Former CIA Director Leon Panetta says that he was cursed at by President Barack Obama's former chief of staff after he agreed to cooperate with the Senate's investigation into his agency's torture tactics in the wake of 9/11. In passages taken from his new book and published online bythe Intercept, Panetta explains the event that triggered the outburst, which flowed from the former chief of sta [...]

Udo Ulfkotte, a former editor of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, one of the largest newspapers in Germany, admits he worked for the CIA. “I’ve been a journalist for about 25 years, and I’ve been educated to lie, to betray, and not to tell the truth to the public,” Ulfkotte told Russia Today. “I was supported by the Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA. Why? Because I am pro-American.� [...]

As the Pentagon reports spending of over $1 billion on bombing ISIS in Iraq and Syria, ex-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says the fight against the Islamist movement may take as long as 30 years. Since mid-June, when militants from the Islamic State (also known as ISIS, or ISIL) launched their lightning offensive in Iraq, the Pentagon has spent $1.1 billion on fighting the militia, US Central C [...]

Tuesday this week commemorates 13 years since the start of the Afghan War "America's longest running campaign of its kind" yet an end to the operation is hardly on the horizon. Under the terms of the Bilateral Security Agreement, the pact signed last week by representatives for both the United States and Afghanistan, the US will significantly reduce the number of soldiers involved in its post-9 [...]

The Pentagon's 1033 Program, which is militarizing state and local police forces with everything from high-powered firearms to armored vehicles, is also giving weapons to officials who have no law enforcement functions. The practice is leading watchdogs and even some US government officials to question why the US military is so desperate to unload its cache of used military hardware that it is [...]

After six years, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has nearly weathered his chilly relationship with President Obama and can expect to coast through the next two years ignoring Obama’s appeals. But Obama is not the first U.S. president to be played by Israel, as Morgan Strong wrote in 2010. At the end of a news conference on April 13, 2010, President Barack Obama made the seemingly obvious poi [...]

Civil wars in Syria and Ukraine, the threat of ISIS, and now protests in Hong Kong. So far the UN has prevented a war from breaking out between super powers since the end of World War II, but recently the US has not gotten its way in the UNSC. By way of financial flows and sanctions, Western powers have ultimately started a world proxy war. CrossTalking with Rodney Shakespeare, Patrick Hennings [...]

US Vice President Joe Biden has made the latest in a series of chastening apologies, after the United Arab Emirates expressed “astonishment” at his Thursday remarks. Biden called US allies “the biggest problem” in fighting terrorism in the Middle East. Biden called Abu Dhabi's Crown Prince and Deputy Defense Minister Mohammed bin Zayed on Sunday to reaffirm the allies’ shared perspect [...]

ISIS militants trained by US Special Forces have been used as a lever to create disorder and organize a Sharia state along the lines of an Islamic caliphate to the advantage of the US military, geopolitical analyst William Engdahl told RT. The US military has, in one way or another, been involved in the Middle East region for over a decade. Why has the violence lasted so long? [...]

For several years, Official Washington blinded itself to the growing radicalism of the Syrian opposition, all the better to portray the Assad regime as the “bad guys” and the rebels as the “good guys.” Now, everyone is pointing fingers about the ISIS “surprise,” as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar explains. The recent burst of recriminations about what the U.S. intelligence community d [...]

Vice President Joe Biden, by blaming Washington's allies for the spread of IS in Iraq and Syria, attempted to distance the US from the mess that is emerging in the Middle East, former MI5 agent Annie Machon told RT. Addressing students at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum at the Institute of Politics at Harvard University, Joe Biden accused Turkey and the Gulf States of being unscrupulous in their [...]

Washington will not be the one to decide Sweden’s policies, Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström said after the US criticized Stockholm’s plans to officially recognize Palestine as a sovereign state. “It's not the US that decides our politics,” Wallström said, adding that the new Swedish authorities expected to “get criticism” after their announcement on Palestinian statehood [...]

The election of Barack Obama in 2008 brought hope and optimism to Americans and non-Americans alike. But after one and a half terms, the reality is sinking in that for all the promised change, it’s the “same old, same old.” The big question is why, writes Australian Greg Maybury. For folks who were fans of the late, great comedian Bill Hicks, they likely will be familiar with one of his m [...]

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed he would wash his hands of Joe Biden if reports that the US vice president blamed Turkey in part for the rise of the so-called Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) were true. On Thursday, Biden said his “old friend” Erdogan had admitted to making a mistake in allowing foreign fighters to cross the Turkish border into Syria. [...]

For the past three years, Official Washington has viewed the Syrian civil war as “white-hatted” rebels against “black-hatted” President Assad, but finally some of the “gray-hatted” reality is breaking through, though perhaps too late, Robert Parry reports. By Robert Parry In late summer 2013, Official Washington was rushing to the judgment that the “evil” Syrian President Bas [...]

America's leadership had to embarrass Europe to impose economic hits on Russia over the crisis in Ukraine - even though the EU was opposed to such a motion, US Vice President Joe Biden revealed during a speech at Harvard. “We’ve given Putin a simple choice: Respect Ukraine’s sovereignty or face increasing consequences,” Biden told a gathering at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum at Harvard [...]

US Vice-President Joe Biden has accused America's key allies in the Middle East of allowing the rise of the Islamic State (IS), saying they supported extremists with money and weapons in their eagerness to oust the Assad regime in Syria. America’s “biggest problem” in Syria is its regional allies, Biden told students at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum at the Institute of Politics at Harvard [...]

Islamic State has been a key foreign policy instrument for the US and a number of its allies and become one of the main drivers of the rebellion in Syria, Charles Shoebridge, security analyst and former British army officer, told RT. The US has one of the most powerful intelligence services in the world, but reports suggest it's not robust enough to target jihadists and safeguard civilians. How [...]

Secret Service Director Julia Pierson resigned from her post atop the security detail in charge of protecting United States President Barack Obama on Wednesday following several recent serious breaches. Pierson, who was appointed only last year to head the US Secret Service after the agency’s reputation was marred by events that preceded her tenure as director, testified on Capitol Hill earli [...]