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Does Iran Have a Hit Team in the US?
Former U.S. and Iranian intelligence officials tell a haunting tale.
Iran’s Quds Force, which the Biden White House has reportedly discussed removing from the terrorism list, has more than a hundred active agents operating inside the United States, according to former U.S. and Iranian intelligence officials.
Their current goal is to penetrate the security perimeter surrounding former President Donald J. Trump and to kill him.
The Iranian plot is not a secret: Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamene’I, boasted in January that Iranian agents inside the United States were tracking the former president’s movements, and could penetrate the security systems protecting him.
That boast appeared in the form of a chilling video, posted to the Khamenei’s website and to Twitter by regime sympathizers and intelligence analysts, showing Quds Force operatives targeting the president on the tee of his West Palm Beach golf club. It ended with a photograph of Qassem Soleymani, the Quds Force commander killed by a U.S. drone strike outside the Baghdad airport on Jan. 2, 2020, and a black screen: “Revenge is Definite.”
They have also threatened to kill former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and CIA Director Gina Haspel in retaliation for their role in the drone strike that killed Suleymani and 17 others on Route Irish at the Baghdad airport. “Ironically, that’s the same road where Suleymani had killed dozens of Americans,” said John Maguire, a former CIA deputy station chief who worked in Iraq after the 2003 invasion.
U.S. intelligence agencies, including the FBI, have known for over a decade about Iranian programs to recruit and train Quds Force operatives – preferably non-Iranians – capable of penetrating Western countries.
“The Quds Force started creating this capability in Baghdad in 2004,” Maguire said. “They wanted educated candidates; ideally, candidates with foreign travel documents and experience traveling in the West. The Quds Force organized, controlled, trained and supported this capability.”
The prospective agents learned how to make improvised explosive devices out of common materials, how to identify concealed fire positions for a sniper attack, and how to conduct surveillance and counter-surveillance, among other operational skills. Many went to Lebanon for a full year’s paramilitary and martial arts training with Hezbollah.
Once these “super-agents” had completed their training, they were dispersed around the world “and we lost them,” Maguire said. “But we do know that they have been coming to the US in increasing numbers since 2011.”
I published photographs of a group of these “super-agents” in my 2005 book Countdown to Crisis: the Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran. I obtained the pictures from former Iranian intelligence officer, Hamid Reza Zakeri. One set showed the group during the armed counter-surveillance training in Tehran. A second set showed the same men back in Iraq in civilian clothes.
Iran’s clandestine U.S. network may have emerged from the shadows in April when the FBI conducted a raid on a Washington, DC, apartment complex and arrested two men for impersonating federal officers.
The two men, Arian Taherzadeh, 40, and Haider Sher-Ali, 35, were found in possession of U.S. driver’s licenses and credit cards in different names, chip cards identifying them as DHS officers, and an astonishing arsenal of weapons, including sniper gear, high-capacity magazines, counter-surveillance detection equipment, a mini door ram and a Halligan tool used for breaching locked doors.
Investigators rushed the arrest because the two men had been tipped off in an email from a U.S. Secret Service agent that they were under investigation. Four Secret Service agents were suspended just before the April 5 arrest, including one on first lady Jill Biden’s personal protection detail, according to the FBI.
“Because of the breakneck pace of the investigation, there are many facts that we still do not know,” federal prosecutors said in a court filing. “But the facts that we do know about the Defendants – that they lied about their identities for years, stored a cache of weapons and surveillance equipment in their apartments, compromised law enforcement agents in sensitive positions, and tried to cover up their crimes – leave no doubt that their release poses a public safety risk.”
Court papers filed by federal prosecutors at the time painted an alarming picture of the two men and their alleged activities. They regularly boasted of their ability to conceal-carry DHS Glock 19 Generation 5 pistols, and provided favors to Secret Service agents, including a rent-free Penthouse apartment. They communicated with their Secret Service friends using official DHS email addresses.
The two men “fit the Quds Force profile well,” former CIA officer Maguire said.
One witness interviewed by the FBI observed Taherzadeh use a Private Identity Verification (“PIV”) card “to access a laptop that is labelled with a “DHS” symbol.” When Taherzadeh logged onto the laptop using the PIV card, the witness “saw a federal logon privacy notice” on the screen. Taherzadeh also boasted of having a list of all the government agents living in their apartment complex.
In a subsequent filing, prosecutors fleshed out the mission of the two men. “They compromised United States Secret Service (USSS) personnel involved in protective details and with access to the White House complex by lavishing gifts upon them, including rent-free living.”
They also “procured, stored, and used all the tools of law enforcement and covert tradecraft: weaponry, including firearms, scopes, and brass knuckles; surveillance equipment, including a drone, antennae, hard drives, and hard drive copying equipment; tools to manufacture identities, including a machine to create Personal Identification Verification (PIV) cards and passport photographs; and tactical gear, including vests, gas masks, breach equipment, police lights, and various law enforcement insignia,” prosecutors alleged.
Heidar Ali told one witness that he had ties to Pakistani intelligence, the ISI, but his passport records also showed four trips to Iran through Mashad, a known hub of the IRGC, and multiple trips to Qatar and to Iraq.
Both men possessed U.S. passports, suggesting they had become naturalized U.S. citizens.
The deeper they dug, the more alarmed prosecutors became. In yet another filing before the court, they noted that “with every new fact uncovered in the investigation…. the story only gets worse.”
“Certainly, infiltration of the [Secret Service] presidential detail would be a key goal,” said Charles (Sam) Faddis, a senior CIA operations officer who spent more than twenty years working in the Middle East and South Asia and now publishes the online And Magazine. He is also a former US Army JAG officer.
“I think everything we know about these guys suggests strongly this is a Quds Force Op. They have the profile. The gear recovered is exactly what I would expect to find in a safe house for a team doing the initial casing preparatory to an attack of some kind.”
Defense attorneys argued that prosecutors had failed to prove a foreign connection and were “making a mountain out of a molehill.” The Obama-appointed judge in charge of the case, G. Michael Harvey, agreed and ordered the release of the two suspects, arguing that they did not “pose a danger” to the community.
Judge Harvey is also the presiding justice over many of the Jan. 6 detainees, some of whom have been in pre-trial detention for seventeen months. Obviously, in Judge Harvey’s eyes these grandmas and grandpas pose a much greater “danger to the community” than two heavily armed men with counter-intelligence training and foreign travel to a terrorist nation.
Prosecutors have not alleged that either defendant was a Quds Force operative.
In writing about the case, former CIA operative Sam Faddis noted that Taherzadeh and Ali “began posing as law enforcement agents in February 2020, the month after a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad killed” Qassem Suleymani, and that the Iranians “have made no secret of their intent to get revenge for the killing of “Soleymani.”
The very day the two men were released in Washington, the commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Ground Forces, Mohammad Pakpour, publicly declared that killing US officials was not enough and “we should avenge Qassem Soleymani’s blood in other ways!”
Eventually, the DC court transferred the case to Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who on May 12 denied a request by the Defendants to allow them to travel during supervised home detention.
There are other rumblings that could presage an Iranian terror attack inside the United States in the coming months.
Earlier this month, authorities in Argentina grounded a 747 cargo jet recently sold to Venezuela by Mahan Air, which regularly transports arms and IRGC fighters to Syria and elsewhere.
Among the Iranians listed as crew on the flight was the former CEO of Qeshm Fars Air, designated by the U.S. Department of Treasury for providing "material support" to the Quds Force and to Mahan Air. Officials in Argentina and neighboring Paraguay are investigating whether the aircraft was used to ferry arms or terrorists and have requested assistance from the FBI.
Iran has stepped up its presence elsewhere in Latin America as well, signing a 20 year cooperation agreement with Venezuela on June 10 and dispatching former Revolutionary Guards commander Mohsen Rezai on a secret trip to Nicaragua and Cuba, where he met with security and intelligence officials.
But the Biden administration appears oblivious to the threats. Just last week, in an apparent gesture of appeasement to the Iranian regime, the State Department and Homeland Security loosened immigration restrictions on persons who had "only" provided non-lethal support to terrorist organizations, including the Quds Force, making it easier for Iran to infiltrate agents into this country.
"Given Iran is actively plotting to kill former American officials, the administration should carefully explain if and how this [rule] might apply to a potential affiliate of the IRGC," former Trump administration official Richard Goldberg told the Washington Free Beacon.
My Iranian sources say that regime officials boast among themselves that they will successfully carry out an attack on President Trump or one of the Trump administration officials involved in the killing of Soleymani before the mid-term elections this November. The daughter of Soleymani mocked former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in a recent tweet, "Live in fear, liar."
We can only pray that the FBI and the Secret Service presidential security detail are up to the task and have not already been compromised.
And:
Why Do So Many Top Democrats Have No Problem Associating With a Virulent Anti-Semite?
Look at who their associations are.
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A shift takes place:
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Despite all of the cultural pressure from the Left, the country is moving center-right
By Salena Zito
What has happened in this country in the last decade or so was that liberalism went from "Let's all coexist" to "If you don't agree with us, you're a bigot."
And that shift told a lot of evangelical voters that they had to begin voting on religious liberty — even though some components of liberalism were attractive to them. That constant beating of the bigot drum on everything, whether it was education or crime or the border, brought along suburban voters, blue-collar voters, women, and Hispanics to join with evangelicals to form this coalition.
For decades, religious liberty has been under pressure from an expanding state and an often spiteful culture. Even those with little religiosity at all within this coalition recognize the negative impact that has on all of us because if one liberty secured by the Bill of Rights is under pressure, they all are.
Click for the full story:
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DUH!
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US ‘alarmed’ at Iran’s nuclear progress, deal may become ‘a thing of the past’ — envoy
The United States and other Western powers are “alarmed” at Iran’s progress toward nuclear capabilities, Washington’s Iran envoy Robert Malley tells NPR radio in an interview.
“They’re much closer to having fissile material for a bomb,” Malley warns. “To our knowledge, they have not resumed their weaponization program, which is what they would need to develop the bomb. But we are of course alarmed, as are our partners, at the progress they’ve made in the enrichment field.”
He adds that Iran now has enough uranium to build a bomb within weeks, if it so chooses, adding that if that happened, the US would know and respond forcefully.
Malley describes as a “wasted occasion” recent talks in Qatar on reinstating a nuclear deal resembling the 2015 agreement, which aimed to curb Tehran’s nuclear activity in exchange for sanctions relief. Former US president Donald Trump withdrew from that deal.
He says Iran has “added demands that I think anyone looking at this would be viewed as having nothing to do with the nuclear deal, things that they’ve wanted in the past, that clearly us and Europeans and others have said, ‘That’s not part of this negotiation.'”
“The discussion that really needs to take place right now is not so much between us and Iran, although we’re prepared to have that. It’s between Iran and itself. They need to come to a conclusion about whether they are now prepared to come back into compliance with the deal,” he says.
“They’re going to have to decide sooner or later, because at some point, the deal will be a thing of the past.
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Consequently, I fear my thinking and predictions may come to pass.
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Deal or No Deal, Iran-Israel War Is Coming to the Middle East
It seems increasingly likely that Israel will strike Iran to prevent the Islamic Republic from acquiring nuclear weapons.
by Sean Durns, THE NATIONAL INTEREST
Iran, Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett warned on June 12, “is dangerously close to getting their hands on a nuclear weapon.” In an interview with The Telegraph, the premier pointed out that “Iran is enriching uranium at an unprecedented rate.” Bennett added: “Iran’s nuclear program won’t stop until it’s stopped.”
Bennett isn’t alone in expressing concern.
The United States has also raised alarm. In a March 2022 hearing of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) observed that “Iran has made key advances” and has “decreased its [nuclear] breakout time to several weeks from a year” compared to what it was under the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), colloquially known as the Iran nuclear deal. Indeed, in April 2022, U.S. secretary of state Antony Blinken said that Iran’s breakout time was “down to a couple of weeks.”
On June 6, 2022, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, said that Tehran was “very close” to crossing the nuclear threshold and that it “cannot be avoided at this point.” Grossi also presented the board with a report “showing that Iran effectively already has enough enriched uranium for three bombs,” the news service JNS reported.
Grossi also told the IAEA’s board of governors that “Iran has not provided explanations that are technically credible in relation to the Agency’s findings at three undeclared locations in Iran.” Grossi noted that Iran has also failed to provide the IAEA with “the current location, or locations, of the nuclear material and/or of the equipment contaminated with the nuclear material” that was moved from the site of Turquzabad in 2018.
Adding to concerns, the Islamic Republic has begun installing advanced IR-6 centrifuges at its underground enrichment plant in Natanz and has said that it plans to install more at other sites. The centrifuges will enable the Islamic Republic to increase enrichment by as much as 50 percent.
The agency formally censured Iran for its activities.
In response, the Islamic Republic called the IAEA “ungrateful” and cut off the agency’s camera feeds which monitor Tehran’s nuclear activities at declared facilities. This, Grossi asserted, was a “fatal blow” to negotiations between the United States and Tehran over its nuclear weapons program. But this overlooks some key points.
As Reuters, among others, has noted, the IAEA hasn’t had access to the data collected by the cameras for more than a year. The agency “hopes that it will gain access to that data, which remains with Iran, at a later date.”
Hope, however, is not a good basis for policy—particularly when it’s a policy designed to prevent the world’s leading state sponsor of terror from acquiring nuclear weapons.
But while several analysts have pointed to a stall in U.S.-Iran negotiations as increasing tensions and making a breakout possible, it is worth noting the following: the very terms of the JCPOA did not prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. And Israel will not allow the Islamic Republic to become such a power. It is that simple.
The JCPOA’s sunset provisions and poor verifications regime enabled Iran to eventually join the nuclear club. Indeed, in a 2015 interview, then-President Barack Obama admitted that the deal would enable Iran to have “near zero” breakout time in as little as thirteen years—or six years from now.
But even this assessment was overly optimistic: the JCPOA did not require Iran to come clean about its past nuclear behavior—thus preventing an accurate benchmark of its progress. Similarly, the JCPOA only allowed inspections at “declared” facilities. And it didn’t fully restrict research and development in key areas, thereby allowing Iran to reduce the time of a nuclear breakout potentially further. This, of course, is to say nothing of the decision by JCPOA architects not to address Iran’s other “malign activities”—code for its support for terrorism and development of intercontinental ballistic missiles, among other things.
The limits of that policy were highlighted in 2018 when Israel revealed that it had broken into Iran’s so-called “nuclear archive.” The findings, later authenticated by the United States, showed that Iran not only lied about its nuclear program but was engaged in hiding it during negotiations with the United States and others.
Iran may lie about its nuclear activities, but it doesn’t always hide its intentions.
Regime apparatchiks from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on down have called for Israel’s destruction. The history of both the Jewish people and the Jewish state show that such calls aren’t to be taken lightly.
In June 1981, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) successfully took out Iraq’s nuclear reactor. And in September 2007, the IDF carried out a strike against Syria’s nuclear program. Israel has been clear: it will not tolerate a hostile power acquiring nuclear weapons. But this time promises to be different.
Unlike the 1981 and 2007 strikes, Israel faces a more difficult security predicament. The Islamic Republic has proxies wrapped around Israel like a snake. Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Gaza’s Hamas are funded, trained, and equipped by Tehran. And both have documented histories of using human shields.
Hezbollah alone is widely regarded as the most well-armed terrorist group in the world and maintains a global presence with operatives in dozens of countries. And it has carried out attacks against Jewish communities worldwide, murdering hundreds.
Similarly, Iran is also deeply embedded in both Syria and Iraq, with capabilities to strike Israel from these satrapies.
In recent weeks, Israel has carried out several targeted assassinations in Iran itself, taking out top Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) operatives as well as nuclear scientists. It is not the first time that Israel has taken out high-level targets inside Iran. But the increase in strikes—nearly half a dozen in less than a month—suggests a shift.
Ditto for Bennett’s vow to implement the “Octopus Doctrine.” The Israeli prime minister recently stated: “We no longer play with the tentacles, with Iran’s proxies: we’ve created a new equation by going for the head.” By letting Tehran know that it can and will be struck, Israel is changing the rules of the game. Jerusalem is no longer content to “mow the grass”—an expression for strategically limited strikes—but is upping the ante in response to what it sees as a growing threat.
Israel has also stepped up the scale and scope of its strikes in Syria, recently hitting the Damascus airport. The IDF recently held the largest military drill in decades, dubbed “Chariots of Fire.” In its own words, the exercises “aim to both increase the IDF’s defensive readiness and examine its preparedness for an intensive and prolonged campaign.
In late May 2022, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) conducted drills which included “long-range flights, aerial refueling and striking distant targets.” It was, the Times of Israel noted, meant to simulate striking Iranian nuclear facilities. According to Israel’s Channel 13 news, the exercises spanned more than 10,000 kilometers and included more than 100 aircraft and navy submarines.
The IAF, the Jerusalem Post reported in early June 2022, can now fly F-35 fighter jets from Israel to Iran without refueling. And now they can be equipped with a new one-ton bomb “that can be carried inside the plane’s internal weapons compartment without jeopardizing its stealth radar signature.”
The IDF is, of course, an exceptionally well-trained military. It isn’t a stranger to major drills and exercises. But it seems clear that something is afoot and the parameters of the long-running conflict between Israel and Iran are changing. Coupled with Tehran’s imminent “nuclear break out,” such developments indicate that Jerusalem is doing more than mowing the grass—it might be preparing to get rid of the entire yard.
Should Israel strike Iran’s nuclear facilities it would likely bring about the worst war that the Middle East has seen in decades—if not longer. The conflict that would follow would look nothing like many of the recent wars between Israel and Iranian proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah. For both Israel and the Islamic Republic, it would be an existential battle, with the fate of both the Jewish state and the regime in Tehran hinging on the war’s outcome. The losses and destruction would be devastating.
Hezbollah is estimated to have 130-150,000 rockets and missiles and Hamas is thought to have at least 30,000. Both hide their arsenals behind human shields.
Indeed, according to a 2021 study by the Alma Center, numerous Hezbollah military sites in southern Lebanon are “located in buildings within populated villages and areas very close to villages.” Researcher Tal Beeri found that “each of the 200 Shi’ite villages in the area south of the Zaharani River up to the border with Israel and the adjacent areas have become part of Hezbollah’s military infrastructure,” constituting part of the terror group’s “regional defensive plan.” Further away, Hezbollah is also firmly ensconced in major cities like Beirut.
And costs will likely extend beyond the Middle East. Iranian proxies have shown themselves to be capable of attacking both Jewish and American targets throughout the world. It also seems likely that a war will fuel anti-Semitic attacks in Europe, the United States, and elsewhere—just as the conflict between Iranian proxies and Israel did in the spring of 2021.
And, of course, a major war will also upset already-strained global energy markets. It will also usher in a harsh verdict on both U.S. nonproliferation policy and credibility in the region.
The Middle East isn’t short of kindling or matches. And it looks ready to explode.
Sean Durns is a Senior Research Analyst for CAMERA, the 65,000-member, Boston-based Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis.
And:
Report: Israel bombs ‘game changing’ Iranian air defense network in Syria
By World Israel News Staff
Israeli forces intercepted and destroyed an Iranian air defense system in transit in northern Syria over the weekend, according to a report by Israeli television.
An airstrike was reported Saturday morning in the northwestern Syrian town of Al-Hamidiyah, south of the port city of Tartus and just north of the Lebanese border. CONTINUE
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Biden is creating an outstanding legacy:
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Still No Peace at the Justices’ Houses
The Supreme Court asks for action under laws against picketing homes.
The Editorial Board
When it comes to shielding Supreme Court Justices from intimidation by a mob, the buck apparently stops nowhere. Marshal of the Court Gail Curley has written to officials in Virginia and Maryland, warning that “protest activity at Justices’ homes, as well as threatening activity, has only increased.”
Virginia law bans picketing private residences or assembling to “disrupt any individual’s right to tranquility in his home.” Ms. Curley cites that statute in letters to Gov. Glenn Youngkin and Fairfax County. She says that last week dozens of protesters were outside the Justices’ homes, yelling “no privacy for us, no peace for you!” and chanting expletives. “This is exactly the kind of conduct that Virginia law prohibits,” Ms. Curley adds.
Maryland has a similar statute protecting residential peace, which she cites in a letter to Gov. Larry Hogan. To Montgomery County, Ms. Curley points out a local law that prohibits picketing “in front of or adjacent to any private residence.” It allows protests to march through neighborhoods “without stopping at any particular private residence.” But according to the marshal, crowds have lingered for up to 30 minutes at a time outside the Justices’ homes.
Why is nobody willing to deploy such laws against judicial intimidation? Officials have argued that Virginia’s and Maryland’s statutes are unenforceable, since they aren’t content neutral. Both laws have an exception that allows picketing for labor disputes. In a 1980 case (Carey v. Brown), the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that a similar Illinois picketing ban was unconstitutional, since it had a union carve-out that “accords preferential treatment to the expression of views on one particular subject.”
Jeff McKay, chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, said he thinks the Virginia statute quoted by Ms. Curley is unconstitutional. “The law cited in the letter is a likely violation of the First Amendment,” he said. “As long as individuals are assembling on public property and not blocking access to private residences, they are permitted to be there.”
Montgomery County’s local ban on residential picketing features no suspect union privilege. The High Court in Carey v. Brown said it did not intend to imply “that residential picketing is beyond the reach of uniform and nondiscriminatory regulation.” It added that a state’s interest in protecting the tranquility of private houses “is certainly of the highest order in a free and civilized society.”
Nevertheless, Montgomery County seems uninterested in enforcing its picketing rule. “We are following the law that provides security and respects the First Amendment rights of protesters,” said County Executive Marc Elrich. “It is noteworthy that the primary responsibility for the safety of the Supreme Court Justices and their families lies with the federal government.” The county didn’t offer a specific answer Tuesday when asked why, exactly, it isn’t enforcing its picketing ban.
As for the feds, where’s our invisible Attorney General Merrick Garland ? Federal law bans attempting to influence the courts by picketing the homes of judges. Govs. Youngkin and Hogan have asked Mr. Garland to act, quoting one Supreme Court protester as saying: “If you take away our choices, we will riot.” The Justice Department’s reply to Messrs. Youngkin and Hogan reads like a form letter to an annoying constituent.
Jeering outside the homes of public officials, some with young children, is a political escalation that Americans might soon regret. Virginia and Maryland, where many government bigwigs live, would be wise to shore up their laws by removing those defective labor exemptions. Montgomery County could try to enforce its ban, and Mr. Elrich might be surprised to find support from much of the public. Ditto for Mr. Garland. If not, they will bear some responsibility for the ugly precedent.
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The Establishment Is Running Out of Cannon Fodder for Its Woke Military
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Could Another Obama Take the Presidential Mantle?
By Matt Vespa
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No Longer Blaming 'Putin's Price Hike' For High Gas Prices, Biden Has a New Scapegoat
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Cassidy Hutchinson's Credibility Has Taken Another Hit
By Matt Vespa
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