Ridge accused of trying to profit from terror alert accusations

A former Bush administration official said she thinks former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge’s recent charges that politics were behind raising the terror level in 2004 were "personally motivated." In a new book, Ridge says top Bush administration officials may have tried to raise the nation’s terror alert for political reasons in the days before the 2004 presidential vote.

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Iranian speaker calls for detainee rape probe

Iran’s influential parliament speaker has called for an investigation into allegations that post-election detainees were raped while in custody, state-run media said. Ali Larijani said that a special parliamentary panel “had carried out investigations into the situation in [Iranian] jails and the treatment of detainees and it should also look into whether jail rape allegations are true or false,” Press TV reported, citing Tabnak, a Web site associated with opposition politician Mohsen Rezaie. Meanwhile, Iran’s Intelligence Ministry, the government body that keeps tabs on political dissenters, warned the media against revealing what it called “classified data” after reports Monday that Ahmadinejad had purged four senior intelligence officials, according to Press TV.

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Tehran’s Trials: Blaming the West, Google and Twitter

Iran’s hardline regime sharply escalated the post-election confrontation on August 8 by putting two foreign embassy staffers and a French teacher on trial alongside dozens of political dissidents. The stepped-up campaign to characterize the widespread unrest since the June 12 presidential election as a foreign-led attempted “soft overthrow” appears to be an effort by the ruling faction to rally the increasingly-splintered conservative base against a popular — and old — enemy: the West

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Is Pakistan’s Taliban Chief Dead?

American and Pakistani officials say it looked more and more likely that the man was Baitullah Mehsud, who had a $5-million bounty on his head. Pakistan’s Foreign Minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, told reporters in Islamabad on Friday Aug. 7 that, “According to my intelligence information, the news is correct

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Cheney getting ‘bum rap’ on CIA program, ex-officials say

Former Vice President Dick Cheney is getting a "bum rap" over reports that he ordered the CIA to withhold information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress, two former U.S. intelligence officials told CNN Monday. According to both officials, any intelligence program of “great sensitivity” is first approved by the White House after a series of meetings

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