When Republican governors Ron DeSantis of Florida and Greg Abbott of Texas began busing illegal migrants from their states to deep blue ‘sanctuary’ cities like New York City, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., Democrats, and the establishment media called it a political ‘stunt.’

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, leading another state suffering from the same migrant crisis, has also sent migrants from his state to sanctuary cities in recent months.

Abbott has been the most prolific bussing migrants north. 

DeSantis sent a couple of busloads to the uber liberal and wealthy enclave of Martha’s Vineyard, the exclusive Massachusetts island that is a regular playground for liberal Hollywood and DC elites.

The governors want to put the pressure of Joe Biden’s horrendous border and immigration policies on the front stoops of big city Democrat mayors, instead of the backyards of mostly red Republican border states.  

They also wanted to highlight the issue nationally and emphasize the sheer insanity of the entire sanctuary city concept where illegal aliens are virtually invited to come and stay, safe from federal law enforcement.

And the governors’ ‘stunt’ appears to be working.

Both the outgoing mayor of Chicago and the new mayor of NYC are begging for help with the crush of these migrants.

NYC Mayor Eric Adams, a national surrogate for Biden, has been the most outspoken, recently saying Biden has “failed” his city which is being “destroyed by the migrant crisis.”

Mayor Lori Lightfoot of Chicago sent a letter to Abbott on Sunday requesting that he stop sending busloads of migrants to the Windy City over what she called political motivations.

She said the city has been caring for more than 8,000 penniless migrants since the first buses arrived from Texas in August. And the number is growing.

But Abbott began sending migrant buses to these blue cities in the fall as a response to the surge of migrant crossings at the southern border caused by Bien’s obscene and likely illegal immigration policies. 

Abbott has said the migrant ‘relocations will continue until the federal government secures the border.

In her letter, Lightfoot said she is sympathetic to the challenges of border towns in Texas but wrote:

Chicago is a Welcoming City and we collaborate with County, State, and community partners to rise to this challenge, but your lack of consideration or coordination in an attempt to cause chaos and score political points has resulted in a critical tipping point in our ability to receive individuals and families in a safe, orderly, and dignified way.

Well, good. Now she can truly be ‘sympathetic’ to the border towns suffering under the stampede of illegal migrants Biden is allowing into the country.

She added a bunch of other claptrap in her letter blaming Abbott for being heartless and creating a humanitarian crisis, etc.

Unfortunately, what she totally ignores is that her ‘welcoming’ policies, and those of her party and the president, are the direct cause of the migrant crisis.

Meanwhile, Politico reports that “Republicans just gained an unlikely ally in their attacks on the president’s immigration policies: the Democratic mayor of New York.”

Unlike Lightfoot, Adams seems to get it.

GOP leaders high-fived this month after hearing Mayor Adams say Biden had “failed” the city on immigration and that NYC “is being destroyed by the migrant crisis.”

In this past year, more than 57,000 migrants have arrived in New York after crossing the southern border. Some were sent from states like Texas, but others arrived on their own.

City services used to house, feed, educate, and provide health care to newcomers are estimated to cost taxpayers $2.9 billion next year alone.

This is more than the entire NYC Fire Department operating budget. 

Adams’ new rhetoric has drawn praise from some Republicans and the conservative editorial page of the New York Post.

His words have also echoed remarks by Fox News contributor Sean Duffy.

But not all Republicans are cheering for Adams. Rep. Chip Roy of Texas wasn’t quite ready to applaud the New York mayor.

Politico continued:

“Eric Adams is right to blame the Biden Administration for the border crisis, but this is the same guy who campaigned on his city’s sanctuary status and extended childcare, colleague classes and other taxpayer-funded programs to illegal migrants,” Roy said in a statement.

“Texas has been bearing the brunt of this crisis for over two years — now New York is getting a taste of their own medicine.”

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

Amanda Head: Bar Association Goes Idiodically Woke

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Law schools across the country are abandoning their decades-long principles going woke and the move could prove disastrous for attorneys, current law students, and prospective law students across the nation.

Let Amanda break down the situation in the video below.

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

IRS Whistleblower Testimony Could Derail Hunter Biden Plea Deal

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President Joe Biden hugs his family during the 59th Presidential Inauguration ceremony in Washington, Jan. 20, 2021. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris took the oath of office on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol. (DOD Photo by Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Carlos M. Vazquez II)

Stating that judges must take all testimony into account before deciding to accept a plea deal, one congressional leader is calling on U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to release testimony from two Internal Revenue Service whistleblowers alleging President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden was given preferential treatment by the agency and is being protected from the true consequences of his crimes.

Biden has pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges, as well as federal firearms charges, as part of a deal with federal prosecutors.  He awaits a July 26 plea hearing.

But U.S. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-MO) is now calling on U Garland and U.S. Attorney for the District of Delaware David Weiss to submit to court allegations from Gary Shapley, previously the supervisor of the investigation at the IRS, and a second anonymous whistleblower alleging that investigators were pressured to go easy on Biden, ignore some crimes.

“Over the course of a single week in June, the existence of a plea agreement in this matter became public, a plea hearing was scheduled, and the Committee submitted whistleblower testimony to the full House,” said Smith in a letter to Garland and Weiss.

“Given the abruptness of the plea agreement announcement shortly after it became public that whistleblowers made disclosures to Congress, the seriousness of the whistleblower allegations, and the fact that multiple congressional investigations into the matter are ongoing, we ask that you file this letter and the attached information in the docket…,” said Smith.

“Placing the attached materials into the record is critical because the testimony provided by the two IRS whistleblowers brings new and compelling facts to light, and because it is essential for the Judge in this matter to have relevant information before her when evaluating the plea agreement,” wrote Smith.

“In his letter, Smith also highlights precedent where judges have rejected plea agreements for a variety of reasons, including situations where the judge finds that such deals were inadequate or deficient given the crimes committed or the motivation of the accused, or the plea deal was not in the best interest of the country,” a statement from the Committee reads.

Smith points out that plea agreements can be thrown out if it can be shown the plea agreement was reached improperly.

“In one state court proceeding, a judge rejected a plea agreement because ‘[i]t is contrary to justice. Justice in this society cannot be seen as being able to buy oneself out of a felony conviction.’ The Judge also went on to say, ‘[m]any in our community steal much less and go to prison or to jail…They steal much less and they don’t get a deferred judgment because they don’t have any money,’” wrote Smith.

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

Biden Pentagon ‘Diversity’ Push is Part of Radical Leftist Agenda, Harms US Warfighting

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Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III speaks during the 2023 U.S.-Japan Security Consultative Committee meeting co-hosted with Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken hosting Japanese Foreign Minister Hayashi Yoshimasa and Japanese Defense Minister Hamada Yasukazu, at the Department of State. Washington, D.C., Jan 11, 2023. (DoD photo by U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Jack Sanders)

ANALYSIS – The ‘Woke Wars’ at the Pentagon will be heating up now that Republicans have taken over the House of Representatives, but few know how bad the problem is.

And what exactly do we mean by ‘woke.’

Well, to me, woke is a catchall term invented by the left to describe a full spectrum of leftist and socialist agendas. Among them are diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), better described as DIE.

DIE includes Critical Race Theory (CRT), anti-white racism, extreme feminism as well as the radical transgender agenda. 

All flow from the Frankfurt School of modern socialism and intend to radically transform our institutions and society along socialist lines.

Not only are these policies wrong, but in many cases, they are illegal and unconstitutional; they simply codify reverse discrimination and racism in violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

Many of these concepts have thoroughly infected our colleges and universities and are being pushed down to even our high schools and grammar schools.

Some of this goes back to the 1980s, but most recently they have been pushed hard at the Pentagon by hardcore leftists with Team Clinton, Team Obama and now the same radicals with Team Biden.

This aggressive push for ‘diversity’ and the obsession with race totally undermines our military culture, where our troops are supposed to think less about our differences, not more.

As Michael Washburn of The Epoch Times writes:

The U.S. military’s increased push for diversity and inclusion, as reflected in the far-reaching National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) signed by President Joe Biden on Dec. 23, 2022, aims to remake the military’s culture and ethos along the same lines as left-wing policies that have been put to use at elite colleges and other areas of the private sphere, defense experts say.

While efforts to diversify the armed forces along racial and gender lines at the expense of traditional standards, aren’t new, the NDAA signals dramatically increased civilian input on and oversight of a culture once deemed to be the domain of professional soldiers, the experts told The Epoch Times.

Provisions of the NDAA that aim to boost diversity are so similar to policies enforced by private institutions, such as Harvard University, that an organization opposing the “woke” agenda in the armed forces, and supporting traditional standards and requirements [Veterans for Fairness and Merit- VFM], has gone so far as to lend its expertise in a lawsuit over Harvard’s admissions policies, in the form of an amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) filing (pdf), obtained by The Epoch Times. The filing argues that diversity and inclusion policies have harmed the military and aren’t a good idea in either the public or private spheres.

Part of Biden’s NDAA pushes illegal racial preferences in training and recruitment.

Scott McQuarrie, president of Veterans for Fairness and Merit (VFM), explains how bad this is: “[advocates of diversity] make this assertion that it’s a national security imperative that the military be allowed to use racial preferences in order to meet that high bar. Most people being candid with you would say that’s a very far-fetched argument.”

“In fact, our military has operated over the last few generations effectively without having to suspend the Constitution. In Bosnia, Panama, the Gulf War, Afghanistan, and Iraq, the military did quite well, and we don’t need to violate the Constitution for the military to execute its mission,” he added.

The Pentagon’s aggressive push for diversity and inclusion, as reflected in Biden’s far-reaching NDAA signed on Dec. 23, aims to radically transform the military’s culture and ethos along the same lines as left-wing policies that are ruining many colleges, corporations and civilian institutions.

They can’t be allowed to destroy our military, as they are destroying everything else. The GOP House needs to focus like a laser beam on these issues at the Defense Department, and private groups like VFM need to continue and ramp up their legal battle against DIE.

This is a war for the soul of our armed forces and our Republic.

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

Amanda Head: Fox News Ratings Beat By MSNBC!

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Is Fox News losing its touch?

Watch Amanda explain the controversy below:

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

Amanda Head: CNN Stabs Biden!

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Is the mainstream media finally waking up? Not so fast…

However, tensions between the press and the Biden administration are definitely heating up after what has been widely regarded as a friendly relationship…

Let Amanda explain the rising feud below:

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

Amanda Head: Hollywood Star Blasts Covid Inc!

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Hollywood actor Woody Harrelson is facing intense criticism after his recent Saturday Night Live appearance…

Watch Amanda break down the scandal below…

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.