Black Horizon

Attack in london now classified as terror attack.

2013-05-22T15:49:00.000-07:00

THE GUARDIAN: Dramatic footage has emerged of the suspected terrorist attack near the London barracks that left one man dead, showing a suspect with blood-covered hands using jihadist rhetoric to justify the violence.

On Wednesday night the prime minister, David Cameron, vowed that Britain will "never buckle" in the face of terrorist incidents, and condemned the "absolutely sickening" killing in Woolwich.

As the government's emergency committee Cobra convened in central London to assess the implications of the incident, ITV News broadcast footage of one of the alleged attackers.

Brandishing a cleaver and a knife, and with the body of the victim lying yards away, the man said: "We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you. The only reason we have done this is because Muslims are dying every day. This British soldier is an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth."

"We must fight them. I apologise that women had to witness this today.

Police at the scene in Woolwich, south London, where a man was killed and two others were taken to hospital with gunshot wounds following a 'serious incident'. BBC screengrab

It is believed the person died after suffering knife injuries, possibly around the head area.

Two people have been taken to hospital after they were shot by armed police.

There were reports that the man who was fatally attacked was wearing a Help for Heroes T-shirt.

The Woolwich and Greenwich MP, Nick Raynsford, said it was his understanding that one person, a serving soldier, was dead but there was no immediate confirmation of this from the Ministry of Defence.

The prime minister said: "Tonight, our thoughts should be with the victim, with their family, with their friends."

"People across Britain, people in every community, I believe, will utterly condemn this attack.

"We have had these sorts of attacks before in our country and we never buckle in the face of them."

Cameron was speaking at a Paris press conference with French president Francois Hollande but confirmed he would cut short the visit to return to the UK tonight to chair a meeting of the Government's Cobra emergency committee in the morning.

Chiefs at the Woolwich barracks were understood to be trying to account for military personnel, amid reports the dead person may have been connected to the military. The incident happened 300-400 metres from the perimeter of the barracks.

The barracks is home to the Princess of Wales regiment and the Kings Troop, which is a ceremonial unit, that relocated to Woolwich last year.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission is investigating the shooting by police, which is standard in cases where officers open fire.

In a statement the IPCC said it had "been made aware by Metropolitan Police Service of an incident in Woolwich, south London. IPCC investigators have been deployed to the scene and to the post-incident process. The IPCC has declared this as an independent investigation."

Earlier Raynsford said: "The incident occurred early afternoon. One individual is dead, two others are seriously injured and in hospital.

"We think a serving soldier was the victim. We don't know the circumstances surrounding the incident.

Gotta reads: "The Permit" - By Bill Scott

2013-05-16T07:10:00.000-07:00

The best way to get the truth out is sometimes through thinly veiled fiction:

A Department of Homeland Security intelligence team has identified a new, incredibly dangerous terrorist cabal. It’s the most grave domestic threat to national security the U.S. has faced since nine-eleven. In the past decade, it has killed more Americans than al Qaeda murdered on nine-eleven.

These terrorists are deeply entrenched in our society. They look like us, talk like us, live in our neighborhoods and, for the most part, pass for respected citizens. But they are killing Americans throughout this great country—and becoming more powerful every day.
Their code name is INDIGO.

Checkmate, a covert counterterrorism squad, has the advanced-technology weapons and agents to neutralize INDIGO, but very little time to do so. If Checkmate fails, America will erupt in armed rebellion.

"The Permit" is based on actual events associated with the murder of my son, Erik B. Scott, on July 10, 2010. A decorated Army officer and West Point graduate with an MBA from Duke University, Erik was the epitome of success. This video describes how Erik fell victim to a perfect storm of fear, arrogance and a trigger-happy fool. The subsequent cover-up of his murder defies belief—but it happened."

click here to buy "The Permit"

Was Bin Laden ever buried at sea? No photos exist.

2013-05-15T05:48:00.001-07:00

By DAILY MAIL REPORTER

Enemy No 1: Internal emails released by the Defense Department show that no U.S. sailors witnessed Osama bin Laden's burial at sea aboard USS Carl Vinson

Internal emails among U.S. military officers indicate that no American sailors watched Osama bin Laden's burial at sea from the USS Carl Vinson, and traditional Islamic procedures were followed during the secret ceremony.

The emails, obtained by The Associated Press through the Freedom of Information Act, are heavily blacked out, but are the first public disclosure of government information about the al-Qaida leader's death. The emails were released Wednesday by the Defense Department.

Bin Laden was killed on May 1, 2011, by a Navy SEAL team that assaulted his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

One email stamped secret and sent on May 2 by a senior Navy officer briefly describes how bin Laden's body was washed, wrapped in a white sheet, and then placed in a weighted bag.

According to another message from the Vinson's public affairs officer, only a small group of the ship's leadership was informed of the burial.

‘Traditional procedures for Islamic burial was followed,’ the May 2 email from Rear Adm. Charles Gaouette reads. ‘The deceased's body was washed (ablution) then placed in a white sheet. The body was placed in a weighted bag.

‘A military officer read prepared religious remarks, which were translated into Arabic by a native speaker. After the words were complete, the body was placed on a prepared flat board, tipped up, whereupon the deceased's body slid into the sea.’

Final destination: Bin Laden's body was taken to an unknown location aboard USS Carl Vinson and dropped into the sea, but the Defense Department says that it cannot find any images showing the terrorist mastermind's remains on the ship

Fallen mastermind: In this undated file image from video seized from bin Laden's walled compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, the al Qaeda leader watches TV

Stronghold: Members of the anti-terrorism squad are seen surrounding the compound where bin Laden was killed by Navy SEAL Team 6 in Abbottabad May 4, 2011

The email also included a cryptic reference to the intense secrecy surrounding the mission.

‘The paucity of documentary evidence in our possession is a reflection of the emphasis placed on operational security during the execution of this phase of the operation,’ Gaouette's message reads.

Long-awaited news: U.S. President Barack Obama is pictured after announcing live on television the death of Osama bin Laden from the East Room of the White House in Washington May 1, 2011

Recipients of the email included Adm. Mike Mullen, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. James Mattis, the top officer at U.S. Central Command. Mullen retired from the military in September 2011.

Earlier, Gaouette, then the deputy commander of the Navy's Fifth Fleet, and another officer used code words to discuss whether the helicopters carrying the SEALs and bin Laden's body had arrived on the Vinson.

‘Any news on the package for us?’ he asked Rear Adm. Samuel Perez, commander of the carrier strike group that included the Vinson.

‘FEDEX delivered the package,’ Perez responded. ‘Both trucks are safely enroute home base.’

Although the Obama administration has pledged to be the most transparent in American history, it is keeping a tight hold on materials related to the bin Laden raid.

In a response to separate requests from the AP for information about the mission, the Defense Department said in March that it could not locate any photographs or video taken during the raid or showing bin Laden's body. It also said it could not find any images of bin Laden's body on the Vinson.

The Pentagon also said it could not find any death certificate, autopsy report or results of DNA identification tests for bin Laden, or any pre-raid materials discussing how the government planned to dispose of bin Laden's body if he were killed.

Historic moment: In this May 1, 2011, image, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden receive an update on the bin Laden mission in the Situation Room

The Defense Department also refused to confirm or deny the existence of helicopter maintenance logs and reports about the performance of military gear used in the raid.

One of the stealth helicopters that carried the SEALs to Abbottabad crashed during the mission and its wreckage was left behind. People who lived near bin Laden's compound took photos of the disabled chopper.

The CIA, which ran the bin Laden raid and has special legal authority to keep information from ever being made public, has not responded to AP's request for records about the mission.

Turkish jet missing

2013-05-13T13:48:00.001-07:00

CNN) -- The Turkish military said it lost communications Monday with one of its jets flying over southern Turkey.

Officials have "received information that the plane crashed" in the southern province of Osmaniye near Yarpuz, the Osmaniye governor said, according to the semi-official Turkish news agency Anadolu. Yarpuz is about 35 kilometers (22 miles) northwest of the Syrian border,

The pilot sent the message "I'm jumping" shortly before the military lost contact with the jet at about 2:15 p.m., the military said.

Search efforts were under way, the military said.

Space Oddity - sung from Space

2013-05-13T05:40:00.002-07:00

STRATCOM commander strips missileers of their launch keys.

2013-05-08T15:55:00.000-07:00

An Air Force commander has temporarily stripped 17 officers of their authority to control and launch nuclear-armed Minuteman III missiles after he found their performance lacking during a recent inspection. The unprecedented move highlights the Air Force’s continuing effort to make up for missteps involving its nuclear weapons arsenal that came to light in 2008.

In mid-April Lt. Col. Jay Folds, the deputy commander of the 91st Operations Group, based at Minot AFB in North Dakota, ordered that 17 of his officers be decertified from their responsibilities and undergo refresher training in the wake of their poor performance during a recent inspection.

One of the officers was investigated for potentially compromising nuclear launch codes, a decision on disciplinary action is pending. News of the decertification was first reported by the Associated Press.

The news comes five years after the Air Force refocused on attention to details for its nuclear mission following a series of missteps involving the handling of nuclear weapons under their care. In one case a B-52 bomber crew flew a mission over several Midwestern states while unknowing carrying nuclear-armed cruise missiles.

In response to those incidents Defense Secretary Robert Gates fired the Air Force’s top two senior officials and the Air Force integrated control of its nuclear inventory under the newly created Global Strike Command.

The 17 officers sent to retraining work in underground launch control centers for Minuteman III missiles housed in silos dotting the North Dakota countryside. The Air Force maintains 450 of the missiles that can each carry multiple nuclear warheads.

Folds’ unit had recently passed a comprehensive inspection with a “satisfactory” rating, the mid-range of five levels with “unsatisfactory” being the lowest.

The unit received an excellent rating in 14 of 22 categories listed for inspection and a “satisfactory” in all but one of the others which was listed as “marginal,” one step above an unsatisfactory rating.

This ‘”marginal” rating for “crew operations” prompted Folds to decertify 17 of his officers. He announced his move in an unusually blunt internal email he sent to his airmen on April 12 entitled “Did You Know?” A copy of the e-mail was obtained by ABC News.

“Did you know that we, as an operations group, have fallen ” asked Folds, “and it is time to stand ourselves back up?” ”We are in fact in a crisis right now,” he added.

“We’re discovering such rot in the crew force that your behavior while on alert is accepting” of missteps in launch security protocols “all in the name of not inconveniencing yourselves.”

“We need to hit the reset button and restructure the crew force to take you out of your comfort zones (which are rotten comfort zones), and rebuild from the ground up,” wrote Folds. He urged his airmen to “get back to the basics and crush any rules violators.”

“You have yourselves to thank … if you’re a violator, you did this to us. If you’re a hater, you did this to us. If you actually follow the rules, but don’t challenge the violators and haters, you did this to us. We are breaking you down, and we will build from the ground up.

At a budget hearing on Capitol Hill, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh told senators there “was nothing good about the incident” at Minot but said he did not believe “we have a nuclear surety risk” there.

“I believe we have commanders who are taking very aggressive action to ensure that never occurs. And in that respect, this is a good thing,” he said. “The idea that we have people not performing to the standard we expect will never be good, and we won’t tolerate it.”

Though he liked the way Minot commanders responded to the rating Welsh also wished “they’d used different language in the email they sent. The word ‘rot’ didn’t excite me, but it got my attention.”

Air Force Secretary Mike Donley said he was “confident in the Air Force’s ability to maintain a safe and secure nuclear deterrent.” He noted the Minot incident reflects the “stronger inspection process that has been put in place” following the 2008 mishaps.

READ THE REST OF THE STORY HERE

Solar Impulse aircraft begins slow flight to Washington

2013-05-03T08:40:00.003-07:00

By Michael A. Fletcher,

MOFFETT FEDERAL AIRFIELD, Calif. — The first plane that can fly day and night powered only by the sun on Friday began a transcontinental journey that will reach Washington by mid-June.

Solar Impulse, which lifted off from this World War II-era airfield shortly after 6 a.m. Pacific time, has room for only one person and an average cruising speed of about 43 miles per hour. But its Swiss developers say the technology suggests the possibilities of clean-energy flight.

The plane has an ultra-light carbon-fiber frame that allows it to weigh 3,500 pounds — about the same as a mid-size car. It has the wingspan of a 747 and a slender fuselage, giving it the look of a giant high-tech dragonfly.

The plane’s power is drawn from the sun by 12,000 photovoltaic cells that form the top of its wings. The juice is collected in a series of batteries arrayed behind the craft’s four electric engines. It routinely reaches altitudes of up to 28,000 feet, about a mile below the thin air traversed by big commercial airliners zipping around at close to 500 miles per hour. On-board instruments alert the pilot if the plane banks even a degree too far.

For all of its innovations, at this stage of development, Solar Impulse is no more practical for commercial flight than was the single-engine Spirit of St. Louis that Charles Lindbergh piloted across the Atlantic Ocean in 1927.

The plane’s engines put out about 10 horsepower — roughly the same amount of power as the Wright brothers’ first planes. Solar Impulse cannot take off or land in windy conditions, nor can it fly through clouds. The lone pilot wears a parachute and is confined to an area the size of a “bad economy seat,” noted the project’s chief executive and co-founder Andre Borschberg, 60, an engineer and former fighter pilot.

The tiny cockpit is unheated and unpressurized, meaning the pilot must endure extreme heat and cold and wear an oxygen mask. On long flights, Borschberg practices meditation and advanced breathing techniques to stay energized. His co-founder and the plane’s other pilot,Bertrand Piccard, a psychiatrist, does self-hypnosis.

And as for bodily functions — the pilot relies on spent water bottles and eschews fibrous foods in the days before a flight to make sure that diapers do not have to be pressed into service.

But comfort is not the project’s goal. “The point of this is to underscore how far we’ve come and how far we need to go to develop alternative sources of power, particularly solar energy,” said Bob van der Linden, chairman of the aeronautics department at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. “This will help push the technology along.”

He said there are some possible applications raised by Solar Impulse’s innovations, including high- and long-flying unmanned planes that could be used for mapping purposes. But any broad commercial uses, he said, lie beyond the horizon.

None of this dims the enthusiasm of the project’s founders.

The idea to build the plane started with Piccard, 55, a hang-gliding pioneer, who earned international acclaim in 1999 when he and co-pilot Brian Jones won a competition to fly around the world non-stop in a hot air balloon. Although they won, Piccard was struck that while they started the trip with 8,200 pounds of propane, they had only 88 pounds remaining when the balloon landed.

READ THE REST OF THE STORY HERE

KC-135 Tanker crashes in Kyrgyzstan

2013-05-03T06:27:00.002-07:00

ISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan -- A U.S. military refueling tanker plane crashed Friday in Kyrgyzstan, the Central Asian nation's emergencies ministry said. There was no immediate word on any casualties.

Kyrgyzstan hosts a U.S. base that is used for flying troops into and out of Afghanistan and for KC-135 tanker planes that refuel warplanes in flight.

The plane crashed Friday afternoon near the village of Chaldovar, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) west of the Manas air base, the ministry said in a statement. It identified the plane as a Boeing 707, but that is a civilian airliner on which the KC-135 tanker is based.

The plane broke into three pieces when it crashed into an uninhabited area, the head of the region that includes Chaldovar, Kuralbek Khamaliyev, told The Associated Press by telephone.

The U.S. base in Kyrgyzstan, called the Transit Center at Manas, said it had no immediate information. The base, which is adjacent to the Manas International Airport outside the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek, was established in late 2001 to support the international military campaign in Afghanistan.

The base has been the subject of a contentious dispute between the United States and its host nation. In 2009, the U.S. reached an agreement with the Kyrgyz government to use the base in return for $60 million a year.

But the lease runs out in June 2014 and the United States wants to keep the base beyond that point to aid in the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.

BREAKING: Three more people taken in custody in connection with Boston Bombing

2013-05-01T08:34:00.002-07:00

ABC NEWS: Three more people have been taken into custody in connection to the deadly bombing at the Boston Marathon, the Boston Police Department tweeted today. The brief statement said more details were forthcoming.

Authorities believe the bombing was carried out by two brothers of Chechen ethnicity, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Tamerlan was killed in a shootout with police days after the attack and Dzhokhar was injured and later taken into custody. Three people were killed and another 170 were injured in the April 15 dual bombing near the finish line at the Boston marathon.

News of the additional suspects comes after the FBI said they had expanded their investigation and were interested in learning more about nearly a dozen persons of interest.

Late Tuesday, the Tsarnaev family was deciding what to do with Tamerlan's body.

UPDATE: Two college-aged friends of bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19-year-olds Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat Tazhayakov, will appear in court this afternoon in Boston for their first appearance for allegedly destroying or concealing a laptop computer and a backpack containing fireworks belonging to Dzhokhar, according to the Department of Justice.

The third new suspect, American 19-year-old Robel Phillipos, who will also appear in court, has been charged with lying to federal law enforcement officers.

Dzhokhar is in custody after being seriously injured in his flee from police. His brother and alleged co-conspirator Tamerlan was killed in a shootout with police hours before Dzhokhar's capture. The pair is accused of setting off two bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon on April 15, killing three people and injuring 170 more.

According to court documents, all three new suspects went to Dzhokhar's dormitory room after they saw images released by the FBI of two suspects, one of which resembled their friend, but it wasn't until they noticed fireworks with missing powder in the room that Kadyrbayev "knew" Dzhokhar was involved with the deadly attack.

Kadyrbayev decided to take the backpack "to help his friend [Dzhokhar] avoid trouble" and took the laptop because he didn't want Dzhokhar's roommate to think he was behaving suspiciously. The documents assert that later Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov decided together to throw the backpack and fireworks in the trash.

Prosecutors said Phillipos initially told federal investigators he did not remember going to Dzhokhar's room and then said the three friends went there but did not go in. In his fourth interview with investigators, however, Phillipos "eventually confessed that he had lied to the agents," the court documents say.

Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov face up to five years in prison and Phillipos faces a maximum sentence of up to eight years if convicted, the DOJ said.

Video of horrifying cargo plane crash at Bagram airfield that killed seven

2013-04-30T14:16:00.000-07:00

Mother of Boston bomber is a "person of interest." in radicalization of her sons.

2013-04-26T14:03:00.001-07:00

The mother of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects is a "person of interest" to federal authorities seeking to learn who radicalized one or both of her sons, according to lawmakers, and a separate report said she was on a federal terrorism database some 18 months before the attack.

Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, who had reportedly become more militant in her Muslim faith around the same time as her son, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was added to the classified intelligence database known by the acronym TIDE at the CIA's request. Two key lawmakers said authorities now want to know if she helped put her son, who died a week ago following a shootout with police in Massachusetts, on the road to radicalism.

"She is a person of interest that we're looking at to see if she helped radicalize her son, or had contacts with other people or other terrorist groups," Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md., the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told reporters.

Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, also pointed to Zubeidat as someone who may have led Tamerlan down the path toward Islamic extremism.

"The mother in my judgment has a role in his radicalization process in terms of her influence over him (and) fundamental views of Islam," McCaul said.

Tsarnaeva was put on the database after Russia told the CIA the mother and son were religious militants preparing to travel to Russia, the AP reported. It has already been widely reported that Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the 26-year-old suspect who died after a shootout with police in Massachusetts a week ago, was on the list.

The Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment database contains between 500,000 and 1 million names of people on the radar of various national security agencies, but a person's presence on the list does not automatically mean he or she is suspected of terrorist activity and does not automatically subject them to surveillance, security screening or travel restrictions.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/04/26/father-boston-bombing-suspects-delays-trip-to-us-over-health-problems-ex-wife/#ixzz2RbbLLOSy

Breaking: Landing gear from 9-11 aircraft found wedged between two buildings

2013-04-26T13:43:00.003-07:00

Click to view photos

NEW YORK (WABC) -- A part of a landing gear, apparently from one of the commercial airliners destroyed on September 11, 2001, has been discovered near Ground Zero.

The part was wedged between the rear of 51 Park Place and the rear of the building behind it, 50 Murray Street, in lower Manhattan, police say.

The NYPD is securing the location as it would a crime scene, documenting it photographically and restricting access until the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner completes its health and safety evaluation protocol.

A decision will then be made concerning sifting the soil for possible human remains. The aircraft part will not be removed until the process is completed, at which point it will secured by the NYPD Property Clerk. The part includes a clearly visible Boeing identification number.

The investigation began after surveyors hired by the property owner who were inspecting the rear of 51 Park Place on Wednesday called 911 at approximately 11 a.m. to report what they identified as apparent damaged machinery behind the building there.

LINK TO PHOTOS

Israel shoots down unidentified drone

2013-04-25T15:16:00.002-07:00

Jerusalem (CNN) -- The Israeli air force shot down a drone approaching the nation's coast Thursday, the Israel Defense Forces said.

An Israeli F-16 shot the drone with air-to-air missiles, an Israeli military official told CNN. It went down five nautical miles off the coast of Haifa, and Israeli naval forces were searching the area while an investigation was initiated, the Israeli military said.

"I view with utmost gravity this attempt to violate our border," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a prepared statement. "We will continue to do everything necessary to safeguard the security of Israel's citizens."

Thursday's incident marked the second time an unmanned aircraft had been intercepted in Israeli airspace within the past seven months, the IDF said.

In October 2012, Israeli warplanes tracked and eventually shot down a drone over the country's northern Negev Desert.

That drone did not carry any weapons or explosives, Israeli officials said at the time. They declined to discuss the drone's route or whether it had approached any sensitive facilities.

Hezbollah claimed responsibility for sending the drone, which Israeli officials at the time said appeared to have originated in Lebanon.

Hezbollah frequently flies drones over Israel, but the military rarely bothers to shoot them down, Michah Zenko of the Council on Foreign Relations said at the time.

Boston bombers planned attack on Times Square

2013-04-25T14:47:00.001-07:00

CHICAGOTRIBUNE: New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said today the two men accused of carrying out last week's bombing of the Boston Marathon had additional bombs and planned a second attack on New York's Times Square.

The brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's original intent when they hijacked a car and its driver in Boston last Thursday night was to drive to New York with bombs and detonate them in Times Square, but their plan fell apart when they became embroiled in a shootout with police.

“Last night we were informed by the FBI that the surviving attacker revealed that New York City was next on their list of targets,” Bloomberg said at New York City Hall. “He and his older brother intended to drive to New York and detonate those explosives in Times Square.”

One law enforcement source said earlier this was based on what surviving suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, told investigators in a Boston hospital. He is recovering from gunshot wounds in Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where he was formally charged on Monday with crimes that could carry the death penaltyOfficials said the Tsarnaev brothers had six remaining improvised explosive devices and, after realizing they had been identified from surveillance images in Boston, spontaneously decided to drive to New York and set off those explosives. The six remaining devices included one pressure cooker bomb, as used in Boston, and five smaller pipe bombs.

READ THE REST OF THE STORY HERE

How to steal a UAV - The Interceptors Club for only 99 cents!

2013-04-25T09:26:00.002-07:00

For the next 48 hours only you can purchase The Interceptors Club and the Secret of the Black Manta on SMASHWORDS for less than one dollar! on purchase use coupon code: GG37E to get it at the sale price.

Click here to read more about it an purchase a copy

REVIEWS:

Review by: longtermproject on April 25, 2011 :
Amazing book, when this book hits its climax, you CANNOT put it down..... I hope it comes out in print format, so I can add it to my collection of all time favorite books!
(reviewed within a month of purchase)

Review by: Ian Metson on April 23, 2011 :
A great read for all ages. Given that it's a thriller based upon what may or may not be 'out there', Steve's treatment is especially credible to those with an interest in the subject matter. All too often I lose interest with fiction based upon Area 51-type stories when the roots of credibility become incredible and this is definitely not one of those. I liked the characters, found their traits amusing as I recognise the same in those I know. Clearly, it's fiction loosely based around Steve's own personal experiences and he is hopefully proud of producing a good, difficult to put down, read.
(reviewed within a month of purchase)

Review by: Jim Whitten on April 23, 2011 :
The Black Manta was a fun easy read and the discriptive adjectives were well done. The first third of the book was in the realm of possible while the last third was in the realm of sci-fi. If such a "plane" existed, no country on this planet could stand up to its fire power. Many more books could be written with the theme of some of those countries trying to learn the secrets of the Black Mantra.
(reviewed within a month of purchase)

Review by: Phil Patton on Dec. 18, 2010 :

This is a thriller with a human side. It is all about secrecy and the mystery of technology and the sinister and the innocent I would compare to another novel that might come as a surprise: To Kill A Mockingbird. Why? Because both books take on deep and important issues through the eyes of kids. In TKAM it is race, here it is the nature of knowledge and suspicion. As someone who has seen government and organizations at work, I sense truth and insight here. Highly recommended. Many stars!
(reviewed long after purchase)

Review by: makitup on Oct. 25, 2010 :
Was a fun read. I enjoyed it and recommend it especially to scanner/radio hobbyists.
(reviewed long after purchase)

Review by: Greg Hillen on Oct. 07, 2010 : (no rating)
I just finished reading Steve’s book, The Interceptors Club And The Secret Of The Black Manta. It was honestly a fun read. I read a lot of Dale Brown and Stephen Coonts and this book is in the same genre, but less heavy and more light hearted. It may, in general, appeal more to younger readers, but as a service brat and early reader of Hardy Boys and Tom Swift novels, I was quite comfortable with it. And as a 34 year DoD employee, I recognized a lot of the terminology as fairly accurate. The pace is slightly slow at first while characters and plot line are developed, but picks up in good time and becomes a bit of a page turner. The plot is all too plausible with a twist at the end that I really liked. At the price you really can’t go wrong. I’ve paid a lot more for books I liked a lot less. I recommend it.

Greg Hillen
(reviewed within a month of purchase)

Review by: Michael Wilhelm on Oct. 03, 2010 :
One cool book, both for teens and adults. I'm over 30 and totally enjoyed it. The story is fresh and and unlike anything I've read. It reads more like a true account then fiction - in fact I can't but help wonder how much of this book is based on real life.

The Interceptors Club is a unique adventure story that takes the reader into the minds and eyes of a group of precocious teenagers (air force brats) who become caught up in a dark world of espionage, stealth aircraft and military intrigue. Although it is a big book - comparable to the size of Harry Potter books - I never found myself bored or tempted to jump ahead. The characters are three dimensional and fresh and talk like kids talk. It's funny an amazingly detailed look into the "black" world and even has a tad of spirituality thrown in to boot. In short - one cool read.
(reviewed within a month of purchase)

CIA asked National Counterterrorism Center to put Boston bomber on watch list over a year ago.

2013-04-24T14:24:00.001-07:00

By Greg Miller and Sari Horwitz,

Washington Post: The CIA asked the main U.S. counterterrorism agency to add the name of one of the suspected Boston Marathon bombers to a watch list more than a year before the attack, according to U.S. officials.

The agency took the step after Russian authorities contacted officials there in the fall of 2011 and raised concerns that Tamerlan Tsarnaev — who was killed last week in a confrontation with police — was seen as an increasingly radical Islamist and could be planning to travel overseas. The CIA requested that his name be put on a database maintained by the National Counterterrorism Center.

That database, the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, or TIDE, is a data storehouse that feeds a series of government watch lists, including the FBI’s main Terrorist Screening Database and the Transportation Security Administration’s “no-fly” list.

Officials said Tsarnaev’s name was added to the database but it’s unclear which agency added it.

The CIA’s request came months after the FBI had closed a preliminary inquiry into Tsarnaev after getting a similar inquiry about him from Russian state security, according to officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.

The new disclosure suggests that the U.S. government may have had more reason than previously known to scrutinize Tsarnaev in the months leading up to the bombings in Boston. It also raises questions as to why U.S. authorities didn’t flag his return to the country after a seven-month trip to Russia last year.

Law enforcement officials said that the request to the FBI in 2011 originated from fears by the Russian government that Tamerlan was a threat to Russia and would commit a terrorist act in Russia -- not the United States. The request came from Russian federal police to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.

“There was a concern he might have some kind of ties to terrorism,” said FBI spokesman Paul Bresson. “We did everything legally that we could do with the little bit of information we had. After we did, we found no derogatory information.”

The FBI gets hundreds of similar requests a year from foreign governments, said a law enforcement official. The findings were reported back to Russia and Russian authorities were asked if they had any more information for the United States to investigate about Tamerlan and they did not.

“They were satisfied,” said the official. “We had checked on their information. And no further information was provided.”

READ THE REST OF THE STORY AT THE WASHINGTON POST

Israel buying MV-22 Ospreys

2013-04-24T08:12:00.001-07:00

DOD BUZZ: The surprise announcement that Israel was acquiring the tilt-rotor MV-22 Osprey for its special forces has led other countries to take a second look at buying the aircraft that has greater range and speed than conventional helicopters.

“I can tell you that several countries are very, very interested” in the Osprey, said William Schroeder, a spokesman for Bell Boeing of Fort Worth, Tex.

Schroeder declined to name the interested countries, but the United Arab Emirates has been haggling with Bell Boeing for more than a year on unit prices, and Britain and Canada have also inquired about the Ospreys.

The sale of Ospreys to Israel — if coupled with buys from other states — could insure keeping the production line open past the current phase out date in 2018.

U.S. and Israel officials have yet to say how many of the $70 million Ospreys that Israel will buy, or the price that the Israelis will pay.
Defense Department officials last Friday made the surprise announcement that the Israelis would be getting the Osprey ahead of a trip to the region by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.

Hagel, who was in Israel Monday in part to seal the deal on the Ospreys as part of a major arms, will be in the Emirates later this week on his Mideast swing to wrap up details on a total $10 billion in arms sales to Israel, the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

At a joint news conference in Tel Aviv with Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, Hagel said the weapons for Israel included “anti-radiation missiles and advanced radars for its fleet of fighter jets, KC-135 refueling aircraft, and most significantly, the V-22 Osprey, which the U.S. has not released to any other nation.”

“The introduction of the V-22 into the Israeli Air Force will give the Israeli Air Force long-range, high-speed, maritime search-and-rescue capabilities to deal with a number of threats and contingencies,” Hagel said, but the Israelis have already made clear that they have much more in mind for the Ospreys than sea rescues when the aircraft becomes operational with its special forces.

Ya’alon said that the arms deal showed the commitment of President Obama to guaranteeing that Israel maintained a qualitative military edge in the region against any potential adversary.

“We see your commitment in the Joint Strike Fighter program and the presidential approval of other advanced capabilities, such as the V-22 for Israel,” Ya’alon said.

Ya’alon said the arms deal with the U.S. should also send a strong signal to Iran.

“Without a credible military option,there’s no chance the Iranian regime will realize it has to stop the military nuclear project,” Ya’alon said.

READ THE REST OF THE STORY AT DOD BUZZ

AP Twitter feed hacked - causing stock market to plunge.

2013-04-23T11:06:00.001-07:00

The Associated Press said Tuesday its Twitter account had been hacked, with a Twitter feed falsely stating there had been two explosions at the White House and sending stocks on a steep, but brief decline.

The tweet from the AP account briefly caused U.S. stocks to drop, with the Dow Jones industrial average falling more than 150 points before quickly recovering. White House spokesman Jay Carney will hold his daily press conference as usual.

"The AP twitter account has been hacked," the news cooperative said moments after the incident. "The tweet about an attack at the White House is false. We will advise more as soon as possible."

Canadian intelligence thwart terror plot

2013-04-22T18:09:00.001-07:00

USA TODAY: Canadian police and intelligence services arrested two suspects Monday who allegedly planned to derail a passenger rail train in Greater Toronto in what the Royal Canadian Mounted Police called a "major terrorist attack."

The plot was not connected to the Boston Marathon bombings, officials said.

RCMP Assistant Commissioner James Malizia said at an afternoon news conference that Chiheb Esseghaier, 30, of Montreal, and Raed Jaser, 35, of Toronto, had received "direction and guidance" from "al-Qaeda elements" in Iran, but that there is no indication they were "state-sponsored."

Neither suspect is a Canadian citizen. The RCMP would not identify their nationalities or say how long they had been in the country, but Superintendent Douglas Best said they had been in Canada a "considerable period of time."

The National Postand The Globe and Mail reported that at least one of the men -- Esseghaier -- is Tunisian.

Esseghaier studied at the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec and then did doctoral research at the Institute National de Recherche Scientifique in Varennes, Quebec, Radio-Canada reported. He worked in a lab developing biosensors.

The two men are scheduled to appear in court Tuesday in Toronto. They are charged with conspiracy to carry out a terrorist attack and "conspiring to murder persons unknown for the benefit of, at the direction of, or in association with a terrorist group."

RCMP Chief Superintendent Jennifer Strachans said that the suspects had watched trains and railways around Toronto. She and Malizia stressed that the public and rail employees were never in any danger.

"It was definitely in the planning stage but not imminent," she said.

Strachans said the plot involved "a specific route but not a specific train," but she and other officials would not say which route. Law enforcement sources told Reuters the target was the Toronto-to-New York route.

VIA Rail jointly operates Toronto-to-Niagara Falls trains with Amtrak, which continues service to New York City. Amtrak's Maple Leaf runs between New York City and Toronto.

"We are aware of the ongoing investigation and will continue to work with Canadian authorities to assist in their efforts," Amtrak said in a statement.

Sources told CBC News that the men had been under surveillance for more than a year in Quebec and southern Ontario.

"This is the first known al-Qaeda plan or attack that we've experienced," Best said.

The cross-border investigation was coordinated with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the FBI.

U.S. Ambassador David Jacobson congratulated the RCMP for the arrests.

"This is an example of the United States and Canada working together to protect our citizens. It underscores the fact that we face serious and real threats, and that security is a shared responsibility," he said in a statement. "We all need to remain vigilant in confronting threats and keeping North America safe and secure."

Glenn Beck: detained Saudi national was set to be deported for proven terrorist activity- Obama nixed it.

2013-04-22T17:02:00.002-07:00

Monday on radio, Glenn Beck revealed further details about the Saudi national who was the first suspect in the Boston marathon bombing. Despite denials from Janet Napolitano and officials from the U.S. Immigrations and Customs (ICE) that a Saudi national was taken into custody in connection to the Boston marathon bombing, several sources have confirmed that Abdul Rahman Ali Al-Harbi was set to be deported for proven terrorist activity.

According to two FBI sources, Abdul Rahman Ali Al-Harbi was taken “into custody” Monday April 15th at a Boston after he was injured in the blast.

A source within the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) told TheBlaze that on Monday night Al-Harbi’s Revere, Massachusetts apartment was searched and property was taken out.

At 4:00pm ET on Tuesday April 16th, The NCTC Field Watch Commander created an “event file” calling for Al-Harbi’s deportation using Section 212 3b, which is proven terrorist activity. According to TheBlaze’s sources, tagging someone as 3b requires solid evidence.

Fox News reporter Todd Starnes has also reported, “The Saudi national who was initially detained and then ruled out as a suspect in the Boston Marathon terrorist attack had been flagged on a terror watch list and was granted a student visa without being properly vetted, sources have told me.”

Starnes report no longer appears on the Fox News website, but can be found on Townhall.

Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-SC) has told TheBlaze that he has detailed information on the Saudi national and confirmed that Al-Harbi was to be deported under Section 212 3b of the Immigration and Nationality Act. Alongside three other Congressmen, Rep. Duncan has requested a classified briefing on the Saudi national and the deportation order.

Even though sources within Congress have confirmed that the Saudi national was set to be deported under Section 212 3B, several figures in the United States government have denied or refused to answer questions on Al-Harbi. First, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano refused to answer questions on the subject when confronted by Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-SC) on Capitol Hill. Then on Thursday, a senior law enforcement official with ICE told TheBlaze that reports claiming the department was deporting Al-Harbi under section 212 3B and had opened an “event” on the Saudi Arabian national following the Boston attacks is “categorically false.”

The senior law enforcement official also told TheBlaze that Al-Harbi was never in custody nor ever considered for deportation by ICE, but that the department does have a different Saudi national in custody being held on grounds unrelated to the Boston bombings.

Glenn told the radio audience that there were several meetings last week between members of the Obama administration and key Saudi officials.

On Tuesday Secretary of State John Kerry met with Saudi Foreign Minister Saud which was closed to the media. Then, on Wednesday, President Obama had a “chance” encounter with Saudi Foreign Minister Saud and Saudi Ambassador Adel al-Jubeir.

Shortly after John Kerry’s meeting with Saud, the FBI started to backtrack Al-Harbi’s status in connection to the Boston Marathon Bombing. First, he was alleged to be a suspect, then a person of interest, then a witness, then a victim of the bombing. Now that two suspects, the Tsarnaev brothers, have been killed or taken into custody, Al-Harbi seems to be completely ignored.

On Wednesday April 17th at 5:35pm ET, the event file on Al-Harbi was altered and the order to deport was rescinded.

“This is unheard of. This is impossible in this timeline due to the severity of the charge,” Glenn explained. “You don’t one day put a 2123b charge against somebody with deportation and then the very next day take it off.”

Glenn said that there are only two people who could order the change. The Director of the NCTC after getting everybody in the agency to sign off, or somebody in the highest levels of the State Department. Glenn said TheBlaze has been unable to identify who made the alteration.

On radio, Glenn said that sources are now telling TheBlaze that this case will likely be moved from The Department of Homeland Security to The Department of Justice and labeled an ongoing investigation. This will be the reason that Janet Napolitano will be unable to respond to The Homeland Security Committee’s request for a briefing.

Glenn also said that there is a heavy disinformation campaign currently being waged against this story similar to Benghazi. He believes that claims of mistaken identity, additional Saudi nationals in custody, and more are being used to discredit further investigation into this story and confuse media outlets.

As of Monday morning, no details on the “second Saudi” in ICE custody have been provided.

“Why were there were no names, no pictures presented? The fact is, an event was created for one Abdul Rahman Ali Al-Harbi indicating he was to be deported for terrorism activity related to the Boston bombing. If this file was created with another Abdul Rahman Ali Al-Harbi in mind, don’t you think we should know about it?” Glenn said.

READ THE REST OF THE STORY HERE

Washington Post: The Spy You Never Heard Of ...

2013-04-22T15:14:00.000-07:00

By Jim Popkin

Ana Montes has been locked up for a decade with some of the most frightening women in America. Once a highly decorated U.S. intelligence analyst with a two-bedroom co-op in Cleveland Park, Montes today lives in a two-bunk cell in the highest-security women’s prison in the nation. Her neighbors have included a former homemaker who strangled a pregnant woman to get her baby, a longtime nurse who killed four patients with massive injections of adrenaline, and Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, the Charles Manson groupie who tried to assassinate President Ford.

But hard time in the Lizzie Borden ward of a Texas prison hasn’t softened the former Defense Department wunderkind. Years after she was caught spying for Cuba, Montes remains defiant. “Prison is one of the last places I would have ever chosen to be in, but some things in life are worth going to prison for,” Montes writes in a 14-page handwritten letter to a relative. “Or worth doing and then killing yourself before you have to spend too much time in prison.”

Like Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen before her, Ana Montes blindsided the intelligence community with brazen acts of treason. By day, she was a buttoned-down GS-14 in a Defense Intelligence Agency cubicle. By night, she was on the clock for Fidel Castro, listening to coded messages over shortwave radio, passing encrypted files to handlers in crowded restaurants and slipping undetected into Cuba wearing a wig and clutching a phony passport.

Montes spied for 17 years, patiently, methodically. She passed along so many secrets about her colleagues — and the advanced eavesdropping platforms that American spooks had covertly installed in Cuba — that intelligence experts consider her among the most harmful spies in recent memory. But Montes, now 56, did not deceive just her nation and her colleagues. She also betrayed her brother Tito, an FBI special agent; her former boyfriend Roger Corneretto, an intelligence officer for the Pentagon specializing in Cuba; and her sister, Lucy, a 28-year veteran of the FBI who has won awards for helping to unmask Cuban spies.

In the days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the FBI’s Miami field office was on high alert. Most of the hijackers had spent time in South Florida, and FBI personnel there were desperate to learn whether any more had stayed behind. So when a supervisor asked Lucy Montes to come to his office, she didn’t blink. Lucy was a veteran FBI language analyst who translated wiretaps and other sensitive communications.

But this impromptu meeting had nothing to do with Sept. 11. An FBI squad leader sat Lucy down. Your sister, Ana, has been arrested for espionage, he informed her, and she could face the death penalty. Your sister, Ana, is a Cuban spy.

Lucy didn’t scream, didn’t storm out in disbelief. Instead, she found the news strangely reassuring. “I believed it right away,” she recalled in a recent interview. “It explained a lot of things.”

Major news organizations reported on the arrest, of course, but it was overshadowed by nonstop coverage of the terrorist attacks. Today, Ana Montes remains the most important spy you’ve never heard of.

Born on a U.S. Army base in 1957, Ana Montes is the eldest child of Emilia and Alberto Montes. Puerto Rico-born Alberto was a respected Army doctor, and the family moved frequently, from Germany to Kansas to Iowa. They settled in Towson, outside Baltimore, where Alberto developed a successful private psychiatric practice and Emilia became a leader in the local Puerto Rican community.

Ana thrived in Maryland. Slender, bookish and witty, she graduated with a 3.9 GPA from Loch Raven High School, where she noted in her senior yearbook that her favorite things included “summer, beaches … chocolate chip cookies, having a good time with fun people.” But the bubblegum sentimentality masked a growing emotional distance, grandiose feelings of superiority and a troubling family secret.

To outsiders, Alberto was a caring and well-educated father of four. But behind closed doors, he was short-tempered and bullied his children. Alberto “happened to believe that he had the right to beat his kids,” Ana would later tell CIA psychologists. “He was the king of the castle and demanded complete and total obedience.” The beatings started at 5, Lucy said. “My father had a violent temper,” she said. “We got it with the belt. When he got angry. Sure.”

Ana’s mother feared taking on her mercurial husband, but as the verbal and physical abuse persisted, she divorced him and gained custody of their children.

Ana was 15 when her parents separated, but the damage had been done. “Montes’s childhood made her intolerant of power differentials, led her to identify with the less powerful, and solidified her desire to retaliate against authoritarian figures,” the CIA wrote in a psychological profile of Montes labeled “Secret.” Her “arrested psychological development” and the abuse she suffered at the hands of a temperamental man she associated with the U.S. military “increased her vulnerability to recruitment by a foreign intelligence service,” adds the 10-page report. Lucy recalls that even as a teenager Ana was distant and judgmental. “We were only a year apart, but I have to tell you that I never really felt close to her,” Lucy said. “She wasn’t one that wanted to share things or talk about things.”

***

Ana Montes was a junior at the University of Virginia when she met a handsome student during a study-abroad program in Spain. He was from Argentina and a leftist, friends recall, and helped open Montes’s eyes to the U.S. government’s support of authoritarian regimes. Spain had become a hotbed of political radicalism, and the frequent anti-American protests offered a welcome diversion from schoolwork. “After every protest, Ana used to explain to me the ‘atrocities’ that the U.S.A. government used to do to other countries,” recalls Ana Colón, a fellow college student who befriended Montes in Spain in 1977 and now lives near Gaithersburg. “She was already so torn. She did not want to be American but was.”

After college, Montes moved briefly to Puerto Rico but could not find suitable work. When a friend told her about an opening as a clerk typist at the Department of Justice in Washington, she put her political considerations aside. A job was a job.

Montes excelled at the DOJ’s Office of Privacy and Information Appeals. Less than a year later, after an FBI background check, the Department of Justice granted Montes top-secret security clearance. She could now review some of the DOJ’s most sensitive files.

While holding down her day job, Montes began pursuing a master’s degree at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Her political views hardened. Montes developed a hatred for the Reagan administration’s policies in Latin America and especially for U.S. support of the contras, the rebels fighting the communist Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

Montes was now a budding Washington bureaucrat and a full-time student at one of the country’s premier universities. But she was about to take on another demanding assignment: spy in training. In 1984, the Cuban-intelligence service recruited her as a full-blown agent.

Sources close to the case think that a friend at SAIS served as a facilitator for the Cubans, helping to identify potential spies. Cuba considers recruiting at American universities a “top priority,” according to former Cuban intelligence agent Jose Cohen, who wrote in an academic paper that the Cuban intelligence service identifies politically driven students at leading U.S. colleges who will “occupy positions of importance in the private sector and in the government.”

Montes must have seemed a godsend. She was a leftist with a soft spot for bullied nations. She was bilingual and had dazzled her DOJ supervisors with her ambition and smarts. But most important, she had top-secret security clearance and was on the inside. “I hadn’t thought about actually doing anything until I was propositioned,” Montes would later admit to investigators. The Cubans, she revealed, “tried to appeal to my conviction that what I was doing was right.”

CIA analysts interpret the recruitment a bit more darkly. Montes was manipulated into believing that Cuba desperately needed her help, “empowering her and stroking her narcissism,” the CIA wrote. The Cubans started slowly, asking for translations and bits of harmless intel that might assist the Sandinistas, her pet cause. “Her handlers, with her unwitting assistance, assessed her vulnerabilities and exploited her psychological needs, ideology, and personality pathology to recruit her and keep her motivated to work for Havana,” the CIA concluded.

Montes secretly visited Cuba in 1985 and then, as instructed, began applying for government positions that would grant her greater access to classified information. She accepted a job at the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s major producer of foreign military intelligence.

In an early mistake, Montes had confided to her old friend from Spain, Ana Colón, that she had visited Cuba and had had a fling with the cute guy who toured her around the island. Montes also revealed that she was about to take a DIA job. “I was dumbfounded,” Colón recalled. “I couldn’t understand why somebody with her leftist beliefs would be willing to work for the U.S.A. government and for the military.” Montes said she wanted to be part of the political action and was “an American girl, after all.” But days after the confession, Montes cut her girlfriend off. Colón called and wrote letter after letter for 2 1/2 years, to no avail. Montes wouldn’t engage. Colón never heard from Montes again.

Back in Miami, Lucy Montes also was puzzled by her sister’s decision to work for the Defense Department. But she loved her sister and was so eager to make a connection that she didn’t press the point. Ana had become more introverted and rigid in her views since joining DIA. “She would talk to me less and less about things that were going on with her,” Lucy said. Ironically, Ana now had much in common with her siblings. Although Juan Carlos, the baby of the family, had become a deli owner in Miami, Lucy and her other brother, Alberto “Tito” Montes, had chosen careers helping to protect the United States. Tito had become an FBI special agent in Atlanta, where he still works, and his wife was an FBI agent. Lucy had become an FBI Spanish-language analyst in Miami, a job she still holds, frequently working on cases involving Cubans. Her husband at the time worked for the FBI, too.

Of her family members, only Lucy would be interviewed. She agreed to talk for the first time — more than a decade after her sister’s arrest — to make her views on Ana clear. “I don’t feel the way that a lot of her friends seem to feel, like there’s a good excuse for what she did, or I can understand why she did it, or, you know, what this country did is wrong. There’s nothing to be admired,” Lucy said.

For the next 16 years, Ana Montes excelled — in both Washington and Havana. Hired by the DIA as an entry-level research specialist, she was promoted again and again. Montes quickly became DIA’s principal analyst for El Salvador and Nicaragua, and later was named the DIA’s top political and military analyst for Cuba. In the intelligence community and at DIA headquarters, Montes became known as “the Queen of Cuba.” Not only was she one of the U.S. government’s shrewdest interpreters of Cuban military affairs — hardly surprising, given her inside knowledge — but she also proved adept at shaping (and often softening) U.S. policy toward the island nation.

Over her meteoric career, Montes received cash bonuses and 10 special recognitions for her work, including a certificate of distinction that then-CIA Director George Tenet presented to her in 1997. The Cubans also awarded their star student with a medal, a private token of appreciation that Montes could never take home.

She became a model of efficiency, a warrior monk embedded deep within the bureaucracy. From cubicle C6-146A at DIA headquarters at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling in Washington, she gained access to hundreds of thousands of classified documents, typically taking lunch at her desk absorbed in quiet memorization of page after page of the latest briefings. Colleagues recall that she could be playful and charming, especially with bosses or when trying to talk her way into a classified briefing. But she also could be arrogant and declined most social invitations.

Montes would clock out at DIA, then start her second job at her Macomb Street apartment in Cleveland Park. She never risked taking a document home. Instead, she fastidiously memorized by day and typed in the evenings, spewing whole documents into a Toshiba laptop. Night after night, she poured years’ worth of highly classified secrets onto cheap floppy disks bought at Radio Shack.

Her tradecraft was classic. In Havana, agents with the Cuban intelligence service taught Montes how to slip packages to agents innocuously, how to communicate safely in code and how to disappear if needed. They even taught Montes how to fake her way through a polygraph test. She later told investigators it involves the strategic tensing of the sphincter muscles. It’s unknown if the ploy worked, but Montes did pass a DIA-administered polygraph in 1994, after a decade of spying.

Montes got most of her orders the same way spies have since the Cold War: through numeric messages transmitted anonymously over shortwave radio. She would tune a Sony radio to AM frequency 7887 kHz, then wait for the “numbers station” broadcast to begin. A female voice would cut through the otherworldly static, declaring, “Atención! Atención!” then spew out 150 numbers into the night. “Tres-cero-uno-cero-siete, dos-cuatro-seis-dos-cuatro,” the voice would drone. Montes would key the digits into her computer, and a Cuban-installed decryption program would convert the numbers into Spanish-language text.

Montes also took the unusual risk of meeting the Cubans face-to-face. Every few weeks, she would dine with her handlers in D.C. area Chinese restaurants, where Montes would slide a fresh batch of encrypted diskettes past tiny dishes of Chinese delicacies. The clandestine handoffs also took place during Montes’s vacations, on sunny Caribbean islands.

Montes even traveled to Cuba four times for sessions with Cuba’s top intelligence officers. Twice, she used a phony Cuban passport and disguised herself in a wig, hop-scotching first to Europe to cover her tracks. Two other times she got Pentagon approval to visit Cuba on U.S. fact-finding missions. She would meet at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana during the day but slip away to brief her Cuban superiors.

Back in the States, when Montes needed to convey an urgent message, she reached for a pager. Montes would seek out pay phones at the National Zoo, the Friendship Heights Metro or by the old Hecht’s in Chevy Chase to call pager numbers controlled by the Cubans. One beeper code would mean “I’m in extreme danger”; another, “We have to meet.” Schooled in spycraft by the KGB, the Cubans relied on the storied tools of the trade. Montes’s pager codes and shortwave-radio notes, for example, were written on specially treated paper. “The frequencies and the cheat sheet for the numbers, that was all on water-soluble paper,” explained the FBI’s Pete Lapp, one of two top agents on the case. “You throw it in the toilet, and it evaporates.

READ THE REST AT THE WASHINGTON POST

Boston Marathon Bomber #2 captured alive.

2013-04-19T18:03:00.003-07:00

The suspect in the Boston Marathon Bombing is in custody, police say.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the 19-year-old believed to be involved in bombing the marathon on Monday, was taken from a boat in Watertown, Mass., around 8:45 p.m.

...

Gunfire erupted shortly this evening in Watertown, Mass., whereDzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings, was believed to have been spotted by a man checking on his boat.

Dozens of law enforcement officers rushed to secure a perimeter around Franlin Street in Watertown, where residents were immediately warned to stay indoors and "shelter in place."

The developments came just minutes after a press conference by law enforcement officials and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick said a massive dragnet had failed to find the suspect.

George Pizzuto, who lives in the neighborhood where the police activity is centered, said that his friend and neighbor, David Henneberry, discovered a body in his boat and reported it to police around 7 p.m. tonight, just minutes after Patrick said residents could go outside again.

Pizzuto told ABC News that Henneberry went out into his backyard after the lockdown was lifted to get some fresh air.

"He looked and noticed something was off about his boat, so he got his ladder, and he put his ladder up on the side of the boat and climbed up, and then he saw blood on it, and he thought he saw what was a body laying in the boat," Pizzuto said. "So he got out of the boat fast and called police."

He said that Henneberry was being interviewed by police about what he saw, and that power had just been cut to the Henneberry's house.

"That boat's his baby. He takes care of it like you wouldn't believe. And they told him it's all shot up," Pizzuto said. "He's going to be heartbroken."

Erik Thompson, who lives across the street from the Henneberry's home, said he heard gunshots and saw law enforcement rush to the scene.

"There was some gunfire earlier which was almost immediately stopped. People were yelling to cease fire, and it seems to be focused on some homes across the street from where I am, which I think is the western side of the street," Thompson said.

"There's still a significant presence of law enforcement there," he said. "It's like D-Day."

The governor lifted an order that kept people in Watertown, Boston and surrounding suburbs inside all day.

The officials had said at the press conference that they thoroughly searched Watertown and had not found any sign of Tsarnaev.

Earlier in the day, police in took three individuals into custody in connection with the search for Tsarnaev.

Exclusive: Last night's Boston Marathon Bomber manhunt & firefight scanner audio posted

2013-04-19T14:27:00.003-07:00

Listen to a recording of last night's manhunt and firefight in Watertown, MA as the police closed in on the Boston Marathon Bombing suspects.

LINK:

CLICK HERE

Disclaimer: As can be the case with breaking news - all information on this blog or monitored on the scanner feed, should be considered preliminary and unsubstantiated until the public safety agency involved releases an official report.

CNN: Manhunt Timeline Map

2013-04-19T12:31:00.002-07:00

Courtesy CNN:

Click to enlarge

Breaking: Boston in lockdown as Marathon Attack suspects flee - throw bombs at police

2013-04-19T06:00:00.000-07:00

(CNN) -- Police sealed off densely populated portions the Boston metro area early Friday after a violent night of chasing the Boston Marathon terror suspects left one of the men and a police officer dead.

Police ordered businesses in the suburb of Watertown and nearby communities to stay closed and told residents to stay inside and answer the door for no one but authorities. Boston authorities advised the same. The city's subway, bus and Amtrak train systems have been shut down. Taxi service across the city was suspended. Every Boston area school is closed.

"It's jarring," said CNN Belief blog writer Danielle Tumminio, who lives in Watertown.

Boston's public transit authority sent city buses to Watertown to evacuate residents while bomb experts combed the surroundings for possible explosives.
Police: 1 suspect dead, 1 on the run
Armed police sweep Boston homes

Police shot one of the men dead after a wild car chase through Watertown in which authorities say they hurled explosives at pursuing officers.

Police believe the men are the same ones pictured in images released Thursday by the FBI as suspects in the marathon bombing that killed three people Monday.

The men are shown in the images walking together near the marathon finish line.

Several sources told CNN that the dead suspect has been identified as Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26. The one still being sought is Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, age 19.

The first suspect, the one believed killed by police, appears in the images wearing a dark hat, sunglasses and a backpack. The second suspect, wearing a white cap, is the one who remains at large, police said.

Police warned Watertown residents to lock their homes and stay away from their windows and doors.

Federal, state and local law officers are swarming through Watertown, going door-to-door to track him down, said Massachusetts State Police spokesman Col. Timothy Alben.

Police officers in full body armor, carrying automatic weapons, flooded the area as authorities praised residents for their cooperation.

"We need more time," Alben said. "We're making significant progress up there. But it may take hours to do this."

"This situation is grave." Alben said earlier. "This is a very serious situation that we are dealing with."

The violence began late Thursday with the robbery of a 7/11 convenience store, he said. Soon after, in Cambridge, across the Charles River from Boston, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer was fatally shot while he sat in his car, the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office said in statement. Police believe the bombing suspects were responsible for the shooting.

The same two suspects, according to authorities, then hijacked a car at gunpoint in Cambridge. They released the driver a half-hour later at a gas station.

As police picked up the chase, the car's occupants threw explosives out the windows and shot at officers, according to the district attorney's office.

Officers fired back, wounding one of the men, possibly the person identified by the FBI as suspect No. 1, who is seen in the images released Thursday in a dark cap, sunglasses and wearing a black backpack.

The man died at Beth Israel Hospital. He had bullet wounds and injuries from an explosion, according to officials. The second man apparently escaped on foot.

Richard H. Donohue Jr., 33, a three-year veteran of the transit system police force, was shot and wounded in the incident and taken to a hospital, a transit police spokesman said Friday. The officer's condition was not immediately known.

CNN photographer Gabe Ramirez arrived in Watertown as the chase ended.

"Police were in a standoff with the vehicle just down the hill," Ramirez said. They ordered one suspect out and commanded him to strip down completely naked before putting him in a patrol car, which did not leave the scene.

The man was later released and is not a suspect in the case.

But while the man was being held, FBI agents approached the squad car, and police ordered the man back out of the car. FBI agents questioned him -- still fully undressed -- on the sidewalk.

In an early phase of the lockdown, a man could be seen lying face down on the street with his hands outstretched in front of him and his legs crossed. It is unclear whether this was the man who was arrested and ordered to undress.

Details about suspects

According to a source briefed on the investigation, the suspects involved in the Boston bombing are originally from the Russian Caucasus and had moved to Kazakhstan at a young age before coming to the United States several years ago.

Another source, from federal law enforcement, also told CNN that the man being sought has been in the United States for at least a couple of years.

The man identified as Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the older brother, had studied at Bunker Hill Community College and wanted to become a engineer, the source said. He then took a year off to train as a boxer.

The source told CNN's Deborah Feyerick that a posting on a social media site in his name included the comments: "I don't have a single American friend. I don't understand them."

aThe source added that it should not be assumed that either brother was radicalized because of their Chechen origins.