ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

By Jonathan Landay and John Walcott Classified documents that the heads of four U.S. intelligence agencies presented last week to President-elect Donald Trump included claims that Russian intelligence operatives have compromising information about him, two U.S. officials said Tuesday evening. They told Reuters the claims, which one called "unsubstantiated," were contained in a two-page memo appended to a report on Russian interference in the 2016 election that U.S. intelligence officials presented to Trump and President Barack Obama last week. Trump responded on Tuesday evening in a tweet calling the reports: "FAKE NEWS - A TOTAL POLITICAL WITCH HUNT!" The Trump transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment. One of the officials, both of whom requested anonymity to discuss classified matters, said the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other U.S. agencies are continuing to investigate the credibility and accuracy of the claims. They are in...

26-year-old enters two houses with gun, shooting 8 people with police officer among dead AFP Tehran: A murder suspect freed on bail killed six people including a policeman and three family members in a shooting rampage Wednesday in central Iran, media reported. The judiciary announced in the evening that the suspect was later arrested. The 26-year-old entered two houses in Arak and shot eight people with a Kalashnikov, killing five of them instantly, ISNA news agency quoted the city’s prosecutor as saying. A sixth victim later died in hospital and another was in critical condition, he added. The first house targeted was the home of a police officer who had arrested the man last year on charges of complicity in a murder. The officer, his sister, mother and brother were all killed while another family member was hospitalised. The suspect then went to the house of the victim who he and two others are accused of killing last year and shot dead his parents. Their son was also injured. “The...

While we learned earlier that John McCain was responsible for handing over the 35-page "dossier" of compromising, if arguably fake, revelations about Trump's connections to Russia over to the FBI, the identity of the actual creator, who was said to be an ex-British intelligence service, remained a mystery. No longer. Courtesy of the WSJ , we now know his name: the former MI-6 officer, now working for a private security-and-investigations firm "who produced the dossier of unverified allegations about President-elect Donald Trump’s activities and connections in Russia" is Christopher Steele, a director of London-based Orbis Business Intelligence .... and before readers google him, beware, there is a male gay porn star with the same name , who may or may not be into "golden showers." The real Chris Steele is profiled below, courtesy of LinkedIn . Steele, 52 years old, is one of two directors of Orbis, along with Christopher Burrows, 58 . Burrows, reac...

© USAF / Tech. Sgt. Taylor Worley / Reuters The secrecy of the actions of the US Air Force in Syria has allowed to evade responsibility for civilian casualties, the Russian Defense Ministry’s spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said on Wednesday. “The aviation of the US Air Force and the international coalition tries to act in secrecy during operations in Syria. Our US colleagues do not like to notify of their plans of use of their military planes, only rarely outlining the approximate timeframe and area. But not the specific types of planes and to whom they belong. This allowed the coalition’s planes to evade responsibility for civilian deaths and destruction of civilian objects in vases of tragic ‘mistakes,” Konashenkov said. Konashenkov added that US military officials are often nowhere to be found on the other end of a hotline set up between Moscow and Washington to discuss and resolve contentious issues in Syria.

Written by Michael Krieger; Originally appeared at Libertyblitzkrieg The true patriotism, the only rational patriotism is loyalty to the nation all the time, loyalty to the government when it deserves it. – Mark Twain, The Czar’s Soliloquy” At this point, pretty much everyone in America has seen the results of Hillary Clinton media pet, John Harwood’s recent Twitter poll. Follow John Harwood ✔@JohnJHarwood Who do you believe America? 2:25 AM - 6 Jan 2017 83%Wikileaks 17%US intel officials 84,115 votes•Final results 14,40814,408 Retweets 13,18613,186 likes The significance of the above cannot be overstated. U.S. intelligence agencies, like so many other national institutions, have lost nearly all credibility in the eyes of the American public. The list is long, but includes economists, politicians, the mainstream media, central bankers, the financial system, and a lot more. The loss in credibility is well deserved and has nothing to do with Russia. Rather, it’s a function of a disa...