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Eric Holder: The Justice Department could strike deal with Edward SnowdenMichael IsikoffChief Investigative CorrespondentJuly 6, 2015Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. (Photo: Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty) Former Attorney General Eric Holder said today that a “possibility exists” for the Justice Department to cut a deal with former NSA contractor Edward Snowden that would allow him to return to the United States from Moscow. In an interview with Yahoo News, Holder said “we are in a different place as a result of the Snowden disclosures” and that “his actions spurred a necessary debate” that prompted President Obama and Congress to change policies on the bulk collection of phone records of American citizens. Asked if that meant the Justice Department might now be open to a plea bargain that allows Snowden to return from his self-imposed exile in Moscow, Holder replied: “I certainly think there could be a basis for a resolution that everybody could ultimately be satisfied with. I think the possibility exists.”

But his remarks to Yahoo News go further than any current or former Obama administration official in suggesting that Snowden’s disclosures had a positive impact and that the administration might be open to a negotiated plea that the self-described whistleblower could accept, according to his lawyer Ben Wizner.

It’s also not clear whether Holder’s comments signal a shift in Obama administration attitudes that could result in a resolution of the charges against Snowden. Melanie Newman, chief spokeswoman for Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Holder’s successor, immediately shot down the idea that the Justice Department was softening its stance on Snowden. “This is an ongoing case so I am not going to get into specific details but I can say our position regarding bringing Edward Snowden back to the United States to face charges has not changed,” she said in an email.

If we want to curb terrorism in the United States, we must stop drone attacks in the Middle East.

It’s a sick myth that Islamic extremists attack the United States or other nations because they “hate our freedom.” They attack us for our foreign policy. In 2006, the United States National Intelligence Estimate reported that the US invasion and occupation of Iraq made the problem of terrorism worse by creating a new generation of terrorists. And since then, top ranking military and counter-terrorism authorities such as General Stanley McChrystal, General Mike Flynn and George W. Bush’s counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke say that drone strikes in particular are creating more terrorists than they’re killing. If we want to stop terrorist attacks, we should stop the barbaric blind bombings that are fueling radicalization.

“The resentment created by American use of unmanned strikes … is much greater than the average American appreciates,” Gen. McChrystal, who led the US counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan, said in 2013. “They are hated on a visceral level, even by people who’ve never seen one or seen the effects of one.” <a href="http://ad.doubleclick.net/N617/jump/defenseone.com/section_ideas;pos=defenseone-instream;sz=600x300;" title=""> <img alt="" src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/N617/ad/defenseone.com/section_ideas;pos=defenseone-instream;sz=600x300;tile=4;"/> </a> <a href="http://ad.doubleclick.net/N617/jump/defenseone.com/section_ideas;pos=contextual-large-rectangle-tablet;sz=700x350;" title=""> <img alt="" src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/N617/ad/defenseone.com/section_ideas;pos=contextual-large-rectangle-tablet;sz=700x350;tile=5;"/> </a> <a href="http://ad.doubleclick.net/N617/jump/defenseone.com/section_ideas;pos=contextual-large-rectangle-mobile;sz=300x150;" title=""> <img alt="" src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/N617/ad/defenseone.com/section_ideas;pos=contextual-large-rectangle-mobile;sz=300x150;tile=6;"/> </a> Gen. Flynn, who until recently was the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency and has become a harsh critic of President Obama’s strategy in the Middle East, has said, “When you drop a bomb from a drone … you are going to cause more damage than you are going to cause good.” Flynn, who has actually backs a more muscular military approach, doesn’t think it should include drones. Clarke has said that when we use unmanned drones to drop bombs which, no matter how hard we try otherwise, inevitably kill innocent people: [Y]ou cause enemies for the United States that will last for generations. All of these innocent people that you kill have brothers and sisters and tribe—tribal relations. Many of them were not opposed to the United States prior to some one of their friends or relatives being killed. And then, sometimes, they cross over, not only to being opposed to the United States, but by being willing to pick up arms and become a terrorist against the United States. So you may actually be creating terrorists, rather than eliminating them,

British authorities are capable of tapping into bulk communications data collected by other countries' intelligence services—including the National Security Agency—without a warrant, according to secret government documents released Tuesday. The agreement between the NSA and Britain's spy agency, known as Government Communications Headquarters or GCHQ, potentially puts the Internet and phone data of Americans in the hands of another country without legal oversight when obtaining a warrant is "not technically feasible."   The data, once obtained, can be kept for up to two years, according to internal policies disclosed by the British government. GCHQ was forced to reveal that it can request and receive vast quantities of raw, unanalyzed data collected from foreign governments it partners with during legal proceedings in a closed court hearing in a case brought by various international human-rights organizations, including Privacy International, Liberty U.K., and Amnesty International. The suit challenges certain aspects of GCHQ's surveillance practices.

It is well known that the NSA and GCHQ closely share intelligence data with one another, as part of a long-standing surveillance partnership. Some details of the agencies' spy pact were exposed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden last year, including the existence of GCHQ's Tempora program, which taps into fiber-optic cables to scoop up online and telephone traffic across the Web for up to 30 days. But this is the first time the British government has disclosed that it does not require a warrant to access data collected and maintained by its American counterparts. The revelation appears to counter statements made by an oversight committee of the British Parliament in July of last year that "in each case where GCHQ sought information from the U.S., a warrant for interception, signed by a minister, was already in place."   It is unclear whether any restrictions on Britain's access to NSA surveillance data is imposed by the U.S. However, documents provided by Snowden to The Guardian last year reveal that the NSA shares raw intelligence data with Israel without removing information about U.S. citizens.

In a statement, the NSA said it works with a number of partner countries to further its "foreign intelligence mission." But it did not specify whether it was aware of or condoned Britain's apparent warrantless access of its data. "Whenever NSA shares intelligence information, we comply with all applicable rules, including rules designed to safeguard U.S. person information," the agency said. "NSA does not ask its foreign partners to undertake any intelligence activity that the U.S. government would be legally prohibited from undertaking itself." American privacy advocates quickly condemned any warrantless access of U.S. communications data by British authorities.   "The 'arrangement' disclosed today suggests that the two countries are circumventing even the very weak safeguards that have been put in place," Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement to National Journal. "It underscores both the inadequacy of existing oversight structures and the pressing need for [surveillance] reform."

Information about ordinary Australian citizens has been offered to Australia's global spying partners, according to the latest reports of leaked intelligence from US whistleblower Edward Snowden. In revelations that will add pressure to the Abbott government, which is still reeling from the Indonesian spying leak, The Guardian is reporting that Australia's surveillance agency has indicated it would share “bulk” data with its “5-eyes” partners – an intelligence-sharing network comprising the US, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.

“The document shows the partners discussing whether or not to share 'medical, legal or religious information',” the report states. Advertisement <iframe id="dcAd-1-4" src="http://ad-apac.doubleclick.net/N6411/adi/onl.smh.news/federalpolitics/politicalnews;cat=federalpolitics;cat1=politicalnews;ctype=article;pos=3;sz=300x250;tile=4;ord=3.4276163E7?" width='300' height='250' scrolling="no" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0"> </iframe> The latest spying revelations are based on a secret 2008 document obtained by Mr Snowden, a former contractor who had access to high-level US government intelligence. Mr Snowden's document reveals notes of what was discussed at a “5-eyes” conference hosted by Britain's GCHQ in Cheltenham on April 22-23, 2008. According to the report, Australia's intelligence agency, then known as the Defence Signals Directorate, told its global intelligence partners it could share “bulk, unselected, unminimised metadata as long as there is no intent to target an Australian national”.

The partners also agreed that medical, legal or religious would not be automatically excluded from the sharing arrangement, but would instead be considered by the owning agency ‘‘on a case-by-case basis’’.  The Australian intelligence agency was reportedly willing to reveal more about its country's citizens, with fewer privacy restraints, than other countries. According to The Guardian’s report, the documents reveal that Canada imposed more rigorous privacy restrictions than Australia, agreeing to share information on the condition that information about its citizens first be redacted. Prime Minister Tony Abbott said he was confident Australian intelligence agencies were acting in accordance with the law and there were adequate safeguards in place.

In New York City, the police now maintain an unknown number of military-grade vans outfitted with X-ray radiation, enabling cops to look through the walls of buildings or the sides of trucks. The technology was used in Afghanistan before being loosed on U.S. streets. Each X-ray van costs an estimated $729,000 to $825,000.The NYPD will not reveal when, where, or how often they are used.

Here are some specific questions that New York City refuses to answer:How is the NYPD ensuring that innocent New Yorkers are not subject to harmful X-ray radiation? How long is the NYPD keeping the images that it takes and who can look at them? Is the NYPD obtaining judicial authorization prior to taking images, and if so, what type of authorization? Is the technology funded by taxpayer money, and has the use of the vans justified the price tag? Those specifics are taken from a New York Civil Liberties Union court filing. The legal organization is seeking to assist a lawsuit filed by Pro Publica journalist Michael Grabell, who has been fighting New York City for answers about X-ray vans for 3 years.“ProPublica filed the request as part of its investigation into the proliferation of security equipment, including airport body scanners, that expose people to ionizing radiation, which can mutate DNA and increase the risk of cancer,” he explained. (For fear of a terrorist “dirty bomb,” America’s security apparatus is exposing its population to radiation as a matter of course.)

A state court has already ruled that the NYPD has to turn over policies, procedures, and training manuals that shape uses of X-rays; reports on past deployments; information on the costs of the X-ray devices and the number of vans purchased; and information on the health and safety effects of the technology. But New York City is fighting on appeal to suppress that information and more, as if it is some kind of spy agency rather than a municipal police department operating on domestic soil, ostensibly at the pleasure of city residents.Its insistence on extreme secrecy is part of an alarming trend. The people of New York City are effectively being denied the ability to decide how they want to be policed.

WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange on Wednesday night promised to leak “thousands” of document pages pertaining to Hillary Clinton, the Democratic National Committee and the presidential election. Speaking to Fox News’ Megyn Kelly, the mysterious Assange claimed an upcoming leak would have a “significant” impact on the coming general election. Story Continued Below “We have a lot of material, thousands of pages of material,” said the WikiLeaks leader, who remains in exile at Ecuador's embassy in London. “There's a variety of different types of documents and different types of institutions that are associated with the election campaign, some quite unexpected angles that are, you know, quite interesting, some even entertaining.”

While refusing to unveil a timetable for the leak, Assange addressed whether the documents in the group’s position could be damaging to the Democratic nominee. “I think it's significant,” he said. “You know, it depends on how it catches fire in the public and in the media.”

Instead of making a real effort to find out the truth of what actually happened to the Syrian aid convoy the Western media preferred to repeat whatever the US and the Jihadis told them as if it was true.

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The outgoing U.S. director of national intelligence has extended an olive branch of sorts to Donald Trump — denouncing media leaks, casting skepticism on a report that Russia has damaging material on the president-elect, and assuring Trump that America's spies stand ready to serve him. In an unusual statement, James Clapper said he had spoken Wednesday evening with Trump, five days after the spy chief and some of his counterparts met with the incoming president to discuss U.S. intelligence assessments that Russia tried to interfere in the 2016 election, possibly to help him win.Story Continued Below The assessment has badly aggravated existing tensions between the intelligence community and Trump. On Tuesday, CNN, BuzzFeed and other media outlets reported that, during Friday’s briefing, the intelligence officials told Trump about an unsubstantiated private report that detailed how Russia's government allegedly had salacious information about him. In addition, BuzzFeed published the apparent dossier, which Trump has since denounced as “fake news.” "I expressed my profound dismay at the leaks that have been appearing in the press, and we both agreed that they are extremely corrosive and damaging to our national security," Clapper said of the information that has come out since last week's intelligence briefing.

Clapper’s statement represented a dramatic turn of events only 24 hours after initial leaks about the intelligence leaders having told Trump of the dossier. And while Clapper’s statement indirectly confirmed the media reports of the briefing, it also could be viewed as a concession of sorts from an intelligence community that has come under repeated, direct fire from the president-elect. Trump had compared the leak from his briefing to “Nazi Germany” on Twitter on Wednesday morning, writing, “Intelligence agencies should never have allowed this fake news to "leak" into the public. One last shot at me. Are we living in Nazi Germany?” In a news conference, also held Wednesday, Trump defended the comparison and elaborated further, saying, “A thing like that should have never been written, it should never have been had, and it certainly should never have been released.” Clapper, however, said he did not believe the leaks to the press came from the intelligence community. At the same time, he indicated that the intelligence community decided to share the material with Trump because its mere existence was important for the incoming president to know about.

As far as the "private security company document," Clapper said, "I emphasized that this document is not a U.S. Intelligence Community product and that I do not believe the leaks came from within the IC. The IC has not made any judgment that the information in this document is reliable, and we did not rely upon it in any way for our conclusions."

Mitch McConnell conducted a survey on Sen. Marco Rubio on Thursday: At a GOP caucus lunch, he asked senators whether they’d like to see Rubio run for reelection. Every hand in the room went up. And then the Senate majority leader told senators to get to work persuading Rubio to ditch his retirement from the chamber after one term and run again, according to two sources familiar with the matter. Story Continued Below National Republicans are growing increasingly worried about their chances in Florida's open Senate race. And Rubio — adamant until now that he will seek a job in the private sector after his failed bid for president — is leaving the door open, if only a millimeter. The Florida senator on Thursday said it was "unlikely" he would jump into the race, even as fellow Republicans began openly urging him to. A chaotic, five-way Republican primary has stoked worries that Rubio's seat will flip to Democrats.

Spy chief James Clapper said Thursday that U.S. intelligence services are facing a "version of war" with Russia — but it's too soon to blame the old Cold War rival for hacking the Democratic National Committee's emails. He said it's also too early to say whether the people who leaked those emails are trying to throw the presidential election to Donald Trump, as Hillary Clinton's campaign has charged. Story Continued Below "I don't think we're quite ready yet to make a call on attribution," Clapper said at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado. "There are just a few usual suspects out there." Additionally, he said, "We don't know enough to ascribe motivation regardless of who it might have been." The reasons for the administration's reluctance to assign blame are a combination of two factors, Clapper said: uncertainty about whether the Russians are the culprits, and the lack of a decision yet on whether the U.S. should "name and shame" them if indeed they committed the cyberattack. No one should be "hyperventilating" about the hack, though, he said. "I'm shocked somebody did some hacking," he said, sarcastically taking the voice of someone who was surprised. "That's never happened before."

A raft of new polls out this week carried almost unanimously good news for Hillary Clinton, staking the Democratic presidential nominee to significant leads over Donald Trump. But there’s one potential warning sign in these polls should the race narrow: Clinton’s lead over Trump shrinks when voters are allowed to choose one of the major third-party candidates in the race. Yet the Libertarian Party’s presidential ticket — composed of former GOP Gov. Gary Johnson of New Mexico and former GOP Gov. Bill Weld of Massachusetts — appears to draw more from voters who might otherwise be aligned with Clinton, especially younger voters.Story Continued Below The same is true of Green Party nominee Jill Stein — though to a lesser degree, since Stein doesn’t earn nearly the same level of support as Johnson.

With only days left to act and Rand Paul threatening a filibuster, Senate Republicans remain deeply divided over the future of the PATRIOT Act and have no clear path to keep key government spying authorities from expiring at the end of the month. Crucial parts of the PATRIOT Act, including a provision authorizing the government’s controversial bulk collection of American phone records, first revealed by Edward Snowden, are due to lapse May 31. That means Congress has barely a week to figure out a fix before before lawmakers leave town for Memorial Day recess at the end of the next week. Story Continued Below The prospects of a deal look grim: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Thursday night proposed just a two-month extension of expiring PATRIOT Act provisions to give the two sides more time to negotiate, but even that was immediately dismissed by critics of the program.

The chairman of the House Benghazi Committee said on Sunday former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s scheduled Oct. 22 committee testimony on the 2012 terrorist attack in Libya will take as long as necessary for all of the committee’s questions to be answered. “If she is going to insist on only coming once, I’m going to insist that all questions are asked and answered, so she’s going to be there for a while,” Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said on “Fox News Sunday.” Story Continued Below The questions, he said, will include why Clinton set up a private email account to use at the State Department and why some classified documents were on her private server. “I don’t have any yoga emails, but the greater steps you take to delete something or clean something — that is a higher level of concealment,” Gowdy said, referring to comments that Clinton deleted private emails related to yoga classes and her daughter Chelsea’s wedding.

Gowdy insisted the committee’s investigation is to determine how four Americans died at the U.S. diplomatic compound in Libya and is not politically motivated. “We are trying to run this in the way serious investigations are run,” he said. “We are going to follow the facts wherever they go — and if that impacts people’s perception of her fitness to be commander and chief, so be it.”

Hillary Clinton’s email problem is a “drip,drip,drip” that just won’t stop. On Monday, it turned into a steady trickle. As the Democratic front-runner tried to shift attention to policy issues and the retail politics of Iowa, a series of developments in court and on Capitol Hill showed that Clinton’s email saga is unlikely to end soon. Story Continued Below A federal judge on Monday scheduled a hearing for later this week to discuss whether the State Department has ensured the retrieval of all official records Clinton, the former secretary of state, and her top aides held on personal email accounts or devices. This came after a lawyer for the technology firm that maintained Clinton’s private server after she left office held out the prospect that at least some of the data is likely preserved on a backup server. New figures emerged in a court filing about the number of potentially classified messages held in Clinton’s private account, now up to 305. And a Republican senator pressed Clinton’s personal lawyer for answers on how the emails were stored and whether he had the security clearance to retain a thumb drive of potentially sensitive data.

As Russia continues airstrikes in Syria, a fight is brewing between members of Congress and U.S. intelligence agencies over what lawmakers were told about the Russian military operations, and when.The House Intelligence Committee, which oversees the CIA and other spy agencies responsible for tracking the Russian military buildup in Syria, is “looking at possible problems in the timely provision of information to Congress,” a congressional staff member told The Daily Beast. Three other officials confirmed that the inquiry—which is not a formal investigation—is underway and that lawmakers have been talking to intelligence officials about whether their reports to Congress accurately predicted when the Russian air strikes would begin and that they would target rebel groups fighting the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

U.S. intelligence officials fired back that they had provided lawmakers with warnings about Russia’s intentions to begin military operations in Syria, including in the weeks before airstrikes began in late September. “Any suggestion that the intelligence community was surprised by Russia’s military support to the Assad regime is misleading,” a senior intelligence official told The Daily Beast. Members of Congress had access to intelligence reports on the movements of Russian aircraft into Syria as well as the buildup of ground troops and could read them anytime they chose, another official said.

“For several years, the Intelligence Community has provided regular assessments of Russia’s military, political, and financial support to the [Assad] regime,” Brian Hale, a spokesperson for the Director of National Intelligence, said in a statement. “In recent months, the Intelligence Community tracked and reported Moscow’s determination to play a more direct role in propping up Assad’s grip on power, including its deployment of offensive military assets to Syria. While these events unfolded quickly, the IC carried out its responsibilities with equal agility.”The pushback from officials underscored how sensitive the agencies are to allegations of “intelligence failures” and in particular being behind the curve about Russia’s international ambitions and the rise of extremists groups in the Middle East. The Defense Department is also investigating allegations that senior intelligence officials at the military’s Central Command manipulated intelligence reports to paint a rosy picture about the U.S.-led air campaign against the so-called Islamic State, widely known as ISIS, in Iraq and Syria.

President Barack Obama on Friday took the first declared U.S. action against North Korea in response to the crippling cyberattack on Sony Pictures Entertainment over Thanksgiving, ordering a fresh set of financial sanctions against the authoritarian regime. Senior administration officials told reporters it was the first time the U.S. has sanctioned a country as a direct result of a cyberattack on an American business, though in the past sanctions have been imposed for human rights abuses by cyber means. Story Continued Below The president signed an executive order Friday afternoon authorizing the action, and the Treasury Department immediately sanctioned a North Korean government agency, two trading companies and 10 individuals affiliated with them under the new powers.

The FBI announced it had concluded North Korea was behind the attack, which wiped out Sony’s servers and computer network for a week and dumped massive amounts of sensitive company data, emails and other intellectual property on the Internet, on Dec. 19. Obama reiterated the government’s determination of North Korea’s responsibility at a press conference that day before leaving for his Hawaiian trip, and pledged a “proportionate response.” Friday’s sanctions are the U.S. government’s first declared response since that day. In the interim, the cybersecurity community has expressed skepticism of North Korea’s culpability based on the indicators the FBI cited as evidence for its conclusion, but officials and the FBI have remained firm that there is no evidence suggesting any other entity is behind the attack. In Friday’s call an official said the FBI is “standing by our assessment” and has access to channels for intelligence that private security firms do not.

At least 15 journalists have been unfairly arrested during the clashes between the police and protesters in Ferguson, Missouri, after a white officer shot dead a young unarmed black man, Michael Brown, on 9 August. As rioting has gripped the town for almost two weeks, police have cracked down on the journalists covering the violence. The arbitrary detention of Washington Post reporter Wesley Lowery and Ryan J. Reilly of the Huffington Post on 13 August appeared at first to be isolated instances as a result of the protests getting out of hand, but they were followed by the arrests of at least 13 more journalists, three of them German and one Turkish. All were handcuffed as a matter of routine. The freelance photojournalist Coulter Loeb, on assignment for the Cincinnati Herald, is the most recent to have been placed under arrest. He was held for six hours overnight on 19 August. Journalists are also victims of police brutality. According to Al-Jazeera correspondent Ash-har Quraishi, tear gas was deliberately aimed at his crew.

“Reporters Without Borders calls for the punishment of the officers responsible for the arbitrary arrests of journalists covering the demonstrations,” said Camille Soulier, the head of the organization’s Americas desk. “The arrest of journalists for reporting on the riots are in flagrant violation of International conventions as well as the U.S. constitution. An investigation must be carried out to identify the officers that deliberately assaulted and threatened those working for the media. There could be further wrongful arrests unless the authorities take decisive action against such shortcomings on the part of the police.” A resolution passed by the U.N. Human Rights Council in March this year urges states to “pay particular attention to the safety of journalists and media workers covering peaceful protests.” On 15 August, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Missouri police authorities signed an agreement that they “acknowledge and agree that the media and members of the public have the right to record public events without abridgement unless it obstructs the activities or threatens the safety of others, or physically interferes with the ability of law enforcement officers to perform their duties.”

Such an agreement may appear unnecessary in the land of the First Amendment, but it should act as a reminder to officers on the ground. In addition, Reporters Without Borders and more than 40 other media organizations have signed a letter at the instigation of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press requesting the Missouri police authorities to allow journalist to do their work. The journalists arrested in Ferguson are listed on the website of the Freedom of the Press Foundation. The United States is ranked 46th of 180 countries in the 2014 Reporters without Borders press freedom index, 13 places below its position in the 2013 edition.