Author Archives: Denise Simon

Lynch To Open IRS Investigation?

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Department of Justice to finally open an investigation into the IRS targeting? Congressman Paul Ryan transmits letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

To read the letter and see the signatures click here. Key section of letter in part:

Ms. Lerner used her position to improperly influence agency action against only conservative organizations, denying these groups due process and equal protection rights under the law.

Ms. Lerner impeded official investigations by providing misleading statements in response to questions from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA).

Ms. Lerner risked exposing, and may actually have disclosed, confidential taxpayer information, in apparent violation of Internal Revenue Code section 6103 by using her personal email to conduct official business.

Paul Ryan on Thursday sent his first official letter to Loretta Lynch, the new U.S. attorney general. With luck, Ms. Lynch will take a few moments out of her international soccer crackdown to give it a glance.

Signed by every Republican member of the House Ways and Means Committee, which Mr. Ryan heads, the letter is a forceful request that Ms. Lynch channel just a smidgen of her famed prosecutorial skill into the largest abuse of government power in decades: the IRS targeting scandal. It’s now been two full years since a little-known IRS bureaucrat named Lois Lerner admitted that her agency systematically collected the names of conservative groups, harassed them, and denied their right to participate in elections. It’s been two full years since the Justice Department opened an investigation. And it’s been two full years of crickets.

While Ms. Lynch was this week orchestrating a dramatic dawn raid and the arrest of seven international soccer officials, the IRS’s offices continued to operate as if nothing ever happened. Two years ago, in the days following the targeting revelations, the administration sacked Acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller only because it had to. Ms. Lerner, who had led the exempt organizations division, was allowed to retire with full pension benefits. Holly Paz, her effective deputy, was put on administrative leave. Everyone else is still at their desks. Not a single official—there or gone—has faced prosecution.

The Ryan letter asks Ms. Lynch to finally answer his committee’s 2014 referral of Ms. Lerner to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution. That referral has been largely lost to time and other headlines. Most of the focus last year was on the House’s decision to issue a contempt citation against Ms. Lerner, for improperly asserting her Fifth Amendment rights and refusing to answer its questions about her time at the IRS. In March of this year, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Ronald Machen, who has since resigned, informed Speaker John Boehner that he was refusing to bring that contempt citation before a grand jury.

That’s a pity. Note, though, that the citation dealt only with Ms. Lerner’s after-the-fact behavior in front of Congress. Investigators have also compiled compelling evidence that she may have broken the law while overseeing the targeting of conservative groups. Nearly a month before Mr. Boehner sent out the citation, the Ways and Means Committee (then under Rep. Dave Camp) sent a letter to Justice making the case that Ms. Lerner should be criminally prosecuted for her time at the IRS. The Justice Department has never responded to that letter.

Specifically, the committee provided documents that show three acts by Ms. Lerner that may have violated criminal statutes. One, she helped to target only conservative organizations, thereby robbing them of equal protection and due process. Two, she may have impeded the Treasury inspector general’s investigation of the matter by giving misleading statements. Three, she risked exposing (and may have exposed) confidential taxpayer information by using her personal email address to conduct official business.

And that’s only what we know so far. Congress’s problem is that the IRS has stonewalled it at every turn. The Treasury inspector general, J. Russell George, has become tentative after all the Democratic criticism of his probe. It seems the Justice Department is the only body with the powers to shake loose some answers about what happened.

The Ryan letter asks Ms. Lynch to tell him the status of that referral, and Speaker Boehner chimed in with a statement calling for the new attorney general to prove to Americans that “justice will be served.”

Ms. Lynch’s response will be enormously telling about her view of her job. Well before the IRS scandal broke, former Attorney General Eric Holder had already built a reputation as one of the most partisan and political holders of the office in history. It was never really a surprise that Justice assigned the IRS probe to a staff attorney who was a Obama donor, or that the FBI early on leaked that it didn’t intend any prosecutions, or that Mr. Holder ignored calls for a special prosecutor. The likelihood that he’d act dropped further as evidence came out that his own Justice attorneys were implicated in Ms. Lerner’s targeting.

Meanwhile, today’s IRS commissioner, John Koskinen, has been unable to acknowledge that someone at his agency might have engaged in intentional wrongdoing. This attitude, combined with Justice’s inaction, creates the scary potential of an IRS targeting repeat. When nobody in a position of authority or with police power is willing to even question whether some in the IRS might be bad actors, there is no guard whatsoever against a Lerner 2.0.

One of Ms. Lynch’s specialties in her previous post as U.S. attorney for the eastern district of New York was political corruption. She knows that government officials can and do break the law. If she ignores or skirts the Ryan letter, the country will see that it has another Obama partisan sitting in the attorney general seat. If she acts, she might instead restore some public faith in two of the nation’s least respected institutions: the Justice Department and the IRS. It doesn’t seem such a hard choice.

 

 

Stuxnet V. 1 Success V. 2 North Korea Failed

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Iran wasn’t the only country that had its nuclear ambitions targeted by a sneaky US cyberattack. It turns out the American government also tried to take down North Korea’s nuclear programs with the Stuxnet worm five years ago, Reuters reports. But there was one major difference: That attack ultimately flamed out. While the US managed to get Stuxnet into Iran’s nuclear facilities (reportedly by hacking suppliers), which ultimately led to the destruction of more than a thousand uranium enriching centrifuges, it never managed to get it into North Korea’s core systems. It turns out having an extremely isolated network worked in North Korea’s favor. That’s particularly ironic since Stuxnet quickly made its way out of Iran and wreaked havoc across the web.

The operation began in tandem with the now-famous Stuxnet attack that sabotaged Iran’s nuclear program in 2009 and 2010 by destroying a thousand or more centrifuges that were enriching uranium. Reuters and others have reported that the Iran attack was a joint effort by U.S. and Israeli forces.
According to one U.S. intelligence source, Stuxnet’s developers produced a related virus that would be activated when it encountered Korean-language settings on an infected machine.
But U.S. agents could not access the core machines that ran Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program, said another source, a former high-ranking intelligence official who was briefed on the program.
The official said the National Security Agency-led campaign was stymied by North Korea’s utter secrecy, as well as the extreme isolation of its communications systems. A third source, also previously with U.S. intelligence, said he had heard about the failed cyber attack but did not know details.
North Korea has some of the most isolated communications networks in the world. Just owning a computer requires police permission, and the open Internet is unknown except to a tiny elite. The country has one main conduit for Internet connections to the outside world, through China.
In contrast, Iranians surfed the Net broadly and had interactions with companies from around the globe.


A spokeswoman for the NSA declined to comment for this story. The spy agency has previously declined to comment on the Stuxnet attack against Iran.
The United States has launched many cyber espionage campaigns, but North Korea is only the second country, after Iran, that the NSA is now known to have targeted with software designed to destroy equipment.
Washington has long expressed concerns about Pyongyang’s nuclear program, which it says breaches international agreements. North Korea has been hit with sanctions because of its nuclear and missile tests, moves that Pyongyang sees as an attack on its sovereign right to defend itself.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said last week that Washington and Beijing were discussing imposing further sanctions on North Korea, which he said was “not even close” to taking steps to end its nuclear program.

Experts in nuclear programs said there are similarities between North Korea and Iran’s operations, and the two countries continue to collaborate on military technology.
Both countries use a system with P-2 centrifuges, obtained by Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan, who is regarded as the father of Islamabad’s nuclear bomb, they said.
Like Iran, North Korea probably directs its centrifuges with control software developed by Siemens AG that runs on Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system, the experts said. Stuxnet took advantage of vulnerabilities in both the Siemens and Microsoft programs.
Because of the overlap between North Korea and Iran’s nuclear programs, the NSA would not have had to tinker much with Stuxnet to make it capable of destroying centrifuges in North Korea, if it could be deployed there.
Despite modest differences between the programs, “Stuxnet can deal with both of them. But you still need to get it in,” said Olli Heinonen, senior fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and former deputy director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
NSA Director Keith Alexander said North Korea’s strict limitations on Internet access and human travel make it one of a few nations “who can race out and do damage with relative impunity” since reprisals in cyberspace are so challenging.
When asked about Stuxnet, Alexander said he could not comment on any offensive actions taken during his time at the spy agency.
David Albright, founder of the Institute for Science and International Security and an authority on North Korea’s nuclear program, said U.S. cyber agents probably tried to get to North Korea by compromising technology suppliers from Iran, Pakistan or China.
“There was likely an attempt” to sabotage the North Korean program with software, said Albright, who has frequently written and testified on the country’s nuclear ambitions.

The Stuxnet campaign against Iran, code-named Olympic Games, was discovered in 2010. It remains unclear how the virus was introduced to the Iranian nuclear facility in Natanz, which was not connected to the Internet.
According to cybersecurity experts, Stuxnet was found inside industrial companies in Iran that were tied to the nuclear effort. As for how Stuxnet got there, a leading theory is that it was deposited by a sophisticated espionage program developed by a team closely allied to Stuxnet’s authors, dubbed the Equation Group by researchers at Kaspersky Lab.
The U.S. effort got that far in North Korea as well. Though no versions of Stuxnet have been reported as being discovered in local computers, Kaspersky Lab analyst Costin Raiu said that a piece of software related to Stuxnet had turned up in North Korea.
Kaspersky had previously reported that the software, digitally signed with one of the same stolen certificates that had been used to install Stuxnet, had been submitted to malware analysis site VirusTotal from an electronic address in China. But Raiu told Reuters his contacts had assured him that it originated in North Korea, where it infected a computer in March or April 2010.
Some experts said that even if a Stuxnet attack against North Korea had succeeded, it might not have had that big an impact on its nuclear weapons program. Iran’s nuclear sites were well known, whereas North Korea probably has at least one other facility beyond the known Yongbyon nuclear complex, former officials and inspectors said.
In addition, North Korea likely has plutonium, which does not require a cumbersome enrichment process depending on the cascading centrifuges that were a fat target for Stuxnet, they said.
Jim Lewis, an advisor to the U.S. government on cybersecurity issues and a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said there are limitations to cyber offense.
A cyber attack “is not something you can release and be sure of the results,” Lewis said.

 

Meanwhile, Mexico Still Corrupt

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You hear very little about the corruption, the massacres and the crimes in Mexico mostly because the cartels and criminals have killed or bought off the media. Once in a while some items are passed on for publication. Do you ever wonder what the president of Mexico is doing? Do you wonder if the United States or the United Nations pays attention to Mexico?

Mexico is a failed state, examples below.

US Banks Close Branches Along Mexico Border to Prevent Money Laundering

Major US banks have recently closed branches along the southern border with Mexico in an attempt to crack down on money laundering, a reflection of the ease with which Mexican drug traffickers can legitimize illicit proceeds north of the border.

In recent months, major banks such J.P. Morgan and Bank of America have closed their branches in the border town of Nogales, Arizona, reported The Wall Street Journal. Other banks, including Wells Fargo and Chase, have reportedly closed hundreds of customer accounts, many of which belonged to Mexican nationals.

The anti-money laundering measures come amid tightening regulations stipulating that banks can be hit with stiff fines if they fail to adequately monitor suspicious accounts, reported National Public Radio.

Banks on the Mexican side of the border have also recently stepped up their efforts to combat money laundering operations. Some Mexican banks have started refusing to accept US dollars, according to The Associated Press.

InSight Crime Analysis

US banks have real reason to fear criminal networks will use their financial services to launder money. Arizona has previously been singled out as a principal money laundering destination for Mexican drug cartels, and bank executives told The Wall Street Journal that Southern California and the Rio Grande Valley in Texas are also high-risk border areas. As evidenced by the recent decisions, in some cases it is easier for banks to simply close accounts and branches rather than attempting to keep criminals from using their financial services.

 

Several high-profile cases point to the ability of Mexican drug traffickers to legalize their illicit funds via the US banking system. In 2010, Wachovia (which is now Wells Fargo) reached an agreement with the US government after prosecutors found that at least $110 million in drug proceeds had been laundered through the bank. In 2012, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) also uncovered a scheme in which Mexico‘s Zetas cartel laundered money through a horse racing enterprise by using Bank of America accounts.

In addition, the decisions by major banks to close their border branches suggest that putting pressure on banks — rather than going after individuals or criminal networks — may be the most effective way to combat money laundering. A recent legal decision, in which a conviction was overturned in the Zetas horse racing case, demonstrates just how difficult it can be for prosecutors to go after the money launderers themselves.

The case of 43 the missing/dead students:

He said three alleged gang members claimed the students were handed over to them by police.

They said some were already asphyxiated and they shot the others dead, before setting fire to all the bodies.

A total of 43 students went missing after clashing with police on 26 September in the town of Iguala.

A spokesman for their families said they would not accept they were dead until it had been officially confirmed by Argentine forensic scientists working on the case.

Bags found near river

The suspects from the Guerreros Unidos drug gang were recently arrested in connection with the disappearances.

Relatives of the missing said they had been told that six bags of unidentified human remains had been found along a river near where the students vanished.

There was this case in 2013 in Mexico:

MEXICO CITY — He admitted being a salaried killer for a drug cartel, the kind of assassin who preferred slashing his victims’ throats.

On Tuesday, after serving three years behind bars, he was released from a Mexican detention center and was on his way to the United States — where he would soon live as a free man.

Or, rather, a free boy.

The killer, Edgar Jimenez Lugo, known to Mexican crime reporters as “El Ponchis,” is 17 years old. He was 11 when he killed his first victim, and he was 14 when he was arrested, in December 2010, at the Cuernavaca airport, along with luggage containing two handguns and packets of cocaine.

Back then, Jimenez’s tender age transformed him into a media phenomenon, one that shocked Mexico, and the world, into recognizing the extent to which the country’s brutal drug war was consuming its young. And now it is one of the reasons why Jimenez — who claims to have killed four people at an age before most kids get their learner’s permit to drive — will soon be mingling with the residents of San Antonio.

Under the laws at the time in the Mexican state of Morelos, where he was prosecuted, Jimenez could be sentenced to a maximum of only three years of incarceration because he was a minor. A judge ordered him released Tuesday, a few days before his three years were up.

And because he is a U.S. citizen, born in San Diego, he has every right to return to his home country.

“Apparently he’s paid his debt for whatever crimes he was convicted of [in Mexico], and I’m not aware of any charges the U.S., federal or state, has against him,” Michelle Lee, an FBI special agent based in San Antonio, said Tuesday. “The situation with him is really no different than any other U.S. national who commits a crime, completes their sentence and is released.”

Jimenez, who had lived, and killed, in Jiutepec, a town near the popular resort city of Cuernavaca, was on a plane headed to San Antonio, where he has family, Jorge Vicente Messeguer Guillen, the Morelos government secretary, said in a TV interview.

Once in San Antonio, Messeguer said, Jimenez would be sent to what he referred to as a “support center” but would not be locked up.

Graco Ramirez, the Morelos governor, said in a separate TV interview that Jimenez’s rehabilitation in the Mexican penal system had been “notable.” He also said that Jimenez had to leave Mexico because his life might be in danger.

U.S. State Department officials would not elaborate on what Jimenez’s living arrangements would be when he arrived in Texas. Nor did they clarify what Messeguer meant by a “support center.”

“We are aware of Edgar Lugo’s upcoming release by the Mexican authorities following completion of his sentence,” a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City said in a statement Tuesday. “We are closely coordinating with our Mexican counterparts and appropriate authorities in the United States regarding Edgar Lugo’s release.

“Due to privacy considerations, we do not publicly discuss details of matters involving U.S. citizens,” he said.

Jimenez’s case is far from unique. In February, a 13-year-old boy was arrested in the state of Zacatecas along with a group of gunmen. The boy, identified as Armando, confessed to participating in at least 10 slayings. He was freed because the state criminal code does not prosecute minors younger than 14. A month later, the boy and his mother were found slain along with four other people.

In 2011, a 15-year-old who went by the name Erick was arrested and said he worked for the same group that Jimenez did, participating with other teenagers in kidnappings and drug dealing. He was sentenced to two years and eight months in prison.

Follow the Nukes, Money and Death(s) to Putin?

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Putin clamps down on troop-death data

Rule may hide ‘secret war’ in Ukraine

Putin signed an order Thursday making the deaths of Russian troops lost during “special operations” a secret, amending a previous decree that limited such secrecy to deaths of soldiers in wartime. Some watchers can see only one plausible reason for the change: Russia is gearing up for another military push into Ukraine.

“We’re in a pre-war situation. Right now, there’s going to be another campaign in Ukraine,” said Pavel Felgenhauer, a military analyst based in Moscow, who added that Russia was being secret about losses because “we’re fighting a secret war.” Read much more here.

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Who Took Moldovos Millions ~ The Crooks or the Kremlin

On the eve of a national election in tiny Moldova last November, $450 million — equal to 10 percent of the Eastern European country’s entire annual gross domestic product — went missing. So far, no one knows where it went.

Much was at stake in the election. Last June, Moldova’s pro-Europe government signed an association agreement with the European Union. Pro-Russia opponents favored partnership with Moscow’s Eurasian Economic Union instead. The incumbents barely won. Moscow signaled its displeasure with the EU agreement by placing an embargo on the import of Moldovan fruits, vegetables and wine.

Earlier this month, approximately 10,000 Moldovans marched in the streets of the capital, Chisinau, shouting, “Down with the thieves!” and “We want the billions back!”

Kroll, the international risk consultancy, had been engaged to do an initial private investigation. The parliament’s speaker posted this from their report: “There appears to have a deliberate plan to gain control of each of the banks and subsequently manipulate transactions to gain access to credit, whilst giving the appearance to the contrary.” Yet, the National Anti-corruption Center of Moldova claimed the report was based on rumors that leaked to local media. Read more here.

Oppose Putin?

Putin opponent near death in suspected poisoning

An outspoken opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin was near death Friday from an apparent poisoning just three months after his close political ally was gunned down near the Kremlin, and supporters want him evacuated to Europe or Israel to determine what sickened him.

Vladimir Kara-Murza Jr., who has long been based in Washington, was in a hotel in Moscow when he suddenly lost consciousness May 26 and was hospitalized with what his wife called “symptoms of poisoning.” The 33-year-old is a coordinator for Open Russia, a nongovernmental organization which on the previous day released a documentary film accusing close Putin crony and Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov of human rights abuses including torture and murder.

“Doctors have just confirmed that he was poisoned,” Andrei Bystrov, an opposition activist and friend of the Kara-Murza family, told The Telegraph. “As to what with, they can’t say yet. It could be anything.”

Kara-Murza, a dual Russian-British citizen, was a close associate of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who was assassinated in February.

“I am deeply concerned about the mysterious illness of Vladimir Kara-Murza, especially given the recent murder of Boris Nemtsov and the number of Putin’s opponents who have been poisoned,” Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., said in a statement

Kara-Murza’s family was trying to get him evacuated to Europe or Israel for toxicology tests after hemodialysis failed to stop complete kidney failure. Read more here.

Nuclear Aggression

NATO Leader Sees Dangerous Trend in Russia’s Nuclear Activities

Russia’s recent use of nuclear rhetoric, exercises and operations are deeply troubling. As are concerns regarding its compliance with the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty.

President Putin’s admission that he considered putting Russia’s nuclear forces on alert while Russia was annexing Crimea is but one example.

Russia has also significantly increased the scale, number and range of provocative flights by nuclear-capable bombers across much of the globe. From Japan to Gibraltar. From Crete to California. And from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea.

Russian officials announced plans to base modern nuclear-capable missile systems in Kaliningrad. And they claim that Russia has the right to deploy nuclear forces to Crimea.

 

U.S. Declares Cuba Normal Despite Terror History

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As you read this short notice, consider that now that relations with Cuba have been formally normalized, will the next step be to turn Guantanamo over to Cuba and terminate the lease, which was designed in perpetuity?

Kerry signed the order on Cuba today placing Cuba back to a pre-Cold War status. Only 3 countries left that carry the distinction of a state sponsor of terror .

The step comes as officials from the countries continue to hash out details of restoring full diplomatic relations, including opening embassies in Washington and Havana and returning ambassadors to the two countries. Friday’s removal of Cuba from the terrorism list had been a key Cuban demand.

President Barack Obama recommended to Congress last month that Cuba be removed from the U.S. list, triggering a 45-day congressional notification period.

State Sponsors of Terrorism

 

Countries determined by the Secretary of State to have repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism are designated pursuant to three laws: section 6(j) of the Export Administration Act, section 40 of the Arms Export Control Act, and section 620A of the Foreign Assistance Act. Taken together, the four main categories of sanctions resulting from designation under these authorities include restrictions on U.S. foreign assistance; a ban on defense exports and sales; certain controls over exports of dual use items; and miscellaneous financial and other restrictions.

Designation under the above-referenced authorities also implicates other sanctions laws that penalize persons and countries engaging in certain trade with state sponsors. Currently there are three countries designated under these authorities: Iran, Sudan, and Syria.

Country Designation Date
Iran January 19, 1984
Sudan August 12, 1993
Syria December 29, 1979

Recommendation to Rescind Cuba’s Designation as a State Sponsor of Terrorism

(Apr. 14): In December 2014, as a critical component of establishing a new direction for U.S.–Cuba relations, the President directed the State Department to launch a review of Cuba’s designation as a State Sponsor of Terrorism and provide a report to him within six months. Last week, the State Department submitted a report to the White House recommending, based on the facts and the statutory standard, that President Obama rescind Cuba’s designation as a State Sponsor of Terrorism.

Country Reports on Terrorism

U.S. law requires the Secretary of State to provide Congress, by April 30 of each year, a full and complete report on terrorism with regard to those countries and groups meeting criteria set forth in the legislation. This annual report is entitled Country Reports on Terrorism. Beginning with the report for 2004, it replaced the previously published Patterns of Global Terrorism.

The U.S. State Department keeps a summary and classification on countries. To read further on those go here.