Group items tagged

The White House and Israel are locked in an information war on Capitol Hill, and right now, Israel may be winning. All week, the Obama administration has provided facts and figures to lawmakers on its sanctions relief proposal to build support for a deal on Iran's nuclear program. But some members in Congress don't trust the data U.S. officials are providing -- they trust conflicting data provided privately by senior Israeli officials. According to multiple Congressional aides, Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee are storming Capitol Hill in an effort to discredit the Obama administration's interim nuclear deal with Iran. The effort coincides with a visit by Israel's Minister of Economy Naftali Bennett, who is also speaking with lawmakers on the Hill. The campaign includes one-on-one briefings with lawmakers that provide data that strays from official U.S. assessments.

The wide discrepancies led to a major clash of viewpoints during Wednesday's classified briefing between Secretary of State John Kerry and members of the Senate Banking Committee. One GOP Senate aide said the administration repeatedly shot down data cited by senators provided by Israeli officials. "You'd raise the Israeli perspective and they'd say, that's wrong -- the Israelis don't know what they're talking about," the aide told The Cable."The administration would interrupt, 'that information is inaccurate.'"  One of the senators citing Israeli data was Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), who said Kerry's briefing was "anti-Israeli."

When Edward Snowden leaked American intelligence secrets the whole world became aware of the extent of US-UK surveillance of global phone and internet traffic. Have the revelations flagged up a corrosive infringement of individual liberty, or undermined efforts to protect the world from terrorism? Hardtalk speaks to journalist, Glenn Greenwald - the man who broke the Snowden story. His mission, he says, is to hold power to account. Is this a journalistic crusade that's gone too far?

If Argentina were in a high-stakes chess match, the country’s actions this week would be the equivalent of flipping over all the pieces on the board. – David Dayen, Fiscal Times, August 22, 2014 Argentina is playing hardball with the vulture funds, which have been trying to force it into an involuntary bankruptcy. The vultures are demanding what amounts to a 600% return on bonds bought for pennies on the dollar, defeating a 2005 settlement in which 92% of creditors agreed to accept a 70% haircut on their bonds. A US court has backed the vulture funds; but last week, Argentina sidestepped its jurisdiction by transferring the trustee for payment from Bank of New York Mellon to its own central bank. That play, if approved by the Argentine Congress, will allow the country to continue making payments under its 2005 settlement, avoiding default on the majority of its bonds. Argentina is already foreclosed from international capital markets, so it doesn’t have much to lose by thwarting the US court system. Similar bold moves by Ecuador and Iceland have left those countries in substantially better shape than Greece, which went along with the agendas of the international financiers.

In the United States and Europe, it is unchallenged in political and media circles that intelligence documents purporting to be from a covert Iranian nuclear weapons program for which the IAEA long demanded an Iranian explanation are genuine.   But evidence has continued to accumulate that the documents - sometimes called the “laptop documents” because they were said to have been on a laptop computer belonging to one of the participants in the program - were fabricated by Israel’s foreign intelligence agency (Mossad).  We now know that the documents did not come from an Iranian participant in the alleged project, as the media were led to believe for years; they were turned over to German intelligence by the anti-regime Iranian terrorist organisation, Mujahedeen E Khalq, (MEK). I first reported this in 2008 and have now confirmed from an authoritative German source in my book on the Iran nuclear issue. The MEK was well known to have been a client of the Mossad, serving to launder Israeli intelligence claims that the Israelis did not want attributed to themselves.

Although it has never been mentioned in news media, former International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General, Mohamed El Baradei recalled in his memoirs that he was doubtful of the authenticity of the documents. “No one knew if any of this was real,” he wrote in reference to the laptop documents. Another former senior IAEA official told me, “It just really didn’t add up.  It made more sense that this information originated in another country.”  And as I have detailed in articles and in my book, key documents in the collection bear clear indications of fabrication. Support for that virtually unknown part of the Iran nuclear story has come from a surprising source: a popular Israeli account, celebrating the successes of the Mossad’s covert operations. “Mossad: The Greatest Missions of the Israeli Secret Service,” first published in Hebrew in 2010, and then published in English in 2012, was Israel’s best-selling book for months in 2010. But not only does it acknowledge that it was indeed the MEK that delivered the documents, it also suggests that at least some of the documents came from the Mossad.  

The co-authors of the book are far from critics of Israel’s policy toward Iran; One of the co-authors, Michael Bar-Zohar, is a well-connected former member of the Israeli Knesset and former paratrooper, who had previously written an authorised biography of Shimon Peres, as well as the biography of Isser Harel, the Mossad chief who presided over the kidnapping of Adolph Eichmann in Argentina. Much of what Bar-Zohar chronicled in the book had already been reported earlier by Israeli journalists - especially Ronen Bergman of the daily Yedioth Ahronoth.  In fact, Bergman accused Bar-Zohar of plagiarising his articles for much of the book, while changing only a few words.  But one thing that Bar-Zohar and co-author Nisham Mishal did not get from other Israeli journalists, was the role of the Mossad in regard to the laptop documents. 

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.”

Greenwald said that he himself has thousands of documents from Snowden that he is continuing to examine. That figure is considerably higher than the 200 documents that Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee, said over the weekend that she was told Snowden possessed. “I don’t know for sure whether [Snowden] has more documents than the ones he has given me,” Greenwald said. “I believe he does. He was clear he did not want to give to journalists things he did not think should be published.”

Ecuador has ramped up its defiance of the US over Edward Snowden by waiving preferential trade rights with Washington even as the whistleblower's prospect of reaching Quito dimmed.President Rafael Correa's government said on Thursday it was renouncing the Andean Trade Preference Act to thwart US "blackmail" of Ecuador in the former NSA contractor's asylum request.Officials, speaking at an early morning press conference, also offered a $23m donation for human rights training in the US, a brash riposte to recent US criticism of Ecuador's own human rights record.Betty Tola, the minister of political coordination, said the asylum request had not been processed because Snowden, who is believed to be at Moscow airport, was neither in Ecuador nor at an Ecuadorean embassy or consulate. "The petitioner is not in Ecuadorean territory as the law requires."

The renunciation underlined divisions within Ecuador's government between leftists who have embraced Snowden as an anti-imperialist symbol and centrists who fear diplomatic and economic damage.Some in the government are believed to be annoyed that Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder who has sheltered at Ecuador's London embassy to avoid extradition, has seized the limelight in the Snowden saga. Assange caught Quito by surprise last week when he announced Snowden had been given a safe conduct pass. Quito replaced its ambassador to London earlier this month in hope of better managing its famous guest.The waiving of preferential trade rights followed threats from members of the US congress to drop the ATPA in July, when it is due for renewal, unless Ecuador toed the line on Snowden."Ecuador does not accept pressure or threats from anyone, nor does it trade with principles or submit them to mercantile interests, however important those may be," said Fernando Alvarado, the communications secretary. "Ecuador gives up, unilaterally and irrevocably, the said customs benefits."

The CIA’s inspector general has accidentally deleted its only copy of a controversial Senate report about the agency’s history of brutal interrogation techniques, opening a new front in the long battle over the document.Like many federal agencies across Washington, the spy agency watchdog was handed a copy of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s full, 6,700-page report about the CIA’s former methods shortly after it was completed. The full version of the report remains classified, however a 500-page executive summary was released to the public in late 2014.ADVERTISEMENTBut at some point last summer, both the electronic copy and a hard disk were destroyed, the watchdog told Congress.Sen. Dianne FeinsteinDianne FeinsteinCIA watchdog ‘accidentally destroyed’ copy of ‘torture report’ Overnight Energy: Senate rejects Iran measure, clearing way for energy spending bill Senate votes down Iran amendment to energy spending bill MORE (D-Calif.), the driving force behind the 2014 report, sent letters to the CIA and Justice Department on Friday confirming that the spy agency’s inspector general “has misplaced and/or accidentally destroyed” its copy of the report.According to Yahoo News, which first reported the development, the deletion was described as “inadvertent.”

Donald Trump's chief spokesman said Thursday that there's 'no truth' to a news report describing a plan by the president-elect to downsize the CIA's headquarters and 'restructure' America's intelligence agencies in order to de-politicize them.  The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump and his national security team were set to move more CIA agents to foreign posts along with 'streamlining' the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.But in a conference call with reporters, Trump's incoming press secretary Sean Spicer completely denied the story, which was based on anonymous sources who claimed to have inside knowledge of the transition team's intentions.'These reports are false. All transition activities are for information gathering purposes and all discussions are tentative,' Spicer said. 

In fact, the pedophile allegation has little to do with Assange’s plight that has kept him in the embassy in London, which involves incidents in Stockholm in the summer of 2010.

Rather, it is a bizarre tale involving a Houston-based dating website and its global and well-funded efforts to discredit Assange around the globe. The byzantine saga involves disconnected telephones and mystery websites. The website, toddandclare.com, launched and ramped up its efforts against Assange during the U.S. presidential campaign, as WikiLeaks released hacked emails related to the campaign of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.Whoever is behind the dating site has marshaled significant resources to target Assange, enough to gain entry into a United Nations body, operate in countries in Europe, North America and the Caribbean, conduct surveillance on Assange’s lawyer in London, obtain the fax number of Canada’s prime minister and seek to prod a police inquiry in the Bahamas.The dating site’s campaign sought to thwart WikiLeaks’ efforts and discredit Assange, who played a role in a presidential campaign season that deeply divided the U.S. electorate and illuminated Russia as a major cyber adversary of the U.S. government.One part of toddandclare’s two-pronged campaign put a megaphone to unproven charges that Assange made contact with a young Canadian girl in the Bahamas through the internet with the intention of molesting her. The second part sought to entangle him in a plan to receive $1 million from the Russian government.

WikiLeaks claims the dating site is “a highly suspicious and likely fabricated” company. In turn, the company has lashed out at Assange and “his despicable activities against American national security,” and warned journalists to “check with your libel lawyers first before printing anything that could impact or endanger innocent people’s lives.”For nearly two months after the October allegations, toddandclare.com went off line. But it recently reappeared, repeating charges about the 8-year-old Canadian girl. The website did not immediately respond Thursday to a new query from McClatchy, and no respondent in the past has given a name or allowed telephone contact.The online company paints itself as all-American. Online material says its founders, Todd and Clare Hammond, “are an average American couple from Michigan, who met in the eighth grade.” In 2011, the company says, the Christian couple started an email dating service, and “have married 3,000 couples to date.” Their online network began in 2015, and a statement it filed to a U.N. body says it has “100,000+ female singles” in six countries. The company’s operating address is a warehouse loading dock in Houston. Its mail goes to a Houston drop box. Its phone numbers no longer work. WikiLeaks says Texas officials tell it the entity is not registered there either under toddandclare.com or a parent company, T&C Network Solutions.A person who answered emails to the website in November declined to identify him or herself.

Amidst an astonishing, relentless, wide-ranging purge that shows no signs of abating, with 60,000 – and counting – civil servants, academics, judges, prosecutors, policemen, soldiers jailed, fired, suspended or stripped of professional accreditation, it’s relatively established by now the Turkish government was very much informed a military coup was imminent on July 15. The information may have come from Russian intelligence, although neither Moscow nor Ankara will reveal any details. So, once and for all, this was no false flag.

As Erdogan solidifies his internal iron grip, a formerly iron clad connection – NATO/Turkey – slowly dissolves into thin air. It’s as if the fate of Incirlik air base was hangin’ – literally – by a few, selected radar threads. There’s extreme suspicion across the spectrum in Turkey that the Pentagon knew what the «rebels» were up to. It’s a fact that not a pin drops in Incirlik without the Americans knowing it. AKP members stress the use of NATO’s communication network to coordinate the putschists and thus escape Turkish intel. At a minimum, the putschists may have believed NATO would have their backs. No «NATO ally» deigned itself to warn Erdogan about the coup. Then there’s the saga of the refueling tanker for the «rebel» F-16s. The tankers in Incirlik are all the same model – KC-135R Stratotanker – for Americans and Turks alike. They work side by side and are all under the same command; the 10th Main Tanker Base, led by Gen. Bekir Ercan Van, who was duly arrested this past Sunday – as seven judges also confiscated all the control tower communications. Not by accident Gen. Bekir Ercan Van happened to be very close to Pentagon head Ash Carter. What happened in Turkish airspace after Erdogan’s Gulfstream IV left the Mediterranean coast and landed in Istanbul’s Ataturk airport has been largely mapped – but there are still some crucial gaps in the narrative open to speculation. As Erdogan has been tight-lipped in all his interviews, one is left with a Mission Impossible-style scenario featuring «rebel» F-16s «Lion One» and «Lion Two» on a «special mission» with their transponder off; their face off with loyalist «Falcon One» and «Falcon Two»; one of the «Lions» piloted by the none other than the man who shot down the Russian Su-24 last November; the by now famous tanker that took off from Incirlik to refuel the «rebels»; and three extra pairs of F-16s that took off from Dalaman, Erzurum and Balikesir to intercept the «rebels», including the pair that protected Erdogan’s Gulfsteam (which was using callsign THY 8456 to disguise it as a Turkish Airlines flight).

Notorious Saudi whistleblower «Mujtahid» caused a sensation as he revealed that the UAE not only «played a role» in the coup but also kept the House of Saud in the loop. As if this was not damning enough, the self-deposed emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad al-Thani, very close to Erdogan, has alleged that the US and another Western nation (France is a strong possibility) had staged the whole thing, with Saudi Arabian involvement. Ankara, predictably, denied all of it.

The European Parliament on Thursday adopted a joint, cross-party resolution to begin investigations into widespread surveillance of Europeans by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). Read this EU to vote to suspend U.S. data sharing agreements, passenger records amid NSA spying scandal Read more In the vote, 483 voted for the resolution, 98 against, and 65 abstained on a vote that called on the U.S. to suspend and review any laws and surveillance programs that "violate the fundamental right of EU citizens to privacy and data protection," as well as Europe's "sovereignty and jurisdiction." The vote also gave backing to the suspension of data sharing deals between the two continents, should the European Commission take action against its U.S. ally.

The U.S. government faces continued criticism and pressure from its international allies following news that its intelligence agencies spied on foreign nationals under its so-called PRISM program. The U.K. government was also embroiled in the NSA spying saga, after its signals intelligence intercepting station GCHQ tapped submarine fiber optic cables under its own secret program, code named Tempora. Reuters reported on Wednesday that the Commission is examining whether the U.K. broke EU law, which could lead to fines imposed by the highest court in Europe.

Should the Commission decide it necessary to suspend the data sharing agreement of passenger details — including personal and sensitive individual data — it could ultimately lead to the grounding of flights between the EU and the U.S. Dutch MEP Sophie in 't Veld said in a statement after the vote: "We must consider now if the PNR and SWIFT agreements are still tenable in the circumstances." Critics say PNR data has never helped catch a suspected criminal or terrorist before. SWIFT data sharing, which provides U.S. authorities with secure banking details in a bid to crack down on terrorist financing, could also be suspended. A spokesperson for the D66 delegation in Brussels confirmed by email that the English version of the joint motion is "the right one and is leading," despite claims that there were "translation error[s]" between the different versions of the joint resolution.

Barack Obama virtually screamed his lungs out telling Russian President Vladimir Putin he had to hand him Snowden "under international law." Putin repeatedly said this was not going to happen.  Obama even phoned Putin. Nothing. Washington even forced European poodles to down Bolivian President Evo Morales' plane. Worse. Moscow kept following the letter of Russian law and eventually granted temporary asylum to Snowden.  The Edward Snowden saga has turned the Pentagon's Full Spectrum Dominance doctrine on its Hydra-head. Not only because of the humbling of the whole US security state apparatus, but also for exploding the myth of Full Spectrum Dominance by POTUS.  Obama revealed himself once again as a mediocre politician and an incompetent negotiator. Putin devoured him as a succulent serving of eggs benedict. Glenn Greenwald will be inflicting death by a thousand leaks -- because he is in charge of Snowden's digital treasure chest. And Snowden took a taxi and left the airport -- on his own terms.  Layers and layers of nuances have been captured in this fascinating discussion at Yves Smith's blog -- something impossible to find across Western corporate media. For POTUS, all that's left is to probably boycott a bilateral meeting with Putin next month, on the sidelines of the G20 summit in St Petersburg. Pathetic does not even begin to explain it. 

There's got to be a serious glitch with the collective IQ of these people. The Obama administration as well as the Orwellian/Panopticon complex are in shock because they simply cannot stop death by a thousand leaks. The Roving Eye is among those who suspect the NSA has no clue about what Snowden, as a systems administrator, was able to download (especially because someone with his skills can easily delete traces of access). Even the top NSA robot -- General Keith Alexander -- admitted on the record the "no such agency" does not know how Snowden pulled it off. He could have left a bug, or infected the system with a virus. The fun may have not even started. 

This Big Brother obsession with watching, tracking, monitoring, controlling, decoding virtually everything we do digitally is leading to monumental stupidities like Google searches attracting armed US government's agents to one's house, as is pricelessly detailed here. And still Paranoia Paradise has not isolated Washington from a major ass-kicking in Afghanistan and Iraq, or has foreseen the 2008 financial crisis; but then again it probably did, and the elites who arbitraged all that massive inside information royally profited from it.  For the moment, what we have is an Orwellian/Panopticon complex that will persist with its unchecked powers; an aphasic populace; a quiet, invisible man in a Moscow multitude; and a POTUS consumed with boundless rage. Watch out. He may be tempted to wag the (war) dog. 

Sun Tzu, the ancient author of The Art of War, must be throwing a rice wine party in his heavenly tomb in the wake of the shirtsleeves California love-in between President Obama and President Xi Jinping. "Know your enemy" was, it seems, the theme of the meeting. Beijing was very much aware of -- and had furiously protested -- Washington’s deep plunge into China’s computer networks over the past 15 years via a secretive NSA unit, the Office of Tailored Access Operations (with the apt acronym TAO). Yet Xi merrily allowed Obama to pontificate on hacking and cyber-theft as if China were alone on such a stage. Enter -- with perfect timing -- Edward Snowden, the spy who came in from Hawaii and who has been holed up in Hong Kong since May 20th. And cut to the wickedly straight-faced, no-commentary-needed take on Obama’s hacker army by Xinhua, the Chinese Communist Party’s official press service. With America’s dark-side-of-the-moon surveillance programs like Prism suddenly in the global spotlight, the Chinese, long blistered by Washington’s charges about hacking American corporate and military websites, were polite enough. They didn’t even bother to mention that Prism was just another node in the Pentagon’s Joint Vision 2020 dream of “full spectrum dominance.” By revealing the existence of Prism (and other related surveillance programs), Snowden handed Beijing a roast duck banquet of a motive for sticking with cyber-surveillance. Especially after Snowden, a few days later, doubled down by unveiling what Xi, of course, already knew -- that the National Security Agency had for years been relentlessly hacking both Hong Kong and mainland Chinese computer networks.

But the ultimate shark fin’s soup on China’s recent banquet card was an editorial in the Communist Party-controlled Global Times.  “Snowden,” it acknowledged, “is a ‘card’ that China never expected,” adding that “China is neither adept at nor used to playing it.” Its recommendation: use the recent leaks “as evidence to negotiate with the U.S.” It also offered a warning that “public opinion will turn against China’s central government and the Hong Kong SAR [Special Administrative Region] government if they choose to send [Snowden] back.” With a set of cyber-campaigns -- from cyber-enabled economic theft and espionage to the possibility of future state-sanctioned cyber-attacks -- evolving in the shadows, it’s hard to spin the sunny “new type of great power relationship” President Xi suggested for the U.S. and China at the recent summit. It’s the (State) Economy, Stupid The unfolding Snowden cyber-saga effectively drowned out the Obama administration’s interest in learning more about Xi’s immensely ambitious plans for reconfiguring the Chinese economy -- and how to capture a piece of that future economic pie for American business. Essential to those plans is an astonishing investment of $6.4 trillion by China’s leadership in a drive to “urbanize” the economy yet further by 2020.

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.

More than six months after the US government finally dropped all charges against Dr. Sami Al-Arian, the stateless Palestinian academic and activist was deported yesterday to Turkey. During his appearance on Democracy Now! today, Dr. Al-Arian expressed relief that his twelve-year-long persecution in the US, where he lived for forty years, had finally come to an end. “It feels like I’m free, finally really feeling freedom for the first time in twelve years,” Dr. Al-Arian said.

During the half-hour segment, Dr. Al-Arian revealed how he campaigned for George W. Bush, helping him win crucial votes from the Muslim community that would clinch his 2000 presidential election victory in the decisive state of Florida. Dr. Al-Arian was very active politically, and had visited the White House several times during both the Bush and Clinton administrations. Regarding his role in Bush’s election, Dr. Al-Arian said that he received a call “from someone who was very close to [Bush advisor] Karl Rove” asking how the campaign could win the endorsement of the Muslim American community. Dr. Al-Arian told this contact that Bush needed to declare his support for proposed legislation against secret evidence being used against Arab and Muslim Americans. During the second presidential candidate debate, Dr. Al-Arian told Democracy Now!, Bush did just that, securing the support of Muslim and Arab American leaders.

His administration had invited these leaders to the White House after Bush took office for a big announcement of good news regarding the legislation. “Unfortunately, it was on 9/11,” Dr. Al-Arian said, referring to the 11 September 2001 attacks in the US. “So that meeting never happened.” Instead, the country went in a very different direction. “At the time, we were protesting secret evidence,” Dr. Al-Arian added. “What happened after 9/11 is that they were arresting people with no evidence.”