Daily Archives: January 16, 2018

Article 32, Negligent Homicide Against 2 Naval Commanders

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Article 32 is a thorough and impartial investigation and proceeding under the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice. This hearing is required to determine if the case should move forward to that of a court martial.

USS Fitzgerald (DDG-62) commander Cmdr. Bryce Benson, executive officer Cmdr. Sean Babbitt and command master chief CMC Brice Baldwin were removed from their positions by U.S. 7th Fleet commander Vice Adm. Joseph Aucoin this week based on the early results of several investigations into the June 17 collision between the destroyer and the merchant ship ACX Crystal. “Several junior officers were relieved of their duties due to poor seamanship and flawed teamwork as bridge and combat information center watchstanders. Additional administrative actions were taken against members of both watch teams,” read the statement.
“The collision was avoidable and both ships demonstrated poor seamanship. Within Fitzgerald, flawed watch stander teamwork and inadequate leadership contributed to the collision that claimed the lives of seven Fitzgerald sailors, injured three more and damaged both ships.”

USS John S. McCain (DDG-56) commander Cmdr. Alfredo J. Sanchez and executive officer Cmdr. Jessie L. Sanchez were removed from their positions by U.S. 7th Fleet commander Vice Adm. Phil Sawyer, “due to loss of confidence.”

The removals are a result of an ongoing investigation into the collision that cost the lives of 10 sailors and resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars of damage to the ship.

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USNI: The commanders of the two guided-missile destroyers that were involved in fatal collisions with merchant ships in 2017 will face military criminal charges that include charges of dereliction of duty, hazarding a vessel and negligent homicide, after the two incidents that resulted in the death of 17 sailors total, USNI News has learned.

Cmdr. Bryce Benson, former commander of USS Fitzgerald (DDG-62), along with three Fitzgerald junior officers, face a mix charges that include dereliction of duty, hazarding a vessel and negligent homicide related to the June 17 collision between the ship and ACX Crystal that resulted in the death of seven sailors, according to a statement from the U.S. Navy provided to USNI News.

Cmdr. Alfredo J. Sanchez, former commander of USS John S. McCain (DDG-56), faces similar dereliction of duty, hazarding a vessel and negligent homicide charges for the Aug. 21 collision between the guided-missile destroyer and a chemical tanker off the coast of Singapore that resulted in the death of 10 sailors.

 

The individuals will have the charges preferred via Article 32 preliminary hearings soon, the statement said.

“The announcement of an Article 32 hearing and referral to a court-martial is not intended to and does not reflect a determination of guilt or innocence related to any offenses. All individuals alleged to have committed misconduct are entitled to a presumption of innocence,” the statement said.
“Additional administrative actions are being conducted for members of both crews including non-judicial punishment for four Fitzgerald and four John S. McCain crewmembers.”

A chief petty officer also faces a dereliction of duty charge that has already been preferred related to the McCain incident.

The charges are part of accountability actions recommended by an independent investigation tasked with reviewing further disciplinary actions by Navy leadership.

Director of Naval Reactors Adm. James F. Caldwell was appointed as the Consolidated Disposition Authority (CDA) for administrative and disciplinary actions related to the Fitzgerald and McCain collisions by Vice Adm. Bill Moran in late October.

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USS Fitzgerald photo(s)

Related image

USS McCain photo(s)

 

Other actions include removing Vice Adm. Tom Rowden from his position as the head of naval surface forces earlier than his planned Feb. 2 retirement date.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson and Secretary of the Navy Richard V. Spencer are set to appear before the House Armed Services readiness and seapower and projection forces subcommittees on Thursday to testify on the two reviews conducted following the Western Pacific collisions. Richardson tasked U.S. Fleet Forces Command with leading a Comprehensive Review of Recent Surface Force Incidents, and Spencer directed a panel to lead a Strategic Readiness Review.

To date, the Navy has removed the commanding officers and executive officers of both McCain and Fitzgerald; Capt. Jeffery Bennett, commodore of the Japan-based Destroyer Squadron 15 to which both ships belonged; the Japan-based task force commander, Rear Adm. Charles Williams; and the commander of U.S. 7th Fleet, Vice Adm. Joseph Aucoin.

U.S. Pacific Fleet commander Adm. Scott Swift announced his earlier-than-expected retirement in late September.

The following is the complete statement from the service on the CDA recommendations.

On 30 October 2017, Admiral William Moran, Vice Chief of Naval Operations, designated Admiral Frank Caldwell as the Consolidated Disposition Authority to review the accountability actions taken to date in relation to USS Fitzgerald (DDG 62) and USS John S. McCain (DDG 56) collisions and to take additional administrative or disciplinary actions as appropriate.

After careful deliberation, today Admiral Frank Caldwell announced that Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) charges are being preferred against individual service members in relation to the collisions.

USS Fitzgerald: Courts-martial proceedings/Article 32 hearings are being convened to review evidence supporting possible criminal charges against Fitzgerald members. The members’ ranks include one Commander (the Commanding Officer), two Lieutenants, and one Lieutenant Junior Grade. The charges include dereliction of duty, hazarding a vessel, and negligent homicide.

USS John S. McCain: Additionally, for John S. McCain, one court- martial proceeding/Article 32 hearing is being convened to review evidence supporting possible criminal charges against one Commander (the Commanding Officer). The charges include dereliction of duty, hazarding a vessel, and negligent homicide. Also, one charge of dereliction of duty was preferred and is pending referral to a forum for a Chief Petty Officer.

The announcement of an Article 32 hearing and referral to a court-martial is not intended to and does not reflect a determination of guilt or innocence related to any offenses. All individuals alleged to have committed misconduct are entitled to a presumption of innocence.

Additional administrative actions are being conducted for members of both crews including non-judicial punishment for four Fitzgerald and four John S. McCain crewmembers.

Information regarding further actions, if warranted, will be discussed at the appropriate time.

 

List of CIA Covert Operators Compromised, Arrest Made

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Department of Justice
Office of Public Affairs
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, January 16, 2018

Former CIA Officer Arrested for Retaining Classified Information

Jerry Chun Shing Lee, aka Zhen Cheng Li, 53, a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer, was arrested last night on charges of unlawful retention of national defense information.

Criminal complaint found here.

Dana J. Boente, Acting Assistant Attorney General for National Security and U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, and Andrew W. Vale, Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, made the announcement.

Lee was arrested after arriving at John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens, New York.  Lee is a naturalized U.S. citizen, currently residing in Hong Kong, China.  According to court documents, Lee began working for the CIA as a case officer in 1994, maintained a Top Secret clearance and signed numerous non-disclosure agreements during his tenure at CIA.

According to court documents, in August 2012, Lee and his family left Hong Kong to return to the United States to live in northern Virginia. While traveling back to the United States, Lee and his family had hotel stays in Hawaii and Virginia.  During each of the hotel stays, FBI agents conducted court-authorized searches of Lee’s room and luggage, and found that Lee was in unauthorized possession of materials relating to the national defense.  Specifically, agents found two small books containing handwritten notes that contained classified information, including but not limited to, true names and phone numbers of assets and covert CIA employees, operational notes from asset meetings, operational meeting locations and locations of covert facilities.

Lee made his initial appearance this afternoon in the Eastern District of New York.  He is charged with unlawful retention of national defense information and faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison, if convicted.  The maximum statutory sentence is prescribed by Congress and is provided here for informational purposes. If convicted of any offense, the sentencing of the defendant will be determined by the court after considering the advisory Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.  A criminal complaint contains allegations that a defendant has committed a crime.  Every defendant is presumed to be innocent until and unless proven guilty in court.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Neil Hammerstrom of the Eastern District of Virginia and Deputy Chief Elizabeth Cannon of the National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section are prosecuting the case.

Iraq Before and After ISIS, Satellite Images and Data

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Mosul in March 2016, under Islamic State control, when nighttime lighting had fallen by 55 percent compared to its pre-ISIS levels in January 2014

January 9, 2018

What Life Under ISIS Looked Like from Space

Rand Corporation: Mosul in March 2016, under Islamic State control, when nighttime lighting had fallen by 55 percent compared to its pre-ISIS levels in January 2014

Image by NOAA Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS)

A sandstorm swept through the besieged Iraqi city of Ramadi on the day it fell to the Islamic State. In the murk and confusion, suicide car bombs raced into the city center and leveled entire blocks. By the afternoon, the black flag of ISIS flew from the government headquarters.

Hundreds of miles above, an array of satellites captured what came next. Markets emptied. Factories went cold. Fields of wheat and barley withered. And the lights went out all over the city.

Data from those satellites provided RAND researchers an unprecedented look at life inside the Islamic State. They found a path of economic destruction, with few exceptions. In city after city, as in Ramadi, the arrival of the Islamic State meant a plunge into darkness.

Local Economies Under ISIS

By the time Ramadi fell in mid-2015, the Islamic State controlled an area of Iraq and Syria approaching the size of Great Britain. Its advance had been ruthless, its brutality staggering. RAND researchers wanted to know: What happened to cities and local economies when the Islamic State tried to govern?

Satellites were their way in.

Satellite observations have opened windows on everything from nuclear weapon programs to rush-hour traffic in the decades since RAND first proposed a “world-circling spaceship” in 1946. The United States alone now has more than 800 active satellites in orbit; more than half of them are commercial. Analysts have used satellite data to measure poverty in Kenya, black markets in North Korea, even the number of customer cars in Home Depot parking lots.

Those same kinds of data, RAND researchers realized, could provide a remarkably detailed look inside one of the most dangerous places in the world.

Satellite data measuring surface reflections from the Earth, for example, would show how much land was planted for agriculture. Urban heat readings would help pinpoint working factories. And infrared ground scans would show where city lights were glowing in the night, bright spider webs against a dark background.

In Syria, more than 60 percent of the lights went dark as ISIS struggled to restore electricity or fuel generators. In Iraq, it was more like 80 percent.

The researchers collected data on more than 150 cities in Iraq and Syria, month by month. They estimated that as much as a third of the population had fled areas under ISIS control. Factories closed; fields dried up. In Syria, more than 60 percent of the lights went dark as ISIS struggled to restore electricity or fuel generators. In Iraq, it was more like 80 percent.

“What’s unique about this is that we were able to bring all these different measurements together and provide a much more holistic understanding of the local economies,” said Eric Robinson, a research programmer and analyst at RAND who led the project. “We were able to use nighttime lighting to understand electricity consumption, but control for population levels. We knew that if an entire city had depopulated, then there was no one there to turn the lights on.”

Some Economic Decay, Some Effective Governance

The researchers then zoomed in on five major cities using high-resolution photographs from commercial satellites. Those photographs, similar to the satellite-view images on Google Maps, were so detailed the researchers could count cars on the road or measure foot traffic at a market. A small army of volunteers helped them go through the images, one by one, and perform those counts by hand—a crowd-sourced solution to a big-data problem.

The images told two very different stories.

In cities like Ramadi, Tikrit, and Deir ez-Zor, where ISIS was under fire and struggling to maintain control, its rule brought economic decay. Satellite images of the main market in Ramadi, for example, showed a ghost town. Commercial trucks all but disappeared from the roads in Tikrit. And in Deir ez-Zor, the lights went dark in ISIS-controlled neighborhoods even though the group held massive oil fields outside the city that could have kept generators running.

But in the core of the caliphate, where ISIS control was more secure, the satellite images showed some evidence of effective governance. In its capital city of Raqqa, for example, the group managed to keep the lights on at hospitals even when the rest of the city went dark, a sign that it was managing electricity. In the big city of Mosul, the group transformed an open-air market into a covered shopping district that was soon bustling with shoppers and car traffic—all of which it could tax.

Mosul City Center and Market

Following liberation of the city, recent satellite photo shows extensive damage and destruction to Mosul.

Satellite image by Digitalglobe

“There were obviously just terrible stories of brutality coming out of the city, but people still need to buy food, and shop owners still own shops, and goods are still moving in and out of this market,” Robinson said.

“One of the key takeaways of our report,” he added, “is that without the military campaign to retake this territory, the Islamic State could have tried to replicate some of the modest success it experienced in Mosul and Raqqa. We would be facing a much different enemy.”

Preparing for a Post-ISIS Recovery

In fact, the researchers concluded it wasn’t necessarily the harsh rule and high taxes of ISIS that ground out local economies. The group was constantly trying to fend off counterattacks and air strikes, and could not turn its attention to governing or building back local economies.

Its caliphate has since splintered. It lost Tikrit in 2015, Ramadi in early 2016. Iraqi forces declared Mosul liberated last year, after dislodging ISIS forces neighborhood by neighborhood. A RAND analysis calculated that the Islamic State had lost more than half its territory by early 2017, a rout that has continued since then.

The extensive destruction of West Mosul, Iraq, June 2017

The extensive destruction of West Mosul, Iraq, June 2017

Photo by Sipa via AP Images

The disintegration of the Islamic State as a state has given RAND’s satellite analysis new importance. No longer a window into how the group governs, though, it is now providing a window into the economic damage it left behind, and what it will take to rebuild. Researchers have been working with U.S. government agencies to prioritize work in Syria to help stabilize cities captured from ISIS—restoring the electric grid, for example, or investing in markets.

“I think the big concern in this region is that if we don’t help truly rebuild and reconstitute the local governance in those areas, that there will be a resurgence of an ISIS 2.0 or an ISIS-like group,” Robinson said. He’s hoping to continue tracking the satellite data, “to measure our progress so far, to make sure we don’t take our foot off the gas too soon.”

The scale of that need is apparent in Ramadi. It’s been almost three years since ISIS fighters swept into the city in the blur of a sandstorm, and two years since Iraqi forces swept them back out. RAND’s satellite data showed destruction in almost every neighborhood in the city; every bridge was demolished. The city was once home to nearly 300,000 people; RAND’s data suggest no more than 36,000 still lived there after ISIS.

— Doug Irving

Highlights of DHS Report to Judiciary Cmte on Immigration

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Primer:

The Justice Department on Tuesday announced plans to appeal a judge’s ruling that blocked President Donald Trump from shuttering a program that gave protections and work permits to some people who entered the U.S. illegally as children.

In a ruling last week, San Francisco-based U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup ordered the administration to resume accepting renewal applications for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, better known as DACA. More here from Politico.

In part, highlights:

The Department has also implemented historic efforts to step up international cooperation. For the first time ever, DHS established a clear baseline for what countries must do to help the United States confidently screen travelers and immigrants from their territory. Every country in the world is now required to meet high security standards and to help us understand who is coming into our country.
As required under President Trump’s Executive Order Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States (EO 13780), all foreign governments have been notified of the new standards, which include the sharing of terrorist identities, criminal
history information, and other data needed to ensure public safety and national security, as well as the requirement that countries issue secure biometric passports, report lost and stolen travel documents to INTERPOL, and take other essential actions to prevent identity fraud.
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Visa Waiver Program
We are also looking at ways to further strengthen the Visa Waiver Program (VWP). First and foremost, the VWP is a security partnership program. It mandates high and consistent standards from partner countries in the areas of national security, law enfor
cement, and immigration enforcement to detect and prevent terrorists, criminals, and other potentially dangerous individuals from traveling to the United States —
while still facilitating legitimate travel and tourism.
Currently, 38 countries participate in the VWP, which allows their citizens to travel to the United States for business or tourism for stays of up to 90 days after applying and being approved through the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA). In return, these countries must comply with program requirements to enter into information
-sharing protocols that enable the relay of information concerning known and suspected terrorists and criminals; consistent and timely lost and stolen passport information reporting; and robust border and travel document
screening. As a result of these program requirements, countries have adopted new laws, policies, and practices that strengthen our mutual security.
The Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act of 2015,
combined with Secretarial action, have strengthened the VWP’s security provisions over the past two years.
VWP countries are now required to issue high -security electronic passports (e-
passports); implement information sharing arrangements to exchange terrorist identity information; establish mechanisms to validate e-passports at each key port of entry; report all lost and stolen passports to INTERPOL or directly to the United States no later than 24 hours after the country becomes aware of the loss or theft; and screen international travelers against the INTERPOL Stolen and Lost Travel Documents (SLTD) database and notices. As with other operational activities of DHS, a full discussion of the privacy impact of these initiatives and how we mitigate the risk to personal privacy is available on our website.
Since enactment of the Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act, DHS has realized an increase in the sharing of terrorist identity information. Several countries have increased the frequency of their reporting of lost and stolen passports —VWP countries account for over 70 percent of the almost 73 million lost and stolen travel documents reported to INTERPOL. All VWP countries are now issuing and using for travel to the United States fraud-resistant e-passports that meet or exceed the ICAO standards. Over 70,000 ESTA applicationshave been denied, cancelled or revoked under enforcement of the VWP Improvement Act’seligibility restrictions for VWP travel.
Border Security
In compliance with Executive Order 13767: Border Security and Immigration Enforcement
Improvements, DHS has conducted a comprehensive study of the security of the southern border that addresses all of the elements that provide an integrated solution for the Nation. Our first priority is to expand on our existing southern border wall system and close legal loopholes that encourage and enable illegal immigration and create a corresponding backlog in the courts. We currently have an immigration court backlog of more than 650,000 cases pending before the Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review. We also have a massive asylum backlog with more than 270,000 pending cases before U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).
Recognizing the unsustainability of the asylum case backlog, USCIS has implemented efficiency measures designed to reduce adjudication times. Similarly, the Department of Justice has taken action to reduce unwarranted case continuances in immigration courts, which helps reduce the backlog while affording aliens full and fair hearings. To further

reduce the “pull factors” and restore integrity to our immigration benefits adjudication process, we must tighten case processing standards, including the “credible
-fear” standard, impose and enforce penalties for fraud, and ensure applicants are fully vetted before they are allowed access to the United States.
In addition, visa-overstays account for roughly 40 percent of all illegal immigration in the
United States. In FY 2016, more than 628,000 aliens overstayed their visas. By increasing
overstay penalties and expanding ICE’s enforcement tools, we can help ensure that foreign
workers, students, and visitors respect the terms of their temporary visas. We need Congress to authorize the Department to raise and collect fees from immigration benefit applications to fund additional enhancements to our immigration system called for by the President’s Executive Orders.
Enforcing Immigration Laws
We are also prioritizing the enforcement of our immigration laws in the interior of our country.
There are nearly one million aliens with final orders of removal across the country
—meaning these removable aliens were afforded due process of law, had their
day in court, and were ultimately ordered removed by a judge — yet they remain in our nation and ICE only has 6,000 Deportation Officers to arrest and remove them. The Administration looks to strengthen law enforcement by hiring 10,000 more ICE officers and agents, and supports the request from the Department of Justice to hire 300 more federal prosecutors.
To further protect our communities, we must end so-called “sanctuary” jurisdictions. Hundreds of state and local jurisdictions across the country that do not honor requests from ICE to hold criminal aliens who are already in state and local custody. Instead, they allow them back into their communities, where they are allowed to commit more crimes. This also poses a greater risk of harm to ICE officers, who must locate and arrest these criminals in public places, and increases the likelihood that the criminal aliens can resist arrest or flee. Rather than enhancing public safety, sanctuary jurisdictions undermine it.
The only “sanctuary” these jurisdictions create is a safe haven for criminals. States and localities that refuse to cooperate with federal authorities should be ineligible for funding from certain grants and cooperative agreements.
Authorizing and incentivizing states and localities to enforce immigration laws would further help ICE with its mission and make all communities safer.
In FY 2017, 1,761 criminal illegal aliens were released from ICE custody because of a 2001
Supreme Court decision that generally requires ICE to release certain removable aliens with final orders of removal—including violent criminals—
within 180 days, if they have not been removed and there is no significant likelihood of removal in the reasonably foreseeable future. Legally insupportable judicial interpretations of the law regarding the detention and removability of criminal aliens have eroded ICE’s authority to keep aliens in custody pending removal.
Pursuant to this Executive Order, USCIS announced it will take a more targeted approach to combatting fraud and abuse in the employment -based visa programs, including the H-1B program. To help end H-1B petitioner fraud and abuse, USCIS has established a Targeted Site Visit and Verification Program (TSVVP). Targeted site visits allow USCIS to focus its resources where fraud and abuse of certain programs are more likely to occur. TSVVP initially focused on H-1B petitions filed by companies that are H-1B dependent (as defined by statute), employers petitioning for H-1B workers who will be placed off -site at another company’s location, or cases where USCIS cannot validate the H-1B petitioner’s business information through commercially -available data.
USCIS has also taken great strides to improve transparency with the public about employment -based immigration programs. The agency has published new data on its website to give the public more information regarding the use of nonimmigrant workers in the H-1B, H-2B, and L nonimmigrant programs. Information about the use and legal authority for employment authorization documents has also been published.
Most low-skilled immigration into the United States occurs legally through our
immigrant-visa system, which, unlike many other countries’ systems, prioritizes family
-based chain-migration. Each year, the United States grants lawful permanent resident status (greencards) to more than one million people; two-thirds of that total is based on a person having a sponsoring relative in the United States, regardless of the new immigrant’s skills, education, English language proficiency, or ability to successfully assimilate. This system of chain-migration has accounted for more than 60 percent of immigration into the United States over the past 35 years. We must end chain-migration, and limit family -based green cards to spouses and the minor children of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents.
We must also eliminate the “diversity visa” lottery. Every year, through this lottery, 50,000
green cards are awarded at random to foreign nationals. Many of these lottery beneficiaries have absolutely no ties to the United States, no special skills, and limited education. The random lottery program has not been adopted by other countries and does not adequately serve our national interest. Full opening summary here.