Author Archives: Denise Simon

Did Hillary Give Sid her Sign-in Credentials?

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Just askin…..there is an intelligence war with Hillary behind the curtains…..how did Sidney Blumenthal, the leader of Hillary’s personal global spy team get exact text from the NSA? Further, how come he had to give it to Hillary…she could have signed in herself…or could she?

Hundreds of questions and a brewing intersection with the whole intelligence community….

Hillary Has an NSA Problem

The FBI has been investigating Clinton for months—but an even more secretive Federal agency has its own important beef with her

Schindler: For a year now, Hillary Clinton’s misuse of email during her tenure as secretary of state has hung like a dark cloud over her presidential campaign. As I told you months ago, email-gate isn’t going away, despite the best efforts of Team Clinton to make it disappear. Instead, the scandal has gotten worse, with never-ending revelations of apparent misconduct by Ms. Clinton and her staff. At this point, email-gate may be the only thing standing between Ms. Clinton and the White House this November.

Specifically, the Federal Bureau of Investigation examination of email-gate, pursuant to provisions of the Espionage Act, poses a major threat to Ms. Clinton’s presidential aspirations. However, even if the FBI recommends prosecution of her or members of her inner circle for mishandling of classified information—which is something the politically unconnected routinely do face prosecution for—it’s by no means certain that the Department of Justice will follow the FBI’s lead.

What the DoJ decides to do with email-gate is ultimately a question of politics as much as justice. Ms. Clinton’s recent statement on her potential prosecution, “it’s not going to happen,” then refusing to address the question at all in a recent debate, led to speculation about a backroom deal with the White House to shield Ms. Clinton from prosecution as long as Mr. Obama is in the Oval Office. After mid-January, however, all bets would be off. In that case, winning the White House herself could be an urgent matter of avoiding prosecution for Ms. Clinton.

That said, if the DoJ declines to prosecute after the Bureau recommends doing so, a leak-fest of a kind not seen in Washington, D.C., since Watergate should be anticipated. The FBI would be angry that its exhaustive investigation was thwarted by dirty deals between Democrats. In that case, a great deal of Clintonian dirty laundry could wind up in the hands of the press, habitual mainstream media covering for the Clintons notwithstanding, perhaps having a major impact on the presidential race this year.

The FBI isn’t the only powerful federal agency that Hillary Clinton needs to worry about as she plots her path to the White House between scandals and leaks. For years, she has been on the bad side of the National Security Agency, America’s most important intelligence agency, as revealed by just-released State Department documents obtained by Judicial Watch under the Freedom of Information Act.

‘What did she not want put on a government system, where security people might see it? I sure wish I’d asked about it back in 2009.’

The documents, though redacted, detail a bureaucratic showdown between Ms. Clinton and NSA at the outset of her tenure at Foggy Bottom. The new secretary of state, who had gotten “hooked” on her Blackberry during her failed 2008 presidential bid, according to a top State Department security official, wanted to use that Blackberry anywhere she went.

That, however, was impossible, since Secretary Clinton’s main office space at Foggy Bottom was actually a Secure Compartment Information Facility, called a SCIF (pronounced “skiff”) by insiders. A SCIF is required for handling any Top Secret-plus information. In most Washington, D.C., offices with a SCIF, which has to be certified as fully secure from human or technical penetration, that’s where you check Top-Secret email, read intelligence reports and conduct classified meetings that must be held inside such protected spaces.

But personal electronic devices—your cellphone, your Blackberry—can never be brought into a SCIF. They represent a serious technical threat that is actually employed by many intelligence agencies worldwide. Though few Americans realize it, taking remote control over a handheld device, then using it to record conversations, is surprisingly easy for any competent spy service. Your smartphone is a sophisticated surveillance device—on you, the user—that also happens to provide phone service and Internet access.

As a result, your phone and your Blackberry always need to be locked up before you enter any SCIF. Taking such items into one represents a serious security violation. And Ms. Clinton and her staff really hated that. Not even one month into the new administration in early 2009, Ms. Clinton and her inner circle were chafing under these rules. They were accustomed to having their personal Blackberrys with them at all times, checking and sending emails nonstop, and that was simply impossible in a SCIF like their new office.

This resulted in a February 2009 request by Secretary Clinton to the NSA, whose Information Assurance Directorate (IAD for short: see here for an explanation of Agency organization) secures the sensitive communications of many U.S. government entities, from Top-Secret computer networks, to White House communications, to the classified codes that control our nuclear weapons.

The contents of Sid Blumenthal’s June 8, 2011, email to Hillary Clinton—to her personal, unclassified account—were based on highly sensitive NSA information.

IAD had recently created a special, custom-made secure Blackberry for Barack Obama, another technology addict. Now Ms. Clinton wanted one for herself. However, making the new president’s personal Blackberry had been a time-consuming and expensive exercise. The NSA was not inclined to provide Secretary Clinton with one of her own simply for her convenience: there had to be clearly demonstrated need.

And that seemed dubious to IAD since there was no problem with Ms. Clinton checking her personal email inside her office SCIF. Hers, like most, had open (i.e. unclassified) computer terminals connected to the Internet, and the secretary of state could log into her own email anytime she wanted to right from her desk.

But she did not want to. Ms. Clinton only checked her personal email on her Blackberry: she did not want to sit down at a computer terminal. As a result, the NSA informed Secretary Clinton in early 2009 that they could not help her. When Team Clinton kept pressing the point, “We were politely told to shut up and color” by IAD, explained the state security official.

The State Department has not released the full document trail here, so the complete story remains unknown to the public. However, one senior NSA official, now retired, recalled the kerfuffle with Team Clinton in early 2009 about Blackberrys. “It was the usual Clinton prima donna stuff,” he explained, “the whole ‘rules are for other people’ act that I remembered from the ’90s.” Why Ms. Clinton would not simply check her personal email on an office computer, like every other government employee less senior than the president, seems a germane question, given what a major scandal email-gate turned out to be. “What did she not want put on a government system, where security people might see it?” the former NSA official asked, adding, “I wonder now, and I sure wish I’d asked about it back in 2009.”

He’s not the only NSA affiliate with pointed questions about what Hillary Clinton and her staff at Foggy Bottom were really up to—and why they went to such trouble to circumvent federal laws about the use of IT systems and the handling of classified information. This has come to a head thanks to Team Clinton’s gross mishandling of highly classified NSA intelligence.

As I explained in this column in January, one of the most controversial of Ms. Clinton’s emails released by the State Department under judicial order was one sent on June 8, 2011, to the Secretary of State by Sidney Blumenthal, Ms. Clinton’s unsavory friend and confidant who was running a private intelligence service for Ms. Clinton. This email contains an amazingly detailed assessment of events in Sudan, specifically a coup being plotted by top generals in that war-torn country. Mr. Blumenthal’s information came from a top-ranking source with direct access to Sudan’s top military and intelligence officials, and recounted a high-level meeting that had taken place only 24 hours before.

To anybody familiar with intelligence reporting, this unmistakably signals intelligence, termed SIGINT in the trade. In other words, Mr. Blumenthal, a private citizen who had enjoyed no access to U.S. intelligence for over a decade when he sent that email, somehow got hold of SIGINT about the Sudanese leadership and managed to send it, via open, unclassified email, to his friend Ms. Clinton only one day later.

NSA officials were appalled by the State Department’s release of this email, since it bore all the hallmarks of Agency reporting. Back in early January when I reported this, I was confident that Mr. Blumenthal’s information came from highly classified NSA sources, based on my years of reading and writing such reports myself, and one veteran agency official told me it was NSA information with “at least 90 percent confidence.”

Now, over two months later, I can confirm that the contents of Sid Blumenthal’s June 8, 2011, email to Hillary Clinton, sent to her personal, unclassified account, were indeed based on highly sensitive NSA information. The agency investigated this compromise and determined that Mr. Blumenthal’s highly detailed account of Sudanese goings-on, including the retelling of high-level conversations in that country, was indeed derived from NSA intelligence.

Specifically, this information was illegally lifted from four different NSA reports, all of them classified “Top Secret / Special Intelligence.” Worse, at least one of those reports was issued under the GAMMA compartment, which is an NSA handling caveat that is applied to extraordinarily sensitive information (for instance, decrypted conversations between top foreign leadership, as this was). GAMMA is properly viewed as a SIGINT Special Access Program, or SAP, several of which from the CIA Ms. Clinton compromised in another series of her “unclassified” emails.

Currently serving NSA officials have told me they have no doubt that Mr. Blumenthal’s information came from their reports. “It’s word-for-word, verbatim copying,” one of them explained. “In one case, an entire paragraph was lifted from an NSA report” that was classified Top Secret / Special Intelligence.

How Mr. Blumenthal got his hands on this information is the key question, and there’s no firm answer yet. The fact that he was able to take four separate highly classified NSA reports—none of which he was supposed to have any access to—and pass the details of them to Hillary Clinton via email only hours after NSA released them in Top Secret / Special Intelligence channels indicates something highly unusual, as well as illegal, was going on.

Suspicion naturally falls on Tyler Drumheller, the former CIA senior official who was Mr. Blumenthal’s intelligence fixer, his supplier of juicy spy gossip, who conveniently died last August before email-gate became front-page news. However, he, too, had left federal service years before and should not have had any access to current NSA reports.

There are many questions here about what Hillary Clinton and her staff at Foggy Bottom were up to, including Sidney Blumenthal, an integral member of the Clinton organization, despite his lack of any government position. How Mr. Blumenthal got hold of this Top Secret-plus reporting is only the first question. Why he chose to email it to Ms. Clinton in open channels is another question. So is: How did nobody on Secretary Clinton’s staff notice that this highly detailed reporting looked exactly like SIGINT from the NSA? Last, why did the State Department see fit to release this email, unredacted, to the public?

These are the questions being asked by officials at the NSA and the FBI right now. All of them merit serious examination. Their answers may determine the political fate of Hillary Clinton—and who gets elected our next president in November.

Movement from Below be Neutralized? More than Soros

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Primer: Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s campaign manager is a GOP delegate from New Hampshire. Conflict much?

CNN: Donald Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski will be among the Republican front-runner’s delegates at the party’s national convention this summer in Cleveland.

A New Hampshire resident, Lewandowski confirmed to CNN Wednesday that he will maintain both roles at the convention. The New York Times first reported that he had listed himself among Trump’s 11 New Hampshire delegates and alternates in a signed letter to the secretary of state.

What will the coming days look like? Will all college campuses go back in history like Kent State?

I am not a supporter of Trump for several reasons as noted by previous articles on this website, however there are larger implications here. For sure conservatives and Republicans alike should never give into clandestine and nefarious people, organizations or objectives, so describe how to neutralize this and bring the whole country together….as much as possible.

Digging deeper and beyond George Soros:

Notorious Washington consultant behind anti-Trump campaign, OpenSecrets:

Donald Trump, the prohibitive favorite for the Republican presidential nomination, just added a fistful of primaries to his string of victories and knocked the GOP establishment’s favorite son, Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), out of the race. To beat Trump now, it seems, someone thinks it’s time to get evil.

Dr. Evil, to be exact. Washington consultant Rick Berman, whom CBS News christened with that title in 2007, runs a public relations consulting company in Washington known for deploying surreptitious tactics on behalf of major industry clients. Berman’s firm has now contracted with a group Berman runs, the Enterprise Freedom Action Committee, in connection with a $315,000 (so far) campaign against Trump waged via Google and Facebook ads.

Berman earned the Austin Powers moniker in part by deploying tactics like “shooting the messenger.” As he told CBS: “Shooting the messenger means getting people to understand that this messenger is not as credible as their name would suggest.”

In practice, that means Berman starts his own nonprofit groups with their own credible-sounding names and their donors kept secret to discredit reports about everything from the health dangers of mercury in fish to trans-fats. The strategy has the effect of distorting debates in Washington with nameless corporate money, encouraging hyperbolic misinformation that confuses voters and muddles policy debates.

Enter Donald Trump. A veritable monarch of misinformation, Trump as recently as last weekend claimed that a would-be attacker at one of his rallies had ties to Islamic State and, when pressed on the statement’s inaccuracy, replied: “All I know is what’s on the Internet.”

Berman may have met his messenger match.

A spokeswoman for Berman and Company declined to answer questions sent via email on Thursday, including this centeral one: Who, exactly, has called on the consultant’s expertise this time? Because the organization attacking Trump, Enterprise Freedom Action, is a dark money nonprofit, it never has to publicly identify the sources of its funding.

The group has several past incarnations: Since 2007, it’s been anti-union, anti-Senate Democrats and anti-Barack Obama.

In 2008, the organization hit its spending peak. With nearly $17 million in receipts that year, it laid out close to $16 million, per its tax forms. None of that, the group maintained in a filing with the IRS, was political spending. At that time, Enterprise Freedom Action primarily was buying advertisements advocating for “democratic union elections.”

It’s a hallmark of Berman’s operations for money to go from one of his organizations to another, keeping as much of it as possible in the family. Berman’s firm made $892,931 in 2008 from its work for Enterprise Freedom Action, of which Berman himself served as president and director.

This time, the firm has, so far, received only $4,800 from the nonprofit in connection with the anti-Trump campaign, and it’s unclear whether more money will follow. Political spending against Donald Trump can seem like a fool’s errand: Before Tuesday’s contest, outside groups spent about $8.7 million on TV ads attacking him in Florida, while Trump himself spent only $2.4 million in the state, according to the International Business Times — and Marco Rubio knows what happened there.

 

Declaring Genocide: Does it Mean Anything?

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John Kerry and Barack Obama finally declared ‘genocide’ with regard to Islamic State but why stop with ISIS? What about Bashir al Assad but mostly what about Mahmoud Abbas? For the Obama White House, Iran certainly does not matter either.

Obama did finally declare genocide after the lawyers reviewed and advised him. But does it matter?

The Genocide Convention says it does matter.

 

In 2009, Barack Obama in Oslo accepting the Nobel Peace Prize award.

THE PRESIDENT:  Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, distinguished members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, citizens of America, and citizens of the world:

I receive this honor with deep gratitude and great humility.  It is an award that speaks to our highest aspirations — that for all the cruelty and hardship of our world, we are not mere prisoners of fate.  Our actions matter, and can bend history in the direction of justice.

And yet I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the considerable controversy that your generous decision has generated.  (Laughter.)  In part, this is because I am at the beginning, and not the end, of my labors on the world stage.  Compared to some of the giants of history who’ve received this prize — Schweitzer and King; Marshall and Mandela — my accomplishments are slight.  And then there are the men and women around the world who have been jailed and beaten in the pursuit of justice; those who toil in humanitarian organizations to relieve suffering; the unrecognized millions whose quiet acts of courage and compassion inspire even the most hardened cynics.  I cannot argue with those who find these men and women — some known, some obscure to all but those they help — to be far more deserving of this honor than I.

But perhaps the most profound issue surrounding my receipt of this prize is the fact that I am the Commander-in-Chief of the military of a nation in the midst of two wars.  One of these wars is winding down.  The other is a conflict that America did not seek; one in which we are joined by 42 other countries — including Norway — in an effort to defend ourselves and all nations from further attacks.

Still, we are at war, and I’m responsible for the deployment of thousands of young Americans to battle in a distant land.  Some will kill, and some will be killed.  And so I come here with an acute sense of the costs of armed conflict — filled with difficult questions about the relationship between war and peace, and our effort to replace one with the other. Full speech here.

What is worse a war, nuclear weapon or genocide? Dead is dead.

May: In the Yemeni port city of Aden earlier this month, Islamists attacked a Catholic home for the indigent elderly. The militants, believed to be soldiers of the Islamic State, shot the security guard, then entered the facility where they gunned down the old people and their care-givers, including four nuns. At least 16 people were murdered. Such atrocities are no longer seen as major news events. Most diplomats regard them – or dismiss them — as “violent extremism,” a phrase that describes without explaining. On America’s campuses, “activists” are deeply concerned about “trigger warnings” and “microaggressions.” Massacres of Christians in Muslim lands, by contrast, seem to trouble them not at all. More here.

Sure they do get it right on Islamic State, when Germany is forecasted as a future target as a matter of sampling.

GateStoneInstitute:

  • Hans-Georg Maaßen, the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency (BfV), warned that the Islamic State was deliberately planting jihadists among the refugees flowing into Europe, and reported that the number of Salafists in Germany has now risen to 7,900. This is up from 7,000 in 2014 and 5,500 in 2013.
  • “Salafists want to establish an Islamic state in Germany.” — Hans-Georg Maaßen, director, BfV, German intelligence.
  • More than 800 German residents — 60% of whom are German passport holders — have joined the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. Of these, roughly one-third have returned to Germany. — Federal Criminal Police Office.
  • Up to 5,000 European jihadists have returned to the continent after obtaining combat experience on the battlefields of the Middle East. — Rob Wainwright, head of Europol.

Going back to 2013: BBC: UN implicates Bashar al-Assad in Syria war crimes, “The UN’s human rights chief has said an inquiry has produced evidence that war crimes were authorised in Syria at the “highest level”, including by President Bashar al-Assad. It is the first time the UN’s human rights office has so directly implicated Mr Assad. Commissioner Navi Pillay said her office held a list of others implicated by the inquiry. The UN estimates more than 100,000 people have died in the conflict.”

 

 

Top Paris Attacker Arrested in Belgium, Alive but Wounded

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Fingerprints and DNA led to clues and there is perhaps yet another Paris attacker still at large. Update, it appears all have been captured as of evening time in Belgium.

 Shot in the knee.

For a photo essay go here.

    

(CNN) Belgian police conducted a raid Friday in Brussels that ended with two suspects in custody — one of whom may be wanted Paris terror attack suspect Salah Abdeslam, a senior counter-terrorism official said.

Earlier in the day, the Belgian federal prosecutor’s office revealed the 26-year-old’s fingerprints and DNA were found in a Brussels apartment raided two days earlier. One person was killed and two people escaped that operation, according to authorities.

The man killed by a special forces sniper was Mohamed Belkaid, an Algerian who used the name Samir Bouzid, is believed to have directed the November 13 Paris attackers via calls from Belgium, according to the prosecutor’s office.

Belkaid is believed to have helped Paris suspect Salah Abdeslam travel prior to the attacks and transferred money to a female cousin of Paris ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud following the attack, the Belgian senior counter-terrorism official told CNN in January.

Authorities believe the 26-year-old Abdeslam was using the apartment as a hideout following the November 13 Paris attacks that left at least 130 people dead, according to the Belgian counter-terrorism official.

Salah Abdeslam is wanted after allegedly taking part in last fall's Paris terror attacks.

Salah Abdeslam is wanted after allegedly taking part in last fall’s Paris terror attacks.

Up until Friday evening, the Belgian federal prosecutor’s office has only said that “the investigation continues day and night.

“It is currently not possible to give any additional information to avoid causing any damage to the investigation,” the agency said.

Belgian authorities are “not happy” that French media leaked evidence showing Abdeslam was in the Brussels apartment raided this week, Belgium Federal Prosecutor Eric Van Der Sijpt said Friday.

Investigators think Abdeslam may have been the driver of a black Renault Clio that dropped off three suicide bombers near the Stade de France, one of the attack sites. They also believe he had worn a suicide belt found on a Paris street after the attacks.

He is believed to have called friends to take him to Belgium after the attacks. They passed through police checkpoints, but Abdeslam had not yet been identified as a suspect and they were allowed to continue on their way.

Surveillance video emerged of him and another man at a gas station near the Belgian border the day after the attacks.

He has eluded authorities ever since.

In January, authorities found traces of explosives and Abdeslam’s fingerprints in another Brussels apartment.

Some theories have suggested he had returned to Syria following the attacks.

Abdeslam, a Belgian-born French citizen, is the brother of another attacker, Ibrahim Abdeslam. He was a French citizen believed to have been the suicide bomber who detonated explosives outside a cafe on Boulevard Voltaire.

Documents: The Long Methodical Game of AQ

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No so much contained or decimated as Barack Obama claims regarding al Qaeda. So much recent attention has been applied to Islamic State, few give any deliberation to al Qaeda and associated terror groups globally.

Osama bin Laden’s ‘Bookshelf’ Reveals al Qaeda’s Long Game Captured documents released by the U.S. reveal the extent of al Qaeda’s strategy, which may include negotiated ‘truces’ in Syria

Gartenstein-Ross: When 113 new documents recovered in 2011 during the fatal raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, became publicly available earlier this month, perhaps the most noteworthy insight they offered was the extent of the strategic patience, to borrow a phrase from the Obama administration, possessed by al Qaeda.

Along with other captured documents, what the U.S. Director of National Intelligence calls “Bin Laden’s Bookshelf” reveals the cunning long-term planning that characterized the group’s approach at the time of bin Laden’s death, and that continues to guide it today, affecting not least the actions of its affiliate the al Nusra Front in Syria.

The record shows that the United States often has overlooked the extent of al Qaeda’s patient approach, sometimes mistaking its relative quiet for inactivity or collapse, and our failure to understand the group has helped it to gain critical operating space, and even worse, has sometimes caused us to blunder into its traps.

The broad outlines of al Qaeda’s strategy of attrition against the West are, at this point, generally well understood. Al Qaeda’s strategy, as initially formulated by bin Laden, was to wear down the United States militarily, politically, and economically.

This long-term approach contrasts with that of al Qaeda’s louder jihadist spin-off and competitor, the so-called Islamic State (ISIS), which already claims to have reestablished the caliphate. Al Qaeda, on the other hand, sees the United States as the “trunk of the tree,” as bin Laden put it in a letter addressed to the late al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) emir Nasir al-Wuhayshi. Al Qaeda wanted to wait to sever that tree trunk before moving on to the next stages in its campaign, including building an Islamic state, according to that captured document which was declassified in 2012.

The newly released Abbottabad documents show how strategic patience has shaped al Qaeda’s military operations and political activities. The jihadist group has proven willing to make compromises, sacrifice short-term victories, and even develop tactical alliances with adversaries in order to outlast its various foes. At the same time, the group looked for rear bases of support and safe havens where members could train, plan attacks, and prepare for future battles in the region.

Al Qaeda’s approach to the Mauritanian government illustrates this restraint and flexibility. In several newly declassified documents dating from about 2010, al Qaeda officials discussed the possibility of making a truce with Mauritania, in which al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb would refrain from military operations in the country.

What was in it for al Qaeda? The group discussed some demands that it had for Mauritania: the government would allow militants to operate freely in the country, release incarcerated al Qaeda members, and provide al Qaeda 10 to 20 million euros a year, protection money to ensure that al Qaeda didn’t kidnap tourists.

From al Qaeda’s perspective, the rationale for the deal was that it would allow militants to “focus on Algeria,” while placing its “cadres in safe rear bases available in Mauritania,” as now-deceased Ahmed Abdi Godane, emir of the Qaeda affiliated Somali al Shabaab, noted in a letter written in March 2010. It is not clear from the documents whether this offer was actually extended to Mauritania, nor what response al Qaeda received if the offer was made, but al Qaeda’s consideration of this approach attests to the group’s patience, and willingness to grant foes a temporary reprieve if there was an advantage to doing so.

The logic that influenced al Qaeda’s thinking on Mauritania could also be seen in Yemen. An al Qaeda strategy paper noted that the jihadist movement was thriving under the country’s then-president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, whose corruption had created “fertile ground” for jihadism. The author of the paper concluded that the best immediate option for al Qaeda was to allow Saleh to remain in power, rather than working to topple him.

Why was the author so suspicious of “ousting the apostate government and keeping the country in a state of chaos”? After all, chaos typically plays to the advantage of jihadists. The author reasoned that Saleh’s replacement likely would be more aggressive in targeting jihadists. Moreover, even if chaos prevailed, he noted that “we cannot spread our Dawah while there is chaos.” Dawah refers to proselytism: In other words, the author was concerned that the preparatory work for an eventual jihadist takeover in Yemen was not complete at that point.

The author even proposed a truce with Saleh, noting that even a unilateral agreement would allow al Qaeda to focus on the United States. This sentiment was echoed in a letter from bin Laden to Wuhayshi, declassified in 2012, in which al Qaeda’s emir explained that the jihadist movement was in a preparatory stage in Yemen, meaning that “it is not in our interest to rush in bringing down the regime.” (Bin Laden eventually changed his mind on this point, as events on the ground seemed to dictate a more aggressive posture.)

Al Qaeda’s thinking about Mauritania and Yemen is characteristic of the newly released documents. Throughout, the group’s leadership urges caution and occasional tactical cooperation with enemies. In a letter to Abu Ayyub al-Masri, al Qaeda in Iraq’s emir, a senior al Qaeda official warned against carrying out operations in Iran. Iran, he explained, had become al Qaeda’s “main artery for funds, personnel, and communication.” The official similarly advised al-Masri to refrain from striking Turkey and Lebanon, urging him to instead “devote your total resource to the fortification of the nation, and the fight against the crusaders and the apostates.”

These directives show that al Qaeda was preparing for the long haul. The group anticipated and prepared for setbacks, even catastrophic ones. In a letter to Ansar al-Islam, an Iraq-based militant group, a senior al Qaeda official (possibly bin Laden himself) explained that “Iraq is not the end of the road.” He stated that if al Qaeda were defeated in that theater, it would be a “catastrophe,” but nonetheless “we must always prepare ourselves for anything that might happen.”

The official noted that “jihad will continue with us or without us,” revealing an organizational belief that the struggle to reestablish the caliphate would persist long after al Qaeda’s founders had died.

This prediction has proven all too true. Al Qaeda has continued to adapt and thrive since bin Laden’s death, while adhering to its late emir’s methodical approach. The group’s strategy has survived several seismic developments that were widely viewed as the organization’s death knell.

The so-called “Arab Spring” was widely perceived as a mortal blow to al Qaeda, a repudiation of the group’s claim that only violent jihad could sweep away the Middle East’s authoritarian regimes. Instead, al Qaeda celebrated the revolutions. In a newly-released letter to one of bin Laden’s assistants, an al Qaeda official expressed his hope that the uprisings would “spread all over the Muslim homelands, which will accelerate the triumph and unity of all Muslims.”

Al Qaeda prepared itself to succeed in the post-revolution turmoil, using bin Laden’s model of preparation and strategic restraint. Al Qaeda covertly expanded its presence in countries like Libya and Tunisia, using front groups such as Ansar al-Sharia to conduct Da’wah and recruitment activities. Indeed, a previous batch of Abbottabad documents released for a criminal trial show that al Qaeda had established itself in Derna, Benghazi, and elsewhere in Libya even before bin Laden’s death.

In multiple theaters today, including Syria/Iraq and Yemen, al Qaeda has embedded itself in local communities, developing relationships.

After seizing control of the Yemeni port city of al-Mukalla, AQAP set up a group known as the “Sons of Hadramawt,” intended to appear as an indigenous force, and appointed a local council, the Hadhrami Domestic Council, to govern the city.
It has likewise sought to build coalitions in Syria, as evidenced by a secret directive issued in early 2015 by the group’s current emir Ayman al-Zawahiri. Zawahiri’s missive instructed Jabhat al Nusra, al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, to work more closely with other rebel groups, strengthen ties with local communities, build sustainable safe havens, and cease planning for attacks against the West.

Al Qaeda’s strategic flexibility has also been on display in its response to the challenge posed by ISIS, whose emergence was another challenge that many analysts thought would cripple al Qaeda. While ISIS has challenged al Qaeda’s position within the jihadist community, it has also given al Qaeda a long-awaited opportunity to remake its image, which had been tarnished by failed governance experiments in Iraq and Mali, among other places. ISIS has become a convenient foil for al Qaeda in its efforts to gain greater operating space.

Time and again, al Qaeda has been able to mitigate setbacks, or even turn them to its advantage. The group’s vision of a multi-generational jihadist struggle has enabled it to think and act strategically, pursuing long-term objectives while passing up ephemeral or unsustainable victories.

Al Qaeda’s ability to think and plan for the long term stands in contrast with both ISIS and also the U.S. government. Election cycles, budgetary uncertainty, and inter-agency squabbles impede strategic thinking in the fight against al Qaeda. As we continue to overlook al Qaeda’s forward-looking approach, we underestimate the group and fall into its traps. At a time when al Qaeda is quietly gaining ground across the Middle East, North Africa, and the Horn of Africa, and benefiting from the international community’s myopic focus on the Islamic State, it is more important than ever that we fully appreciate al Qaeda’s long-term planning.