Author Archives: Denise Simon

Flight Recorders: Crashed Russian Airliner NOT Struck From Outside

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Flight Recorders Show Crashed Russian Airliner NOT Struck From Outside — According To Investigator Analyzing Crash; ISIS Said To Have Taken Advanced MANPADS From Syrian Air Base Which It Overran In 2014; Saudi Arabia Gave Chinese SAMs To Syrian Rebels In 2014

     Although a terrorist bomb on the doomed Russian airliner that crashed in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula over the weekend cannot be ruled out as a potential cause for the crash, Reuters News Service is reporting that the aircraft “was NOT struck from the outside — thus eliminating the possibility of a surface-to-air  missile being used — if true.  Ahmed Mohmed and Polina Devitt, reporting for the publication from Cairo, Egypt, write on the November 2, 2015 edition of the news website, cites a “source [investigator] who has done a preliminary examination of the black boxes recovered from the A321 which crashed n Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula region on Saturday, killing all 224 people on board.  An Egyptian Islamic militant group affiliated with the Islamic State claimed over the weekend that it had downed the civilian airliner, “in response to Russian airstrikes that [it says] killed hundreds of Muslims on Syrian land.” Russian Transport Minister immediately dismissed the claim saying — “It can’t be considered accurate.”  Alexander Smrnov, Deputy General of the Russian airline, Kogalymavia, which operated the plane under the brand name — Metrojet — said only a “technical, or physical action” could have caused the aircraft break up in the air.”

     Reuters reports that “militants in the area are not believed to have missiles capable of hitting a plane at 30,000ft.,” though that may be wishful thinking.

ISIS Takes Advanced MANPADS From Syria – Stolen From Airbase Saudi Arabia Supplied Syrian Rebels With Chinese Surface-To-Air Missiles In 2014

    

     Thomas Gibbons Neff, writing for the Washington Post last year, (Tuesday, August 26, 2014 edition) reported that “ISIS militants stormed a Syrian airbase over the weekend, routing the remaining elements of the Syrian Army from the northern Raqqa Province; and, reportedly seized a cache of shoulder fired surface-to-air missiles. Mr. Neff adds that “the seizure of Tabqa air base, while not the first installation of its type to fall to militants, highlights the Islamic State’s gains in the region; and, the groups continued pilfering of advanced military equipment — particularly the surface-to-air missile systems known as MANPADS (Man Portable Air Defense Systems).”

    Matt Schroeder, a senior researcher at the Switzerland-based research group, Small Arms Survey; and, author of a recent report on MANPADS in Syria, believes the takeover of Tabqa Air Base could mark a “significant proliferation” of weapons across the region. “What we do know from previous airfield seizures…is that these places are a source of MANPADS and similar weapons,” Schroeder said.

     Damien Spleeters, an investigator for Conflict Armament Research, who has been documenting the weapons of the Islamic State in northern Iraq and Syria, said, “usually when you take an airbase you don’t just find one or two systems. You find a lot more than that because airbases are meant to store those types of weapons.” Spleeters added that “the prevalence of advanced systems like the SA-24, which can hit aircraft flying up to 20K feet — is very worrying. There’s a limited shelf-life for these type of weapons. There’s a lot of parameters in the picture.”

     “Most MANPADS,” for example, Mr. Spleeters said, “depend on batteries, which usually lasts only a few years when in storage; and, a few seconds when activated. When powered, the battery allows the missile to lock on to its target, but only for a brief window,” Spleeters explained. “Once the battery is expended, the weapon is useless.”

     “It’s possible,” however, “that militants are trying to work around that limitation by using a homemade recharging system for one particular MANPADS variant,” Mr. Neff wrote. C.J. Shivers, of The New York Times, first reported the case of the Syrian rebel with an SA-7 outfitted with such a system,” Mr. Neff wrote.

     Rachel Stohl, an expert on arms control at The Stimson Center, believes that like prior conflicts in the region, that the Syrian Civil War will have long-standing ramifications for MANPADS proliferation in the Middle East. “There’s no question, that the region is going to have to deal with a legacy of these weapons,” Stohl said. “You don’t just put the immediate area at risk, there’s a ripple effect.”

German Intelligence Previously Warned That ISIS Could Shoot Down Passenger Planes

     Reuters News (reporting on October 26, 2014) citing the German newspaper, Bild am Sontag — who cited German intelligence sources — says Islamic State militants “have modern, man portable air defense systems that are capable of shooting down a passenger plane,” Germany’s intelligence agency, the BND, said that “Islamic militants located in northern Iraq, had obtained air-defense systems from the captured military arsenal of the Syrian Army. The German newspaper went on to note that air defense arms “were 1970s models; as well as modern man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS). “Unlike other air defense weapons, MANPADS are easy to use, barely trained militia-men can fire the weapon accurately,” the report said, adding that the weapons are especially dangerous to aircraft that are landing or taking off. The paper added that German authorities had not yet confirmed the report [though there has been other reliable reporting indicating this as well]. Several airlines, including Austrian Airlines, and Qatar Airways, still fly in the airspace over northern Iraq — where ISIS is in the heat of battle.

Saudis Reportedly Gave Syrian Rebels Mobile Antiaircraft Missiles In 2014

     Maria Abi-Habib and Stacy Meichtry had a front-page article in the Wall Street Journal (Sat., Feb. 15, 2014) with the title above.”Disappointed with U.S. disengagement in the region; and in particular, the Syrian civil war, Saudi Arabia has decided to provide the rebels fighting Bashir al-Assad with more sophisticated weapons — including Chinese man-portable air-defense systems (reportedly in significant numbers), or Manpads, as well as anti-tank guided missiles (Konkurs) from Russia,” according to the Journal article.  The Journal cited an Arab diplomat and several rebel opposition figures as their source for this report. “The bulk of the weapons are reportedly in warehouses in Jordan, and are awaiting transport and delivery across northern Jordan and via southern Turkey. These new weapons reportedly will not go to the Islamic Front; but, keeping that commitment may be easier said than done. But, clearly Riyadh felt the potential to swing the momentum in favor of the rebels outweighed the potential risks that some of these weapons could fall into the wrong hands.

     So, while this particular downing of a civilian airliner may not have been due to Islamic militants using a surface-to-air missile, downplaying the possibility that they could do so — could be fatal.  Clearly, credible reporting suggests that in all likelihood — Islamic militants have MANPADs; and, to believe otherwise….invites disaster.  V/R, RCP

Can FBI Investigate the Director of CIA over Private Emails?

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There have been countless top agency people within the Obama administration that have violated law, procedures and even a White House directive regarding use of private emails and violations of communications security and operational security.

First we came to know about Lisa Jackson, Secretary of the EPA, then there was Eric Holder himself, while he was the top lawyer at the Department of Justice. Hillary and her server operation made an art of violating all protocols, but now John Brennan appears to be the next one in line where the FBI needs to open an investigation case. Is that possible? Has anyone asked Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson about his use of private emails? How about a massive campaign where every administration official has to sign a compliance document, then take a polygraph, then be terminated for violations? Imagine…..just imagine the fallout. If for nothing else, these people should lose their respective security clearances, this is dereliction of duty and malfeasance, much less a violation of Oath.

Hackers release info on Obama’s national security transition team

by: Aaron Boyd 

The slow drip of information allegedly stolen from CIA Director John Brennan’s personal email account continues to find its way onto WikiLeaks, with a list of personal information about 20 members of President Obama’s transition team added to the leak in the most recent post on Oct. 26.

The list — which includes names, personal emails, phone numbers, Social Security numbers and more — was originally posted to Twitter by user @_CWA_ on Oct. 19, however the account was quickly suspended and the post removed.

After the Twitter account was shut down, “Crackas With Attitude” — the duo claiming to have perpetrated the hack — began slowly posting the information to WikiLeaks. The third and latest dump came on Oct. 26, including the list and the dossier of a FBI agent in the counterterrorism division.

The list posted Monday mostly includes names of former intelligence and national security officials, some of whom served under President George W. Bush and some who served or currently serve under President Barack Obama, including Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson.

The names have something else in common, as well.

All of the people listed were part of the Obama administration’s transition team, with most of them serving on the National Security Team. The team members listed covered the Defense Department, DHS, CIA and Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Only three names advised on other aspects of the transition but Federal Times confirmed that everyone whose information was exposed served in some capacity.

The document was created (or most recently updated) on Nov. 16, 2008, according to the associated metadata.

The breadth of the release is minor compared to the high-profile breach of the Office of Personnel Management last year but the implications are still serious, especially as this information was released publicly on the Internet.

“It’s a pretty serious proposition to have any of that information out there,” said Marcus Christian, a former federal prosecutor and current partner with the law firm of Mayer Brown’s cybersecurity and data privacy practice.

While the perpetrators reportedly used social engineering to trick a helpline support employee into changing Brennan’s account password, the subsequent exfiltration of data and postings online still constitute a cyber crime, Christian said.

“Often times we look to the technological solution [for cybersecurity] but often times the problem — no matter how intricate and hardened we think our technology happens to be — there’s always some weakness,” he said, including the human element.

If the perpetrators are caught, Christian expects they could be prosecuted under a combination of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and federal Aggravated Identity Theft statutes, with the latter carrying a two-year mandatory minimum sentence.

Hillary’s Top Security Clearance Status in Question

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While the FBI is performing a robust investigation on Hillary’s servers, emails and communications that include her inner circle of people, no one is publically asking about her present security clearance status. Consider the following facts and then question whether she should even has any clearance.

  1. There were emails between Hillary Clinton, the White House and Barack Obama himself. The White House has said they were aware of Hillary’s use of a private email but not her use of a covert communications server. Consequently, the White House is fully protecting all communications between Hillary and the White House until after Mr. Obama leaves office. There are legal challenges to this underway.
  2. Hillary was derelict and forgetful when it came to securing classified material at her office at Foggy Bottom. Classified material must be protected at all times and comply with protocol and procedures.
  3. Hillary and Susan Rice were warned NOT to use the excuse of the video, 2 days before Susan Rice trotted out to the 5 Sunday morning talk shows as there was no evidence the video played any role in the Benghazi attack.
  4. Per the House Committee on Benghazi and the CIA: “CIA Head: ‘Analysts Never Said the Video was a Factor in the Benghazi Attacks’.

There is more, but at this point, continue with the question, if Hillary has top security clearance, the objective must be to have it terminated. If Hillary does not have top security clearance at this point as she has been gone from the State Department since 2013, she should be forced to apply again if she becomes the Democratic nominee for President. Then given the existing facts and those that come from the FBI investigation, she should not be granted this clearance status, thus preventing her completely from holding the office of President in totality.

There was also a trail of communications that prove complete disdain of Israel by not only the White House but by Hillary’s State Department internal officials and those of her outer and more clandestine circle of advisors beginning in 2009.

Click here for that particular email.

For perspective and for some context as to the willful and derelict attitude and culture was at Hillary’s State Department, a handful of emails most recently released tell the story.

From Politico: (in part)

A White House official declined to say whether any of the Obama-Clinton emails related to Libya. If so, the White House’s position could cause an executive privilege clash with Congress, since the House Benghazi Committee subpoenaed all Clinton emails related to Benghazi in March of this year.

The new release of Clinton emails — the largest batch of messages made public since State began posting the messages online to comply with a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit — revealed more about Clinton’s knowledge of embassy security issues and provided a window into lighter moments like Clinton being instructed in the use of emojis.

Friday’s document release is the sixth of its kind and with it, more than half of the messages Clinton turned over to the agency from her private email account and server have now been made public. In the new batch, State deemed 268 emails classified at the lowest classification tier, according to spokesman John Kirby, who said that none of these emails “were marked classified at the time they were sent or received.” There are now between 600 and 700 emails newly marked as classified since the releases began in May.

Clinton, who has been battling the controversy regarding her exclusive use of a private email account and homebrew server during her tenure at Foggy Bottom, has contended that no emails on her account were marked as classified at the time she received them.

The emails released on Friday were sent and received largely during 2011 and 2012, with additional messages from 2009 and 2010 that were not part of previous batches.

Many of the early messages reflect difficulty coordinating between Clinton’s team and the White House. In April 2009, then-National Security Council communications adviser Denis McDonough apologized after senior State officials were left out of the loop on White House announcements about Armenia and Sri Lanka. Clinton told aides she had “forcefully” complained and asked a colleague to show “a little sternness” in confronting the White House about the snubs.

In one message in May 2011, Clinton vented to a longtime friend that not even “the allure of Mother Moon in all her glory” could impress Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Longtime Clinton friend Sid Blumenthal, who frequently gave advice that Clinton said was unsolicited, also offered up in May his analysis of the upcoming November 2010 election, making reference to Rand Paul, then a candidate for Kentucky Senate.

“In the short-term, post-May 18 primaries, the splits within the GOP need to be highlighted; the takeover by extremist forces emphasized; the rejection of traditional Republicans within their own party stressed; and the economic consequences of the extremists—not least now, the gift of Rand Paul, the Republicans’ new spokesman on the scene—who would shut down Social Seucrity [sic], Medicare, student scholarships, and the interstate highway system—constantly targeted as a threat to economic recovery. Run, Rand, run!” he wrote in a memo marked “CONFIDENTIAL.”

In another email chain, Clinton expressed hesitance about the protocol of helping out a famous friend. She received at least three emails from chief of staff Cheryl Mills pertaining to a request from a former ambassador asking the secretary of state to lobby for composer Marvin Hamlisch to receive Kennedy Center honors. Clinton, noted Fay Hartog Levin, was a friend and fan of the musician.

After the ambassador followed up again to see about a letter or a call, Mills asked Clinton her thoughts.

“Sure. I’ll do, but didn’t know that was appropriate. Can you ask Ann Stock. I’d like to support him in best way possible,” she wrote.

Hamlisch died in August 2012, four months after the exchange.

Clinton also got a crash course in emojis. “Here’s my question: on this new berry can I get smiley faces?” Clinton asked senior adviser Philippe Reines.

“For email, no, I don’t think so – you need to type them out manually like 🙂 for happy, or :-I I if you want to express anger at my tardiness,” Reines wrote, after his initial email apologizing for keeping her waiting.

Reines pointed out that for texting, “the chart might be there in the lower right, next to where you type the message.”

“If it’s not, I THINK that if you type 🙂 it MIGHT automatically convert it into a symbol. Try it,” he told the secretary of state.

Another email shows Clinton getting briefed on embassy security issues, despite her contention at last week’s House Select Committee on Benghazi hearing that she did not directly deal with security matters.

When Republicans tried to buttonhole Clinton because State declined numerous requests for additional security at the Benghazi compound that was later over-run, Clinton largely waved them off. Those requests for more protection, she argued several times that day, went to people who deal with security — not her, personally.

One email from April 23, 2009, however, shows top State aide Huma Abedin updating Clinton on a few embassy security issues. In a series of bullet points sent to “H2” at 8:34 a.m., Abedin listed steps State was taking to secure Afghanistan and Pakistan embassies, including “increasing the number of hooches, and doubling up staff in lodging.”
“[W]e need to improve the security perimeter — acquiring property adjacent to our current facilities in Kabul, which is now difficult to secure,” one bullet reads. “Long-term, we need embassies in these countries adequate to serve the mission. It’s not so long ago our Embassy in Islamabad was torched; we need a facility which is structurally sound. In Kabul, we need facilities adequate to size the mission needed.”

It was not clear, though, if Clinton responded to the email or followed up in any other way.

Another newly released Libya email forwarded to Clinton and her top policy staffer Jake Sullivan, dated about a year before the Benghazi attack, warned of Islamist threats in Libya that could turn eventually pose a serious danger. State Department policy planning official Andrew Miller sent Sullivan a memo warning that once Qaddafi was ousted, Islamist groups that had focused their energy on canning the brutal dictator could turn their attention elsewhere and become violent.

“Once operations against Qadhafi and the regime are wrapped up, this force for unity is likely to dissipate,” Miller wrote. Sullivan forwarded the memo to Clinton, who asked her staff to “pls print.” “It is at this point that militias, including the Islamists, will probably abandon caution and pursue a more aggressive campaign for power, perhaps including violence.”

Clinton emerged from last Thursday’s high-stakes, marathon 11-hour Benghazi committee hearing with her campaign and messaging intact. However, Clinton is not out of the woods as far as potential new discoveries in the email controversy that has dogged her campaign. Beyond the other thousands of emails that the State Department has yet to publicly release, there are myriad Freedom of Information Act lawsuits seeking the release of emails from not only Clinton but also her top aides, and at least two other Senate committees are probing Clinton’s email setup.

Additionally, the FBI is probing Clinton’s email arrangement to determine whether sensitive materials were mishandled, and investigators have reportedly successfully recovered some of the messages Clinton’s aides deleted from her server because they deemed them private.

In an interview in March, Obama said he was not aware of Clinton’s email arrangement until news reports about it emerged earlier this year. However, White House spokesman Josh Earnest acknowledged a short time later that Obama had exchanged emails with Clinton on her account, but was not aware that she had no official account and exclusively used her private one during her time as America’s top diplomat.

When producing records to the House Benghazi Committee, the State Department has repeatedly acknowledged that it was holding back a “small” number of documents that implicate “important executive branch confidentiality interests.” However, a New York Times report Friday was the first to make clear the Obama Administration is taking such a tack with respect to the Obama-Clinton messages.

While the White House seems eager to avoid asserting executive privilege over the Obama-Clinton messages, it may have little choice but to do so if it wants to protect them from disclosure. All of Clinton’s emails have been requested in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by Vice News. Lawyers said State will eventually have to account for all of those messages and identify a basis for any deletions or omissions. In that context, the Justice Department is likely to assert a version of executive privilege called the “presidential communications privilege.”

The White House could try to argue that the Clinton-Obama messages are not subject to FOIA at all, but that would be an aggressive stance that lawyers who fight for government transparency are sure to resist.

“I would take the view that the copy that is in Obama’s email account at the White House is a presidential record and the copy that went to Hillary Clinton and was maintained on her email server is a State Department record subject to the Federal Records Act and FOIA,” said Scott Nelson of Public Citizen Litigation Group.

Ultimately, the courts are unlikely to force the release of the contents of the Clinton-Obama exchanges through FOIA, although details about who was on the email chains and when they were exchanged will probably emerge in the coming months. Nelson noted that the substance of the messages will probably come out through Obama’s presidential library before they would be accessible under FOIA. Presidential records detailing advice to a president are usually subject to release 12 years after he leaves office.

“You might get access to the presidential records one sooner than the FOIA one,” Nelson said.

Congress could also press for the emails, but if they don’t relate to Libya or Benghazi, it’s unclear which committee would do so. A Hill subpoena could force Obama to formally assert executive privilege over the records, as it did in a House committee’s showdown with Attorney General Eric Holder over records relating to the government’s response to the Operation Fast and Furious gunwalking scandal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Let ’em Fight, Fight to Win, 50 SpecOps to Syria

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The White House says there is no military solution to Syria and this deployment is not a game changer, rather the White House was a diplomatic solution, allegedly a new election for Syria. Assad’s job is safe for at least 6 months, perhaps longer.

The dangers are significant when it Syria, there are an alleged 5000 Iranian forces, Hezbollah, Cuba, Russia, pro-Assad forces and al Qaeda factions. If the rules of engagement and supportive military assets are allowed, this is a moment the United States can prevail. Yet under Mr. Obama in collusion with Iran and Russia the expectations for winning and success are slim.

Putin’s military minister is already verbally outflanking the White House:

MOSCOW (AP) — A senior Russian government official says some in the U.S. may have a delusion of winning a war with Russia with new conventional weapons without resorting to nuclear arms.

Dmitry Rogozin, a deputy prime minister in charge of military industries, said in remarks carried Friday by Russian news agencies that “for the first time ever, the American strategists have developed an illusion … that they may defeat a nuclear power in a non-nuclear war.” He added that “it’s nonsense, and it will never happen.”

Rogozin, who spoke after the Security Council’s meeting chaired by President Vladimir Putin, was commenting on prospective U.S. weapons under the so-called Prompt Global Strike program, which would be capable of striking targets anywhere in the world in as little as an hour with deadly precision.

U.S. to Send Special Forces to Syria

Syrian government forces walk in the eastern outskirts of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo.

By Adam Entous, Gordon Lubold and Carol E. Lee

 

WASHINGTON—The White House has approved the deployment of small teams of U.S. Special Forces to locations in northeastern Syria, expanding America’s direct role on the ground in support of U.S.-backed Syrian rebel forces as they prepare for a new military campaign against Islamic State militants in their stronghold in Raqqa, officials said.

The new deployment would amount to the first sustained U.S. ground presence in Syria. A senior Obama administration official said the U.S. role in Syria would, nonetheless, remain narrow. “We don’t have any intention to pursue long-term, large-scale ground combat operations like those we’ve seen in the past in Iraq and Afghanistan,” the official said.

Eleven million people displaced, four million refugees, and a quarter of a million dead—all in the last four years. What’s happened to Syria’s people? WSJ’s Niki Blasina takes a look at the world’s largest humanitarian crisis since World War II.

Up to 50 U.S. commandos will be involved in the new mission under President Barack Obama’s authorization, officials said, marking the start of a sharp escalation in the level of U.S. involvement in the fight against Islamic State.

The new campaign is expected to kick off with an operation in northern Syria as early as next week. Initially, two small teams will evaluate the security situation on the ground and link up with local Syrian forces there, officials said.

The American commandos will operate under what the Pentagon calls an “advise-and-assist” mission. But military officials said they couldn’t rule out the possibility that the forces would be pulled into occasional firefights with Islamic State given their proximity to the confrontation line. The officials cited as an example last week’s raid in Iraq in which a U.S. commando was killed.

Since the start of the civil war in Syria in 2011, Mr. Obama has sought to keep U.S. ground forces out of the country, although the Pentagon has conducted a limited number of raids there using special-operations forces since mid-2014.

The change in the U.S. approach comes as the White House struggles to demonstrate progress in the fight against Islamic State and begins talks with Russia and Iran over the future of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad. Moscow and Tehran, allies of Mr. Assad, have stepped up their support for the regime in recent weeks.

Officials said the special-operations forces will help coordinate local Syrian forces fighting Islamic State, as well as help ensure they receive U.S. air support during ground operations.

To support local forces with their ground campaign, Mr. Obama has authorized the deployment of A-10 ground-attack planes as well as F-15 fighters to the Incirlik air base in southern Turkey, a senior administration official said.

The decision, made in a meeting between Mr. Obama and his top advisors Thursday, followed weeks of debate over ways to increase pressure on Islamic State.

In addition to authorizing the special-forces deployment, Mr. Obama also has authorized U.S. officials to discuss with the Iraqi government the establishment of a special-operations task force there. Officials said Mr. Obama has also agreed to furnish targeting information to Jordan to help its attack aircraft pinpoint Islamic State positions, officials said.

The White House, however, has yet to approve other proposals that would expand the U.S. role in the conflict, including a military proposal to deploy a small squadron of Apache attack helicopters to Iraq.

For months, members of the U.S. Army’s elite Delta Force have been in contact with Syrian Kurdish and Sunni Arab commanders who have been jointly fighting Islamic State militants in a swath of territory in northeastern Syria east of the Euphrates River.

In early October, the Pentagon abandoned plans to build an army from the ground up to fight Islamic State in favor of providing ammunition and other equipment directly to the Syrian Arab commanders with whom the U.S. commandos have been in contact.

The Pentagon recently used aircraft to drop ammunition and other supplies to those commanders, part of what the Pentagon calls the Syrian Arab Coalition, which fights alongside Syrian Kurdish groups.

The growing partnership between U.S. Special Forces and Kurdish groups in northeastern Syria has angered North Atlantic Treaty Organization ally Turkey, which has accused the Pentagon of sending arms to the Kurds rather than the Syrian Arab Coalition. Ankara sees Kurdish territorial gains in Syria as a threat to the Turkish state. Pentagon officials say they delivered the arms to the Syrian Arab Coalition as intended.

U.S. officials said the deployment of the American commandos will help in laying the ground for a U.S.-backed campaign to encircle Raqqa, the Islamic State stronghold, and cut the city off from Mosul, the group’s stronghold in neighboring Iraq. U.S. officials said both the Syrian Arab Coalition and the Kurds will take part in that campaign, assisted by U.S. air support.

Officials said the new campaign doesn’t call in the near term for U.S. allies on the ground to try to retake Raqqa from Islamic State. Rather, the aim of the planned campaign will be to “squeeze” Islamic State within Raqqa by closing off the group’s supply lines.

Mr. Obama’s decision to expand the role of U.S. special-operations forces on the ground inside Syria followed a rare joint mission last week by U.S. special forces and Kurdish fighters to free prisoners of Islamic State in Iraq. The commandos intervened unexpectedly when the Kurdish forces they were assisting were pinned down by Islamic State fighters. One of the U.S. commandos was killed in the firefight, the first U.S. combat fatality in Iraq since 2011.

In May, Delta Force commandos carried out a raid in Syria in which they killed an Islamic State finance chief and captured his wife.

The first known U.S. raid in Syria during the civil war took place in July 2014, when Delta Force commandos attempted to rescue several Americans held by Islamic State militants at an oil facility near Raqqa. The U.S. force swarmed the oil facility but the militants had already moved the hostages.

Putin’s Most Terrifying Army

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This hacking wing of the Kremlin is not lost on our Congressional members, they clearly are aware of the names and events.

Organized crime is now a major element of Russia statecraft
BusinessInsider: In the past couple years, Russian hackers have launched attacks on a French television network, a German steelmaker, the Polish stock market, the White House, the US House of Representatives, the US State Department, and The New York Times.

And according to press reports citing Western intelligence officials, the perpetrators weren’t rogue cyber-pranksters. They were working for the Kremlin.

Cybercrime, it appears, has become a tool of Russian statecraft. And not just cybercrime.

Vladimir Putin’s regime has become increasingly adept at deploying a whole range of practices that are more common among crime syndicates than permanent members of the UN Security Council.

In some cases, as with the hacking, this involves the Kremlin subcontracting organized crime groups to do things the Russian state cannot do itself with plausible deniability. And in others, it involves the state itself engaging in kidnapping, extortion, blackmail, bribery, and fraud to advance its agenda.

Spanish prosecutor Jose Grinda has noted that the activities of Russian criminal networks are virtually indistinguishable from those of the government.

“It’s not so much a mafia state as a nationalized mafia,” Russian organized crime expert Mark Galeotti, a professor at New York University and co-host of the Power Vertical Podcast, said in a recent lecture at the Hudson Institute.

Hackers, Gangsters, And Goblins
According to a report by the FBI and US intelligence agencies, Russia is home to the most skilled community of cybercriminals on the globe, and the Kremlin has close ties to them.

“They have let loose the hounds,” Tom Kellermann, chief security officer at Trend Micro, a Tokyo-based security firm, told Bloomberg News.

Citing unidentified officials, Bloomberg reported that Russian hackers had stepped up surveillance of essential infrastructure, including power grids and energy-supply networks, in the United States, Europe, and Canada.

Dmitri Alperovitch, co-founder of the security firm CrowdStrike, noted recently that the Russian security services have been actively recruiting an army of hackers.

“When someone is identified as being technically proficient in the Russian underground,” a pending criminal case against them “suddenly disappears and those people are never heard from again,” Alperovitch said in an interview with The Hill, adding that the hacker in question is then working for the Russian security services.

“We know that’s going on,” Alperovitch added.

And as a result, criminal hackers “that used to hunt banks eight hours a day are now operating two hours a day turning their guns on NATO and government targets,” Kellermann of Trend Micro told The Hill, adding that these groups are “willingly operating as cyber-militias.”

The hacking is just one example of how the Kremlin effectively uses organized crime as a geopolitical weapon.

Moscow relied heavily on local organized crime structures in its support for separatist movements in Transdniester, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Donbas.

In the conflict in eastern Ukraine, organized crime groups served as agents for the Kremlin, fomenting pro-Russia unrest and funneling arms to rebel groups.

In annexed Crimea, the Kremlin installed a reputed gangster known as “The Goblin” as the peninsula’s chief executive.

And of course there is the case of Eston Kohver, the Estonian law enforcement officer who was investigating a smuggling ring run jointly by Russian organized crime groups and the Russian Federal Security Service.

Kohver was kidnapped in Estonia September 2014, brought across the Russian border at gunpoint, and convicted of espionage. He was released in a prisoner exchange last month.

The Geopolitics Of Extortion
But Putin’s mafia statecraft doesn’t just involve using and colluding with organized crime groups.

It often acts like an organized crime group itself.
In some cases this involves using graft as a means of control. This is a tactic Moscow has deployed throughout the former Soviet space, involving elites in corrupt schemes — everything from shady energy deals or money-laundering operations — to secure a “captured constituency.”

This is a tactic Russia attempted to use in Georgia following the 2003 Rose Revolution and in Ukraine after the 2004 Orange Revolution, where “corruption and shadow networks were mobilized to undermine the new leadership’s reform agenda,” according to James Greene in a 2012 report for Chatham House.

This was particularly successful in Ukraine, where opaque gas deals were used “to suborn Ukraine’s post-Orange Revolution new leadership,” Greene wrote.

And Putin is clearly hoping to repeat this success in eastern Ukraine today — especially after elections are held in the rebel areas of Donbas.

“His bet in the eastern Ukraine local election, if it ever takes place, won’t be on the rebel field commanders but on local oligarchs who ran the region before the 2014 ‘revolution of dignity.’ Through them, he will hope to exert both economic and political influence on Kiev.” political commentator Leonid Bershidsky wrote in Bloomberg View.

In addition to graft, Moscow has also effectively utilized blackmail — making the international community a series of offers it can’t refuse.

It’s a neat trick. First you create instability, as in Ukraine, or exasperate existing instability, as in Syria.Then offer your services to establish order.

You essentially create demand — and then meet it. You get to act like a rogue and be treated like a statesman.

It’s how protection rackets operate. And it has become one of the pillars of Putin’s foreign policy.
“It’s the geopolitics of extortion, but it’s probably working,” Galeotti told Voice of America in a recent interview.

“He’s identifying a whole series of potential trouble spots around the world, places that matter to the West, and is essentially indicating that he can either be a good partner, if they’re willing to make a deal with him, or he can stir up more trouble.”