Is this for real? Las Ketchup and Lou Bega? “Poland’s defence ministry and state broadcaster TVP will this weekend hold a concert to show support for troops defending the eastern border .. the event will feature .. Last Ketchup .. and Lou Bega.” notesfrompoland.com/2021/12/03/pol…
NEW: Guinean Special Forces that stormed the presidential palace on Sept. 5, seizing power, were being trained by Green Berets. The U.S. military told @declanwalsh and @EricSchmittNYT it had “no prior indication” that their students were planning a coup. nytimes.com/2021/09/10/wor…
This video of two vehicles w/ men with U.S. flag patches and Guinean soldiers pushing through a crowd chanting “Freedom!” is authentic: geolocated to a roundabout south of the U.S. Embassy in Conakry and officials told @nytimes it shows their Green Berets.
The geolocation of the video was relatively straightforward. Here are some of the steps. First, the red licence plate on the Toyota matched with licence plates used for the Conakry Region (worldlicenseplates.com/world/AF_GUIN.…), suggesting the video was likely filmed in Guinea.
On Sept. 11, 2001, @Maxar's IKONOS satellite was the only high-resolution commercial imagery system in orbit. As 9/11 unfolded, the collection team shifted tasking of the satellite to image the affected sites asap. Here are some of those images. blog.maxar.com/earth-intellig…
IKONOS als imaged the Pentagon on Sept. 15, 2001, showing the damage to the east side of the building. Satellite image courtesy of @Maxar.
On the left, Shanksville, Pa., where United Airlines Flight 93 crashed as seen on Sept. 13, 2001, by @Maxar's IKONOS satellite. On the right, same site nearly two decades later (it's now a national memorial).
On Sept. 5, Col. Mamady Doumbouya (41) —former French legionnaire and head of the country's Special Forces Group— seized power in Guinea from President Alpha Condé (83). Threading some footage that surfaced on social media, and some geolocations. nytimes.com/2021/09/05/wor…
Heavy gunfire was heard in the capital Conakry on Sunday morning. This video shows the 8 Nov. Bridge connecting Camayenne and Coleah in Kaloum, the tip of the peninsula where the Presidential Palace is located.
This video shows six military vehicles and about a double dozen troops just at Ave de la Republique and Blvd de Commerce — just a block away from the President Palace.
Days after we published our investigation on the CIA's Salt Pit/Eagle Base site near Kabul, the Taliban allowed journalists in. I'll thread some of the ground visuals with a note where it is in the nearly two-square mile compound.
Here are some of the main locations inside the CIA compound. To the south: the Salt Pit (where the CIA tortured detainees), the original Eagle Base in the former brick factory, shooting ranges and heliport. To the north: new Eagle Base incl. ammo depot and training facility.
The LA Times' @nabihbulos is here in the northern part of the compound, what appears to be an ammunitions depot and/or storage facility that was partly blown up as the CIA and the Afghan units it trained here left.
The Salt Pit was so secretive that there are only a handful of on-the-ground photos of the site. I'll thread all the ones we found during our deep dive on the CIA black site here, as it may interest others too.
This photo, likely taken in 2003, is the one and only photo we found of the Salt Pit as it was operational as a CIA detention facility. It was taken by a US soldier who said he visited the site while coming or going to Bagram.
An interesting but by no means verified detail from that US soldier is that he claims that US folks stationed at Salt Pit told him that the former brick factory was used by Al Qaida operatives before Sept. 11, 2001. We weren't able to verify this.