

By H. Leighton Steward
Fantasy replaces reality in Obama's green economy

The nation's intelligence chief says it will take five years to complete major improvements in the system that allows U.S. agencies to share secret information, after the WikiLeaks breach revealed embarrassing weaknesses.

The Obama administration is using a century-old anti-spying law to prosecute federal workers for leaking secrets to the media, drawing criticism that the law is draconian and the prosecutions are chilling efforts to report news.

The weeklong preliminary hearing for the Army analyst accused of leaking thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks ended Thursday, with a defense lawyer urging military authorities to reduce the charges against his client.

Court documents in the case of an Army intelligence analyst accused of giving classified files to WikiLeaks show a catalog of problems in the Army's handling of classified materials in war zones, especially the use of supposedly secure computer networks.

President Obama is feeling the heat over the treatment of WikiLeaks suspect Army Private First Class Bradley E. Manning. During the 2008 presidential campaign, Mr. Obama took unseemly advantage of the accusation that George W. Bush's administration tortured terrorist detainees. Now even an O Force insider is strongly hinting that the administration's conduct toward the individual thought to have leaked thousands of classified documents amounts to torture.

The U.S. military on Wednesday added capital crime charges of aiding the enemy to the indictment against Army Pfc. Bradley E. Manning, the intelligence analyst accused of copying a quarter-million classified U.S. military and diplomatic cables and providing them to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks.

The State Department and other U.S. agencies are not fully cooperating with lawmakers' efforts to probe the WikiLeaks security breach, according to the Republican likely to be the next chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

Army Private First Class Bradley E. Manning, a low-level military intelligence analyst accused of downloading three massive databases of secret U.S. documents while serving in Iraq, exploited information-sharing tools put in place after the September 11 attacks in what has become the largest leak of classified data in U.S. history.

An Army private charged with leaking classified material to the whistleblower website had civilian help, a key figure in the case said Saturday.
Bradley E. Manning, told military court officials at Fort Meade, Md.
"Millions of government and military people deal with classified information every single day across the globe. Once in a great while, someone decides to do something bad with that information," he said, adding that does not mean the whole system was broken.

By Patrice Hill - The Washington Times
Nicholas Rastenis has been through the wringer.

By Tim Devaney - The Washington Times
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich hinted Sunday that if rival Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney ...

By Manuel Valdes - Associated Press
Three skiers were killed Sunday when an avalanche swept them about a quarter-mile down an ...