US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Friday scrapped a plea agreement with 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, just two days after the announcement of a deal that reportedly would have taken the death penalty off the table. Agreements with Mohammed and two alleged accomplices announced Wednesday had appeared to have moved their long-running cases toward … Read more
Security establishment sources said there were no reports of Havana Syndrome in Delhi. (Reuters) US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director William Burns could lead an “egregious escalation” if it was found an adversarial power was involved in a fellow intelligence officer developing Havana Syndrome while the two were in India earlier this month, the country’s … Read more
It’s called the loneliest job in the world for a reason. Surrounded by everything a superpower can offer and watched by all, President Joe Biden wore the weight of a lonely man as he came to grips in recent days with the deadly end of the American effort in Afghanistan and tried to keep the … Read more
The United States spent billions supplying the Afghan military with the tools to defeat the Taliban, but the rapid capitulation of the armed forces means that weaponry is now fuelling the insurgents’ astonishing battlefield successes. “We provided our Afghan partners with all the tools — let me emphasise: all the tools,” US President Joe Biden … Read more
Mark Zaid, lawyer, Washington, DC. James Giordano, PhD, Georgetown University, senior fellow in biosecurity, technology, and ethics, U.S. Naval War College. National Academies of Science, Engineering, Medicine: “An Assessment of Illness in U.S. Government Employees and Their Families at Overseas Embassies.” Journal of the American Medical Association: “Neuroimaging Findings in US Government Personnel With … Read more
In early 2020, members of a Taliban-linked criminal network in Afghanistan detained in raids told interrogators that they had heard that Russians were offering money to reward killings of American and coalition troops. The claim, that Russia was trying to pay to generate more frequent attacks on Western forces, was stunning, particularly because the United … Read more
China’s effort to expand its growing influence represents one of the largest threats to the United States, according to a major annual intelligence report released Tuesday, which also warned of the broad national security challenges posed by Moscow and Beijing. The report does not predict a military confrontation with either Russia or China, but it … Read more
A human rights group in Afghanistan said Monday it was probing a shooting last week in which CIA-trained Afghan forces reportedly killed 20 civilians during an anti-Taliban operation in eastern Khost province. The development comes as Washington is trying to negotiate a reduction in violence between the Taliban and Afghan government forces. The reports first … Read more