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In addition to constructing the Stellar Wind center, and then running the operation, secretive contractors with questionable histories and little oversight were also used to do the actual bugging of the entire U.S. telecommunications network. According to a former Verizon employee briefed on the program, Verint, owned by Comverse Technology, taps the communication lines at Verizon, which I first reported in my book The Shadow Factory in 2008. Verint did not return a call seeking comment, while Verizon said it does not comment on such matters. At AT&T the wiretapping rooms are powered by software and hardware from Narus, now owned by Boeing, a discovery made by AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein in 2004. Narus did not return a call seeking comment. What is especially troubling is that both companies have had extensive ties to Israel, as well as links to that country’s intelligence service, a country with a long and aggressive history of spying on the U.S.

In fact, according to Binney, the advanced analytical and data mining software the NSA had developed for both its worldwide and international eavesdropping operations was secretly passed to Israel by a mid-level employee, apparently with close connections to the country. The employee, a technical director in the Operations Directorate, “who was a very strong supporter of Israel,” said Binney, “gave, unbeknownst to us, he gave the software that we had, doing these fast rates, to the Israelis.” Because of his position, it was something Binney should have been alerted to, but wasn’t. “In addition to being the technical director,” he said, “I was the chair of the TAP, it’s the Technical Advisory Panel, the foreign relations council. We’re supposed to know what all these foreign countries, technically what they’re doing…. They didn’t do this that way, it was under the table.” After discovering the secret transfer of the technology, Binney argued that the agency simply pass it to them officially, and in that way get something in return, such as access to communications terminals. “So we gave it to them for switches,” he said. “For access.”

But Binney now suspects that Israeli intelligence in turn passed the technology on to Israeli companies who operate in countries around the world, including the U.S. In return, the companies could act as extensions of Israeli intelligence and pass critical military, economic and diplomatic information back to them. “And then five years later, four or five years later, you see a Narus device,” he said. “I think there’s a connection there, we don’t know for sure.” Narus was formed in Israel in November 1997 by six Israelis with much of its money coming from Walden Israel, an Israeli venture capital company. Its founder and former chairman, Ori Cohen, once told Israel’s Fortune Magazine that his partners have done technology work for Israeli intelligence. And among the five founders was Stanislav Khirman, a husky, bearded Russian who had previously worked for Elta Systems, Inc. A division of Israel Aerospace Industries, Ltd., Elta specializes in developing advanced eavesdropping systems for Israeli defense and intelligence organizations. At Narus, Khirman became the chief technology officer.

There's been a lot of focus elsewhere concerning the FISA rulings that were leaked, showing that the government is scooping up the details of pretty much every phone call. However, a case concerning some guys who were trying to rob an armored truck may lead to some interesting revelations related to what the government collects. Daryl Davis, Hasam Williams, Terrance Brown, Toriano Johnson, and Joseph K. Simmons were charged with trying to rob a bunch of armored Brink's trucks, in which one of the robberies went wrong and a Brink's employee was shot and killed. As part of the case against the group, the DOJ obtained call records. However, during discovery, the government refused to hand over call records for July of 2010, claiming that when they sought them from the telco, the DOJ was told that those records had been purged. Terrance Brown's lawyer is now claiming that since it appears the NSA has sucked up all of this data for quite some time, it would appear that the government should, in fact, already have the phone records from July 2010, which he argues would show that he was nowhere near the robbery when it happened. Defendant Brown urges that the records are important to his defense because cell-site records could be used to show that Brown was not in the vicinity of the attempted robbery that allegedly occurred in July 2010. And, relying on a June 5, 2013, Guardian newspaper article that published a FISA Court order relating to cellular telephone data collected by Verizon,1 Defendant Brown now suggests that the Government likely actually does possess the metadata relating to telephone calls made in July 2010 from the two numbers attributed to Defendant Brown.

The court agrees that, under the law, the government may need to produce those records. Here, Defendant asserts that, under Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963), due process requires the production of the July 2010 telephone records because they are anticipated to be exculpatory in that they are expected to show that Defendant Brown was not physically located at the scene of the alleged attempted Brink’s truck robbery in July 2010. In view of Defendant Brown’s Motion and the requirements of FISA, it is hereby ORDERED and ADJUDGED that the Government shall respond to Defendant Brown’s Motion and, if desired, shall file an affidavit of the Attorney General of the United States. That order was actually issued Monday, only giving the government until yesterday to comply. At the time of posting, the government's reply has not yet shown up in PACER, though it may pop up soon. I'm guessing that they'll try to either get some sort of extension or explain why those records are somehow inaccessible -- but it could get interesting.

Snowden has reportedly been stopped from flying to the UK. The man who lifted the lid on America’s secret surveillance activities is being pursued by Washington. For his latest revelation, he told a Hong Kong newspaper that the U.S. repeatedly hacks into Chinese computer networks. For more about the leaks and Snowden’s future we’re now joined live by Pepe Escobar, a roving correspondent for the Asia Times.

PARIS (AP) — A leading French newspaper says France's intelligence services have put in place a giant electronic surveillance gathering network.Citing no sources, the Le Monde daily says France's Direction Generale de la Securite Exterieure, the country's foreign intelligence agency, systematically collects information about all electronic data sent by computers and telephones in France, as well as communications between France and abroad.

According to Le Monde, data on "all e-mails, SMSs, telephone calls, Facebook and Twitter posts" are collected and stored in a massive three-floor underground bunker at the DGSE's headquarters in Paris. The paper specified that it is the communications' metadata — such as when was call was made and where an author was when she sent an email — that is being archived, not their content.Officials at the DGSE did not answer phone calls or emails seeking comment Thursday.The vast archive, which Le Monde says amounts to tens of millions of gigabytes, is accessible to France's other spy agencies, including military intelligence, domestic intelligence, Paris police and a special financial crimes task force.

Le Monde compared the French digital dragnet to PRISM, the U.S. National Security Agency program which has most caught the imagination of Internet users. But PRISM appears aimed at allowing U.S. spies to peel data off the servers of Silicon Valley firms — whereas the program described in Le Monde appears to be fed through the mass interception of electronic data bouncing across the world.Also, PRISM can apparently be used to collect content, not just metadata.Le Monde said the French surveillance program relies on spy satellites, listening stations in French overseas territories or former colonies such as Mayotte or Djibouti, and information harvested from undersea cables — all three of which are methods long familiar to the NSA.A French lawmaker played down the report, saying France's surveillance gathering system is not comparable with the NSA's.Patricia Adam, a lawmaker who until last year headed parliament's intelligence committee, said French spies "are line fishing, not trawling" the vast oceans of data thrown up by mobile phones, emails and Internet communication.

Edward Snowden, the former government contractor who leaked information on the National Security Agency's surveillance programs, says he sought the job with Booz Allen Hamilton to gather evidence on the agency's data collection networks. In a June 12 interview with the South China Morning Post published Monday, Snowden, who previously worked as a CIA technician, said he took the position with the intention of collecting information on the NSA. “My position with Booz Allen Hamilton granted me access to lists of machines all over the world the NSA hacked,” he said. “That is why I accepted that position about three months ago.”

SCMP reports: Asked if he specifically went to Booz Allen Hamilton to gather evidence of surveillance, he replied: “Correct on Booz.” His intention was to collect information about the NSA hacking into “the whole world” and “not specifically Hong Kong and China”. The documents he divulged to the Post were obtained during his tenure at Booz Allen Hamilton in April, he said. Snowden also told the Hong Kong newspaper that he intends to leak more documents on the NSA's programs.

Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian journalist who Snowden first contacted in February, told The Daily Beast on Tuesday that Snowden “has taken extreme precautions to make sure many different people around the world have these archives to insure the stories will inevitably be published.” Greenwald added that the people in possession of these files “cannot access them yet because they are highly encrypted and they do not have the passwords.” But, Greenwald said, “if anything happens at all to Edward Snowden, he told me he has arranged for them to get access to the full archives.” The fact that Snowden has made digital copies of the documents he accessed while working at the NSA poses a new challenge to the U.S. intelligence community that has scrambled in recent days to recover them and assess the full damage of the breach. Even if U.S. authorities catch up with Snowden and the four classified laptops the Guardian reported he brought with him to Hong Kong the secrets Snowden hopes to expose will still likely be published.

A former U.S. counterintelligence officer following the Snowden saga closely said his contacts inside the U.S. intelligence community “think Snowden has been planning this for years and has stashed files all over the Internet.” This source added, “At this point there is very little anyone can do about this.” The arrangement to entrust encrypted archives of his files with others also sheds light on a cryptic statement Snowden made on June 17 during a live chat with The Guardian. In the online session he said, “All I can say right now is the U.S. government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me. Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped.”

However, Greenwald said that in his dealings with Snowden the 30-year-old systems administrator was adamant that he and his newspaper go through the document and only publish what served the public’s right to know. “Snowden himself was vehement from the start that we do engage in that journalistic process and we not gratuitously publish things,” Greenwald said. “I do know he was vehement about that. He was not trying to harm the U.S. government; he was trying to shine light on it.” Greenwald said Snowden for example did not wish to publicize information that gave the technical specifications or blueprints for how the NSA constructed its eavesdropping network. “He is worried that would enable other states to enhance their security systems and monitor their own citizens.” Greenwald also said Snowden did not wish to repeat the kinds of disclosures made famous a generation ago by former CIA spy, Philip Agee—who published information after defecting to Cuba that outed undercover CIA officers. “He was very insistent he does not want to publish documents to harm individuals or blow anyone’s undercover status,” Greenwald said. He added that Snowden told him, “Leaking CIA documents can actually harm people, whereas leaking NSA documents can harm systems.”

Here’s a recap of Snowden’s leaked documents published so far, in my own highly subjective order of importance.

A leaked executive order from President Obama shows the administration asked intelligence agencies to draw up a list of potential offensive cyberattack targets around the world. The order, which suggests targeting “systems, processes and infrastructure” states that such offensive hacking operations “can offer unique and unconventional capabilities to advance U.S. national objectives around the world with little or no warning to the adversary or target and with potential effects ranging from subtle to severely damaging.” The order followed repeated accusations by the U.S. government that China has engaged in state-sponsored hacking operations, and was timed just a day before President Obama’s summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Current and former FBI officials have launched a media counter-offensive to engage head to head with the Clinton media machine and to throw off the shackles the Loretta Lynch Justice Department has used to stymie their multiple investigations into the Clinton pay-to-play network. Over the past weekend, former FBI Assistant Director and current CNN Senior Law Enforcement Analyst Tom Fuentes told viewers that “the FBI has an intensive investigation ongoing into the Clinton Foundation.” He said he had received this information from “senior officials” at the FBI, “several of them, in and out of the Bureau.” (See video clip from CNN below.) That information was further supported by an in-depth article last evening in the Wall Street Journal by Devlin Barrett. According to Barrett, the “probe of the foundation began more than a year ago to determine whether financial crimes or influence peddling occurred related to the charity.” Barrett’s article suggests that the Justice Department, which oversees the FBI, has attempted to circumvent the investigation. The new revelations lead to the appearance of wrongdoing on the part of U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch for secretly meeting with Bill Clinton on her plane on the tarmac of Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport on the evening of June 28 of this year. Not only was Bill Clinton’s wife under an FBI investigation at the time over her use of a private email server in the basement of her New York home over which Top Secret material was transmitted while she was Secretary of State but his own charitable foundation was also under investigation, a fact that was unknown at the time to the public and the media.

The reports leaking out of the FBI over the weekend came on the heels of FBI Director James Comey sending a letter to members of Congress on Friday acknowledging that the investigation into the Hillary Clinton email server was not closed as he had previously testified to Congress, but had been reopened as a result of “pertinent” emails turning up. According to multiple media sources, those emails were found on the laptop of Anthony Weiner, estranged husband of Hillary Clinton’s longtime aide, Huma Abedin. Weiner was forced to resign from Congress in 2011 over a sexting scandal with more sexting scandals to follow. Early this month, on October 3, the FBI raided Weiner’s apartment in New York with a search warrant in hand and seized multiple electronic devices. At least one of those devices had been used by both Weiner and Abedin to send email messages. The search warrant had been obtained following a detailed report that had appeared in the Daily Mail newspaper in the U.K. in September, showing sordid, sexual emails that Weiner had allegedly sent to a 15-year old girl in North Carolina. According to the content of the published emails, Weiner was aware that the girl was underage. While examining the hard drive of a laptop seized from Weiner, the FBI found metadata showing that thousands of the emails were exchanged between the private server located in Hillary Clinton’s basement in Chappaqua, New York. Since the FBI had only a search warrant to examine emails and documents related to the Weiner matter, it was not able to read the other emails but simply tallied up the metadata linked to the private server in Chappaqua to show how many potentially new emails might be in the trove on the laptop. (It is also possible that the FBI agents could have used a program to compare subject headings against those emails previously turned over by Abedin to make their case that Abedin had perjured herself when she testified to them that she had turned over all of her work-related emails from her time as Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations when Hillary Clinton served as Secretary of State.)

The FBI officials briefed FBI Director James Comey last Thursday on the new trove of emails and he went public with his letter to Congress the next day – leading the Clinton camp to immediately launch a media assault on his motives. As if all of this wasn’t enough for the public to digest over the weekend, yesterday morning James Kallstrom, the former Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s New York Division and 25-year veteran of the FBI, went on the John Catsimatidis radio program to call the Clintons a “crime family.” (You can hear the full program here.) Kallstrom’s comments were further amplified when the New York Daily News reported on his criticisms that the FBI had been hamstrung from conducting a real investigation. The Daily News quoted Kallstrom from the radio program as follows: “ ‘This investigation was never a real investigation, they never had grand jury empaneled…This investigation was without the ability to serve subpoenas, serve search warrants, and obtain evidence … It was just ludicrous.’ ” On Wednesday of last week, just two days before FBI Director Comey issued his public letter to Congress, WikiLeaks released a devastating memo from Douglas Band, at the time a key figure at the Clinton Foundation and President of his own corporate consulting firm, Teneo. The memo was rife with suggestions of pay-to-play and personal enrichment schemes at the Clinton Foundation. The same day, Washington Post reporters Rosalind Helderman and Tom Hamburger reported the story, including the following details:

President Obama indicated on Friday that he won’t pardon NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, even as President-elect Donald Trump announced his pick to run the CIA: Kansas congressman Mike Pompeo, who has called for “the traitor Edward Snowden” to be executed.

In an interview with Obama published on Friday, German newspaper Der Spiegel asked: “Are you going to pardon Edward Snowden?” Obama replied: “I can’t pardon somebody who hasn’t gone before a court and presented themselves, so that’s not something that I would comment on at this point.” But P.S. Ruckman, editor of the Pardon Power blog said Obama is wrong to suggest he couldn’t pardon Snowden if he wanted to. Ruckman noted that Obama has previously only granted pardons and commutations to people who have already been convicted. “I just think what he may have better said is: ‘I prefer that he present himself to a court and then we’ll talk turkey.’ But technically in terms of the Constitution, there are no restrictions at all.” The operative Supreme Court ruling, from 1886, states that “The power of pardon conferred by the Constitution upon the President is unlimited except in cases of impeachment. It extends to every offence known to the law, and may be exercised at any time after its commission, either before legal proceedings are taken or during their pendency, or after conviction and judgment. The power is not subject to legislative control.”

President-elect Donald Trump is planning to restructure two of the nation's top intelligence agencies, according to a Wall Street Journal report published Wednesday. The newspaper writes that Trump plans to reduce the size of the office of the Director of National Intelligence and the CIA, fearing the agencies have become too large and politicized. "The view from the Trump team is the intelligence world has become completely politicized," The Journal quoted someone close to Trump's transition team as saying. "They all need to be slimmed down. The focus will be on restructuring the agencies and how they interact."

I have watched incredulous as the CIA’s blatant lie has grown and grown as a media story – blatant because the CIA has made no attempt whatsoever to substantiate it. There is no Russian involvement in the leaks of emails showing Clinton’s corruption. Yes this rubbish has been the lead today in the Washington Post in the US and the Guardian here, and was the lead item on the BBC main news. I suspect it is leading the American broadcasts also. A little simple logic demolishes the CIA’s claims. The CIA claim they “know the individuals” involved. Yet under Obama the USA has been absolutely ruthless in its persecution of whistleblowers, and its pursuit of foreign hackers through extradition. We are supposed to believe that in the most vital instance imaginable, an attempt by a foreign power to destabilise a US election, even though the CIA knows who the individuals are, nobody is going to be arrested or extradited, or (if in Russia) made subject to yet more banking and other restrictions against Russian individuals? Plainly it stinks. The anonymous source claims of “We know who it was, it was the Russians” are beneath contempt. As Julian Assange has made crystal clear, the leaks did not come from the Russians. As I have explained countless times, they are not hacks, they are insider leaks – there is a major difference between the two. And it should be said again and again, that if Hillary Clinton had not connived with the DNC to fix the primary schedule to disadvantage Bernie, if she had not received advance notice of live debate questions to use against Bernie, if she had not accepted massive donations to the Clinton foundation and family members in return for foreign policy influence, if she had not failed to distance herself from some very weird and troubling people, then none of this would have happened. The continued ability of the mainstream media to claim the leaks lost Clinton the election because of “Russia”, while still never acknowledging the truths the leaks reveal, is Kafkaesque.

I had a call from a Guardian journalist this afternoon. The astonishing result was that for three hours, an article was accessible through the Guardian front page which actually included the truth among the CIA hype: The Kremlin has rejected the hacking accusations, while the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has previously said the DNC leaks were not linked to Russia. A second senior official cited by the Washington Post conceded that intelligence agencies did not have specific proof that the Kremlin was “directing” the hackers, who were said to be one step removed from the Russian government. Craig Murray, the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, who is a close associate of Assange, called the CIA claims “bullshit”, adding: “They are absolutely making it up.” “I know who leaked them,” Murray said. “I’ve met the person who leaked them, and they are certainly not Russian and it’s an insider. It’s a leak, not a hack; the two are different things. “If what the CIA are saying is true, and the CIA’s statement refers to people who are known to be linked to the Russian state, they would have arrested someone if it was someone inside the United States. “America has not been shy about arresting whistleblowers and it’s not been shy about extraditing hackers. They plainly have no knowledge whatsoever.” But only three hours. While the article was not taken down, the home page links to it vanished and it was replaced by a ludicrous one repeating the mad CIA allegations against Russia and now claiming – incredibly – that the CIA believe the FBI is deliberately blocking the information on Russian collusion. Presumably this totally nutty theory, that Putin is somehow now controlling the FBI, is meant to answer my obvious objection that, if the CIA know who it is, why haven’t they arrested somebody. That bit of course would be the job of the FBI, who those desperate to annul the election now wish us to believe are the KGB. It is terrible that the prime conduit for this paranoid nonsense is a once great newspaper, the Washington Post, which far from investigating executive power, now is a sounding board for totally evidence free anonymous source briefing of utter bullshit from the executive.

Now both Julian Assange and I have stated definitively the leak does not come from Russia. Do we credibly have access? Yes, very obviously. Very, very few people can be said to definitely have access to the source of the leak. The people saying it is not Russia are those who do have access. After access, you consider truthfulness. Do Julian Assange and I have a reputation for truthfulness? Well in 10 years not one of the tens of thousands of documents WikiLeaks has released has had its authenticity successfully challenged. As for me, I have a reputation for inconvenient truth telling. Contrast this to the “credible sources” Freedland relies on. What access do they have to the whistleblower? Zero. They have not the faintest idea who the whistleblower is. Otherwise they would have arrested them. What reputation do they have for truthfulness? It’s the Clinton gang and the US government, for goodness sake. In fact, the sources any serious journalist would view as “credible” give the opposite answer to the one Freedland wants. But in what passes for Freedland’s mind, “credible” is 100% synonymous with “establishment”. When he says “credible sources” he means “establishment sources”. That is the truth of the “fake news” meme. You are not to read anything unless it is officially approved by the elite and their disgusting, crawling whores of stenographers like Freedland.

AUSTIN, Texas — Amid a wave of widespread criticism and legal threats, the Washington Post has added a lengthy editor’s note to an article which alleged that a host of independent media websites were spreading Russian propaganda. Washington Post added editor's note to top of "Russian propaganda" story after being called out for shoddy reportinghttps://t.co/dWKbZJGS9a pic.twitter.com/skGiZUX2Ls — Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) December 7, 2016 The article, written by Craig Timberg and published on Nov. 24, relied largely on information compiled by PropOrNot, an anonymous group that claims to be comprised of media analysts and researchers. At the time the Post story was published, the group’s homepage featured a list of 200 websites, including MintPress News and many other well-established independent media outlets, which the organization alleges are either deliberately or inadvertently spreading Russian propaganda. Among other criticisms levied against the group, PropOrNot’s research depends on overly broad criteria. According to its own stated methodology, criticism of the ”US, Obama, Hillary Clinton, the EU, Angela Merkel, NATO, Ukraine, Jewish people, US allies, the ‘mainstream media,’ and democrats, the center-right or center-left, and moderates of all stripes,” would be grounds for inclusion on “The List.” The Post added an editor’s note to the article on Wednesday in an apparent attempt to distance the newspaper from the controversy. “The Washington Post on Nov. 24 published a story on the work of four sets of researchers who have examined what they say are Russian propaganda efforts to undermine American democracy and interests,” the note begins.

While Timberg’s article does refer to the work of multiple researchers, the bulk of the report relied on allegations made by PropOrNot. The Washington Post continued: “One of them was PropOrNot, a group that insists on public anonymity, which issued a report identifying more than 200 websites that, in its view, wittingly or unwittingly published or echoed Russian propaganda. A number of those sites have objected to being included on PropOrNot’s list, and some of the sites, as well as others not on the list, have publicly challenged the group’s methodology and conclusions. The Post, which did not name any of the sites, does not itself vouch for the validity of PropOrNot’s findings regarding any individual media outlet, nor did the article purport to do so.” Numerous websites, including MintPress, have objected to their inclusion on “The List.” On Tuesday, James Moody, the lawyer representing the publisher of the website Naked Capitalism, demanded a formal retraction and public apology on Tuesday. Moody wrote: “You did not provide even a single example of ‘fake news’ allegedly distributed or promoted by Naked Capitalism or indeed any of the 200 sites on the PropOrNot blacklist. You provided no discussion or assessment of the credentials or backgrounds of these so-called ‘researchers’ (Clint Watts, Andrew Weisburd, and J.M. Berger and the “team” at PropOrNot), and no discussion or analysis of the methodology, protocol or algorithms such ‘researchers’ may or may not have followed.” Backlash against both PropOrNot and the Post’s story hasn’t just come from media outlets included on “The List,” though.

“The group promoted by the Post … embodies the toxic essence of Joseph McCarthy, but without the courage to attach individual names to the blacklist,” wrote Ben Norton and Glenn Greenwald in The Intercept, which was not featured on the PropOrNot list, on Nov. 26. The Post’s editor’s note concludes: “Since publication of The Post’s story, PropOrNot has removed some sites from its list.” However, MintPress and Naked Capitalism remain on “The List,” as do respected alternative and independent media sites Antiwar.com, Black Agenda Report, Truthout, and Truthdig. Overall, the Post’s new position seemed poorly received by many of the media analysts who have criticized the story. On Wednesday evening, Adam Johnson, a reporter who writes for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, tweeted that the Post editors who refuse to retract the story are “a bunch of cowards.” what a bunch of cowards. "This blacklist that served as the entire news basis of our piece is bullshit but we wont retract the story" https://t.co/V5ZSwSMgTg — Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) December 7, 2016 Timberg’s article appeared amid widespread outcry over the apparent threat of “fake news” against American democracy. Kevin Gosztola, managing editor of Shadowproof, told MintPress editor-in-chief Mnar Muhawesh that the rush to create “blacklists” of media outlets undermines the freedom of the press.

According to leaked documents released by Edward Snowden, British intelligence spied on Israeli diplomats and military officials in 2008 and 2009, the French newspaper Le Monde and Israel’s Haaretz reported on Wednesday. One of the files from 2009 said that “Britain’s GCHQ intelligence-gathering apparatus defined Israel as ‘a true threat’ to the Middle East”. “The Israelis constitute a true threat to regional security, notably because of the country’s position on the Iran issue,” the file said. The UK spy agency gathered data on the “second-highest ranking official in the Israeli foreign ministry”, who went unidentified by Le Monde and Haaretz. The two outlets also said that the UK gathered surveillance on the Palestinian Authority. GCHQ tapped the phone of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in December 2008, weeks before Israel launched an offensive the following month. GCHQ also monitored emails between Israel’s ambassadors to Kenya and Nigeria and the private Israel defence company Ophir Optronics. During those two years, the UK spied on the Palestinian Liberation Organisation’s secretary general and several Palestinian diplomatic delegations, including former Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qurei and Israeli-Palestinian parliamentarian Dr Ahmad Tibi.

At least 14 US-led coalition military advisers have been captured by the Syrian Special Forces in a bunker in the city of Aleppo, according to media reports.The event allegedly took place in the morning on December 16, 2016 (Voltaire.net):“The Security Council is sitting in private on Friday, December 16, 2016, at 17:00 GMT, while NATO officers were arrested this morning by the Syrian Special Forces in a bunker in East Aleppo.”21stcenturywire.com also provided a list of names of the coalition’s military advisers captured in Aleppo, citing a Syrian member of Parliament:Fares Shehabi, a prominent Syrian Parliamentarian and head of Aleppo’s Chamber of Commerce published the names of the Coalition officers on his Facebook page on the 15th December (emphasis added):Mutaz Kanoğlu – Turkey David Scott Winer – USA David Shlomo Aram – Israel Muhamad Tamimi – Qatar Muhamad Ahmad Assabian – Saudi Abd-el-Menham Fahd al Harij – Saudi Islam Salam Ezzahran Al Hajlan – Saudi Ahmed Ben Naoufel Al Darij – Saudi Muhamad Hassan Al Sabihi – Saudi Hamad Fahad Al Dousri – Saudi Amjad Qassem Al Tiraoui – Jordan Qassem Saad Al Shamry – Saudi Ayman Qassem Al Thahalbi – Saudi Mohamed Ech-Chafihi El Idrissi – Moroccan

Damascus-based Syrian journalist Said Hilal Alcharifi also reported on the issue in his Facebook account:Very urgent The Syrian authorities were able, thanks to information thorough, arrive at the headquarters of senior officers and western regional in the basement of a district of Aleppo-is, and capture them all alive. A few names have already been ex filtered to Syrian journalists including me. Seen the nationalities (us, French, British, German, Israelis, Turks, Saudis, Moroccans, Qatari, etc.. etc) of these scumbags and their military ranks, I assure you Syria holds in this moment a big treasures to carry out the negotiations with the countries that have destroyed.Earlier in December, SF already noted that the US despearate attempts to push a “diplomatic solution” in Aleppo could indicate that the Obama administration stalling for time to extricate US mercenaries and special service members from the Aleppo pocket:

Considering that US-led coalition military advisers have been widely operating across Syria, training and assisting to the so-called “moderate opposition” openly linked with al-Qaeda, the recently appeared reports are likely true.For isntance, British military advisers have officially arrived to Syria to restore combat capability of the ‘moderate’ opposition, retreated from Aleppo:British military advisers have arrived to Syria in order to restore combat capability of units of the ‘moderate’ opposition, retreated from Aleppo, the Izvestiya newspaper reported, citing a statement of UK Defense Minister Michael Fallon. According to Fallon, 20 British military instructors, who will train the opposition forces, involved in the fight against the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group, have already arrived at the destination.The dispatch of British advisers was announced in October, long before the recapture of Aleppo by the Syrian government forces. Initially, they had a task to train recruits to conduct combined arms combat, as well as to teach them the basics of tactical medicine and combat engineering. However, the situation changed and the task was changed too.

And that brings us once again to Henry Kissinger, the putative dalang — puppet master — of Trump’s foreign policy. As leaked late last year in Germany’s Bild Zeitung newspaper, Kissinger has drafted a plan to officially recognize Crimea as part of Russia and lift the Obama administration’s economic sanctions.

The plan fits into Kissinger’s overall strategy — call it a traditional British Balance of Power, or Divide and Rule, approach — of breaking up the Eurasian front (Russia-China-Iran) that constitutes the real “threat” to what Mattis defines as the “established world order.” The strategy consists in seducing the alleged weaker top “threat” (Russia) away from the stronger (China), while keeping on antagonizing/harassing the third and weakest pole, Iran. Kissinger is certainly more sophisticated than predictable US Think Tankland in his attempt to dismember the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, one of key nodes of the Russia-China strategic partnership. The SCO has been on the go for a decade and a half now. Iran, an observer, will soon become a full member, as will India and Pakistan; and Turkey — after the failed coup against Erdogan — is being courted by Moscow. German analyst Peter Spengler adds a juicy teaser — if Kissinger’s “Metternichian approach would include some degree of ‘harmonization’ with Russia, how will a Trump presidency then manage to contain the re-engineered ally Germany?” After all, a key priority for sanctions-averse German industrialists is to vastly expand business with Russia.

Kissinger’s strategy essentially tweaks the early 1970s Trilateral Commission, largely advanced by his rival dalang Dr Zbigniew “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski, according to which geopolitics is to be managed by North America, Western Europe and Japan.

Israel's former foreign minister cancelled a trip to Brussels after Belgian prosecutors confirmed they wanted to question her over war crimes allegations. Tzipi Livni was expected to meet Jewish leaders in the city on Monday, but cancelled ahead of time. A spokesman for the event said Livni cancelled for "personal reasons" but local newspaper Le Soir said prosecutors had been hoping to question her over allegations of war crimes in the 2008-9 Israeli war in Gaza, when she was foreign minister. "We wanted to take advantage of her visit to try to advance the investigation," a spokesman for Belgium's federal prosecutor Thierry Werts told the AFP news agency. Livni is named along with other political and military leaders in a complaint filed in June 2010 over alleged crimes committed during the Gaza war. More than 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians, died during the Israeli offensive between December 27, 2008 to January 18, 2009. 

Belgian authorities have the right to detain a suspect in its territory on crimes related to international law, as one of the victims had Belgian citizenship. The Belgian federal prosecutor's office believes Livni, now a member of parliament and opposition leader, is not protected by immunity.

The Belgian-Palestinian Association supporting the complaint said in a statement it wanted to hold Livni responsible for her role in the war, as well as Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak, then prime minister and minister of defence. In December 2009, Livni cancelled a visit to London after being informed that she was the subject of an arrest warrant issued by a UK court over her role in the same war. An Israeli foreign ministry spokesman said the planned interrogation was "a cheap publicity stunt with no legal basis".

Brazil today awoke to stunning news of secret, genuinely shocking conversations involving a key minister in Brazil’s newly installed government, which shine a bright light on the actual motives and participants driving the impeachment of the country’s democratically elected president, Dilma Rousseff. The transcripts were published by the country’s largest newspaper, Folha de São Paulo, and reveal secret conversations that took place in March, just weeks before the impeachment vote in the lower house was held. They show explicit plotting between the new planning minister (then-senator), Romero Jucá, and former oil executive Sergio Machado — both of whom are formal targets of the “Car Wash” corruption investigation — as they agree that removing Dilma is the only means for ending the corruption investigation. The conversations also include discussions of the important role played in Dilma’s removal by the most powerful national institutions, including — most importantly — Brazil’s military leaders. The transcripts are filled with profoundly incriminating statements about the real goals of impeachment and who was behind it. The crux of this plot is what Jucá calls “a national pact” — involving all of Brazil’s most powerful institutions — to leave Michel Temer in place as president (notwithstanding his multiple corruption scandals) and to kill the corruption investigation once Dilma is removed. In the words of Folha, Jucá made clear that impeachment will “end the pressure from the media and other sectors to continue the Car Wash investigation.” Jucá is the leader of Temer’s PMDB party and one of the “interim president’s” three closest confidants.

It is unclear who is responsible for recording and leaking the 75-minute conversation, but Folha reports that the files are currently in the hand of the prosecutor general. The next few hours and days will likely see new revelations that will shed additional light on the implications and meaning of these transcripts. The transcripts contain two extraordinary revelations that should lead all media outlets to seriously consider whether they should call what took place in Brazil a “coup”: a term Dilma and her supporters have used for months. When discussing the plot to remove Dilma as a means of ending the Car Wash investigation, Jucá said the Brazilian military is supporting the plot: “I am talking to the generals, the military commanders. They are fine with this, they said they will guarantee it.” He also said the military is “monitoring the Landless Workers Movement” (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, or MST), the social movement of rural workers that supports PT’s efforts of land reform and inequality reduction and has led the protests against impeachment.

The second blockbuster revelation — perhaps even more significant — is Jucá’s statement that he spoke with and secured the involvement of numerous justices on Brazil’s Supreme Court, the institution that impeachment defenders have repeatedly pointed to as vesting the process with legitimacy in order to deny that Dilma’s removal is a coup. Jucá claimed that “there are only a small number” of Court justices to whom he had not obtained access (the only justice he said he ultimately could not get to is Teori Zavascki, who was appointed by Dilma and who — notably — Jucá viewed as incorruptible in obtaining his help to kill the investigation (a central irony of impeachment is that Dilma has protected the Car Wash investigation from interference by those who want to impeach her)). The transcripts also show him saying that “the press wants to take her [Dilma] out,” so “this shit will never stop” — meaning the corruption investigations — until she’s gone. The transcripts provide proof for virtually every suspicion and accusation impeachment opponents have long expressed about those plotting to remove Dilma from office. For months, supporters of Brazil’s democracy have made two arguments about the attempt to remove the country’s democratically elected president: (1) the core purpose of Dilma’s impeachment is not to stop corruption or punish lawbreaking, but rather the exact opposite: to protect the actual thieves by empowering them with Dilma’s exit, thus enabling them to kill the Car Wash investigation; and (2) the impeachment advocates (led by the country’s oligarchical media) have zero interest in clean government, but only in seizing power that they could never obtain democratically, in order to impose a right-wing, oligarch-serving agenda that the Brazilian population would never accept.

A key figure in Brazil’s interim government has resigned after explosive new transcripts revealed how he plotted to oust President Dilma Rousseff in order to end a corruption investigation that was targeting him. The transcripts, published by Brazil’s largest newspaper, Folha de São Paulo, document a conversation in March, just weeks before Brazil’s lower house voted in favor of impeaching President Rousseff. Romero Jucá, who was then a senator but became a planning minister after Rousseff’s ouster, was speaking with a former oil executive, Sérgio Machado. Both men had been targets of the so-called Car Wash investigation over money laundering and corruption at the state-controlled oil firm Petrobras. In the conversation, the men agree that ousting President Rousseff would be the only way to end the corruption probe. In the transcript, Jucá said, "We have to change the government so the bleeding is stopped." Machado then reportedly said, "The easiest solution is to put Michel in"—a reference to Vice President Michel Temer, who took power once Rousseff was suspended. We speak to Maria Luisa Mendonça, director of Brazil’s Network for Social Justice and Human Rights.

According to the conservative English language newspaper Yeni Savak,  ”a former U.S. commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), a NATO-led security mission in Afghanistan, was the organizer of the July 15 military coup attempt in Turkey”.  Four Star US Army General Campbell and Vice Chief of Staff (March 2013-August 2014) assumed command of  ISAF from August to December of 2014. He was then appointed Commander of NATO’s Afghanistan Operation Resolute Support, “a training, advisory, assistance, and counter-terror mission” from which he retired in March 2016, four months prior to Turkey’s failed coup.  It should be noted that the Turkey based news media does not fully acknowledge its sources of information. The report remains to be fully corroborated.

According to Yeni Savak:   General John F. Campbell was one of the top figures who organized and managed the soldiers behind the failed coup attempt in Turkey, sources close to ongoing legal process of pro-coup detainees said. Campbell also managed more than $2 billion money transactions via UBA Bank in Nigeria by using CIA links to distribute among the pro-coup military personnel in Turkey. The ongoing investigation unveiled that Campbell had paid at least two secret visits to Turkey since May, until the day of the coup attempt.

The report intimates that General Campbell operated in tandem with  the Fethullah Gülen organization. It also intimates that US intelligence and military were behind the failed coup. Military sources said Campbell, who was the commander of ISAF between August 26, 2014 and May 1, 2016, had made some top secret meetings in Erzurum military base and Adana İnicrlik Airbase. İncirlik Airbase has been used by the U.S. Military for conducting the anti-Daesh campaign in Syria. Military sources said that Campbell was the man, who directed the process of trending / blacklisting the military officers in the base. If the coup attempt was successful, Campbell would visit Turkey in a short time, according to the sources. The report also examined the alleged money transactions focussing on the role of  The Nigeria branch of the United Bank of Africa (UBA), which allegedly constituted “the main base for the last six-months of money transactions for the coup plotters”. The report also underscored the role of the CIA in implementing the money transfers

The national security subcommittee of the GOP platform committee today approved a plank that calls for the declassification of 28 pages that are said to link the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to the 9/11 hijackers. The plank was introduced by Maine state senator Eric Brakey, who contacted 28Pages.org director Brian McGlinchey last week after hearing his interview on The Tom Woods Show. McGlinchey helped Brakey draft the plank’s language.

Planks are official expressions of the party’s opinions on various issues. To be incorporated in the final platform, the 28 pages plank must first be approved on Tuesday by a majority of the full, 112-member platform committee. Then, along with all the other proposed planks, it must be approved by the full body of next week’s GOP convention in Cleveland. If adopted, the plank would represent an important new endorsement of the release of the 28 pages. Supporters of declassification already include more than 70 Democratic and Republican members of Congress, former members of the 9/11 Commission and the editorial boards of many of the nation’s most prominent newspapers, including The New York Times and USA Today.

Brakey’s 28 pages plank reads: Delivering Transparency on Foreign Government Ties to 9/11 As the nation continues to confront terrorism at home and abroad, the American people are being denied access to information that can provide vital insight into the funding of Islamic extremism: 28 classified pages from a 2002 joint congressional intelligence inquiry into the September 11 attacks. A former senator who co-chaired the inquiry says the pages “point a very strong finger at Saudi Arabia as being the principal financier” of the 9/11 attacks and that, by shielding the kingdom from consequences for its actions, the redaction has encouraged its continued sponsorship of extremism and paved the way for the rise of ISIS. President Obama twice promised 9/11 family members he would release the pages, which could be invaluable in their pursuit of justice in the courtroom. However, his administration has refused to declassify them, even in the face of bipartisan support for their release that includes former 9/11 Commission members and 73 current representatives and senators. These pages must be released. As Thomas Jefferson said, “An enlightened citizenry is indispensable for the proper functioning of a republic. Self-government is not possible unless the citizens are educated sufficiently to enable them to exercise oversight.”