Now Loretta Lynch Pleads the ‘Fifth’ in Iran Ransom Investigation

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H. R. 5931, a bill in Congress is designed to stop all future payments of any sort to Iran.

Senator Grassley’s letter to Loretta Lynch demanding answers to 5 questions is here.

Congress: Attorney General
Lynch ‘Pleads Fifth’ on Secret Iran ‘Ransom’ Payments

Obama admin blocking congressional probe into cash payments to Iran

Attorney General Loretta Lynch is declining to comply with an investigation by leading members of Congress about the Obama administration’s secret efforts to send Iran $1.7 billion in cash earlier this year, prompting accusations that Lynch has “pleaded the Fifth” Amendment to avoid incriminating herself over these payments, according to lawmakers and communications exclusively obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) and Rep. Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.) initially presented Lynch in October with a series of questions about how the cash payment to Iran was approved and delivered.

In an Oct. 24 response, Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik responded on Lynch’s behalf, refusing to answer the questions and informing the lawmakers that they are barred from publicly disclosing any details about the cash payment, which was bound up in a ransom deal aimed at freeing several American hostages from Iran.

The response from the attorney general’s office is “unacceptable” and provides evidence that Lynch has chosen to “essentially plead the fifth and refuse to respond to inquiries regarding [her] role in providing cash to the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism,” Rubio and Pompeo wrote on Friday in a follow-up letter to Lynch, according to a copy obtained by the Free Beacon.

The inquiry launched by the lawmakers is just one of several concurrent ongoing congressional probes aimed at unearthing a full accounting of the administration’s secret negotiations with Iran.

“It is frankly unacceptable that your department refuses to answer straightforward questions from the people’s elected representatives in Congress about an important national security issue,” the lawmakers wrote. “Your staff failed to address any of our questions, and instead provided a copy of public testimony and a lecture about the sensitivity of information associated with this issue.”

“As the United States’ chief law enforcement officer, it is outrageous that you would essentially plead the fifth and refuse to respond to inquiries,” they stated. “The actions of your department come at time when Iran continues to hold Americans hostage and unjustly sentence them to prison.”

The lawmakers included a copy of their previous 13 questions and are requesting that Lynch provide answers by Nov. 4.

When asked about Lynch’s efforts to avoid answering questions about the cash payment, Pompeo told the Free Beacon that the Obama administration has blocked Congress at every turn as lawmakers attempt to investigate the payments to Iran.

“Who knew that simple questions regarding Attorney General Lynch’s approval of billions of dollars in payments to Iran could be so controversial that she would refuse to answer them?” Pompeo said. “This has become the Obama administration’s coping mechanism for anything related to the Islamic Republic of Iran—hide information, obfuscate details, and deny answers to Congress and the American people.”

“They know this isn’t a sustainable strategy, however, and I trust they will start to take their professional, and moral, obligations seriously,” the lawmaker added.

In the Oct. 24 letter to Rubio and Pompeo, Assistant Attorney General Kadzik warned the lawmakers against disclosing to the public any information about the cash payment.

Details about the deal are unclassified, but are being kept under lock and key in a secure facility on Capitol Hill, the Free Beacon first disclosed. Lawmakers and staffers who have clearance to view the documents are forced to relinquish their cellular devices and are barred from taking any notes about what they see.

“Please note that these documents contain sensitive information that is not appropriate for public release,” Kadzik wrote to the lawmakers. “Disclosure of this information beyond members of the House and Senate and staff who are able to view them could adversely affect the diplomatic relations of the United States, including with key allies, as well as the State Department’s ability to defend [legal] claims against the United States [by Iran] that are still being litigated at the Hague Tribunal.”

“The public release of any portion of these documents, or the information contained therein, is not authorized by the transmittal of these documents or by this communication,” Kadzik wrote.

Congressional sources have told the Free Beacon that this is another part of the effort to hide details about these secret negotiations with Iran from the American public.

One senior congressional source familiar with both the secret documents and the inquiry into them told the Free Beacon that the details of the negotiations are so damning that the administration’s best strategy is to ignore lawmakers’ requests for more information.

“Every Obama administration official and department involved in the Iran Deal appear to be running for cover,” the source said. “Like we feared, the [Iran deal] is turning out to be a disaster and Iran is emboldened in its aggression. Evidently Attorney General Lynch and the Department of Justice have decided ‘refusal to cooperate’ is their best strategy. But this is dangerous and ultimately won’t protect them from anything.”

Update: The headline has been updated to more accurately characterize the story.

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In part testimony on the House side:

The deal – as well as the interim agreement known as the Joint Plan of Action (JPOA) – provided Iran with substantial economic relief that helped the regime avoid a severe economic crisis and return to a modest recovery path. The lifting of restrictions on Iran’s use of frozen overseas assets as part of the interim agreement returned about $11.9 billion to Iran. The final agreement provided Tehran with access to a further $100 billion, including over $50 billion in unencumbered, liquid cash, according to the Obama administration.2 These funds gave Tehran badly needed hard currency to settle its outstanding debts, begin to repair its economy, build up its diminished foreign exchange reserves, and ease a budgetary crisis, as well as providing the regime greater resources for the financing of terrorism and other illicit activities.

The nuclear deal did nothing to address the full range of Iran’s malign activities, including ballistic missile development, support for terrorism, regional destabilization, and human rights abuses. Iran also still owes American terrorism victims and their families more than $55 billion in unpaid, outstanding damages awarded by American courts. (…)

A key driver of these threats remains the Islamic Republic’s ability to bankroll and finance a host of terrorist groups, militias, and proxy forces throughout the Middle East,6 including Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and designated Iraqi Shiite militias, as well expanding the existing asymmetric military capabilities of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its elite Quds Force. Iran remains the world’s largest and most dangerous state sponsor of terrorism, according to President Obama’s State Department.7

Iran’s ability to access cash outside the formal banking system is crucial in supporting these activities. Tehran also cash for other malign activities that it aggressively supports: WMD procurement, missile and heavy weaponry procurement, as well as aid to the murderous regime of Bashir al-Assad in Syria, designated Shiite militias, the Houthis in Yemen, and other malign actors.

 

He Warned the WH and Democrats About Obamacare

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He Predicted Obamacare Wouldn’t Be ‘Affordable.’ Democrats Didn’t Listen.

DailySignal: Robert Laszewski is a policy adviser and analyst for the health insurance industry. He’s correctly predicted Obamacare’s pitfalls since Day One.

Heritage

In an interview with “Full Measure” this Sunday, Laszewski says he warned the Obama administration and other Democrats not to call it the “Affordable Care Act.” Earlier this week, the administration announced Obamacare premiums are spiking 25 percent.

Here’s a transcript from our interview:

Laszewski: The future is not good. The fundamental problem is not enough healthy people have signed up to pay for the sick, and not enough healthy people have signed up because the insurance plans that people are being offered just simply aren’t of good value.

Attkisson: What do customers see as wrong with the insurance product?

Laszewski: The insurance products consumers see are still too expensive in terms of premium. And the deductibles and copays are too high.

Attkisson: Can you explain in simple terms how the insurance companies are losing so much money if they’re charging so much for premiums and if deductibles are so high?

Laszewski: It’s real simple. If you only provide a health insurance plan that the sickest people buy, you can’t charge enough. You can never charge enough.

Attkisson: At it’s core, it was supposed the provide affordable insurance for everybody who needed it.

Laszewski: Yes. The Affordable Care Act was supposed to ensure that whether you were employed or unemployed or self-employed, you would have access to affordable health insurance. For someone who’s not getting a subsidy, who’s paying the full cost of the insurance, it’s likely they are now paying about double what they paid before under the old market, where only healthy people could get in.

>> Find out when and where you can watch “Full Measure”

 

DailySignal

**** Either way, taxpayers are in fact on the hook to offset costs regardless of how they are applied. Socialized payment system for a broken system.

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Minnesota could spend up to $300M to offset ObamaCare hikes

TheHill: Minnesota’s Democratic governor wants to pour as much as $300 million into a relief fund for people facing massive premium hikes under ObamaCare in his state next year.

Gov. Mark Dayton proposed Thursday that he would offer “rebates” to help offset the 55 percent increase in healthcare premiums that ObamaCare customers will face in Minnesota this year.

The money would be taken out of Minnesota’s “rainy day fund,” which got a boost from the state’s budget surplus last year.

But Dayton was clear that his state would need a longer-term solution to make ObamaCare plans more affordable.

Dayton is the first governor in the country to announce his own plan to tackle rising premiums this year, which are far steeper than any of the previous year’s increases. The state’s final plan will also include input from the state’s Republicans, who are working on their own proposals to address panic over the premiums.

With the new rebates, Dayton said the rate increase would be limited to an average of 16 percent — below the national average of 22 percent. Last year, the national average for premium hikes was about 7 percent.

Minnesota has attracted national attention this year as it faces one of the highest premium hikes in the country. Dayton himself came under scrutiny on the issue of healthcare after he declared earlier this month that the “Affordable Care Act is no longer affordable.” Under pressure from fellow Democrats, he later walked back his remarks.

In his lengthy statement on Thursday, Dayton vigorously defended ObamaCare while also acknowledging the law is “now causing very difficult financial problems” for some people.

NSA Contractor Stole Names of Covert Agents

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WDEF: The former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor who’s been charged with stealing and keeping highly classified material over the course of two decades put U.S. intelligence officers and operations at risk by possessing their names, according to a court filing Thursday.

In the filing with a Maryland federal court, the Justice Department confirmed for the first time specific details about the type of information Harold Martin took from the NSA.

Indictment document is here.

Harold Martin’s Detention order filed on October 27, 2016 is found here. His bail hearing held on October 28 resulted in a denial of freedom and a bail release.

“As an example, information stolen by the Defendant includes numerous names of intelligence officers of the United States,” the filing said. “These officers operate under cover outside the United States, and putting the secrecy of their identities at risk by removing information about those identities from appropriate, secure storage not only endangers the lives and safety of those officers and the individuals with whom they work, but also risks exposure of American intelligence operations.”

The Justice Department added that if numerous intelligence sources and methods for highly sensitive intelligence operations fell into the wrong hands, they “could be rendered nearly useless.”

Prosecutors estimate that a substantial portion of the 50 terabytes of digital information found in Martin’s possession contains “highly classified information.” Authorities also found thousands of hard-copy documents containing “highly classified information” in his possession.

In the filing Thursday, the Justice Department did not say whether the names of intelligence officers were shared with U.S. adversaries and it’s still unclear whether Martin was selling this information or if he was simply hoarding the information in his home.

Regardless of his intentions, the Justice Department plans to charge Martin under the Espionage Act. He has already been charged with theft of government property and removal and retention of classified materials for stealing half a billion pages of U.S. secrets and records between 1996 and 2016.

Martin, 51, of Glen Burnie, Maryland, made his first public court appearance in a Baltimore federal courtroom on Friday and the judge ruled that he must remain detained because he poses a “serious risk to the public.”

In court documents filed last week, government lawyers said that Martin committed theft that was “breathtaking in its longevity and scale.”

The Justice Department revealed only earlier this month that Martin had been arrested in late August when officials used search warrants to look through his home, two storage sheds and car. Martin was a Booz Allen Hamilton Employee.

This comes three years after Edward Snowden, a NSA contractor who also worked for Booz Allen Hamilton, leaked top secret U.S. government documents from the agency.

FBI to Re-Open Hillary Clinton ServerGate Case Confirmed

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Update: There are countless investigations ongoing and as it relates to this reopen of the Hillary case:

New emails found on a government official’s device, likely Huma Abedin tied to the FBI’s Clinton inquiry were discovered during the investigation into Anthony Weiner’s sexting.

It appears there are countless emails coming into evidence that are the cause of the House Oversight Committee and the FBI may be re-opening the email/server investigation. Given the handful of days remaining before the general presidential election, it is assured that something significant has come to the surface that would approve this decision.

Speaker Paul Ryan has just called for cancelling all security briefings for Hillary Clinton.

Jason Chaffetz@jasoninthehouse

FBI Dir just informed me, “The FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation.” Case reopened.

Back in September:

Smith Calls for FBI to Reopen Clinton Investigation

Sep 28, 2016
Press Release

WASHINGTON – U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), chairman of the U.S. House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, today urged FBI Director James Comey to reopen the FBI’s investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email server.

At today’s House Judiciary Committee hearing titled Oversight of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Rep. Smith questioned Director Comey and described several recent developments that would justify a reopening of the investigation, including:

  • Reports that an employee at a company that managed former Secretary Clinton’s private email server said on the forum Reddit.com, “ . . . I need to strip out a VIP’s (VERY VIP) email address from a bunch of archived emails….” This same employee called a new retention policy designed to delete emails after 60 days a “Hillary cover-up operation.”
  • A former Clinton Foundation employee who also managed the Clinton server destroyed devices used by Clinton by smashing them with a hammer.
  • Two employees involved in maintaining the Clinton server recently pleading the Fifth Amendment to Congress to avoid self-incrimination.

Rep. Smith also urged Director Comey to ensure that the FBI complied with the Science Committee’s recent subpoena of documents related to the server. More here.

****

Related reading: House Oversight Chairman promises years of Clinton investigations: ‘She’s not getting a clean slate’

We don’t know if another whistleblower has come forward or if the WikiLeaks emails are at the center of the decision to re-open the Hillary servergate issue but the letter signed by James Comey does offer some clues.

****

BusinessInsider: NBC News also reported that the FBI will reopen its investigation. In a letter to Congress, FBI director James Comey wrote that the investigative team in charge of looking into Clinton’s server briefed him on Thursday on new emails they found that might contain classified information.

“The FBI cannot assess whether or not this material may be significant,” Comey wrote.

 

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NYPost: For months now, we’ve been told that Hillary Clinton’s 33,000 missing emails were permanently erased and destroyed beyond recovery. But newly released FBI notes strongly suggest they still exist in several locations — and they could be recovered, if only someone would impanel a grand jury and seize them.

In a May interview with FBI agents, an executive with the Denver contractor that maintained Clinton’s private server revealed that an underling didn’t bleach-clean all her subpoenaed emails, just ones he stored in a data file he used to transfer the emails from the server to Clinton’s aides, who in turn sorted them for delivery to Congress.

The Platte River Networks executive, whose name was redacted from the interview report, said PRN tech Paul Combetta “created a ‘vehicle’ to transfer email files from the live mailboxes of [Clinton Executive Services Corp.] email accounts [and] then later used BleachBit software to shred the ‘vehicle,’ but the email content still existed in the live email accounts.”

Unless one of Clinton’s aides had the capability to log in to the PRN server as an administrator and remove a mailbox, her archived mailboxes more than likely still reside somewhere in that system. And they may also materialize on an internal “shared drive” that PRN created to control access to the Clinton email accounts among PRN employees. PRN has been under FBI order to preserve all emails and other evidence since the start of its investigation last year.

Clinton’s missing “personal” emails may also be captured on a Google server. According to FBI notes, Combetta “transferred all of the Clinton email content to a personal Google email address he created.” Only the FBI never subpoenaed Google to find out.

The FBI documents also reveal that Hillary’s server was mirrored on a cloud server in Pennsylvania maintained by Datto Inc., a tech firm that performs cloud-to-cloud data protection.

When PRN contracted with Datto, it requested that Hillary’s server be backed up locally and privately. But the techs forgot to order the private node, and they sent the server backup data “remotely to Datto’s secure cloud and not to a local private node.” The FBI never subpoenaed Datto’s server, either.

Then there’s the laptop Combetta loaded with the Clinton email archive and allegedly shipped back to a Clinton aide in Washington, who claims it got “lost” in the mail. Not so fast: The latest FBI document dump includes a series of interviews with an unidentified former “special assistant” to Clinton at the State Department who said the elusive Apple MacBook laptop was actually “shipped to the Clinton Foundation in New York City.”

But in a June follow-up interview, FBI agents inexplicably left it up to this critical witness to “inquire about the shipment” with the foundation’s mailroom manager, who works in Rockefeller Center. The FBI still does not have the laptop in its possession.

It turns out that investigators also know the whereabouts of the original Apple server Clinton used in her first two months in office. Recovering that equipment is critical because it contains a mass of unseen emails from Jan. 21, 2009, to March 18, 2009 — a critical period in Clinton’s tenure at State. Witnesses say the equipment was not discarded, as first believed, but “repurposed” as a “work station” used by staff in Clinton’s Chappaqua residence.

Yet the FBI says it “was unable to obtain the original Apple server for a forensic review.” Instead of seizing it, the agency has taken Clinton’s aides’ and lawyers’ word that the server’s bereft of relevant emails. In fact, the agency confesses on Page 27 of its 47-page investigative case summary that it failed to recover other equipment and data as well: “The FBI’s inability to recover all server equipment and the lack of complete server log data for the relevant time period limited the FBI’s forensic analysis of the server systems. As a result, FBI cyber analysis relied, in large part, on witness statements.”

Congressional investigators say FBI Director James Comey in his year-long “investigation” didn’t even bother to send agents to search Clinton’s homes in Chappaqua or Washington, DC. Nor did he dispatch them to the offices of the Clinton Foundation or Clinton Executive Services Corp. in New York City.

“The Clinton residences and other locations should have been treated like any other criminal investigation — with federal grand jury subpoenas or search warrants issued by judges and served in the middle of the night,” said veteran FBI special agent Michael M. Biasello, who worked criminal cases out of New York and other field offices for 27 years.

“Never — I repeat, never — in my career have I or any FBI agent known to me investigated a criminal case without the use of a federal grand jury, grand jury subpoenas or search warrants,” he said. “It’s disgraceful they weren’t used in this case.”

The most damning evidence against Clinton may never have been actually destroyed. It was simply left untouched by the FBI.

*****

It should also be noted that many schedules have been applied to continue Congressional oversight after lawmakers return to session:

Chaffetz, Goodlatte Request Perjury Investigation of Hillary Clinton

Published: Jul 11, 2016
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WASHINGTON, D.C.—Today, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (UT-03) and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (VA-06) sent a letter to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia requesting an investigation into whether former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton committed perjury and made false statements when testifying under oath before Congress.

The letter states:

“The evidence collected by the FBI during its investigation of Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal email system appears to directly contradict several aspects of her sworn testimony.  In light of those contradictions, the Department should investigate and determine whether to prosecute Secretary Clinton for violating statutes that prohibit perjury and false statements to Congress, or any other relevant statutes.”

Background:

During a July 5, 2016 hearing before the House Oversight Committee, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director James Comey stated the truthfulness of Secretary Clinton’s testimony before Congress was not within the scope of the FBI’s investigation. According to Director Comey the Department of Justice requires a criminal referral from Congress to initiate an investigation into Secretary Clinton’s congressional testimony.

Additionally, Chairman Chaffetz sent a letter to Director Comey requesting the FBI’s full investigative file from its review of former Secretary Clinton’s use of an authorized private email server.

Chairman Goodlatte sent a letter to Director Comey pressing for more information about the FBI’s investigation and also led a letter signed by over 200 members of Congress demanding answers from FBI Director Comey regarding the many questions surrounding his announcement that he does not recommend federal prosecution against former Secretary Hillary Clinton for mishandling classified information through private email servers.

Full text of letter:

The Honorable Channing D. Phillips
U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia
555 Fourth Street NW
Washington, D.C. 20530

Dear Mr. Phillips:

We write to request an investigation to determine whether former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton committed perjury and made false statements during her testimony under oath before congressional committees.

While testifying before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on July 7, 2016, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director James Comey stated the truthfulness of Secretary Clinton’s testimony before Congress was not within the scope of the FBI’s investigation.  Nor had the FBI even considered any of Secretary Clinton’s testimony.  Director Comey further testified the Department of Justice requires a criminal referral from Congress to initiate an investigation of Secretary Clinton’s congressional testimony.  We are writing for that purpose.

The evidence collected by the FBI during its investigation of Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal email system appears to directly contradict several aspects of her sworn testimony.  In light of those contradictions, the Department should investigate and determine whether to prosecute Secretary Clinton for violating statutes that prohibit perjury and false statements to Congress, or any other relevant statutes.

Thank you for your attention to this important matter.

UNESCO Denies Jerusalem Israel History in Vote

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Jerusalem (AFP)- Israel recalled its ambassador to UNESCO for consultations Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced, after a second resolution accused of denying the Jewish connection to Jerusalem.

The Israeli ambassador to the UN body, Carmel Shama Hacohen, told public radio that “we are studying the possibility of breaking all contact with UNESCO”.

Despite what an Israeli official called long efforts to get the resolution amended or dropped, the heritage committee, made up of 21 member states, adopted the text proposed by Kuwait, Lebanon and Tunisia.

The resolution refers throughout to the Al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram Al-Sharif religious complex, without using the Israeli name “Temple Mount,” according a copy seen by AFP.

The 14-hectare (35-acre) rectangular esplanade at the southeastern corner of the Old City is the third holiest site in Islam and the most holy in Judaism. More here.

Related reading: The First Temple – Solomon’s Temple

UNESCO approves new controversial resolution on Jerusalem

PARIS (AP)— The U.S. Ambassador to UNESCO condemned as “inflammatory” a resolution approved Wednesday by UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee on the status of conservation of the Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls — a document that Israel says denies Judaism’s deep ties to the holy site Temple Mount.

In Wednesday’s secret ballot, the international body agreed to retain the site on the list of endangered world heritage and criticized Israel for its continuous refusal to let the body’s experts access Jerusalem’s holy sites to determine their conservation status. The document refers to the Jerusalem site that Jews called Temple Mount only by its Arab name — a significant semantic decision also adopted by UNESCO’s Executive Board last week that triggered condemnation from Israel and its allies.

“This item should have been defeated … These politicized and one-sided resolutions are damaging the credibility of UNESCO,” U.S. Ambassador Crystal Nix Hines said in a statement to The Associated Press. “These resolutions are continuously one-sided and inflammatory.”

The resolution was passed by the World Heritage Committee’s 21 member countries. Ten countries voted for, two against, 8 abstained and one was absent. Neither Israel, the U.S. nor Palestine is on the World Heritage Committee.

Israel suspended ties with UNESCO earlier this month over a similar resolution.

Elias Sanbar, the Palestinian ambassador to UNESCO, fired back at those upset with the resolution, which was sponsored by his delegation.

“What Israel wants, in fact, is to put politics in religion. This is the most dangerous thing that is happening now in UNESCO,” Sanbar told the AP. “They are politicizing religion and this is very dangerous.”

The resolution is the latest of several measures at UNESCO over decades that Israelis see as evidence of ingrained anti-Israel bias within the United Nations, where Israel and its allies are far outnumbered by Arab countries and their supporters.

The site in Jerusalem has been on UNESCO’s endangered list since 1982.

UNESCO’s World Heritage Site list is known throughout the world for its work in highlighting sites of historic and cultural significance, and endangered global heritage.

   

Related reading: US lawmakers urge UNESCO panel to reject text erasing Jewish ties to Temple Mount

Senators, Congressmen call on World Heritage Committee to vote against ‘yet another attempt to rewrite history’

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It’s time to disband UNESCO

Rubin/AEI: On October 13, 2016, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), a body charged with protecting and defending culture and cultural heritage, voted on a resolution denying Jewish ties to the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism. The good news, as UN Watch noted, is that the resolution passed with only a plurality 17 countries abstaining. Normally, anti-Israel resolutions pass with overwhelming majorities.

Still, the resolution is itself so toxic that it delegitimizes UNESCO and raises questions about its continued existence. In effect, UNESCO has become so polluted by political hate, that it has embraced a resolution that advances a counterfactual narrative completely at odds with the archaeological, cultural, and historical record. It is one thing to criticize Israel and Israeli politics, but it’s quite another to suggest that there is neither Jewish history nor legitimate ties to Jerusalem. That’s akin to saying Hagia Sophia in Istanbul was never a church or that Cordoba cathedral was never a mosque. In effect, rather than advance cultural preservation, UNESCO is laying the ground work for ethnic and sectarian cleansing.

Among the countries voting for the UNESCO resolution were China, Brazil, Russia, South Africa, and Mexico. In effect, they demonstrate how easy it is to abet hatred and anti-Semitism so long as the money coming from Arab states and Iran is right. Again, diplomatic opposition to Israeli policies is no excuse, as UNESCO is supposed to be a cultural institution. The abstainers, however —among them France, India, Argentina, Spain, Sweden, Ukraine, Greece, and Italy — really are no better. After all, at issue is a clear matter of historical fact. Only six countries — the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Netherlands, Lithuania and Estonia — opposed the resolution.

Organizations form for good reasons. Few foresaw how the UN Human Rights Commission (later the UN Human Rights Council) would transform itself into a body to launder and excuse the worst human rights violations. When the UN founded the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the organization genuinely hoped they could resettle Palestinian refugees in Arab countries within a few years and disband; its founders never would have believed UNRWA would become a mechanism to launder money for terrorists and hide their weaponry. UNESCO is simply the latest organization that has outlived its utility and now threatens more harm than good. The UN General Assembly and Security Council are valuable as places for countries to meet and discuss common problems, but outgoing UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has been far more interested in traveling and grandstanding than repairing the internal rot that infuses the organization over which he presides.

Already, some UN diplomats are scrambling to paper over the UNESCO resolution and, feeding from the trough of bloated UN salaries, why shouldn’t they? But sometimes, when gangrene sets in, the best recourse is amputation. It’s time to let UNESCO fade into the dustbin of history and allow a new organization — perhaps one less beholden to politics and therefore outside the formal mechanisms of the UN — assume the responsibility to protect cultural heritage.