That’s what Russia’s Federal Security Service said an American accused of being a spy was carrying when he allegedly tried to recruit a Russian agent for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. The Russian counterintelligence bureau now wants the man, identified as Ryan Christopher Fogle, expelled from the country, declaring him a “persona non grata.”

Fogle was detained on Monday wearing a blond wig, Russian authorities said. They also said he had large sums of euros, a Boy Scouts-style compass, three pairs of glasses, a flashlight, a map of Moscow and a typed contract offering $ 100,000 for future spy work.

“This is a down-payment from someone who is very impressed with your professionalism and who would greatly appreciate your cooperation in the future,” the letter, published by Russian news sites, reads. “Your security means a lot to us. This is why we chose this way of contacting you. We will continue to make sure our correspondent sic remains safe and secret.”

The letter concludes: “We look forward to working with you in the nearest future. Your friends.”

According to Russian officials, Fogle was a career agent whose cover was his role as third secretary of the political department of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. Photos published by the Russia Today website showed a man, presumed to be Fogle, in a blue-checkered shirt, baseball cap and blond wig pinned facedown to the ground. He was then was shown handcuffed inside an FSS office—without the wig. Another photograph shows a table covered with Fogle’s purported spy gear.

“The detainee was brought in the reception office of the Federal Security Service and after necessary procedures was handed over to the official representatives of the U.S. Embassy,” the bureau said in a statement. “Recently American intelligence has made multiple attempts to recruit employees of Russian law enforcement organs and special agencies, which have been detected and monitored by Russian FSB counterintelligence.”

The U.S. Embassy has yet to comment on the report.

According to The New York Times, Russia’s Foreign Ministry summoned U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul to appear on Wednesday to respond to the espionage allegation.

The ambassador, Reuters noted, was holding a live Q&A session (“#AskMcfaul”) on Twitter when news of the apparent arrest broke.

When was asked to comment on Fogle, McFaul wrote “No” in Russian.

Link

That’s what Russia’s Federal Security Service said an American accused of being a spy was carrying when he allegedly tried to recruit a Russian agent for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. The Russian counterintelligence bureau now wants the man, identified as Ryan Christopher Fogle, expelled from the country, declaring him a “persona non grata.”

Fogle was detained on Monday wearing a blond wig, Russian authorities said. They also said he had large sums of euros, a Boy Scouts-style compass, three pairs of glasses, a flashlight, a map of Moscow and a typed contract offering $ 100,000 for future spy work.

“This is a down-payment from someone who is very impressed with your professionalism and who would greatly appreciate your cooperation in the future,” the letter, published by Russian news sites, reads. “Your security means a lot to us. This is why we chose this way of contacting you. We will continue to make sure our correspondent sic remains safe and secret.”

The letter concludes: “We look forward to working with you in the nearest future. Your friends.”

According to Russian officials, Fogle was a career agent whose cover was his role as third secretary of the political department of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. Photos published by the Russia Today website showed a man, presumed to be Fogle, in a blue-checkered shirt, baseball cap and blond wig pinned facedown to the ground. He was then was shown handcuffed inside an FSS office—without the wig. Another photograph shows a table covered with Fogle’s purported spy gear.

“The detainee was brought in the reception office of the Federal Security Service and after necessary procedures was handed over to the official representatives of the U.S. Embassy,” the bureau said in a statement. “Recently American intelligence has made multiple attempts to recruit employees of Russian law enforcement organs and special agencies, which have been detected and monitored by Russian FSB counterintelligence.”

The U.S. Embassy has yet to comment on the report.

According to The New York Times, Russia’s Foreign Ministry summoned U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul to appear on Wednesday to respond to the espionage allegation.

The ambassador, Reuters noted, was holding a live Q&A session (“#AskMcfaul”) on Twitter when news of the apparent arrest broke.

When was asked to comment on Fogle, McFaul wrote “No” in Russian.

Link

January 2, 2013 12:26 pm

Iranian officials have instructed residents of Isfahan to leave the city, renewing concerns that a nearby nuclear site could be leaking radioactive material.

An edict issued Wednesday by Iranian authorities orders Isfahan’s one-and-a-half million people to leave the city “because pollution has now reached emergency levels,” the BBC reported.

However, outside observers suspect that the evacuation order may corroborate previous reports indicating that a uranium enrichment facility near Isfahan had been leaking radioactive material.

Tehran went to great lengths in December to deny these reports, telling state-run media outlets that “the rumors about leaking and contamination at Isfahan’s Uranium Conversion Facility are not true at all.”

November reports indicated that a radioactive leak might have poisoned several workers at the nuclear plant, which converts highly toxic yellowcake uranium into material that could be used in the core of a nuclear weapon.

The head of Iran’s emergency services agency said at the time that residents have no reason to worry about possible contamination resulting from a possible leak.

Stories about the potential leak soon disappeared from state-run news websites, Trend reported in late November.

Iranian officials denied that a leak has occurred and blamed Western media outlets for creating “tumult” in the region.

Wednesday’s evacuation order is now fueling concerns that Iranian officials are trying to hide something, including further fallout from a possible radioactive leak.

“Pollution in Isfahan is a problem but in the past, Iranian authorities respond by closing schools and the government to keep people at home and let the pollution dissipate, not by evacuating people,” said Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon adviser on Iran and Iraq who has written about Isfahan’s battle against pollution.

“Mass evacuations suggest a far more serious problem,” Rubin explained. “There are two possibilities here: There is a radiation leak and the regime is lying or there is really bad pollution and no
one believes the regime’s explanations.”

Rubin also pointed out that Iranian officials have a history of lying to both Western officials and their own citizens.

Editors comment: and western governments don’t lie to media and public??? Oh please when did the IRD become a legal entity. When did a western government official come out and say that income tax is voluntary??? whos lying to who round here?

It remains unclear whether the technology has been properly inspected for safety because Iran has denied Western officials access to many of its nuclear sites.

Editors comment: under the NPT agreement it is the right of Iran to porduce it’s own nuclear fuel AND MORE THAN THAT under that treaty it is the obligation of all other nuclear members to support Iran in it’s nuclear program and to advise on safety and provide technology to assist Iran with it’s nuclear program.
All other members of the NPT are breaking the treaty rules because they are all adding to US driven Sanctions.

The nuclear site at Isfahan has been targeted for attack in the past.

Editors comment: now even the western propaganda writers admit that the west has attacked this site in the past … and the term “in the past” tells me that this is an attack not an accident.

An unexplained explosion at the plant in 2011 is reported to have damaged the facility.

The nuclear plant also sits on an active fault line. The city of Isfahan has been destroyed at least six times from past earthquakes, a point of concern among regional experts.

“Given that Iran is on an earthquake zone and has lost tens of thousands of people with regularity suggests that a devastating nuclear accident is only a matter of time,” said Rubin.

We need to sit back and wait to see where the truth is here and most certainly not jump to accuse Iran of being sloppy.

Neal

Bodyguards for Iraq’s deputy prime minister have wounded two people after firing warning shots at Sunni protesters who had pelted his convoy with bottles and stones, witnesses said.

The incident took place on Sunday in the city of Ramadi in the western province of Anbar, to which Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq, himself a Sunni, had travelled to address people in an attempt to defuse sectarian tensions.

Thousands of Iraqi Sunnis have taken to the streets and blocked a main highway over the past week in protest against Shia Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, whom they accuse of discriminating against them and being under the sway of non-Arab neighbour Iran.

“Leave! Leave!” the protesters shouted at Mutlaq, who has actually been a frequent critic of Maliki.

“It’s only now Mutlaq comes to attend the protest and after seven days. He came to undermine the protest,” Saeed al-Lafi, a spokesman for the protesters, told the Reuters news agency.

Mutlaq’s guards opened fire to disperse the crowd after they threw objects at his convoy. Two people were wounded, the witness said.

In a statement following the incident, Mutlaq said some “rogue elements” at the protest had tried to kill him.

“Upon the deputy prime minister’s arrival, the protesters greeted him with great warmth … but some rogue elements which seek to divert the protesters from their legitimate demands carried out a cowardly assassination attempt against Doctor Mutlaq,” it read.

Protesters are demanding an end to what they see as the marginalisation of Iraq’s Sunni minority, which dominated the country until the US-led invasion of 2003 that toppled Saddam Hussein.

They want Maliki to abolish anti-terrorism laws they say are used to persecute them.

Arab Spring slogans

Echoing slogans used in popular revolts that brought down leaders in Egypt, Yemen, Tunisia and Yemen, protesters have also called on Maliki to step down.

“Is this the way to deal with peaceful protesters? To shoot them? This is really outrageous,” said protester Ghazwan al-Fahdawi, displaying empty bullet casings from shots he said had been fired by Mutlaq’s guards.

In the northern city of Mosul, the provincial council called a three-day strike to press Baghdad to release women prisoners and stop targeting Sunni politicians.

Protests erupted last week in Anbar province after troops loyal to Maliki detained bodyguards of his finance minister, a Sunni.

That happened just hours after President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd seen as a steadying influence on Iraq’s tumultuous politics, was flown abroad for medical care.

In a televised interview late on Sunday, Maliki said there were foreign agendas behind the protests and urged protesters to go home.

“You wanted to convey your message, it has been received, and that is enough because if this goes on it will complicate matters.”

The Arab League described recent developments as “worrying” and called for dialogue in a statement released on Friday.

A year after US troops left, sectarian friction, as well as tension over land and oil between Arabs and ethnic Kurds, threaten renewed unrest and are hampering efforts to repair the damage of years of violence and exploit Iraq’s energy riches.

http://www.aljazeera.com

Predictably the blame is being dumped on mid-level officials, not the folks with the real power, and this is meant to wrap up the entire scandal with a bow, and no questions asked about the failure to send help to the Benghazi mission and the incredible delays before US personnel arrived in Benghazi.

Eric Boswell, assistant secretary of diplomatic security, and Charlene Lamb, deputy assistant secretary of state for international programs, submitted their resignations, a senior official said. A third official in the Near East Affairs bureau also resigned, the official said.

Boswell and Lamb oversaw security for the Benghazi mission. Lamb testified before Congress about the security precautions. Documents show Lamb denied repeated requests for additional security in Libya.

Charlene Lamb was an obvious scapegoat, her name was up and her testimony was an infuriating disaster. And Lamb certainly deserves a chunk of the blame for her rejection of the necessary security measures in Benghazi, but she wasn’t the one who was truly responsible. Lamb was following the policies that had been set down, and acting in tune with those priorities.

But Lamb was also a longtime DS employee and not a political appointee.

Veteran diplomat Thomas Pickering, who was chairman of the review board, said the members placed primary blame “at the assistant secretary level, which is in our view the appropriate place to look, where the decision making in fact takes place. Where, if you like, the rubber hits the road.”

Pickering on the other hand is an authentic bad guy and his political ties are bad news. But this is an independent review board whose members were picked by Hillary Clinton. The fallout from such a review board was never going to impact her.

The Democrats and their media allies want this to be the end of Benghazigate, but it’s only the beginning.

Frontpage Magazine

by Tom Bowman

December 14, 2012 2:41 PM

President Obama has warned Syrian President Bashar Assad, shown here in 2009, against using chemical weapons.
Louai Beshara /AFP/Getty Images

U.S. and allied officials say the forces of embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad have prepared several dozen bombs and shells loaded with the lethal chemical sarin.

The number is a larger estimate than has previously been reported. The Syrians loaded the weapons with the chemical agents in the past several weeks, the officials say.

Those preparations raise fears that the fighting against rebel forces could enter a new and more troubling phase, according to the officials, who requested anonymity.

They were particularly alarmed when Assad’s forces fired Scud missiles at rebel positions earlier this week, initially believing that the warheads included sarin, one of the most deadly chemical weapons, which can kill victims within minutes.

Between three and eight Scuds were fired from the capital Damascus, according to Pentagon sources, toward rebel positions around the northern city of Aleppo, a distance of some 200 miles.

The U.S. and its allies are preparing for ways to address the chemical weapons threat.

CIA contractors are training rebels in Jordan on how to identify and safeguard chemical weapons that are located in dozens of sites around the country.

NATO Is Involved In Planning

NATO is stepping up planning. The Czech Republic, which has expertise in chemical weapons, is taking the lead on a more robust rebel training effort, officials said.

NATO is also identifying medical personnel who could be quickly dispatched to Syria to assist any casualties, officials said. And there is talk among the allies of reaching out to the Syrian population –- either through the international media or other means –- to describe the symptoms of exposure to chemical weapons. NATO also is considering airdropping medicines that could help Syrian civilians in the event of a chemical attack.

The alliance already has reached out to the Syrian National Coalition, which was recognized this week by the U.S., to begin planning for disposal of the chemical weapons if Assad is removed from power.

Still, a particular concern among allied officials is this scenario: Assad falls and various rebel groups begin fighting among themselves, which may make it more difficult to locate and secure the weapons.

The Syrian bombs and shells loaded with chemical agents were located at one or two air bases, officials told NPR. The mixture of two precursor chemicals creates sarin. But it has a limited shelf life.

“Once they have mixed them together, they’re in a circumstance where it’s kind of a use it or lose it,” Charles Duelfer, a former U.N. weapons inspector, told NPR’s All Things Considered. “That’s why that indicator is quite troubling.”

Those weapons could still be used, particularly as rebels continue to make gains in and around Damascus.

Still, there are indications, according to officials, that Iran and Hezbollah leaders have urged Assad not to use the weapons.

U.S. President Warns Syria

And so has President Obama.

“We simply cannot allow the 21st century to be darkened by the worst weapons of the 20th century,” the president said recently. “If you Assad make the tragic mistake of using these weapons, there will be consequences and you will be held accountable.”

White House spokesman Jay Carney, who didn’t confirm the launch of the Scuds this week, said their use would be a sign of desperation. The Scud — a tactical ballistic missile developed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War and exported widely to other countries — is not considered a very sophisticated weapon. It’s inaccurate and only useful for large targets.

So, officials say, the launch of the Scuds, together with the use of crude “barrel bombs” that combine explosives and nails, is a sign that Assad not only is becoming more desperate but also may be running out of conventional weapons. He is having a difficult time resupplying his weapons stocks, and rebels have overrun some of his military bases, seizing weaponry.

Analysts say Syria has the largest stockpile of chemical weapons in the Middle East, an arsenal that includes tons of chemical agents along with hundreds of bombs and missiles that can be loaded with chemicals.

Strong Evidence Of Weapons Stockpile

There’s substantial evidence that Syria has chemical weapons.

Besides sarin, Syria also has mustard agent, developed during World War I, which can blister the lungs and damage the skin.

“First of all, Bashar al-Assad has not denied that he has chemical weapons,” said Duelfer, the former U.N. inspector. “He has not, you know, agreed to the chemical weapons treaty.”

Syrian Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi said in July that chemical weapons would never be used against the Syrian people, just “external aggression.”

Duelfer also said there have been intelligence reports going back years showing Syrian forces testing chemical weapons.

“They’ve been testing the deployment mechanisms in ways so they’re quite visible. So they’ve not been trying to conceal their capabilities. … What makes them different as compared with regular explosives is you want the weapon to detonate above the ground. And then when they test, they put a grid on the ground so that they can see how the agent disperses. These types of tests are readily observable from, you know, the outside world. These things are not hidden.”

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/12/14/167267519/u-s-officials-syria-has-prepared-several-dozen-chemical-bombs

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff

Sun Nov 25, 2012 8:6AM GMT

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has dismissed several government officials over allegations of corruption, fraud and influence peddling.

Rosemary de Noronha, the personal secretary of former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who has headed the regional office of the presidency in Sao Paulo since 2005 and Deputy Attorney General Jose Weber Holanda are among officials being under police investigation.

The Brazilian police raided the Brasilia office of the deputy attorney general on Friday and seized computers and information.

According to a statement from the presidential office, under Rousseff’s order “all the government employees under investigation by the Federal Police will be dismissed or fired from their positions.”

The Brazilian president also ordered all agencies mentioned in the police probe to open internal investigations.

The sacked authorities ran an influence peddling ring selling government permits to businessmen in return for bribes.

The recent scandal came in the wake of another political corruption trial that convicted former president’s closest aides for buying votes in Congress for his minority Workers’ Party government in 2003.

The scandal did not implicate Lula, but it tarnished his legacy. The new scandal, however, could further undermine his political status.

The bribery ring came under investigation in 2010 when a government official returned the bribe he had received and revealed the peddling ring.

Rousseff was elected as Brazil’s first female president, who took office in January 2011.

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/11/25/274409/brazil-sacks-officials-over-scandal/

t U.S. denies visas to Iran officials for U.N. meeting: report
Reuters – 14 hrstDUBAI (Reuters) – The United States has denied visas to Iranian officials hoping to attend a U.N. meeting in New York, Iran’s state news agency reported on Saturday.

The Iranian judiciary’s Human Rights Headquarters said in a statement that the United States denied visas to members of an Iranian delegation that planned to travel to a meeting of the United Nations’ Third Committee, which focuses on social issues and human rights, state news agency IRNA said.

“The U.S. government, by not issuing visas to the members of the delegation, wants to ruin the possibility of the presence of the delegation, and prevent its members from conducting their mission of interacting and cooperating with the United Nations,” said the statement, according to IRNA.

The judiciary body urged U.N. officials to warn the United States against such decisions and remind it of its obligations as U.N. host country, IRNA reported. It did not say how many Iranian officials had applied for visas from the United States or when they wanted to travel.

The Swiss embassy, which handles U.S. consular services in Iran, did not respond immediately to a request from comment. A U.S. State Department spokesperson said it did not comment on visa cases.

As U.N. host country, the United States has a policy of issuing visas for members of delegations, in line with a 1947 pact with the United Nations, regardless of disputes with individual countries.

However, it does sometimes refuse entry to government officials and professionals from Iran with which it has had no diplomatic ties since 1979 and which it accuses of seeking nuclear weapons, a charge Tehran denies.

In September, Iran’s Fars news agency reported that the U.S. had denied visas to about 20 government officials hoping to attend the U.N. General Assembly, including two ministers, although President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did attend and addressed the assembly.

At the time, a U.S. official speaking on condition of anonymity, said: “Visas for foreign officials to attend U.N. meetings in the U.N. headquarters district are adjudicated in accordance with all applicable laws and procedures including both U.S. law and the U.N. Headquarters Agreement, however, visa records are confidential.”

In 2009, as Iranian authorities were crushing protests against the re-election of Ahmadinejad, Iran said a delegation headed by its first vice president had been refused visas to attend a U.N. conference on the global financial crisis.

(Reporting by Yeganeh Torbati; Editing by Alison Williams)

http://news.yahoo.com/u-denies-visas-iran-officials-u-n-meeting-175007466.html