Netanyahu Cancel Merkel Summit Due to Attacks

Earlier today, Palestinian rioters attacked & beat an Israeli woman after stopping her car on the way to Jerusalem.

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Terrorists Arrested

IDF: The ISA, IDF and Israel Police have arrested members of the cell that perpetrated the shooting attack that killed 2 Israeli civilians on October 1. Rabbi Eitam Henkin and his wife Naama Henkin were murdered in front of their 4 children, the oldest of whom being 9 years old. The detainees have been transferred for investigation by the ISA and have admitted their involvement in the murder of the Henkins.

The cell – affiliated with Hamas in Nablus – numbered five terrorists, each of which had a defined role. One terrorist checked the route. Three terrorists were in the attacking vehicle – a driver and two attackers. The cell commander was not in the vehicle. Several additional suspects have been arrested on suspicion of aiding the cell.

The cell commander was Raeb Ahmed Muhammad Alivi, born in 1978, and active in Hamas’s military wing. He recruited the members of the cell, instructed them and provided them with weapons.

Members of the cell included:

Yehye Muhammad Naif Abdallah Haj Hamed, born in 1991, a resident of Nablus. A Hamas member, he carried out the shooting in this attack and has been active in others.

Samir Zahir Ibrahim Kusa, born in 1982, a resident of Nablus. A Hamas member, he drove the attacking vehicle.

Kerem Lutfy Fathi Razek, born in 1992, a resident of Nablus. A Hamas member, he set out on the attack armed with a pistol but was mistakenly wounded by his colleague during the carrying out of the attack.

Zid Ziad Jamil Amar, born in 1989, a resident of Nablus. A Hamas member, he checked the route.

Cell members said that on the evening of the attack, two of them traveled on the route and selected the point from which they would open fire. Afterwards they collected the other members, one of which checked the route. Upon hearing that the route was clear, the cell set out, identified the Henkins’ vehicle and opened fire. After the Henkins’ vehicle stopped, two cell members left their vehicle and fired again from very close range.

After carrying out the shooting, the terrorists fled toward Nablus.

The cell members also said that they had been involved in two shooting attacks in recent weeks, neither of which resulted in casualties, including the 30 August attack near the entrance to Kedumim.

The investigation of the cell members is continuing.

From CNN:

 

(CNN)Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Monday to take strong action and defeat what he called a “wave of terror.” In a statement, Netanyahu said Israel is increasing its anti-terror operations with thousands of police in Jerusalem and more soldiers in the West Bank.

The move comes after a rise in violence over the past five days.

On Thursday, an Israeli couple were shot and killed in the West Bank in front of their four children, officials said. Five people were arrested Monday in the shooting, lsrael’s Securities Authority spokesperson said in a statement.

Israel’s Security Authority said those arrested were members of a cell affiliated with the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Nablus and admitted their involvement in the shooting.

On Saturday, a 19-year-old Palestinian attacked and killed two Israelis with a knife in Jerusalem’s Old City, according to authorities.

Police say they killed the attacker in a gun battle. He was identified as Mohannad Shafik Halabi from near Ramallah, in the West Bank.

On Monday, a 13-year-old Palestinian boy was shot and killed when riots broke out in Bethlehem in the West Bank, the child’s uncle and eyewitnesses told CNN.

The teen was walking from school with friends and tried to hide when they saw the clashes but a sniper shot him in the chest, eyewitnesses said.

The IDF said rioters in the area had attacked security forces in recent days with rocks, Molotov cocktails and IEDs. They pledged an investigation into the boy’s death.

“We are allowing our forces to take strong action against those who throw rocks and firebombs,” Netanyahu said adding that there are no restriction on the action of Israeli security forces.

“The police are going deeply into the Arab neighborhoods, which has not been done in the past. We will demolish terrorists’ homes,” Netanyahu said.

Oh Look, a Second Hillary Email Server

WashingtonPost: Datto’s work on the Clinton e-mail system became public Tuesday when the Republican chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee sent the company a lengthy letter seeking information about the role it and other firms played in managing the Clinton e-mail system.

Datto was hired to provide backups for the Clinton e-mail accounts starting in May 2013 by Platte River Networks, the Colorado-based tech firm hired earlier that year by the Clinton family to manage the system after Hillary Clinton concluded her term as secretary.

Senator Ron Johnson and a small committee is on the case.

Second IT firm agrees to give Clinton’s server data to FBI

WASHINGTON

Hillary Clinton hired a Connecticut company to back up her emails on a “cloud” storage system, and her lawyers have agreed to turn whatever it contains over to the FBI, a personal familiar with the situation said Tuesday.

The disclosure came as a Republican Senate committee chairman, Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, also asked the firm to turn over to the committee copies of any Clinton emails still in its possession.

There were conflicting accounts as to whether the development could lead to recovery of any of Clinton’s more than 31,000 personal emails, which she said she deleted from her private server upon turning over her work-related emails to the State Department, at its request, in December 2014.

Congressional Republicans have voiced skepticism as to whether the 30,940 business emails that the Democratic presidential candidate handed over represented all of those related to her position as secretary of state. The FBI is separately investigating whether Clinton’s arrangement put classified information at risk but has yet to characterize it as a criminal inquiry.

Datto Inc., based in Norwalk, Conn., became the second data storage firm to become entangled in the inquiry into Clinton’s unusual email arrangement, which has sparked a furor that has dogged her campaign. In August, Clinton and the firm that had managed her server since June 2013, Colorado-based Platte River Networks, agreed to surrender it for examination by the FBI.

On Friday, Clinton’s attorney, David Kendall, and Platte River agreed to allow Datto to turn over the data from the backup server to the FBI, said the person familiar with Datto’s storage, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Datto said in a statement that “with the consent of our client and their end user, and consistent with our policies regarding data privacy, Datto is working with the FBI to provide data in conjunction with its investigation.”

The source said, however, that Platte River had set up a 60-day retention policy for the backup server, meaning that any emails to which incremental changes were made at least 60 days prior would be deleted and “gone forever.” While the server wouldn’t have been “wiped clean,” the source said, any underlying data likely would have been written over and would be difficult to recover.

Since Clinton has said she deleted all of her personal emails, the configuration might complicate any attempt by FBI forensics experts to resurrect emails from the backup. However, Bloomberg reported recently that the FBI has recovered some of Clinton’s emails, apparently from the server they seized from Platte River.

In laying out facts gathered by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which he chairs, Johnson offered the first public confirmation that Clinton or her representatives had arranged for a backup of her email server after she left office in early 2013.

His letter also cited internal emails recounting requests in late 2014 and early 2015 from Clinton representatives for Colorado-based Platte River Networks, the firm managing Clinton’s primary server, to direct Datto to reduce the amount of her emails it was backing up. These communications led a Platte River employee to air suspicions that “this whole thing really is covering up some shaddy (sic) shit,” according to an excerpt of an email cited by Johnson.

The controversy seems sure to come up on Oct. 22, when Clinton is scheduled to testify to a House committee investigating the fatal 2012 attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya. It was the panel’s chairman who first declared last March that she had “wiped” her server clean based on a letter from Clinton’s attorney.

Spokesmen for Clinton’s campaign declined to respond to requests for comment about Johnson’s letter Tuesday.

On May 31, 2013, four months after Clinton left office, the Clinton Executive Service Corp., which oversaw her email server contracts, hired Platte River to maintain her account. Its New Jersey-based server replaced the server in her New York home that had handled her emails throughout her tenure as secretary of state.

Several weeks ago, Platte River employees discovered that her private server was syncing with an offsite Datto server, he said.

When Datto acknowledged that was the case, a Platte River employee replied in an email: “This is a problem.”

Johnson said that “Datto apparently possessed a backup of the server’s contents since June 2013.”

Upon that discovery, Platte River “directed Datto to not delete the saved data and worked with Datto to find a way to move the saved information . . . back to Secretary Clinton’s private server.”

The letter also noted that Platte River employees were directed to reduce the amount of email data being stored with each backup. Late this summer, Johnson wrote, a Platte River employee took note of this change and inquired whether the company could search its archives for an email from Clinton Executive Service Corp. directing such a reduction in October or November 2014 and then again around February, advising Platte River to save only emails sent during the most recent 30 days.

Those reductions would have occurred after the State Department requested that Clinton turn over her emails.

It is unclear why Secretary Clinton’s representatives apparently directed (Platte River) to reduce the backup time period of her emails around the same time period or in the months following the State Department’s request.

Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, in letter to Datto

It was here that a Platte River employee voiced suspicions about a cover-up and sought to protect the company. “If we have it in writing that they told us to cut the backups,” the employee wrote, “and that we can go public with our statement saying we have had backups since day one, then we were told to trim to 30 days, it would make us look a WHOLE LOT better,” according to the email cited by Johnson.

In the letter to Austin McChord, Datto’s CEO, Johnson asked the firm to produce copies of all communications it had relating to Clinton’s server, including those with Platte River and the Clinton firm.” He also asked whether Datto and its employees were authorized to store and view classified information and for details of any cyberattacks on the backup server.

In an ongoing review of Clinton’s work emails, the State Department and intelligence agencies have found more than 400 containing classified information, including at least two declared “Top Secret,” the most sensitive national security data. Clinton has said none of the emails were marked classified during her tenure although some communications by their nature are classified at creation.

In other developments, the State Department is asking Clinton to search again for any emails, regardless of format, from the first two months of her tenure, according to a document filed Tuesday by the State Department in response to a lawsuit about her emails.

The request to Clinton attorney David Kendall, dated Oct. 2, comes weeks after the State Department obtained a series of emails that Clinton did not turn over despite her claim that she sent the agency all her work-related correspondence.

To the extent her emails might be found on any internet service and email providers, we encourage you to contact them.

Patrick Kennedy, under secretay of state for management

The chain of emails, dating from Jan. 10, 2009 to Feb. 1, 2009, were exchanged with former Gen. David Petraeus when he headed the military’s U.S. Central Command, responsible for running the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and mostly relate to personnel matters.

“These emails are now in our possession and will be subject to Freedom of Information Act requests,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said last week. “Furthermore, we asked the IG to incorporate this matter into the review Secretary Kerry requested in March. We have also informed Congress of this matter.”

Clinton said she was unable to turn over emails she sent or received from late January to March 18, 2009, because she continued to use the AT&T Blackberry account she had when she was a senator. But after the Petraeus emails surfaced and showed she had not turned over emails sent or received on her new account, aides said said she could not turn over emails because they had not been captured on her private server.

Clinton’s campaign and Kendall did not immediately respond to questions about Johnon’s letter or the State Department’s new request.

 

Nuclear smugglers sought terrorist buyers

CHISINAU, Moldova (AP) — Over the pulsating beat at an exclusive nightclub, the arms smuggler made his pitch to a client: 2.5 million euros for enough radioactive cesium to contaminate several city blocks.

It was earlier this year, and the two men were plotting their deal at an unlikely spot: the terrace of Cocos Prive, a dance club and sushi bar in Chisinau, the capital of Moldova.

“You can make a dirty bomb, which would be perfect for the Islamic State,” the smuggler said. “If you have a connection with them, the business will go smoothly.”

But the smuggler, Valentin Grossu, wasn’t sure the client was for real — and he was right to worry. The client was an informant, and it took some 20 meetings to persuade Grossu that he was an authentic Islamic State representative. Eventually, the two men exchanged cash for a sample in a sting operation that landed Grossu in jail.

The previously unpublicized case is one of at least four attempts in five years in which criminal networks with suspected Russian ties sought to sell radioactive material to extremists through Moldova, an investigation by The Associated Press has found. One investigation uncovered an attempt to sell bomb-grade uranium to a real buyer from the Middle East, the first known case of its kind.

In that operation, wiretaps and interviews with investigators show, a middleman for the gang repeatedly ranted with hatred for America as he focused on smuggling the essential material for an atomic bomb and blueprints for a dirty bomb to a Middle Eastern buyer.

In wiretaps, videotaped arrests, photographs of bomb-grade material, documents and interviews, AP found that smugglers are explicitly targeting buyers who are enemies of the West. The developments represent the fulfillment of a long-feared scenario in which organized crime gangs are trying to link up with groups such as the Islamic State and al-Qaida — both of which have made clear their ambition to use weapons of mass destruction.

The sting operations involved a partnership between the FBI and a small group of Moldovan investigators, who over five years went from near total ignorance of the black market to wrapping up four sting operations. Informants and police posing as connected gangsters penetrated the smuggling networks, using old-fashioned undercover tactics as well as high-tech gear from radiation detectors to clothing threaded with recording devices.

But their successes were undercut by striking shortcomings: Kingpins got away, and those arrested evaded long prison sentences, sometimes quickly returning to nuclear smuggling, AP found.

For strategic reasons, in most of the operations arrests were made after samples of nuclear material had been obtained rather than the larger quantities. That means that if smugglers did have access to the bulk of material they offered, it remains in criminal hands.

The repeated attempts to peddle radioactive materials signal that a thriving nuclear black market has emerged in an impoverished corner of Eastern Europe on the fringes of the former Soviet Union. Moldova, which borders Romania, is a former Soviet republic.

Moldovan police and judicial authorities shared investigative case files with the AP in an effort to spotlight how dangerous the black market has become. They say a breakdown in cooperation between Russia and the West means that it is much harder to know whether smugglers are finding ways to move parts of Russia’s vast store of radioactive materials.

“We can expect more of these cases,” said Constantin Malic, one of the Moldovan investigators. “As long as the smugglers think they can make big money without getting caught, they will keep doing it.”

The FBI and the White House declined to comment. The U.S. State Department would not comment on the specifics of the cases.

“Moldova has taken many important steps to strengthen its counter nuclear smuggling capabilities,” said Eric Lund, spokesman for the State Department’s bureau in charge of nonproliferation. “The arrests made by Moldovan authorities in 2011 for the attempted smuggling of nuclear materials is a good example of how Moldova is doing its part.”

Wiretapped conversations exposed plots that targeted the United States, the Moldovan officials said. In one case, a middleman said it was essential the smuggled bomb-grade uranium go to Arabs, said Malic, an investigator in all four sting operations.

“He said: ‘I really want an Islamic buyer because they will bomb the Americans.'”

___

“HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF URANIUM?”

Malic was a 27-year-old police officer when he first stumbled upon the nuclear black market in 2009. He was working on a fraud unit in Chisinau, and had an informant helping police take down a euro counterfeiting ring stretching from the Black Sea to Naples, Italy.

The informant, an aging businessman, casually mentioned to Malic that over the years, contacts had periodically offered him radioactive material.

“Have you ever heard of uranium?” he asked Malic.

Malic was so new to the nuclear racket that he didn’t know what uranium was, and had to look it up on Google. He was horrified — “not just for one country,” he said, “but for humanity.”

“Soon after, the informant received an offer for uranium. At about that time, the U.S. government was starting a program to train Moldovan police in countering the nuclear black market, part of a global multi-million dollar effort.

In Malic’s first case, three people were arrested on Aug. 20, 2010, after a sample of the material, a sawed-off piece of a depleted uranium cylinder, was exchanged for cash. That kind of uranium would be difficult to turn into a bomb.

Authorities suspected, but couldn’t prove, that the uranium had come from the melted down Chernobyl reactor in Ukraine, Malic said.

Malic transported the seized radioactive material in a matchbox on the passenger seat of his car. It did not occur to him that the uranium should have been stored in a shielded container to protect him from possible radiation.

When FBI agents came to collect it, they were stunned when he simply proffered the matchbox in his uncovered hand: “Take it,” Malic said.

“Madman!” the American officers exclaimed.

The uranium, fortunately, turned out not to be highly toxic.

___

PLUTONIUM FOR FREE

Several months later, a former KGB informant, Teodor Chetrus, called Malic’s source, the Moldovan businessman. Chetrus told him he had uranium to sell, but was looking for a Middle Eastern buyer.

Unlike Malic’s first case, this one involved highly enriched uranium, the type that can be used to make a nuclear bomb.

Smarter and more cautious than the members of the previous gang, Chetrus was a bit of a paradox to the investigators. He was educated and well dressed, yet still lived in his dilapidated childhood farmhouse in a tiny village on Moldova’s border with Ukraine.

In many of the smuggling cases, the ringleaders insulated themselves through a complex network of middlemen who negotiated with buyers in order to shield the bosses from arrest. In this case, Chetrus was the go-between.

But he had his own agenda. Chetrus clung to a Soviet-era hatred of the West, Malic said, repeatedly ranting about how the Americans should be annihilated because of problems he thought they created in the Middle East.

“He said multiple times that this substance must have a real buyer from the Islamic states to make a dirty bomb,” Malic said.

Chetrus and the informant hammered out a deal to sell bomb-grade uranium to a “buyer in the Middle East” over months of wiretapped phone calls and meetings at Chetrus’ house.

The informant would show up with a recording device hidden in a different piece of clothing each time. On the other side of the road would be Malic, disguised as a migrant selling fruit and grains from a van — watching the house for signs of trouble.

In one early phone call, the informant pressed Chetrus to find out whether he had access to plutonium as well as uranium, saying his buyer had expressed interest, according to wiretaps. But Chetrus was suspicious, and insisted that before big quantities of either substance could be discussed, the buyer had to prove that he was for real and not an undercover agent.

Chetrus’ boss decided to sell the uranium in installments, starting with a sample. If the buyers were plants, he reasoned, the police would strike before the bulk of the uranium changed hands — an acceptable risk.

“I have to tell you one thing,” Chetrus told the informant in a wiretapped phone call. “Intelligence services never let go of the money.”

Eventually they worked out the terms of a deal: Chetrus would sell a 10-gram sample of the uranium for 320,000 euros ($360,000). The buyer could test it and if he liked what he saw, they could do a kilogram a week at the same rate — an astonishing 32 million euros every time until the buyer had the quantity he wanted. Ten kilograms of uranium was discussed — about a fifth of what was used over Hiroshima.

The two later met in the dirt courtyard of Chetrus’s house to discuss plutonium. The informant had a video camera hidden in his baseball cap. Chetrus can be seen in an army-green V-neck, talking animatedly as a rooster squawks in the background.

“For the plutonium,” Chetrus said, “if they prove they are serious people, we will provide the sample for free. You can use a small amount to make a dirty bomb.”

He spread his hands wide. Then waved them around, as if all before him was laid to waste.

Malic found the video chilling. “I was afraid to imagine what would happen if one of these scenarios happened one day.”

___

A REAL BUYER IN SUDAN

The man behind the bomb-grade uranium deal was Alexandr Agheenco, known as “the colonel” to his cohorts. He had both Russian and Ukrainian citizenship, police said, but lived in Moldova’s breakaway republic of Trans-Dniester.

A separatist enclave that is a notorious haven for smuggling of all kinds, Trans-Dniester was beyond the reach of the Moldovan police.

In a selfie included in police files, the colonel is balding, mustachioed, and smiling at the camera.

In June 2011, he arranged the uranium swap. He dispatched a Trans-Dniester police officer to smuggle the uranium to Moldova, according to court documents. At the same time, he sent his wife, Galina, on a “shopping outing” across the border to the capital.

Her job was to arrange a handoff of the uranium to Chetrus.

Galina Agheenco arrived in downtown Chisinau in a Lexus GS-330, parking near a circus. She met the police officer, who handed her a green sack with the uranium inside.

Meanwhile, the informant and Chetrus, sporting a dark suit and striped tie, pulled up at the Victoriabank on the city’s main drag in a chauffeur-driven gray BMW X5. Inside the bank, Chetrus inspected a safe deposit box with 320,000 euros, court documents show. He counted the bills and used a special light to check whether they were marked.

Satisfied, Chetrus went to collect the uranium package from the Lexus, where the colonel’s wife had left it. When he turned it over to the informant, the police pounced.

The bust, captured on video, shows officers in balaclavas forcing Chetrus to his knees and handcuffing him. Galina was arrested, too.

But the police officer-turned-smuggler managed to escape back to Trans-Dniester, where he and the colonel could not be touched by Moldovan police.

The arrests took Malic by surprise. He and the informant had been told that police would allow the sample exchange to go forward, so they could later seize the motherlode of uranium and arrest the ringleaders.

Malic was furious. Instead of capturing the gang leaders intent on selling nuclear bomb-grade material to terrorists, his Moldovan bosses had jumped the gun.

“What they did was simply create a scene for the news media,” Malic said. “We lost a huge opportunity to make the world safer.”

Tests of the uranium seized confirmed that it was high-grade material that could be used in a nuclear bomb. The tests also linked it to two earlier seizures of highly enriched uranium that investigators believed the colonel was also behind.

A search of Chetrus’ house showed just how dangerous the smugglers were. After police made their arrests in Chisinau, Malic combed through documents in the farmhouse.

He found the plans for the dirty bomb. Worse, there was evidence that Chetrus was making a separate deal to sell nuclear material to a real buyer.

Investigators found contracts made out to a Sudanese doctor named Yosif Faisal Ibrahim for attack helicopters and armored personnel carriers, government documents show. Chetrus had a copy of Ibrahim’s passport, and there was evidence that Chetrus was trying to help him obtain a Moldovan visa. Skype messages suggested that he was interested in uranium and the dirty bomb plans.

The deal was interrupted by the sting, but it looked like it had progressed pretty far. A lawyer working with the criminal ring had traveled to Sudan, officials said. But authorities say they could not determine who was behind Ibrahim or why he was seeking material for a nuclear bomb. AP efforts to reach Ibrahim were unsuccessful.

Consequences for the smugglers were minimal. Galina Agheenco got a light 3-year sentence because she had an infant son; and Chetrus was sentenced to a 5-year prison term. Interpol notices were issued for the colonel and the Trans-Dniester policeman who got away.

Moldovan officials say there were indications from a foreign intelligence agency that the colonel fled with his infant son through Ukraine to Russia shortly after the bust.

The authorities don’t know if the colonel also took a cache of uranium with him.

“Until the head of the criminal group is sentenced and jailed, until we know for sure where those substances seized in Europe came from and where they were going to, only then will we be able to say a danger is no longer present,” says Gheorghe Cavcaliuc, the senior police officer who oversaw the investigation.

___

A COOL FACE, A POUNDING HEART

In mid-2014, an informant told Malic he had been contacted by two separate groups, one offering uranium, the other cesium. The Moldovan police went directly to the FBI, who backed up their operations.

Malic volunteered to work undercover, posing as an agent for a Middle Eastern buyer. He did not have much training, and struggled with his nerves, resorting to shots of vodka before each meeting. He went into them with no weapon — showing a cool face while taming a pounding heart.

The FBI fitted him with a special shirt that had microphones woven into the fabric, so that even a pat-down could not reveal that he was wired. They also set him up in a white Mercedes S-Class to look like a gangster.

It worked. At one point, the unwitting smuggler said in text messages obtained by the AP that his gang had access to an outdated Russian missile system capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. The man said he could obtain two R29 submarine-based missiles and provide technical background on how to use them.

Following the same script as in 2011, the team wrapped up the investigation after a sample of 200 grams of unenriched uranium was exchanged for $15,000 on Dec. 3, 2014. Six people were arrested, five got away.

What worried Malic was what appeared to be a revolving door of smugglers. Three criminals involved in the new case had been taken into custody following the earlier investigations. Two of them had served short sentences and immediately rejoined the smuggling network, helping the new ring acquire the uranium. A third criminal was none other than the man who drove Chetrus to make his uranium deal.

The investigators tracked the new uranium for sale to an address in Ukraine. Although they reported it to the authorities, they never heard back.

As Malic’s frustration grew, so did the danger to him and his colleagues.

Early this year, at the Cocos Prive nightclub in Chisinau, the stakes became apparent. The middleman, Grossu, warned that his cesium supplier was a retired FSB officer with a reputation for brutality.

If there was any trouble, Grossu told a wired informant, “They will put all of us against the wall and shoot us,” Malic recalled.

Grossu’s bosses wanted the cesium to reach the Islamic State. “They have the money and they will know what to do with it,” he said.

The sellers claimed to have a huge cache of cesium 137 — which could be used to make a dirty bomb. As in previous cases, they insisted that the buyers prove their seriousness by first purchasing a sample vial of less-radioactive cesium 135, which is not potent enough for a dirty bomb.

They were busted on Feb. 19. Grossu and two other men were arrested. The suspected FSB officer and the remaining cesium disappeared.

It is not clear whether the Moldovan cases are indicative of widespread nuclear smuggling operations.

“It would be deeply concerning if terrorist groups are able to tap into organized crimes networks to gain the materials and expertise required to build a weapon of mass destruction,” said Andy Weber, former U.S. assistant secretary of defense, who oversaw counter-proliferation until a year ago.

On May 28, the FBI honored Malic and his team at an awards ceremony for the two recent investigations. But by then the Moldovan police department had disbanded the team amid political fallout and police infighting.

Chetrus’ 5-year prison sentence was supposed to run into next year. But Chetrus’ sister said this summer that he had been released in December, which the AP confirmed.

He had served barely three years for trying to sell a nuclear bomb to enemies of the United States.

Dems Move to Stop Benghazi Cmte, But not so Fast

Congresswoman Louise Slaughter of NY is on the move attaching an amendment to shut down the Gowdy led Benghazi Committee to another piece of legislation where a new select committee would be created to investigate Planned Parenthood.

The State Department is not trusting Hillary. They are asking Hillary to check again, where are ALL the emails.

State Dept. tells Hillary Clinton to search for more emails

WashingtonTimes: The State Department has instructed former Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton go back to her Internet companies and try to recover email messages from any personal email accounts that she used during her time in government, saying it appears she didn’t turn over all of her documents.

In a letter to Clinton lawyer David E. Kendall, the department said it has become aware of messages Mrs. Clinton sent to other government officials in her first few months in office, but which she did not turn over as part of the more than 30,000 emails she did relinquish last December.

Mrs. Clinton had previously said she used a personal email account — the same one she kept as a senator — to do government business during the first couple of months she was at the State Department. Her campaign said she no longer had access to those messages.

But after some of those messages were produced from the Defense Department, the State Department realized it had a problem.

“As a result, I ask that you confirm that, with regard to her tenure as secretary of state, former Secretary Clinton has provided the department with all federal records in her possession, regardless of their format or the domain on which they were stored or created, that may not otherwise be preserved in the department’s recordkeeping system,” Patrick F. Kennedy, under secretary of state for management, said in the letter, dated Oct. 2.

“To the extent her emails might be found on any internet service and email providers, we encourage you to contact them.” Mr. Kennedy wrote.

Mrs. Clinton’s email practices have become a major problem for her presidential aspirations.

During her time as secretary she rejected use of an account on State Department servers, instead using her personal email for several months, then switching over to an account she kept on a server at her home in New York.

Some of her top aides, likewise, did their business on non-State.gov accounts. The arrangement meant that many key communications have been shielded from public disclosure for years, thwarting the intent of open-records laws.

Mrs. Clinton has said her goal was “convenience” for herself, not an effort to circumvent those laws.

Mills shared now-classified info with Clinton Foundation

Politico: Hillary Clinton’s No. 2 at the State Department twice forwarded information to the Clinton Foundation that was later deemed classified, the latest instance of former Clinton staff transmitting now-classified information.

According to a new email chain shared with POLITICO by Citizens United, Cheryl Mills — Clinton’s former chief of state at State — forwarded State Department background information about Rwanda and the Congo to the Clintons’ philanthropic organization. Citizens United, a conservative activist group, obtained the messages via a Freedom of Information act lawsuit.

Former President Bill Clinton was visiting Africa, including Rwanda, around the time that Mills sent the email, which was mostly redacted. Former president Clinton was also considering giving Rwandan President Paul Kagame a plenary role at the Clinton Global Initiative, according to the emails.

“Fyi for [Bill] since he is in contact w/Kagame,” Mills wrote in an email chain dated July 28, 2012, forwarding to the foundation a message originally written to State employees under the subject “Developments in the Eastern Congo.”

“Thanks,” Ami Desai, the foundation’s director of foreign policy, wrote back. “He has been talking about giving Kagame a plenary role at CGI.”

The information in the 2012 emails was classified by the State Department in July of this year because of national security and foreign policy reasons, according to the documents. The classification specifically related to foreign government information and intelligence activities, sources or methods, according to the redaction labels.

Mills’ lawyer Beth Wilkinson of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison did not respond to requests for comment. Previously, Mills’ legal team has argued that she did nothing wrong because the messages were not marked classified when she had originally sent them.

Meanwhile, the FBI is currently investigating whether classified information was ever mishandled via Hillary Clinton’s private email server. For months, Clinton maintained that she did not have classified information on her homemade email server, until government watchdogs unveiled that she did. After those reports, the campaign maintained that Clinton had not received messages that were “marked” classified at the time.

The State Department has agreed with that assessment, but the intelligence community inspector general does not and has argued many of the emails were indeed classified at the time in 2012.

Beyond the classification issue, Republicans and other transparency groups have questioned whether the foundation’s work, funded in part by foreign donors, ever influenced what happened at the State Department. Or if the foundation received preferential treatment.

Mills sat on the foundation’s board before becoming the department’s No. 2 official and returned to the board after leaving State in 2013. And she appeared to continue to advise the foundation while at State, according to other emails revealed by the Citizens United lawsuit. Republicans say those connections between Mills and the Clinton Foundation raise questions about whether the relationship was too close.

“The fact that these two email chains — which are now classified — were sent only 16 days apart, makes it appear as if the sharing of sensitive government information with the Clinton Foundation was a regular occurrence,” David Bossie, president of Citizens United, said in a statement. “Time will tell as more emails become public.”

The emails are just the latest in a series of communications by Clinton and top staff being publicly released due to ongoing lawsuits under the Freedom of Information Act, which have forced the State Department to ask Clinton and her top brass to turn in email records from years before. The messages are just now becoming public.

The Washington Free Beacon last week reported the first instance of an email suggesting Mills shared now classified information. That email chain dated July 11, 2012 seems to be intended for Clinton specifically. Johnie Carson, an assistant secretary of state for the bureau of African affairs, asked Mills what she thought about them encouraging Bill Clinton to use his trip to Rwanda on July 18, 2012 to “in his private conversations with Kagame to quietly encourage him to defuse the tension with the DRC” and “terminate any [direct] or indirect to support to DRC.”

A chunk of the email about the situation in Rwanda is now classified.

Mills forwarded it to Ami: “See below and attacked points which I requested for WJC.”

 

 

 

 

Anything Illegal, Under Obama is Accelerated to Legal

US government deports fewest immigrants in nearly a decade

 

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration deported fewer immigrants over the past 12 months than at any time since 2006, according to internal figures obtained by The Associated Press as Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton called Obama’s deportation policies too harsh.

Deportations of criminal immigrants have fallen to the lowest levels since President Barack Obama took office in 2009, despite his pledge to focus on finding and deporting criminals living in the country illegally. The share of criminal immigrants deported in relation to overall immigrants deported rose slightly, from 56 percent to 59 percent.

The overall total of 231,000 deportations generally does not include Mexicans who were caught at the border and quickly returned home by the U.S. Border Patrol. The figure does include roughly 136,700 convicted criminals deported in the last 12 months.

Total deportations dropped 42 percent since 2012.

In a Miami interview with Spanish-language TV network Telemundo, Clinton promised to be “less harsh and aggressive” than Obama in enforcing immigration laws.

“The deportation laws were interpreted and enforced, you know, very aggressively, during the last six and a half years, which I think his administration did in part to try to get Republicans to support comprehensive immigration reform,” Clinton said in the weekend interview.

In the first two full budget years under the Obama administration, the U.S. deported more people year over year, until reaching its 2012 peak. Those increases, which started under the administration of President George W. Bush, were small, rising just a few percentage points each year. Nevertheless, the record deportations in 2012 led immigration advocates to criticize Obama as the “deporter-in-chief.”

After multiple bills to overhaul immigration laws failed in Congress during Obama’s first term, he made administrative changes aimed at narrowing the population of immigrants targeted for deportation. The focus since then has been on criminals, and the overall number of deportations has steadily declined.

The Homeland Security Department has not yet publicly disclosed the new internal figures, which include month-by-month breakdowns and cover the period between Oct. 1, 2014, and Sept. 28. The new numbers emerged as illegal immigration continues to be sharply debated among presidential candidates, and has been a special focus of Republican Donald Trump.

And they come as Obama carries out his pledge from before his 2012 re-election to narrowly focus enforcement and slow deportations after more than a decade of rising figures.

The biggest surprise in the figures was the decline in criminal deportations. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson last year directed immigration authorities anew to focus on finding and deporting immigrants who pose a national security or public safety threat, those who have serious criminal records, and those who recently crossed the Mexican border. The decline suggests the administration has been failing to find criminal immigrants in the U.S. interior, or that fewer immigrants living in the U.S. illegally had criminal records serious enough to justify deporting them.

“With the resources we have … I’m interested in focusing on criminals and recent illegal arrivals at the border,” Johnson told Congress in April.

Roughly 11 million immigrants are thought to be living in the country illegally.

Obama has overseen the removal of more than 2.4 million immigrants since taking office, but deportations have been declining steadily in the last three years. Removals declined by more than 84,000 between the 2014 and 2015 budget years, the largest year-over-year decline since 2012.

The Homeland Security Department has in the past attributed the steady decline to changing demographics at the Mexican border, specifically the increasing number of immigrants from countries other than Mexico and the spike in unaccompanied children and families caught trying to cross the border illegally in 2014. The majority of the children and tens of thousands of people traveling as families, mostly mothers and children, came from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.

The Border Patrol historically sends home Mexican immigrants caught crossing the border illegally, but U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement must fly home immigrants from other countries. That process is more expensive, complicated and time-consuming, especially when immigrants fight their deportation or seek asylum in the United States.

Arrests of border crossers from other countries also dropped this year, along with the number of unaccompanied children and families. As of the end of August, the Border Patrol arrested about 130,000 immigrants from countries other than Mexico, about 34,500 unaccompanied children and roughly 34,400 people traveling as families.

More than 257,000 immigrants from countries other than Mexico were apprehended at the border during the 2014 budget year, including more than 68,000 unaccompanied children and tens of thousands of family members. It was the first time that immigrants from other countries outnumbered those from Mexico.

Ahhhh….it gets worse, much worse. Tomorrow, America loses her full identity but gains new voters.

The Obama administration is launching a campaign to accelerate the conversion of millions of immigrants to citizenship. The nation’s immigration agencies will spend big bucks on “outreach” activities and the Naturalization process will be streamlined.

Breitbart: The goal is to add several million new citizens to the voter rolls by November 2016.

If you think the Naturalization process is governed by law and long-established rules so we need not worry about shortcuts and wholesale fraud – wake up. This is the Obama Administration we are talking about. If you think immigration law enforcement was politicized, wait until you see what citizenship fraud looks like. It will become very politically incorrect to question any immigrant’s right to vote.

The fact that newly naturalized citizens routinely vote Democrat more than Republican by 3-to-1 is, no doubt, a pure coincidence and has nothing to do with the desire to “expedite” the creation of new citizens.

By law, a legal immigrant can apply for citizenship and begin the Naturalization process after five years.

  • There are over 8.8 million immigrants now eligible.
  • Another 5 million will become eligible in the next four years.
  • Approximately 1.5 million each year will become eligible over the next decade.
  • Between now and 2024, almost 20 million immigrants could become citizens and join the voter rolls.

The citizenship application form, the N-400 Form, is available online, and an army of lawyers is waiting to help the 13 million eligible immigrants. There will be taxpayer-financed mobile units roaming the rural parts of America to be sure no one is overlooked. Uncle Sam wants YOU!

Historically, only about 60 percent of legal immigrants eventually became citizens, and different nationalities have sought citizenship at different rates. Millions of legal immigrants have been content to work and live in the United States without seeking citizenship. Now, there will be a bilingual multimedia campaign to remind them it is their duty to become voters, and jumping through the hoops will be made incredibly easy.

The Yearbook of Immigration Statistics provides a wealth of historical data about immigration and Naturalizations. For example, it tells us that legal immigrants from Mexico have always had one of the lowest rates of Naturalization. Could that be the reason the Obama appointees at the USCIS came up with an expensive PR campaign to educate, encourage and facilitate more Naturalizations?

  • Is it pure coincidence that more than 30 percent of those 8.8 million immigrants now eligible for citizenship are Mexican-born, or that more than 70 percent of Mexican legal immigrants register as Democrats if they become citizens?
  • Would the USCIS bureaucrats have discovered this urgent need for an “outreach campaign” if 80 percent of those 8.8 million were from Europe instead of Latin America and Asia?

No one will argue with the right of legal permanent residents to become citizens by following the lawful process for Naturalization. We all have parents, grandparents or great-grandparents who did that, and we are glad they did.  What raises red flags and rocket flares is not those aspirations but the motives, methods and malevolence of a lawless White House. Will Obama’s lawyers at USCIS bring the same passion and creative circumventions of law to the Naturalization rules and procedures as they have to other parts of immigration law?

In fact, we all know there will be fraud disguised as “expedited enfranchisement” on a massive scale so that the maximum number of new voters can be added to the rolls. And like other immigration benefits, once awarded, the new legal status dare not be taken away.

But the story does not end in 2016 or 2024. A September Pew Research Center report predicts 59 million new immigrants between now and 2065 if present trends continue —and that projection does NOT count 10-20 million illegal aliens given legal status and eventual citizenship through another amnesty.

But wait; there’s more fun and games in store. If Obama succeeds in his plans, his model for “facilitating” expedited citizenship will inevitably become the “new normal.” By 2065, those 59 million new immigrants will produce about 50 million new citizens of foreign birth –and 35 million new Democrats.

Optimists will paint a more rosy scenario. However, optimists will have to contend with the lasting effects of the Obama administration’s official abandonment — in the June “New Americans” manifesto — of assimilation as an integral, necessary element of immigration. You see, it is now officially considered xenophobic and racist to expect immigrants to adopt American values and adapt to American institutions. After all, every progressive knows that constitutionalism and the rule of law are mere artifacts of history, not anchors against the periodic storms of tyranny.

It is not an exaggeration to say that under Obama, the Naturalization process – becoming a citizen—no longer requires becoming an American. The real tragedy and the real crime of the Obama plan for accelerated Naturalization of millions flows from the redefinition of citizenship as a triumph of multiculturalism.

Obama’s most radical goal has not been the transformation of our economy, our foreign policy, or our place in the world. Obama aims to transform what it means to be an American.

Given the lack of resistance and absence of Republican leadership in opposition to those ideas, by the time those 50 million former immigrants cast a vote in 2065, it won’t matter which party wins the election.