Budapest voiced its opposition to Ukrainian attacks on Russian pipelines that bring oil to Hungary. A Ukrainian attack on a pipeline briefly paused oil deliveries to the neighboring country.
On Tuesday, Ukraine conducted its largest-ever attack on Russia, firing over 300 drones into Russian territory. While Moscow claimed success in downing the UAVs, some reached their targets, killing at least three people. A measuring station on the Druzhba oil pipeline between Russia and Hungary was also hit.
In response, Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó urged Kiev to halt attacks on infrastructure bringing oil into Hungary, which imports most of its crude through the Druzhba pipeline. Despite the damage, the pipeline was operational by Tuesday afternoon.
“We consider the attacks directed against the energy structure of Hungary unacceptable,” Szijjártó said.
“We call on the Ukrainians not to attack the energy infrastructure heading towards Hungary. Hungary cannot be blamed for the war between Russia and Ukraine, Hungary is not responsible for this war,” the Hungarian FM added.
While Kiev and Budapest came to an agreement last year that allowed oil to continue to flow through the Ukrainian section of the Druzhba line, Ukraine’s Sanctions Minister Vladyslav Vlasiuk accused Hungary of using the “Druzhba pipeline problem as an argument to block the continuation of sanctions.”
There is concern within the European Union that Hungary will impede the bloc’s sanctions on Russia, as the measures are set to expire next week and must be reapproved with unanimous consent from all member states.
Some EU and Ukrainian officials reportedly fear that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán will vote to end the sanctions, as he has frequently criticized the economic war on Russia and Western military support for Kiev.
Vlasiuk, the Ukrainian sanctions chief, claimed that Budapest was undermining “the unity of the EU.“
The humid air of the South China Sea clung to my skin as I peered through my binoculars, scanning the horizon. Our team was tracking a vessel suspected of transporting critical technology to a hostile nation. Suddenly, our target’s signature vanished from our screens.
“Target lost,” my analyst called out, his voice tight with frustration.
In that moment, I knew we were outmatched. Our adversary’s vessels, equipped with edge-processed AI systems, could analyze and react to pattern changes in seconds. Meanwhile, our “advanced” AI capabilities required reaching back to a server farm thousands of miles away. By the time we completed our manual cross-referencing of five different intelligence feeds, the target had vanished into the cluttered maritime environment.
This wasn’t just another missed opportunity. It was a stark reminder of what I’ve witnessed repeatedly during my twenty years in special operations: America’s warfighters are falling dangerously behind in the artificial intelligence revolution. While we debate perfect solutions in comfortable conference rooms, our adversaries are rapidly fielding autonomous systems that fundamentally change the battlefield geometry.
The difference between theoretical AI capabilities and battlefield reality is measured in missed opportunities and lost American lives.
Ground Truth: The AI Capability Gap
Let me paint you a picture from my last deployment. The official briefings touted our access to innovative AI systems, but the reality was starkly different. During one critical maritime surveillance operation, our team tracked pattern-of-life changes across five domains – air, surface, subsurface, cyber, and electromagnetic. Each domain required separate analysis through disconnected systems. An integrated AI solution could have fused this data in seconds.Instead, we spent four hours manually correlating data while our target slipped away.
This capability gap manifests in stark operational realities. During a recent operation in the Indo-Pacific, reminiscent of my time with JSOC-TF, our team was tracking multiple small vessels showing unusual behavior patterns. The Congressional Research Service reports that Chinese autonomous ISR platforms can process sensor data locally within 1.3 seconds. Our systems require transmission to central processors, creating 15-45 second delays. In contested environments with degraded communications, these delays extended to minutes or hours.
In the world of special operations, where the OODA loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) is measured in seconds, these delays are more than an inconvenience – they’re a critical vulnerability. I’ve seen this firsthand during Counterterrorism/Counterinsurgency (CT/COIN) operations and HVT raids in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Breaking Through Bureaucratic Barriers
The Pentagon’s response to these challenges follows a familiar pattern: committees, working groups, and multi-year development cycles. But the battlefield doesn’t wait for perfect solutions. We need a paradigm shift in how we approach AI integration.
Despite efforts to integrate AI, the Department of Defense has faced significant challenges. The Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO), established in 2022, has undergone multiple restructurings and leadership changes in an attempt to better align with the DoD’s AI integration needs. While the CDAO has made progress, including the creation of AI Rapid Capabilities Cells (AI RCC), it has struggled with scaling AI solutions across the vast DoD enterprise, integrating with legacy systems, and addressing ethical concerns in AI deployment. The DoD has also faced challenges in providing core infrastructure for data and AI capabilities and attracting AI talent in competition with the private sector.
In a recent proof-of-concept operation, drawing on my experience with NSA’s SCS Special Operations, my team deployed modified commercial AI tools on ruggedized edge processors. The results were transformative:
• Decision-making speed increased by 300%
• Pattern recognition accuracy improved by 78%
• Mission success rate jumped from 62% to 89%
This wasn’t achieved through years of development and billions in funding. It was the result of operators working directly with AI developers to solve real-world problems.
The Path Forward: Recommendations for Immediate Action
Push AI to the Edge: Deploy ruggedized edge processing units with local AI models to enable real-time analysis and decision-making.
Rapid Field Testing: Implement a “deploy-test-iterate” model for AI tools, allowing for continuous improvement based on real-world feedback.
Operator-Driven Development: Involve special operators directly in the AI development process to ensure tools meet actual operational needs.
Flexible Acquisition: Create streamlined pathways for acquiring and modifying commercial AI tools for military use.
AI-Enabled Training: Integrate AI tools into training scenarios to familiarize operators with their capabilities and limitations.
Addressing Concerns: The Ethics of Battlefield AI
Critics may argue that rapid AI integration could lead to ethical concerns or unreliable systems. However, the greater ethical risk lies in sending our warfighters into harm’s way without the best tools available. We can and must develop AI systems that align with our values and rules of engagement.
“As Dr. Margarita Konaev, Research Fellow at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, notes, ‘The ethical implementation of AI in military operations is not just possible, it’s imperative. The key is to build ethical considerations into the development process from the ground up The Strategic Imperative.”
The AI integration crisis extends beyond special operations. It strikes at the heart of America’s deterrence posture. In an era of near-peer competition, the nation that masters AI integration will have a decisive advantage.
“General Bryan P. Fenton, Commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, emphasizes, ‘We’re not just talking about efficiency gains. AI integration is about maintaining our ability to project power and protect our interests in an increasingly complex global environment.”
A Call to Action
The time for incremental change has passed. We need a revolution in how we approach AI integration in military operations. To my fellow operators, I say: make your voices heard. To policymakers: listen to those on the front lines. And to the American public: understand that this is not about robots taking over the battlefield. It’s about giving our men and women in uniform the tools they need to complete their missions and come home safely.
The next time I’m on a mission, whether it’s an intelligence operation or a critical interdiction, I want to be confident that we have the best technology at our fingertips. The lives of my team and the security of our nation depend on it. Let’s close the AI gap before it’s too late.
Richard Byno is the Executive Vice President of Defense at Eureka Naval Craft and a Managing Partner at Maritime Support Concepts. A veteran with over 20 years of experience in special operations, intelligence, and commercial maritime operations, he has worked extensively with the U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Navy on maritime interdiction, expeditionary operations, and mission-configurable platform development.
Trump Backpedals On Controversial Plan: ‘No One Is Expelling Anyone From Gaza’
President Trump in a Wednesday press conference while hosting Irish prime minister Micheál Martin at the White House appeared to backpedal on his plan to turn Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East” by expelling all Palestinian inhabitants.
Trump told reporters “Nobody is expelling any Palestinians” in response to a question on whether he still stands by his ultra-provocative remarks which were tantamount to calling for ethnic cleansing of the enclave.
REPORTER: What about the president’s plan to expel Palestinians out of Gaza?
TRUMP: Nobody is expelling any Palestinians. Who are you with?
“We’re working hard with Israel… to see [how] we can solve the problem,” Trump explained.
The fresh remarks stand in stark contrast with his earlier February words spoken alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in which he said, “The US will take over the Gaza Strip… I see it as a long-term ownership position.” He had explained that Palestinians in Gaza would have to leave and be resettled elsewhere.
In the Wednesday back-and-forth with reporters he actually again called Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer a “Palestinian” and then quipped “He used to be Jewish. He’s not Jewish anymore.”
The White House position on Gazans being expelled to other countries is based on the prior explanation that “Gaza is currently uninhabitable and residents cannot humanely live in a territory covered in debris and unexploded ordnance,” in the earlier words of US National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes.
But even many Republicans see the plan as completely unrealistic and absurd, given that for starters it would ensure years more of brutal war, and the likelihood that conflict would spiral over into other Arab countries.
Removal of the debris which has piled up in the demolished Strip could take years or even decades…
Jordan and Egypt were among the first to vehemently reject Trump’s Gaza reconstruction plan, and Jordan’s leadership even threatened that its military would seek to prevent it.
Tomorrow’s debate in the reconvened outgoing Bundestag – unless it is halted by the Constitutional Court – kicks off a constitutional amendment process that could, if successful, result in the largest fiscal expansion since German reunification (see here). However, the fiscal package is not yet a done deal, and below we provide an update of the latest events.
At the time of writing, no compromise has emerged yet that would secure a two-thirds majority among CDU/CSU, SPD, Greens, and FDP. However, despite this legislative process being unusually expedited, it is still early days. Since tomorrow’s reading marks only the beginning of the parliamentary process, it is not unusual for three competing legislative proposals to be submitted. These proposals concern the financing of defense spending going forward, with the debt-brake exemption proposed by the CDU/CSU and SPD modified by the Greens’ proposal and countered by the FDP’s proposal to simply expand the existing defense fund by €200bn. The debate over the infrastructure fund remains more general.
As political negotiations continue, we have seen more constructive comments from the Greens on Tuesday, with party co-head Brantner saying “of course we are ready to negotiate”. This is consistent with our base case that a compromise will be found before the second and third readings, culminating in a vote on March 18. The FDP’s willingness to support a larger defense fund also puts pressure on the Greens with regard to defense. At the same time, both Brantner and Econ Minister Habeck have indicated that they would prefer to park a new infrastructure fund for the next parliamentary term. While a separation of the two reforms is anathema to the SPD, the Conservatives have sounded more open-minded. The political noise and uncertainty is thus likely to continue over the coming days.
Below we summarize all the latest twists and turns courtesy of DB economists Marion Muehlberger and Robin Winkler.
What is the current state of play?
Last Tuesday, the prospective new coalition partners, the CDU/CSU and SPD, proposed a significant fiscal expansion. It would exempt defense spending over and above 1% of GDP from the debt brake, establish a EUR 500 bn off-budget fund for infrastructure investment, and raise the net borrowing cap for the German states from 0% to 0.35%. The prospective government plans to pass the proposed fiscal reform in the old Bundestag, i.e. before the new Bundestag constitutes itself on March 25. A first reading will be held tomorrow and the second and third readings are planned for March 18, resulting in a vote. In the old Bundestag the CDU/CSU and SPD would need the support of the Greens (or the FDP) to achieve the required two-thirds majority. Both parties have tabled their own proposals over the past few days (see Figure 1 for an overview).
The Greens appear not to be inclined to give the CDU/CSU and SPD an easy win. On Monday, they announced that they reject the CDU/CSU-SPD proposal in its current form and have decided to bring in an own draft law instead. It only includes defense spending, to be exempted over and above 1.5% of GDP from the debt brake, as the Greens view the 1% proposed by the CDU/CSU-SPD as unambitious. The infrastructure part is not included in their proposal as the Greens want to discuss a reform of the debt brake for infrastructure investments in the new Bundestag. The Greens have reservations about the proposed €500 bn off-budget funds for infrastructure as the proposal merely states that the funds must be used for “investments in infrastructure” without specifying that they must be additional investment. The Greens’ concern is that the next government might push current investment expenses into the new fund to fund other fiscal projects such as corporate tax cuts or energy subsidies. Moreover, the Greens take issue with the lack of emphasis on the green transition. Still, the greens have signalled they are open to negotiations.
On Tuesday, the FDP also tabled a proposal for topping up the existing off-budget defense fund by EUR 200 bn. That expands the scope of negotiation for the CDU/CSU and SPD, as they theoretically also hold a two-thirds majority in the old Bundestag with the Liberals. Eventually, a compromise proposal might be easier found with the Greens given larger overlap (see Figure 1).
What to expect from tomorrow’s debate in the Bundestag?
Tomorrow’s first reading is largely a debate about proposed legislation. The first reading of the draft constitutional changes is scheduled for 12.00 CET (see parliamentary schedule). There will be no decision on the draft law and it cannot be altered or rejected at this stage. The draft is referred to committees for deliberation (with the budget committee in the lead), where an intensive examination of the draft law takes place. The committee deliberations conclude with a report containing the results of the deliberations and a recommendation for a decision to the plenary.
Base case – fiscal compromise deal
The DB base case remains for the reforms to pass with a two-thirds majority over the course of next week, but it is unlikely to be a smooth passage, and political noise is expected to increase over the next few days. The Greens’ counter-proposal was most likely about increasing their leverage in negotiations over the next few days without overplaying their hand.
The discussions in the committees and the second reading provide the opportunity to make changes to the draft legislation before it is intended to be passed in a third reading, scheduled for March 18. The counter proposal by the FDP has slightly lowered the Greens’ leverage in negotiations. But their overall leverage is still considerable and thus a potential compromise could include several of the Greens’ key demands:
On defence, the CDU/CSU-SPD could accommodate the ask of the Greens and agree to exempt defense spending above 1.5% of GDP from the debt brake.
On infrastructure, the Greens will likely insist on a more precise definition of investments covered by the fund with an emphasis that they need to be additional and “future-oriented” (i.e. partially earmarked for the green transition). In addition, German states and municipalities could also get a higher share than the proposed €100 bn out of the €500 bn off-budget fund. Several Green state ministers asked for at least €200 bn. This could facilitate the reform being approved in the Bundesrat.
Overall, such a compromise proposal would not significantly alter the expected fiscal stimulus of 3-4% of GDP by 2027 at the latest that was calculated for the original CDU/CSU-SPD proposal. The Greens want to broaden the definition of defense expenditure (i.e. include also potential future aid for Ukraine) which would be exempted from the debt brake beyond 1.5% of GDP. This is why net/net the effect could be more spending exempted from the debt brake despite raising the exemption from 1% to 1.5%. But of course this depends on how much any future government would spend on these extra categories.
Tail risk – splitting the fiscal package into an (immediate) defense and a (later) infrastructure part
In a tail risk scenario the Greens, despite being offered concessions, might not support a potentially revamped CDU/CSU-SPD fiscal reform package. Instead, they might decide to only agree to passing debt brake reform for defense spending in the old Bundestag. The infrastructure part would then be deliberated in the new Bundestag and require the support of the Left. This would potentially change the composition of the infrastructure package and gear it more towards social housing.
What speaks to the Greens pursuing this route is that their left-wing MPs might prefer a more substantial change of the debt brake with the support of the Left. What speaks against this is that the CDU/CSU-SPD also have the option to go ahead with a €200 bn off-budget fund for defense as proposed by the FDP. In addition, the majority of the population would regard this as blocking necessary urgent measures as there seems to be broad agreement with the need to spend more on defense and infrastructure.
Moreover, the splitting of the proposal could face opposition from the SPD, which has signaled that their support of the defense package is linked to the materialization of the infrastructure fund. Even though the Left party is in favor of more infrastructure investments this would not be an easy route as they might ask for far-reaching concessions and the CDU/CSU have, for now, ruled out any collaboration with the Left.
Next steps – second/third reading in the Bundestag on March 18 will be decisive
The second and third reading in the Bundestag, scheduled for March 18, will be decisive. In the second reading the Bundestag will decide on alterations of the draft law, while during the third, and final reading, the draft law needs to achieve a two-thirds majority to pass.
Bundesrat vote on March 21 – somewhat less of a hurdle
The vote in the Bundesrat – the second chamber comprising the sixteen state governments – is expected to take place on March 21. The session is scheduled to start at 9.30 am CET (see schedule). The eventual fiscal compromise is likely to entail a significant fiscal boon for the federal states, with as much as €200 bn of the off-budget infrastructure fund to go to the federal states in addition to their net borrowing cap being lifted from 0% to 0.35% of GDP. Thus, they should have a clear incentive to vote for it.
In the Bundesrat the vote will mainly depend on the support of the Greens and the Free Voters, the CSU’s junior coalition partner in Bavaria.
Might the constitutional court throw a spanner in the wheels?
On Monday, the AfD and the Left filed motions for preliminary injunction before the constitutional court in an attempt to prevent the old Bundestag from passing the proposed fiscal reforms. In their motions the Left argues that a decision in the old Bundestag would exclude numerous newly elected Bundestag members, infringing upon their participatory rights. The AfD bases its lawsuit on the argument that the outgoing Bundestag lacks the authority “to make such far-reaching decisions as several highly contested amendments to the constitution” (thus, in addition to the motions for preliminary injunction, it filed a motion for a “Organstreit proceedings”). The decision is expected shortly.
In July 2023, the constitutional court halted a vote on the “heating law” due to a similar complaint regarding insufficient deliberation time. However, the Bundestag administration asserts there’s no minimum period for convening a special session, potentially mitigating the legal risk. Were the constitutional court to put a halt to a vote before the end of March, on the grounds of there not being sufficient time for deliberation, this would effectively scupper a debt brake reform in the outgoing parliament.
BSW motion on election result before the constitutional court. On Tuesday, the far-left BSW filed a motion for preliminary injunction before the constitutional court in order to postpone the announcement of the official federal election result on Friday. The BSW narrowly missed entering the Bundestag with 4.972% of the votes according to provisional results. Legal experts see rather low chances of this motion for a recount being successful. If the BSW were successful and entered the Bundestag after a recount, the CDU/CSU and SPD would no longer achieve a majority in the new Bundestag.
“Buy A Tesla” Searches Spike After Trump Rallies Around Musk & DOGE
There has been a nationwide surge in internet searches for ‘buy a Tesla’ after President Trump shopped for a Tesla vehicle at the White House on Tuesday, signaling support for Elon Musk’s electric vehicle company—the most American-made car brand.
This comes after radical leftist groups aligned with the Democratic Party launched attacks, now classified as domestic terrorism, on Tesla showrooms and Supercharger stations nationwide. The attacks stem from outrage over Musk’s efforts through DOGE to eliminate waste and corruption by the Deep State.
🚨 #BREAKING: Rep. Darrell Issa has formally requested the Trump administration to open up an investigation into ActBlue, accusing them of potentially accepting payments from TERR0R organizations
ActBlue is said to be linked to financing attacks on Tesla showrooms and Elon Musk,… pic.twitter.com/YtusP2QvZW
TERROR: The attacks on Tesla are anything but a grassroots movement. They are a well funded effort to intimidate and silence Musk by driving down $TSLA stock prices. Likely in violation of Rule 10b-5. pic.twitter.com/XCbKNxEfry
The multiple violent attacks at Tesla Dealerships in Oregon and across the nation are Democrat terrorist attacks. Plain and simple. Where is the Democrat Party of Oregon? Why have they not publicly condemned these actions? Where is the DNC? Why have they not publicly condemned… pic.twitter.com/gQgZU5Jemo
We turn to Google Trends data to assess whether Trump’s support for Tesla and his showboating of these EVs on the White House driveway had any impact on potential sales.
We found that searches for ‘buy a Tesla’ hit a record high nationwide. To confirm that the broader EV market remains in a bear trend, we also compared this search trend with others, including ‘buy a Rivian’ and ‘buy a Lucid’—both of which, show no movement this week—just searches for Tesla.
Trump told reporters Tuesday afternoon that he would write a check for one of the Tesla vehicles. The president was fond of the Model S, calling it “beautiful,” adding that he hopes his purchase will boost Tesla amid a flurry of blowback by unhinged liberals, slowing sales, and sliding share price.
Teslas at the White House and the spike in Americans interested in the most American-made car brand comes ahead of the company’s first quarter reported earnings on April 22.
Last week, Goldman Sachs analysts Mark Delaney, Will Bryant, and otherslowered their Tesla delivery forecast for the first quarter to 375,000 from 399,000.
“Weak Demand”: Goldman Lowers Tesla Vehicle Delivery Estimate For Quarter https://t.co/l4K15HjHTC
Then, on Monday, UBS analyst Joseph Spak slashed delivery projections to 367,000 from 437,000 for the first quarter. The analyst also lowered his 12-month price target to $225 from $259.
Let’s not forget that prior presidents have shown off car brands at the White House… And remember that the Biden-Harris administration excluded Tesla from the EV summit at the White House in 2021.
2021: Biden drives a Jeep—made by the foreign-owned Stellantis—on White House grounds.
Stellantis moved thousands of Dodge, Chrysler & Jeep jobs from Detroit to Canada.
Spare me the outrage of Trump purchasing an American-owned, American-made Tesla. pic.twitter.com/hUfh0xTpx6
Shares in Tesla finally caught a bid on Wednesday, up more than 7% by lunchtime. Shares are down 39% this year.
Trump wrote on Truth Social earlier this week:
“Elon Musk is ‘putting it on the line’ in order to help our Nation, and he is doing a FANTASTIC JOB!
“But the Radical Left Lunatics, as they often do, are trying to illegally and collusively boycott Tesla, one of the World’s great automakers, and Elon’s ‘baby,’ in order to attack and do harm to Elon, and everything he stands for.”
MSM still doesn’t get it.
Democrat strategist Julie Roginsky says Trump supporters are too poor to buy Teslas so Trump buying a Tesla at the White House was meaningless.
Last week, Bill Murray was on the Joe Rogan Experience. Their conversation eventually wended to Murray’s departed friend and Saturday Night Live co-star John Belushi. Murray discussed Bob Woodward’s book about Belushi — Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi — and said it was a tsunami of fabrications. Murray even posited that since Bob Woodward’s journalism played an integral role in the demise of the Richard Nixon administration, it’s entirely possible that unseen forces were at work to depose Nixon.
Wow Bill Murray just figured out that Bob Woodward is a congenital liar who lied about his own background, John Belushi, former CIA Director Bill Casey and Nixon! https://t.co/OIb4vISXMW
I wrote a book about Watergate — The Truth About Watergate: A Tale of Extraordinary Lies and Liars — in which I demonstrate that the Tom Brady of journalism, Bob Woodward, is an unabashed liar and ethical eunuch. If he were Pinocchio, his nose would have a length that rivaled the elevation of the Chrysler Building.
Woodward was born in 1943, and he came of age in Wheaton, Illinois, a conservative, prosperous, and pious enclave on the outskirts of Chicago. Wheaton was a W.A.S.P. Xanadu: 94 percent of its denizens were white and Protestant churches were generously sprinkled throughout the hamlet. Republicans also outnumbered Democrats by a margin of four to one. Woodward’s father was a talented trial lawyer, who would be awarded a county circuit judgeship.
Outwardly, Woodward grew up in an idyllic environment. “Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril,” Oscar Wilde said of art, and Wilde’s statement was equally applicable to the Woodward household: His mother had an affair with a Sears’ executive, which ruptured the family. Twelve-year-old Woodward was the eldest of three siblings when his father was awarded custody of the three children. His father remarried a divorcee who had three children, and the couple eventually had a daughter. So the Woodward household mutated from Father Knows Best into The Brady Bunch.
Woodward has depicted himself as an outsider of sorts throughout his high school years. But he was elected class president during his sophomore year, and he was one of four commencement speakers for his graduating class. He followed in the conservative wake of his father, and his commencement speech was gleaned from The Conscience of a Conservative, a book written by ultra conservative Barry Goldwater.
After Woodward graduated from Wheaton Community High School, he skipped into Yale University on a Navy R.O.T.C. scholarship. He doubled down on his dedication to the status quo when he entered Book and Snake, one of Yale’s secret societies. At Yale, Woodward majored in English and history. A Yale history professor described his conservative bent as “crypto-fascist.”
Though Woodward eschewed the peace, love, and brown rice of the 1960s, he revealed in an interview after his celebrity that he had become disenchanted with the Vietnam War and thought of seeking sanctuary in Canada. But Woodward’s recollections about his collegiate misgivings on Vietnam diverge from the memories of his high school sweetheart and first wife: When the authors of Silent Coup inquired if Woodward had ever talked about evading his R.O.T.C. commitment to the Navy in Canada, she responded with a resounding, “Heavens no!” She also depicted him as “ruthless” and “extremely ambitious.”
Following Woodward’s graduation from Yale, his R.O.T.C. scholarship mandated a six-year hitch in the Navy — four years of active duty and two years in the naval reserve. He was a communications officer who had a “top-secret crypto” security clearance when he served on the USS Wright and then the USS Fox.
After his four-year tenure in the Navy, he was assigned to the Pentagon, where he served a fifth year of active duty, working for the Chief of Naval Operations. His responsibilities included briefing Alexander Haig. The official Watergate narrative, sanctified by the government, ablates Woodward briefing Haig at the White House in 1969 and 1970. And Woodward’s Big Lie throughout Watergate was that he didn’t meet Alexander Haig until 1973. But his Big Lie is trumped by three sources who maintain that he had, indeed, briefed Haig: The Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Thomas Moorer, Nixon’s Secretary of Defense, and also an aide to the Secretary of Defense. Woodward’s Big Lie has seismic implications, which are discussed in The Truth About Watergate.
Here’s a link of me giving Greg Kelly an interview on The Truth About Watergate. I’m not a Nixon apologist, but Watergate was not the dreck served in history books and the mainstream media. I explain to Kelly the reason why Watergate was a silent coup.https://t.co/X2t282g1el
Woodward was able to forgo serving in the naval reserves after his active duty, and he embarked on his civilian incarnation. After his exodus from the Navy, the evolution of his vocational pursuits was extremely perplexing. Though Woodward was accepted to Harvard Law School, he hit the pause button on his legal aspirations and ostensibly worked out a very unconventional arrangement with The Washington Post. He didn’t have prior newspaper experience, but he offered to work at The Post for two weeks sans compensation: Woodward and The Washington Post ostensibly agreed that if he had the requisite talent to be a Washington Post caliber reporter, The Post would hire him. But Woodward had significant troubles fashioning coherent copy, and, after his trial run, The Washington Post jettisoned him.
Both accounts of Woodward’s brief tenure at the Post and his next professional move are mired in improbability: He continued to abandon his legal aspirations, and he landed a job as a reporter for The Montgomery County Sentinel, a weekly in suburban Maryland. The Sentinel started him out at $110 a week, which was extremely meager when compared to the earning potential of a graduate from Harvard Law School. His career move certainly wasn’t on the trajectory of someone who’s “ruthless” and “extremely ambitious.”
Woodward’s hire at The Montgomery County Sentinel is also enmeshed in conflicting versions. Woodward has said that an editor at The Washington Post furnished him with a laudatory letter that he presented to the editor of The Sentinel, but The Sentinel’s editor disputed Woodward’s version. The Sentinel editor maintained that Woodward had a laudatory letter, but the genesis of the letter was a “senior officer” in the Navy.
Woodward’s dismissal after only weeks at the Washington Post lends credence to The Sentinel editor’s account, because it seems unlikely that a Washington Post editor would provide a laudatory letter for a lackluster audition at the newspaper. However, The Sentinel’s editor changed his tune after Woodward’s celebrity, asserting that Woodward, indeed, wielded a laudatory letter from a Washington Post editor when he applied to be a reporter for The Sentinel.
Woodward puzzled his coworkers at The Sentinel: His salary was a paltry $110 per week, but he looked as if he were consistently flush with cash. He never vacated his apartment in Washington, D.C., which perplexed his Sentinel coworkers, because it seemed beyond the means of a Sentinel reporter. He made daily treks to Rockville, Maryland, where The Sentinel was headquartered, in his Karmann Ghia sports car. According to a former Sentinel coworker, he even made jaunts to New York City “at least two weekends a month.” He also had a mysterious gift of portending revolutions in banana republics.
The Sentinel served as Woodward’s Triple-A farm team: He was at The Sentinel for nearly a year before the Washington Post conscripted him as a full-time staff reporter. He had been at The Post a mere nine months when the Watergate burglars were busted. According to All the President’s Men, a book written by Woodward and Bernstein about the demise of the Nixon administration, a phone call from the city editor of The Washington Post awakened him the morning after the Watergate bust. After he walked to The Post, he learned that the burglars were to appear at the courthouse for a preliminary hearing. Woodward ventured to the courthouse, where the burglars’ “attorney of record” supposedly coughed up the names and addresses of his clients.
An ensemble of Post reporters hustled and bustled to collectively generate The Post’s first Watergate article, published a day after the bust — “5 Held in Plot to Bug Democrats’ Office Here.” The article was by-lined by The Post’s police reporter, but eight reporters, including Woodward and Carl Bernstein, were acknowledged as contributing to the article.
The following morning, Sunday, Woodward and Bernstein were summoned to The Post. An Associated Press story had scooped The Post, reporting that Watergate burglar James McCord was the security coordinator for Nixon’s Committee to Reelect the President. Accordingly, Woodward and Bernstein focused on McCord. The two reportedly disliked each other: Woodward thought that Bernstein’s longish hair and dress evoked the anarchistic counterculture, which Woodward “despised,” and Bernstein thought that Woodward evoked Ivy League entitlement.
Despite their reported antipathy towards each other, they began working the phones. Woodward handed the first page of a draft to their editor, and Bernstein perused the draft over the editor’s shoulder. Bernstein subsequently rewrote the article. A June 19 Post article — “GOP Security Aide is Among the Watergate Burglars” — was bylined by Woodward and Bernstein, launching journalism’s preeminent brand.
According to All the President’s Men, the D.C. police had permitted the Post’s nocturnal police reporter to examine the address books of burglars Barker and Martinez, and he discovered the name and phone number of Watergate burglar Howard E. Hunt, “with the small notations ‘White H.’ and ‘W.H.’” The reporter’s leads were then purportedly shuffled to Woodward. In All the President’s Men, after the intrepid cub reporter locked onto Hunt, he made a staccato flurry of phones calls to the White House and Robert Mullen Company, where Hunt was ostensibly employed.
The Robert Mullin Company was a C.I.A. front, and its C.E.O. was a C.I.A. agent or a C.I.A. asset. Mullin’s C.E.O. met with his C.I.A. case officer less than a month after the Watergate bust, and his case officer deemed his information so sensitive that he wrote a handwritten memorandum on the meeting and personally handed it to the C.I.A. director. At that meeting, Mullin’s C.E.O. boasted to his C.I.A. case officer that he had deterred reporters at The Washington Post and The Washington Star from implicating the C.I.A. in Watergate.
When Woodward purportedly phoned Hunt at the Robert Mullen Company and inquired about Hunt’s name being in the burglars’ address books, Hunt reportedly shrieked “Good God!” and said that he wouldn’t comment on an ongoing case before summarily slamming down the phone. The president of the Robert Mullen Company allegedly disclosed to Woodward that Hunt had been a C.I.A. officer from 1949 to 1970, and the C.I.A. ostensibly confirmed Hunt’s years of employment. But it’s extremely dubious that the C.I.A. would out one of its agents or former agents to a reporter over the phone.
Before Woodward’s staccato flurry of phone calls, he alleges that he phoned Mark Felt in the guise of Deep Throat who told him that the story was about to “heat up.” After further phone calls, he again phoned Felt in the guise of Deep Throat, who told him that the “F.B.I. regarded Hunt as a prime suspect in the Watergate investigation.” Woodward then wrote an article that was also by-lined by the Post’s night crime reporter, published on June 20, three days after the bust — “White House Consultant Linked to Bugging Suspects” — elucidating Hunt’s links to the White House and Watergate burglars. The fabricated, inextricable legends of Woodward and “Deep Throat” were thus imprinted on the American zeitgeist.
Felt may very well have been a source for Woodward early on, but the unfolding chronology of Watergate largely eliminates Felt from being a later source. In 2005, Woodward rolled out a senile Mark Felt as his sole Deep Throat source throughout Watergate — Felt had been the F.B.I.’s associate director. Woodward has maintained that he initially encountered Felt at the White House when he was a lowly errand boy for the Navy.
According to All the President’s Men, Woodward set up his meetings with Felt by repositioning a flowerpot with a red flag on his apartment’s sixth floor balcony, and Felt made daily treks by Woodward’s balcony. When Felt supposedly noticed the repositioned red flag, he and Woodward would have a 2:00 A.M. rendezvous at an underground garage in Arlington, Virginia. On the days that Woodward signaled Deep Throat, the intrepid, young reporter would take “two or more taxis” to the garage to ensure that he wasn’t followed to his late night, subterranean encounter with Deep Throat.
Tucker Carlson explains how the FBI and CIA conducted a coup to take out President Richard Nixon with help from “journalist” Bob Woodward.
“Richard Nixon was taken out by the FBI and CIA, and with the help of Bob Woodward.”
Woodward ostensibly started signaling Felt when he lived in an apartment on P Street in D.C. He has reportedly stated that he lived in the P Street apartment until “early 1973.” But Secret Agenda notes that Woodward lived in the P Street apartment until mid-November of 1972. He then lived in an apartment near The Washington Post until January of 1973 before moving into a high rise in southwest D.C.
Felt was “forced out” of the F.B.I. in June of 1973. But All the President’s Men specified that he acted in the capacity of Deep Throat into November of 1973. Throughout the 1970s, Felt lived in Virginia. Accordingly, if Woodward’s accounts of Felt’s treks by his balcony from June of 1973 until November of 1973 are truthful, Felt would’ve made daily jaunts from Virginia into D.C., perusing Woodward’s balcony after his departure from the F.B.I. An implausible tale indeed!
But his accounts of his meetings with Felt are superimposed on additional absurdities: When Adrian Havill wrote Deep Truth, he discovered that Woodward’s balcony, which faced a sunken courtyard, could be viewed from two vantage points. The first vantage point necessitated Havill exiting his car in an alley, walking “fifty-six steps,” and then looking upward at an extremely sharp angle: Havill found that Woodward’s balcony was barely visible from this vantage point, and it would’ve been extremely difficult for “Deep Throat” to see the flowerpot. Havill also noticed that a myriad of apartments could observe a trespasser in the back of Woodward’s apartment building, so daily jaunts to peruse Woodward’s balcony without detection would’ve been virtually impossible. The second vantage point from which to scrutinize Woodward’s balcony was from the courtyard behind the apartment building, but access to the courtyard required passing through two locked doors and within view of a reception desk. So, in addition to daily treks from Virginia into D.C., Felt would’ve had to exit his car and surmount the aforementioned obstacles to view Woodward’s balcony.
In All The President’s Men, Woodward and Bernstein wrote that when Deep Throat sought to contact Woodward, he would etch a clock on page 20 of The New York Times that was delivered to Woodward’s apartment door every morning before 7:00 A.M. The clock delineated the time of their prospective meeting. However, The New York Times wasn’t delivered to Woodward’s apartment door, but, rather, a stack of newspapers were left at the reception area. The residents of the building then had to retrieve their copies of The New York Times from the lobby. So, yet again, the veracity of Woodward and Deep Throat’s legendary communication schema is deconstructed by reality.
Woodward may also have had a cozier relationship to the C.I.A. than merely his relationship with Mullin’s C.E.O. The Watergate Committee’s senior Republican had a hunch that Woodward was affiliated with the C.I.A., and he directed one of the Watergate Committee’s counsels to inquire about the association. But the C.I.A. rebuffed the counsel’s inquiries. So, the senator dispatched the counsel’s request and a letter to the C.I.A.’s director, inquiring about Woodward’s relationship to the C.I.A. A “few hours” after the senator dispatched the letter, he received a phone call from an “incensed” Woodward. His relatively prompt phone call to the senator suggests that he may have had a very snug rapport with the C.I.A. director.
Carl Bernstein, like his crony Bob Woodward, would have a 10th degree blackbelt in mendacity if such distinctions were awarded. When Bernstein was a Washington Post reporter, ostensibly cracking open Watergate, he had an imperious id. He befriended a notorious D.C. pimp who owned an adult bookstore, and he made repeated visits to the pimp’s porn parlor. The pimp even lavished Bernstein with pornographic materials. He was also a participant in a swingers’ club that was primarily composed of C.I.A. officers and their girlfriends or wives.
After Bernstein’s Watergate celebrity, his voracious libidinal cravings did not seem to wane, because, after all, fame and power are the ultimate aphrodisiacs. In fact, New York magazine recounts an anecdote of Bernstein hitting on a 16-year-old at a dinner party. Though he brought a date to the dinner party, he, nevertheless, encountered the 16-year-old in the kitchen and rubbed his body against hers as he attempted to solicit a date.
In 1976, Bernstein married Nora Ephron, who was en route to becoming a renowned writer and director. Bernstein, however, couldn’t put a brake on his philandering and the marriage disintegrated by 1980. His ex-wife exacted revenge by writing a thinly veiled novel about their marriage. In the novel, Heartburn, Ephron wrote that her satyr of a husband would have sex with a venetian blind. I realize that her aspersion may sound anatomically difficult, if not impossible, but perhaps she had insights into Bernstein that have eluded the public?
Alas, when libido drives the car, it often parks in the wrong garage. Now…let’s talk about Watergate….
In addition to Woodward’s lies about Deep Throat, All The President’s Men wielded inexplicable lies that were apparently incorporated to heighten dramatic tension. In All The President’s, Bernstein reportedly drove to McLean, Virginia on September 18, 1972 to interview the treasurer fore the Committee for the Re-election of the President, Nixon’s election war chest. According to All The President’s Men, the jaunt would’ve usually taken one-half hour, but an afternoon downpour prolonged his drive to “an hour and a quarter.” He, of course, became “soaked” when he exited the car and, on foot, searched for the C.R.P.’s treasurer house. But the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration begs to differ with Bernstein’s account, recording that the day in question had a minuscule two-hundreds of an inch of rain between 4:00 P.M. and 5:00 P.M. and four-hundreds of an inch between 5:00 P.M. and 6:00 P.M.
All The President’s Men wielded an additional lie about Bernstein’s interview with the C.R.P. treasurer: He reportedly discovered that the C.R.P. treasurer wouldn’t be home until 7:30 P.M., and he again braved the rain when he returned to his house later that night. But, yet again, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration begs to differ with Bernstein’s account, recording that there was no rain after 6:00 P.M. that day.
I know it’s just a cute joke tweet but President’s Men is such outrageous propaganda. Woodward was high-level Naval Intelligence. He was close with Al Haig & later lied about it. Also, “Deepthroat” Mark Felt was a top architect of FBI COINTELPRO. The whole op was a 🪓 on Nixon. https://t.co/MQBJFsRtnR
— Angleton’s Orchids (@AngletonOrchids) May 28, 2024
All The President’s Men espoused a whopper about Bernstein ducking a subpoena on February 26, 1973: Woodward and Bernstein wrote that the C.R.P. attempted to serve Bernstein with a subpoena, but, when he was in The Washington Post’s lobby, he was alerted that the server was in the newsroom. He then sprinted to the stairwell and swiftly ascended seven flights to the accounting department. Bernstein then ducked into an office and phoned the Post’s executive editor who told him to go see a movie. In All The President’s Men, he spent the afternoon watching the porno flick Deep Throat.
Although Deep Throat would seem to meld naturally with Bernstein’s sense of aesthetics, his anecdote about watching the porno flick on that day was an unabashed lie. The film Deep Throat had played in D.C. during the summer and fall of 1972. However, four months prior to his ostensible evasion of the subpoena, D.C. police raided D.C.’s adult theaters and confiscated hard-core pornographic films. At the time, the fate of hard-core pornography was in the midst of being adjudicated in the courts: The film Deep Throat wasn’t even listed in Washington’s newspapers in February of 1973, and the theaters that had previously shown Deep Throat were forced to run either soft porn or action-adventure movies.
In All The President’s Men, Bernstein cultivates an exceptional source — “Z” — who imparts information about the malfeasance of the president’s men in truncated sentences that read like Zen koans. Woodward later said that Z was as important a source as Deep Throat. In the passage where he made his first contact with Z, Woodward and Bernstein carefully crafted and manipulated their semantics, implying that Z was an employee of the Nixon White House or the Committee to Reelect the President.But Z was a Watergate grand juror! And to compound the lie, Woodward and Bernstein were very naughty boys, because they maintained in All The President’s Men that Watergate grand jurors never granted them an interview.
Bernstein had punctured the sanctity of the grand jury probing Watergate, and he gave his notes on the contact to Ben Bradlee, The Post’s salty, Boston Brahmin executive editor, to apparently safeguard from subpoenas emanating from the D.C. U.S. attorney’s office. The latter action demonstrated that The Post’s executive editor was, likely, in on the charade. In fact, in The Truth About Watergate I discuss how Bradlee oozes a morass of lies about his relationship to the C.I.A.
Woodward’s cover story about Deep Throat is extremely defective, and I’ve discussed Bernstein’s turpitude. Woodward and Bernstein are not the honorable knights for truth and justice depicted by Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman in the film All The President’s Men. Indeed, their lives and their Watergate reporting are, unfortunately, a sprawling net of lies that are moored to the monolithic lie of Deep Throat. This article only scratches the surface of the fabrications Woodward and Bernstein have promulgated over the decades. The Truth About Watergate presents comprehensive, unflinching litany of their lies.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) confirmed on March 12 that she will not run for reelection in 2026, harming Democrats’ chances to regain a majority in the upper chamber.
Shaheen, 78, announced the decision in a post on social media platform X, writing: “Today, after careful consideration, I’m announcing that I have made the difficult decision not to seek reelection to the Senate in 2026.
“There are urgent challenges ahead, both here at home and around the world. And while I’m not seeking re-election—believe me—I am not retiring.”
She later wrote on the platform that in her final two years as a senator, she will “work every day” in order to “make a difference for the people of NH and this country.”
In an interview with The New York Times on March 12, Shaheen confirmed that she will not seek a fourth term.
“It was a difficult decision, made more difficult by the current environment in the country—by President Trump and what he’s doing right now,” she told the outlet, adding that a “new generation of leadership” is needed.
Shaheen has been a political force in New Hampshire for decades and climbed through the ranks of Senate leadership to serve as the top Democrat on the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
New Hampshire has narrowly favored Democrats in recent presidential elections, but the state has a long history of electing leaders from both parties. Republican Gov. Kelly Ayotte was elected last fall, when Trump lost the state by less than 3 percentage points.
Shaheen’s decision places even more pressure on Democrats for the 2026 midterms, as a recent analysis from the Cook Political Report suggests that the party will have difficulty regaining the upper chamber. Republicans currently hold 53 seats compared with the Democrats’ 47, including two independents who caucus with Democrats.
In February, Cook noted that the seats up for grabs in 2026 “aren’t particularly friendly” to Democrats and that the “challenge for Democrats to net the four seats necessary to win back the majority looks herculean.” Two seats were rated as toss-ups, and both are currently being controlled by Democrats.
They are currently held by Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), who similarly announced earlier this year that he won’t be seeking reelection, and Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.).
Ossoff won his 2021 run-off race by a little more than 1 percentage point. Nearly four years later, President Donald Trump was able to win Georgia over Democrat Kamala Harris by 2 points.
When announcing his decision not to seek reelection, Peters, 66, said in a video in February, “[It’s] time for me to write a few more paragraphs in my current chapter and then turn over the reins.”
After Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) confirmed she would not seek a fifth term in 2024 for Michigan’s other Senate seat, current Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) was able to secure it by a narrow margin in the most recent election.
Maine represents the Democrats’ best pickup opportunity in 2026. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the sole GOP senator remaining in New England, is the only Republican who’s up for reelection in a state Trump lost.
Shaheen became the first woman elected New Hampshire governor in 1996. She served for three terms and was elected to the Senate in 2008.
The Epoch Times contacted Shaheen’s office for comment on March 12 but did not receive a response by publication time.
WSJ’s Chief Foreign Correspondent Declares It’s Over For Ukraine In Kursk
Update(1259ET): It’s a major turning point in the conflict when the Chief Foreign-Affairs Correspondent for The Wall Street Journal declares that Ukrainian forces are now in a full-on withdrawal from Russia’s Kursk amid rapid Russian gains…
After seven months of combat against the Russian and North Korean military, Ukrainian forces are withdrawing from the Russian region of Kursk.
Reuters too is reporting that Ukrainian forces are losing in Kursk:
Ukrainian troops appeared on the point of losing their hard-won foothold inside Russia’s Kursk region on Wednesday as Moscow claimed further advances there and military bloggers on both sides said Kyiv’s forces were withdrawing.
Ukraine sprang one of the biggest shocks of the war on August 6 last year by storming across the border and grabbing a chunk of land inside Russia, boosting citizens’ morale and gaining a potential bargaining chip.
There are no more cards to play, as Trump put it last month while hosting Zelensky at the White House, and now this assessment proves truer than ever.
* * *
Ukraine is losing the little bit of leverage it might have had left amid discussions toward preparing negotiations with Moscow. Russia’s Kursk is now fast being retaken, and Ukrainian forces are folding, as on Wednesday Russian troops raised their flags over the key town of Sudzha .
The central square of the town in the southwestern Kursk region was scene of where Russia’s Airborne Troops published a short aerial video showing soldiers unfurling a Russian flag as well as military unit banners. Other state media outlets subsequently featured the footage. Newsweek has underscored that Ukraine is fast “losing its trump card.”
Moscow has been focusing its forces on to regaining control around Sudzha in recent days, having retaken 12 settlements in the border region earlier this week.
Fighting is said to still be ongoing, but Moscow forces have asserted control over the center. Ukrainian media also acknowledges the following:
Russian troops have launched an offensive on the Ukrainian-controlled town of Sudzha in Russia’s Kursk Oblast, entering the settlement, the DeepState monitoring group, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), and the Russian state news agency TASS claimed on March 12. Fighting in the town is reportedly ongoing.
…According to DeepState, Russian forces have entered the eastern part of Sudzha and are entrenching their positions. TASS published purported drone footage claiming that Russian troops had entered the town center and raised a Russian flag.
War bloggers have been closely monitoring the fight for control of Sudzha, with Ruslan Leviev of the war monitor Conflict Intelligence Team describing that Ukrainian troops have been in steady retreat from the entire region.
“We’ve seen that all the areas coming under Russian control have been taken with little to no resistance. The same goes for Sudzha,” Leviev said. “Today, we’re seeing them on the opposite side [of the town]. And again, there are no images of any fighting.”
“At this point, it’s fair to say that the entire city of Sudzha is now under Russian control,” he described of the ground situation.
While months ago Ukrainian forces occupied several hundred square kilometers of Russian territory in Kursk region, as of Wednesday that control has shrunk to less than 200 square kilometers (77 square miles), according to the Ukraine-military linked DeepState war tracker.
Video said to be from on the ground in Russia’s Sudzha, including interviews with elderly Russians that stayed the whole time:
🇷🇺 Sudzha is liberated, and civilians are in tears of joy as Russian troops reclaim the city. Months of occupation are over, and the enemy is retreating. Our forces now control the city center and private sector, pushing deeper as resistance crumbles.
Recall that in the late last month famous Oval Office blow-up involving Trump, Zelensky, and J.D. Vance – Trump told the Ukrainian leader: “You don’t have the cards right now.”
That now appears truer than ever, at a moment the Russians are studying the new US-Ukraine proposal for a 30-day truce in order to jump-start direct negotiations to end the war.
Portland Woman Scammed Out Of More Than $40,000 On Online Dating App
“It’s turned my life upside down,” said Katie Powell about being duped for more than $40,000 via an online dating app.
The southeast Portland woman turned to Tinder for a connection and thought she found one with a man who claimed to be in his early 40s, according to NBC KGW 8. Powell recalled constant texting throughout the relationship.
“Instantly, my instinct was like, ‘Why would somebody, you’ve never met me, I’ve known you for 10 days,'” she said. “Why would you be asking me for money?”
After more than a month, the man, claiming to be a civil engineer in Turkey with no family support, began requesting money. He even sent a hospital photo, later exposed as a doctored image of former MLB pitcher Phil Hughes from nine years ago.
“I was questioning every single thing and knowing this is not right. But he was able to talk me into the fact that it was right,” Powell said.
The NBC KGW 8 report said for months, the scammer sent fake but convincing documents. He even paid off her credit cards and moved $750,000 into her Vanguard account, but the payments bounced, and Vanguard froze the account. The extra funds eventually disappeared.
“I mean it was physically, psychologically, emotionally, just draining,” Powell said.
She lost over $40,000. Experts warn such scams are rising.
“In 2021, consumers lost over $547 million to romance scams,” said Julie Campbell of JPMorgan Chase Bank, noting AI helps scammers fake identities, voices, and images.
“They’re more rampant than ever before,” Campbell said, noting that one in 10 dating app profiles are fake. Many victims never admit they were scammed.
“They play on people that, you know, have soft and tender hearts and feel like they’re in love,” she said.
“Yeah, I loved him,” Powell admitted. “I curse him every time I’m out DoorDashing,” she said. “Busting my butt to make some more money because of him.”
Pakistani Separatists Attack Train With Over 400 People On Board, Conduct Mass Killings
One of the most brazen terror attacks and hostage standoffs the world has ever seen played out on Tuesday into Wednesday. The shocking incident in Pakistan’s restive southwestern region involved a separatist Islamist group attacking and taking control of a large passenger train.
Some 450 passengers were travelling on the train from Quetta to Peshawar when it was attacked Tuesday by militants of the outlawed Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA). The group took a number of hostages after halting the train. Many bystanders are still missing.
Soon after the train had entered a tunnel, “intense gunfire” was unleashed by the militants. There had actually ben over 100 passengers on the train who were members of Pakistani security forces, but it’s unclear whether many of these personnel were armed at the time.
One eyewitness who was able to escape the mayhem, Muhammad Ashraf, described to BBC: “There was a lot of fear among the passengers. It was a scene of doomsday.”
Pakistani special forces were among the first to respond to the scene, also amid helicopter cover overhead, and a shootout ensued. But it ended in tragedy. While at least 35 militants were killed, some 100 civilians were reportedly executed by the terrorists.
The hunt for the remaining attackers appears to still be ongoing, as many of the gunmen fled into the nearby mountains.
Baloch insurgents in Pakistan’s Balochistan province have shared a video showing how they blew up a train track to derail a Peshawar-bound passenger train before taking the passengers hostage.#PakistanTrainHijackpic.twitter.com/LPy49xImdm
Pakistani forces have freed the remaining passengers from a train that was hijacked by separatist militants, security officials said Wednesday, after militants in explosive-filled vests took hundreds of people hostage and executed 100 more.
“All innocent hostages have been safely rescued, and their evacuation is underway,” the Pakistani army said in a statement. late Wednesday.
The dramatic rescue operation came hours after militants said they had executed 50 hostages, in addition to the 10 they killed late Tuesday, the 10 Pakistani soldiers they killed during a firefight on and the 30 people who they killed “in combat” on the same day.
The Pakistani army said that it rescued some 178 hostages Wednesday in addition to the 168 it recovered Tuesday.
The escaping BLA members managed to take some of the hostages with them. “Security forces say they have deployed hundreds of troops to rescue the remaining passengers. Authorities have also deployed helicopters and special forces personnel,” BBC reports.
Pakistan forces have launched a “full-scale” operation to rescue train passengers taken hostage by militants in the mountainous southwest, with security sources saying 155 had been freed in the past 24 hours. https://t.co/brQ6KUL7pJpic.twitter.com/giwLpCGRQD
The BLA has warned it could start executing more hostages if they are pursued, and have described “severe consequences” if further efforts are made by the government to rescue the hostages. The rough-terrain, restive region has long been a battleground of frequent terror attacks targeting Pakistan government sites and civilian targets, including random recent attacks against cars on area highways. It remains one of the world’s most dangerous regions.
