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A number of militants have been killed in Islamic State’s very first battle with U.S. ground troops after the extremists attempted to overrun an Iraqi military base.
The militants attacked Ein al-Asad military base on Sunday where more than 100 U.S. military support troops are based.
Despite launching the surprise attack just after midnight, ISIS’s offensive was swiftly repelled when U.S. troops and F18 jets joined in the skirmish in support of the Iraqi Army.
Facing both Iraqi and US troops supported by F18 jets, an unknown number of ISIS attackers were killed during the two hour firefight before being forced to retreat.
Ein al-Asad came under repeated attack by ISIS troops in October, however, now bolstered by the U.S. assistance, it poses a much more formidable target.
A fighter from the Kurdish People’s Protection Unit, or YPG, told CNN’s Arwa Damon that the battle in Kobani concerned the main border crossing into Turkey. If ISIS took control, he said, “it’s over.”
The fighter said the Kurdish fighters had pushed back an attempted advance by ISIS on Monday morning but that it would be “impossible” for them to hold their ground if current conditions continued.
Kurds prepare for final battle with ISIS
Should they take Kobani, the militants would control three official border crossings between Turkey and Syria and a stretch of the border about 60 miles (97 kilometers) long.
Monday has been one of the most violent days in Kobani since ISIS launched its assault on the Syrian city, with sounds of fierce fighting, including gunfire and explosions, CNN staff on the Syria-Turkey border said.
CNN’s Nick Paton Walsh described seeing a mushroom cloud rising about 100 meters (nearly 330 feet) above the city in an area targeted by at least four blasts, generally after the sound of jets overhead.
“However, it remains unclear who is gaining the upper hand,” Walsh said. “Distribution of the airstrikes does not immediately suggest the Kurds are retaking the center so far.”
Three Key Islamic State Figures Were Killed in Recent Weeks, Chairman of Joint Chiefs Says
WASHINGTON—U.S. airstrikes have killed several very senior military leaders of Islamic State forces in Iraq, the Pentagon’s top uniformed officer disclosed Thursday.
Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that three key Islamic State military leaders in Iraq were killed there in recent weeks during operations that are part of an expanding coalition effort ahead of a planned offensive next year.
The strikes in which the Islamic State leaders were killed were designed to hamper the group’s ability to conduct its own attacks, supply its fighters and finance its operations, Gen. Dempsey said.
“It is disruptive to their planning and command and control,” Gen. Dempsey said. “These are high-value targets, senior leadership.”
***
Some progress is being made. Certain intelligence gathering has proven to be productive.
One Islamic State militant is alone responsible for killing 150 women, including pregnant women and young teenagers, because they refused to marry members of the barbaric militant army, according to Iraqi officials.
Abu Anas Al-Libi is suspected of mercilessly gunning down the women,most of whom were Yazidi, because they refused to enter into sham temporary marriages with Islamic State fighters simply to have sex in what the terrorists believe to be a Koranic loophole.
“Abu Anas Al-Libi killed more than 150 women and girls, some of whom were pregnant after refusing to accept Jihad marriage,” the Iraqi Ministry of Human Rights said in a statement.
The forced relationships are being pushed on captives in cities like Fallujah and surrounding villages. The statement added that Islamic State militias carried out mass executions in the city, then buried the dead in two mass graves in Al-Zaghareed and Al-Saqlawiya areas. The terror group then turned a mosque in Fallujah into a big prison, holding hundreds of men and women, the statement said.
Al- Libi is not the terrorist with the same name who is alleged to have helped carry out East Africa’s embassy bombings back in 1998 that killed 224 people in Kenya and Tanzania.
In a separate report released on Monday, the ministry said that Islamic State distributed an eight-page pamphlet to mosques in the Iraqi city of Mosul and nearby towns on the topic of female captives and slaves.
According to the Middle East Media Research Institute, the pamphlet titled “Questions & Answers on Taking Captives & Slaves” clarifies what the terror group believes permissible for its militants to do with their captives, including having sexual intercourse, beating and trading them.
“This is a cheap ‘Fatwa’ that is far from what Islam really stands for and is in violation of human rights,” the Iraqi ministry said. “It is a portrayal of these murderers’ devilish-like behavior and low moral standing.”
There are countless militant terror organizations globally and there is a movement to re-look at designations such that enemies are being legitimized and are offered seats at negotiations and peace tables. Hamas has a deep history of terror and is very integrated with other nation states without consequence to the detriment of Europe, Israel and the United States.
The EU General Court has ordered that the Palestinian militant group Hamas be removed from the bloc’s terror blacklist. The move comes over four years after Hamas appealed its terror designation before the EU. The lawyer for Hamas, Liliane Glock, told AFP she was “satisfied with the decision.”
Hamas official Izzat al-Rishq lauded the decision, saying the court had righted an injustice done to the organization, which he said is a “national freedom movement,” and not a terrorist organization, the Jerusalem Post reports.
But a deputy from Israel’s major right-wing Likud party, Danny Danon, said, “The Europeans must believe that there blood is more sacred than the blood of the Jews which they see as unimportant. That is the only way to explain the EU court’s decision to remove Hamas from the terror blacklist.”
“In Europe they must have forgotten that Hamas kidnapped three boys and fired thousands of rockets last summer at Israeli citizens,” he added.
Shortly after the ruling, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on the EU to keep Hamas on its list of terrorist organizations.
“We expect them to immediately put Hamas back on the list,” Reuters cites Netanyahu as saying in a statement. “Hamas is a murderous terrorist organization which in its charter states its goal is to destroy Israel.”
The EU and Israel have attempted to downplay the ruling, saying that groups standing within Europe as terror organizations will not change. Israeli and European officials say the court will be given a few months to rebuild its file against Hamas with evidence of the group’s activities, which will enable it to be placed back on the list of terror organizations, the Israeli news portal Ynet reports.
According to RT’s Paula Slier, Israeli politicians “across the political spectrum” have unanimously condemned what they call a “temporary” removal.
Hamas says it is a legitimate resistance movement and contested the European Union’s decision in 2001 to include it on the terrorist list. It welcomed Wednesday’s verdict.
“The decision is a correction of a historical mistake the European Union had made,” Deputy Hamas chief Moussa Abu Marzouk said. “Hamas is a resistance movement and it has a natural right according to all international laws and standards to resist the occupation.”
The EU court did not ponder the merits of whether Hamas should be classified as a terror group, but reviewed the original decision-making process. This, it said, did not include the considered opinion of competent authorities, but rather relied on media and Internet reports.
It said if an appeal was brought before the EU’s top court, the European Court of Justice, the freeze of Hamas funds should continue until the legal process was complete.
In a similar ruling, an EU court said in October the 2006 decision to place Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers on the EU list was procedurally flawed. As with Hamas, it also said the group’s assets should remain frozen pending further legal action and the European Union subsequently filed an appeal.
The European Parliament has approved a non-binding resolution supporting Palestinian statehood. The text was a compromise, representing divisions within the EU over how far to blame Israel for failing to agree peace terms.
On 17 December the European Union’s [General] Court cancelled the inclusion of Hamas on the European list of terrorist organizations, where it had been since 2001.
This cancellation is based on procedural reasons alone.
In no way does it imply any questioning of the European Union’s determination to combat all forms of terrorism.
It does not alter our appreciation of the basic fact: Hamas was described as a terrorist group by the Council of the European Union on 27 December 2001. The European Union [General] Court has also decided to maintain the effects of the inclusion, such as the freezing of Hamas funds.
France will act to ensure that Hamas is included on the list again as soon as possible
Sony Pictures canceled its planned release of “The Interview” marking the success of a brazen hacking attack against the studio and terrorist threats against theaters that played the film.
The Sony Corp. studio’s 11th-hour decision, unprecedented in the modern movie business, came after the nation’s largest theater chains all said they would not play the raunchy Seth Rogen farce set in North Korea.
Sony executives were considering alternative options, including releasing it only via video-on-demand or on television, said a person at the studio. But even those approaches could entail serious challenges. Given that the film already set off the worst corporate hack in history, chances were high that companies with major VOD businesses would regard the film as too radioactive to touch.
“We are deeply saddened at this brazen effort to suppress the distribution of a movie, and in the process do damage to our company, our employees and the American public,” Sony said in a statement conceding defeat on Wednesday. “We stand by our filmmakers and their right to free expression and are extremely disappointed by this outcome.”
It sounds even more implausible than the plot of the lowbrow comedy itself, in which a pair of hapless television journalists is recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. As matters escalated this week, the film was thrust into the center of a nationwide debate over free speech, terrorism, international relations, journalistic ethics and cybersecurity.
The sight of the studio that released “Zero Dark Thirty” and “The Social Network” brought to its knees by hackers apparently affiliated with North Korea, one of the most isolated and impoverished nations on earth, set off alarm bells throughout Hollywood. On Wednesday, the production company New Regency canceled plans for a thriller set in North Korea, in which Steve Carell was to have starred, according to a person familiar with the matter. Production was to have begun in March. The cancellation was first reported by the Hollywood trade website Deadline.
Also in question is the status of several other scripts floating around Hollywood, including rights to the memoirs of North Korean defectors who spent years in the country’s notorious labor camps.
The reverberations will carry far beyond Hollywood, online security experts warned, saying that the episode could set a disturbing precedent. “This is now a case study that is signaling to attackers that you can get all that you want and even more,” said Pete Singer, a cybersecurity strategist and senior fellow at the New America Foundation.
Sony Corp. Chief Executive Kazuo Hirai retains confidence in Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton and Sony Pictures head Amy Pascal, according to people familiar with the matter, and he doesn’t blame them for the attack.
The debacle’s roots stretch back at least to June of this year, when Sony executives deliberated over changes to the movie because of its political sensitivities. Though the studio never planned to release “The Interview” in Asia, Sony Corp. executives in Tokyo were concerned about the film because of Japan’s long and tense history with both North Korea and South Korea.
People claiming to be the hackers escalated their threats on Tuesday, warning of terrorist attacks on theaters that showed the film.
The Department of Homeland Security dismissed the terrorist threat as lacking credibility. But theater operators nonetheless asked Sony on Tuesday to delay the film’s opening, planned for Dec. 25, out of concern that the threats would depress box office sales across the industry during the critical holiday season. When Sony declined, the theaters decided Wednesday morning that they wouldn’t play the movie until the Federal Bureau of Investigation complete its probe of the matter, and maybe not even then.
Distribution executives at other studios worried that screening “The Interview” would depress ticket sales for other movies, and the concerns also threatened to keep business from surrounding stores and restaurants over the holiday season.
Sony executives had long been aware “The Interview” would be controversial and have attempted to make a number of changes to its content and release strategy as a result, according to emails leaked by the hackers.
In June, Sony Pictures President Doug Belgrad sent a message to Sony Entertainment’s Mr. Lynton, saying, “I understand this is a delicate issue and will do whatever I can to help address all of the issues and concerns.” He added that he was only aware of two other movies that depicted the killing of a living international leader: Charlie Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator,” which features a thinly veiled version of Adolf Hitler, and “Team America: World Police,” a 2004 musical comedy in which former North Korean leader Kim Jong Il is depicted as a puppet.
The next week, Mr. Belgrad got Mr. Lynton’s approval to spend $550,000 to digitally remove images of former North Korean leaders Kim Jong Il and Kim Il-sung from pins and murals in more than 500 shots.
By July 1, the studio’s Japanese parent became concerned. An executive at Sony Corp. who dealt with diversity and human rights wrote to Sony Corp. of America President Nicole Seligman, saying he was worried the movie could lead “to a great negative affect [sic] on the relationship between North Korea and Japan.”
To back up the studio’s case for the film, Mr. Lynton already had been in contact with a North Korean expert at think tank Rand Corp.
While Sony did go ahead with the film, executives decided to remove all references to the company from the film and not even host promotional materials on the SonyPictures.com website. The movie was instead branded only with the Sony label Columbia Pictures.
At the same time, Sony Pictures executives reached out to Comcast Corp. ’s Universal Pictures about handling distribution of the movie in all foreign countries save for Asia, where “The Interview” wasn’t ever planned to be released. Such a partnership would have cost Sony about $3.5 million, according to an email from a senior executive.
Sony was looking for a partner to help it back the movie in the case of potential political heat, said a person with knowledge of the talks. Universal passed, citing an already full release slate.
Later in the summer, the studio was in tense discussions with Mr. Rogen and his co-director Evan Goldberg over proposed changes to the scene in which Kim Jong Un is killed by a missile.
“As Amy can attest from Seth’s many emails to her, he’s pretty agitated,” Mr. Belgrad wrote in an email following an August report in the Hollywood Reporter that Sony was making changes to the movie. The comic actor was concerned that critics would focus on “whether or not the film was ‘censored’ rather than simply judging whether or not it’s funny.”
Executives all the way up to Mr. Hirai discussed minute details about the changes, such as how much fire would be in Mr. Kim’s hair, how many embers on his face, and the size of an explosion.
“There is no face melting” in the latest cut, Ms. Pascal assured Mr. Hirai in a September email. He urged her to push Messrs. Rogen and Goldberg to tone down the scene a bit further and remove it entirely from international versions.
It is unclear how many changes the directors ended up making to the final cut of the film that was to be released next week.
U.S. officials haven’t reached a final ruling on who was behind the breach. There are diplomatic concerns if North Korea was involved, U.S. officials and people involved in the investigation said. For instance, some officials worry publicly blaming North Korea for the attack could put Japan, a U.S. ally, in a bind. Tokyo, unlike America, has to deal with North Korea as a neighbor just across the Sea of Japan.
The FBI didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
An accusation also creates distinct problems for Washington, these people said. If the U.S. blames North Korea for the attack, it then feels pressured to respond. And the proportional response in this case isn’t clear, as North Korea already is sanctioned and cut off from much of the world.
Nations have yet to agree on what types of cyberattacks are acceptable without escalating tensions. Some experts believe that in cases like the Sony attack, the U.S. needs at least to make a public condemnation.
“We can set the norms by coming out and saying this is just too much,” said Jay Healey, an expert on cybersecurity and diplomacy at the Atlantic Council near Washington.
After hackers entered Sony’s systems more than a month ago, they installed malicious code that would eventually wipe hard drives on many corporate computers. This wiped away many of the digital clues and has made the investigation by the FBI and FireEye Inc., a cybersecurity company, very difficult. As of Wednesday, investigators still can’t say they have removed and blocked the hackers from Sony’s systems, people familiar with the investigation said.
The situation also remains tenuous for Sony Pictures’ parent company in Tokyo. After investigators at FireEye determined North Korea was likely linked to the attack, it proposed a public report that would offer an update on the breach and implicate Pyongyang hackers. Sony’s Japan headquarters nixed the idea, people familiar with the probe said.
Though hardly any North Koreans have access to the Internet, mobile phones or other modern technology, the nation is believed to maintain a robust hacker corps, many of them stationed in China or elsewhere outside the isolated nation.
Kim Kwan-jin, then-defense minister in Seoul, said last year that North Korea runs a dedicated cyberwarfare military unit composed of 3,000 people.
Chang Yong-Seok, a senior researcher at the Institute for Peace and Unification Studies at Seoul National University, said a film like “The Interview” would likely have provided an incentive for North Korean officials to prove their loyalty to the dictator as the film insults the leader’s dignity.
“An extreme response is a way to secure one’s position and professional success,” Mr. Chang said.
For One Syrian Militant Group, “Pick-Up Lines” Have a Texas Twang
A pick-up truck that belonged to a Texas plumber a year ago wound up in jihadi hands. How did it get there? Here is what we know – and what the mainstream media and a handful of angry, completely confounded Americans do not know.
By Tom Wyld
For the past week, #HiveInt, the league of strategists and intelligence analysts on Twitter, have been digging deeper into a report, first written by Caleb Weiss, on the appearance of a pick-up truck on the internet.
But this was no ordinary pick-up truck advertised on E-Bay.
The Ford F-250 photo was posted on the website of a self-identified Syria-based militant alliance, and the men onboard were members of a largely Chechen anti-Assad militant group.
And mounted on the truck bed: a Russian-made heavy machine gun.
The truck’s logo captured everyone’s attention – including press here and abroad. The logo was not that of the Chechen fighters’ Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar (“Army of Emigrants and Supporters”). It was not the sign of the alliance to which this particular Jaish or Army belongs, namely Jabhat Ansar al-Din (“Partisans of the Religion Front”).
The logo was that of Mark-1 Plumbing of Texas City, Texas – complete with the small business’ phone number.
According to the militant posting, the photo was taken in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city ravaged by violence, jihadi infighting and the war against dictator Bashar Al-Assad. Aleppo is also 20 miles west of Al-Safirah, site of Assad’s largest chemical weapons compound. A writer with the blog Line of Steel and a contributor to the warrior-favorite Long War Journal, Caleb Weiss was first to break the story. Bravo Zulu to this young political science student who studies security policy and militant trends. (Unmarked photo from a militant site.)
I telephoned the Texas firm. Many rings, no answer, no voice mail. Caleb Weiss was more fortunate. He reached a “very nice woman” who was “happy” to answer his questions about the pick-up. When he said he had called about a photo, the woman knew which one. After all, she had received many phone inquiries about it before Caleb’s call.
Not surprisingly, those calls included “about six” that were “threatening” and voiced by people the employee “couldn’t understand.” The woman said the firm had notified the authorities about the photo and the threats. Read Caleb’s post for details here. Keep in mind his was the first report on the incident posted on Monday, 15 December. Since then, the story has garnered major media attention, has undergone many twists and turns and prompted outraged, threatening phone calls – and the employee understood all to0 well those additional angry calls.
The Fabled Truck – Sold, But By Whom?
By Tuesday, CBS News reported that the firm had brought an attorney aboard. Presumably this was the small business’ “representative” who told CBS the pick-up was sold in October 2013 to Auto Nation. An Auto Nation representative refused to provide the network the vehicle’s sales history over the phone and hung up.
Also on Tuesday, ABC News reported the truck was driven to Auto Nation and traded “last fall.” The truck was then sent to auction and subsequently sold to a “Southwest Houston” company. It may have been sold many times since. A source describes the area in SW Houston as a “heavy immigrant and auto trading” hub – a motor-mecca, if you will.
Today (Wednesday, 17 December), the Galveston County Daily News wrote that the truck was sold to Auto Nation “three years ago,” attributing the statement to Mark-1 owner Mark Oberholtzer. The businessman said he usually takes his firm’s decals off the truck when they are sold, but reckoned Auto Nation would do that for him.
Among the decals on the F-250 in question? A state inspection sticker that expired September 2013. But state inspections must be conducted annually in Texas, casting doubt on the claim by the Galveston County Daily News that the truck was sold “three years ago.”
Also in support of a transaction occurring last year, USA Today reported today that Mr. Oberholtzer drove the truck to Auto Nation and traded it in November 2013.
In short, give or take a month or two, Mark-1’s pick-up truck was sold legitimately about a year ago to a dealer and, from there, to an auctioneer.
So How Did a Texas Truck Get to a Battlefield in Syria?
Aboard ship, obviously. But how did the truck get aboard ship? That is the trickier question.
“Technicals” – intelligence parlance for pick-up trucks modified for combat use – are the vehicles-of-choice for militants worldwide. Conflicts and hot zones are expanding, not contracting, and that creates a burgeoning demand and, therefore, a black market, for plain vanilla pick-ups, even from the U.S. Only upon arrival in an area controlled by jihadis are the pick-ups converted to “technicals.”
From the dealership to an auction in Southwest Houston, the truck was likely loaded into a container that was ultimately lifted aboard a container ship (a.k.a. “box ship” among mariners) moored pier-side at the Port of Galveston or Port of Houston. The Port of Galveston accommodates about 1,000 ships and handles 10 million short tons of cargo annually. Much of that cargo is inside containers. The sort of boxes motorists see aboard trains and trucks on the highway, these containers are measured in “Twenty-Foot Equivalent units” or TEUs.
The world’s largest box ship, EMMA MAERSK, can carry more than 18,000 TEUs. If every container aboard EMMA MAERSK held cars or trucks, that would equate to 36,000 vehicles. (Promotional photo from The Maersk Group.)
Assessment: Jihadi Sympathizers Love East Coast Seaports
Assessment number one: Alarmingly, citing Mr. Oberholtzer, USA Today reported that recent threats are being conveyed from people across the USA. “We have a secretary here,” he said. “She’s scared to death. We have families. We don’t want no problems.” Presumably, some of those American callers are making the outrageous leap that, by selling the truck last year, he was aiding jihadis.
Here’s an assessment from a former Navy commander in his sixth year of intelligence and counterterrorism analysis – namely, me: Neither Mr. Oberholtzer, his firm nor his employees have anything whatsoever to do with Islamic militants, and Americans have no right or foundation to assert same, much less place angry, threatening phone calls. Basing those angry calls on reports by mainstream media (which those same callers uniformly mistrust) only serves to double their shameful behavior. Knock it off.
Assessment number two: The Ports of Galveston and Houston are not alone. I assess that used car dealers in close proximity to east coast seaports are shipping pick-up trucks to all sorts of legitimate buyers overseas. Some find their way to recipients in, say, Turkey and the Middle East. Most are legit. Some are not.
Shipping is a simple affair. The shipper completes a manifest or cargo declaration (“1 pick-up truck, brand ABC, worth X dollars”), signs the form, seals and locks the container, and off it goes. On arrival, only the recipient listed on the manifest may open the container, and the truck rolls to its final destination.
What about inspecting all containers? Impossible, impractical and wholly disruptive of an extremely time-sensitive business. And also fruitless. The top 25 U.S. ports that accommodate container ships handle 11 million TEUs annually.
What if authorities opened the container that held the Texas truck? What would they find? Why, they’d find a truck – the very one lawfully owned and accurately listed on the manifest. To get a handle on this, law enforcement and port security must look ashore – upstream from the seaport, not along the waterfront.
In closing, I have only one source for the following piece of evidence, but that source has proven impeccable.
In the case of the truck that took to sea from a Galveston or Houston seaport, the shipper was not a plumber in Texas.
He is a Syrian.
[SIDEBAR IS BELOW—–]
Are the New F-250 Owners Al Qaeda?
Not according to research by Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi, an Oxford graduate and analyst with the Middle East Forum, a think-tank devoted to promoting American interests in the region. That said, Chechen jihadis in Syria vs. Al Qaeda may be a difference without a distinction.
The new truck owners’ group, Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar (JMWA) belongs to an alliance of three other groups formed in July 2013. The alliance is called Jabhat Ansar al-Din (JAD). The pick-up photo was found on the JAD website.
In November 2013, JMWA transformed when its previous leader and a cadre of his followers joined Ad-Dawlah Al-Islamiyya (“The Islamic State” or IS, now mislabeled by the White House, the Pentagon and mainstream media as “ISIS” or “ISIL”). Made up largely of Chechen jihadis, JMWA can best be viewed as the Syria-based wing of the Caucasus Emirate, designated a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. and many other nations.
Fighters in Syria from the largely Chechen Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar (JMWA). (Photo from a jihadi site, courtesy of Caleb Weiss)
JAD and its 4 member-groups advocate Shari’a Law and the formation of a caliphate and oppose the U.S.-led coalition operating above, if not in, Syria and Iraq. The alliance opposes the U.S. and the West for all the usual reasons that prompt militants to kill Westerners: from Afghanistan and Gitmo to the fuel rod of Islamist rage: “the Jews’ occupation of Al-Aqsa” mosque in Jerusalem. So, JAD hardly consists of the “moderate Syrian rebels” Congress has just voted to arm.
So JAD is akin to IS and the Al-Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra (“Victory Front” or JAN). JAD, however, will not join JAN and wants nothing at all to do with IS. Their fighters don’t even refer to IS by name. Reasons: fierce competition among the groups, persistent enmity between leaders and perhaps a non-aggression pact, however tacit. Said one JAD spokesman to analyst Aymenn Al-Tamimi: “We don’t fight [IS], and they don’t fight us. Anyone who says [JAD] is affiliated with [IS] is lying.”
Thus, the new owners of a Texas plumber’s old pick-up truck hate us for the same reasons IS and JAN hate us. All are driving hard toward the same destination. Each just prefers to travel alone and via a different route.
__________
A former Navy Commander, Tom Wyld served nearly 5 years as director of intelligence for a private security firm specializing in training and operational support of U.S. Navy SEALs. He continues to provide intelligence, investigative and counterterrorism support to former SEALs. Prior assignments include Communications Coordinator, Swift Boat Veterans & POWs for Truth; lobbyist for State Motorcyclists’ Rights Organizations (e.g., ABATEs); and Chief of Staff and PR Director for the Institute for Legislative Action, the lobbying and political arm of the NRA.
Paying to play goes from the Senate to the State Department. Video here.
MIAMI — The Obama administration overturned a ban preventing a wealthy, politically connected Ecuadorean woman from entering the United States after her family gave tens of thousands of dollars to Democratic campaigns, according to finance records and government officials.
The woman, Estefanía Isaías, had been barred from coming to the United States after being caught fraudulently obtaining visas for her maids. But the ban was lifted at the request of the State Department under former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton so that Ms. Isaías could work for an Obama fund-raiser with close ties to the administration.
It was one of several favorable decisions the Obama administration made in recent years involving the Isaías family, which the government of Ecuador accuses of buying protection from Washington and living comfortably in Miami off the profits of a looted bank in Ecuador.
The family, which has been investigated by federal law enforcement agencies on suspicion of money laundering and immigration fraud, has made hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions to American political campaigns in recent years. During that time, it has repeatedly received favorable treatment from the highest levels of the American government, including from New Jersey’s senior senator and the State Department.
The Obama administration has allowed the family’s patriarchs, Roberto and William Isaías, to remain in the United States, refusing to extradite them to Ecuador. The two brothers were sentenced in absentia in 2012 to eight years in prison, accused of running their bank into the ground and then presenting false balance sheets to profit from bailout funds. In a highly politicized case, Ecuador says the fraud cost the country $400 million.
The family’s affairs have rankled Ecuador and strained relations with the United States at a time when the two nations are also at odds over another international fugitive: Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, who has taken refuge in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London.
But while scrutiny has typically focused on whether the family’s generous campaign donations have helped its patriarchs avoid extradition, the unorthodox help given to Ms. Isaías, the daughter of Roberto, has received little attention.
In the spring of 2011, Ms. Isaías, a television executive, was in a difficult situation.
Her father and uncle were Ecuadorean fugitives living in Miami, but she was barred from entering the United States after she brought maids into the country under false visa pretenses and left them at her parents’ Miami home while she traveled.
“Alien smuggling” is what American consular officials in Ecuador called it.
American diplomats began enforcing the ban against Ms. Isaías, blocking her from coming to Miami for a job with a communications strategist who had raised up to $500,000 for President Obama.
What happened next illustrates the kind of access and influence available to people with vast amounts of money.
A Senator’s Assistance
For more than a year, Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, and his staff engaged in a relentless effort to help Ms. Isaías, urging senior government officials, including Mrs. Clinton’s chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, to waive the ban. The senator’s assistance came even though Ms. Isaías’s family, a major donor to him and other American politicians, does not live in his state.
The Obama administration then reversed its decision and gave Ms. Isaías the waiver she needed to come to the United States — just as tens of thousands of dollars in donations from the family poured into Mr. Obama’s campaign coffers.
An email from Mr. Menendez’s office sharing the good news was dated May 15, 2012, one day after, campaign finance records show, Ms. Isaías’s mother gave $40,000 to the Obama Victory Fund, which provided donations to the president and other Democrats.
“In my old profession as a prosecutor, timelines mean a lot,” said Ken Boehm, a former Pennsylvania prosecutor who is chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center, a government watchdog. “When a donation happens and then something else happens, like the favor, as long as they are very, very close, that really paints a story.”
In 2012, the Isaías family donated about $100,000 to the Obama Victory Fund. Campaign finance records show that their most generous donations came just before a request to the administration.
Ms. Isaías’s mother, María Mercedes, had recently donated $30,000 to the Senate campaign committee that Mr. Menendez led when she turned to him for help in her daughter’s case. At least two members of Mr. Menendez’s staff worked with Ms. Isaías and her father, as well as lawyers and other congressional offices, to argue that she had been unfairly denied entry into the United States.
Over the course of the next year, as various members of the Isaías family donated to Mr. Menendez’s re-election campaign, the senator and his staff repeatedly made calls, sent emails and wrote letters about Ms. Isaías’s case to Mrs. Clinton, Ms. Mills, the consulate in Ecuador, and the departments of State and Homeland Security.
After months of resistance from State Department offices in Ecuador and Washington, the senator lobbied Ms. Mills himself, and the ban against Ms. Isaías was eventually overturned.
Mr. Menendez’s office acknowledged going to bat for Ms. Isaías, but insisted that the advocacy was not motivated by money.
“Our office handled this case no differently than we have thousands of other immigration-related requests over the years, and to suggest that somehow the senator’s longstanding and principled beliefs on immigration have been compromised is just plain absurd,” said Patricia Enright, the senator’s spokeswoman.
Ms. Enright said Mr. Menendez’s office worked on the case because Ms. Isaías had previously been allowed to travel to the United States six times despite the ban, and the decision to suddenly enforce it seemed arbitrary and wrong. She said the senator routinely acted on cases he got from across the nation.
Mr. Menendez is currently under investigation by the Justice Department for his advocacy on behalf of another out-of-state campaign donor, Dr. Salomon E. Melgen, who ran afoul of federal health officials for unorthodox Medicare billing.
In the Isaías case, the senator wrote seven letters for various members of the family, including four on April 2, 2012, alone.
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Senator Robert Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey, lobbied on behalf of Estefanía Isaías, though she is not a constituent.Credit Mel Evans/Associated Press
A month after succeeding in Ms. Isaías’s case, Mr. Menendez sent another letter to the head of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to waive a ban on her sister, María — who had also been deemed an immigrant smuggler because she had brought maids into the United States and left them with her parents while she traveled abroad.
As that letter went out, their mother gave $20,000 more to the Obama Victory Fund.
Immigration officials forwarded the senator’s inquiries to Homeland Security Investigations, the immigration bureau’s investigative arm. Officials there noticed that the Isaías family had made several donations to the senator, and informed the F.B.I. in Miami.
Agents with Homeland Security Investigations are working to have the Isaías brothers deported. The Ecuadorean government has repeatedly requested that the men be extradited, but Washington has declined, saying that the extradition request was poorly prepared and did not meet legal standards. The criminal case in Ecuador was also marred by irregularities.
Support on Capitol Hill
The Isaías brothers consider themselves political exiles unfairly attacked by the Ecuadorean government and have garnered support on Capitol Hill, where sentiment against Ecuador’s leftist president runs strong.
But the case involving Estefanía could prove awkward for Mrs. Clinton, who was in charge of the State Department at the time high-ranking officials overruled the agency’s ban on Ms. Isaías for immigration fraud, and whose office made calls on the matter
Alfredo J. Balsera, the Obama fund-raiser whose firm, Balsera Communications, sponsored Ms. Isaías’s visa, was featured recently in USA Today as a prominent Latino fund-raiser backing Mrs. Clinton for president in 2016.
Mr. Balsera declined repeated requests to explain what work Ms. Isaías had done for his company, which has close ties to the Obama administration. To stay in the country under her three-year visa, Ms. Isaías would have to remain employed by Balsera Communications, request a change of immigration status or get another employer to sponsor her.
The company website does not list her as one of its 12 employees, though it has biographies and photos of even junior account executives, and news releases were issued when others were hired. Ms. Isaías’s name has not been mentioned on the company’s blog, Facebook page or Twitter timeline, and she is not present in any of the dozens of photographs posted on social media sites of company outings, parties, and professional and social events.
David A. Duckenfield, a partner at the company who is now on leave for a position as deputy assistant secretary of public affairs at the State Department, said Ms. Isaías worked for the firm but declined to comment further. Another senior executive at the firm said she must work outside the office because he had never heard of her.
Cheryl Mills, who was former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s chief of staff.Credit Michael Buckner/Getty Images for J/P Haitian Relief Organization and Cinema for Peace
A spokesman for Mrs. Clinton and her chief of staff, Ms. Mills, denied any special treatment for Ms. Isaías. Although Ms. Mills is unlikely to serve in any official capacity on a potential 2016 presidential campaign, she would undoubtedly be a strong behind-the-scenes presence and one of a small number of longtime advisers whom Mrs. Clinton would rely on for advice.
“There are rigorous processes in place for matters such as these, and they were followed,” said the spokesman, Nick Merrill. “Nothing more, nothing less.”
A White House spokesman, Eric Schultz, declined to comment, saying that visas are issued free from political interference by other federal agencies.
‘Not His Constituents’
Linda Jewell, the American ambassador in Quito, Ecuador, from 2005 to 2008, when Ms. Isaías’s immigration fraud was detected, said the intervention in Ms. Isaías’s case was far from routine.
“Such close and detailed involvement by a congressional office in an individual visa case would be quite unusual, especially for an applicant who is not a constituent of the member of Congress,” Ms. Jewell said after reviewing emails and documents related to the case. “This example of inquiry is substantially beyond the usual level of interest.”
Others have expressed concern. When Mr. Menendez’s office reached out to Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, to get him to write a letter on Ms. Isaías’s behalf, his office refused.
The office “discovered from the State Department that there were some red flags associated with the individual in question, and we took no further action,” said Mr. Nelson’s spokesman, Dan McLaughlin.
Mr. Boehm, the former Pennsylvania prosecutor, said Senate ethics rules allowed members of Congress to reach out to the administration on behalf of a constituent. “Members of Congress do a lot for their constituents,” Mr. Boehm said.
“These folks are not his constituents,” he added, referring to Mr. Menendez.
The Isaías family did not return several requests for comment. Ms. Isaías did not respond to emails and messages left at her home in Miami. Her lawyer, Roy J. Barquet, did not respond to phone and email messages.
In an interview this year, Roberto Isaías said the family’s donations were targeted to members of Congress who fight for human rights and freedom of speech in Latin America. He said he had met Mr. Menendez once or twice. “If you go to his website,” Mr. Isaías said, “it says, ‘If you have an immigration problem, call me.’ ”
The senator’s website does offer such casework assistance, under a category titled “Services for New Jerseyans.”
