Top senators are calling for a hearing on the “continuing leaks of classified information” allegedly from the White House after a recent media report detailed a U.S. cyber warfare targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities.

A report in The New York Times on Friday provided classified details of the U.S cyber attack.

Since the beginning of his term, President Barack Obama secretly ordered cyber attacks targeting computers that run Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities, the Times reported, attributing the information to the program’s participants.

Senators John McCain and Dianne Feinstein, a Republican and a Democrat respectively, discussed the possibility of holding hearings to address the leak of information.

“I am pleased to report that chairman Carl Levin has agreed to hold a hearing on these leaks in the Senate Armed Services Committee,” McCain said in a statement Tuesday.

McCain said the alleged leaks are detrimental to U.S. security and accused the White House of releasing the information to boost the president’s political standing ahead of the November election.

“With the leaks that these articles were based on, our enemies now know much more than they even did the day before they came out about important aspects of the nation’s unconventional offensive capability and how we use them,” McCain said in remarks on the Senate floor.

“Such disclosures can only undermine similar ongoing or future operations and, in this sense, compromise national security. For this reason, regardless of how politically useful these leaks may be to the president, they have to stop.”

Feinstein decried the leaks too, saying she discussed the possibility of a joint hearing with Levin, chairman of the senate committee.

“Today, I sent a classified letter to the president outlining my deep concerns about the release of this information,” Feinstein said Tuesday. ” I made it clear that disclosures of this type endanger American lives and undermine America’s national security.”

White House deputy press secretary, Josh Earnest, has said the administration is committed to withholding classified information.

“I’m saying that I’m not in a position to talk to you about any of the details that were included in the story,” he said. “But I am telling you that this administration — well, that it’s our view, as it is the view of everybody who handles classified information, that information is classified for a reason; that it is kept secret, it is intended not to be publicized because publicizing it would pose a threat to our national security.”

McCain and Saxby Chambliss, a top Republicans who serves on the intelligence committee, cited other recent leaks, including the release of information on the administration’s efforts to expand drone programs on militants in Yemen. The public airing of the Yemen plot angered intelligence and national security officials.

“Let me be clear: I am fully in favor of transparency in government — I have spent my entire career in Congress furthering that principle,” McCain said.

“But what separates these sorts of leaks from, say, the whistle-blowing that fosters open government or a free press is that these leaks expose no violations of law, abuses of authority, or threats to public health or safety. They are merely gratuitous and utterly self-serving.”

Chambliss called for a probe on the “pattern” of leaks.

Gitmo detainees stay imprisoned years after being cleared

Published on Jun 11, 2012 by RTAmerica

Then Senator Obama touted if he became president of the United States, he would make shutting down Guantanamo Bay a top priority. But for many, the failure of restoring the right to Habeas Corpus to those prisoners is unacceptable. On Monday, the Supreme Court gave a preview of the cases it would be willing to hear in its next term from detainees being held in the Cuban facility. Several people in Gitmo have been officially cleared for release, but still remain behind bars. Andy Worthington, author of The Guantanamo Files, joins us to explain why that is.

As eurosceptics, who have devoted many years of our lives to opposing this new EU regime that has descended over Europe, our first loyalty, our whole sympathy, must be with the victims of the EU ambition: we are all Greeks now.

The Greek people are the victims of an experiment. And let us not confuse Greeks, the people like us, and the institutions of government that are in Greece but are tiers in the EU governmental hierarchy.

Not all people are opponents of the EU nor of the way the EU governs Europe. Such people will say that the Greeks are to blame for all their woes. For some people it simply would not do if blame was seen to lay with the EU, the institutions of the Euro and the foreign banks who made speculative loans. These people say that they all conducted themselves with perfect virtue and should suffer no loss – and that the people must pay. And so television screens all over Europe have shows vilifying the swarthy, lazy, greedy Greek.

Alright, the average Greek may have borrowed too much, retired too early and defended himself too enthusiastically against the taxation of a kleptocratic state. But all his sin was not to have the power to doubt every word he was told by his politicians, his newspapers and his television. What people of what nation could have done that? Not even the British. If a man, even if he is a fool, believes a lie, is he as guilty as the liar? All Greeks did was to live the way they were told was the way to live.

The Greeks are victims of an experiment. The European Union always claims that it has kept the peace in Europe since the second world war, although it never kept much peace in Greece then. The EU claims that it brought civilised democracy to the post-Soviet east of Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall as if those countries would be savage without the guiding wisdom of Brussels – and yet after the fall of dictators in Greece, membership of the EU has brought little virtue to the governing elite of Greece. Rather, Brussels has kept in place a compliant regime and connived in scandalous dishonesty to fit Greece into the Euro. Good sense was discarded for the vanity of the Euro.

In as much as all people are responsible for who they allow to govern them, all Greeks are culpable. As are all Europeans. But did the Greek people ask to join the Euro in a referendum? Then they are innocent as all Europeans are innocent.

The Greeks must take some small responsibility for their woes. But we have been taught to love our neighbour. We have been taught to love our neighbour always and not to love him apart from when he makes a mistake or when he is in need. If a man loses his job, his savings, his ability to choose how his country is run, everything as a result of this euro-crisis and that does not make him our neighbour, then what would?

Greeks are hurting. They have been the first to suffer the severe pain of the Euro construct. Their pain is that of those first into battle – should those of us still safe for the moment mock their wounds? Because the hardship, then suspension of democratic rule and national independence are coming to us soon. Look at Greece and you see Ireland. Look and see your own future.

So should we pay to the ECB and their laundry boys at the IMF? If you asked a Eurosceptic to pay for the freedom of another country then he is glad to pay just as a true patriot will fight for the freedom of another’s country. But we are not being asked to pay for the freedom of Greece but for the lasting austerity, hardship and what is almost slavery of Greece. We are not being asked to make gifts to a neighbour who has suffered misfortune but to save banks from the folly of their greed and the Euro madness of their ambition. We are not being asked to do anything that will lead to the happiness of Greeks but to save the Euro from collapse. If Roger Helmer is remembered for anything it should be his “They are trying to save the cancer and not the patient”. There has been no better description of the efforts to perpetuate precisely what afflicts Europe.

EU politicians join together to tell Greece how to vote in her second election. But this was in the way of bullies. Cameron is no Palmerston, but a British Prime Minister should send a message to the Greek people that however they vote we are friends. Communist politics in Greece made some kind of sense when the USSR could subsidise such decisions but not now. However the protest is absolutely necessary. Now Greece has a hard path through protest and instability before a sensible way out of this can be trodden. Our Government must tell Greeks that if they must leave the Euro, then we will stand by you. In any case, it will be for the best.

No, we will not pay for your top civil servants to retire at 50 nor to turn you into a nation of beggars. Greeks will work hard and fight like demons (as Churchill observed) for freedom. So we are prepared to do what we can to help regain freedom, responsibility and a serious route to regained prosperity. Because that is how the Eurosceptic shows true European solidarity.

We are all Greeks. When Percy Bysshe Shelly wrote this he meant that so much of what is beautiful in our civilisation today had its origin in Greece. Today we see that a horror that could engulf all of Europe is planted in Greece. The banners we see in London and the blog we read that say “we are all Greek” ask us to join in solidarity against this horror.

June 11 – Breakingviews editor Hugo Dixon says Greeks must choose between the pain of sticking with the euro and the chaos of bringing back the drachma.

A dusty marketplace in southern Afghanistan was turned into a gruesome scene of blood and bodies on Wednesday after at least two suicide attacks, which left 22 civilians dead and at least 50 others injured, officials said.

Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi said the militant group was behind the attacks in Kandahar, the capital of Kandahar province and the spiritual birthplace of the insurgency, The Associated Press reported.

In the east, two American pilots were killed in a helicopter crash amid enemy activity, an un-named senior U.S. defense official at the Pentagon told The Associated Press. NATO confirmed that two service members had been killed in the crash but not their nationality or any other information.

Also in the east, Afghan officials and residents said a pre-dawn NATO air-strike targeting militants killed civilians celebrating a wedding in Logar province, including women and children, although a NATO forces spokesman said they had no reports of civilians being killed in the overnight raid to capture a Taliban leader.

NATO said a number of insurgents had been killed as a result of the operation, and that two Afghan women had received medical care after being wounded. The women had not received life-threatening injuries, NATO said.

Kandahar attack

Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned the Kandahar attack on civilians, saying it proved the “enemy is getting weaker because they are killing innocent people.”

One suicide bomber detonated a three-wheeled motorbike filled with explosives first, Rahmatullah Atrafi, deputy police chief in Kandahar province told the AP. Then, as people rushed to assist the casualties, two other suicide bombers on foot walked up to the site and blew themselves up, he said.

The explosions left a bloody scene of body parts, shoes, soda cans, snacks and debris from three shops that were destroyed.

Mohammad Naeem, a 30-year-old shopkeeper, said he was selling soft drinks to a customer when the first blast occurred.

A local member of parliament told NBC News that at least 18 people were killed in the attack.

“Among those killed were civilians and members of the Taliban,” Saib Khan told NBC News. “It is hard to obtain the exact number of casualties because a wedding party was staying in the same area where the airstrike occurred.”

Local officials told Afghanistan’s TOLOnews that 13 civilians had been killed in the airstrike.

There was no immediate explanation for the different accounts.

“I dropped to the ground,” he told the AP. “When I got up, I looked outside and I heard people shouting for help.”

Naeem said he helped his customer, who was wounded, into his shop.

“He was bleeding. I put cloth on his wound to stop the bleeding,” he said. “I was busy with that when the other blasts occurred.”

Islam Zada, a truck driver, was on the other side of the road having tea near his parked truck when the attack began.

“I couldn’t see anything except for fire and dust,” Zada said of the scene. “I found a wounded truck driver on our side of the road and went to help him,” Zada said. “We gave him some water and when we were talking to him the other blasts occurred.”

The number of Afghan civilians killed dropped 36 percent in the first four months of the year compared with last year, according to the latest figures compiled by the U.N. While the trend is promising, the U.N. laments that too many civilians are being caught up in the violence as insurgents fight Afghan and foreign forces.

The U.N. said last month that 579 civilians were killed in the first four months – down from 898 killed in the same period of 2011.

Anti-government forces caused 79 percent of civilian casualties and Afghan and foreign forces 9 percent, according to the U.N. It was not clear who was responsible for the remaining 12 percent.

MSNBC and The Associated Press contributed to this report.