Finally, Hillary’s Security Clearance in Jeopardy?

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Humm –> Expect to undergo one or more interviews and often a polygraph as part of the clearance process. These steps are used by investigators to get a better understanding of your character, conduct and integrity. You might also have to answer questions designed to clear up discrepancies or clarify unfavorable data discovered during the background investigation. The ultimate goal is for government security personnel to determine your eligibility for a clearance, a decision based on the totality of the evidence and information collected.

August of last year: Intelligence community wants Clinton’s security clearance suspended

WashingtonTimes: Security experts say that if Hillary Rodham Clinton retained her government security clearance when she left the State Department, as is normal practice, it should be suspended now that it is known her unprotected private email server contained top secret material.

“Standard procedure is that when there is evidence of a security breach, the clearance of the individual is suspended in many, but not all, cases,” said retired Army Lt. Gen. William Boykin, who was deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence in the George W. Bush administration. “This rises to the level of requiring a suspension.”

“The department does not comment on individuals’ security clearance status,” the official said.

Mrs. Clinton is the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination. A campaign spokesman did not reply to a query, but she did get a vote of support from a key congressional Democrat.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, said Thursday there is no evidence Mrs. Clinton herself sent classified information and that the emails now under scrutiny were not marked classified at the time she sent them.

Clinton’s Security Clearance Is Under Scrutiny

Bloomberg: Now that several e-mails on Hillary Clinton’s private server have been classified, there is a more immediate question than the outcome of the investigation: Should the former secretary of state retain her security clearance during the inquiry? Congressional Republicans and Democrats offer predictably different answers.

The State Department announced Friday that it would not release 22 e-mails from Clinton’s private server after a review found they contained information designated as top secret. U.S. officials who reviewed the e-mails tell us they contain the names of U.S. intelligence officers overseas, but not the identities of undercover spies; summaries of sensitive meetings with foreign officials; and information on classified programs like drone strikes and intelligence-collection efforts in North Korea.

The FBI is investigating the use of Clinton’s home server when she was secretary of state, which the bureau now has. The New York Times reported in August that  Clinton is not a target of that investigation. We reported in September that one goal is to discover whether a foreign intelligence service hacked in.

 

Representative Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said Clinton should not lose her security clearance for receiving information that was not marked classified at the time. “I’m sure she does hold a clearance, and she should,” he told us.

Representative Mike Pompeo, a Republican member of that committee who also has read the e-mails, told us, “It’s important, given all the information we now know, that the House of Representatives work alongside the executive branch to determine whether it’s appropriate for Secretary Clinton to continue to hold her security clearances.”

Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr told us the decision lies with the White House. “I think that’s up to what the National Security Council is comfortable with,” he said.

Burr, who has also read all 22 e-mails, said Clinton should have known to better protect the information they contain. “They are definitely sensitive,” he said. “Anybody in the intelligence world would know that the content was sensitive.”

His Democratic counterpart, Senator Dianne Feinstein, who also read them, told us that Clinton didn’t originally send any of the e-mails and that they were largely from her staff, although she did sometimes reply. Feinstein said the intelligence community is being overly cautious by designating the e-mails as top secret.

“There’s no question that they are over-classifying this stuff,” she said.

Clinton’s discussion of classified programs on an unclassified e-mail system is hardly rare. The issue, called “spillage,” has plagued the government for years. It can apply to anything from a spoken conversation about intelligence programs outside of a secure facility, to printing out a document with classified information on an unsecure printer.

Still, it is forbidden. The State Department’s Foreign Affairs Manual says “transmitting classified information over a communication channel that is unauthorized for the level of information being transmitted” is a “security violation.” Such violations must be investigated by the State Department’s own bureaus of human resources and diplomatic security. Punishment can vary from a letter of reprimand to loss of security clearance, according to the manual.

When asked about the status of Clinton’s security clearance, State Department spokesman John Kirby said: “The State Department does not comment on individuals’ security clearance status. We will say, however, that generally speaking there is a long tradition of secretaries of state making themselves available to future secretaries and presidents. Secretaries are typically allowed to maintain their security clearance and access to their own records for use in writing their memoirs and the like.”

The Clinton campaign declined to comment.

During the Obama administration, it has not been automatic for officials to lose their security clearance while an investigation is underway. Just last week, the Washington Post reported that the chief of naval intelligence, Vice Adm. Ted Branch, had his security clearance suspended because he is wrapped up in a Justice Department investigation into contracting corruption. He has not been able to read, see, or hear classified information since November 2013. Branch has not been charged with any crime and continues to serve in that post.

But when then-CIA director David Petraeus came under FBI investigation at the end of 2012, his security clearance was not formally revoked. After he resigned, his access to classified information was suspended, according to U.S. officials. In that case, Petraeus had provided notebooks with highly classified information to his biographer and mistress Paula Broadwell, whose security clearances did not permit her to receive it.

Unlike Broadwell, officials familiar with the e-mails tell us that Clinton and her e-mail correspondents were cleared to receive the information that has been classified after the fact. Steven Aftergood, who heads the project on government secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists, told us, “It’s entirely possible for information to start out as unclassified and to be classified only when the question of public disclosure arises.”

William Leonard, who oversaw the government’s security classification process between 2002 and 2008 as the director of the Information Security Oversight Office, told us this kind of “spillage” was common. “The bottom line is this, if you have the opportunity to pore through any cleared individual’s unclassified e-mail account, it’s almost inevitable you would find material that someone, some way would point out should be classified.” He also said that in Clinton’s case, “there is no indication that she deliberately disregarded the rules for handling classified information so I see no reason why she should not remain eligible for a security clearance.”

Nonetheless, Leonard added that Clinton’s decision to use the private e-mail server as secretary of state “reflected exceedingly poor judgment, and those that advised her on this did not serve her well.”

The FBI investigation may determine that neither Clinton nor her aides broke the law, but Clinton herself has said she used poor judgment. It’s an open question how that poor judgment will affect her access to state secrets, during and after the FBI’s investigation.

Pathetic, Kerry is Begging Russia

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As Syria Talks Fizzle, ‘War Has No Meaning Anymore’

NYT: GENEVA — Four Syrian rebel commanders huddled in a knot, all broad shoulders and shiny gray suits, surveying the hotel lounge. Gigantic portraits of Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix gazed down at the carpet, a checkerboard of faux zebra-hide in squares of orange and magenta. On a low sofa, a couple snuggled to the sounds of Amy Winehouse. The fighters decamped to a smokers’ enclosure behind a plate-glass window, its back wall a trompe-l’oeil image of electric-blue waves that made it seem as though they were submerged in a fish tank. It was an effect that fit their mood. They were in Geneva, notionally at least, for peace talks, but back in Syria, the government and its Russian allies were battering insurgents with scores of airstrikes. With their men under fire, the commanders were asking themselves how much longer they could credibly stay.

“Maybe a day,” one, Maj. Hassan Ibrahim, said on Monday night.

By Wednesday, the talks were indeed suspended, as the intense fighting on the ground proved there was as little to talk about as ever.

In an interview earlier, under the watchful eye of an adviser from Saudi Arabia, Major Ibrahim had dutifully projected strength and determination. But when the Saudi man walked away, the Syrian, who had defected from the government army in 2011, leaned forward and confided that the fighters he led in southern Syria were struggling. Supplies of weapons and salaries from the United States and its allies are dwindling. Moving in and out of Jordan is getting harder.

“They are doing it to put pressure on us to accept a political process,” he said, one in which he doubted that the Syrian government — or Russia, a sponsor of the talks — would make any compromise.

Major Ibrahim was reflecting a growing foreboding among the opposition’s fighters and civilians, mirrored by growing hope on the government side, that Washington, interested only in bombing the Islamic State militant group, is ceding the field to Russia and leaving the opposition on its own.

So much in Geneva this week was exactly like the last round of Syria peace talks in the city two years ago. Soft-lit hotel lobbies sweltered in the heat of glass fireplaces. Room service offered staple Syrian food — “Oriental mezze” — for about $40, which in Syria might constitute two weeks’ decent wages. Government and opposition delegates still seemed to be coming from different planets and witnessing different wars. Continue here.

Russia ignores Kerry plea to stop Syria bombing, deploys advanced fighter jets

FNC: Russia seemingly has ignored Secretary of State John Kerry’s appeals to stop bombing civilians and allow critical humanitarian aid to starving Syrians – and is instead escalating its military involvement, deploying four of its most capable fighter jets to Syria, two defense officials confirmed to Fox News.

The decision to send the Su-35S jets poses yet another hurdle for Kerry’s efforts to proceed with peace talks. The Su-35S is Russia’s most advanced warplane, capable of air-to-air and air-to-ground missions, one official familiar with the jet said.

Already, continued Russian airstrikes against Syrian opposition fighters, some backed by the CIA, were enough to derail proposed peace talks in Geneva Wednesday.

Despite backing two U.N. resolutions in support of a ceasefire, Russia reneged on its promise to stop bombing civilians in Syria, a prerequisite for the U.N.-backed talks in Geneva.

“[T]here will be a ceasefire,” Kerry predicted Tuesday in Rome. “We expect a ceasefire. And we expect adherence to the ceasefire. And we expect full humanitarian access.”

Two days later, the Russian bombing hasn’t stopped and thousands of Syrians remain starving.

Kerry said he was assured by his Russian counterpart the Russians would stop bombing.

“I talked to Foreign Minister Lavrov a couple of days ago and I specifically discussed a ceasefire with him, and he said they are prepared to have a ceasefire,” Kerry said.

But Kerry’s counterpart responded the next day saying the strikes would continue.

“Russian strikes will not cease [in Syria] … I don’t see why these airstrikes should be stopped,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Wednesday in Oman. Hours later, the U.N. talks fell apart.

Kerry continued calling on Russia to stop bombing Thursday in London.

“It could not be more clear. That is an obligation that is not tied to talks. It is an obligation accepted by all parties in the United Nations resolution. Russia voted for that, Russia has a responsibility, as do all parties, to live up to it,” he said.

The Russians have carried out 270 airstrikes since Monday, according to its defense ministry.

On Wednesday, a United Nations special envoy suspended the peace talks, which include participation from Russia and Iran, just hours after they began.

“It is not the end and it is not a failure of the talks,” said U.N. Special Envoy to Syria Staffan di Mistura.

The State Department denied the peace conference was a waste of time.

“It’s not a charade because they were there and because there was a beginning,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said Wednesday.

The top U.S. general in Iraq said the U.S. wants to avoid a confrontation with Russia, despite Russia bombing U.S.-backed rebels.

“I wouldn’t characterize it as a proxy war. I would say that we are pursuing different goals,” Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland told reporters, speaking from Baghdad earlier this week.

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Syrians are starving inside the country, besieged by Russian airstrikes preventing humanitarian aid from reaching them.

The U.N. chief humanitarian coordinator says close to 500,000 Syrians are cut off from food assistance surrounded by Bashar Assad’s forces. Fifty-one people have died of hunger in Madaya, a town of 20,000, located an hour outside Damascus and just 10 miles from Lebanon and 40 miles from the Israeli border.

Aid workers who arrived with the first and only food convoy last month said they have never seen such devastation.

“We saw people who are clearly malnourished, especially children, we saw people who are extremely thin, skeletons, that are now barely moving,” said Yacoub El Hillo, the U.N. resident and humanitarian coordinator in Syria to Reuters.

There are currently no plans for the U.S. military to help the U.N. get food to the hundreds of thousands trapped in Syria.

“There are no plans for that at this time,” said Col. Steve Warren, a U.S. military spokesman for the coalition based in Baghdad. “We’ll, of course, support them if asked and able, but our focus is the defeat of ISIL.”

“We haven’t seen a catastrophe like this since World War II,” said Kerry in Rome. “[I]n recent months its people have been reduced to eating grass,” he added.

A Washington Post editorial blamed Secretary Kerry’s compromise with Russia in the pursuit of peace talks, in part, for the prolonged starvation crisis: “Unfortunately, the Obama administration’s handling of the Syrian crisis appears to be enabling those very war crimes.”

In a statement late Wednesday, the State Department said the peace talks in Geneva were “paused” and would resume later this month.

Epic Chinese Hacking is Forecasted

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In 2015: Washington (CNN) A highly trained group of Chinese hackers is targeting defense, commercial and political organizations worldwide, pulling off sophisticated heists of sensitive information, according to new research out Wednesday.

Though Chinese cyberespionage has been well-documented, researchers from Dell SecureWorks Counter Threat Unit — a division of Dell tech company — say this group, nicknamed Emissary Panda by another research firm, has pulled off cyberattacks at a level of sophistication and specialization rarely seen before among Chinese hackers. More here.

Security Firm Warns of
New Chinese Cyber Attacks

CrowdStrike: Russia, North Korea also engaged in cyber theft

FreeBeacon: China’s cyber attacks against U.S. government and private sector databases are part of a major intelligence-gathering operation and are likely to continue, according to a new report by a cyber security firm.

Chinese hackers stole health care data pertaining to some 80 million Americans last year, and the Office of Personnel Management cyber attacks netted sensitive records on 22 million federal workers, according to an annual threat report made public Wednesday by CrowdStrike, a cyber security and intelligence company. The company is widely consulted by both government and private sector organizations.

The gathering of personal data by the Chinese represents a new trend in Beijing’s aggressive cyber attacks.

“This targeting underscores that intrusion operations associated with nation-states pose a significant risk to all data, no matter how uninteresting it may seem,” the report said.

The 49-page “2015 Global Threat Report” also states that the U.S.-China agreement not to conduct commercial cyber theft has had little impact on Beijing’s cyber operations.

“Beneath the surface, however, China has not appeared to change its intentions where cyber is concerned,” the report said.

Any reduction in Chinese cyber attacks this year likely will be temporary, and an apparent reduction may result from the use of more clandestine methods for conducting attacks following a major military reorganization.

The military changes “will likely increase [China’s] reliance on its civilian intelligence agencies and associated contractors, all of which generally employ better tradecraft,” the report said.

“If observed campaigns in late 2015 were any indication, it is unlikely China will completely cease its cyber operations, and 2016 will show the new direction it is headed,” the report said.

More cyber attacks seeking personal data could take place in the future, and organizations that hold such data “should remain alert to the possibility of similar activity going into 2016,” the report said.

China’s cyber spies usually use cyber intrusions to steal strategic information, such as intellectual property, business operations data, and sensitive government documents.

Stolen personal data, on the other hand, “is typically used to facilitate identity theft or other types of financially motivated crimes,” the report said.

However, the compromised personal information from health insurance companies Anthem, Premera, and CareFirst last year could be used by the government or state-run companies.

The large data theft also appears to be part of Chinese efforts to “build out profiles on individuals to support future operations.”

The federal government data breaches were more damaging and included sensitive background investigation information on federal employees, the report said.

“Without doubt, access to this degree of [personally identifiable information] for both successful and unsuccessful applicants represents a treasure trove of information that may be exploited for counterintelligence purposes,” the report said.

The Chinese can now exploit millions of stolen records for intelligence operations.

“Knowledge acquired during these operations could be used to create more individualized, and therefore more effective, spear phishing campaigns, or also in more traditional, real-world espionage activity,” the report said, noting that the background investigation data “would be particularly useful to traditional [human intelligence] operations as it contains details of a very personal nature about current and former government employees, as well as private sector employees working on government contracts.”

The Chinese government, through the Ministry of Public Security, has launched a major domestic campaign to crack down on online dissent. The Ministry is conducting cyber operations against people and websites that post information opposed by communist authorities, including use of an offensive cyber security force called the “Great Cannon,” a supplement to the Great Firewall designed to block online users from accessing unapproved content.

In Russia, hackers linked to the government used malicious software for intelligence-gathering and for political coercion, such as against Ukraine. Moscow hackers also have conducted cyber reconnaissance—preparation of the cyber battlefield—in Europe and elsewhere.

“In February, widespread spear phishing … was detected and analyzed,” the report said. “These attacks targeted numerous entities in government, defense, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the U.S., Europe, Asia, and South America.”

Russian hackers used stolen emails from a hack against the U.S. strategic consulting firm Stratfor, the report said, a tactic not typical of Russian hacking in the past.

International pressure on Moscow over its military activities, such as the annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea “portend increased intelligence collection by Russia-based adversaries particularly against regional targets and global energy companies,” the report said.

A Russian cyber intelligence operation, dubbed Berserk Bear, targeted oil and gas companies in the Middle East. Another operation, called Fancy Bear, targeted Chinese defense firms.

One Russian hacker group called CyberBerkut operating in Ukraine appears linked to Russian intelligence services.

North Korean cyber activities last year principally involved intelligence-gathering operations directed against South Korea.

Pressure from China could prompt Pyongyang to take a more aggressive cyber posture. And North Korean cyber activities also could expand into criminal activities to raise money for the regime, the report said.

Iran is expected to step up cyber attacks against Saudi Arabia. Regional tensions “increase the likelihood that Iran would use its proven cyber capabilities in 2016, targeting Saudi Arabia and regional governments that are becoming involved in the two countries’ dispute by choosing to align with Saudi Arabia.”

The report names more than 70 cyber adversaries and divides them into three types of attackers: Target intruders, such as nation states, cyber criminals, and “hacktivists.”

For cyber crime, attacks on banks and the use of ransom schemes increased during 2015.

“Phishing emails continued to dominate crimeware distribution throughout the year as the primary mechanism used for the aforementioned banking Trojans and ransomware threats,” the report said.

So-called hacktivist activities including politically motivated cyber attacks by groups like the Syrian Electronic Army and pro-ISIS hackers.

Several pro-Iranian hacker groups also were active last year, including Parastoo, Remember EMAD, and SOBH Cyber Jihad.

The group Remember EMAD—named after the Hezbollah terrorist Imad Mughniyah who was killed in a Damascus car bomb in 2009—claimed to have penetrated Pentagon networks and then threatened to release stolen data. No data was ever released.

ISIS hacking was very active last year and included campaigns of web defacement, the release of personal data—known as “doxing”—and the hijacking of social media accounts.

Russia’s Beachhead Syria, Serbia and Baltics?

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New Russian beachhead in Syria

WashingtonTimes: U.S. intelligence agencies are closely watching what appears to be a buildup of Russian military forces in northeastern Syria, very close to the Turkish border.

The buildup has been underway for the past several weeks, and defense officials say there are concerns Moscow is creating a new military air base and outpost similar to the current base near Latakia, on Syria’s Mediterranean coast.

Defense officials said there are indications the Russians are planning to deploy their most advanced air defense weapons, the S-400, at Qamishli, located very close to the Turkish border. Russian-Turkish relations soured in November after Turkish forces shot down a Russian Su-24 jet that strayed into Turkish airspace.

The London Times reported last month that some 200 Russians were fortifying a runway at the Qamishli air base.

The report prompted the Russian Defense Ministry to deny Moscow planned to deploy air forces at the base.

“There are no ‘new’ air bases or additional pre-strike staging ports for Russian warplanes in the territory of [the] Syrian Arab Republic, and there are no plans to create them,” Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov told the Interfax news agency.

The Russian activity at Qamishli has set off alarms in Turkey, a NATO ally, with fears the Russians are preparing to conduct threatening operations against Turkey in retaliation for the downing of the Su-24, which led to the death of one of the two crew members and a member of the Russian team sent to rescue the downed crew.

Russia denied the jet violated Turkish airspace and said it would retaliate against the Turks for the incident.

Turkey then announced Jan. 30 that another Russian jet violated Turkish airspace, prompting another denial from Moscow.

An Israeli think tank, The Fisher Institute for Air and Space Strategic Studies, this week published photos of the Russian military buildup at Latakia. The photos reveal deployments of over 30 warplanes, including 11 of the supersonic Su-24 bombers. Additionally, the photos show 10 Su-25s and seven advanced Su-35s.

Defense officials say the Russian airstrikes in Syria are aimed primarily at anti-regime rebels with only limited strikes against the Islamic State terrorist group.

The S-400 batteries also are visible in the photos along with Pantsir SA-22 missiles.

***

Serbia and Russia

Moscow confirms: Serbia wants Russian missiles and warplanes

Serbia is interested in buying Russian air defense systems Tor, Pantsir, and Buk, as well as MiG-29 warplanes, Sputnik is reporting.

Belgrade showed interest in this after Croatia announced it planned to buy American weapons, a representative of the Russian Federal Service for Military Technical Cooperation said.

“We are considering the issue of delivering air defense systems and MiG-29s to Serbia. That country is our strategic partner in Europe in many spheres, including military-technical cooperation,” the source said.

It was stated on January 15 that in the wake of Croatia’s announced plans to buy MGM-140 ATACMS missiles, Serbia became interested in Russian air defense systems and jets.

If Russia Started a War in the Baltics, NATO Would Lose — Quickly

FP: If Russian tanks and troops rolled into the Baltics tomorrow, outgunned and outnumbered NATO forces would be overrun in under three days. That’s the sobering conclusion of war games carried out by a think tank with American military officers and civilian officials.

“The games’ findings are unambiguous: As currently postured, NATO cannot successfully defend the territory of its most exposed members,” said a report by the RAND Corp., which led the war gaming research.

In numerous tabletop war games played over several months between 2014-2015, Russian forces were knocking on the doors of the Estonian capital of Tallinn or the Latvian capital of Riga within 36 to 60 hours. U.S. and Baltic troops — and American airpower — proved unable to halt the advance of mechanized Russian units and suffered heavy casualties, the report said.

The study argues that NATO has been caught napping by a resurgent and unpredictable Russia, which has begun to boost defense spending after having seized the Crimean peninsula in Ukraine and intervened in support of pro-Moscow separatists in eastern Ukraine. In the event of a potential Russian incursion in the Baltics, the United States and its allies lack sufficient troop numbers, or tanks and armored vehicles, to slow the advance of Russian armor, said the report by RAND’s David Shlapak and Michael Johnson.

“Such a rapid defeat would leave NATO with a limited number of options, all bad,” it said.

The United States and its NATO allies could try to mount a bloody counter-attack that could trigger a dramatic escalation by Russia, as Moscow would possibly see the allied action as a direct strategic threat to its homeland.  A second option would be to take a page out of the old Cold War playbook, and threaten massive retaliation, including the use of nuclear weapons. A third option would be to concede at least a temporary defeat, rendering NATO toothless, and embark on a new Cold War with Moscow, the report said.

However, the war games also illustrated there are preemptive steps the United States and its European allies could take to avoid a catastrophic defeat and shore up NATO’s eastern defenses, while making clear to Moscow that there would no easy victory.

A force of about seven brigades in the area, including three heavy armored brigades, and backed up by airpower and artillery, would be enough “to prevent the rapid overrun of the Baltic states,” it said. The additional forces would cost an estimated $2.7 billion a year to maintain.

The report was released Tuesday, the same day Defense Secretary Ash Carter unveiled plans to add more heavy weapons and armored vehicles to prepositioned stocks in Eastern Europe to give the Pentagon two brigade sets worth of heavy equipment on NATO’s eastern frontier.  As it stands now, there are two U.S. Army infantry brigades stationed in Europe — one in Italy and the other in Germany — but they have been stretched thin by the constant demands of training rotations with allies across the continent. The new $3.4 billion plan outlined by Carter and the White House would add another brigade to the mix, but it would be made up of soldiers from the United States, rotating in for months at a time.

Late last month, Gen. Philip Breedlove, commander of U.S. European Command, released a new strategy anticipating — and pushing back against — the call for more rotational forces. Flying troops in and out of the region “complements” the units who call Europe home, he wrote, but they’re no “substitute for an enduring forward deployed presence that is tangible and real. Virtual presence means actual absence.”

David Ochmanek from the RAND Corp., a former senior Pentagon official who has studied the challenge posed by Russia’s military, called the administration’s budget proposal for European forces an important step and an “encouraging sign.”

“Heavy armored equipment, pre-positioned forward, is the sine qua non of a viable deterrent and defense posture on the alliance’s eastern flank,” Ochmanek told Foreign Policy. But he said much more needed to be done to strengthen NATO’s defenses.

The findings from the war games will be warmly welcomed by senior officers in the U.S. Army, who have struggled to justify the cost of maintaining a large ground force amid budget pressures in recent years and a preference for lighter footprints. And the report will reinforce warnings from top military leaders, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Joseph Dunford, that Russia may represent the number one threat to U.S. interests.

In early 2012, the Obama administration announced the withdrawal of two heavy brigades and their equipment from Germany, cutting deeply into the U.S. Army’s traditional, large footprint on the continent. Since then, the service has been slowly trying to move some hardware back into Germany for use in training exercises with NATO partners. Last year, U.S. Marines also began to roll a small number of Abrams tanks into Romania for a series of exercises with local forces.

Since Russia’s intervention in Ukraine sparked alarm in Eastern Europe, the United States has repeatedly vowed to defend Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in the event of an attack, citing its mutual defense obligations under the NATO alliance. In a September 2014 speech in Tallinn, President Barack Obama made an explicit promise to protect the Baltic countries.

“We’ll be here for Estonia.  We will be here for Latvia.  We will be here for Lithuania.  You lost your independence once before. With NATO, you will never lose it again,” Obama said.

But the RAND report said “neither the United States nor its NATO allies are currently prepared to back up the president’s forceful words.”

The borders that the three Baltic countries — all former Soviet republics — share with Russia and Belarus are about the same length as the one that separated West Germany from the Warsaw Pact during the Cold War. But in that era, NATO stationed a massive ground force along the frontier with more than 20 divisions bristling with tanks and artillery.

Tanks are few and far between now in NATO countries, the report said. Germany’s arsenal of about 2,200 main battle tanks in the Cold War has declined to roughly 250. Britain, meanwhile, is planning on pulling out its last brigade headquarters left on the continent.

With only light infantry units at the ready in the Baltics, U.S. and NATO planners are also worried about the continued Russian arms buildup in the exclave of Kaliningrad on the Baltic coast between Poland and Lithuania, and Moscow’s intention to build a new air force base in Belarus, just south of the Polish-Lithuanian border.

The war games run by RAND underscored how U.S. and NATO forces lack the vehicles and firepower to take on their Russian adversaries, which have maintained more mechanized and tank units. NATO ground troops also lacked anti-aircraft artillery to fend off Russian warplanes in the Baltic scenario.

“By and large, NATO’s infantry found themselves unable even to retreat successfully and were destroyed in place,” the report said.

In the war games, although U.S. and allied aircraft could inflict damage on the invading Russian forces, they also were forced to devote attention to suppressing Russia’s dense air defenses and defending against Russian air attacks on rear areas.

Although it was unclear if deploying more troops and armor would be enough to discourage Russia from gambling on an attack in the Baltics, NATO’s current weak position clearly did not pose a persuasive deterrent, the report said.

By undertaking “due diligence” and bolstering NATO’s defenses, the alliance would send “a message to Moscow of serious commitment and one of reassurance to all NATO members and to all U.S. allies and partners worldwide,” it said.

 

 

About that Mosque that Barack Visited Today

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A deep investigation was performed on the Muslim Brotherhood and organizations in the United States under that umbrella. The full summary is here.

Mosque Obama Visiting Graduated Terrorist Who Targeted Federal Building

The Al-Rahmah School at Islamic Society of Baltimore as seen in 2007. The mosque is hosting President Obama on Wednesday. (AP) According to CIA Director John Brennan ‘jihad’ means struggle…..

InvestorsDaily: Islamophilia: President Obama is conferring legitimacy on a Baltimore mosque the FBI just a few years ago was monitoring as a breeding ground for terrorists, after arresting a member for plotting to blow up a federal building.

IBD has learned that the FBI had been conducting surveillance at the Islamic Society of Baltimore since at least 2010 when it collared one of its members for plotting to bomb an Army recruiting center not far from the mosque in Catonsville, Md.

Agents secretly recorded a number of conversations with a 25-year-old Muslim convert — Antonio Martinez, aka Muhammad Hussain — and other Muslims who worshipped there. According to the criminal complaint, Martinez said he knew “brothers” who could supply him weapons and propane tanks.

“He indicated that if the military continued to kill their Muslim brothers and sisters, they would need to expand their operation by killing U.S. Army personnel where they live,” FBI special agent Keith Bender wrote. Martinez said that in studying the Quran he learned that Islam counsels Muslims to “fight those who fight against you.”

Sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2012, Martinez also stated in a social media posting that he wanted to join the ranks of the “mujahideen” in “Pakistan or Afghanistan (a country that struggle[sic] for the sake of allah).” Most of ISB’s board members are from Pakistan.

To help disrupt the plot, the FBI reportedly put an undercover agent in the mosque, which upset the leadership there. After protests, the FBI sent an official to ISB to take questions and mollify concerns the bureau was spying on Muslims.

Members of the mosque complained that the FBI tried to “entrap” Martinez and other Muslim terrorism suspects by sending “spies with Muslim names” into the mosque.

“If I was the president of the mosque, I would not let you come here without strip(-searching) you,” one member angrily told the FBI official, “because you might drop something (like a bug) to hear what’s going on here.” “The Muslim Link” newspaper described the questioner as Pakistani.

This is the mosque that will be honored with a visit from Obama on Wednesday, the first U.S. mosque visit of his presidency.

It’s now abundantly clear the White House failed to properly vet the venue. Reportedly, it let the Council on American-Islamic Relations choose the site, even though the FBI has banned CAIR from outreach because of known ties to the Hamas terrorist group.

“For a number of years we’ve been encouraging the president to go to an American mosque,” CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper said. “With the tremendous rise in anti-Muslim sentiment in our country, we believe that it will send a message of inclusion and mutual respect.”

As we reported Tuesday, ISB is affiliated with the Islamic Society of North America — which federal prosecutors in 2007 named a radical Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas front and an unindicted terrorist co-conspirator in a scheme to funnel more than $12 million to Hamas suicide bombers — and ISB has helped organize the terror-tied ISNA’s conferences.

The Shariah-compliant mosque was led for 15 years by a radical cleric — Imam Mohamad Adam el-Sheikh — who once represented a federally designated al-Qaida front group. El-Sheikh also has argued for the legitimacy of suicide bombings, according to the Washington Post.

We also first reported that ISB board member and vice president Muhammad Jameel has blamed American foreign policy — namely, U.S. support for Israel — for terrorism and the rise of Osama bin Laden.

“I hope (his death) does not camouflage the bigger picture, which is to look at what gave rise to OBL and what are the root causes of terror,” Jameel said in a local 2011 interview. “Just eliminating him does not resolve the longer-term problems, which I consider to be (U.S.) foreign policy.”

ISB board members are required to have “an in-depth understanding of the Shariah,” and “must take Islam as the way of life,” according to recently amended articles of incorporation papers filed with the state of Maryland.

We have also learned that ISB invited one of the imams of the Boston Marathon bombers’ mosque to headline a 2013 fundraiser for its Islamic school.

Then-Islamic Society of Boston imam Suhaib Webb spoke at the 25th anniversary banquet of ISB’s Al-Rahmah School — even though two days before 9/11, according to an FBI surveillance report, Webb was raising cash for a Muslim cop-killer together with al-Qaida cleric Anwar Awlaki, the hijackers’ spiritual leader.

So let’s recap. The mosque that is hosting the commander in chief, while receiving his historic benediction graduated a terrorist who plotted to blow up a local Army recruiting station, hired an imam who condoned suicide bombings and blames American “foreign policy” for terrorism.

Obama has to be willfully blind not to see all these ties to terror.