The tip-off, says an American counterintelligence official, came from information collected over many months suggesting that the Warsaw Pact countries possessed "bits and pieces" of top-secret NATO wartime contingency plans. Investigators then discovered proof that Soviet planners had highly classified documents. Last week West German officials arrested retired U.S. Sergeant First Class Clyde Lee Conrad and charged him with being the linchpin in an "especially grave" Soviet intelligence penetration of Western defenses. Conrad, 41, formerly attached to the headquarters company ...

General Michael Hayden, Director of the CIA, walked into the celebration of Saudi Arabia's national day in Washington D.C. and was immediately posed with the question of the day. "Is it true?" Hayden was asked by a Time reporter. "Nope," Hayden said, immediately adding to the accumulating statements on the paucity of evidence that Osama bin Laden was dead. About an hour before, the Saudi government itself declared that it "has no evidence to support recent media ...

The New Republic recently asked an intriguing question about the U.S. intervention in Libya: Why isn't Obama getting credit for preventing an atrocity? The answer is obvious when you think about it: because he prevented the atrocity. It's hard to get credit for avoiding a disaster when it's impossible to prove the disaster would have happened without you. Social scientists call this the counterfactual problem. There's no double-blind study to show what would happen in an alternative ...

Goldman Sachs reported on Thursday that it had nearly quadrupled its profits in the third quarter compared with a year ago, driven by a jump in trading revenues and strong returns on its own corporate investments. Meanwhile, Citigroup defied expectations of a third-quarter loss, reporting profits of $101m on the strength of its customer deposits. Goldman's results beat the expectations of Wall Street analysts, who had anticipated a surge in fixed-income underwriting opportunities, and followed its record performance in the ...

Stephan Mace of the Army's 61st Cavalry Regiment knew the Taliban would be waiting for him when he returned to eastern Afghanistan in September. During a two-week leave in early September, the 21-year-old specialist sat on his father's couch in Winchester, Virginia, and discussed his concerns over Forward Operating Base Keating in Kamdesh District, a region known as a Taliban stronghold. "He talked about the village next to the base, that it had 300 Taliban, and they couldn't do anything ...

As campaigning was closing for the German presidential election Sunday, attention was already turning to what coalition will rule the country. Few doubt that Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, CDU, will win most votes. So, will Merkel continue the current center right-center left 'grand coalition' with the Social Democrats or will the votes suffice for a coalition with the business liberal but centrist Liberal Democrats or the FDP, a constellation Germans refer to as 'Black-Yellow.' At a press conference ostensibly ...

The recession is a good excuse for employers to introduce a pay freeze, but what if you think your hard work deserves greater financial reward? Four experts share their tips for getting a pay raise during the downturn. 1. Knowledge is power, so before you pursue a pay increase, do some research."Compare your salary with that of your colleagues and with job adverts so you know the market salary for your position," says Sherridan Hughes, occupational psychologist with ...