Story 1: Jared Kushner Talked To Russians — So Do Democrats — “Treason?” — Russia/Trump Collusion — No Evidence — No Credibility — No Crime — American People Bored With Progressive Propaganda — Put Up or Shut Up — Big Lie Media and Desperate, Delusional, Demented Democrat Distraction For Not Covering Obama Administration’s Spying On American People and Republican Candidates For President — Videos
Backchannel diplomacy refers to secret lines of communication held open between two adversaries. It is often communicated through an informal intermediary or through a third party.
Amb. Bolton on Jared Kushner’s backchannel talks
Jared Kushner under FBI scrutiny in Russia probe
Cracking the Kushner Russian code: Kushner Russian back channel explained part 1
Published on May 27, 2017
What you need to know about Jared Kushner’s ties to Russia. Sergey Kislyak reported to his superiors in December that Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, asked him about setting up a communications channel between the transition team and the Kremlin using Russian facilities in the United States. Russia’s ambassador to Washington discussed the possibility of setting up a secret and secure communications channel between Trump’s transition team and the Kremlin, using Russian diplomatic facilities in an apparent move to shield their pre-inauguration discussions from monitoring, according to U.S. officials briefed on intelligence reports. Ambassador Sergey Kislyak reported to his superiors in Moscow that Kushner, son-in-law and confidant to then-President-elect Trump, made the proposal during a meeting on Dec. 1 or 2 at Trump Tower, according to intercepts of Russian communications that were reviewed by U.S. officials. Kislyak said Kushner suggested using Russian diplomatic facilities in the United States for the communications. The meeting also was attended by Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser. The White House disclosed the meeting only in March, playing down its significance. But people familiar with the matter say the FBI now considers the encounter, as well as another meeting Kushner had with a Russian banker, to be of investigative interest. Kislyak reportedly was taken aback by the suggestion of allowing an American to use Russian communications gear at its embassy or consulate — a proposal that would have carried security risks for Moscow as well as the Trump team.
Cracking the Kushner Russian code: Kushner Russian back channel explained part 2
Published on May 27, 2017
Cracking the Kushner Russian code: Kushner Russian back channel explained. Russian ambassador told Moscow that Kushner wanted secret channel with Kremlin. Sergey Kislyak reported to his superiors in December that Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, asked him about setting up a communications channel between the transition team and the Kremlin using Russian facilities in the United States. Russia’s ambassador to Washington discussed the possibility of setting up a secret and secure communications channel between Trump’s transition team and the Kremlin, using Russian diplomatic facilities in an apparent move to shield their pre-inauguration discussions from monitoring, according to U.S. officials briefed on intelligence reports. Ambassador Sergey Kislyak reported to his superiors in Moscow that Kushner, son-in-law and confidant to then-President-elect Trump, made the proposal during a meeting on Dec. 1 or 2 at Trump Tower, according to intercepts of Russian communications that were reviewed by U.S. officials. Kislyak said Kushner suggested using Russian diplomatic facilities in the United States for the communications. The meeting also was attended by Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser. The White House disclosed the meeting only in March, playing down its significance. But people familiar with the matter say the FBI now considers the encounter, as well as another meeting Kushner had with a Russian banker, to be of investigative interest. Kislyak reportedly was taken aback by the suggestion of allowing an American to use Russian communications gear at its embassy or consulate — a proposal that would have carried security risks for Moscow as well as the Trump team.
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James Clapper: Dashboard Light Was On Over Trump Campaign, Russia (Full) | Meet The Press | NBC News
Published on May 30, 2017
Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper tells Chuck Todd that he was “very concerned about the nature” of approaches between the Trump campaign and Russian agents during the 2016 elections.
Fmr. DNI James Clapper: I HAVE SEEN NO EVIDENCE OF TRUMP-RUSSIA COLLUSION
Published on Mar 5, 2017
Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper says that, to his knowledge, there is no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians. This clip is from Clapper’s interview with Chuck Todd on NBC’s Meet the Press on March 5, 2017.
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Story 2: Amazon Benefits From Growing Trend Of Consumer Shopping Online — Benefits of Amazon Prime For $99 Per Year — Videos —
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IT’S PRIMETIME AT AMAZON.COM … SHARES HIT $1,000
BY JOSEPH PISANI
NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon, the internet goliath that revolutionized the way much of the world buys books, toilet paper and TVs, hit a new milestone Tuesday. Its stock surpassed the $1,000 mark for the first time.
That price put Amazon’s market value at about $478 billion, double that of the world’s biggest traditional retailer, Wal-Mart, and more than 15 times the size of Target. A $1,000 investment on Amazon’s first day of trading in 1997 would be worth more than $500,000 today.
Not only has Amazon changed the retail landscape since it became a public company 20 years ago, it’s now part of a small cadre of high-flying stocks belonging to companies that have defied Wall Street and shunned stock splits.
Those splits make the stock more affordable and generate brokerage fees. But companies like Amazon have chosen to reward its long-term investors.
The last time Amazon has split its stock was nearly 18 years ago, according to financial research firm FactSet.
Another company with a similar philosophy is Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google.
Amazon just beat Alphabet to the $1,000 level, with its Class A shares just $2 short of $1,000 Tuesday.
Only four other U.S.-listed companies have shares trading above $1,000: online travel booking company Priceline Group Inc., homebuilder NVR Inc., pork producer and ocean transportation company Seaboard Corp. and the apostle of long-term investing, Warren Buffett, with his holding company Berkshire Hathaway Inc. But stock prices only tell a part of the story.
The value of a company is determined by its stock price and the number of shares on the market. Amazon.com is well over four times the size of Priceline, NVR and Seaboard combined. It’s 17 percent bigger than Berkshire Hathaway, a multinational conglomerate with ownership stakes in some of America’s most well-known consumer brands like Coca-Cola, insurance companies and U.S. infrastructure.
Since launching a website to sell mostly books in 1995, Amazon has transfigured retail, sent revenue numbers to stratospheric heights, and is among the biggest reasons longtime powerhouses like Macy’s, Borders bookstores and even RadioShack have suffered.
Those companies are closing locations and Amazon is filling the void, sometimes literally.
Last week in a location once occupied by Borders, the bookstore chain that went out of business in 2011, Amazon opened its first bookstore in New York City.
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Story 1: National Security State Interventionist Progressive Elites Oppose Trump’s Foreign Policy of Non-Intervention — CIA Covert Operations and Special Forces — American Empire of The Warfare and Welfare State or American Republic of The Peace and Prosperity Economy — Videos
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IN JANUARY, 1961, Dwight Eisenhower delivered his farewell address after serving two terms as U.S. president; the five-star general chose to warn Americans of this specific threat to democracy: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” That warning was issued prior to the decade long escalation of the Vietnam War, three more decades of Cold War mania, and the post-9/11 era, all of which radically expanded that unelected faction’s power even further.
This is the faction that is now engaged in open warfare against the duly elected and already widely disliked president-elect, Donald Trump. They are using classic Cold War dirty tactics and the defining ingredients of what has until recently been denounced as “Fake News.”
Their most valuable instrument is the U.S. media, much of which reflexively reveres, serves, believes, and sides with hidden intelligence officials. And Democrats, still reeling from their unexpected and traumatic election loss as well as a systemic collapse of their party, seemingly divorced further and further from reason with each passing day, are willing — eager — to embrace any claim, cheer any tactic, align with any villain, regardless of how unsupported, tawdry and damaging those behaviors might be.
The serious dangers posed by a Trump presidency are numerous and manifest. There are a wide array of legitimate and effective tactics for combatting those threats: from bipartisan congressional coalitions and constitutional legal challenges to citizen uprisings and sustained and aggressive civil disobedience. All of those strategies have periodically proven themselves effective in times of political crisis or authoritarian overreach.
But cheering for the CIA and its shadowy allies to unilaterally subvert the U.S. election and impose its own policy dictates on the elected president is both warped and self-destructive. Empowering the very entities that have produced the most shameful atrocities and systemic deceit over the last six decades is desperation of the worst kind. Demanding that evidence-free, anonymous assertions be instantly venerated as Truth — despite emanating from the very precincts designed to propagandize and lie — is an assault on journalism, democracy, and basic human rationality. And casually branding domestic adversaries who refuse to go along as traitors and disloyal foreign operatives is morally bankrupt and certain to backfire on those doing it.
Beyond all that, there is no bigger favor that Trump opponents can do for him than attacking him with such lowly, shabby, obvious shams, recruiting large media outlets to lead the way. When it comes time to expose actual Trump corruption and criminality, who is going to believe the people and institutions who have demonstrated they are willing to endorse any assertions no matter how factually baseless, who deploy any journalistic tactic no matter how unreliable and removed from basic means of ensuring accuracy?
All of these toxic ingredients were on full display yesterday as the Deep State unleashed its tawdriest and most aggressive assault yet on Trump: vesting credibility in and then causing the public disclosure of a completely unvetted and unverified document, compiled by a paid, anonymous operative while he was working for both GOP and Democratic opponents of Trump, accusing Trump of a wide range of crimes, corrupt acts and salacious private conduct. The reaction to all of this illustrates that while the Trump presidency poses grave dangers, so, too, do those who are increasingly unhinged in their flailing, slapdash, and destructive attempts to undermine it.
FOR MONTHS, the CIA, with unprecedented clarity, overtly threw its weight behind Hillary Clinton’s candidacy and sought to defeat Donald Trump. In August, former acting CIA Director Michael Morell announced his endorsement of Clinton in the New York Times and claimed that “Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.” The CIA and NSA director under George W. Bush, Gen. Michael Hayden, also endorsed Clinton, and went to the Washington Post to warn, in the week before the election, that “Donald Trump really does sound a lot like Vladimir Putin,” adding that Trump is “the useful fool, some naif, manipulated by Moscow, secretly held in contempt, but whose blind support is happily accepted and exploited.”
It is not hard to understand why the CIA preferred Clinton over Trump. Clinton was critical of Obama for restraining the CIA’s proxy war in Syria and was eager to expand that war, while Trump denounced it. Clinton clearly wanted a harder line than Obama took against the CIA’s long-standing foes in Moscow, while Trump wanted improved relations and greater cooperation. In general, Clinton defended and intended to extend the decadeslong international military order on which the CIA and Pentagon’s preeminence depends, while Trump — through a still-uncertain mix of instability and extremist conviction — posed a threat to it.
Whatever one’s views are on those debates, it is the democratic framework — the presidential election, the confirmation process, congressional leaders, judicial proceedings, citizen activism and protest, civil disobedience — that should determine how they are resolved. All of those policy disputes were debated out in the open; the public heard them; and Trump won. Nobody should crave the rule of Deep State overlords.
Yet craving Deep State rule is exactly what prominent Democratic operatives and media figures are doing. Any doubt about that is now dispelled. Just last week, Chuck Schumer issued a warning to Trump, telling Rachel Maddow that Trump was being “really dumb” by challenging the unelected intelligence community because of all the ways they possess to destroy those who dare to stand up to them:
And last night, many Democrats openly embraced and celebrated what was, so plainly, an attempt by the Deep State to sabotage an elected official who had defied it: ironically, its own form of blackmail.
BACK IN OCTOBER, a political operative and former employee of the British intelligence agency MI6 was being paid by Democrats to dig up dirt on Trump (before that, he was paid by anti-Trump Republicans). He tried to convince countless media outlets to publish a long memo he had written filled with explosive accusations about Trump’s treason, business corruption and sexual escapades, with the overarching theme that Trump was in servitude to Moscow because they were blackmailing and bribing him.
Despite how many had it, no media outlets published it. That was because these were anonymous claims unaccompanied by any evidence at all, and even in this more permissive new media environment, nobody was willing to be journalistically associated with it. As the New York Times’ Executive Editor Dean Baquet put it last night, he would not publish these “totally unsubstantiated” allegations because “we, like others, investigated the allegations and haven’t corroborated them, and we felt we’re not in the business of publishing things we can’t stand by.”
The closest this operative got to success was convincing Mother Jones’s David Corn to publish an October 31 article reporting that “a former senior intelligence officer for a Western country” claims that “he provided the [FBI] with memos, based on his recent interactions with Russian sources, contending the Russian government has for years tried to co-opt and assist Trump.”
But because this was just an anonymous claim unaccompanied by any evidence or any specifics (which Corn withheld), it made very little impact. All of that changed yesterday. Why?
What changed was the intelligence community’s resolution to cause this all to become public and to be viewed as credible. In December, John McCain provided a copy of this report to the FBI and demanded they take it seriously.
At some point last week, the chiefs of the intelligence agencies decided to declare that this ex-British intelligence operative was “credible” enough that his allegations warranted briefing both Trump and Obama about them, thus stamping some sort of vague, indirect, and deniable official approval on these accusations. Someone — by all appearances, numerous officials — then went to CNN to tell them they had done this, causing CNN to go on-air and, in the gravest of tones, announce the “Breaking News” that “the nation’s top intelligence officials” briefed Obama and Trump that Russia had compiled information that “compromised President-elect Trump.”
CNN refused to specify what these allegations were on the ground that they could not “verify” them. But with this document in the hands of multiple media outlets, it was only a matter of time — a small amount of time — before someone would step up and publish the whole thing. Buzzfeed quickly obliged, airing all of the unvetted, anonymous claims about Trump.
Its editor-in-chief Ben Smith published a memo explaining that decision, saying that—- although there “is serious reason to doubt the allegations” — Buzzfeed in general “errs on the side of publication” and “Americans can make up their own minds about the allegations.” Publishing this document predictably produced massive traffic (and thus profit) for the site, with millions of people viewing the article and presumably reading the “dossier.”
One can certainly object to Buzzfeed’s decision and, as the New York Times notes this morning, many journalists are doing so. It’s almost impossible to imagine a scenario where it’s justifiable for a news outlet to publish a totally anonymous, unverified, unvetted document filled with scurrilous and inflammatory allegations about which its own editor-in-chief says there “is serious reason to doubt the allegations,” on the ground that they want to leave it to the public to decide whether to believe it.
But even if one believes there is no such case where that is justified, yesterday’s circumstances presented the most compelling scenario possible for doing this. Once CNN strongly hinted at these allegations, it left it to the public imagination to conjure up the dirt Russia allegedly had to blackmail and control Trump. By publishing these accusations, BuzzFeed ended that speculation. More importantly, it allowed everyone to see how dubious this document is, one the CIA and CNN had elevated into some sort of grave national security threat.
ALMOST IMMEDIATELY after it was published, the farcical nature of the “dossier” manifested. Not only was its author anonymous, but he was paid by Democrats (and, before that, by Trump’s GOP adversaries) to dig up dirt on Trump. Worse, he himself cited no evidence of any kind, but instead relied on a string of other anonymous people in Russia he claims told him these things. Worse still, the document was filled with amateur errors.
While many of the claims are inherently unverified, some can be confirmed. One such claim — that Trump lawyer Michael Cohen secretly traveled to Prague in August to meet with Russian officials — was strongly denied by Cohen, who insisted he had never been to Prague in his life (Prague is the same place that foreign intelligence officials claimed, in 2001, was the site of a nonexistent meeting between Iraqi officials and 9/11 hijackers, which contributed to 70% of Americans believing, as late as the fall of 2003, that Saddam personally planned the 9/11 attack). This morning, the Wall Street Journal reported that “the FBI has found no evidence that [Cohen] traveled to the Czech Republic.”
None of this stopped Democratic operatives and prominent media figures from treating these totally unverified and unvetted allegations as grave revelations. From Vox’s Zach Beauchamp:
Meanwhile, liberal commentator Rebecca Solnit declared this to be a “smoking gun” that proves Trump’s “treason,” while Daily Kos’ Markos Moulitsas sounded the same theme:
While some Democrats sounded notes of caution — party loyalist Josh Marshall commendably urged: “I would say in reviewing raw, extremely raw ‘intel’, people shld retain their skepticism even if they rightly think Trump is the worst” — the overwhelming reaction was the same as all the other instances where the CIA and its allies released unverified claims about Trump and Russia: instant embrace of the evidence-free assertions as Truth, combined with proclamations that it demonstrated Trump’s status as a traitor (with anyone expressing skepticism designated a Kremlin agent or stooge).
THERE IS A REAL DANGER here that this maneuver can harshly backfire, to the great benefit of Trump and to the great detriment of those who want to oppose him. If any of the significant claims in this “dossier” turn out to be provably false — such as Cohen’s trip to Prague — many people will conclude, with Trump’s encouragement, that large media outlets (CNN and BuzzFeed) and anti-Trump factions inside the government (CIA) are deploying “Fake News” to destroy him. In the eyes of many people, that will forever discredit — render impotent — future journalistic exposés that are based on actual, corroborated wrongdoing.
Beyond that, the threat posed by submitting ourselves to the CIA and empowering it to reign supreme outside of the democratic process is — as Eisenhower warned — an even more severe danger. The threat of being ruled by unaccountable and unelected entities is self-evident and grave. That’s especially true when the entity behind which so many are rallying is one with a long and deliberate history of lying, propaganda, war crimes, torture, and the worst atrocities imaginable.
All of the claims about Russia’s interference in U.S. elections and ties to Trump should be fully investigated by a credible body, and the evidence publicly disclosed to the fullest extent possible. As my colleague Sam Biddle argued last week after disclosure of the farcical intelligence community report on Russia hacking — one which even Putin’s foes mocked as a bad joke — the utter lack of evidence for these allegations means “we need an independent, resolute inquiry.” But until then, assertions that are unaccompanied by evidence and disseminated anonymously should be treated with the utmost skepticism — not lavished with convenience-driven gullibility.
Most important of all, the legitimate and effective tactics for opposing Trump are being utterly drowned by these irrational, desperate, ad hoc crusades that have no cogent strategy and make his opponents appear increasingly devoid of reason and gravity. Right now, Trump’s opponents are behaving as media critic Adam Johnson described: as ideological jelly fish, floating around aimlessly and lost, desperately latching on to whatever barge randomly passes by.
There are solutions to Trump. They involve reasoned strategizing and patient focus on issues people actually care about. Whatever those solutions are, venerating the intelligence community, begging for its intervention, and equating their dark and dirty assertions as Truth are most certainly not among them. Doing that cannot possibly achieve any good, and is already doing much harm.
Just when you think things can’t get crazier with Donald Trump, they do! With these latest developments from the CIA and from U.S. representatives, we are seeing the early signs of an all-out war between the president-elect and the Central Intelligence Agency.
Recent comments from Sen. Chuck Schumer during a recent interview with Rachel Maddow on MSNBC reveal everything you need to know about what is currently happening behind the scenes in Washington D.C. “When you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday getting back at you,” Schumer said. “Even for a practical, supposedly hard-nosed businessman, it is being really dumb.”
Did anyone else catch the fact that with that Schumer is essentially saying that if Trump dares to challenge the CIA, it will retaliate against him? Of course, if you know the true history of the CIA, you know that their reputation is incredibly low as it is, because they create clandestine operations that overthrow democratically elected leaders. They sabotage governments, they sabotage policies, they work for global elites and they torture people. They are known for doing god-awful things in secret, and getting away with it because of their power.
Following Schumer’s hints that the CIA would retaliate against Trump, former CIA Director James Woolsey announced that he is quitting Trump’s transition team. Many people questioned why he was there in the first place. He is a neo-conservative who pushed for war in Iraq, blamed Iraq for 9/11, and was a key member of the Project for the New American Century. Woolsey is also adamantly against WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, and when I confrontedhim about Operation Mockingbird in 2011, he lied through his teeth.
This all comes as a “hyped up” Senate hearing on alleged Russian hacking failed to lead to any concrete evidence. While there was no evidence presented confirming that the Russian government was involved in the U.S. election, they did provide information on some Ukrainian malware code, which could have been purchased by anyone anonymously online.
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper added to the fear campaign on Thursday, when he testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee, and said that the alleged Russian interference went far beyond a cyberattack.
“While there has been a lot of focus on the hacking, this is actually part of a multifaceted campaign that the Russians mounted,” Clapper told the committee.
In addition to all of the disinformation, we’re learning that the FBI is blaming Russia when they haven’t even examined the DNC servers, and instead relied on a report produced by a DNC contractor.
What we’re seeing is very clear. We’re seeing the CIA, a clandestine group that has committed horrible atrocities all over the world in secret, versus Donald Trump, a very strong personality who has not backed down. There will be a confrontation, and we will be covering exactly what happens when these two forces collide.
What do you think about this story, and what elements do you think are being overlooked or ignored? Let us know in the comments section!
Trump Dossier Spotlights Russian History of ‘Kompromat’
Diplomats, politicians and bureaucrats have been embarrassed by leaks of compromising material
Unverified allegations in a dossier on President-elect Donald Trump include a claim that Russian officials obtained evidence that could potentially be used for blackmail. Russian President Vladimir Putin held a meeting on Wednesday.PHOTO: DRUZHININ ALEXEI/ZUMA PRESS
By NATHAN HODGE and THOMAS GROVE
Jan. 11, 2017 4:46 p.m. ET
MOSCOW—The public airing of a dossier Tuesday on President-elect Donald Trump casts a spotlight on Russia’s dark art of kompromat, the practice of collecting compromising material on prominent individuals for the purposes of blackmail.
The dossier is packed with unverified allegations, including a claim that Russian officials obtained evidence of Mr. Trump with prostitutes and kept the information in reserve as potential blackmail.
Mr. Trump has dismissed the reports. “Intelligence agencies should never have allowed this fake news to ‘leak’ into the public,” Mr. Trump said on Twitter on Wednesday. “One last shot at me.”
President-elect Donald Trump says allegations made about him in an unverified dossier prepared by ex-British intelligence officer, Christopher Steele, are completely fabricated. WSJ’s Jason Bellini breaks down what we know about the material and the person behind it. Photo: Getty.
The Kremlin has denied any link to the dossier, and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the reports “pulp fiction,” according to Russian news agencies.
Kompromat, a contraction of the Russian phrase “compromising materials,” has a rich history in Russia dating back to the Soviet era. Diplomats, politicians and bureaucrats have all been embarrassed by leaked videos or other material.
While blackmail is by no means unique to Russia, the deployment of kompromat is a regular feature in the country’s bare-fisted domestic politics.
Early last year, the pro-Kremlin television network NTV aired hidden-camera footage of Mikhail Kasyanov, leader of the opposition party Parnas. The footage appeared to show Mr. Kasyanov carrying on an affair with another party member and gossiping about other opposition politicians.
Mr. Kasyanov declined to comment on the video and the use of hidden cameras. The footage, aired ahead of parliamentary elections in September, made Russia’s embattled opposition appear fractured, divided and insignificant. His party didn’t win enough votes to be represented in parliament.
Footage aired last year on a pro-Kremlin network appeared to show opposition leader Mikhail Kasyanov carrying on an affair. Mr. Kasyanov, shown here in December, declined to comment.PHOTO: SHCHERBAK ALEXANDER/ZUMA PRESS
Valery Solovyov, a political analyst and historian at Moscow State Institute of International Relations, said the Russian government has a long history of collecting dossiers on dissidents, potential adversaries and political opponents.
“Of course the Kremlin collects compromising material,” he said. “The tradition goes back to the Soviet KGB, and now that material is collected through special services and journalists.”
Journalists, particularly ardently pro-Kremlin TV channels, were used during protests against Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2010-2012 to accuse opposition figures of nefarious deeds, such as collaborating with the U.S. Department of State, then headed by former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Journalists collected kompromat on the opposition as well as distributed materials given to them.
Mr. Solovyov, however, said that only a smattering of the compromising material collected is used against others. Less still comes to light publicly, he added.
“If it is quality and reliable, then it’s best for secret blackmail,” he said.
Kompromat, which might seem the stuff of B-grade spy thrillers, is also used as a tool in diplomatic squabbles with other countries. Western diplomats posted to Russia are trained to avoid sexual entrapment: A married diplomat caught in an extramarital affair, for instance, could be blackmailed into revealing secrets.
The U.S. State Department formally lodged a complaint in 2009, when the Russian-language website Komsomolskaya Pravda posted footage of a man it claimed to be an American diplomat visiting a prostitute. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said at the time the diplomat was the “subject of a smear campaign using the Russian press,” using a fabricated video.
In a country with a rich history of surveillance as a tool of political repression, where security services are feared and respected, kompromat carries a particular resonance.
The fear of surveillance is ingrained in the habits of many Russians, whether or not they are actually being monitored. Russians often have a morbid humor about hidden cameras and it isn’t unusual to hear the phrase, “This isn’t a conversation to have over the phone”
To some Russians, the attention around the Trump dossier is playing out like a Russian political drama. Yuri Skuratov, Russia’s former top prosecutor, said he doubted that the Trump dossier was real.
“This is nothing more than a political act,” he said. “It’s written ideally for the losing side of the election. This is all hype, and for the American reader it tries to explain why Trump suddenly started to have good ties with Russia.”
Mr. Skuratov himself was a victim of compromising material after he began looking into charges of corruption by then-president Boris Yeltsin and his associates. In 1999, a video was aired in which someone who resembled him was filmed in bed with two women. The next year he was dismissed from his position by the country’s upper house of parliament.
The former prosecutor maintains the man in the video wasn’t him.
“It was done in order to take me away when I started to investigate corruption of Yeltsin and his circle,” Mr. Skuratov said. “It was done to get me fired and away from the investigation.”
Story 1: What Bombshell Evidence Does The FBI Have and When Will They Reveal It? Evidence Will Never See The Light of Day — Obama Will Pardon Clinton After The Election — Case Closed — Trump Elected President — Videos
Will Obama pardon Hillary Clinton?
Blame Game Mainstream Media Points Finger At Comey Clinton Scandal Fox friends
BREAKING NEWS! FBI Mutiny Reopens Hillary’s Case
Rep. Gowdy on the impact of the FBI’s new Clinton inquiry
WoW! Bombshell***** FBI Reopens Clinton Email Case!!!!!
Why Hillary Clinton’s Campaign Is Collapsing | True News
3 Scandals: Hillary Clinton, Anthony Weiner and Loretta Lynch | True News
FBI Reopens Hillary Email Investigation, So Obama Can Pardon Her When She Loses
Lou Dobbs Tonight – FBI bribed by Obama / Clinton admin | Fox Business | October 17, 2016
Trump Demands That Obama Not Pardon Hillary! This Video is Explosive! Best 15 min Of Trump To Date!
Donald Trump Warns President Obama Not to ‘Pardon Hillary Clinton and Her Co-Conspirators’
Will Barack Obama PARDON Hillary Clinton?
Why The FBI Are Taking So Long on Clinton
CHECKMATE: Hillary Clinton Needs President Obama’s Pardon After FBI Indictment. Bernie Wins.
Why Obama Won’t Dare Indict Hillary: She Will Unleash DC Secrets
Laptop may contain thousands of messages sent to or from Mrs. Clinton’s private server
By DEVLIN BARRETT
Updated Oct. 30, 2016 7:59 p.m. ET
The surprise disclosure that agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation are taking a new look at Hillary Clinton’s email use lays bare, just days before the election, tensions inside the bureau and the Justice Department over how to investigate the Democratic presidential nominee.
Investigators found 650,000 emails on a laptop that they believe was used by former Rep. Anthony Weiner and his estranged wife Huma Abedin, a close Clinton aide, and underlying metadata suggests thousands of those messages could have been sent to or from the private server that Mrs. Clinton used while she was secretary of state, according to people familiar with the matter.
It will take weeks, at a minimum, to determine whether those messages are work-related from the time Ms. Abedin served with Mrs. Clinton at the State Department; how many are duplicates of emails already reviewed by the FBI; and whether they include either classified information or important new evidence in the Clinton email probe.
Officials had to await a court order to begin reviewing the emails—which they received over the weekend, according to a person familiar with the matter—because they were uncovered in an unrelated probe of Mr. Weiner.
The new investigative effort, disclosed by FBI Director James Comey on Friday, shows a bureau at times in sharp internal disagreement over matters related to the Clintons, and how to handle those matters fairly and carefully in the middle of a national election campaign. Even as the probe of Mrs. Clinton’s email use wound down in July, internal disagreements within the bureau and the Justice Department surrounding the Clintons’ family philanthropy heated up, according to people familiar with the matter.
The latest development began in early October when New York-based FBI officials notified Andrew McCabe, the bureau’s second-in-command, that while investigating Mr. Weiner for possibly sending sexually charged messages to a teenage minor, they had recovered a laptop. Many of the 650,000 emails on the computer, they said, were from the accounts of Ms. Abedin, according to people familiar with the matter.
Those emails stretched back years, these people said, and were on a laptop that hadn’t previously come up in the Clinton email probe. Ms. Abedin said in late August that the couple were separating.
The FBI had searched the computer while looking for child pornography, people familiar with the matter said, but the warrant they used didn’t give them authority to search for matters related to Mrs. Clinton’s email arrangement at the State Department. Mr. Weiner has denied sending explicit or indecent messages to the minor.
In their initial review of the laptop, the metadata showed many messages, apparently in the thousands, that were either sent to or from the private email server at Mrs. Clinton’s home that had been the focus of so much investigative effort for the FBI. Senior FBI officials decided to let the Weiner investigators proceed with a closer examination of the metadata on the computer, and report back to them.
At a meeting early last week of senior Justice Department and FBI officials, a member of the department’s senior national-security staff asked for an update on the Weiner laptop, the people familiar with the matter said. At that point, officials realized that no one had acted to obtain a warrant, these people said.
Those emails stretched back years, these people said, and were on a laptop that hadn’t previously come up in the Clinton email probe. Ms. Abedin said in late August that the couple were separating.
The FBI had searched the computer while looking for child pornography, people familiar with the matter said, but the warrant they used didn’t give them authority to search for matters related to Mrs. Clinton’s email arrangement at the State Department. Mr. Weiner has denied sending explicit or indecent messages to the minor.
In their initial review of the laptop, the metadata showed many messages, apparently in the thousands, that were either sent to or from the private email server at Mrs. Clinton’s home that had been the focus of so much investigative effort for the FBI. Senior FBI officials decided to let the Weiner investigators proceed with a closer examination of the metadata on the computer, and report back to them.
At a meeting early last week of senior Justice Department and FBI officials, a member of the department’s senior national-security staff asked for an update on the Weiner laptop, the people familiar with the matter said. At that point, officials realized that no one had acted to obtain a warrant, these people said.
Presidential nominees Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump addressed the FBI’s new email inquiry on Monday.
Mr. McCabe then instructed the email investigators to talk to the Weiner investigators and see whether the laptop’s contents could be relevant to the Clinton email probe, these people said. After the investigators spoke, the agents agreed it was potentially relevant.
Mr. Comey was given an update, decided to go forward with the case and notified Congress on Friday, with explosive results. Senior Justice Department officials had warned the FBI that telling Congress would violate policies against overt actions that could affect an election, and some within the FBI have been unhappy at Mr. Comey’s repeated public statements on the probe, going back to his press conference on the subject in July.
The back-and-forth reflects how the bureau is probing several matters related, directly or indirectly, to Mrs. Clinton and her inner circle.
New details show that senior law-enforcement officials repeatedly voiced skepticism of the strength of the evidence in a bureau investigation of the Clinton Foundation, sought to condense what was at times a sprawling cross-country effort, and, according to some people familiar with the matter, told agents to limit their pursuit of the case. The probe of the foundation began more than a year ago to determine whether financial crimes or influence peddling occurred related to the charity.
ENLARGE
New York mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner and his wife, Huma Abedin, attended a news conference in New York in 2013. Mr. Weiner had attempted to revive his career with a bid for New York City mayor, but that effort was doomed after a website published lewd photos that he had evidently sent to another woman. PHOTO: ERIC THAYER/REUTERS
Some investigators grew frustrated, viewing FBI leadership as uninterested in probing the charity, these people said. Others involved disagreed sharply, defending FBI bosses and saying Mr. McCabe in particular was caught between an increasingly acrimonious fight for control between the Justice Department and FBI agents pursuing the Clinton Foundation case.
It isn’t unusual for field agents to favor a more aggressive approach than supervisors and prosecutors think is merited. But the internal debates about the Clinton Foundationshow the high stakes when such disagreements occur surrounding someone who is running for president.
The Wall Street Journal reported last weekthat Mr. McCabe’s wife, Jill McCabe, received $467,500 in campaign funds in late 2015 from the political-action committee of Virginia Gov.Terry McAuliffe, a longtime ally of the Clintons and, until he was elected governor in November 2013, a Clinton Foundation board member.
Mr. McAuliffe had supported Dr. McCabe in the hopes she and a handful of other Democrats might help win a majority in the state Senate. Dr. McCabe lost her race last November, and Democrats failed to win their majority.
A spokesman for the governor has said that “any insinuation that his support was tied to anything other than his desire to elect candidates who would help pass his agenda is ridiculous.”
Dr. McCabe told the Journal, “Once I decided to run, my husband had no formal role in my campaign other than to be” supportive.
In February of this year, Mr. McCabe ascended from the No. 3 position at the FBI to the deputy director post. When he assumed that role, officials say, he started overseeing the probe into Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email server for government work when she was secretary of state.
FBI officials have said Mr. McCabe had no role in the Clinton email probe until he became deputy director, and by then his wife’s campaign was over.
But other Clinton-related investigations were under way within the FBI, and they have been the subject of internal debate for months, according to people familiar with the matter.
Early this year, four FBI field offices—New York, Los Angeles, Washington and Little Rock, Ark.—were collecting information about the Clinton Foundation to see if there was evidence of financial crimes or influence-peddling, according to people familiar with the matter.
Los Angeles agents had picked up information about the Clinton Foundation from an unrelated public-corruption case and had issued some subpoenas for bank records related to the foundation, these people said.
The Washington field office was probing financial relationships involving Mr. McAuliffe before he became a Clinton Foundation board member, these people said. Mr. McAuliffe has denied any wrongdoing, and his lawyer has said the probe is focused on whether he failed to register as an agent of a foreign entity.
Clinton Foundation officials have long denied any wrongdoing, saying it is a well-run charity that has done immense good.
The FBI field office in New York had done the most work on the Clinton Foundation case and received help from the FBI field office in Little Rock, the people familiar with the matter said.
In February, FBI officials made a presentation to the Justice Department, according to these people. By all accounts, the meeting didn’t go well.
Some said that is because the FBI didn’t present compelling evidence to justify more aggressive pursuit of the Clinton Foundation, and that the career anticorruption prosecutors in the room simply believed it wasn’t a very strong case. Others said that from the start, the Justice Department officials were stern, icy and dismissive of the case.
“That was one of the weirdest meetings I’ve ever been to,” one participant told others afterward, according to people familiar with the matter.
Anticorruption prosecutors at the Justice Department told the FBI at the meeting they wouldn’t authorize more aggressive investigative techniques, such as subpoenas, formal witness interviews, or grand-jury activity. But the FBI officials believed they were well within their authority to pursue the leads and methods already under way, these people said.
About a week after Mr. Comey’s July announcement that he was recommending against any prosecution in the Clinton email case, the FBI sought to refocus the Clinton Foundation probe, with Mr. McCabe deciding the FBI’s New York office would take the lead, with assistance from Little Rock.
ENLARGE
Director James Comey testified before the House Judiciary Committee in September on a variety of subjects including the investigation into former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s email server. PHOTO: WIN MCNAMEE/GETTY IMAGES
The Washington field office, FBI officials decided, would focus on a separate matter involving Mr. McAuliffe. Mr. McCabe had decided earlier in the spring that he would continue to recuse himself from that probe, given the governor’s contributions to his wife’s former political campaign.
Within the FBI, the decision was viewed with skepticism by some, who felt the probe would be stronger if the foundation and McAuliffe matters were combined. Others, particularly Justice Department anticorruption prosecutors, felt that both probes were weak, based largely on publicly available information, and had found little that would merit expanded investigative authority.
According to a person familiar with the probes, on Aug. 12, a senior Justice Department official called Mr. McCabe to voice his displeasure at finding that New York FBI agents were still openly pursuing the Clinton Foundation probe during the election season. Mr. McCabe said agents still had the authority to pursue the issue as long as they didn’t use overt methods requiring Justice Department approvals.
The Justice Department official was “very pissed off,” according to one person close to Mr. McCabe, and pressed him to explain why the FBI was still chasing a matter the department considered dormant. Others said the Justice Department was simply trying to make sure FBI agents were following longstanding policy not to make overt investigative moves that could be seen as trying to influence an election. Those rules discourage investigators from making any such moves before a primary or general election, and, at a minimum, checking with anticorruption prosecutors before doing so.
“Are you telling me that I need to shut down a validly predicated investigation?” Mr. McCabe asked, according to people familiar with the conversation. After a pause, the official replied, “Of course not,” these people said.
For Mr. McCabe’s defenders, the exchange showed how he was stuck between an FBI office eager to pour more resources into a case and Justice Department prosecutors who didn’t think much of the case, one person said. Those people said that following the call, Mr. McCabe reiterated past instructions to FBI agents that they were to keep pursuing the work within the authority they had.
Others further down the FBI chain of command, however, said agents were given a much starker instruction on the case: “Stand down.” When agents questioned why they weren’t allowed to take more aggressive steps, they said they were told the order had come from the deputy director—Mr. McCabe.
Others familiar with the matter deny Mr. McCabe or any other senior FBI official gave such a stand-down instruction.
For agents who already felt uneasy about FBI leadership’s handling of the Clinton Foundation case, the moment only deepened their concerns, these people said. For those who felt the probe hadn’t yet found significant evidence of criminal conduct, the leadership’s approach was the right response.
In September, agents on the foundation case asked to see the emails contained on nongovernment laptops that had been searched as part of the Clinton email case, but that request was rejected by prosecutors at the Eastern District of New York, in Brooklyn. Those emails were given to the FBI based on grants of partial immunity and limited-use agreements, meaning agents could only use them for the purpose of investigating possible mishandling of classified information.
Some FBI agents were dissatisfied with that answer, and asked for permission to make a similar request to federal prosecutors in Manhattan, according to people familiar with the matter. Mr. McCabe, these people said, told them no and added that they couldn’t “go prosecutor-shopping.”
Not long after that discussion, FBI agents informed the bureau’s leaders about the Weiner laptop, prompting Mr. Comey’s disclosure to Congress and setting off the furor that promises to consume the final days of a tumultuous campaign.
The FBI director lends credence to Trump’s accusation that the system is rigged.
FBI Director James Comey before the House Judiciary Committee in Washington, D.C., Oct. 22.PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
By BRET STEPHENS
Updated Oct. 31, 2016 7:49 p.m. ET
There was once an honorable tradition of resignations from government service. Cy Vance stepped down as Jimmy Carter’s Secretary of State after each man lost confidence in the other’s judgment. George Tenet resigned as George W. Bush’s CIA director in the wake of the Iraq WMD intelligence debacle.
Now it behooves James Comey to do the same. The FBI director lost the confidence of millions of Americans last summer by using semantic sophistry and bureaucratic legerdemain to exonerate Hillary Clinton from charges of mishandling classified information. He lost the confidence of millions more last Friday with his blundering letter to Congress announcing that the Clinton email investigation might not be closed after all—details to come, maybe.
In the most divisive political season in memory, Mr. Comey has become the rare object of political consensus, his motives distrusted by Trump and Clinton voters alike, his judgment doubted by congressional Republicans, Democratic Justice Department officials and probably a great many agents in his own bureau. He needs to go.
This isn’t because Mr. Comey is a secret partisan—an “arm of the [Clinton] campaign,” as journalist Mark Halperin suggested in September. In July Mr. Comey, an Obama appointee who also served as deputy attorney general in the George W. Bush administration, testified that he had been a registered Republican “for most of my adult life,” but that he was “not registered any longer.”
Whatever that means. Mr. Comey’s gnomic, ex cathedra distinction between Mrs. Clinton’s “extremely careless” handling of classified information and the “grossly negligent” standard that would have put her in legal jeopardy probably saved her candidacy. Friday’s letter to Congress, raising “there’s-gotta-be-something-there” suspicions, may yet save Mr. Trump’s.
These aren’t partisan acts. They are self-regarding ones. Mr. Comey is a familiar Washington type—the putative saint—whose career is a study in reputation management. He went after investment banker Frank Quattrone. He threatened to resign from the Bush administration over its warrantless wiretap program. He vouchsafed the case against Steven J. Hatfill, the virologist accused of the 2001 anthrax mail attacks, in internal White House deliberations. He appointed his close friend Patrick Fitzgerald to investigate the leak of CIA analyst Valerie Plame’s name.
One common thread in these cases is that Mr. Comey was always on the right side of Beltway conventional wisdom. The second is that he was consistently on the wrong side of justice.
Mr. Quattrone was exonerated. Warrantless wiretaps were ruled constitutional by the FISA court. Mr. Hatfill was an innocent man who eventually won a $5.8 million settlement from the Justice Department. Mr. Fitzgerald oversaw a three-year witch hunt that conveniently overlooked Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage’s role in leaking Ms. Plame’s identity. Instead, New York Times reporter Judith Miller went to jail for protecting her sources and Scooter Libby had his career wrecked.
The Journal brought this record to light in a blistering 2013 editorial. “Any potential FBI director deserves scrutiny, since the position has so much power and is susceptible to ruinous misjudgments and abuse,” the editorial warned. “That goes double for Mr. Comey, a nominee who seems to think the job of the federal bureaucracy is to oversee elected officials, not the other way around.”
The Senate ignored our advice. Mr. Comey was confirmed 93-1.
It’s amusing to read liberal pundits suddenly denounce Mr. Comey as a self-serving operator, not the man of honor he was supposed to be when his behavior was more congenial to Democrats.
It’s also amusing to conjecture that Mr. Comey’s hand in sending Friday’s letter to Congress was forced by fear that disgruntled FBI agents would leak the news of the emails. Mr. Comey used just that kind of tactic when he threatened to resign from the Bush administration.
What’s not amusing is that Mr. Comey has lent credence to Donald Trump’s toxic accusation that the system is rigged. In July, the FBI director arrogated to himself the right to decide whether a “reasonable prosecutor” would bring Mrs. Clinton’s case to trial, a decision that belonged to the Justice Department. Now he has flouted Justice Department protocols against using “official authority or influence to interfere with or affect the result of an election.” All to protect his position and reputation.
FBI directors are supposed to be above politics, not in them. President Obama has the authority to fire Mr. Comey but will be hard-pressed to do so politically. That goes double if Mrs. Clinton is elected. Who knows what a President Trump would do.
All the more reason for Mr. Comey to do the right thing. He has lost the trust of his political masters, his congressional overseers and the American people. Wanting to spend more time with family is the usual excuse.
WSJ: FBI Agents Allege DOJ Ordered ‘Stand Down’ on Clinton Foundation Investigation
By Guy Benson
Lost in all the shouting and hypocrisy over James Comey and the FBI’s renewed investigation into Hillary Clinton’s national security-compromising email scandal is a true jaw-dropper of a Wall Street Journal scoop regarding deep internal divisions within the Bureau and DOJ. The story begins by focusing on the email probe side of the controversy, then delves into great detail about a raging, under-the-radar battle over multiple FBI field offices examining possible criminal wrongdoing at the Clinton Foundation. The specifics of the report are remarkable, with warring factions offering differing accounts of what has really transpired. One thing that becomes clear from the Journal’s reporting is that some within the FBI believe top brass at their agency and at the Justice Department have repeatedly exerted their influence to hamstring or shut down a serious criminal investigation:
New details show that senior law-enforcement officials repeatedly voiced skepticism of the strength of the evidence in a bureau investigation of the Clinton Foundation, sought to condense what was at times a sprawling cross-country effort, and, according to some people familiar with the matter, told agents to limit their pursuit of the case.The probe of the foundation began more than a year ago to determine whether financial crimes or influence peddling occurred related to the charity.Some investigators grew frustrated, viewing FBI leadership as uninterested in probing the charity, these people said. Others involved disagreed sharply, defending FBI bosses and saying Mr. McCabe in particular was caught between an increasingly acrimonious fight for control between the Justice Department and FBI agents pursuing the Clinton Foundation case…
Early this year, four FBI field offices—New York, Los Angeles, Washington and Little Rock, Ark.—were collecting information about the Clinton Foundation to see if there was evidence of financial crimes or influence-peddling, according to people familiar with the matter…The FBI field office in New York had done the most work on the Clinton Foundation case and received help from the FBI field office in Little Rock, the people familiar with the matter said. In February, FBI officials made a presentation to the Justice Department, according to these people. By all accounts, the meeting didn’t go well. Some said that is because the FBI didn’t present compelling evidence to justify more aggressive pursuit of the Clinton Foundation, and that the career anticorruption prosecutors in the room simply believed it wasn’t a very strong case. Others said that from the start, the Justice Department officials were stern, icy and dismissive of the case.
Let’s pause right there. Remember this August report about an active FBI probe into the Clinton Foundation, which was pooh-poohed as unsubstantiated at the time? Apparently, it had quite a lot of validity to it. Also recall that those rumors began to swirl shortly after an element of the Obama Justice Department was alleged to have rebuffed an FBI request to look into the Clintons’ controversial family charity. Those headlines came and went rather quickly, but it turns out that there was a heavy duty tug-of-war underway beneath the surface. One contingent of agents views their bosses at DOJ as actively trying to deep-six their investigative efforts, which could have further damaged the Clintons. Another contingent believes the evidence wasn’t strong enough to justify a full-scale investigation. Back to the Journal’s piece:
Anticorruption prosecutors at the Justice Department told the FBI at the meeting they wouldn’t authorize more aggressive investigative techniques, such as subpoenas, formal witness interviews, or grand-jury activity. But the FBI officials believed they were well within their authority to pursue the leads and methods already under way, these people said. About a week after Mr. Comey’s July announcement that he was recommending against any prosecution in the Clinton email case, the FBI sought to refocus the Clinton Foundation probe, with Mr. McCabe deciding the FBI’s New York office would take the lead, with assistance from Little Rock…The Washington field office, FBI officials decided, would focus on a separate matter involving Mr. McAuliffe…Within the FBI, the decision was viewed with skepticism by some, who felt the probe would be stronger if the foundation and McAuliffe matters were combined. Others, particularly Justice Department anticorruption prosecutors, felt that both probes were weak.
The decision to keep pursuing the Clinton Foundation did not sit well with at least one high-ranking DOJ boss, who placed an angry phone call to McCabe — whose name may sound vaguely familiar. More on that connection in a moment, but first, this smacks of improper political pressure:
WSJ: DOJ official was “very pissed off” that the FBI was pursuing its Clinton Foundation investigation & applied pressure to kill.
“Are you telling me that I need to shut down a validly predicated investigation?” Mr. McCabe asked, according to people familiar with the conversation. After a pause, the official replied, “Of course not,” these people said. For Mr. McCabe’s defenders, the exchange showed how he was stuck between an FBI office eager to pour more resources into a case and Justice Department prosecutors who didn’t think much of the case, one person said. Those people said that following the call, Mr. McCabe reiterated past instructions to FBI agents that they were to keep pursuing the work within the authority they had. Others further down the FBI chain of command, however, said agents were given a much starker instruction on the case: “Stand down.” When agents questioned why they weren’t allowed to take more aggressive steps, they said they were told the order had come from the deputy director—Mr. McCabe.Others familiar with the matter deny Mr. McCabe or any other senior FBI official gave such a stand-down instruction. For agents who already felt uneasy about FBI leadership’s handling of the Clinton Foundation case, the moment only deepened their concerns, these people said.
It sounds as if McCabe was caught between DOJ higher-ups who wanted the Clinton Foundation probe jettisoned or significantly defanged, and line agents who were angry and suspicious that their work was being undermined by a political agenda. Did agents on the case hallucinate the effective “stand down” order they received? Was the decision to back off wrongly attributed to Mr. McCabe? He is an interesting figure, as it was recently revealed that Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe — a very close Clinton ally, and the subject of yet another FBI probe — funneled $675,000 to the the State Senate campaign of McCabe’s wife, a liberal Democrat. Even if Mr. McCabe did his best to abide by ethical guidelines, his central involvement in all of these politically-charged matters at least looks questionable, given his family’s very recent partisan alliance with Clintonworld. And then there’s this:
In September, agents on the foundation case asked to see the emails contained on nongovernment laptops that had been searched as part of the Clinton email case, but that request was rejected by prosecutors at the Eastern District of New York, in Brooklyn. Those emails were given to the FBI based on grants of partial immunity and limited-use agreements, meaning agents could only use them for the purpose of investigating possible mishandling of classified information. Some FBI agents were dissatisfied with that answer, and asked for permission to make a similar request to federal prosecutors in Manhattan, according to people familiar with the matter. Mr. McCabe, these people said, told them no and added that they couldn’t “go prosecutor-shopping.”
McCabe apparently denied agents’ September request to seek non-government laptops seized from Clinton aides during the (then dormant) email scandal investigation. Relevant FBI/DOJ-granted immunity deals, described by ex-federal officials as highly irregular, stipulated that the evidence in question could only be used by officials looking into the mishandling of classified data — not other potential crimes related to the Clinton Foundation. Hmmm. Layer all of this new information atop the facts that Attorney General Loretta Lynch improperly huddled with Bill Clinton while the email probe was still active and then broke her word by inserting herself into the case, pressuring Comey not to update Congress on new developments that impact his previous testimony. Asking tough pointed about whether some top officials at DOJ are abusing their roles to protect their partisan allies is justified. I’ll leave you with this bottom-line assessment, amid all the finger-pointing and acrimony:
FBI in Internal Feud Over Hillary Clinton Probe
As federal agents prepare to scour roughly 650,000 emails discovered on a laptop for possible links to Hillary Clinton’s private server, the case lays bare tensions within the FBI and Justice…
wsj.com
Correct, on all three counts. But Continetti neglects to add Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin to his list, now that the FBI has reopened the email matter, too.
UPDATE – Here’s Clinton categorically denying that there was any FBI investigation into her family’s ‘slush fund‘ foundation earlier this year. Those reports had “no basis” and were “irresponsible,” she claimed. Wrong again:
Story 1: Breaking News! Terrorist Attack At Turkish Ataturk airport in Istanbul — 50 Dead+ and 60 Wounded — 3 Suicide Bombers From Islamic State — Videos
TURKEY AIRPORT Terror 41 Dead 239 Inj USA High Alert
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2016 – BBC World News – 41 Dead in Triple Suicide Bombings @ Istanbul Airport – 29/6/16
Terrorist Attack At Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport Kills Dozens
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Terrorist attack Istanbul Ataturk Airport
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Brussels Terrorist Attack RAW Footage Just After Explosion at Airport
SUSPECTED IS ATTACK KILLS DOZENS AT ISTANBUL’S AIRPORT
BY ZEYNEP BILGINSOY, SUZAN FRASER AND DOMINIQUE SOGUEL
Suspected Islamic State group extremists have hit the international terminal of Istanbul’s Ataturk airport, killing dozens of people and wounding many others, Turkish officials said Tuesday.
Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said 31 people were killed in the attack while another senior government official told The Associated Press it could climb much higher.
The senior official at first said close to 50 people had already died, but later said that the figure was expected to rise to close to 50.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with government protocol, said as many as four militants may have been involved in the attack.
Turkey’s NTV television earlier quoted Istanbul Governor Vasip Sahin as saying some 60 people were wounded.
Roads around the airport were sealed off for regular traffic after the attack and several ambulances could be seen driving back and forth. Hundreds of passengers were flooding out of the airport and others were sitting on the grass, their bodies lit by the flashing lights of the emergency vehicles.
Twelve-year-old Hevin Zini had just arrived from Dusseldorf with her family and was in tears from the shock.
She told The Associated Press that there was blood on the ground and everything was blown up to bits.
South African Judy Favish, who spent two days in Istanbul as a layover on her way home from Dublin, had just checked in when she heard an explosion followed by gunfire and a loud bang.
She says she hid under the counter for some time.
Favish says passengers were ushered to a cafeteria at the basement level where they were kept for more than an hour before being allowed outside.
Another Turkish official said attackers detonated explosives at the entrance of the international terminal after police fired at them.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with government protocol, said the attackers blew themselves up before entering the x-ray security check at the airport entrance.
Turkish airports have security checks at both the entrance of terminal buildings and then later before entry to departure gates.
Two South African tourists, Paul and Susie Roos from Cape Town, were at the airport and due to fly home at the time of the explosions and were shaken by what they witnessed.
“We came up from the arrivals to the departures, up the escalator when we heard these shots going off,” Paul Roos said. “There was this guy going roaming around, he was dressed in black and he had a hand gun.”
The private DHA news agency said the wounded, among them police officers, were being transferred to Bakirkoy State Hospital.
Turkey has suffered several bombings in recent months linked to Kurdish or Islamic State group militants.
The bombings include two in Istanbul targeting tourists – which the authorities have blamed on the Islamic State group.
The attacks have increased in scale and frequency, scaring off tourists and hurting the economy, which relies heavily on tourism revenues.
Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport was the 11th busiest airport in the world last year, with 61.8 million passengers, according to Airports Council International. It is also one of the fastest-growing airports in the world, seeing 9.2 percent more passengers last year than in 2014.
The largest carrier at the airport is Turkish Airlines, which operates a major hub there. Low-cost Turkish carrier Onur Air is the second-largest airline there.
—
Soguel reported from Sanliurfa, Turkey. Bram Janssen in Istanbul and Scott Mayerowitz in New York also contributed to this report.
PUBLISHED: 14:27 EST, 28 June 2016 | UPDATED: 15:30 EST, 28 June 2016
Suicide bombers have killed at least 10 and wounded 40 at Istanbul’s Ataturk airport after blowing themselves up as police opened fire, according to Turkish officials.
It is understood that a ‘terrorist’ first opened fire with a Kalashnikov, before blowing himself up.
It is not yet clear how many attackers were involved as witnesses reported twin blasts that struck at the International Arrivals Terminal at 7.50pm GMT – 9.50pm local time.
The first photographs to emerge from the airport show a scene of devastation, with debris and what appear to be ceiling tiles scattered over the taxi ranks outside the airport.
A man carries a wounded boy away from the devastated airport tonight after the twin explosions, in what is believed to have been a suicide attack
Ceiling tiles are scattered over the ground outside the international arrivals terminal, which was hit by what is believed to have been a suicide blast tonight
Ambulances rush to the airport after the blasts this evening, to help the at least 40 wounded in the blast
An AK-47 can be seen lying abandoned on the floor, after two suicide bombers set of blasts at the airport as police opened fire
Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag confirmed 10 people were killed in the attack at the international arrival terminal.
He said: ‘A terrorist at the international terminal entrance first opened fire with a Kalashnikov and then blew himself up.’
It is believed the suspects had been trying to pass through the x-ray machines when they were stopped by security officials.
They then opened fire and became locked in a shootout with security and police officers.
Some of the wounded are said to be police officers involved in the melee.
Turkish airports have security checks at both at the entrance of terminal buildings and then later before entry to departure gates.
The private DHA news agency said the wounded were being transferred to Bakirkoy State Hospital.
One photograph from the scene shows an AK-47 lying abandoned on the floor of the airport following the attack.
Police officers and ambulance crews outside the international arrivals terminal, which was struck in what officials say was a terror attack
Ambulance crews ferry the wounded away from the terminal. The wounded are believed to include a number of police officers and security personnel
The first images to emerge from the scene show debris, including what appear to be ceiling tiles, scattered over taxis
An abandoned office at Turkey’s largest airport, the Ataturk airport in Istanbul, where reports say explosions and gunfire have broken out. A window pane to the right of the image appears to have been shattered
Ambulance crews and emergency services have descended on the stricken airport, as the number of wounded is expected to increase.
A witness told broadcaster CNN Turk that gunfire was heard from the direction of the car park at the airport, which is the largest in Turkey.
Four armed men were reportedly seen running away from the terminal building after the explosions, according to Turkey’s NTV channel.
All flight operation from the airport has been suspended.
Initial reports put the number of wounded at around 40 people. Taxis are ferrying the wounded away from the airport, which officials suspect was hit by a suicide bomber
A witness told broadcaster CNN Turk that gunfire was heard from the direction of the car park at the airport, which is the largest in Turkey. Pictured, emergency services at the airport
Paramedics at the scene help the 40 wounded at the airport, with at least 10 people reported to have died
A photograph of the entrance to the international airport shows scattered debris as onlookers gather around to help the wounded – initially estimated to number around 40 people
Crowds gather outside the airport after tonight’s explosions, as emergency crews rush to help the wounded
Holidaymakers drag their suitcases outside the airport, as all flights were grounded following the attack
Two explosions and gunfire have been heard at Istanbul’s Ataturk airport (pictured), according to reports in Turkish media
A file image of the Ataturk International Airport in Istanbul, which is the country’s largest airport. Explosions and gunfire have hit the airport, although it is not yet clear whether it was a terror attack or suicide blast, according to officials
A Turkish official confirmed to Reuters that two explosions had hit the airport.
Turkey has suffered several bombings in recent months linked to Kurdish or ISIS militants.
The bombings included two in Istanbul targeting tourists – which the authorities have blamed on the Islamic State group.
The attacks have increased in scale and frequency, scaring off tourists and hurting the economy, which relies heavily on tourism revenues.
The U.S. State Department published a travel warning in March, encouraging citizens to ‘exercise heightened vigilance and caution when visiting public access areas, especially those heavily frequented by tourists’.
Story 2: The Big Lies And Cover-up About A State Department Foreign Policy And CIA Covert Action Failures in Libya and Benghazi Elects Barack Obama and Destroys Hillary Clinton Credibility And Reveals Total Incompetence and Blind Ambition of Obama and Clinton — Missing In Action President Obama and Secretary of Defense Not In Situation Room, No Followup and Leading From Behind — Arrogance of Power and The Decline and Fall Of American Empire By The Two Party Tyranny of The Democratic and Republican Parties — Throw The Political Elitist Establishment Out of Office — Both Political Parties Authorized A Undeclared War In Libya Contrary To United States Constitution — An Imperial President and Congress — American People Will Overthrow These Tyrants Come Election Day — Story 2: Breaking News! Terrorist Attack At Turkish Ataturk airport in Istanbul — 10 Dead+ and 40 Wounded –Videos
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) explains what happened in Benghazi
In a press conference on June 28, 2016, Rep. Jim Jordan, OH-04, explains his view of what happened leading up to, during and after the night of September 11, 2012 when four Americans lost their lives in Benghazi, Libya from a terrorist attack. Follow the link to read Rep. Jordan’s joint report with Rep. Mike Pompeo about the events: http://jordan.house.gov/uploadedfiles…
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Benghazi Report Leaves Weapon Trafficking A Question Mark
SHOCK REPORT: CIA operatives at Benghazi Attack! DEALING WEAPONS?
Benghazi Bombshell: Insiders Confirm CIA Sent Missiles to FSA Rebels
Benghazi Illegal CIA Arms Transfer Hidden From Public No Longer
The Release of the Benghazi Report
The Hard Line | Michael Brown discusses the Benghazi committee report findings
Clinton’s Contradiction – White House Knew A Video Didn’t Cause Benghazi Attack – Napolitano – F&F
GOP Benghazi Report Faults Military Response
Benghazi Report Out Today – House GOP To Reveal Findings This Morning – Fox & Friends
Trey Gowdy Benghazi Report FULL Press Conference 6/28/16 – House Select Committee
Benghazi Press Conference Senator Trey Gowdy GOP Members of Congress on Select Committee Report
State Department Reacts to Benghazi Report 6/28/16
Clinton fights back against new House Benghazi report
Muslim Brotherhood’s plan & Obama connection exposed
The official report of the House Select Committee on Benghazi offered proof of what America already knew about the attack – but, more importantly, added shocking details about the lack of leadership during that attack which led to the death of two of the four victims. It explains that the Obama Administration was already working on a cover-up during the attack – when Ambassador Stevens was missing and not yet reported dead and at least two of the four victims were still on the roof of the compound (Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods) and fighting for their lives.
The official 800 page committee report issued Tuesday came just a few hours after a politically-motivated report released by the Democrats, which referred to Donald Trump more times than two of the Benghazi victims.
While the report does find fault with Clinton and the State Department, it does not focus on her, just as committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-SC) promised. The report is a chronology of the events leading up to the attack, the attack itself and the aftermath. Additionally, the committee interviewed more than 80 people and reviewed thousands of pages of new documents not available to any prior investigation.
Along with finding fault with State Department staff and Hillary Clinton’s actions, the report criticizes the CIA, saying it “missed the looming threat despite warnings and wrote faulty intelligence reports after the attack. The findings will also indicate that the Defense Department did not meet its response times to deploy military assets to Benghazi and follow up to ensure Americans were rescued in a timely fashion.”
It is not surprising that the report says the story the Administration told America, that terrorist attack in Benghazi was incited by a Mohammed video on YouTube, was a fabrication invented by the Obama Administration political team and had nothing to do with the ongoing live reports the state department was getting from Benghazi during the attack.
One U.S. agent at the American outpost in Benghazi, whose name was withheld for security reasons, said that, just before the attack, they heard “some kind of chanting.”
Then that sound was immediately followed by “explosions” and “gunfire, then roughly 70 people rushing into the compound with an assortment of “AK-47s, grenades, RPG’s … a couple of different assault rifles,” the agent said.
In addition, a senior watch officer at the State Department’s diplomatic security command described the Sept. 11, 2012, strikes as “a full on attack against our compound.”
When asked whether he saw or heard a protest prior to the attacks, the officer replied, “zip, nothing, nada.”
“The firsthand accounts made their way to the office of the Secretary through multiple channels quickly …,” the report concluded.”
Not one of the reports provided from the people on the ground during the attack mentioned a protest or a video, yet as the attack was happening, senior members of the administration were meeting to create that story, even as they knew that Ambassador Stevens was missing (but, before anyone knew he had died) and CIA operatives Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods were standing on the roof of the Benghazi Compound fighting for their lives.
That White House meeting that was convened roughly three hours into the attack, and included deputies to senior Cabinet members and Clinton, focused on a “Terrorist Event Notification” – not the video:
Five of the 10 action items from the 7:30 PM White House meeting referenced the video, but no direct link or solid evidence existed connecting the attacks in Benghazi and the video at the time the meeting took place. The State Department senior officials at the meeting had access to eyewitness accounts to the attack in real time. The Diplomatic Security Command Center was in direct contact with the Diplomatic Security Agents on the ground in Benghazi and sent out multiple updates about the situation, including a “Terrorism Event Notification.” The State Department Watch Center had also notified Jake Sullivan and Cheryl Mills that it had set up a direct telephone line to Tripoli. There was no mention of the video from the agents on the ground. Greg Hicks—one of the last people to talk to Chris Stevens before he died—said there was virtually no discussion about the video in Libya leading up to the attacks.
The only statement from the Obama administration that evening came from Hillary Clinton and included this line: “Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet.”
But, as we learned during her testimony to the committee, Ms. Clinton was saying something else in private:
In an email provided to the Select Committee, Clinton told daughter Chelsea, “Two of our officers were killed in Benghazi by an Al Queda-like [sic] group.”
Clinton also told Egypt’s prime minister the following day: “We know that the attacks in Libya had nothing to do with the film. It was a planned attack — not a protest.”
The report says that, despite “Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta’s clear orders to deploy military assets, nothing was en route to Libya at the time the last two Americans were killed almost 8 hours after the attacks began.”
The reason for the delay was a concern about the rescuers’ wardrobe:
So we were told multiple times to change what we were wearing, to change from cammies into civilian attire, civilian attire into cammies, cammies into civilian attire.
There was also some talk of whether or not we could carry our personal weapons. I was basically holding hard and fast to the point where we were carrying our personal weapons. Like, we’ve got a very violent thing going on the ground where we’re going, so we’re going to be carrying something that can protect ourselves.
In fact, the FAST Platoon commander testified that during the course of three hours, he and his Marines changed in and out of their uniforms four times.[General Carter] Ham [commander of U.S. Africa Command] was not aware the FAST Platoon had been directed to change out of their uniforms until after the fact. When asked whether he had any explanation for why it took so long for the FAST Platoon to arrive in Tripoli, he replied, “I do not.”
It was the State Department which originally suggested the wardrobe change. According to the notes from the 7:30PM White House meeting:
Apparently Pat K[ennedy] expressed concern on the [White House meeting] about Libyan reaction if uniformed US forces arrived in country in military aircraft; there was discussion of the option of entering in plainclothes, which JCS explained was possible but noted that the risks to the forces to remaining in plainclothes increased as they transited from point of entry to the relevant location of action.
A email framed the issue as follows:
The U.S. military has begun notifying special units of likely deployment, with ultimate disposition pending State coordination with the Libyan government and final approval by the White House. State remains concerned that any U.S. military intervention be fully coordinated with the Libyan Government and convey Libyan concerns that [sic] about U.S. military presence, to include concerns that wheeled military vehicles should not be used and U.S. Military Forces should consider deploying in civilian attire.
Thus, Panetta was being honest when he said there was no stand-down order. The rescue was delayed because of a concern about the appropriate wardrobe initiated by the State Department.
According to Susan Rice, who went on five Sunday news programs days after the attack blaming the video, her statements blaming the video “were based on the best available information, but nobody from the intelligence community such as the CIA director or the Director of National Intelligence briefed Rice. That was done by the political appointees.”
So, it seems that, even though she was playing the role of the administration’s spokesperson on the Sunday shows, it was deemed that Rice should get her story from the spin-masters.
In fact, a Sept. 14, 2012 memo from Rhodes included the subject line: “RE: PREP Call with Susan: Saturday at 4:00 pm ET.”
The email was sent to a dozen members of the administration’s inner circle, including key members of the White House communications team such as then-Press Secretary Jay Carney, who also pushed the video narrative in the days after the attacks.
In the email, Rhodes specifically draws attention to the anti-Islam Internet video, without distinguishing whether the Benghazi attack was different from protests elsewhere, including one day earlier in Cairo.
The Rhodes email, which was a catalyst for the Select Committee, was first obtained by Judicial Watch and reported here. Per the report, Rhodes was also the official who signed off on Clinton’s statement the night of the attack linking the video to Benghazi.
Among the goals laid out for Rice in the email were “to underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video and not a broader failure of policy” and “to reinforce the President and Administration’s strength and steadiness in dealing with difficult challenges.” Both this subterfuge and the attack occurred less than two months before the 2012 presidential election.
According to the committee, the CIA post-attack intelligence analysis contradicted the eyewitness accounts that night, and the “administration latched onto the faulty analysis to defend and justify their misleading statements to the public.”
The CIA’s September 13, 2012, intelligence assessment was rife with errors. On the first page, there is a single mention of “the early stages of the protest” buried in one of the bullet points. The article cited to support the mention of a protest in this instance was actually from September 4. In other words, the analysts used an article from a full week before the attacks to support the premise that a protest had occurred just prior to the attack on September 11
A headline on the following page of the CIA’s September 13 intelligence assessment stated “Extremists Capitalized on Benghazi Protests,” but nothing in the actual text box supports that title. As it turns out, the title of the text box was supposed to be “Extremists Capitalized on Cairo Protests.” That small but vital difference—from Cairo to Benghazi—had major implications in how people in the administration were able to message the attacks
On top of the full committee report, two of the panel’s Republican members, Reps. Mike Pompeo (R-KS) and Jim Jordan (R-OH) released their own views, stating that the committee should have been harsher on Ms. Clinton, saying that the committee needed an answer for why she was so insistent on keeping people in Libya’s troubled second city — creating a target for the terrorists.
“There was a very good chance that everyone was going to die,” one diplomatic security agent told the committee, recalling the troublesome security situation in the run-up to the attack.
(…) Mrs. Clinton personally joined a high-level video meeting the night of the attack and that gathering spent an extraordinary amount of time focused on the video, the lawmakers said. Of 11 action items emerging from that meeting, five of them related to the video, according to an email recounting the meeting, which the committee unearthed.
“What has also emerged is a picture of the State Department eating up valuable time by insisting that certain elements of the U.S. military respond to Libya in civilian clothes and that it not use vehicles with United States markings,” the lawmakers said. “We will never know exactly how long these conditions delayed the military response but that they were even a part of the discussion is troubling.”
This may not be the final version of the report, since the committee has scheduled a meeting markup to discuss and vote on the proposed report on July 8, 2016. According to the report issued Tuesday, all members of the committee will have the opportunity to offer changes in a manner consistent with the rules of the House at that time.
BENGHAZI REPORT: 10 THINGS THAT HAPPENED THE NIGHT OF
FILE – In this Oct. 22, 2015 file photo, Democratic presidential candidate former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington before the House Select Committee on Benghazi. Clinton never personally denied any requests from diplomats for additional security at the U.S. outpost in Benghazi, Libya, according to Democrats on a select House panel who absolved the former secretary of state and the U.S. military of wrongdoing in the deadly Sept. 11, 2012 attacks. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)
With all the intelligence available at the time,Hillary Clinton should have realized the risks Ambassador Christopher Stevens and others faced from extremist groups in Benghazi, Libya, according to a long-awaited U.S. House committee reporton the attack that left Stevens and three others dead in 2012.
The report from the “Select Committee on the Events Surrounding the 2012 Terrorist Attack in Benghazi, Libya,” was released Tuesday. In addition to taking Clinton to task for her actions, the findings also say the Obama administration failed in nearly every way it could to protect American diplomats in Benghazi that night.
The report points out failures in military response, and slams Clinton, who was secretary of State at the time, and the State Department for acting in a “shameful” manner in failing to turn over emails from her private email server as the attack was being investigated. The report said because it did not have the emails, it was “impossible” to know everything about the Sept. 11, 2012, attack that left four Americans – Stevens, foreign service officer Sean Smith and former Navy Seals Ty Woods and Glen Doherty, dead.
The 800-page report comes after a two-year investigation into the events of that night.
What’s in the report
Here are some of the report’s findings:
Despite President Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta’s clear orders to deploy military assets, nothing was sent to Benghazi, and nothing was en route to Libya at the time the last two Americans were killed almost 8 hours after the attacks began. [pg. 141]
With Ambassador Stevens missing, the White House convened a roughly two-hour meeting at 7:30 PM, which resulted in action items focused on a YouTube video, and others containing the phrases “[i]f any deployment is made,” and “Libya must agree to any deployment,” and “[w]ill not deploy until order comes to go to either Tripoli or Benghazi.” [pg. 115]
The Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff typically would have participated in the White House meeting, but did not attend because he went home to host a dinner party for foreign dignitaries. [pg. 107]
A Fleet Antiterrorism Security Team (FAST) sat on a plane in Rota, Spain, for three hours, and changed in and out of their uniforms four times. [pg. 154]
Five of the 10 action items from the 7:30 PM White House meeting referenced the video, but no direct link or solid evidence existed connecting the attacks in Benghazi and the video at the time the meeting took place. The State Department senior officials at the meeting had access to eyewitness accounts to the attack in real time. The Diplomatic Security Command Center was in direct contact with the Diplomatic Security Agents on the ground in Benghazi and sent out multiple updates about the situation, including a “Terrorism Event Notification.” The State Department Watch Center had also notified Jake Sullivan and Cheryl Mills that it had set up a direct telephone line to Tripoli. There was no mention of the video from the agents on the ground. Greg Hicks—one of the last people to talk to Chris Stevens before he died—said there was virtually no discussion about the video in Libya leading up to the attacks. [pg. 28]
The morning after the attacks, the National Security Council’s Deputy Spokesperson sent an email to nearly two dozen people from the White House, Defense Department, State Department, and intelligence community, stating: “Both the President and Secretary Clinton released statements this morning. … Please refer to those for any comments for the time being. To ensure we are all in sync on messaging for the rest of the day, Ben Rhodes will host a conference call for USG communicators on this chain at 9:15 ET today.” [pg. 39]
Minutes before the President delivered his speech in the Rose Garden, Jake Sullivan wrote in an email to Ben Rhodes and others: “There was not really much violence in Egypt. And we are not saying that the violence in Libya erupted ‘over inflammatory videos.’” [pg. 44]
According to Susan Rice, both Ben Rhodes and David Plouffe prepared her for her appearances on the Sunday morning talk shows following the attacks. Nobody from the FBI, Department of Defense, or CIA participated in her prep call. While Rhodes testified Plouffe would “normally” appear on the Sunday show prep calls, Rice testified she did not recall Plouffe being on prior calls and did not understand why he was on the call in this instance. [pg.98]
On the Sunday shows, Susan Rice stated the FBI had “already begun looking at all sorts of evidence” and “FBI has a lead in this investigation.” But on Monday, the Deputy Director, Office of Maghreb Affairs sent an email stating: “McDonough apparently told the SVTS [Secure Video Teleconference] group today that everyone was required to ‘shut their pieholes’ about the Benghazi attack in light of the FBI investigation, due to start tomorrow.” [pg. 135]
Susan Rice’s comments on the Sunday talk shows were met with shock and disbelief by State Department employees in Washington. The Senior Libya Desk Officer, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, State Department, wrote: “I think Rice was off the reservation on this one.” The Deputy Director, Office of Press and Public Diplomacy, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, State Department, responded: “Off the reservation on five networks!” The Senior Advisor for Strategic Communications, Bureau of Near East Affairs, State Department, wrote: “WH [White House] very worried about the politics. This was all their doing.” [pg. 132]
House Benghazi report faults military response, not Clinton, for deaths
Panel chair Trey Gowdy concludes $7m investigation with 800-page report that accuses US of being slow to respond after 2012 attack was already under way
Benghazi report blames military for slow response after attacks
Lauren Gambino in New York and David Smith in Washington
Tuesday 28 June 2016 10.49 EDT Last modified on Tuesday 28 June 2016 15.14 EDT
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House Republicans investigating the 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya, have found no new evidence to conclude that Hillary Clinton, secretary of state at the time, was culpable in the deaths of four Americans, according to the committee’s final report released on Tuesday.
The 800-page document released by the Republicans on the House select committee on Benghazi brought to a close a fiercely partisan, two-year, $7m investigation that included interviews with more than 80 witnesses. The report reveals new details about the night of the attack and concludes that the Obama administration failed to recognize the possibility of it happening.
Ambassador Christopher Stevens, his state department colleague Sean Smith and former Navy Seals Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty were killed when Islamist militants stormed the US consulate in Benghazi on 11 September 2012. Controversy has raged ever since over the chain of events and how much support the men had from Washington.
The White House noted tersely that this was the eighth congressional committee to investigate the attacks and went on longer than the 9/11 commission and the committees designated to look at Pearl Harbor, the assassination of President John F Kennedy, the Iran-Contra affair and Watergate. It accused Republicans of pursuing “wild conspiracy theories”.
Committee chairman Trey Gowdy, a Republican from South Carolina, denied that presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Clinton was the target. “When the select committee was formed, I promised to conduct this investigation in a manner worthy of the American people’s respect, and worthy of the memory of those who died,” he said.
“That is exactly what my colleagues and I have done. Now, I simply ask the American people to read this report for themselves, look at the evidence we have collected, and reach their own conclusions.”
But a split emerged among Republicans on the committee. Two members, Jim Jordan and Mike Pompeo, issued a 48-page supplementary report more forthright in its criticism. It says: “What we did find was a tragic failure of leadership – in the run-up to the attack and the night of – and an administration that, so blinded by politics and its desire to win an election, disregarded a basic duty of government: tell the people the truth. And for those reasons Benghazi is, and always will be, an American tragedy.”
Jordan, from Ohio, and Pompeo, from Kansas, were equally blunt in their condemnation of Clinton in particular. “Secretary Clinton and the administration told one story privately – that Benghazi was a terrorist attack – and told another story publicly – blaming a video-inspired protest,” they wrote.
Pressed on whether he believed that Clinton lied, Gowdy declined to give a direct answer, telling journalists to read the report. “You’re going to have to decide that for yourself,” he said.
Clinton on Benghazi report: ‘It’s pretty clear it’s time to move on’
The committee’s Democrats, who have long derided the investigation as politically motivated, on Monday released their own report on the committee’s findings.
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“Although the select committee obtained additional details that provide context and granularity, these details do not fundamentally alter the previous conclusions,” the Democrats’ report said.
Donald Trump has used the incident to discredit Clinton’s time at the helm of the state department. In a speech last week, he said Clinton “spread death, destruction and terrorism everywhere she touched. Among the victims was our late ambassador Chris Stevens”.
And on Tuesday Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, weighed in: “The new information in the majority’s report on the Benghazi terrorist attack makes clear that Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration engaged in a politically motivated cover-up weeks before the 2012 presidential election.
“Hillary Clinton knew the night of the attack it had nothing to do with an internet video, and yet she shamefully peddled this false narrative to the American public and to the victims’ families. This in itself is a disqualifying act of deception.”
Clinton, campaigning in Denver, said: “I understand that after more than two years and $7m spent by the Benghazi committee under taxpayer funds, it had to today report that it had found nothing – nothing – to contradict the conclusions that the independent accountability board, or the conclusions of the prior multiple earlier investigations carried out on a bipartisan basis in the Congress.”
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She added: “So while this unfortunately took on a partisan tinge, I want us to stay focused on what I’ve always wanted us to stay focused on, and that is the important work of diplomacy and development.”
The Democratic nominee added: “That’s especially true in dangerous places. We cannot withdraw or retreat from the world. America needs a presence for a lot of reasons, and the best way to honor the commitment and sacrifice of those we’ve lost is to redouble our efforts to provide resources and support that our diplomats and development groups deserve. So, I’ll leave it to others to characterize this report, but I think it’s pretty clear that it’s time to move on.”
In Washington, Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, condemned the report claiming it dealt in “politically motivated fantasies” and accused Republicans of “cynically trying to capitalise on the deaths of four innocent Americans who were killed overseas”.
Asked if he believed this finally drew a line under the Benghazi issue, Earnest replied: “I thought it was over after the first five investigations. This was the eighth.”
He called on the Republican National Committee to correctly report the in-kind contributions for the $7m investigation in its next filing with the Federal Election Commission.
In October, Clinton endured 11 hours of questioning by the House select committee, and was roundly commended for her performance during the marathon hearing while the chairman was criticized for failing to produce any new information about the 2012 attack.
The hearing was a turning point for Clinton’s campaign. On the trail, Democrats still refer to her grace-under-fire performance as a testament to her endurance and ability to withstand and overcome partisan attacks.
The report faults the military for its slow response sending resources to the Libyan city during the deadly 2012 attacks on a US outpost, despite clear orders from Barack Obama and the then US defense secretary Leon Panetta.
Gowdy said “nothing was en route to Libya at the time the last two Americans were killed almost eight hours after the attacks began”.
He said the Libyan forces that evacuated Americans from the CIA annex in Benghazi were not affiliated with any of the militias the CIA or state department had developed a relationship with during the previous 18 months.
Gowdy said on Tuesday that the report documents that the US was slow to send help to the Americans in Benghazi “because of an obsession with hurting the Libyans’ feelings”.
He said the report was not aimed at Clinton, but portrays “series of heroic acts” by Americans under attack “and what we can do to prevent” other assaults.
The Democrats’ report released on Monday saying that while the state department’s security measures in Benghazi the night of 11 September 2012 were “woefully inadequate”, Clinton never personally turned down a request for additional security. Democrats said the military could not have done anything differently that night to save the lives of the Americans.
On Tuesday, the panel’s Democrats denounced the Republicans’ report as “a conspiracy theory on steroids – bringing back long-debunked allegations with no credible evidence whatsoever”.
The state department also issued a statement on Tuesday, saying that the “essential facts” of the attacks “have been known for some time”, and have been the subject of numerous reviews, including one by an independent review board.
It is well accepted that the conduct of war is an “executive Power,” vested by Article II in the President, who also serves as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. Both at the time of the Framing of the Constitution and afterward, there has been agreement that the President has the power to repel invasions. Intimately familiar with the treatises on international law, the Framers were undoubtedly aware of the general rule that, as Hugo Grotius had put it, “By the law of nature, no declaration is required when one is repelling an invasion.” The Law of War and Peace (1646). The debate, instead, has centered on the location of the power to initiate war.
Advocates of congressional power contend that the President cannot initiate hostilities because the Constitution expressly vests the power to “declare War” in Congress. In support of that view, they note that, according to his notes from the Constitutional Convention, James Madison successfully advocated that Congress be given the power, not to “make” war but to “declare” war, to “leav[e] to the Executive the power to repel sudden attacks.” In 1862, the Supreme Court opined that the President “has no power to initiate or declare a war,” but if there were an invasion, “the President is not only authorized but bound to resist force by force…without waiting for any special legislative authority.” Prize Cases (1863).
On the other hand, the Constitution distinguishes between “declaring” war and “engaging in” (see Article I, Section 10, Clause 3) or “levying” war (see Article III, Section 3, Clause 1). Moreover, there is no express requirement of legislative consent in other sections of the Constitution or in earlier documents before the President may commence hostilities.
Accordingly, much of the debate over the power to initiate hostilities focuses on understanding the meaning of the words, “declare War.” Supporters of presidential authority contend that the Founders were well aware of the long British practice of undeclared wars. They assert that the Constitution likewise does not require formal war declarations for the President to authorize hostilities as a matter of domestic constitutional power.
Under this view, Congress’s power to declare war was established for an altogether different purpose. Declarations of war alter legal relationships between subjects of warring nations and trigger certain rights, privileges, and protections under the laws of war. According to Grotius, declarations gave notice of the legal grounds for the war and the opportunity for enemy nations to make amends and thereby avoid the scourge of war. It served notice on the enemy’s allies that they would be regarded as cobelligerents and their shipping subject to capture. Under a declaration of war, one’s own navy and privateers could not be treated as pirates by the enemy, but on the other hand one’s own citizens were subject to prosecution if they dealt with the enemy.
Furthermore, under previous practice, declarations of war triggered other legal actions, such as the internment or expulsion of enemy aliens, the breaking of diplomatic relations, and the confiscation of the enemy’s property. In short, the power to declare war was designed as a power to affect legal rights and duties in times of hostilities. It is not a check on executive power to engage in such hostilities in the first place.
Congressional power supporters respond that the Declaration of War Clause must be given a broader interpretation, particularly in light of contemporaneous statements by prominent Founding era figures. They contend that the clause was intended to include the power not only to issue formal declarations, but also to confer authority to decide upon any engagement of hostilities, whether declared or otherwise. Therefore, they argue, the Declaration of War Clause must be construed to deprive the President of power to initiate hostilities absent congressional consent.
There have been only five congressionally declared wars in the history of the United States. Of those, only the first, the War of 1812, constituted an affirmative declaration of war. The remaining four, the Mexican-American War of 1846, the Spanish-American War of 1898, World War I, and World War II, merely declared the prior existence of a state of war. Notably, those declarations were accompanied by express authorizations of use of force, suggesting a distinction between declarations of war and authorizations of force.
Numerous other hostilities have been specifically authorized by Congress through instruments other than formal declarations. For example, offensive actions taken by the United States during its first real “war”—against Tripoli in 1802—were statutorily authorized but not accompanied by a formal declaration. Congress also expressly authorized the use of force in the Quasi War with France in 1798, against Iraq in 1991 and 2002, and against the perpetrators of the September 11, 2001, attacks, all without issuing a formal declaration of war.
Early in American history, in an era of limited peacetime budgets for military resources, Presidents tended to defer to Congress. In modern times, the debate over the allocation of war powers between Congress and the President is dramatically affected by the institution of a large United States peacetime military force following World War II. Starting with the Korean War, modern Presidents have been more aggressive in asserting unilateral authority to engage in war without declaration or other congressional authorization. In 1973, Congress attempted to affirm its control over war through passage, over President Richard M. Nixon’s veto, of the War Powers Resolution. Presidents have generally refused to recognize the constitutional operation of the War Powers Resolution, although Presidents have often taken actions “consistent” with the War Powers Resolution to avoid unnecessary conflict with Congress.
The Supreme Court has never intervened to stop a war that a President has started without congressional authorization. Some federal courts of appeals have held that at least some level of congressional authorization is constitutionally required before the President may conduct military hostilities. See, e.g., Orlando v. Laird (1971). Other courts have found the issue nonjusticiable. See, e.g., Mitchell v. Laird (1973).
Whatever the domestic constitutional implications for presidential power to initiate hostilities, the Declaration of War Clause gives to Congress certain powers under international and domestic statutory law. Nonetheless, with the growth of international law, the significance of formal declarations has declined. For example, the Geneva Conventions of 1949, which guarantee various enumerated rights to lawful combatants, prisoners of war, and civilians, explicitly apply to all armed conflicts between contracting nations and not just to declared wars. Congress’s power to declare war continues to have important statutory ramifications, nonetheless. A particularly dramatic example is the Alien Enemy Act (1 Stat. 577 (1798), codified in 50 U.S.C. § 21 (2003)), which authorizes the President to detain and deport citizens of enemy nations, but only following either a declaration of war or an attack upon the United States.
Rep. Cuellar Asks DHS Sec. Johnson About Immigration Enforcement
Wave of Cubans Make Their Way to the U.S. Border
Cuban Immigration Surges After Thaw in US-Cuba Relations
TRT World – World in Focus: Record numbers of Cuban refugees in the US
Published on Jan 19, 2016
‘We want to go to the US’
Eight-thousand Cuban refugees were stuck at Costa Rica’s border with Nicaragua when Managua closed its border to them in mid-November last year. They were on their way to the United States. And only a 180 of them have made it through.
‘Wet foot, dry foot’
US immigration policy grants Cubans automatic refugee status and permanent residency after they stay in the country for more than a year. That remains the case, even if they arrive there illegally. The policy was first drafted in 1966 and revised 40 years later – with a slight change. Now, to seek asylum, people must arrive in the US without being intercepted at sea. For that reason, it’s been dubbed the ‘wet foot, dry foot’ policy. The US gives only Cubans this right – and between October 2014 and September 2015, more than 43-thousand Cubans exercised it. The Pew Research Center says that’s a 78 percent increase from the year before. So WHY are they all heading to the US now? Many Cubans fear that the recent thawing of relations between Washington and Havana could bring an end to the policy. But many others in the US and Central America feel their countries can’t sustain the influx of asylum seekers.
Air bridge to the US
Last month, several Latin American countries agreed with the International Organization for Migration to implement a pilot programme to transfer refugees to the United States. The first group of asylum seekers each paid 555 dollars to join – and they’ve now arrived in the US – via Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico. But those four countries are still to decide whether the programme should become permanent. But countries working to solve the crisis say they’re still overwhelmed.
Can the US support its Cuban refugees?
A popular destination for Cuban refugees is Miami. But its mayor says the city doesn’t have the money to take care of the refugees who are likely to end up there… A Florida newspaper reported that in 1960, Cuban immigrants received around 1 million dollars worth of US federal funding. Now, they receive about 680 million a year in food stamps and other benefits. Republican presidential candidate and Cuban-American, Marco Rubio thinks the US policy is outdated ‘hard to justify’ – given that Cubans who now come to settle in the US end up travelling to and from Cuba. And he questioned whether they can be considered oppressed. But whatever their reason for coming to the US may be…it seems many Cubans will continue to make the most of the ‘wet foot, dry foot’ policy for sometime yet.
The Wet-Foot, Dry-Foot Policy
Cuban Revolution (Fidel Castro Raul Castro Che Guevara)
THE WATCHMEN: CIA Secrets – Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis Declassified 1 of 2
The Cuban Missile Crisis Declassified 2 of 2
Missile Crisis: The Man Who Saved the World
This PBS documentary explores the dramatic and little-known events that unfolded inside a nuclear-armed Russian submarine during the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. While both U.S. and Russian politicians sought a solution to the stand-off, Vasili Arkhipov, an officer aboard the submarine, refused to fire a nuclear torpedo, thus averting disaster. The program combines tense drama with eyewitness accounts and expert testimony about a critical event during the Cold War.
“THE MISSILES OF OCTOBER” (1974)
Peter Jennings – The Missiles of October: What the World Didn’t Know (1992)
Bay of Pigs Invasion: Lessons Learned
Bay Pigs Declassified
The Brilliant Disaster Part 1 – JFK,Castro, & America’s Doomed Invasion Of Cuba’s Bay Of Pigs
The Brilliant Disaster Part 2 – JFK, Castro, & America’s Doomed Invasion Of Cuba’s Bay Of Pigs
TUSSLING ON HUMAN RIGHTS, OBAMA, CASTRO VOW NEW PATH FORWARD
BY JOSH LEDERMAN
President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro tussled Monday over differences on human rights and democracy but pledged to keep working on a new path forward between their two countries in a stunning diplomatic display.
Obama, midway through his history-making trip to Cuba, succeeded in getting Cuba’s leader to submit to questioning by reporters, a routine occurrence for U.S. presidents but an anomaly in a communist country where the media are tightly controlled. Though Castro’s answers were far from forthcoming, the mere occurrence of the news conference was significant in that way.
Asked by an American television reporter about political prisoners in Cuba, Castro seemed oblivious, first saying he couldn’t hear the question, then asking whether it was directed to him or Obama. Eventually he pushed back, saying if the journalist could offer up names of anyone allegedly imprisoned, “they will be released before tonight ends.”
“What political prisoners? Give me a name or names,” Castro said defiantly as Cuban citizens watched on state television. He added later, “It’s not correct to ask me about political prisoners in general.”
After responding to a handful of questions, Castro ended the news conference abruptly, declaring, “I think this is enough.”
Cuba is criticized for briefly detaining demonstrators thousands of times a year but has drastically reduced its practice of handing down long prison sentences for crimes human rights groups consider to be political. Cuba released dozens of political prisoners as part of its deal to normalize relations with Cuba, and Amnesty International said in a recent report that it knew of no prisoners of conscience in Cuba.
It’s extremely rare for Raul Castro to preside over a formal news conference, although he has sometimes taken reporters’ questions when the mood strikes. The White House worked feverishly to get him to agree, with negotiations going right up until the moment the two walked out of their meeting and faced reporters.
Obama, speaking earlier alongside Castro at the Palace of the Revolution, declared “this is a new day” for the U.S. and Cuba, which were estranged for half a century until he and Castro pursued a diplomatic thaw 15 months ago. Still, Obama said he and Castro had spoken openly about U.S. concerns over Cuba’s human rights record, calling such delicate discussions a prerequisite to truly normalizing relations.
“This is something that we are going to stay on,” Obama said, adding that if the two countries could make progress on the issue, their relationship could blossom. “In the absence of that, I think it will continue to be a very powerful irritant.”
Castro, in a lengthy statement, worked to turn the tables on Obama by saying Cuba found it “inconceivable” for a government to fail to ensure health care, education, food and social security for its people – a clear reference to the U.S. Aiming to show the issue needn’t be one-sided, Obama said he was open to hearing Cuba’s concerns.
“I actually welcome President Castro commenting on some of the areas where he feels that we’re falling short,” Obama said. “Because I think we should not be immune or afraid of criticism or discussion as well.”
Story 1: Playing The Blame Game — Avoiding Responsibility and Accountability — Government Failure! — 9/11: Trump Blames Bush — Clinton Blames Republicans ! — Videos
Hillary Clinton and the “Dark Forces” in Benghazi
Kenneth Timmerman, author of Dark forces: The Truth About What Happened in Benghazi, looks at Hillary Clinton’s next scheduled appearance before the Benghazi special committee and the Iranian nuclear deal. He cites evidence that the Iranians were behind the attack in Benghazi that killed four Americans on September 11, 2012. In addition, Timmerman says Iran was involved in the September 11, 2001, attacks. Timmerman also discusses Russian backing for Iran and the Russian role in attacking the opponents of Assad in Syria. Timmerman also looks at: Will Russia attack the Kurds? And who are the Kurds? Is Obama a Muslim? Will Israel strike Iran?
Donald Trump blames George W. Bush for 9/11
Did Donald Trump blame Bush for 9/11?
Jake Tapper calls out Jeb Bush for saying his brother is blameless for 9/11
9-11 WTC Attacks Original Sound
Who Was Really Behind the 9/11 Attacks?
George Bush Takes Questions After Meeting With 9/11 Commission – 4/29/2004
Richard Clarke, Former Counterterrorism Chief, Apologizes for 9/11
Why Government Failure Occurs: Richard Clarke on National Security Disasters (2008)
Your Government Failed You: Richard Clarke at the September 11 Commission on Counterterrorism (2004)
Richard Alan Clarke (born October 27, 1950) is the former National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism for the United States.
Clarke worked for the State Department during the presidency of Ronald Reagan. In 1992, President George H.W. Bush appointed him to chair the Counter-terrorism Security Group and to a seat on the United States National Security Council. President Bill Clinton retained Clarke and in 1998 promoted him to be the National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism, the chief counter-terrorism adviser on the National Security Council. Under President George W. Bush, Clarke initially continued in the same position, but the position was no longer given cabinet-level access. He later became the Special Advisor to the President on cybersecurity. Clarke left the Bush administration in 2003.
Clarke came to widespread public attention for his role as counter-terrorism czar in the Clinton and Bush administrations in March 2004, when he appeared on the 60 Minutes television news magazine, released his memoir about his service in government, Against All Enemies, and testified before the 9/11 Commission. In all three instances, Clarke was sharply critical of the Bush administration’s attitude toward counter-terrorism before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and of the decision to go to war with Iraq.
On March 24, 2004, Clarke testified at the public 9/11 Commission hearings.[17] At the outset of his testimony Clarke offered an apology to the families of 9/11 victims and an acknowledgment that the government had failed: “I also welcome the hearings because it is finally a forum where I can apologize to the loved ones of the victims of 9/11…To the loved ones of the victims of 9/11, to them who are here in this room, to those who are watching on television, your government failed you. Those entrusted with protecting you failed you. And I failed you. We tried hard, but that doesn’t matter because we failed. And for that failure, I would ask, once all the facts are out, for your understanding and for your forgiveness.”[17]
Many of the events Clarke recounted during the hearings were also published in his memoir. Clarke charged that before and during the 9/11 crisis, many in the Administration were distracted from efforts against Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda organization by a pre-occupation with Iraq and Saddam Hussein. Clarke had written that on September 12, 2001, President Bush pulled him and a couple of aides aside and “testily” asked him to try to find evidence that Saddam was connected to the terrorist attacks. In response he wrote a report stating there was no evidence of Iraqi involvement and got it signed by all relevant agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the CIA. The paper was quickly returned by a deputy with a note saying “Please update and resubmit.”[18] After initially denying that such a meeting between the President and Clarke took place, the White House later reversed its denial when others present backed Clarke’s version of the events.
Clarke is currently Chairman of Good Harbor Consulting and Good Harbour International, two strategic planning and corporate risk management firms; an on-air consultant for ABC News, and a contributor to the Good Harbor Report, an online community discussing homeland security, defense, and politics. He is an adjunct lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School and a faculty affiliate of its Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.[35] He has also become an author of fiction, publishing his first novel, The Scorpion’s Gate, in 2005, and a second, Breakpoint, in 2007.
Clarke wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post on May 31, 2009 harshly critical of other Bush administration officials, entitled “The Trauma of 9/11 Is No Excuse”.[36] Clarke wrote that he had little sympathy for his fellow officials who seemed to want to use the excuse of being traumatized, and caught unaware by Al-Qaeda’s attacks on the USA, because their being caught unaware was due to their ignoring clear reports a major attack on U.S. soil was imminent. Clarke particularly singled out former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice.
911 Press for Truth
Intelligence Stove Piping Is System Failure
Fannie Mae, Jamie Gorelick and The 911 Commission
911 Commission Co-Chair Explains Need for New Investigation
Jamie Gorelick for FBI director? Are you kidding me?
Inside Libya’s Militias
Libya War: What They Don’t Want You to Know
How Will History Judge U.S., Coalition Intervention in Libya?
Libyan No Fly Zone Necessary But Intervention Has Imperialist Objectives
Debate The Libyan Intervention: Humanitarian or an Aggression?
Democracy and Hypocrisy in Libya
Backlash? Wave of terror feared in Europe over Libya intervention
Semantics – The Rise and Fall of Muammar al Gaddafi
Why Did America and the West Intervene in Libya?
Former State Department officer Ethan Chorin explains, the United States and the West provided Muammar Qaddafi and his forces with many of the weapons they used to fight the rebels during the 2011 Libyan revolution. Therefore, the U.S. and NATO had a moral responsibility to help the anti-Qaddafi forces
US special forces already on ground in Libya – FoxNews 110324
Obama authorized CIA covert operation in Libya – FoxNews 110331
The Truth About The War On Libya Government Lies Revealed A Goverment Conspiracy 2011
SYRIA Retired General Suspects A US Covert Operation For Running Libya Arms To Syria
LIBYA TIMELINE SHOWING LIE AFTER LIE BY OBAMA ADMINISTRATION – LYBYAGATE COVERUP
Murder Of Chris Stevens In Benghazi Attack Ordered By American Military Leadership, Possibly Obama
Know The TRUTH ~ Step By Step ~ Bret Baier’s ~ ‘Death and Deceit in Benghazi’
FLASHBACK] Hillary Clinton blames youtube video for Benghazi
Obama and Hillary Blame Youtube Video for Benghazi Terrorist Attack as Coffins Arrive
Rand Paul Destroys Hillary Clinton Over Benghazi-Gate During Capitol Hill Press Conference
Benghazi Attack Cover Up! Obama Armed Al Qaeda?
Former CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson: Emails Reveal White House Hid Truths About Benghazi Attack
Sharyl Attkisson: White House Hiding Photos of Obama on Night of Benghazi Attack
Benghazi Hearing Trey Gowdy — “I don’t give a damn whose careers are ruined
Hillary Ad Hammers Republicans On Bogus Benghazi Investigation
Why Is Hillary Clinton Blamed For The Benghazi Attack?
For The Record-Zero Footprint
Treason Exposed! Obama Used Benghazi Attack to Cover Up Arms Shipments to Muslim Brotherhood
Trump’s take on birthright citizenships
Mark Levin: No Birthright Citizenship – Hannity 8/19/2015
Mark Levin: The Citizenship Clause of 14th Amendment, birthright citizenship & illegal immigration
Donald Trump’s Tense Presser, Illegal Immigration, Birthright Citizenship Debate- Mark Levin Hannity
Jeb Bush dismisses Donald Trump’s immigration plans
Jamie Gorelick’s wall
By – The Washington Times – Thursday, April 15, 2004
The disclosure that Jamie Gorelick, a member of the September 11 commission, was personally responsible for instituting a key obstacle to cooperation between law enforcement and intelligence operations before the terrorist attacks raises disturbing questions about the integrity of the commission itself. Ms. Gorelick should not be cross-examining witnesses; instead, she should be required to testify about her own behavior under oath. Specifically, commission members need to ask her about a 1995 directive she wrote that made it more difficult for the FBI to locate two of the September 11 hijackers who had already entered the country by the summer of 2001.
On Tuesday, Attorney General John Ashcroft declassified a four-page directive sent by Ms. Gorelick (the No. 2 official in the Clinton Justice Department) on March 4, 1995, to FBI Director Louis Freeh and Mary Jo White, the New York-based U.S. attorney investigating the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. In the memo, Ms. Gorelick ordered Mr. Freeh and Ms. White to follow information-sharing procedures that “go beyond what is legally required,” in order to avoid “any risk of creating an unwarranted appearance” that the Justice Department was using Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants, instead of ordinary criminal investigative procedures, in an effort to undermine the civil liberties of terrorism suspects.
At issue was the oft-noted wall of separation that prevented counterterrorism agents and federal prosecutors from communicating with one another prior to September 11. Information collected under special FISA warrants, which do not require a probable cause, was generally not to be shared with personnel responsible for enforcing federal criminal laws — where probable cause must be demonstrated for a warrant to be issued. As lawyers David Rivkin and Lee Casey noted on our Op-Ed page yesterday, the practical effect of the wall was that counterintelligence information was generally kept away from law enforcement personnel who were investigating al Qaeda activities. But Ms. Gorelick’s memo clearly indicated that the Clinton administration had decided as a matter of policy to go even beyond the law’s already stringent requirements in order to further choke off information sharing.
As Mr. Ashcroft noted during his testimony before the September 11 commission, all of this had a devastating effect into the investigation of al Qaeda operations in this country in the summer of 2001. For example, in late August, when the CIA told the FBI that Khalid Almidhar and Nawaf Alhazmi had entered the country, FBI investigators refused to permit criminal investigators with considerable knowledge about the most recent al Qaeda attack to join the manhunt. Also, a criminal search warrant to examine the computer of Zacarias Moussaoui, whose interest in flying aircraft had attracted attention, was rejected because FBI officials were afraid of breaching the wall.
Ms. Gorelick has been among the most partisan and aggressive Democratic panel members in questioning the anti-terror efforts of the Bush administration. The nation deserves a full accounting from Ms. Gorelick of why the Clinton administration felt it necessary to go the extra mile in order to hamper the capability of law enforcement and intelligence agents to talk to one another. If Ms. Gorelick fails to provide this, her actions would bring into serious doubt the credibility of the commission.
Ken Lay and Jack Abramoff must be green with envy over the all the mischief that has been accomplished by Jamie Gorelick, with scarcely any demonization in the press.
Imagine playing a central role in the biggest national defense disaster in 50 years. Imagine playing a central role in one of the biggest economic disasters in your country’s history. Imagine doing both as an un-elected official. Imagine getting filthy rich in the process, and even being allowed to sit self-righteously on a commission appointed to get to the bottom of the first disaster, which of course did not get to the bottom of that disaster or anything else for that matter.
Imagine ending, ruining or at least causing signficant quality deterioration in the lives of millions of people, most of whom will never know your name. Imagine counting your millions of dollars while people who tried to stop you from causing all this mayhem were getting blamed for most of the ills you actually contributed to.
Well, as un-imagineable as this is, there is one American who doesn’t have to imagine it. One Jamie Gorelick is this American. And without pretending that she caused the loss of countless thousands of lives and countless billions of dollars of wealth by herself, she certainly did push some of the early domino’s in catastrophic chain events that are a major factors in life in America today.
This is not a bad millineums’s work, when you think about it. Gorelick, an appointee of Bill Clinton, is the one who constructed the wall of separation that kept the CIA and the FBI from comparing notes and therefore invading the privacy of nice young men like, say, Muhammed Atta and Zacarius Moussaoui. While countless problems were uncovered in our intelligence operations in the wake of 9-11, no single factor comes close to in importance to Jamie Gorelick’s wall.
In fact, it was Gorelick’s wall, perhaps more than any other single factor, that induces some people to blame Clinton himself for 9-11 since he appointed her and she acted consistent with his philosophy of “crime fighting.” She put the wall into place as Deputy Attorney General in 1995.
And for good measure, she was appointed by Tom Daschle to serve on the “non partisan” 9-11 Commission. And we thought the fox in the henhouse was simply a metaphor. Of course, in a splendid example of “reaching across the aisle,” feckless Republican Slade Gorton of Washington did all he could to exonerate Gorelick in the commission. Thanks, Slade. God forbid the nation actually knows the truth.
But for Ms. Gorelick, one earth shaking catastrophe is just not enough. You might think that she caused enough carnage to us infidels on 9-11 as to qualify her for the 72 virgins upon her death. (this would also keep her consistent with several of Clinton’s philosophies).
Alas, that’s only part of her resume. Her fingerprints are all over the Fannie Mae-Freddie Mac mess, which is to say the mess that is central in the entire mortgage-housing crisis. Without so much as one scintilla of real estate or finance experience, she was appointed as Vice Chairman of Fannie Mae in 1997 and served in that role through 2003, which is when most of the systemic cancers that came home to roost today happened. She was instrumental in covering up problems with Fannie Mae while employed there and took multiple millions in bonuses as she helped construct this house of cards.
From Wikipedia:
One example of falsified financial transactions that helped the company meet earnings targets for 1998, a “manipulation” that triggered multimillion-dollar bonuses for top executives. On March 25, 2002, Business Week Gorelick is quoted as saying, “We believe we are managed safely. Fannie Mae is among the handful of top-quality institutions.” One year later, Government Regulators “accused Fannie Mae of improper accounting to the tune of $9 billion in unrecorded losses”
As we know, the financial damage done by the housing related problems in this country are still incalculable. Ms. Gorelick’s evil tab is still growing.
But it doesn’t stop there. She managed to be on the wrong side of the Duke LaCrosse case, working for Duke University to protect that school from it’s damaging knee jerk reactions to the spectacularly unbelievable charges filed by a stripper. (excuse me, exotic dancer). So, even on a smaller scale, she continues to make money while working to ruin the lives of innocent Americans in defense of liberal dogma. At the Department of Defense, when she served as legal counsel there in 1993, she drafted the “Don’t ask /don’t tell” policy.
From what can be gleaned, it all comes from being well connected. She was educated (is that what they call it?) at Harvard undergrad and Harvard Law. From there, she kept getting appointed to positions above her experience level where she could flex her liberal muscles, add a resume item, and move upward. http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/09/mistress_of_disaster_jamie_gor.html#ixzz3p3M8KxQf
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Story 1: The Democratic Party War on The Central Intelligence Agency Will Lead To Blow-back and Payback When CIA Agents Reveal What They Were Really Doing in Benghazi — Shipping Arms To Syrian Rebels Including Al-Qaeda — Impeachable Offenses — The Genie Is Out of The Bottle and The CIA Knows Where The Bodies Are Buried — Do The Ends Ever Justify The Means? — Remembering September 11, 2001 and 2012 –Videos
Covert Action
“The term “covert action” means an activity or activities of the United States Government to influence political, economic, or military conditions abroad, where it is intended that the role of the United States Government will not be apparent or acknowledged publicly, but does not include . . . (2) traditional . . . military activities or routine support to such activities.“
People Falling from the World Trade Center
9/11 – The Falling Man
Breaking News December 2014 Dick Cheney CIA interrogation techniques I’d do it again in a minute
Cheney Accuses Chuck Todd of Taking a Cheap Shot
Dick Cheney Says CIA Torture Report ‘ FULL OF CRAP ‘ (Full VIDEO)
John Brennan CIA Director Responds To Torture Report in Press Conference ( FULL VIDEO)
Conversation: Putting the CIA Interrogation Report Into Context
Former CIA Officer Defends Torture Programme He Designed
Ex-CIA defends CIA torture (09Dec14)
CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia: Changes to Interrogation Policy for the United States (2009)
Paul on Benghazi: Hillary Was ‘Most Eager’ to Get Arms From Libya to Syria
CNN CIA Pressuring Agents With Knowledge Of Benghazi To Keep Silent ‘You Jeopardize Your Family’
Obama Approves CIA Covert Actions In Libya 3/30/11 – CNN
Treason Exposed! Obama Used Benghazi Attack to Cover Up Arms Shipments to Muslim Brotherhood
What roles Turkey play in Syria’s insurgency?
NY Times says CIA supplying arms to Syria insurgents
WW3 in ACTION: US LAUNCH covert OPERATION to ARM militants in Syria with HEAVY WEAPONS!
Retired Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin suspects US Was Running Guns To Syrian Rebels Via Benghazi
Retired Army Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin—who is the former commander of the U.S. Special Forces Command, the former deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence and who, in the 1990s, worked with the CIA—told CNSNews.com in a video interview last week that he believes it is a reasonable supposition that the U.S. was supporting or planning to support the Syrian rebels via Benghazi, Libya.
Robert David Steele: Former CIA Spy Benghazi Was CIA Operation
The Benghazi Select Committee: Many Questions Remain Unanswered
G. Edward Griffin – The Collectivist Conspiracy
G. Edward Griffin- On Individualism v Collectivism #1
G. Edward Griffin- On Individualism v Collectivism #2
CNBC: BENGAHZI IS NOT ABOUT LIBYA! “It’s An NSC Operation Moving Arms & Fighters Into Syria”
Ron Paul on Covert U.S. Support of Terrorist Insurrection in Syria
June 27, 2012 – Ron Paul warns of the ongoing U.S. government’s covert support of the terrorist insurrection against the Syrian government and offers a short history of the quagmires and blowback that U.S. interventions abroad have brought about.
Glenn Beck – Benghazi: Truth coming out
Soros, Obama & ‘Responsibility to Protect’
END WAR: Scheuer On CIA In Libya To Arm Islamist And May Be US Ground Invasion In Another Arab State
The truth about SYRIA by Westerns
Syrian Rebels Capture City Near Jordanian Border – Libya Vs Syria Where’s The Obama Admin?
Gaffney on Benghazi » Not Just About Cover Up « About Administration Embracing Muslim Brotherhood
ADM Lyons, “Muslim Brotherhood has penetrated every government agency”
ADM “Ace” Lyons, Former Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, the largest single military command in the world, states, “The Muslim Brotherhood has penetrated every level of the US government.”
End the Coverup: Rep. Frank Wolf Urges New Benghazi Investigation
Rep. Frank Wolf called a press conference outside the capitol to discuss his sponsorship of H. Res. 36, which would create a special congressional committee to investigate the failures that contributed to the deadly jihadist attack in Benghazi, Libya last year. He was joined by Family Research Council’s Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin, former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and former member of Delta Force. Boykin represented Special Operations Speaks, a group of ex-special forces operators who came together to write a letter to Members of Congress, urging them to commit to getting to the bottom of what happened in Benghazi, and to end the administration’s cover-up. Finally, the Center for Security Policy’s Frank Gaffney spoke about the implications of the attack in Libya on America’s national security and foreign policy in the Middle East/North Africa region.
Gen. Jerry Boykin: “Get accountability and get the truth out” on Benghazi
Rand Paul: I Believe Part of Cause for Benghazi Attack Was Gun-Running Operation Going
Syrian rebel group Al-Nusra allies itself to al-Qaeda
Nusra Front and al-Qaeda in Iraq are joining forces to bring back the Caliphate.
A Caliphate Is Coming – GBTV
Obama Hiding Arms Shipments To Syrian Jihadists
Lebanon seizes 150 tons of Libyan arms en route to Syrian rebels
Treason: Benghazi Revelations Could Sink Obama
Benghazi-Gate: Connection between CIA and al-Qaeda in Libya and Syria, with Turkey’s Help
Benghazi-Gate: Connection between CIA and al-Qaeda in Libya and Syria, with Turkey’s Help
Syrian Rebel Group Joins Branch Of Al Qaeda
West Intervenes to Stop Islamist Rebels in Mali but Supports Them to Destroy Syria
Presidential Finding
A presidential finding is an executive directive issued by the head of the executive branch of a government, similar to the more well-known executive order. The term is mostly used by the United States Government, and in other countries may be identified by different terms. Such findings and other executive decrees are usually protocols which have evolved through the course of government and not typically established by law.
Use and history in the United States
“US President Barack Obama has signed a secret order allowing the CIA and other American agencies to support rebels seeking to overthrow the Assad regime, a US government source told Reuters. Obama reportedly gave the order, known as an intelligence “finding”, earlier this year. The presidential finding also provides for US collaboration with a secret command center operated by Turkey and its allies. The full extent of the assistance the “finding” allows the CIA to give the Syrian rebels is unclear. It is also unknown precisely when Obama signed the order.” The report of Obama’s authorization for covert rebel support comes amidst continued fighting between Syrian government troops and rebels over control of Aleppo, the country’s economic capital. Thousands of people have fled the city, while the government and rebels continue to release conflicting reports on the extent of their control over the city. Asia Times Online correspondent Pepe Escobar told RT that the leak’s timing was intended to distort the true nature of Washington’s covert operations on the ground in Syria.
“This intelligence finding signed by Obama – that’s the code for a secret order – this was signed six months ago. So the fact that Reuters has only been allowed now to report about it proves that there have been high deliberations in Washington: ‘should we let people know about what they already know?’”
“In fact, the Washington Post two weeks ago had already reported about it, and when the CIA wants to leak something in the US, they usually go to the Washington Post. The CIA and Mossad, on the ground [in Syria], side by side working with the Qataris, the Turks, the Saudis and a swarm of jihadis coming from everywhere, but especially from across the border in Iraq,” he argues.
Escobar says the leak was intended to make it look as though Washington was leading the Syrian campaign from behind the scenes, when in fact the US is “leading from the front lines alongside al-Qaeda-style Jihadists, Qatari intelligence, and Turkish logistics.” [1]
The first specific use of presidential findings was precipitated by the Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act of 1954, in which the findings indicated that certain conditions of that act had be satisfied and, therefore, sales of agricultural commodities could proceed. In their use under this act, such findings were published in the Federal Register and the CFR Title 3 compilations. In contrast, presidential findings in their modern use are not published in these or other governmental publications.
Current use of the presidential finding stems from the so-called Hughes-Ryan amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act of 1974, which prohibited the expenditure of appropriated funds by or on behalf of the Central Intelligence Agency for intelligence activities “unless and until the President finds that each such operation is important to the national security of the United States and reports, in a timely fashion, a description and scope of such operation to the appropriate committees of Congress” (section 662). This was intended to ensure that clear responsibility for such action was attributable to the President and that Congress was always made aware of such activities. Due to the sensitivity of their content, presidential findings are almost always classified.
The most recent change to exercise of findings occurred in the Intelligence Authorization Act of 1991, which introduced increased flexibility in the reporting requirement: findings are to be “reported to the intelligence committees as soon as possible” after being approved “and before the initiation of the covert action authorized by the finding.” As such, presidential findings are one of the primary means through which the intelligence committees exercise their oversight of the government’s intelligence operations.
Covert Action: Title 10, Title 50, and the Chain of Command
By Joseph B. Berger III
Abstract
America champions the rule of law and must maintain that moral stance in its international dealings and retain the clarity of an unambiguous chain of command. The Abbottabad raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound highlighted the dangers and vagaries of departing from the traditional military chain of command. The Secretary of Defense was taken out of the chain and the CID Director was inserted. In contrast, the rescue of a U.S. citizen in Somalia was carried out secretively but not covertly by joint forces under military command, maintaining individual Servicemember protections that may be forfeit in the gray zone of questionable legality. National authorities should reconsider the rejection of the 9/11 Commission’s recommendation that DOD be responsible for paramilitary covert actions, and when DOD acts in that capacity, the operation should be carried out as a traditional military operation with a military chain of command.
Recent media reports have Pentagon officials considering “putting elite special operations troops under CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] control in Afghanistan after 2014, just as they were during last year’s raid on [Osama bin Laden’s] compound.”1 This shell game would allow Afghan and U.S. officials to deny the presence of American troops in Afghanistan because once “assigned to CIA control, even temporarily, they become spies.”2 Nearly simultaneously, Department of Defense (DOD) leaders were warned to “be vigilant in ensuring military personnel are not inappropriately utilized” in performing “new, expanding, or existing missions,” ensuring the force is aligned against strategic choices “supported by rigorous analysis.”3 Placing Servicemembers—uniformed members of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force—under CIA control demands such rigorous analysis. The raid on bin Laden’s compound provides a framework.
n his May 1, 2011, televised address, President Barack Obama reported “to the American people and to the world that the United States ha[d] conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden.”4 President Obama initially detailed little beyond noting that he had directed “the[n] Director of the CIA [Leon Panetta], to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority of our war against al Qaeda” and that the operation, carried out by a “small team of Americans” was done “at [his] direction [as President].” In the following days, senior executive branch officials garrulously provided explicit details, from the now-iconic White House Situation Room photograph to intricate diagrams of the Abbottabad compound and the assault force’s composition. Most noteworthy was Panetta’s unequivocal assertion the raid was a covert action:
Since this was what’s called a “Title 50” operation, which is a covert operation, and it comes directly from the president of the United States who made the decision to conduct this operation in a covert way, that direction goes to me. And then, I am, you know, the person who then commands the mission. But having said that, I have to tell you that the real commander was Admiral [William] McRaven because he was on site, and he was actually in charge of the military operation that went in and got bin Laden.5
Despite his self-effacing trumpeting of Vice Admiral McRaven’s role, Panetta’s comment highlights that critical confusion exists among even the most senior U.S. leaders about the chain of command and the appropriate classification of such operations.
Openly describing the raid as both a “covert operation” and “military operation,” Panetta asserted he was the “commander,” describing a chain of “command” that went from the President to Panetta to McRaven. Panetta’s public comments are problematic, as is describing a chain of command that excludes the Secretary of Defense and purports to route command authority through the CIA director. Title 50 is clear:
The term “covert action” means an activity or activities of the United States Government to influence political, economic, or military conditions abroad, where it is intended that the role of the United States Government will not be apparent or acknowledged publicly, but does not include . . . (2) traditional . . . military activities or routine support to such activities.6
The administration did the opposite, making patently clear the raid’s nature and, in exhaustive detail, the precise role of the United States. Instead of categorizing it as a covert action under the director’s “command,” the President could have conducted the raid as a covert action under the Secretary of Defense instead of the CIA director, or under his own constitutional authority as Commander in Chief and the Secretary’s statutory authorities, classifying it as a traditional military activity and excepting it from the statute’s coverage. As a traditional military activity, there would have been no legal limits on subsequent public discussion. Alternatively, conducting the raid as a covert action within a military chain of command removes the issues the director raised in asserting command authority over Servicemembers. The decisionmaking process remains shrouded, but conducting a raid into a sovereign country targeting a nonstate actor using military personnel and equipment under the “command” of the CIA director and classifying it as a covert action raises significant legal and policy questions. Such decisions threaten the legitimacy and moral authority of future U.S. actions and demand a rigorous examination of those associated risks.
The Abbottabad raid illustrates the post-9/11 security environment convergence of DOD military and CIA intelligence operations.7 While dead terrorists attest to this arrangement’s efficacy, many directly challenge the legal and policy framework behind current DOD-CIA cooperation. The discourse focuses largely on distinctions between Title 10 and Title 50 and the legal basis for conducting apparently overlapping military and intelligence operations beyond the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. Notwithstanding the potentially misleadingly simple labels of Title 10 and Title 50, these complex issues lack clear answers. Many argue the legacy structure ill equips the President to effectively combat the threat. But tweaking that structure carries risk. Thus, correctly classifying and structuring our actions within that framework are critical. The law of war is designed to protect our nation’s military forces when they are engaged in traditional military activities under a military chain of command; spies conducting intelligence activities under executive authority have no such protections. This distinction rests on a constitutional, statutory, treaty, and doctrinal framework underpinning the military concept of command authority.
U.S. power relies on moral and legal legitimacy. Exclusive state control over the legitimate use of armed force remains viable domestically and internationally only where exercised within an accepted framework. Thus, employing DOD forces in a nontraditional manner entails significant risk. The policy implications of classification and structure are neither semantic nor inconsequential, and must be understood by senior decisionmakers; likewise, individual Servicemembers must understand the practical effects. A rigorous risk analysis should therefore inform any deviation, however permissible under domestic law.
This article focuses on the risks associated with both using military personnel to conduct kinetic covert action and using them without a military chain of command. Those risks inform the recommendation to change practice, but not the law. Specifically, the author rejects melding distinct operational military (Title 10) and intelligence (Title 50) authorities into the often mentioned Title 60. Properly classifying actions—either under the statute as a covert action or exempted from the statute as a traditional military activity—ensures the correct command structure is in place.8 Ultimately, the analysis argues for revisiting the previously rejected 9/11 Commission recommendation to place paramilitary covert action under DOD control.9
This article first outlines current and likely future threats and then explains the critical terms of art related to covert action and, against that lingua franca, examines why kinetic military operations should be either classified as traditional military activities or kept under a military chain of command. Analyzing the relevant constitutional, statutory, treaty, and doctrinal elements of command, this article illustrates that a raid conducted like the Abbottabad raid, while legally permissible, is best conducted as a traditional military activity.
Changed Character of the Battlefield and Enemy
In the decade since 9/11, DOD and CIA elements have become “operationally synthesi[zed].”10 A senior intelligence official recently noted that “the two proud groups of American secret warriors had been ‘deconflicted and basically integrated’—finally—10 years after 9/11.”11 The direct outgrowth is the increased reliance on special operations forces (SOF) to achieve national objectives against a “nimble and determined” enemy who “cannot be underestimated.”12 While the United States fought wars on geographically defined battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan and beyond, the underlying legal structure remained constant. In the wars’ background, leaders, advisors, academics, and others argued about the structure of the appropriate legal and policy framework. Post-Iraq and post-Afghanistan, the United States must still address other threats, including those that al Qaeda and their associated forces present.
The threats have migrated beyond a battlefield defined by sovereign nations’ borders. When asked recently in “how many countries we are currently engaged in a shooting war,” Secretary of Defense Panetta laughed, responding, “That’s a good question. I have to stop and think about that . . . we’re going after al Qaeda wherever they’re at. . . clearly, we’re confronting al Qaeda in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, [and] North Africa.”13 The unresolved legal and policy challenges will likely increase in complexity on this geographically unconstrained battlefield. Remaining rooted in enduring principles is critical. DOD conduct of kinetic operations beyond traditionally recognized battlefields raises significant legal and policy concerns, especially where the U.S. Government conducts them without knowledge or consent of the host nation, as apparently happened with the Abbottabad operation.14 Properly categorizing and structuring these operations, while vexing for policymakers and their lawyers, carries much greater stakes for the Servicemembers executing them.
The Need for a Lingua Franca
Colloquial usage refers to DOD authorities as Title 10, and the CIA’s as Title 50. That is technically inaccurate and misleading since DOD routinely operates under both Titles 10 and 50.15 Instead of Title 10, this article uses the term military operations; instead of Title 50, it uses CIA operations or the more specific covert action. All three terms require clarification.
CIA operations are all CIA activities except covert action. Covert action is the narrow, statutory subset of Presidentially approved, CIA-led activities.16 Unfortunately, colloquially, covert action “is frequently used to describe any activity the government wants concealed from the public.”17 That common usage ignores the fact that a traditional military activity, notwithstanding how “secretly” it is executed, is by statute not a covert action. DOD defines a covert operation as one “planned and executed as to conceal the identity of or permit plausible denial by the sponsor,” where “emphasis is placed on concealment of the identity of the sponsor rather than on concealment of the operation.”18 While not in conflict with the statutory definition, the DOD definition is incomplete; it fails to recognize the President’s role and ignores the exception of traditional military activities.19 Practitioners should use the statutory definition.
The concept of clandestine operations further blurs colloquial and doctrinal imprecision.20 DOD activities “may be both covert and clandestine . . . focus[ing] equally on operational considerations and intelligencerelated activities.”21 Appropriately, DOD officials assert that, absent a Presidential covert action finding, they “conduct only ‘clandestine activities.’” 22 They characterize clandestine activities as those “conducted in secret but which constitute ‘passive’ intelligence information gathering.”23 Interchanging the terms and mixing them with intelligence functions is inaccurate and dangerous; practitioners must draw clear distinctions. The sponsorship of a covert action is hidden, not the act itself. The specific acts of the U.S. Government in influencing a foreign election (for example, posters, marches, election results, and so forth) would be visible, but not the covert sponsorship of those acts. For clandestine acts, the act itself (for example, intercepting a phone call) must remain hidden. The CIA and DOD can conduct clandestine operations without Presidential approval, whereas covert action triggers statutory requirements for a Presidential finding and congressional notification. Some have argued DOD’s “activities should be limited to clandestine” activities, as this would ensure military personnel are protected by the law of war,24 a critical point examined in detail later.
Military operations are DOD activities conducted under Title 10, including activities intended or likely to involve kinetic action. Pursuant to an order issued by the Secretary of Defense, they are conducted by military personnel under DOD command and in accordance with the law of war. They specifically exclude DOD’s intelligence activities (for example, the Joint Military Intelligence Program); like the CIA’s, those intelligence activities are conducted pursuant to Title 50.
Statutorily assigned responsibility helps distinguish between CIA operations and military operations. Although the President can designate which department, agency, or entity of the U.S. Government will participate in the covert action, the statute implicitly tasks the CIA as the default lead agency: “Any employee . . . of the [U.S.] Government other than the [CIA] directed to participate in any way in a covert action shall be subject either to the policies and regulations of the [CIA], or to written policies or regulations adopted . . . to govern such participation.25
Executive order 12333 (EO 12333) makes that default tasking explicit:
The Director of the [CIA] shall . . . conduct covert action activities approved by the President. No agency except the [CIA] (or the Armed Forces of the United States in time of war declared by the Congress or during any period covered by a report from the President to the Congress consistent with the War Powers Resolution. . . .) may conduct any covert action activity unless the President determines that another agency is more likely to achieve a particular objective.26
The statute, coupled with EO 12333, unequivocally places all covert action squarely under the CIA’s control; the narrow exception for DOD is currently inapplicable. While the Executive order expressly tasks
the director with conducting covert action, it does not task the Secretary of Defense.27
Default CIA primacy and the absence of statutory specificity in defining traditional military activities create risk when DOD conducts kinetic covert action.
The Unique Nature of Traditional Military Activities
One practitioner described traditional military activities’ exclusion from covert action’s definition as “the exception that swallows the rule.”28 But while DOD-CIA operational convergence blurs the issue, the exception need not swallow the rule. Functionally, anything done by a uniformed member of a nation’s armed forces is a “military” activity; the nuanced requirement is to understand which are traditional military activities. That definition can be consequential, functional, or historical—or a combination of some or all three approaches. The statute’s legislative history provides the best clarification, noting the conferees intended that:
“Traditional military activities” include activities by military personnel under the direction and control of a United States military commander (whether or not the U.S. sponsorship of such activities is apparent or later to be acknowledged) . . . where the fact of the U.S. role in the overall operation is apparent or to be acknowledged publicly.
In this regard, the conferees intend to draw a line between activities that are and are not under the direction and control of the military commander. Activities that are not under the direction and control of a military commander should not be considered as “traditional military activities.”29
That nonstatutory definition frames the follow-on analysis. That functional and historical definition turns on who is in charge.
Activities under the “direction and control of a military commander” meet the requirement to be excepted from the statute; those with a different command and control arrangement are not traditional military activities. “Command” is unique to the military and the definition appears to draw a bright line rule; but the CIA director blurred the line by asserting “command” over a DOD element.30 The confusion questions the necessary nature and scope of leadership by a “military commander.” What level or rank of command is required? Must the chain of command from that military commander run directly back to the Commander in Chief solely through military channels? Must it run through the Secretary of Defense? Can it run through the director if there is a military commander below him? Given Goldwater-Nichols,31 what about the geographic combatant commander? In short, what does the wiring diagram look like? These questions highlight three baseline possibilities as depicted in the figure below.
Chain of Command Possibilities
Part 1A of the figure reflects DOD’s Title 10 chain of command, illustrating the broadest historical, functional, and consequential definition of traditional military activity. The clear chain is rooted in the uniquely military concept of command and the President’s constitutionally defined role as Commander in Chief. It clarifies congressional oversight responsibility, results in unquestioned jurisdiction, and forms the basis of the strongest legal argument for combatant immunity. Part 1B represents the President as chief executive, exercising oversight and control of the CIA under Title 50. This hierarchy lacks the legal command authority exercised over military personnel in 1A. Finally, part 1C represents the paradox created by the covert action statute’s attempts to overlap the parallel structures of 1A and 1B; it is often described as Title 60.
The current Congressional Authorization for the Use of Military Force allows the President to “use all necessary and appropriate force” to prevent “future acts of international terrorism against the United States.”32 This statutory grant of power creates the paradox: here, where the Senate vote was 98 to 0 and the House vote was 420 to 1, the President’s executive authority (as Commander in Chief and chief executive) is greatest,33 the exercise of those powers blurs the clear lines of parts 1A and 1B of the illustration. Merging the two, although permissible under the covert action statute, creates risk.
Consequently, questions about the nature and structure of the chain of command demand rigorous scrutiny and cannot be left to ad hoc arrangements. Defining military command determines whether or not the activity is a traditional military activity and therefore not under the ambit of the statute. The criticality of this categorization is twofold: it is the core of the state’s monopoly on the legitimate use of force and cloaks Servicemembers in the legal armor of combatant immunity.
Chain of Command, or Control?
Since George Washington’s Presidency, the Secretary of War (later Defense) has served without interruption as a Cabinet member. The President’s role, enshrined in the Constitution, is clear: “The President shall be Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States.”34 With the Secretary of Defense, this embodies the Founders’ vision of civilian control of the military. The Secretary of Defense’s appointment requires the “Advice and Consent of the Senate.”35 While the President can relieve him and replace him with an inferior officer (that is, the Deputy Secretary of Defense), Senateconfirmed executive branch officials are not fungible. He cannot interchange officials individually confirmed to fulfill separate and unique duties—something James Madison warned about in Federalist 51.36
Longstanding U.S. practice is an unbroken chain of command from the President, through his Secretary of Defense, to a subordinate uniformed commander. Even GoldwaterNichols’s37 streamlining the military warfighting chain of command to run from the President through the Secretary and directly to the unified combatant commanders did not alter that fundamental practice.38 Combatant commanders simply replace Service chiefs. The civilian leader between the Commander in Chief and his senior uniformed commander remains unchanged—a specific individual confirmed by the Senate to execute statutory duties. The inviolate concept of civilian control of the military and the Senate’s Advice and Consent requirement make assertion of any executive authority to “trade out” duties between Cabinet officials implausible. The President can place military personnel under CIA control, but control is not command.
Command is the inherently military “privilege” that is “exercised by virtue of office and the special assignment of members of the US Armed Forces holding military grade.”39 In fact, under the Army regulation, “A civilian, other than the President as Commander-in-Chief . . . may not exercise command.”40 Goldwater-Nichols allows the President to exercise command through his Secretary of Defense. Command rests on constitutional and statutory authority (including the Uniform Code of Military Justice) and the customs and practices of the Service. Removing military personnel from that hierarchy— illustrated in part 1C of the figure—changes their fundamental nature. This is Panetta’s assertion: he was in “command” 41 of the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound.
itles 10 and 50 define the specific duties of the Secretary of Defense42 and Title 50 the CIA director’s.43 The duties are neither identical nor interchangeable. In Title 50, Congress explicitly states that DOD shall function “under the direction, authority, and control of the Secretary of Defense” in order to “provide for their unified direction under civilian control.”44 Placing the Services under the Secretary of Defense is necessary to “provide for the establishment of [a] clear and direct line of command.”45 Congress is equally clear in Title 10, granting the Secretary complete authority over DOD: “there shall be a Secretary of Defense, who is the head of the [Department], appointed . . . by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate.”46 The statute allows the Secretary to “perform any of his functions or duties, or [to] exercise any of his powers through” other persons, but only persons from within DOD.47
Two caveats exist to the Secretary of Defense’s “authority, direction, and control”: the Secretary’s authority is “subject to the direction of the President” and the 1947 National Security Act.48 The latter covers DOD personnel within the National Foreign Intelligence Program (NFIP). The former appears to be an exception that swallows the rule. But even in empowering the President to limit his Secretary’s authority, Congress did not specifically authorize any change to the fundamental command of military forces. Likewise, in defining the director’s limited authorities over military personnel, Congress maintained the military command structure over military operations.
Congress neither allows the director command nor control of DOD operational assets, nor did it grant the President a caveat like that with the Secretary of Defense’s authority.49 Although the director’s duties include the transfer of “personnel within the NFIP,” which includes DOD personnel, such transfers are limited to personnel within DOD’s Joint Military Intelligence Program (JMIP).50 SOF are not part of the JMIP. When DOD does transfer any JMIP personnel to the CIA, the director must “promptly” report that transfer to both the intelligence oversight and Armed Services Committees of both houses.51 Transfers between other executive branch elements trigger no such requirements. Congress only intended CIA control over DOD intelligence assets and was clearly concerned about even that. Goldwater-Nichols reinforces this analysis.
Goldwater-Nichols codifies geographic combatant commanders’ nearly inviolable command authority: “all forces operating within the geographic area assigned to a unified combatant command shall be assigned to, and under” his command.52 Two exceptions supplant that authority. Servicemembers assigned to U.S. Embassies (for example, the Defense Attaché) are under the Ambassador’s control and the Defense Intelligence Agency’s command. For those Servicemembers, diplomatic protections have replaced law of war protections, but the Secretary of Defense remains in the chain of command. The second exception, carved from GoldwaterNichols’s “unless otherwise directed by the President” language, covers DOD participation in covert action.53 Goldwater-Nichols’s silence on the Secretary of Defense remaining in the chain of command indicates Congress did not intend to change the default hierarchy. DOD recognized that point by defining combatant command as being “under a single commander” and running “through the Secretary of Defense.”54 All these say nothing about covert action.
The statute and EO 12333 put the director “in charge” of the conduct of covert actions.55 CIA “ownership” means any non-CIA employee supporting a covert action “belongs” to the CIA. However, the CIA lacks DOD’s legal command structure and no CIA official possesses the command authority inherent in an officer’s commission.56 The CIA can only be in charge, not in command. The director cannot give a lawful order that would be legally binding on Servicemembers. The Constitution unequivocally grants Congress the authority to “make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces.”57 Those rules, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, never contemplated CIA personnel exercising command authority over Servicemembers. The CIA’s ownership of covert action is limited. Exclusive CIA control fails elsewhere; the statute authorizes the President to task “departments, agencies, or entities”58 to conduct covert action. The implication is that DOD can conduct a covert action exclusively. EO 12333 specifically envisions that.59 Placing DOD elements under CIA control to conduct a kinetic operation is arguably unnecessary.
This chain of command is constitutionally enshrined, codified, and ratified through longstanding practice; even if Congress had explicitly authorized the President to reroute it, doing so creates risk. First, it removes the law of war’s protections upon which Servicemembers conducting kinetic operations rely. In such an event, Servicemembers must be made aware they are no longer protected. Second, as a state practice, realigning military personnel under a nonmilitary framework to conduct kinetic activities creates precedential risk for U.S. allies. Such a decision must be fully informed at all levels.
Chain of Command: International Law Context
National armies engaged against each other have, throughout modern history, been cloaked in the law of war’s combatant
immunity. Absent that immunity, a captured individual is subject to criminal prosecution for his wartime conduct. His deliberately targeting and killing others become nonmilitary and therefore criminal. In World War II’s aftermath, widespread acceptance of what constituted an “army” rendered a definition unnecessary: “Individuals composing the national forces” automatically enjoyed combatant immunity.60 However, for those outside their nation’s military hierarchy, specificity was necessary. The Third Geneva Convention grants prisoner of war status—which confers combatant immunity—to those who are subordinate to a responsible commander, wear a fixed, distinctive insignia recognizable at a distance, carry their arms openly, and conduct their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.61
The command requirement stems from the “dual principle of responsible command and its corollary command responsibility.”62 The Hague Convention required that a commander be “responsible for his subordinates.”63 The Geneva Convention recognized “no part of [an] army . . . is not subordinated to a military commander,” applying this “from the Commander-in-Chief down to the common soldier.”64 The later protocols “could not conceive” of a hierarchy “without the persons who make up the command structure being familiar with the law applicable in armed conflict.”65 This is DOD’s unchallenged area of expertise.66 Like Congress’s definition of traditional military activity,67 the commentary’s definition, when coupled with the requirements for those not considered part of the Nation’s army, is the parallel to Servicemembers conducting kinetic covert action under CIA control. Combatant immunity necessitates prisoner of war status; for those not acting as part of the army, that status requires a military chain of command. Replacing the Secretary of Defense with the CIA director eviscerates this.
U.S. history records a fundamental belief in the rules for combatant immunity.68 First, to codify these requirements, the 1863 Lieber Code defined prisoner of war as including “all soldiers.”69 The code noted noncompliance with the rules meant no combatant immunity: spies were “punishable with death by hanging by the neck.”70 “Armed prowlers . . . who steal within the lines of the hostile army for the purpose of . . . killing . . . are not entitled to the privileges of the prisoner of war.”71 The code’s noteworthy purpose was not to regulate conduct between nations, but for application in a non-international armed conflict and maintaining the moral high ground necessary to facilitate reconciliation with and reintegration of the confederate states.
The law of war’s efficacy rests on the principle of reciprocity. One party provides the protections to its prisoners believing and hoping its enemies will respond in kind. Commendable German and U.S. treatment of each other’s prisoners during World War II exemplifies this principle; Japanese treatment of U.S prisoners at Bataan proves its imperfections. Regardless, maintaining the moral high ground is critical. Had Abbottabad gone poorly, the United States would have asserted that U.S. personnel in Pakistani custody were entitled to the high standards of prisoner of war treatment. That would have required those Soldiers and Sailors to be in compliance with the law of war. The nonmilitary chain of command may have been problematic in making that assertion.
Conclusion
“From its inception . . . America has venerated the rule of law.”72 Traditional military activities occur against a rich fabric of domestic and international law. Covert action, while uniquely codified, presents multiple dilemmas. Although permissible under U.S. domestic law, covert action is generally illegal in the target country.73 Again, maintaining the moral high ground is critical.
Although inimical to covert action’s fundamental premise, overt executive branch commentary following the Abbottabad raid highlighted the legal risk associated with policy decisions. Placing Servicemembers under CIA command threatens to undermine the protections they rely on when conducting kinetic military operations, especially where the activity is more accurately classified as a traditional military activity.
The risk can—and should—be mitigated by first properly classifying the activity. Classifying a traditional military activity as anything else undermines the very categorization and its inherent law of war protections. DOD can undoubtedly conduct secretive (that is, clandestine and/or unacknowledged) actions as traditional military activities and enjoy the full body of the law of war’s protections. The current framework neither envisions nor facilitates placing Servicemembers under CIA control and preserving the command relationships necessary to cloak them in combatant immunity. The Abbottabad raid utilized this risk-laden approach.
This is not to assert that conducting the raid as a covert action was illegal. There were three likely outcomes: success, failure,
or something in between (that is, aborting the mission). Neither success nor failure required covert action’s plausible deniability. The United States immediately publicly acknowledged killing of “public enemy number one”; regardless, the crashed helicopter disclosed the U.S. role. A noncatastrophic driven decision to abort (for example, Pakistani detection of violation of their sovereign airspace) provides the sole outcome where the United States would likely have hidden behind the statute’s shield, disavowing all. The covert action classification provided an insurance policy, yet the cost of allowing that policy to “lapse” through post-success disclosures undermines the plausibility of such “insurance” in the future.
Compare the Abbottabad covert action with the recent rescue of a U.S. citizen in Somalia, conducted secretively, but not covertly, by “a small number of joint combatequipped U.S. forces.”74 This comparison illustrates that such activities can be conducted as traditional military activities, maintaining secrecy and preserving individual Servicemember protections. The need for continued distinction between covert action and traditional military activities and, where covert, the need for DOD-conducted operations to maintain a military chain of command, drive these recommendations. The United States should revisit the rejection of the 9/11 Commission’s recommendation that DOD assume responsibility for paramilitary covert operations.75
Where DOD participation is necessary and primary, the operation should be conducted as an unacknowledged traditional military activity. If the risk analysis drives a decision to conduct the operation as a covert action, the President should maintain the military chain of command. This ensures Servicemembers going in harm’s way have every protection the Nation they serve can provide them—or a clearer understanding of the additional risks they are assuming on behalf
of their Nation. JFQ
The Largest Covert Operation in CIA History
By Chalmers Johnson
The History News Network
Monday 09 June 2003
The Central Intelligence Agency has an almost unblemished record of screwing up every “secret” armed intervention it ever undertook. From the overthrow of the Iranian government in 1953 through the Bay of Pigs, the failed attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro of Cuba and Patrice Lumumba of the Republic of Congo, the Phoenix Program in Vietnam, the “secret war” in Laos, aid to the Greek colonels who seized power in 1967, the 1973 killing of Salvador Allende in Chile and Ronald Reagan’s Iran-contra war against Nicaragua, there is not a single instance in which the agency’s activities did not prove acutely embarrassing to the United States. The CIA continues to get away with this primarily because its budget and operations have always been secret and Congress is normally too indifferent to its constitutional functions to rein in a rogue bureaucracy. Therefore the tale of a purported CIA success story should be of some interest.
According to the author of the newly released Charlie Wilson’s War, the exception to CIA incompetence was the arming between 1979 and 1988 of thousands of Afghan moujahedeen (“freedom fighters”). The agency flooded Afghanistan with an astonishing array of extremely dangerous weapons and “unapologetically mov[ed] to equip and train cadres of high tech holy warriors in the art of waging a war of urban terror against a modern superpower,” in this case, the USSR.
The author of this glowing account, George Crile, is a veteran producer for the CBS television news show “60 Minutes” and an exuberant Tom Clancy-type enthusiast for the Afghan caper. He argues that the U.S. clandestine involvement in Afghanistan was “the largest and most successful CIA operation in history” and “the one morally unambiguous crusade of our time.” He adds that “there was nothing so romantic and exciting as this war against the Evil Empire.” Crile’s sole measure of success is the number of Soviet soldiers killed (about 15,000), which undermined Soviet morale and contributed to the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the period from 1989 to 1991. That’s the successful part.
However, he never mentions that the “tens of thousands of fanatical Muslim fundamentalists” the CIA armed are some of the same people who in 1996 killed 19 American airmen at Dhahran, Saudi Arabia; bombed our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998; blew a hole in the side of the U.S. destroyer Cole in Aden harbor in 2000; and on Sept. 11, 2001, flew hijacked airliners into New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Today, the world awaits what is almost certain to happen soon at some airport — a terrorist firing a U.S. Stinger low-level surface-to-air missile (manufactured at one time by General Dynamics in Rancho Cucamonga) into an American jumbo jet. The CIA supplied thousands of them to the moujahedeen and trained them to be experts in their use. If the CIA’s activities in Afghanistan are a “success story,” then Enron should be considered a model of corporate behavior.
Nonetheless, Crile’s account is important, if appalling, precisely because it details how a ruthless ignoramus congressman and a high-ranking CIA thug managed to hijack American foreign policy. From 1973 to 1996, Charlie Wilson represented the 2nd District of Texas in the U.S. House of Representatives. His constituency was in the heart of the East Texas Bible Belt and was the long-held fiefdom of his fellow Democrat, Martin Dies, the first chairman of the House Un-American Affairs Committee. Wilson is 6 feet, 4 inches tall and “handsome, with one of those classic outdoor faces that tobacco companies bet millions on.” He graduated from the Naval Academy in 1956, eighth from the bottom of his class and with more demerits than any other cadet in Annapolis history.
After serving in the Texas Legislature, he arrived in Washington in 1973 and quickly became known as “Good Time Charlie,” “the biggest playboy in Congress.” He hired only good-looking women for his staff and escorted “a parade of beauty queens to White House parties.” Even Crile, who featured Wilson many times on “60 Minutes” and obviously admires him, describes him as “a seemingly corrupt, cocaine snorting, scandal prone womanizer who the CIA was convinced could only get the Agency into terrible trouble if it permitted him to become involved in any way in its operations.”
Wilson’s partner in getting the CIA to arm the moujahedeen was Gust Avrakotos, the son of working-class Greek immigrants from the steel workers’ town of Aliquippa, Pa. Only in 1960 did the CIA begin to recruit officers for the Directorate of Operations from among what it called “new Americans,” meaning such ethnic groups as Chinese, Japanese, Latinos and Greek Americans. Until then, it had followed its British model and taken only Ivy League sons of the Eastern Establishment. Avrakotos joined the CIA in 1961 and came to nurture a hatred of the bluebloods, or “cake eaters,” as he called them, who discriminated against him. After “spook school” at Camp Peary, next door to Jamestown, Va., he was posted to Athens, where, as a Greek speaker, he remained until 1978.
During Avrakotos’s time in Greece, the CIA was instrumental in destroying Greek freedom and helping to turn the country into probably the single most anti-American democracy on Earth today. Incredibly, Crile describes this as follows: “On April 21, 1967, he [Avrakotos] got one of those breaks that can make a career. A military junta seized power in Athens that day and suspended democratic and constitutional government.” Avrakotos became the CIA’s chief liaison with the Greek colonels. After the fall of the colonels’ brutally fascist regime, the 17 November terrorist organization assassinated the CIA’s Athens station chief, Richard Welch, on Dec. 23, 1975, and “Gust came to be vilified in the Greek radical press as the sinister force responsible for most of the country’s many ills.” He left the country in 1978 but could not get another decent assignment — he tried for Helsinki — because the head of the European Division regarded him as simply too uncouth to send to any of its capitals. He sat around Langley for several years without work until he was recruited by John McGaffin, head of the Afghan program. “If it’s really true that you have nothing to do,” McGaffin said, “why not come upstairs? We’re killing Russians.”
Wilson was the moneybags and sparkplug of this pair; Avrakotos was a street fighter who relished giving Kalashnikovs and Stingers to the tribesmen in Afghanistan. Wilson was the more complex of the two, and Crile argues that his “Good Time Charlie” image was actually a cover for a Barry Goldwater kind of hyper-patriotism. But Wilson was also a liberal on the proposed Equal Rights Amendment and a close friend of the late Congresswoman Barbara Jordan (D-Texas), and his sister Sharon became chairwoman of the board of Planned Parenthood.
As a boy, Wilson was fascinated by World War II and developed an almost childlike belief that he possessed a “special destiny” to “kill bad guys” and help underdogs prevail over their enemies. When he entered Congress, just at the time of the Yom Kippur War, he became a passionate supporter of Israel. After he traveled to Israel, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee began to steer large amounts of money from all over the country to him and to cultivate him as “one of Israel’s most important Congressional champions: a non-Jew with no Jewish constituents.” Jewish members of Congress also rallied to put Wilson on the all-powerful Appropriations Committee in order to guarantee Israel’s annual $3-billion subsidy. His own Texas delegation opposed his appointment.
Wilson was not discriminating in his largess. He also became a supporter of Anastasio “Tacho” Somoza, the West Point graduate and dictator of Nicaragua who in 1979 was swept away by popular fury. Before that happened, President Carter tried to cut the $3.1-million annual U.S. aid package to Nicaragua, but Wilson, declaring Somoza to be “America’s oldest anti-Communist ally in Central America,” opposed the president and prevailed.
During Wilson’s long tenure on the House Appropriations Committee, one of its subcommittee chairmen, Clarence D. “Doc” Long, used to have a sign mounted over his desk: “Them that has the gold makes the rules.” Wilson advanced rapidly on this most powerful of congressional committees. He was first appointed to the foreign operations subcommittee, which doles out foreign aid. He then did a big favor for then-Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill Jr. (D-Mass.). The chairman of the Defense Appropriations subcommittee at the time, Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), had been caught in the FBI’s ABSCAM sting operation in which an agent disguised as a Saudi sheik offered members of Congress large cash bribes. O’Neill put Wilson on the Ethics Committee to save Murtha, which he did. In return, O’Neill assigned Wilson to the defense appropriations subcommittee and made him a life member of the governing board of the John F. Kennedy Performing Arts Center, where he delighted in taking his young dates. Wilson soon discovered that all of the CIA’s budget and 40 percent of the Pentagon’s budget is “black,” hidden from the public and even from Congress. As a member of the defense subcommittee, he could arrange to have virtually any amount of money added to whatever black project he supported. So long as Wilson did favors for other members on the subcommittee, such as supporting defense projects in their districts, they would never object to his private obsessions.
About this time, Wilson came under the influence of a remarkable, rabidly conservative Houston woman in her mid-40s, Joanne Herring. They later fell in love, although they never married. She had a reputation among the rich of the River Oaks section of Houston as a collector of powerful men, a social lioness and hostess to her fellow members of the John Birch Society. She counted among her friends Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, dictator and first lady of the Philippines, and Yaqub Khan, Pakistan’s ambassador to Washington, D.C., who got Herring named as Pakistan’s honorary consul for Houston.
In July 1977, the head of Pakistan’s army, Mohammed Zia-ul-Haq, seized power and declared martial law, and in 1979, he hanged Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the president who had promoted him. In retaliation, Carter cut off U.S. aid to Pakistan. In 1980, Herring went to Islamabad and was so entranced by Zia and his support for the Afghan freedom fighters that on her return to the United States, she encouraged Wilson to go to Pakistan. There he met Zia, learned about the Afghan moujahedeen and became a convert to the cause. Once Reagan replaced Carter, Wilson was able to restore Zia’s aid money and added several millions to the CIA’s funds for secretly arming the Afghan guerrillas, each dollar of which the Saudi government secretly matched.
Although Wilson romanticized the mountain warriors of Afghanistan, the struggle was never as uneven as it seemed. Pakistan provided the fighters with sanctuary, training and arms and even sent its own officers into Afghanistan as advisors on military operations. Saudi Arabia served as the fighters’ banker, providing hundred of millions with no strings attached. Several governments, including those of Egypt, China and Israel, secretly supplied arms. And the insurgency enjoyed the backing of the United States through the CIA.
Wilson’s and the CIA’s greatest preoccupation was supplying the Afghans with something effective against the Soviets’ most feared weapon, the Mi-24 Hind helicopter gunship. The Red Army used it to slaughter innumerable moujahedeen as well as to shoot up Afghan villages. Wilson favored the Oerlikon antiaircraft gun made in Switzerland (it was later charged that he was on the take from the Zurich-based arms manufacturer). Avrakotos opposed it because it was too heavy for guerrillas to move easily, but he could not openly stand in Wilson’s way. After months of controversy, the Joint Chiefs of Staff finally dropped their objections to supplying the American Stinger, President Reagan signed off on it, and the “silver bullet” was on its way. The Stinger had never before been used in combat. It proved to be murderous against the Hinds, and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev decided to cut his losses and get out altogether. In Wilson’s postwar tour of Afghanistan, moujahedeen fighters surrounded him and triumphantly fired their missiles for his benefit. They also gave him as a souvenir the stock from the first Stinger to shoot down a Hind gunship.
The CIA “bluebloods” fired Avrakotos in the summer of 1986, and he retired to Rome. Wilson became chairman of the Intelligence Oversight Committee, at which time he wrote to his CIA friends, “Well, gentlemen, the fox is in the hen house. Do whatever you like.” After retiring from Congress in 1996, he became a lobbyist for Pakistan under a contract that paid him $30,000 a month. Meanwhile, the United States lost interest in Afghanistan, which descended into a civil war that the Taliban ultimately won. In the autumn of 2001, the United States returned in force after Al Qaeda retaliated against its former weapon supplier by attacking New York and Washington. The president of the United States went around asking, “Why do they hate us?”
Crile knows a lot about these matters and presents them in a dramatic manner. There are, however, one or two items that he appears unaware of or is suppressing. For the CIA legally to carry out a covert action, the president must authorize a document called a finding. Crile repeatedly says that Carter signed such a finding ordering the CIA to provide covert backing to the moujahedeen after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan on Dec. 24, 1979. The truth of the matter is that Carter signed the finding on July 3, 1979, six months before the Soviet invasion, and he did so on the advice of his national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, in order to try to provoke a Russian incursion. Brzezinski has confirmed this sequence of events in an interview with a French newspaper, and former CIA Director Robert M. Gates says so explicitly in his 1996 memoirs. It may surprise Charlie Wilson to learn that his heroic moujahedeen were manipulated by Washington like so much cannon fodder in order to give the USSR its own Vietnam. The moujahedeen did the job, but as subsequent events have made clear, they may not be grateful to the United States.
Mr. Johnson is the author of Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire and The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy and the End of the Republic, to be published in January by Metropolitan Books.
CIA Covert Action in the Cold War: Iran, Jamaica, Chile, Cuba, Afghanistan, Libya, Latin America
The CIA Controls Al Qaeda
Triple Cross Bin Laden’s Spy In America (Full Documentary)
Covert Action – Operation Field Goal
A CIA special operations officer pursues a tip from an intercepted al-Qaeda transmission and ventures alone into enemy territory – where he’ll need all his training to survive.
CIA Covert Operations and U.S. Interventions Since World War II Full documentary
Col. L Fletcher Prouty: Secret Team – The Formation & Purpose of The NSC – PT 1 of 4
Col. L Fletcher Prouty: The Secret Team – The CIA’s Origins Of Covert Operations – PT 2 of 4
Col. L Fletcher Prouty: The Secret Team – Covert Operations & Their Consequences – PT 3 of 4
Col. L Fletcher Prouty: Secret Team – Conclusion – PT 4 of 4
Muslim Brotherhood Subversion: 12 Key Players in Obama/Bush Administrations
C.I.A. Agents in Libya Aid Airstrikes and Meet Rebels
By MARK MAZZETTI and ERIC SCHMITT
WASHINGTON — The Central Intelligence Agency has inserted clandestine operatives into Libya to gather intelligence for military airstrikes and to contact and vet the beleaguered rebels battling Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces, according to American officials.
While President Obama has insisted that no American military ground troops participate in the Libyan campaign, small groups of C.I.A. operatives have been working in Libya for several weeks as part of a shadow force of Westerners that the Obama administration hopes can help bleed Colonel Qaddafi’s military, the officials said.
In addition to the C.I.A. presence, composed of an unknown number of Americans who had worked at the spy agency’s station in Tripoli and others who arrived more recently, current and former British officials said that dozens of British special forces and MI6 intelligence officers are working inside Libya. The British operatives have been directing airstrikes from British jets and gathering intelligence about the whereabouts of Libyan government tank columns, artillery pieces and missile installations, the officials said.
American officials hope that similar information gathered by American intelligence officers — including the location of Colonel Qaddafi’s munitions depots and the clusters of government troops inside towns — might help weaken Libya’s military enough to encourage defections within its ranks.
In addition, the American spies are meeting with rebels to try to fill in gaps in understanding who their leaders are and the allegiances of the groups opposed to Colonel Qaddafi, said United States government officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the classified nature of the activities. American officials cautioned, though, that the Western operatives were not directing the actions of rebel forces.
A C.I.A. spokesman declined to comment.
The United States and its allies have been scrambling to gather detailed information on the location and abilities of Libyan infantry and armored forces that normally takes months of painstaking analysis.
“We didn’t have great data,” Gen. Carter F. Ham, who handed over control of the Libya mission to NATO on Wednesday, said in an e-mail last week. “Libya hasn’t been a country we focused on a lot over past few years.”
Several weeks ago, President Obama signed a secret finding authorizing the C.I.A. to provide arms and other support to Libyan rebels, American officials said Wednesday. But weapons have not yet been shipped into Libya, as Obama administration officials debate the effects of giving them to the rebel groups. The presidential finding was first reported by Reuters.
In a statement released Wednesday evening, Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, declined to comment “on intelligence matters,” but he said that no decision had yet been made to provide arms to the rebels.
Representative Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican who leads the House Intelligence Committee, said Wednesday that he opposed arming the rebels. “We need to understand more about the opposition before I would support passing out guns and advanced weapons to them,” Mr. Rogers said in a statement.
Because the publicly stated goal of the Libyan campaign is not explicitly to overthrow Colonel Qaddafi’s government, the clandestine war now going on is significantly different from the Afghan campaign to drive the Taliban from power in 2001. Back then, American C.I.A. and Special Forces troops worked alongside Afghan militias, armed them and called in airstrikes that paved the rebel advances on strategically important cities like Kabul and Kandahar.
In recent weeks, the American military has been monitoring Libyan troops with U-2 spy planes and a high-altitude Global Hawk drone, as well as a special aircraft, JSTARS, that tracks the movements of large groups of troops. Military officials said that the Air Force also has Predator drones, similar to those now operating in Afghanistan, in reserve.
Air Force RC-135 Rivet Joint eavesdropping planes intercept communications from Libyan commanders and troops and relay that information to the Global Hawk, which zooms in on the location of armored forces and determines rough coordinates. The Global Hawk sends the coordinates to analysts at a ground station, who pass the information to command centers for targeting. The command center beams the coordinates to an E-3 Sentry Awacs command-and-control plane, which in turn directs warplanes to their targets.
Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, who recently retired as the Air Force’s top intelligence official, said that Libya’s flat desert terrain and clear weather have allowed warplanes with advanced sensors to hunt Libyan armored columns with relative ease, day or night, without the need for extensive direction from American troops on the ground.
But if government troops advance into or near cities in along the country’s eastern coast, which so far have been off-limits to coalition aircraft for fear of causing civilian casualties, General Deptula said that ground operatives would be particularly helpful in providing target coordinates or pointing them out to pilots with hand-held laser designators.
The C.I.A. and British intelligence services were intensely focused on Libya eight years ago, before and during the successful effort to get Colonel Qaddafi to give up his nuclear weapons program. He agreed to do so in the fall of 2003, and allowed C.I.A. and other American nuclear experts into the country to assess Libya’s equipment and bomb designs and to arrange for their transfer out of the country.
Once the weapons program was eliminated, a former American official said, intelligence agencies shifted their focus away from Libya. But as Colonel Qaddafi began his recent crackdown on the rebel groups, the American spy agencies have worked to rekindle ties to Libyan informants and to learn more about the country’s military leaders.
A former British government official who is briefed on current operations confirmed media reports that dozens of British Special Forces soldiers, from the elite Special Air Service and Special Boat Service units, are on the ground across Libya. The British soldiers have been particularly focused on finding the locations of Colonel Qaddafi’s Russian-made surface-to-air missiles.
A spokesman for Britain’s Ministry of Defense declined to comment, citing a policy not to discuss the operations of British Special Forces.
Military, CIA shun 9/11 panel on covert operations
Special-ops lead urged in report
By Bill Gertz The Washington Times
The U.S. military and the CIA failed to agree on implementing a key recommendation of the commission that investigated the 9/11 terrorist attacks: Give special-operations commandos the lead for all covert military action.
The 9/11 Commission ordered the shift in response to concerns that CIA covert action — a mainstay of the agency’s World War II predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services — had “atrophied.” The agency also had a “risk averse” approach to spying and semisecret military activities.
Former Navy Secretary John F. Lehman, a member of the panel, said a report card made public last week by the Bipartisan Policy Center didn’t address the failure to implement the covert action change because of the secrecy surrounding the issue.
“The situation has evolved far beyond where it was at the time of our report,” Mr. Lehman said, adding that the raid to kill Osama bin Laden “shows that they are now doing something right.”
The military has expanded special operations forces in recent years. But critics complain that the Pentagon official in charge of the policies for their use is Michael G. Vickers, a former CIA official who comes from the agency’s risk-averse, anti-covert-action culture.
Military covert action involves training and equipping foreign military or paramilitary forces in semisecret activities where the U.S. role is hidden. Past programs included arming Cuban rebels for the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion, deploying direct-action hit teams in Vietnam, and the arming and training of anti-communist rebels in Latin America and anti-Soviet rebels in Afghanistan.
Since 2004, the CIA’s most successful covert military operation was the hunt for bin Laden and the raid to kill him in Pakistan on May 2 with Navy SEALs.
The CIA’s other successful covert military action is the war against al Qaeda and other terrorist groups using drone missile strikes in the Middle East and South Asia.
One setback was the suicide bombing by a double agent in December 2009 at a CIA covert base in Khost, Afghanistan, that killed seven agency officers.
“Our capabilities are complementary, not duplicative, and the success of those capabilities should speak for itself,” she said.
Gen. Boykin said a task force was set up to study the 9/11 recommendation, but it failed to define paramilitary covert action. “This was a fundamental question that no one could answer,” Gen. Boykin said.
If the commission meant training, SoCom already had the mission of working with surrogates. But “paramilitary” operations — activities that are militarylike but carried out by groups other than the military — automatically would become military if the function is passed to the Pentagon.
Gen. Boykin said that if the commission wanted to give responsibility for covert action to the Pentagon, the CIA was opposed, arguing that the change would hinder intelligence collection. The agency said its facilities and equipment were “dual-use” — for spying and paramilitary — and could not be transferred.
Gen. Boykin said the command was against duplicating the CIA’s training facilities, methods and equipment, because of high costs needed to “age” equipment and weapons for operations.
“Working from the assumption that the commission was not really sure what they were recommending, the study group determined that the capabilities already in SoCom were competent to train indigenous forces including using clandestine methodology,” he said.
“The agreement was that the CIA would support [special operations] as needed with facilities and other resources.”
Bureaucratic turf also played a role.
“CIA did not want to lose anything since that would result in a reduction of resources as well as a loss of authority,” Gen. Boykin said.
However, special operations forces also “did not want the covert action mission because they saw it as something that would absorb huge amounts of time and resources and would be a distraction,” he said.
Former CIA officer Robert Baer, who was investigated by the Clinton administration during a covert action in northern Iraq, said he favors giving the mission to the military. “No matter what the bosses say, the CIA hates covert and paramilitary operations,” he said.
“The place is managed by liberal-arts majors who do a lot better operating on intuition and big-horizon stuff — like whether we’re winning or losing in Afghanistan,” Mr. Baer said. “But never ask it to run a bunch of Hmong tribesmen or disaffected Pashtuns and ever hope to win a war with them.”
Mr. Baer said the Pentagon is better tactically at making things work and has a larger pool of recruits with foreign-language skills.
“The problem is that presidents always reach for the CIA when they think they need a ‘silver bullet,’ like the Bay of Pigs,” he said. “The CIA inevitably fails, and then it gets blamed for the mess.”
Every covert action requires a presidential directive stating that the proposed action is in the country’s national interest. The procedure is often cumbersome and prone to public disclosure. Supporters of the change say military-led covert action would be more flexible and easier to approve.
Hiring former special operations forces at the CIA will not help the agency’s covert military capabilities, Mr. Baer said. “Outside military discipline, they just don’t perform up to their capabilities,” he said.
Mr. Baer said the covert program to supply Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to Afghan rebels in the 1980s was less a covert action success than a “logistics” plan to ship arms to the fighters in the field. “It was not a proper paramilitary campaign,” he said.
A Harvard University study several years ago quoted anti-covert-action officials at the CIA as opposing the Stinger operation because of fears it would trigger a war with the Soviet Union.
The 9/11 Commission report describes the CIA in 2001 as “institutionally averse to risk, with its capacity for covert action atrophied.”
It also says the CIA did not invest in developing “robust” paramilitary operations with U.S. personnel but instead relied on proxies trained and organized by CIA officers without military experience. “The results were unsatisfactory,” it says.
The 9/11 Commission said the CIA could continue clandestine and nonmilitary covert action, including propaganda and nonmilitary disruption.
“We believe, however, that one important area of responsibility should change,” the commission’s report says. “Lead responsibility for directing and executing paramilitary operations, whether clandestine or covert, should shift to the Defense Department.”
There, covert military action programs should be consolidated and placed under Special Operations Command, it says.
“Whether the price is measured in either money or people, the United States cannot afford to build two separate capabilities for carrying out secret military operations, secretly operating standoff missiles, and secretly training foreign military or paramilitary forces,” the report says.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) announced Monday that he has appointed Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) to head a select committee to investigate the 2012 Benghazi attacks.
“With four of our countrymen killed at the hands of terrorists, the American people want answers, accountability, and justice,” the speaker said in a statement. “Trey Gowdy is as dogged, focused and serious-minded as they come. His background as a federal prosecutor and his zeal for the truth make him the ideal person to lead this panel. I know he shares my commitment to get to the bottom of this tragedy and will not tolerate any stonewalling from the Obama administration.”
“I plan to ensure he and his committee have the strongest authority possible to root out all the facts. This is a big job, but Rep. Gowdy has the confidence of this conference, and I know his professionalism and grit will earn him the respect of the American people,” Boehner said.
Gowdy assumed office in 2011, shortly after the historic 2010 “red wave” midterm elections. He previously served as federal prosecutor.
“Twenty months after the Benghazi attacks, there remain unresolved questions about why the security was inadequate, our response during the siege itself, and our government’s interaction with the public after the attack,” Gowdy said in a statement Monday. “All of those lines of inquiry are legitimate and should be apolitical. Facts are neither red nor blue.”
“Four of our fellow citizens were murdered, and a facility emblematic and representative of our country was attacked and burned on the anniversary of 9-11,” the statement added. “Our fellow citizens are full well capable of processing the truth about the attacks and aftermath, and most assuredly entitled to hear it.”
News of the South Carolina congressman’s appointment comes shortly after the House speaker announced last week that he would form a special committee to investigate attacks that claimed the lives of four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens.
Boehner said in a statement that he decided to form the special committee “in response to the release of emails showing the White House was more involved in misleading the American people than previously known and the revelation that the Obama administration had withheld these documents from a Congressional subpoena.”
Newly declassified White House emails, which were obtained and released last week by Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, reveal that top Obama administration officials coordinated in 2012 to portray the Benghazi attacks as being “rooted in [an] Internet video” and not “a broader failure of policy.”
The new emails, many of which were written by then-White House deputy strategic aommunications Adviser Ben Rhodes, have called into question the White House’s handling of the deadly 2012 attacks.
The “goal” going forward, one Rhodes email said, is “to underscore that these protests are rooted in [an] Internet video, and not a broader failure or policy.”
“[W]e’ve made our views on this video crystal clear. The United States government had nothing to do with it,” Rhodes added.
In response to the new trove of White House emails, House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) announced last week that he had subpoenaed Secretary of State John Kerry to testify before Congress on the attacks.
The State Department’s “response to congressional investigation of Benghazi has shown a disturbing disregard for its legal obligations to Congress,” Issa said in a statement. “Compliance with a subpoena for documents is not a game. The State Dept has failed to meet its legal obligations.”
“I expect [Secretary Kerry] to identify docs the [department] is withholding, has delayed, or has simply avoided searching for,” the California Republican added.
Issa also praised Boehner’s decision to appoint Gowdy to chair the special committee.
“Speaker Boehner could not have chosen a Member more committed to getting the full truth about the before, during, and after of the Benghazi terrorist attacks than Congressman Trey Gowdy,” Issa said in a statement. “Trey has been an integral contributor to the Oversight Committee investigation and takes the knowledge we have gained, through subpoenas and individual testimony, to his new role leading the new Select Committee.”
House Democrats to oppose Benghazi select committee
Susan Davis
Chief Congressional Reporter
top House Democrat said Monday that he will oppose the creation of a U.S. House select committee to investigate the 2012 Benghazi attack.
“We will urge members to vote ‘no’ on it,” said House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md. However, House Republicans are expected to overcome Democratic opposition and approve its creation.
The House is on track to vote as early as this week on a resolution outlining the size, scope and budget of the select committee.
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, announced Friday that the House of Representatives would move forward with a select committee. Republicans contend that the Obama administration has intentionally deceived the public about the circumstances surrounding the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. Embassy in Libya. Four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador, were killed.
Boehner announced Monday that Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., will chair the panel. Gowdy, 49, is a former federal prosecutor and a member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which has focused intensely on the Benghazi attack under chairman Darrell Issa’s directive. Issa said the select committee “will shed fuller light on the truth” but he intends to also continue investigating the circumstances around the attack.
“Twenty months after the Benghazi attacks, there remain unresolved questions about why the security was inadequate, our response during the siege itself, and our government’s interaction with the public after the attack,” Gowdy said Monday in a statement. “All of those lines of inquiry are legitimate and should be apolitical.”
The remaining committee members will be named after the resolution is approved, and Boehner said the panel will have “robust authority.” It will also likely need special resources, such as secure computers and hearing rooms, because the investigation will likely involve some classified information.
It remains unclear if Democrats will participate. Hoyer said Monday that Democratic leaders have not been contacted to discuss the panel, but he said it should have an equal number of members from both parties.
“We have not received any information about how the committee would be composed, especially the ratio, from the House Republican leadership,” said Drew Hammill, a spokesman for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
House GOP leaders are scheduled to meet Tuesday afternoon to work on finalizing the select committee. A House vote could come as early as Thursday.
House Democrats have panned the panel as politically motivated, citing no substantive need for a select committee because House and Senate committees have already conducted extensive hearings into the attack. “Benghazi was a tragedy,” Hoyer said, on the terrorist attack that cost four American lives. “We’ve had some 13 hearings on that issue, 25,000 pages of documents, 50 briefings. This has been seriously and thoroughly investigated.”
Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., a member of the House Intelligence Committee, told Fox News Sunday that he believes Democrats should boycott the panel, calling it a “a colossal waste of time.”
Congress has historically employed the use of temporary special or select committees to direct special attention or scrutiny to matters of national interest. The committees generally expire when they complete the assigned purpose of the panel, such as producing a report or legislation.
One of the more notable select committees occurred was on Watergate in 1973, which was conducted by a seven-member Senate select committee. In 2007, House Democrats created an open-ended Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, but Republicans dissolved the panel when they control in 2011. Also in 2007, a select committee was established to study a voting controversy. The panel concluded that Democrats ended a vote on the floor too soon, confirming GOP allegations of parliamentary mischief.
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The Pronk Pops Show 901, May 30, 2017, Story 1: Jared Kushner Talked To Russians — So Do Democrats — “Treason?” — Russia/Trump Collusion — No Evidence — No Credibility — No Crime — American People Bored With Progressive Propaganda — Show Me — Put Up or Shut Up — Big Lie Media and Desperate, Delusional, Demented Democrat Distraction For Not Covering Obama Administration Spying On American People and Republican Candidates For President — Videos Story 2: Amazon Benefits From Growing Trend Of Consumer Shopping Online — Benefits of Amazon Prime For $99 Per Year — Videos — Story 3: Amazon’s Just Walk Out Technology — Coming Soon??? — Videos —
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Story 1: Jared Kushner Talked To Russians — So Do Democrats — “Treason?” — Russia/Trump Collusion — No Evidence — No Credibility — No Crime — American People Bored With Progressive Propaganda — Put Up or Shut Up — Big Lie Media and Desperate, Delusional, Demented Democrat Distraction For Not Covering Obama Administration’s Spying On American People and Republican Candidates For President — Videos
Backchannel diplomacy refers to secret lines of communication held open between two adversaries. It is often communicated through an informal intermediary or through a third party.
Amb. Bolton on Jared Kushner’s backchannel talks
Jared Kushner under FBI scrutiny in Russia probe
Cracking the Kushner Russian code: Kushner Russian back channel explained part 1
What you need to know about Jared Kushner’s ties to Russia. Sergey Kislyak reported to his superiors in December that Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, asked him about setting up a communications channel between the transition team and the Kremlin using Russian facilities in the United States. Russia’s ambassador to Washington discussed the possibility of setting up a secret and secure communications channel between Trump’s transition team and the Kremlin, using Russian diplomatic facilities in an apparent move to shield their pre-inauguration discussions from monitoring, according to U.S. officials briefed on intelligence reports. Ambassador Sergey Kislyak reported to his superiors in Moscow that Kushner, son-in-law and confidant to then-President-elect Trump, made the proposal during a meeting on Dec. 1 or 2 at Trump Tower, according to intercepts of Russian communications that were reviewed by U.S. officials. Kislyak said Kushner suggested using Russian diplomatic facilities in the United States for the communications. The meeting also was attended by Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser. The White House disclosed the meeting only in March, playing down its significance. But people familiar with the matter say the FBI now considers the encounter, as well as another meeting Kushner had with a Russian banker, to be of investigative interest. Kislyak reportedly was taken aback by the suggestion of allowing an American to use Russian communications gear at its embassy or consulate — a proposal that would have carried security risks for Moscow as well as the Trump team.
Cracking the Kushner Russian code: Kushner Russian back channel explained part 2
Cracking the Kushner Russian code: Kushner Russian back channel explained. Russian ambassador told Moscow that Kushner wanted secret channel with Kremlin. Sergey Kislyak reported to his superiors in December that Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, asked him about setting up a communications channel between the transition team and the Kremlin using Russian facilities in the United States. Russia’s ambassador to Washington discussed the possibility of setting up a secret and secure communications channel between Trump’s transition team and the Kremlin, using Russian diplomatic facilities in an apparent move to shield their pre-inauguration discussions from monitoring, according to U.S. officials briefed on intelligence reports. Ambassador Sergey Kislyak reported to his superiors in Moscow that Kushner, son-in-law and confidant to then-President-elect Trump, made the proposal during a meeting on Dec. 1 or 2 at Trump Tower, according to intercepts of Russian communications that were reviewed by U.S. officials. Kislyak said Kushner suggested using Russian diplomatic facilities in the United States for the communications. The meeting also was attended by Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser. The White House disclosed the meeting only in March, playing down its significance. But people familiar with the matter say the FBI now considers the encounter, as well as another meeting Kushner had with a Russian banker, to be of investigative interest. Kislyak reportedly was taken aback by the suggestion of allowing an American to use Russian communications gear at its embassy or consulate — a proposal that would have carried security risks for Moscow as well as the Trump team.
Will recent revelations impact Jared Kushner’s influence on Trump?
Sean Spicer Dodges Questions On Jared Kushner-Russia Meetings
Sean Spicer holds first briefing since Jared Kushner/Russia ties reports
CNN panel: No way Jared Kushner was ‘lone-wolfing’ backchannel pitch to Russian- Trump was involved
James Clapper: Dashboard Light Was On Over Trump Campaign, Russia (Full) | Meet The Press | NBC News
Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper tells Chuck Todd that he was “very concerned about the nature” of approaches between the Trump campaign and Russian agents during the 2016 elections.
Fmr. DNI James Clapper: I HAVE SEEN NO EVIDENCE OF TRUMP-RUSSIA COLLUSION
Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper says that, to his knowledge, there is no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians. This clip is from Clapper’s interview with Chuck Todd on NBC’s Meet the Press on March 5, 2017.
Former CIA Chief “Concerned” Trump Could Be On “Treasonous Path”
Inside Dems’ ‘Big Lie’ About Trump And Russia
Tucker Carlson Trump Collusion With Russia: Inappropriate Deals with Russia. Fox News 2017
Krauthammer on Trump-Russia collusion: “I don’t trust the story”
James Clapper: ‘Still no EVIDENCE of any Russian Collusion with Trump Campaign’
“You Don’t Do Evidence Well I Do” Trey Gowdy Demands Answers On Trump Russia Collusion Investigation
Former Senate Intel Chair Dianne Feinstein No Evidence Of Russia Trump Camp Collusion
CNN: Alt-Left Journalistic Malpractice, Fake News Proliferation and Contamination
CNN Host gets Destroyed By John Sununu For Russian Collusion Fake News
Story 2: Amazon Benefits From Growing Trend Of Consumer Shopping Online — Benefits of Amazon Prime For $99 Per Year — Videos —
What Is Amazon Prime and Is It Worth It?
Introducing Amazon Go and the world’s most advanced shopping technology
IT’S PRIMETIME AT AMAZON.COM … SHARES HIT $1,000
BY JOSEPH PISANI
NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon, the internet goliath that revolutionized the way much of the world buys books, toilet paper and TVs, hit a new milestone Tuesday. Its stock surpassed the $1,000 mark for the first time.
That price put Amazon’s market value at about $478 billion, double that of the world’s biggest traditional retailer, Wal-Mart, and more than 15 times the size of Target. A $1,000 investment on Amazon’s first day of trading in 1997 would be worth more than $500,000 today.
Not only has Amazon changed the retail landscape since it became a public company 20 years ago, it’s now part of a small cadre of high-flying stocks belonging to companies that have defied Wall Street and shunned stock splits.
Those splits make the stock more affordable and generate brokerage fees. But companies like Amazon have chosen to reward its long-term investors.
The last time Amazon has split its stock was nearly 18 years ago, according to financial research firm FactSet.
Another company with a similar philosophy is Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google.
Amazon just beat Alphabet to the $1,000 level, with its Class A shares just $2 short of $1,000 Tuesday.
Only four other U.S.-listed companies have shares trading above $1,000: online travel booking company Priceline Group Inc., homebuilder NVR Inc., pork producer and ocean transportation company Seaboard Corp. and the apostle of long-term investing, Warren Buffett, with his holding company Berkshire Hathaway Inc. But stock prices only tell a part of the story.
The value of a company is determined by its stock price and the number of shares on the market. Amazon.com is well over four times the size of Priceline, NVR and Seaboard combined. It’s 17 percent bigger than Berkshire Hathaway, a multinational conglomerate with ownership stakes in some of America’s most well-known consumer brands like Coca-Cola, insurance companies and U.S. infrastructure.
Since launching a website to sell mostly books in 1995, Amazon has transfigured retail, sent revenue numbers to stratospheric heights, and is among the biggest reasons longtime powerhouses like Macy’s, Borders bookstores and even RadioShack have suffered.
Those companies are closing locations and Amazon is filling the void, sometimes literally.
Last week in a location once occupied by Borders, the bookstore chain that went out of business in 2011, Amazon opened its first bookstore in New York City.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_AMAZON_1K_STOCK?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2017-05-30-11-55-52
About Amazon Prime
Receive all the benefits of Amazon Prime including FREE Two-Day Shipping for eligible purchases, unlimited streaming of movies and TV shows with Prime Video, and the ability to borrow books from the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library for $99 a year or $10.99 a month. We also offer a Prime Video membership for $8.99 a month that only includes Prime Video as a benefit.
The benefits include:
Note:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200444160
Story 3: Amazon’s Just Walk Out Technology — Coming Soon??? — Videos
Why Amazon Go Is Being Called The Next Big Job Killer | Tech Bet | CNBC
How does Amazon Go work?
The Fox News Specialists 5/29/17 | Fox News | May 29, 2017
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