Other Helpful Links

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August 2021

The Beirut Protocol: A Marcus Ryker Series Political and Military Action Thriller (Book 4) by Joel C. Rosenberg
The Beirut Protocol: A Marcus Ryker Series Political and Military Action Thriller (Book 4) by Joel C. Rosenberg

A game-changing peace treaty between Israel and the Saudis is nearly done. The secretary of state is headed to the region to seal the deal. And Special Agent Marcus Ryker is leading an advance trip along the Israel-Lebanon border, ahead of the secretary’s arrival.

But when Ryker and his team are ambushed by Hezbollah forces, a nightmare scenario begins to unfold. U.S. and Israeli forces are mobilizing to find the hostages and get them home, but Ryker knows the clock is ticking.

Should he wait to be rescued? Or try to escape? How? And what if his colleagues are too wounded to run?

In the fourth installment of Rosenberg’s gripping new series, Marcus Ryker finds himself in the most dangerous situation he has ever faced―captured, brutalized, and dragged deep behind enemy lines.

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Deep Strike: A Novel by Rick Campbell (Trident Deception Series, 6)
Deep Strike: A Novel by Rick Campbell (Trident Deception Series, 6)

A shoulder-launched missile attack on a convoy of vehicles leaving the U.N. headquarters in New York kills several diplomats, including the American ambassador. Security footage reveals that the killer behind the attack is a disgraced former special forces operative, Mark Alperi. But before U.S. intelligence operatives can catch up with him, Alperi is already onto the next phase of his plan.

With funding from the nearly shattered ISIS, Alperi plans an attack on the U.S. that will be more devastating than 9/11.

In Rick Campbell’s next action-packed thriller Deep Strike, the U.S. Atlantic fleet is in a race to stop a rogue Russian submarine—funded by ISIS—en route to launch a missile attack against the east coast of the U.S.

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Kennedy's Avenger: Assassination, Conspiracy, and the Forgotten Trial of Jack Ruby by Dan Abrams & David Fisher
Kennedy’s Avenger: Assassination, Conspiracy, and the Forgotten Trial of Jack Ruby by Dan Abrams & David Fisher

No crime in history had more eyewitnesses. On November 24, 1963, two days after the killing of President Kennedy, a troubled nightclub owner named Jack Ruby quietly slipped into the Dallas police station and assassinated the assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. Millions of Americans witnessed the killing on live television, and yet the event would lead to questions for years to come.

Featuring a colorful cast of characters, including the nation’s most flamboyant lawyer pitted against a tough-as-Texas prosecutor, award-winning authors Dan Abrams and David Fisher unveil the astonishing details behind the first major trial of the television century. While it was Jack Ruby who appeared before the jury, it was also the city of Dallas and the American legal system being judged by the world.

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Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration’s Response to the Pandemic That Changed History by Yasmeen Abutaleb & Damian Paletta
Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration’s Response to the Pandemic That Changed History by Yasmeen Abutaleb & Damian Paletta

Since the day Donald Trump was elected, his critics warned that an unexpected crisis would test the former reality-television host – and they predicted that the president would prove unable to meet the moment. In 2020, that crisis came to pass, with the outcomes more devastating and consequential than anyone dared to imagine.

Nightmare Scenario is the complete story of Donald Trump’s handling – and mishandling – of the COVID-19 catastrophe, during the period of January 2020 up to Election Day that year. Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta take us deep inside the White House, from the Situation Room to the Oval Office, to show how the members of the administration launched an all-out war against the health agencies, doctors, and scientific communities, all in their futile attempts to wish away the worst global pandemic in a century.

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Ex-intelligence analyst sentenced to 45 months for leaking secret drone info

A former Air Force intelligence analyst on Tuesday was sentenced to 45 months in prison for violating the Espionage Act when he leaked top secret documents about the U.S. government’s drone strike program, the AP reports.

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Five Eyes warn about hacking dangers in wake of China cyber attacks

Australia’s premier cyber security agency has joined forces with its “Five Eyes” partners for the first time to issue an unprecedented warning about the vulnerabilities cyber hackers are exploiting in the wake of a series of hacks by China.

In a joint statement with its sister agencies in Britain, Canada, the United States and New Zealand, the Australian Cyber Security Centre released advice on the top 30 cyber security vulnerabilities being exploited by hackers over the past 18 months.

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India building secretive base in Mauritius as it strengthens military ties with Australia

New evidence is emerging of a secretive Indian military base being built in the Indian Ocean, at the same time as Australia expands its Defence cooperation with the rising global power.

Recent satellite images and other documents detail progress on the construction of two naval jetties and a large runway on the remote Mauritian island of Agaléga.

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Internal State Department Cable Warned of Kabul Collapse

An internal State Department memo last month warned top agency officials of the potential collapse of Kabul soon after the U.S.’s Aug. 31 troop withdrawal deadline in Afghanistan, according to a U.S. official and a person familiar with the document.

The classified cable represents the clearest evidence yet that the administration had been warned by its own officials on the ground that the Taliban’s advance was imminent and Afghanistan’s military may be unable to stop it.

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Flubot text message voicemail scam targets nervous Australians waiting for COVID updates

A new scam known as “Flubot” is sending thousands of text messages to Australians as they wait anxiously for updates on COVID tests and vaccination appointments.

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New police CCTV use rules criticised as bare bones

A proposed code of practice covering police use of live facial recognition in England and Wales has been criticised by human rights groups. Live facial-recognition systems compare faces captured on closed-circuit television with those on a watch-list, alerting officers to a match.

Former CCTV watchdog Tony Porter said the new rules were “bare bones” and offered unclear guidance. And two campaign groups have called for the practice to be ended entirely.

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Chinese espionage tool exploits vulnerabilities in 58 widely used websites

A security researcher has discovered a web attack framework developed by a suspected Chinese government hacking group and used to exploit vulnerabilities in 58 popular websites to collect data on possible Chinese dissidents.

Fifty-seven of the sites are popular Chinese portals, while the last is the site for US newspaper, the New York Times.

In addition, the tool also abused legitimate browser features in attempts to collect user keystrokes, a large swath of operating system details, geolocation data, and even webcam snapshots of a target’s face—although many of these capabilities weren’t as silent as the exploits targeting third-party websites, since they also tended to trigger a browser notification prompt.

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Bitcoin proves double-edged sword for criminals

Regulators have repeatedly criticised the growth of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin because of their popularity with criminals but the technology’s transparent transactions can also work against law breakers.

The lesson is one that has been learnt by cybercriminal hackers Darkside the hard way after the organisation extracted a $4.4 million ransom from oil company Colonial Pipeline in bitcoin.

Following the ransomware extortion, which forced the shutdown of a major fuel network in the eastern United States last month, the US Justice Department said it has clawed back $2.3 million of the funds by tracing financial transactions.

For a traditional bank payment, police can turn to the bank that sent or received the money but for bitcoin, the registry that records these transactions—the blockchain—does not ask users to reveal their identity.

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NSA to National Security employees: Avoid working on public Wi-Fi

The agency offered best practices for remote work using wireless technologies.

The COVID-19 pandemic changed what work looks like, and for some, telework remains an essential part of daily business. While most teleworkers connect via secure home networks, those that opt for public networks like those in hotels or coffee shops are putting their data at risk, according to the National Security Agency.

The NSA on Thursday released guidance for National Security System, Defense Department, and defense industrial base users describing how to identify vulnerable connections and protect common wireless technologies when working on public networks. US-CERT on Friday shared the guidance as well.

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Who are the Taliban?

The Taliban emerged from the rubble of the Soviet-Afghan war and in turn were ousted by the US led War on Terror. Twenty years on, the Americans and their allies gone and the Taliban are once again in control of Afghanistan. Who are the Taliban and what will their return to power mean?

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Cyber Risk Across the U.S. Nuclear Enterprise

As the United States embarks on an effort to modernize many elements of its nuclear enterprise, it needs to consider how dependencies on modern information technologies could lead to cyber-induced failures of nuclear deterrence or to nuclear war.

The Biden administration has an opportunity to address issues of cyber risk across the entire nuclear enterprise in ways that previous administrations have not.

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COVID-19: Sewage surveillance reveals ‘widespread increase’ of coronavirus in England last month

People shed fragments of coronavirus through daily activities like going to the toilet and blowing their nose, and these subsequently show up in the surveillance of wastewater at sites throughout England.

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12 Ways to get smarter in one infographic

People shed fragments of coronavirus through daily activities like going to the toilet and blowing their nose, and these subsequently show up in the surveillance of wastewater at sites throughout England.

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Intelligence Reports From Afghanistan Missed One Key Element: Speed

In late June, a stark new intelligence estimate said the government of President Ashraf Ghani could collapse in as soon as six months after the U.S. withdrew its troops from Afghanistan.

By last week, with the Taliban rapidly taking over provincial capitals, a revised estimate gave the Ghani government as little as a month to survive. On Sunday, Mr. Ghani fled the country as Taliban troops entered Kabul.

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CIA’s Former Counterterrorism Chief for the Region: Afghanistan, Not An Intelligence Failure — Something Much Worse

While it’s certainly convenient to depict the shock and miscalculation U.S. officials claim over Afghanistan’s tragic, rapid fall to the Taliban as an intelligence failure, the reality is far worse. It’s a convenient deflection of responsibility for decisions taken owing to political and ideological considerations and provides a scapegoat for a policy decision that’s otherwise unable to offer a persuasive defense.

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The woman who was the first to warn about Osama bin Laden| Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst

Gina Bennett is a member of the CIA’s Senior Analytic Service working as senior counterterrorism adviser at the National Counterterrorism Center. No one in the US government has tracked al Qaeda and all its many branches and offshoots for as long and with as much distinction as Bennett has.

The classified report, “The Wandering Mujahidin: Armed and Dangerous,” identified “Usama bin Ladin” as a donor who was supporting Islamic militants in “places as diverse as Yemen and the United States.” Bin Laden’s fortune had derived from his family’s construction company, which was one of the largest in the Middle East. According to Bennett’s 1993 analysis, bin Laden’s funding had also enabled hundreds of Afghan Arabs to resettle in Sudan and Yemen.

Bennett’s report was the first time that the US government had produced a warning about the dangers of a global jihadist movement led by the mysterious multimillionaire, Osama bin Laden. And the warning was not issued by the CIA or the FBI, but by a junior intelligence analyst at the State Department.

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Afghanistan Is a Failure of Military Intelligence—and Common Sense | Thomas Joscelyn

On July 8, President Joe Biden thought it was necessary to defend his decision to withdraw from Afghanistan once again. The president had announced America’s retreat from its longest war less than three months earlier.

Whether President Biden knew or not, the Afghan government was teetering as he spoke in mid-July. He placed the onus squarely on the shoulders of Afghanistan’s security forces.

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Osama bin Laden is gone, but al-Qaeda is thriving | Colin Clarke

“We delivered justice to Osama bin Laden, and we degraded the terrorist threat of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan,” Joe Biden declared in his speech to Congress on Wednesday. And that, he explained, was why we can now withdraw the last U.S. troops from Afghanistan, as he announced earlier this month.

Yes, bin Laden is dead — thanks to a daring raid by U.S. Special Operations forces 10 years ago. But the president’s statement misses the mark. Its founder might have left the scene, but al-Qaeda hasn’t gone away — and that has clear implications for our strategy in Afghanistan and across the world.

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