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Paul Merrell

The Crisis in U.S.-Israel Relations Is Officially Here - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...382031

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Obama Israel Netanyahu

shared by Paul Merrell on 30 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • The other day I was talking to a senior Obama administration official about the foreign leader who seems to frustrate the White House and the State Department the most. “The thing about Bibi is, he’s a chickenshit,” this official said, referring to the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, by his nickname. This comment is representative of the gloves-off manner in which American and Israeli officials now talk about each other behind closed doors, and is yet another sign that relations between the Obama and Netanyahu governments have moved toward a full-blown crisis. The relationship between these two administrations— dual guarantors of the putatively “unbreakable” bond between the U.S. and Israel—is now the worst it's ever been, and it stands to get significantly worse after the November midterm elections. By next year, the Obama administration may actually withdraw diplomatic cover for Israel at the United Nations, but even before that, both sides are expecting a showdown over Iran, should an agreement be reached about the future of its nuclear program.
  • The fault for this breakdown in relations can be assigned in good part to the junior partner in the relationship, Netanyahu, and in particular, to the behavior of his cabinet. Netanyahu has told several people I’ve spoken to in recent days that he has “written off” the Obama administration, and plans to speak directly to Congress and to the American people should an Iran nuclear deal be reached. For their part, Obama administration officials express, in the words of one official, a “red-hot anger” at Netanyahu for pursuing settlement policies on the West Bank, and building policies in Jerusalem, that they believe have fatally undermined Secretary of State John Kerry’s peace process.
  • Over the years, Obama administration officials have described Netanyahu to me as recalcitrant, myopic, reactionary, obtuse, blustering, pompous, and “Aspergery.” (These are verbatim descriptions; I keep a running list.)  But I had not previously heard Netanyahu described as a “chickenshit.” I thought I appreciated the implication of this description, but it turns out I didn’t have a full understanding. From time to time, current and former administration officials have described Netanyahu as a national leader who acts as though he is mayor of Jerusalem, which is to say, a no-vision small-timer who worries mainly about pleasing the hardest core of his political constituency. (President Obama, in interviews with me, has alluded to Netanyahu’s lack of political courage.) “The good thing about Netanyahu is that he’s scared to launch wars,” the official said, expanding the definition of what a chickenshit Israeli prime minister looks like. “The bad thing about him is that he won’t do anything to reach an accommodation with the Palestinians or with the Sunni Arab states. The only thing he’s interested in is protecting himself from political defeat. He’s not [Yitzhak] Rabin, he’s not [Ariel] Sharon, he’s certainly no [Menachem] Begin. He’s got no guts.”
  • Paul Merrell on 30 Oct 14
     
    Netanyahu response is at http://goo.gl/bKA5TV
Paul Merrell

Israeli official says Netanyahu's top ministers haven't discussed Iran in months - Israel News | Haaretz Daily Newspaper - 0 views

www.haaretz.com/...cussed-iran-in-months-1.455787

Israel Iran Iranian nukes war crimes wars of aggression

shared by Paul Merrell on 07 Aug 12 - No Cached
  • Israel's top ministerial forum, comprised of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's top eight minister, had not held a serious discussion concerning the Iranian standoff since late last year, an unnamed Israeli official told the Reuters news agency on Thursday. "The octet hasn't held a proper discussion of Iran for months - since October, as far as I can recall," said the official, who had been briefed on the closed-door sessions.
  • "It's possible that, since then, Iran came up during other sessions, but I wouldn't count those as serious discussions. You can't make any concrete decisions or policy advances in an hour-long chat on the sidelines of a different agenda." In addition, the official said the octet remained split on the issue, while Israel's top military and intelligence echelon were "entirely against" launching a unilateral strike on distant and well-fortified Iranian targets that would pose an unprecedented challenge to their forces.
  • Paul Merrell on 07 Aug 12
     
    Contrasting with all other coverage, one might strongly suspect from this article, if true, that high Israeli officials have been blowing nothing but hot air about an eminent Israeli military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities. But notice that it is sourced to an anonymous government official.  The Israeli Council of 8 is roughly equivalent to the U.S. Executive Branch's Cabinet Secretaries. Because an Israeli strike on Iran would almost certainly lead to Iranian missiles being launched against Israel, the chances are slim to none that the Council of 8 would not have been aggressively preparing for war if a strike were eminent. But what is true in this situation?
Paul Merrell

Obama Pins Fate of Nuclear Pact on Documents From an Iranian "Curveball" - 0 views

www.truth-out.org/...ents-from-an-iranian-curveball

war & peace Iran Iranian-nukes-myth Israel neocons Iran-negotiations

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • Obama administration officials insist "possible military dimensions" of Iran’s nuclear program must be resolved to the satisfaction of the IAEA to complete a nuclear agreement. But the term refers to discredited intelligence from suspect sources. One of the issues Obama administration officials are insisting must be resolved to the satisfaction of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) before any nuclear agreement may be concluded involves "possible military dimensions." That term refers to documents long discredited by German intelligence but which the United States and the IAEA have maintained came from a covert Iranian nuclear weapons program. A former senior German official has now revealed that the biggest collection of documents cited as evidence of such a covert Iran program actually came from a member of the Iranian terrorist organization Mujihedin-E-Khalq (MEK) and that German intelligence sought to warn the George W. Bush administration that the source of the documents was not trustworthy.
  • The use of those documents to make a case for action against Iran closely parallels the Bush administration's use of the testimony of the now-discredited Iraqi exile called "Curveball" to convince the US public to support war against Iraq. The parallel between the two episodes was recognized explicitly by the German intelligence service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), according to Karsten Voigt, who was the German Foreign Office's coordinator of North American-German relations. Voigt provided details of the story behind the appearance of the mysterious Iran nuclear documents in an interview with this writer last March for a book on the false narrative surrounding Iran's nuclear program that is newly published, Manufactured Crisis. 
  • In 2004, Powell and his State Department team still regarded the MEK as a disreputable terrorist organization, but the neoconservatives in the administration viewed it as useful as an anti-regime tool. The MEK was known to have served the interests of Israel's Mossad by providing a way to "launder" intelligence claims that Israel wanted to get out to the public but didn't want identified as having come from Israel. In the best-known case, the group's political front organization, the National Council of Resistance in Iran, had revealed the location of the Iranian uranium enrichment facility at Natanz in an August 2002 press conference, but it had been given the coordinates of the construction site by Israeli intelligence, according to both a senior IAEA official and an Iranian opposition group source, cited by Seymour Hersh and New Yorker writer Connie Bruck, respectively. The purported Iranian documents conveyed by the MEK to Western intelligence also displayed multiple indications of having been fabricated by an outside actor. The clearest and most significant anomaly was that the drawings of efforts to redesign the Shahab-3 missile to accommodate a nuclear weapons showed a missile that had already been abandoned by Iran's Defense Ministry by the time the drawings were said to have been made, as was confirmed by former IAEA deputy director general for safeguards, Olli Heinonen, in an interview with this writer. The Iranian abandonment of the earlier missile design became known to foreign analysts, however, only after Iran flight-tested a completely new missile design in August 2004 - after the "laptop documents" had already been conveyed to the BND by its MEK source. Whoever ordered those drawings was unaware of the switch to the new missile design, which would rule out a genuine Iranian Defense Ministry or military program.
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  • A former IAEA official familiar with those documents recalled in interview with Truthout that senior officials at the IAEA were immediately suspicious of the entire collection of documents given to the agency in 2005. "The documents were never really convincing," said the former official. The creators of the documents had taken publicly available information about people, organizations and location and had "woven their own narrative" around them, he said. Furthermore, he recalled finding anomalies in the stamps and signature blocs of documents. The fabricated documents, depicting Iran as redesigning their missile reentry vehicle to accommodate a nuclear weapon, among other things, fit into a Bush administration strategy - coordinated with Israel - that was aimed at justifying a military confrontation with Iran. The working assumption, as was revealed by David Wurmser, special assistant to Bolton and then to Cheney, in October 2007, was that the United States would probably need to use force to bring about that change once Iraq was brought under control. Bolton recalls in his memoirs that his aim was to move the Iran nuclear issue out of the IAEA to the United Nations Security Council, where the Bush administration would call for international action against Iran, and failing that, take unilateral action.
  • The IAEA got more documents and intelligence directly from Israel in 2008 and 2009 claiming Iranian work on nuclear weapons, according to then-IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei. The intelligence passed on by Israel included the claim that Iran had installed a large metal cylinder for high explosives tests at its Parchin military facility in 2000, which it intended to use for hydrodynamic tests of nuclear weapons designs. But the IAEA never revealed the information had come from Israel, covering up the primary fact relevant to its reliability and authenticity. The Safeguards Department had been prepared as early as 2009 to publish a dossier on what it called the "possible military dimensions" of the Iranian nuclear program that would accept all the intelligence reports and documents provided by Israel as genuine and accurate. But ElBaradei's successor, Yukiya Amano, waited to do so until November 2011, when the Obama administration was ready to organize an international coalition for harsh sanctions against Iran's oil export sector. The Obama administration returned to the "possible military dimensions" last November, insisting on a provision in the interim Iran nuclear agreement that required Iran to "resolve" all the "concerns" about that issue. A "senior administration official" briefing the press on the agreement November 24 said there would be no final agreement unless Iran showed that it had "come into compliance with its obligations under the NPT and its obligations to the IAEA."
  • In response to a request from Truthout for a confirmation or denial of the revelation by Karsten Voigt of the MEK role in transmitting the purported Iranian documents to the BND in 2004, NSC officials declined to comment on the matter, according to NSC spokesperson Bernadette Meehan. Some observers believe US negotiators hope to get Iran to admit to having had a nuclear weapons program. However, Iran is certainly not going to admit that the documents and intelligence reports it knows to be fabrications are true. But the Obama administration may well believe so strongly in the Iran nuclear narrative it inherited from the Bush administration and in the idea that the sanctions against Iran confer ultimate negotiating leverage on the United States that it sees an Iranian confession as a realistic goal. In any case, the decision to introduce the falsified evidence of the past into the final negotiations is bound to bring them to an impasse unless the United States is prepared to back down.
  • Paul Merrell on 27 Feb 14
     
    Neocons in the Obama administration are at it again, fueling the Iranian nukes myth with fabricated intelligence on behalf of Israel. 
Paul Merrell

Encouraging Words of Regret From Dean Baquet and Weasel Words From James Clapper - The Intercept - 0 views

firstlook.org/...uet-weasel-words-james-clapper

surveillance-state NSA-reform encryption Clapper lies

shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • One should not expect any change to come from the U.S. government itself (which includes Congress), whose strategy in such cases is to enact the pretext of “reform” so as to placate public anger, protect the system from any serious weakening, and allow President Obama to go before the country and the world and give a pretty speech about how the U.S. heard their anger and re-calibrated the balance between privacy and security. Any new law that comes from the radically corrupted political class in DC will either be largely empty, or worse. The purpose will be to shield the NSA from real reform. There are, though, numerous other avenues with the real potential to engender serious limits on the NSA’s surveillance powers, including the self-interested though genuine panic of the U.S. tech industry over how surveillance will impede their future business prospects, the efforts of other countries to undermine U.S. hegemony over the internet, the newfound emphasis on privacy protections from internet companies worldwide, and, most of all, the increasing use of encryption technology by users around the world that poses genuine obstacles to state surveillance. Those are all far, far more promising avenues than any bill Barack Obama, Dianne Feinstein and Saxby Chambliss will let Congress cough up.
  • That national security state officials routinely mislead and deceive the public should never have even been in serious doubt in the first place – certainly not for journalists, and especially now after the experience of the Iraq War. That fact — that official pronouncements merit great skepticism rather than reverence — should be (but plainly is not) fundamental to how journalists view the world. More evidence for that is provided by a Washington Post column today by one of the national security state’s favorite outlets, David Ignatius. Ignatius interviewed the chronic deceiver, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who now “says it appears the impact [of Snowden's leaking] may be less than once feared because ‘it doesn’t look like he [Snowden] took as much’ as first thought.” Clapper specifically casts serious doubt on the U.S. government’s prior claim that Snowden ”had compromised the communications networks that make up the military’s command and control system”; instead, “officials now think that dire forecast may have been too extreme.” Ignatius — citing an anonymous “senior intelligence official” (who may or may not be Clapper) — also announces that the government has yet again revised its rank speculation about how many documents Snowden took: “This batch of probably downloaded material is about 1.5 million documents, the senior official said. That’s below an earlier estimate of 1.77 million documents.”
  • Most notable is Ignatius’ summary of the government’s attempt to claim Snowden seriously compromised the security of the U.S.: Pressed to explain what damage Snowden’s revelations had done, the official was guarded, saying that there was “damage in foreign relations” and that the leaks had “poisoned [NSA’s] relations with commercial providers.” He also said that terrorist groups had carefully studied the disclosures, turning more to anonymizers, encryption and use of couriers to shield communications. The senior official wouldn’t respond to repeated questions about whether the intelligence community has noted any changes in behavior by either the Russian or Chinese governments, in possible response to information they may have gleaned from Snowden’s revelations. In other words, the only specific damage they can point to is from the anger that other people around the world have about what the U.S. government has done and the fact that people will not want to buy U.S. tech products if they fear (for good reason) that those companies collaborate with the NSA. But, as usual, there is zero evidence provided (as opposed to bald, self-serving assertions) of any harm to genuine national security concerns (i.e., the ability to monitor anyone planning actual violent attacks).
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  • As is always the case, the stream of fear-mongering and alarmist warnings issued by the government to demonize a whistleblower proves to be false and without any basis, and the same is true for accusations made about the revelations themselves (“In January, [Mike] Rogers said that the report concluded that most of the documents Snowden had access to concerned ‘vital operations of the U.S. Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force’” – AP: Lawmakers: Snowden’s Leaks May Endanger US Troops“). But none of that has stopped countless U.S. journalists from mindlessly citing each one of the latest evidence-free official claims as sacred fact.
Paul Merrell

Will Hillary Clinton's Emails Burn the White House? - The Daily Beast - 0 views

www.thedailybeast.com/...ails-burn-the-white-house.html

Auction 2016 Hillary email-scandal Obama

shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • Hillary Clinton’s email problems are already causing headaches for her presidential campaign. But within American counterintelligence circles, there’s a mounting sense that the former secretary of state may not be the only Obama administration official in trouble. This is a scandal that has the potential to spread to the White House, as well. The Federal Bureau of Investigation can be expected to be tight-lipped, especially because this highly sensitive case is being handled by counterintelligence experts from Bureau headquarters a few blocks down Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House, not by the FBI’s Washington Field Office. That will ensure this investigation gets the needed “big picture” view, since even senior FBI agents at any given field office may only have a partial look at complex counterintelligence cases.
  • And this most certainly is a counterintelligence matter. There’s a widely held belief among American counterspies that foreign intelligence agencies had to be reading the emails on Hillary’s private server, particularly since it was wholly unencrypted for months. “I’d fire my staff if they weren’t getting all this,” explained one veteran Department of Defense counterintelligence official, adding: “I’d hate to be the guy in Moscow or Beijing right now who had to explain why they didn’t have all of Hillary’s email.” Given the widespread hacking that has plagued the State Department, the Pentagon, and even the White House during Obama’s presidency, senior counterintelligence officials are assuming the worst about what the Russians and Chinese know.
  • EmailGate has barely touched the White House directly, although it’s clear that some senior administration officials beyond the State Department were aware of Hillary’s unorthodox email and server habits, given how widely some of the emails from Clinton and her staff were forwarded around the Beltway. Obama’s inner circle may not be off-limits to the FBI for long, however, particularly since the slipshod security practices of certain senior White House officials have been a topic of discussion in the Intelligence Community for years. Hillary Clinton was far from the only senior Obama appointee to play fast and loose with classified materials, according to Intelligence Community insiders. While most counterspies agree that Hillary’s practices—especially using her own server and having her staffers place classified information into unclassified emails, in violation of federal law—were especially egregious, any broad-brush investigation into security matters are likely to turn up other suspects, they maintain. “The whole administration is filled with people who can’t shoot straight when it comes to classified,” an Intelligence Community official explained to me this week. Three U.S. officials suggested that Susan Rice, the National Security Adviser, might be at particular risk if a classified information probe goes wide. But it should be noted that Rice has made all sorts of enemies on the security establishment for her prickly demeanor, use of coarse language, and strategic missteps.
  • Paul Merrell on 03 Sep 15
     
    Sounds to me like some CIA officials of the "Cowboy" branch are trying to use the Clinton email scandal to tar the Obama Administration.  
Paul Merrell

Exclusive: This Is the ISIS Intel the U.S. Military Dumbed Down - The Daily Beast - 0 views

www.thedailybeast.com/...-u-s-military-dumbed-down.html

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy ISIL intelligence-cooking Obama CENTCOM

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • The intelligence pros said killing certain ISIS leaders might not diminish the group and that airstrikes might not be working. The bosses didn’t like those answers—not at all.Senior intelligence officials at the U.S. military’s Central Command demanded significant alterations to analysts’ reports that questioned whether airstrikes against the so-called Islamic State widely known as ISIS were damaging the group’s finances and its ability to launch attacks. But reports that showed the group being weakened by the U.S.-led air campaign received comparatively little scrutiny, The Daily Beast has learned. Senior CENTCOM intelligence officials who reviewed the critical reports sent them back to the analysts and ordered them to write new versions that included more footnotes and details to support their assessments, according to two officials familiar with a complaint levied by more than 50 analysts about intelligence manipulation by CENTCOM higher-ups.
  • In some cases, analysts were also urged to state that killing particular ISIS leaders and key officials would diminish the group and lead to its collapse. Many analysts, however, didn’t believe that simply taking out top ISIS leaders would have an enduring effect on overall operations. “There was the reality on the ground but it was not as rosy as [the leadership] wanted it to be,” a defense official familiar with the complaint told The Daily Beast. “The challenge was assessing whether the glass was half empty, not half full.”Some analysts have also complained that they felt “bullied” into reaching conclusions favored by their bosses, two separate sources familiar with analysts’ complaints said. The written and verbal pressure created a climate at CENTCOM in which analysts felt they had to self-censor some of their reports.
  • Army General Lloyd Austin came under withering bipartisan criticism on Wednesday when he testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee that after spending at least $43 million over a 10-month period, the U.S. had trained only nine fighters to confront ISIS in Syria. Senators were dumbfounded that the nearly year-long effort had produced such paltry results, calling it “a joke” and “an abject failure.”
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Some of the analysts have also accused their bosses of changing the reports in order to appeal to what they perceived as the Obama administration’s official line that the anti-ISIS campaign was making progress and would eventually end with the group’s destruction.Lawmakers and even presidential candidates seized on the allegations of politicizing intelligence as the White House tried to distance itself from the very strategy it has been pursuing.
  • Meanwhile, Pentagon investigators are examining the back-and-forth between the intelligence bosses at CENTCOM and the analysts, which created a paper trail. Favorable reports had fewer comments written on them, and requests that were more critical showed heavy questioning, the two officials said. The altering of intelligence led to reports that overstated the damage that U.S. strikes had on specific ISIS targets. For instance, strikes on oil refineries and equipment were said to have done more damage to the group’s financing of operations through illicit oil sales than the analysts believed. Also, strikes on military equipment were said to have set back the group’s ability to wage combat operations, when the analysts believed that wasn’t always the case.The altered reports made ISIS seem financially weakened and less capable of launching attacks, the analysts allege.
  • The CENTCOM supervisors “did not like the reports on the impact [of the airstrikes] because they didn’t believe it,” one military adviser familiar with CENTCOM operations told The Daily Beast. The Defense Department inspector general has been conducting interviews at CENTCOM headquarters in Tampa, Florida, in order to determine who in the command’s intelligence directorate may have distorted or manipulated the intelligence reports, some of which eventually made their way into materials briefed to President Obama. Investigators have pulled CENTCOM personnel one by one into private interviews to get to the bottom of the allegations and determine who was ultimately responsible for changing intelligence reports, according to individuals with knowledge of the investigation. The inspector general has confirmed that the investigation is focused on the CENTCOM intelligence directorate, or J2. Multiple sources told The Daily Beast that the head of intelligence, Army Major General Steven Grove, is named in the complaint, as are several other senior officials at CENTCOM. The tone of the complaint is said to be harsh and highly critical of senior officials’ leadership and actions.
Paul Merrell

Turkish court issues "historic" arrest warrants for Israeli army commanders | The Electronic Intifada - 0 views

electronicintifada.net/...rrants-israeli-army-commanders

war & peace human rights Israel Turkey arrest-warrants Mavi-Marmara

shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • A court in Istanbul has issued arrest warrants against four Israeli military officials for their role in authorizing and carrying out the attacks on the Mavi Marmara, the Turkish humanitarian aid boat bound for Gaza on 31 May 2010. Israeli forces attacked and raided the boat, which was part of a flotilla in international waters and was attempting to break the siege on Gaza. Israeli commandos killed nine civilians and wounded dozens of others. Speaking to The Electronic Intifada, Rabia Yurt, a Turkish attorney for the families of the victims, says the ruling is unprecedented. Yurt says it is “the first [time] in history” that arrest warrants have been issued against Israeli officials, who have never been held responsible in an international court for the army’s “uncountable crimes.”
  • The judges presiding at the Istanbul Çağlayan Courthouse on 26 May ordered arrest warrants against former Israeli army Chief General Gabi Ashkenazi, Naval Forces commander Vice Admiral Eliezer Marom, Israeli military intelligence chief Major General Amos Yadlin and Air Forces Intelligence head Brigadier General Avishai Levi. It is now up to Interpol, the international police agency, to follow the Turkish court’s directives and arrest the four commanders, who were tried in absentia. This was the sixth trial so far in the case against the Israeli leaders for their role in the deadly attacks on the flotilla.
  • After the deadly raid on the Mavi Marmara, Israeli forces kidnapped the crew and hundreds of the flotilla’s passengers, bringing the boats and all aboard to an Israeli port, where the human rights activists were arrested, detained and deported. One of the civilians killed was Furkan Doğan, a 19-year-old dual citizen of Turkey and the US. The Center for Constitutional Rights stated that “Israeli commandos shot Furkan five times, including one shot to the head at point-blank range. At the time of the attack, it is believed Furkan was filming with a small video camera on the top deck of the Mavi Marmara.” A tenth activist, 51-year-old Turkish citizen Uğur Süleyman Söylemez, died on 23 May — days before the court’s decision, and nearly four years after Israeli forces shot him in the head. Söylemez was in a coma ever since his injury.
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  • “The court argued that an arrest warrant had become necessary for the legal procedure as the defendants had neither attended the trial nor responded to an invitation sent to them through the related department of the Turkish justice ministry,” reported Turkish daily Hurriyet on 30 May. The Turkish humanitarian group IHH (Humanitarian Relief Foundation), which sponsored and helped organize the aid flotilla in 2010 and has been helping to represent the families of those killed, stated in a press release last week that the ruling was a “positive outcome” for the relatives and loved ones of the ten Turkish citizens who were killed by Israeli attacks. Last year, as The Electronic Intifada reported, the prosecutor of Spain’s national court formally requested a judge to begin steps to refer a case against Israeli leaders for the attack to the International Criminal Court (ICC). Three Spanish citizens, Manuel Tapial, Laura Arau and David Segarra, were aboard the Mavi Marmara when it was attacked and commandeered. Tapial, Arau and Segarra filed the case against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, six ministers and Vice Admiral Eliezer Marom of the Israeli navy who led the attack.
  • However, we are optimistic, because Turkey is a democratic country. It is part of and is a signatory to the European extradition convention and signed to Interpol, and therefore all other countries who are also signatories to these conventions and institution have an obligation to indeed arrest these Israeli officials for whom the arrest warrants were issued. So we have to trust [this] and we have to keep our faith in this. And we also know that — remember that this trial started way back in 2012 — the Israeli soldiers wouldn’t travel around too much, especially not go to Turkey. We know that Israeli soldiers were complaining about this. For instance, there was a case of an Israeli soldier who filed a claim against the State of Israel because he wanted to study in the United States, but because he took part in this operation he could not set foot out of Israel. So because we know this, we are quite optimistic about the arrest warrants, that they will be in fact implemented by other countries.
  • NBF: Finally, what’s next in this case on behalf of now ten victims of Israel’s raid, how are you pushing forward in this case? RY: In December, there is going to be another hearing, and we’re just going to make sure that the entire world will know about this arrest warrant, that we will follow whether any of these four defendants steps foot outside of Israel. We have lawyers in different countries also working together, and in South Africa, in the UK, many, many countries more — they will also closely follow whether these four defendants will travel in these countries. And then if this is the case, we will immediately take action and make sure that if the country in which one of the four defendants steps foot refuses, or neglects to fulfill its obligation to arrest [the defendant], then we will make sure that that country will not get away with it. And we will push for it, and publicize this as much as we can.
  • Paul Merrell on 03 Jun 14
     
    A historic day indeed. Turkey is a member of both NATO and INTERPOL. Four high-ranking Israeli military officers will be on the INTERPOL arrest list soon, with a network of human rights lawyers around the world on the watch and ready to enforce INTERPOL arrest obligations. In other words, these officers' travel outside Israel will be very unlikely to include INTERPOL treaty nations and European extradition convention nations as either destinations or waypoints. The deterrent effect on Israeli government officials is considerable, particularly with another criminal prosecution pending in Spain. Fittingly, the Turkish court has aimed its message at high military officials who directed the assassinations rather than at the low-ranking soldiers who committed them. Message to high Israeli officials: be nice to Turkish citizens if you want to ever travel outside Israel.  One can only wish that the same message had been delivered about American citizens. The victim shot five times including a point blank shot to the head was an American citizen. Many of the kidnaped human rights people on the Navi Marmara and accompanying boats were Americans. One of the boats was American-flagged. Under international law, these actions were casus belli, a sufficient cause for military retaliation against the government of Israel. But the cowardly Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did not so much as lodge a diplomatic protest, so fearful they are of the powerful Israel Lobby. 
Paul Merrell

Obama to propose legislation to protect firms that share cyberthreat data - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...4-bcfb-059ec7a93ddc_story.html

surveillance state U.S. digital-privacy legislation

shared by Paul Merrell on 19 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • President Obama plans to announce legislation Tuesday that would shield companies from lawsuits for sharing computer threat data with the government in an effort to prevent cyber­attacks. On the heels of a destructive attack at Sony Pictures Entertainment and major breaches at JPMorgan Chase and retail chains, Obama is intent on capitalizing on the heightened sense of urgency to improve the security of the nation’s networks, officials said. “He’s been doing everything he can within his executive authority to move the ball on this,” said a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss legislation that has not yet been released. “We’ve got to get something in place that allows both industry and government to work more closely together.”
  • The legislation is part of a broader package, to be sent to Capitol Hill on Tuesday, that includes measures to help protect consumers and students against ­cyberattacks and to give law enforcement greater authority to combat cybercrime. The provision’s goal is to “enshrine in law liability protection for the private sector for them to share specific information — cyberthreat indicators — with the government,” the official said. Some analysts questioned the need for such legislation, saying there are adequate measures in place to enable sharing between companies and the government and among companies.
  • “We think the current information-sharing regime is adequate,” said Mark Jaycox, legislative analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy group. “More companies need to use it, but the idea of broad legal immunity isn’t needed right now.” The administration official disagreed. The lack of such immunity is what prevents many companies from greater sharing of data with the government, the official said. “We have heard that time and time again,” the official said. The proposal, which builds on a 2011 administration bill, grants liability protection to companies that provide indicators of cyberattacks and threats to the Department of Homeland Security.
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  • But in a provision likely to raise concerns from privacy advocates, the administration wants to require DHS to share that information “in as near real time as possible” with other government agencies that have a cybersecurity mission, the official said. Those include the National Security Agency, the Pentagon’s ­Cyber Command, the FBI and the Secret Service. “DHS needs to take an active lead role in ensuring that unnecessary personal information is not shared with intelligence authorities,” Jaycox said. The debates over government surveillance prompted by disclosures from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden have shown that “the agencies already have a tremendous amount of unnecessary information,” he said.
  • The administration official stressed that the legislation will require companies to remove unnecessary personal information before furnishing it to the government in order to qualify for liability protection. It also will impose limits on the use of the data for cybersecurity crimes and instances in which there is a threat of death or bodily harm, such as kidnapping, the official said. And it will require DHS and the attorney general to develop guidelines for the federal government’s use and retention of the data. It will not authorize a company to take offensive cyber-measures to defend itself, such as “hacking back” into a server or computer outside its own network to track a breach. The bill also will provide liability protection to companies that share data with private-sector-developed organizations set up specifically for that purpose. Called information sharing and analysis organizations, these groups often are set up by particular industries, such as banking, to facilitate the exchange of data and best practices.
  • Efforts to pass information-sharing legislation have stalled in the past five years, blocked primarily by privacy concerns. The package also contains provisions that would allow prosecution for the sale of botnets or access to armies of compromised computers that can be used to spread malware, would criminalize the overseas sale of stolen U.S. credit card and bank account numbers, would expand federal law enforcement authority to deter the sale of spyware used to stalk people or commit identity theft, and would give courts the authority to shut down botnets being used for criminal activity, such as denial-of-service attacks.
  • It would reaffirm that federal racketeering law applies to cybercrimes and amends the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act by ensuring that “insignificant conduct” does not fall within the scope of the statute. A third element of the package is legislation Obama proposed Monday to help protect consumers and students against cyberattacks. The theft of personal financial information “is a direct threat to the economic security of American families, and we’ve got to stop it,” Obama said. The plan, unveiled in a speech at the Federal Trade Commission, would require companies to notify customers within 30 days after the theft of personal information is discovered. Right now, data breaches are handled under a patchwork of state laws that the president said are confusing and costly to enforce. Obama’s plan would streamline those into one clear federal standard and bolster requirements for companies to notify customers. Obama is proposing closing loopholes to make it easier to track down cybercriminals overseas who steal and sell identities. “The more we do to protect consumer information and privacy, the harder it is for hackers to damage our businesses and hurt our economy,” he said.
  • In October, Obama signed an order to protect consumers from identity theft by strengthening security features in credit cards and the terminals that process them. Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said there is concern that a federal standard would “preempt stronger state laws” about how and when companies have to notify consumers. The Student Digital Privacy Act would ensure that data entered would be used only for educational purposes. It would prohibit companies from selling student data to third-party companies for purposes other than education. Obama also plans to introduce a Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights. And the White House will host a summit on cybersecurity and consumer protection on Feb. 13 at Stanford University.
Paul Merrell

Hagel Resigns Under Pressure as Global Crises Test Pentagon - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ense-chief-under-pressure.html

war & peace Obama Hagel Rice

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel resigned under pressure on Monday after President Obama determined that he had to shake up his national security team in the face of escalating conflicts overseas and hawkish Republicans reasserting themselves on Capitol Hill.
  • Aides said Mr. Obama made the decision to remove his defense secretary on Friday after weeks of rising tension over a variety of issues, including what administration officials said were Mr. Hagel’s delays in transferring detainees from the military prison in Guantánamo Bay and a dispute with Susan E. Rice, the national security adviser, over Syria policy.
  • In reality, Mr. Hagel was never able to penetrate the president’s tight national security team of West Wing loyalists, officials at the White House and the Pentagon said. And faced with the calls for a shake-up of his national security staff to better deal with an onslaught of global crises, Mr. Obama balked at the idea of replacing Ms. Rice, Secretary of State John Kerry or the powerful White House chief of staff, Denis R. McDonough.
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  • The president is “too close to Susan Rice, and John Kerry’s in the middle of Iran negotiations,” said one administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity. “So he went for the low-hanging fruit” — Mr. Hagel, who was criticized by White House aides as largely silent in meetings, and who Mr. Obama had often bypassed in recent months for Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a favorite in the West Wing.
  • In the view of White House officials, Mr. Hagel has helped to thwart Mr. Obama’s pledge to close Guantánamo with his concerns about the security risks posed by the release of detainees. He recently pulled back from plans to repatriate four Afghans who had been approved for transfer, a decision that annoyed Ms. Rice, officials said.Continue reading the main story White House officials also expressed annoyance over a sharply critical two-page memo that Mr. Hagel sent to Ms. Rice last month, in which he warned that the administration’s Syria policy was in danger of unraveling because of its failure to clarify its intentions toward President Bashar al-Assad. Senior officials complained that Mr. Hagel had never made such a case in internal debates, suggesting that he was trying to position himself for history on a crucial issue as he was talking to Mr. Obama about leaving his job. Mr. Hagel’s defenders said he stayed quiet to avoid leaks.
  • “The next couple of years will demand a different kind of focus,” a senior administration official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. He insisted that Mr. Hagel was not fired, saying that the defense secretary initiated discussions about his future two weeks ago with the president, and that the two men mutually agreed it was time for him to leave. Continue reading the main story Write A Comment Now, however, the American military is in escalating crises. Some 3,000 American troops are being deployed in Iraq to help the Iraqi military fight the Sunni militants of the Islamic State, even as the administration struggles to come up with, and articulate, a strategy to defeat the group in both Iraq and Syria.
  • In the past few months he has been overshadowed by General Dempsey, who officials said had won the confidence of Mr. Obama with his recommendation of military action against the Islamic State.
  • Paul Merrell on 26 Nov 14
     
    Obama sides with his inner circle neocons, gets rid of Hagel, who was brought on board to downsize the Pentagon to meet congressional sequestration requirements. The neocons want war; Obama gives itto them. Score one more for the War Party.  
Paul Merrell

Goldberg Sees Crisis in US-Israel Ties, Blames Bibi « LobeLog - 0 views

www.lobelog.com/-in-us-israel-ties-blames-bibi

U.S.-foreign-policy Mideast Israel-divorce

shared by Paul Merrell on 30 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • While everyone ritually insists that the bonds between Israel and the United States are “unbreakable,” yesterday’s analysis by Jeffrey Goldberg, “The Crisis in U.S.-Israel Relations Is Officially Here,” argues that they’re currently under unprecedented strain and that the fault lies mainly with Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. The analysis argues further that, post-November, the Obama administration may no longer be inclined to protect Israel (at least to the same pathetic extent) at the UN Security Council and may even be willing to go a step further by presenting “a public full lay-down of the administration’s vision for a two-state solution, including maps delineating Israel’s borders. These borders, to Netanyahu’s horror, would based on 1967 lines, with significant West Bank settlement blocs attached to Israel in exchange for swapped land elsewhere. Such a lay-down would make explicit to Israel what the U.S. expects of it.” I’m not a big fan of Goldberg, but this analysis is definitely worth a read if for no other reason than his voice is a very important one in the US Jewish community, including among the right-wing leadership of its major national organizations. And he essentially gives over most of the article—in a way that suggests he shares their views—to anonymous administration Officials who have clearly grown entirely contemptuous of the Israeli leader, calling him, among other names, “chickenshit.” Goldberg himself describes the Netanyahu government’s policy toward Palestinians as being “disconnected from reality” and stresses what he calls the “unease felt by mainstream American Jewish leaders about recent Israeli government behavior.” It seems that his chief envoy and confidante here, Ron Dermer, is not doing a good job.
  • Of particular interest to readers of this blog, however, are Goldberg’s observations about how the administration views Bibi’s bluster about Iran: The official said the Obama administration no longer believes that Netanyahu would launch a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities in order to keep the regime in Tehran from building an atomic arsenal. “It’s too late for him to do anything. Two, three years ago, this was a possibility. But ultimately he couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger. It was a combination of our pressure and his own unwillingness to do anything dramatic. Now it’s too late.” This assessment represents a momentous shift in the way the Obama administration sees Netanyahu. In 2010, and again in 2012, administration officials were convinced that Netanyahu and his then-defense minister, the cowboyish ex-commando Ehud Barak, were readying a strike on Iran. To be sure, the Obama administration used the threat of an Israeli strike in a calculated way to convince its allies (and some of its adversaries) to line up behind what turned out to be an effective sanctions regime. But the fear inside the White House of a preemptive attack (or preventative attack, to put it more accurately) was real and palpable—as was the fear of dissenters inside Netanyahu’s Cabinet, and at Israel Defense Forces headquarters. At U.S. Central Command headquarters in Tampa, analysts kept careful track of weather patterns and of the waxing and waning moon over Iran, trying to predict the exact night of the coming Israeli attack.
  • Today, there are few such fears. “The feeling now is that Bibi’s bluffing,” this second official said. “He’s not Begin at Osirak,” the official added, referring to the successful 1981 Israeli Air Force raid ordered by the ex-prime minister on Iraq’s nuclear reactor. The belief that Netanyahu’s threat to strike is now an empty one has given U.S. officials room to breathe in their ongoing negotiations with Iran. This is a significant passage. It suggests that the administration has decided to essentially ignore Netanyahu and his threats to take unilateral action, including when they are conveyed by members of Congress close to the Israel lobby. It also suggests strongly that the administration will not back up Israel if it should indeed undertake a strike of its own in hopes that Washington would be dragged into to finishing the job.
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  • Goldberg’s analysis about the state of the relationship is, in some ways, mirrored by Bret Stephens’s weekly “Global View” column in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, “Bibi and Barack on the Rocks,” although he, entirely predictably given his pro-settler worldview, sees Bibi as the wronged party. And, unlike Goldberg, he doesn’t see the US as the more powerful. Noting how Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon was snubbed by senior administration officials with whom he requested to meet, Stephens, a former editor of the Jerusalem Post, writes: The administration also seems to have forgotten that two can play the game. Two days after the Yaalon snub, the Israeli government announced the construction of 1,000 new housing units in so-called East Jerusalem, including 600 new units in the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood that was the subject of a 2010 row with Joe Biden. Happy now, Mr. Vice President? Stephens calls for a “trial separation” by the two countries in which Israel will give up its $3 billion dollar/year US aid package to free itself from US interference
  • The administration likes to make much of the $3 billion a year it provides Israel (or, at least, U.S. defense contractors) in military aid, but that’s now less than 1% of Israeli GDP. Like some boorish husband of yore fond of boasting that he brings home the bacon, the administration thinks it’s the senior partner in the marriage. Except this wife can now pay her own bills. And she never ate bacon to begin with. It’s time for some time away. Israel needs to look after its own immediate interests without the incessant interventions of an overbearing partner. The administration needs to learn that it had better act like a friend if it wants to keep a friend. It isn’t as if it has many friends left. This is precisely where Goldberg believes current Israeli policy is leading it.
  • Netanyahu, and the even more hawkish ministers around him, seem to have decided that their short-term political futures rest on a platform that can be boiled down to this formula: “The whole world is against us. Only we can protect Israel from what’s coming.” …But for Israel’s future as an ally of the United States, this formula is a disaster.”
  • Paul Merrell on 30 Oct 14
     
    If Goldberg and Stephens have it right, a U.S./Israel divorce might just spell the end of the appartheid state of Israel. It is only the U.S. veto on the U.N. Security Council that has enabled Israel to continue to treat Palestinians with impunity and to retain control of and colonize the territory it seized in the 1967 war that it launched. (The right to acquire territory by conquest was abolished by the U.N. Charter and the Fourth Geneva Convention in the late 1940s.)  Israel is now a pariah state internationally, with only the U.S., Canada, and a few minor island nations dependent on the U.S. still voting for Israel even in the U.N. General Council. Moreover, the U.S. public is fed up with the foreign wars the U.S. has been waging in the Mideast in aid of Israel's empirical goal of destabilizing and Balkanizing Israel's Arab neighbors. A U.S./Israel divorce would almost certainly bring down Netanyahu's government. On the other hand, the Obama Administration's relationship with Israel has been a departure from the historical norm in the U.S. and Obama's likely successor, Hillary Clinton, has long been much more friendly with the Israel Lobby than Obama.  Many close observers believe that Netanyahu's strategy with Obama has been to wait until Obama is out of office, betting that his successor will be much more amenable to Bibi's desires. But with Bernie Sanders hat in the ring for Auction 2016 and possibly Elizabeth Warren as well, it's conceivable that issues they raise might push Hillary to adopt a less Israel-friendly stance. But on yet another hand, Obama's stance on ISIL is entirely consistent with Israel's longstanding goal of regime change in Syria and Balkanization of Iraq into three nations along ethnic/religious lines, an independent  Kurdistan in the north, a Shia-stan in the South, and a Sunni state in the middle. Note in this regard Obama's strategy of arming "moderate" Syrians only to defend territory ISIL has not yet seized, then to bring down t
Gary Edwards

The Daily Bell - 9/11 Fourteen Years Later - 0 views

www.thedailybell.com/...berts-911-Fourteen-Years-Later

911 911-Conspiracy-facts

shared by Gary Edwards on 15 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • The Official Version of 9/11 goes something like this: Directed by a beardy-guy from a cave in Afghanistan, nineteen hard-drinking, coke-snorting, devout Muslims enjoy lap dances before their mission to meet Allah. Using nothing more than craft knifes, they overpower cabin crew, passengers and pilots on four planes. And hangover or not, they manage to give the world's most sophisticated air defence system the slip. Unfazed by leaving their "How to Fly a Passenger Jet" guide in the car at the airport, they master the controls in no-time and score direct hits on two towers, causing THREE to collapse completely.
  • The laws of physics fail, and the world watches in awe as asymmetrical damage and scattered low temperature fires cause steel-framed buildings to collapse symmetrically through their own mass at free-fall speed, for the first time in history. Despite their dastardly cunning and superb planning, they give their identity away by using explosion-proof passports, which survive the destruction of steel and concrete and fall to the ground where they are quickly discovered lying on top of the mass of debris.
  • Meanwhile in Washington Hani Hanjour, having previously flunked Cessna flying school, gets carried away with all the success of the day and suddenly finds incredible abilities behind the controls of a jet airliner. Instead of flying straight down into the large roof area of the Pentagon, he decides to show off a little. Executing an incredible 270 degree downward spiral, he levels off to hit the low facade of the Pentagon. Without ruining the nicely mowed lawn and at a speed just too fast to capture on video.
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  • In the skies above Pennsylvania  Desperate to talk to loved ones before their death, some passengers use sheer willpower to connect mobile calls that would not be possible until several years later. And following a heroic attempt by some to retake control of Flight 93, the airliner crashes into a Pennsylvania field leaving no trace of engines, fuselage or occupants except for the standard issue Muslim terrorist bandana.
  • During these events President Bush continues to read "My Pet Goat" to a class of primary school children.
  • In New York World Trade Center leaseholder Larry Silverstein blesses his own foresight in insuring the buildings against terrorist attack only six weeks previously. 
  • In Washington The Neoconservatives are overjoyed by the arrival of the "New Pearl Harbor," the necessary catalyst for launching their pre-planned wars.
  • Gary Edwards on 15 Oct 15
     
    "Millions of refugees from Washington's wars are currently over-running Europe. Washington's 14-year and ongoing slaughter of Muslims and destruction of their countries are war crimes for which the US government's official 9/11 conspiracy theory was the catalyst. Factual evidence and science do not support Washington's conspiracy theory. The 9/11 Commission did not conduct an investigation. It was not permitted to investigate. The Commission sat and listened to the government's story and wrote it down. Afterwards, the chairman and cochairman of the Commission said that the Commission "was set up to fail." For a factual explanation of 9/11, watch this film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsoY3AIRUGA&feature=youtu.be. Here is an extensive examination of many of the aspects of 9/11: http://www.luogocomune.net/site/modules/sections/index.php?op=viewarticle&artid=167. Phil Restino of the Central Florida chapter of Veterans For Peace wants to know why national antiwar organizations buy into the official 9/11 story when the official story is the basis for the wars that antiwar organizations oppose. Some are beginning to wonder if ineffectual peace groups are really Homeland Security or CIA fronts. The account below of the government's 9/11 conspiracy theory reads like a parody, but in fact is an accurate summary of the official 9/11 conspiracy theory. It was posted as a comment in the online UK Telegraph on September 12, 2009, in response to Charlie Sheen's request to President Obama to conduct a real investigation into what happened on September 11, 2001."
Gary Edwards

Does Trump Trump? Angelo Codevilla on Our Present Moment | Power Line - 1 views

www.powerlineblog.com/...illa-on-our-present-moment.php

Angelo-Codevilla Trump ruling-class-elites

shared by Gary Edwards on 29 Jul 15 - No Cached
  • Angelo Codevilla is a former staff member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, professor emeritus of international relations at Boston University, and the author of more than a dozen fine books on politics, arms control, and intelligence (if I had to pick a favorite it might be The Character of Nations), including a fine translation of Machiavelli’s Prince published by Yale University Press. Most recently his essay-turned-book The Ruling Class: How They Corrupted America and What We Can Do About It caught the attention of Rush Limbaugh and many others. It argues that our fundamental political problem is not “big government,” but the creation of a ruling class, inhabiting both parties, that is steadily increasing its authoritarian control over the nation. In a conversation a few months ago Angelo remarked, “The 2016 election is simple; the person who runs on the platform ‘Who do they think they are?’ will win.”
  • Donald Trump leapt atop other contenders for the Republican presidential nomination when he acted on the primordial fact in American public life today, from which most of the others hide their eyes, namely: most Americans distrust, fear, are sick and tired of, the elected, appointed, and bureaucratic officials who rule over us, as well as their cronies in the corporate, media, and academic world.
  • Trump’s attraction lies less in his words’ grace or even precision than in the extent to which Americans are searching for someone, anyone, to lead against this ruling class, that is making America less prosperous, less free, and more dangerous.
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  • three fifths of Democratic voters approve the conduct of their officials, only about one fifth of Republican voters approve what theirs do.
  • Moreover, Americans are becoming increasingly skeptical about their celebrities’ integrity. With good reason. McCain is just a minor example of a phenomenon that characterizes our ruling class: reputations built on lies and cover-ups, lives of myth protected by mutual forbearance, by complicitous journalists, or by records deep-sixed, including in in government archives.
  • As they lord it over us, they live lives that cannot stand scrutiny.
  • The point here is simple: our ruling class has succeeded in ruling not by reason or persuasion, never mind integrity, but by occupying society’s commanding heights, by imposing itself and its ever-changing appetites on the rest of us. It has coopted or intimidated potential opponents by denying the legitimacy of opposition. Donald Trump, haplessness and clownishness notwithstanding, has shown how easily this regime may be threatened just by refusing to be intimidated.
  • At increasing speed, our ruling class has created “protected classes” of Americans defined by race, sex, age, disability, origin, religion, and now homosexuality, whose members have privileges that outsider do not. By so doing, they have shattered the principle of equality – the bedrock of the rule of law. Ruling class insiders use these officious classifications to harass their socio-political opponents. An unintimidated statesman would ask: Why should not all “classes” be equally protected? Does the rule of law even admit of “classes”? Does not the 14th amendment promise “the equal protection of the laws” to all alike? He would note that when the government sets aside written law in favor of what the powerful want, it thereby absolves citizens any obligation to obey government.
  • Gary Edwards on 29 Jul 15
     
    "Does Trump trump? By Angelo M. Codevilla "In the land of the blind," so goes the saying, "the one-eyed man is king." Donald Trump leapt atop other contenders for the Republican presidential nomination when he acted on the primordial fact in American public life today, from which most of the others hide their eyes, namely: most Americans distrust, fear, are sick and tired of, the elected, appointed, and bureaucratic officials who rule over us, as well as their cronies in the corporate, media, and academic world. Trump's attraction lies less in his words' grace or even precision than in the extent to which Americans are searching for someone, anyone, to lead against this ruling class, that is making America less prosperous, less free, and more dangerous. Trump's rise reminds this class's members that they sit atop a rumbling volcano of rejection. Republicans and Democrats hope to exorcise its explosion by telling the public that Trump's remarks on immigration and on the character of fellow member John McCain (without bothering to try showing that he errs on substance), place him outside the boundaries of their polite society. Thus do they throw Br'er Rabbit into the proverbial briar patch. Now what? The continued rise in Trump's poll numbers reminds all that Ross Perot - in an era that was far more tolerant of the Establishment than is ours - outdistanced both Bush 41 and Bill Clinton before self-destructing, just by speaking ill of both parties before he self destructed. Republicans brahmins have the greater reason to fear. Whereas some three fifths of Democratic voters approve the conduct of their officials, only about one fifth of Republican voters approve what theirs do. If Americans in general are primed for revolt, Republican (and independent) voters fairly thirst for it. Trump's barest hints about what he opposes (never mind proposes) regarding just a few items on the public agenda have had such effect because they accord with
Paul Merrell

Little consensus within administration on how to stop fall of Aleppo to Assad - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...6-bff0-d53f592f176e_story.html

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Syria Aleppo Obama

shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • There is no consensus within the administration about what the United States can or should do to try to bring a halt to the killing and stop what appears to be the increasingly inevitable fall of Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, to government forces.
  • But last Thursday, as the discussion moved up the chain to a contentious White House meeting of national security principals, top defense officials made clear that their position had not changed. They advised a possible increase in weapons aid to opposition fighters but said the United States should focus its own military firepower on the anti-Islamic State mission rather than risk a direct confrontation with Russia. Asked about the perception of a double shift, a senior defense official said the Pentagon’s position had not changed. “We still believe there are a number of ways to bolster the opposition and not compromise the anti-Islamic State mission,” this official said.
  • But others felt that they had been spun by the defense leadership. Amid increasing internal tension, one senior administration official insisted that both the Syrian opposition and U.S. allies have pressed for a continuation of negotiations and discouraged talk of military intervention. Obama’s position on the subject, this official said, has been “consistent. We do not believe there is a military solution to this conflict. There are any number of challenges that come with applying military force in this context.” In Obama’s recent speech at the United Nations, the official noted, Obama repeated that “there’s no ultimate military victory to be won” in Syria. Instead, Obama said, “we’re going to have to pursue the hard work of diplomacy that aims to stop the violence, and deliver aid to those in need, and support those who pursue a political settlement.” No proposals have been presented to Obama for a decision, and some in the administration think the White House is willing to let time run out on Aleppo, in part to preserve options for a new administration.
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  • De Mistura has predicted that if Russian and Syrian air attacks and artillery bombardment do not stop, the city will fall before the end of the year; the U.S. intelligence community assesses that it could be a matter of weeks.
  • An estimated 275,000 civilians, one-third of them children, and 10,000 rebels are surrounded in the eastern side of the city, now under constant aerial attack
  • While Aleppo is the proximate prize sought by the government and its Russian backers, at least 50,000 opposition fighters — many of whom owe their training, weapons and inspiration in large part to the United States — remain in pockets spread across western Syria. Many of those forces have been advised and supplied by the CIA, whose director, John Brennan, is said to favor military action or, at the very least, dispatching more and better weapons to the opposition, particularly if Aleppo is lost. That decision, which would allow the rebels to continue to fight a guerrilla war, or to defend those pockets of the country still in opposition hands, might not be the administration’s to make. Allied governments in the region, including Qatar, Turkey and, to a lesser extent, Saudi Arabia, have long advocated for increased support for the rebels and could decide on their own to send more sophisticated armaments — some of which, including shoulder-launched antiaircraft weapons, the United States has refused to make available on the grounds that they could end up in the wrong hands.
  • As they assess Russian President Vladi­mir Putin’s goals in Syria, intelligence officials think he is less interested in an outright military victory than in being able to set the terms for a settlement that ensures Assad’s survival. But at least in the short term, they believe, the big winner may be the Front for the Conquest of Syria, the al-Qaeda affiliate formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra. The jihadist group, which U.S. officials have said is planning “external operations” against the United States, has grown in strength and respect as a formidable, well-equipped fighting force against Assad. While senior White House aides are said to be opposed to U.S. military action, one other official who is said to have argued in favor of a military response is Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations,
  • Echoing the arguments for accountability in the book, “A Problem From Hell,” Kerry last week publicly called for Russia and Syria to be investigated for war crimes for the targeted killing of civilians and wanton destruction in Aleppo and beyond. On Friday, Moscow described Kerry’s call as “propaganda” and repeated its assertion that the United States, by failing to separate rebel forces from the targetable terrorists it insists control Aleppo, is to blame for the failure of the cease-fire. According to international-law experts, however, the likelihood of a war crimes prosecution of either country is virtually nonexistent. Neither Russia nor Syria belongs to the treaty-based International Criminal Court, and a referral to its jurisdiction would require a resolution by the U.N. Security Council, a body in which Russia holds a veto. At the same time, both the ICC and the International Court of Justice, the United Nations’ judicial branch, are designed to prosecute individuals rather than states.
  • “The law of war crimes is individual and personal,” said Kenneth Anderson, a law professor at American University. “Talk of war crimes trials by itself is not serious,” Anderson said. “It’s an evasion of policy by a state that does not want to have to respond to the concerted actions of another state, another two states.”
  • Paul Merrell on 10 Oct 16
     
    The WaPo statistics on the number of people surrounded in East Aleppo are way off. Most of the city is government controlled, but WaPo uses the city's entire population as the number of surrounded people. Best estimates for the number surrounded in the cauldron are in the neighborhood of 10,000 fighters and 20,000 of their camp followers. Let's hope that Obama has a sane moment and doesn't buckle to the chickenhawk pressure.
Paul Merrell

U.S. withholds millions pledged to help Syrian opposition | McClatchy - 0 views

www.mcclatchydc.com/...rian-oppositions-disarray.html

war & peace Syria Obama

shared by Paul Merrell on 05 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • WASHINGTON — The United States is withholding $63 million that it had pledged to the main Syrian opposition organization because the Obama administration is frustrated with the group’s disarray and is searching for more credible partners to support in the rebellion against Syrian President Bashar Assad, knowledgeable officials said Friday. The decision not to fund the Syrian Opposition Coalition contrasts sharply with the Obama administration’s continued public expressions of confidence in the group, which has been central to U.S. policy on Syria since last fall and which the administration recognizes as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people.But U.S. officials said privately that they are fed up with the group’s inability to organize, appoint a government-in-exile or reach decisions on a wide range of issues. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity so as to more freely discuss sensitive diplomacy. State Department officials are fond of repeating that they’ve pledged $250 million in nonlethal aid to boost the Syrian opposition. In reality, however, only a fraction of that – roughly $54 million – has been delivered, and almost none of it has gone directly to the coalition because “it’s obviously been a very unstable organization,” as one official put it.
  • “We have not given them money to go off and spend precisely because of the instability,” the official said.officials insisted the plan wasn’t to give up on the coalition. But they said that Secretary of State John Kerry was mulling greater support of rival opposition factions such as the rebels’ military command and grassroots civil society organizations inside Syria.State Department officials also were said to be incensed at the coalition’s announcement Friday that it wouldn’t attend U.S.-Russian sponsored peace talks in Geneva. The coalition blamed its refusal to attend on the “invasion of Syria” by Iran and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.But analysts said the refusal looked particularly truculent, especially after Assad suggested in a Lebanese television interview Thursday that he might personally attend.“If Assad sends someone and they don’t, it doesn’t look good for them,” said Leila Hilal, a Syria specialist and head of the Middle East task force of the New America Foundation, a Washington research institute.
Paul Merrell

Wyden, Udall Statement on the Disclosure of Bulk Email Records Collection Program | Press Releases | U.S. Senator Ron Wyden - 0 views

www.wyden.senate.gov/...ail-records-collection-program

surveillance state NSA NSA-blowback efficacy email Udall Wyden

shared by Paul Merrell on 04 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • U. S. Senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Mark Udall (D-Colo.), both members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, released the following statement regarding the recent disclosure by intelligence officials that the NSA operated a bulk email records collection program under the authority of the Patriot Act until 2011.  This program is distinct from the internet-related collection carried out under section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act (which involves the PRISM computer system).   “We are quite familiar with the bulk email records collection program that operated under the USA Patriot Act and has now been confirmed by senior intelligence officials.  We were very concerned about this program’s impact on Americans’ civil liberties and privacy rights, and we spent a significant portion of 2011 pressing intelligence officials to provide evidence of its effectiveness.  They were unable to do so, and the program was shut down that year.  
  • “As we have noted, the Patriot Act’s surveillance authorities are not limited to phone records.  In fact, section 215 of the Patriot Act can be used to collect any type of records whatsoever.  The fact that Patriot Act authorities were used for the bulk collection of email records as well as phone records underscores our concern that this authority could be used to collect other types of records in bulk as well, including information on credit card purchases, medical records, library records, firearm sales records, financial information and a range of other sensitive subjects.  These other types of collection could clearly have a significant impact on Americans’ constitutional rights.   “Intelligence officials have noted that the bulk email records program was discussed with both Congress and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.  In our judgment it is also important to note that intelligence agencies made statements to both Congress and the Court that significantly exaggerated this program’s effectiveness.  This experience demonstrates to us that intelligence agencies’ assessments of the usefulness of particular collection programs – even significant ones – are not always accurate.  This experience has also led us to be skeptical of claims about the value of the bulk phone records collection program in particular.  
  • “We believe that the broader lesson here is that even though intelligence officials may be well-intentioned, assertions from intelligence agencies about the value and effectiveness of particular programs should not simply be accepted at face value by policymakers or oversight bodies any more than statements about the usefulness of other government programs should be taken at face value when they are made by other government officials.  It is up to Congress, the courts and the public to ask the tough questions and press even experienced intelligence officials to back their assertions up with actual evidence, rather than simply deferring to these officials’ conclusions without challenging them.   “We look forward to continuing the debate about the effectiveness of the ongoing Patriot Act phone records collection program in the days and weeks ahead.”
Paul Merrell

Spying by N.S.A. Ally Entangled U.S. Law Firm - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...nsnared-american-law-firm.html

surveillance state NSA ASD NSA-targets law-firms

shared by Paul Merrell on 21 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • The list of those caught up in the global surveillance net cast by the National Security Agency and its overseas partners, from social media users to foreign heads of state, now includes another entry: American lawyers. A top-secret document, obtained by the former N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden, shows that an American law firm was monitored while representing a foreign government in trade disputes with the United States. The disclosure offers a rare glimpse of a specific instance in which Americans were ensnared by the eavesdroppers, and is of particular interest because lawyers in the United States with clients overseas have expressed growing concern that their confidential communications could be compromised by such surveillance. Related Coverage Text: Document Describes Eavesdropping on American Law FirmFEB. 15, 2014 The government of Indonesia had retained the law firm for help in trade talks, according to the February 2013 document. It reports that the N.S.A.’s Australian counterpart, the Australian Signals Directorate, notified the agency that it was conducting surveillance of the talks, including communications between Indonesian officials and the American law firm, and offered to share the information.
  • The Australians told officials at an N.S.A. liaison office in Canberra, Australia, that “information covered by attorney-client privilege may be included” in the intelligence gathering, according to the document, a monthly bulletin from the Canberra office. The law firm was not identified, but Mayer Brown, a Chicago-based firm with a global practice, was then advising the Indonesian government on trade issues. On behalf of the Australians, the liaison officials asked the N.S.A. general counsel’s office for guidance about the spying. The bulletin notes only that the counsel’s office “provided clear guidance” and that the Australian agency “has been able to continue to cover the talks, providing highly useful intelligence for interested US customers.” The N.S.A. declined to answer questions about the reported surveillance, including whether information involving the American law firm was shared with United States trade officials or negotiators.
  • Most attorney-client conversations do not get special protections under American law from N.S.A. eavesdropping. Amid growing concerns about surveillance and hacking, the American Bar Association in 2012 revised its ethics rules to explicitly require lawyers to “make reasonable efforts” to protect confidential information from unauthorized disclosure to outsiders.Last year, the Supreme Court, in a 5-to-4 decision, rebuffed a legal challenge to a 2008 law allowing warrantless wiretapping that was brought in part by lawyers with foreign clients they believed were likely targets of N.S.A. monitoring. The lawyers contended that the law raised risks that required them to take costly measures, like traveling overseas to meet clients, to protect sensitive communications. But the Supreme Court dismissed their fears as “speculative.”The N.S.A. is prohibited from targeting Americans, including businesses, law firms and other organizations based in the United States, for surveillance without warrants, and intelligence officials have repeatedly said the N.S.A. does not use the spy services of its partners in the so-called Five Eyes alliance — Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand — to skirt the law.
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  • The N.S.A.’s protections for attorney-client conversations are narrowly crafted, said Stephen Gillers, an expert on legal ethics at New York University’s School of Law. The agency is barred from sharing with prosecutors intercepted attorney-client communications involving someone under indictment in the United States, according to previously disclosed N.S.A. rules. But the agency may still use or share the information for intelligence purposes. Andrew M. Perlman, a Suffolk University law professor who specializes in legal ethics and technology issues, said the growth of surveillance was troubling for lawyers. He helped create the bar association’s ethics code revisions that require lawyers to try to avoid being overheard by eavesdroppers. “You run out of options very quickly to communicate with someone overseas,” he said. “Given the difficulty of finding anything that is 100 percent secure, lawyers are in a difficult spot to ensure that all of the information remains in confidence.” 
  • Still, the N.S.A. can intercept the communications of Americans if they are in contact with a foreign intelligence target abroad, such as Indonesian officials. The N.S.A. is then required to follow so-called minimization rules to protect their privacy, such as deleting the identity of Americans or information that is not deemed necessary to understand or assess the foreign intelligence, before sharing it with other agencies. An N.S.A. spokeswoman said the agency’s Office of the General Counsel was consulted when issues of potential attorney-client privilege arose and could recommend steps to protect such information. “Such steps could include requesting that collection or reporting by a foreign partner be limited, that intelligence reports be written so as to limit the inclusion of privileged material and to exclude U.S. identities, and that dissemination of such reports be limited and subject to appropriate warnings or restrictions on their use,” said Vanee M. Vines, the spokeswoman.
  • In justifying the agency’s sweeping powers, the Obama administration often emphasizes the N.S.A.’s role in fighting terrorism and cyberattacks, but disclosures in recent months from the documents leaked by Mr. Snowden show the agency routinely spies on trade negotiations, communications of economic officials in other countries and even foreign corporations.
  • Other documents obtained from Mr. Snowden reveal that the N.S.A. shares reports from its surveillance widely among civilian agencies. A 2004 N.S.A. document, for example, describes how the agency’s intelligence gathering was critical to the Agriculture Department in international trade negotiations. “The U.S.D.A. is involved in trade operations to protect and secure a large segment of the U.S. economy,” that document states. Top agency officials “often rely on SIGINT” — short for the signals intelligence that the N.S.A. eavesdropping collects — “to support their negotiations.”
  • Paul Merrell on 21 Feb 14
     
    Outrageous.
Gary Edwards

Intelligence Warnings On Benghazi Were Loud And Clear - Investors.com - 0 views

news.investors.com/...agged-dangers-at-benghazi.aspx

Benghazi-coverup

shared by Gary Edwards on 13 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 13 Nov 13
     
    excerpt: "Months before the murder of a U.S. ambassador in Benghazi, American intelligence analysts documented a massive al-Qaida rally a few miles from the ambassador's residence. At that rally, terror leaders called for the murder of American diplomats. Three U.S. intelligence reports, unearthed by the American Media Institute and detailed here for the first time, offer vivid descriptions of the al-Qaida meeting. Flying the black flag of al-Qaida, some 300 armed men gathered in Benghazi's Al-Tahrir Square on June 7 and 8, 2012. They brandished machine guns, rocket launchers and a truck mounted with an anti-aircraft cannon. The two-day meeting, which included outdoor prayers and a parade of armed vehicles, was attended by a baker's dozen of North African al-Qaida affiliates. "It was like a team pep rally before the game, only for jihad," said a U.S. intelligence analyst who monitors North Africa. "Organized and deadly. You saw what followed. People died." In the face of these three reports, the State Department continued to deny requests for additional security for the U.S. ambassador in Libya. At the same time, the State Department issued a travel advisory warning Americans against going to Libya in August 2012. Obama administration officials have long denied any warning before the Sept. 11, 2012, Benghazi attacks. On the campaign trail, the president insisted that al-Qaida was "decimated" and "on the run," while intelligence reports prepared for the president's advisers told a different story - that al-Qaida's menace was growing in Libya and elsewhere. Al-Qaida itself publicly displayed its strength. Al-Qaida posted pictures of the June 2012 Benghazi meeting on its Arabic-language Facebook page and invited the Arabic-language media to cover the event, which many did. The three U.S. intelligence reports documenting the al-Qaida gathering in Benghazi were circulated in August 2012 and earlier among Defense and State Department officials, as well as Americ
Paul Merrell

Julian Assange unlikely to face U.S. charges over publishing classified documents - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...3-8304-caf30787c0a9_story.html

whistle-blowers Assange Wikileaks DoJ prosecutuion grand-jury

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • The Justice Department has all but concluded it will not bring charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for publishing classified documents because government lawyers said they could not do so without also prosecuting U.S. news organizations and journalists, according to U.S. officials. The officials stressed that a formal decision has not been made, and a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks remains impaneled, but they said there is little possibility of bringing a case against Assange, unless he is implicated in criminal activity other than releasing online top-secret military and diplomatic documents.
  • Justice officials said they looked hard at Assange but realized that they have what they described as a “New York Times problem.” If the Justice Department indicted Assange, it would also have to prosecute the New York Times and other news organizations and writers who published classified material, including The Washington Post and Britain’s Guardian newspaper, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
  • “We have repeatedly asked the Department of Justice to tell us what the status of the investigation was with respect to Mr. Assange,” said Barry J. Pollack, a Washington attorney for Assange. “They have declined to do so. They have not informed us in any way that they are closing the investigation or have made a decision not to bring charges against Mr. Assange. While we would certainly welcome that development, it should not have taken the Department of Justice several years to come to the conclusion that it should not be investigating journalists for publishing truthful information.”
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  • There have been persistent rumors that the grand jury investigation of Assange and WikiLeaks had secretly led to charges. Officials told The Post last week that there was no sealed indictment, and other Officials have since come forward to say, as one senior U.S. Official put it, that the department has “all but concluded” that it will not bring a case against Assange.
Paul Merrell

Obama Lets N.S.A. Exploit Some Internet Flaws, Officials Say - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ernet-flaws-officials-say.html

surveillance state Obama NSA NSA-backdoors exploits must-read Iranian-nukes-myth Stuxnet

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • Stepping into a heated debate within the nation’s intelligence agencies, President Obama has decided that when the National Security Agency discovers major flaws in Internet security, it should — in most circumstances — reveal them to assure that they will be fixed, rather than keep mum so that the flaws can be used in espionage or cyberattacks, senior administration officials said Saturday.But Mr. Obama carved a broad exception for “a clear national security or law enforcement need,” the officials said, a loophole that is likely to allow the N.S.A. to continue to exploit security flaws both to crack encryption on the Internet and to design cyberweapons.
  • elements of the decision became evident on Friday, when the White House denied that it had any prior knowledge of the Heartbleed bug, a newly known hole in Internet security that sent Americans scrambling last week to change their online passwords. The White House statement said that when such flaws are discovered, there is now a “bias” in the government to share that knowledge with computer and software manufacturers so a remedy can be created and distributed to industry and consumers.Caitlin Hayden, the spokeswoman for the National Security Council, said the review of the recommendations was now complete, and it had resulted in a “reinvigorated” process to weigh the value of disclosure when a security flaw is discovered, against the value of keeping the discovery secret for later use by the intelligence community.“This process is biased toward responsibly disclosing such vulnerabilities,” she said.
  • The N.S.A. made use of four “zero day” vulnerabilities in its attack on Iran’s nuclear enrichment sites. That operation, code-named “Olympic Games,” managed to damage roughly 1,000 Iranian centrifuges, and by some accounts helped drive the country to the negotiating table.Not surprisingly, officials at the N.S.A. and at its military partner, the United States Cyber Command, warned that giving up the capability to exploit undisclosed vulnerabilities would amount to “unilateral disarmament” — a phrase taken from the battles over whether and how far to cut America’s nuclear arsenal.“We don’t eliminate nuclear weapons until the Russians do,” one senior intelligence official said recently. “You are not going to see the Chinese give up on ‘zero days’ just because we do.” Even a senior White House official who was sympathetic to broad reforms after the N.S.A. disclosures said last month, “I can’t imagine the president — any president — entirely giving up a technology that might enable him some day to take a covert action that could avoid a shooting war.”
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  • One recommendation urged the N.S.A. to get out of the business of weakening commercial encryption systems or trying to build in “back doors” that would make it far easier for the agency to crack the communications of America’s adversaries. Tempting as it was to create easy ways to break codes — the reason the N.S.A. was established by Harry S. Truman 62 years ago — the committee concluded that the practice would undercut trust in American software and hardware products. In recent months, Silicon Valley companies have urged the United States to abandon such practices, while Germany and Brazil, among other nations, have said they were considering shunning American-made equipment and software. Their motives were hardly pure: Foreign companies see the N.S.A. disclosures as a way to bar American competitors.Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story AdvertisementAnother recommendation urged the government to make only the most limited, temporary use of what hackers call “zero days,” the coding flaws in software like Microsoft Windows that can give an attacker access to a computer — and to any business, government agency or network connected to it. The flaws get their name from the fact that, when identified, the computer user has “zero days” to fix them before hackers can exploit the accidental vulnerability.
  • But documents released by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor, make it clear that two years before Heartbleed became known, the N.S.A. was looking at ways to accomplish exactly what the flaw did by accident. A program code-named Bullrun, apparently named for the site of two Civil War battles just outside Washington, was part of a decade-long effort to crack or circumvent encryption on the web. The documents do not make clear how well it succeeded, but it may well have been more effective than exploiting Heartbleed would be at enabling access to secret data.The government has become one of the biggest developers and purchasers of information identifying “zero days,” officials acknowledge. Those flaws are big business — Microsoft pays up to $150,000 to those who find them and bring them to the company to fix — and other countries are gathering them so avidly that something of a modern-day arms race has broken out. Chief among the nations seeking them are China and Russia, though Iran and North Korea are in the market as well.
  • Paul Merrell on 13 Apr 14
     
    Note that this is only an elastic policy, not law. Also notice that NYT is now reporting as *fact* that the NSA did the cyber attack on the Iranian enrichment centrifuges. By any legal measure, if true that was an act of war, a war of aggression.  So why wasn't the American public informed that we were at war with Iran? 
Paul Merrell

CIA's Ex-No. 2 Says ISIS 'Learned From Snowden' - The Daily Beast - 0 views

www.thedailybeast.com/...isis-learned-from-snowden.html

surveillance state CIA NSA Snowden traitor ISIL

shared by Paul Merrell on 09 May 15 - No Cached
  • That is not a consensus view within the U.S. intelligence community, where officials have been divided over how much ISIS really learned from the Snowden leaks that it didn’t already know. The group didn’t begin seizing territory in Iraq until a year after the leaks began. And last year, a U.S. intelligence official with access to information about ISIS’s current tactics told The Daily Beast that while the group had “likely learned a lot” from the Snowden leaks, “many of their forces are familiar with the U.S. from their time in AQI, [and] they have adapted well to avoiding detection.”
  • “Within weeks of the leaks, terrorist organizations around the world were already starting to modify their actions in light of what Snowden disclosed. Communications sources dried up, tactics were changed,” Morell writes. Among the most damaging leaks, he adds, was one that described a program that collects foreigners’ emails as they move through equipment in the United States.Terrorist groups, including ISIS, have since shifted their communications to more “secure” platforms, are using encryption, or “are avoiding electronic communications altogether.”“ISIS was one of those terrorist groups that learned from Snowden, and it is clear that his actions played a role in the rise of ISIS,” Morell writes.
  • Edward Snowden’s leaks about U.S. intelligence operations “played a role in the rise of ISIS.” That’s the explosive new allegation from the former deputy director of the CIA, Michael Morell, who was among the United States’ most senior intelligence officials when Snowden began providing highly classified documents to journalists in 2013. U.S. intelligence officials have long argued that Snowden’s disclosures provided valuable insights to terrorist groups and nation-state adversaries, including China and Russia, about how the U.S. monitors communications around the world. But in his new memoir, to be published next week, Morell raises the stakes of that debate by directly implicating Snowden in the expansion of ISIS, which broke away from al Qaeda and has conquered large swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Edward Snowden’s leaks about U.S. intelligence operations “played a role in the rise of ISIS.” That’s the explosive new allegation from the former deputy director of the CIA, Michael Morell, who was among the United States’ most senior intelligence officials when Snowden began providing highly classified documents to journalists in 2013. U.S. intelligence officials have long argued that Snowden’s disclosures provided valuable insights to terrorist groups and nation-state adversaries, including China and Russia, about how the U.S. monitors communications around the world. But in his new memoir, to be published next week, Morell raises the stakes of that debate by directly implicating Snowden in the expansion of ISIS, which broke away from al Qaeda and has conquered large swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria. 
  • “Within weeks of the leaks, terrorist organizations around the world were already starting to modify their actions in light of what Snowden disclosed. Communications sources dried up, tactics were changed,” Morell writes. Among the most damaging leaks, he adds, was one that described a program that collects foreigners’ emails as they move through equipment in the United States.Terrorist groups, including ISIS, have since shifted their communications to more “secure” platforms, are using encryption, or “are avoiding electronic communications altogether.”“ISIS was one of those terrorist groups that learned from Snowden, and it is clear that his actions played a role in the rise of ISIS,” Morell writes.
  • That is not a consensus view within the U.S. intelligence community, where officials have been divided over how much ISIS really learned from the Snowden leaks that it didn’t already know. The group didn’t begin seizing territory in Iraq until a year after the leaks began. And last year, a U.S. intelligence official with access to information about ISIS’s current tactics told The Daily Beast that while the group had “likely learned a lot” from the Snowden leaks, “many of their forces are familiar with the U.S. from their time in AQI, [and] they have adapted well to avoiding detection.”
  • Paul Merrell on 09 May 15
     
    Keep in mind that ISIL is a U.S. creation. And that just about everything that CIA and NSA do violates the laws of the nation in which they act and is antithetical to our form of government.   
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