Obama and Castro, Let My People Go

There is much more to the matter of normalizing relations between the United States and Cuba. At the core of the issue is Guantanamo. In order for Barack Obama to fulfill his first pledge to close Gitmo, several tracks have been in play. You can bet terminating the lease of Guantanamo is at hand.

The lease was a two part lease, here and here, signed in 1903 whereby the United States would monitor ship traffic in and out of the regional waters of the Panama Canal. It is a rather simple lease and can be terminated. The lawyers, the interagency types have examined reasons to void the lease given several subsequent activities that occurred at Gitmo most recently being a detention center for enemy combatants. Lawyers have summarized this is a breach of the spirit of the lease which was part of the Cuban-America Treaty.

Barack Obama has not dismissed a visit to Havanna nor has he dismissed inviting a Castro to America. What is worse, Obama hinted at placing a diplomatic post, an embassy in Havanna, when we should have one in Jerusalem. Moving forward, there is the matter of human rights violations in Cuba and they are many.

As a result of the stunning announcement by Barack Obama this week to normalize relations and to swap prisoners, another major issue is at hand, JoAnne Chesimard. There are hundreds of prisoners and political activists from America who sought refuge in Cuba yet JoAnne will set the standard.

As U.S.-Cuba tension thaws, the fate of a fugitive is in question

Assata Shakur, formerly JoAnne Chesimard and the step-aunt of deceased rapper Tupac Shakur, was convicted of killing a New Jersey State trooper on May 2, 1973. Now 67, Shakur escaped from a New Jersey prison in made-for-the-movies fashion in 1979 and found her way to Cuba, where she was eventually granted asylum under Fidel Castro in 1984.

News that the two countries have agreed to restore relations after 50 years have many U.S. officials hoping Shakur will be extradited back to the U.S. to carry out the remainder of her life sentence. After all, Cuba on Wednesday released American contractor Alan Gross, who had been imprisoned in Cuba for five years. Officials there have also agreed to free an intelligence agent who spied for the U.S. and was held on the island for almost two decades. And the U.S., in turn, freed three Cuban intelligence agents convicted of espionage and being held in the U.S.

If Cuba really wants to warm relations, the thinking goes, they should extradite Shakur, a member of the Black Panthers and Black Liberation Army, who last year was named a Most Wanted Terrorist by the FBI — the first woman ever to make the list.

Acting New Jersey Attorney General John Hoffman told msnbc in a statement that with America’s decision to ease relations with Cuba, “We remain ever hopeful in our resolve to bring Joanne Chesimard to justice. We will be working closely with federal authorities as we explore ways to apprehend her and return her to her rightful place in a New Jersey prison.” And New Jersey State Police Superintendent Rick Fuentes said he views “any changes in relations with Cuba as an opportunity to bring her back to the United States.”

Shakur’s conviction has been questioned, with several activists and lawyers dismissing the validity of the verdict, arguing that race may have unfairly been a factor. The National Lawyers Guild, which represented Shakur, is urging American authorities to respect her political asylum status in Cuba.

“The National Lawyers Guild calls on New Jersey law enforcement to respect the political asylum status of Assata Shakur in accordance with international law, especially in light of yesterday’s announcement of plans for renewed US-Cuba relations. Under the pretense of ‘counter-terrorism,’ the US has for the last 40 years persecuted Ms. Shakur for her political views and activism, while she inspired generations in the fight for racial justice,” NLG President Azadeh Shahshahani told msnbc.

What we do know is Shakur — who was in a car with two other activists, Zayd Shakur (unrelated to Assata) and Sundiata Acoli — was arrested during a routine traffic stop on the New Jersey Turnpike. The stop resulted in a gunfight, and Zayd Shakur and police officer Werner Foerster were both killed. Another police officer and Assata Shakur were both wounded.

Shakur, who was born in Jamaica, Queens, was convicted of first degree murder in 1977 along with seven other felonies in connection to the shootout. Two years later, she managed to escape the Clinton Correctional Facility for Women in New Jersey when three members of the Black Liberation Army drew their guns during a visit, took two guards as hostages and seized control of a prison van. Shakur surfaced in Cuba about five years later.

While much isn’t known about Shakur’s life in Cuba, she has continued to speak out on global injustice, including in her 1987 autobiography. She also wrote an open letter to Pope John Paul II during his trip to Cuba in 1998, which said “I am not the first, nor the last person to be victimized by the New Jersey system of ‘justice.’ The New Jersey State Police are infamous for their racism and brutality.” She  gave an interview, in which she claimed her innocence, to NBC reporter Ralph Penza that same year.

The White House referred requests for comment on the matter back National Security Council. Bernadette Meehan, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, told msnbc, “We will continue to press for the return of U.S. fugitives in Cuba to pursue justice for the victims of their crimes in our engagement with the Cuban government.” There are approximately 80 fugitives in Cuba who are wanted by the U.S.

Meehan’s statement came after several New Jersey lawmakers and officials called for Shakur’s return and as bounty for her capture stands at $2 million. Republican Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen said in a statement that the White House and State Department needs to work “much harder to bring this murderer ‘home’ to New Jersey where she can face justice and serve out her sentence.”

Critics argue medical evidence showed Shakur was shot with her hands in the air and that she would have been unable to fire a weapon. And according to the NLG, the proceedings were filled with constitutional violations: All 15 jurors were white and five of them had personal connections to state troopers. The group also insists that a state Assembly member spoke to jury members at the hotel where they were sequestered and encouraged them to convict Shakur.

Whether or not Cuba decides to extradite Shakur, of course, remains to be seen. The country has had an extradition treaty with the U.S. since 1904, but it hasn’t really been enforced during the Castro reign. There’s also a clause in the treaty that says a fugitive criminal shall not be surrendered if the “offense in respect of which his surrender is demanded be of a political character,” which could apply to the Shakur case, said Douglas McNabb, an international criminal defense lawyer who specializes in extradition.

But “any state can do anything they want, even if there is an extradition treaty,” said McNabb. “From a policy standpoint, Cuba is going to have to make a decision.”

Stephen Vladeck, an expert on national security law at American University College of Law, echoed that sentiment, saying “So much of extradition law Is just politics. The real question is whether the Cuban government decides it’s in its interest to cooperate with New Jersey through the Justice Department.”

The chance that Shakur would actually be extradited doesn’t look good, said Vladeck, noting “it sends a terrible message to anyone that would seek asylum in Cuba.”

But Bob Anello, a New York lawyer who deal with extradition cases, said “it certainly will be easier than when we weren’t talking to Cuba,  although it may not be the first order of priority.” He predicted, “You will see both countries trying to do things to foster better relations.”

 

 

 

U.S. Schools Courtesy of Gulen

Anyone remember the Barack Obama famous Cairo speech? In April of 2009, Barack delivered a long message siding with Islam and opening the door for radicals to launch their agendas and local schools in America were included.

But setting the table for what is below is this: He is in the United States.

Turkey issues arrest warrant for cleric Gulen – state media

(Frank J.Gaffney Jr. The Wash.Times:11 Dec.2012)

It is a commonplace saying, but one that most of us ignore: If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. This applies in spades to a proposal under active consideration by the school board in Virginia’s Loudoun County. It would use taxpayer funds to create a charter school to equip the children of that Washington exurb with enhanced skills in science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines. Ostensibly, they will thus be equipped to compete successfully in the fields expected to be at the cutting edge of tomorrow’s workplace.

What makes this initiative, dubbed the Loudoun Math and IT Academy, too good to be true? Let’s start with what is acknowledged about the proposed school.

The academy’s board is made up of a group of male Turkish expatriates. One of them, Fatih Kandil, was formerly the principal of the Chesapeake Science Point Public Charter School in Anne Arundel County, Md. Another is Ali Bicak, the board president of the Chesapeake Lighthouse Foundation, which owns Chesapeake Science Point and two other charter schools in Maryland. The Loudoun Math and IT Academy applicants expressly claim that Chesapeake Science Point will be the model for their school.

The taxpayers of Loudoun County and the school board elected to represent them should want no part of a school that seeks to emulate Chesapeake Science Point, let alone be run by the same people responsible for that publicly funded charter school. For one thing, Chesapeake Science Point has not proved to be the resounding academic success the applicants claim. It does not appear anywhere in the acclaimed U.S. News & World Report lists of high-performing schools in Maryland, let alone nationwide — even in the subsets of mathematics or charter schools.

What is more, according to public documents chronicling Anne Arundel County Public Schools’ dismal experience with Chesapeake Science Point, there is significant evidence of chronic violations of federal, state and local policies and regulations throughout its six years of operations, with little or inconsistent improvement, reflecting deficiencies in fiscal responsibility and organizational viability.

Why, one might ask, would applicants for a new charter school cite so deeply problematic an example as their proposed institution? This brings us to aspects of this proposal that are not acknowledged.

Chesapeake Science Point is just one of five controversial schools with which Mr. Kandil has been associated. He was previously the director at the Horizon Science Academy in Dayton, Ohio; the principal at the Wisconsin Career Academy in Milwaukee and at the Baltimore Information Technology Academy in Maryland; and one of the applicants in a failed bid to establish the First State Math and Science Academy in Delaware.

These schools have something in common besides their ties to the peripatetic Fatih Kandil. They have all been “inspired” by and in other ways are associated with Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish supremacist and imam with a cultlike following of up to 6 million Muslims in Turkey and elsewhere around the world. More to the point, Imam Gulen is the reclusive and highly autocratic leader of a global media, business, “interfaith dialogue” and education empire said to be worth many billions that is run from a compound in the Poconos.

This empire — including its roughly 135 charter schools in this country and another 1,000 abroad — and its adherents have come to be known as the Gulen Movement. Those associated with it, in this country at least, are assiduously secretive about their connections to Imam Gulen and his enterprise. For example, the Loudoun Math and IT Academy applicants, their spokeswoman and other apologists have repeatedly misled the Loudoun school board, claiming that these Turkish gentlemen and their proposed school have nothing to do with Imam Gulen.

There are several possible reasons for such professions. For one, the Gulen schools are reported to be under investigation by the FBI. A growing number of them — including Chesapeake Science Point — have also come under critical scrutiny from school boards and staff around the country. In some cases, they have actually lost their charters for, among other reasons, chronic financial and other mismanagement and outsourcing U.S. teachers’ jobs to Turks.

The decisive reason for the Gulenist lack of transparency, however, may be due to their movement’s goals and modus operandi. These appear aligned with those of another secretive international organization that also adheres to the Islamic doctrine known as Shariah and seeks to impose it worldwide — the Muslim Brotherhood. Both seek to accomplish this objective by stealth in what the Brotherhood calls “civilization jihad” and Imam Gulen’s movement describes as “jihad of the word.”

This practice enabled the Gulenists to help transform Turkey from a reliable, secular Muslim NATO ally to an Islamist state deeply hostile to the United States — one aligned with other Islamic supremacists, from Iran to the Muslim Brotherhood to Hamas to al Qaeda. Fethullah Gulen’s followers clearly don’t want us aware of the obvious dangers posed by their penetration of our educational system and influence over our kids.

The good news is that members of the Loudoun County school board have a code of conduct that reads in part: “I have a moral and civic obligation to the nation which can remain strong and free only so long as public schools in the United States of America are kept free and strong.” If the board members adhere to this duty, they will reject a seductive Loudoun Math and IT Academy proposal that is way too “good” to be true.

So what has happened since the launch of these schools around the country?

FBI raids Concept Schools in Illinois, 2 other states

The FBI and two other federal agencies conducted raids in Illinois and two other states at charter schools run by Des Plaines-based Concept Schools, FBI officials said Tuesday.

Search warrants were executed at 19 Concept schools in connection with an “ongoing white-collar crime matter,” said Vicki Anderson, a special agent in the Cleveland FBI office that’s leading the probe.

The U.S. Department of Education and the Federal Communications Commission also were involved in the June 4 raids, but officials said the warrants remain under seal, and they wouldn’t give any details about the investigation. 

The raids targeted Concept schools in Illinois — where Concept has three schools in Chicago and one in Peoria — as well as in Indiana and Ohio.

FBI RAIDS TURKISH GULEN CHARTER SCHOOL IN LA

Dec 14, 2013 by

fbi_raid“Finally FBI Raids Turkish Gulen Charter School in Louisiana”

by Donna Garner 12.13.13   

12.12.13 — To view the FBI raid of the Gulen charter school in East Baton Rouge, please go to the following link on WBRZ.com. The Gulen charter schools are tied to Fethullah Gulen who is an Islamist imam.  Kenilworth Science and Technology School is connected to the Pelican Foundation, Cosmos Foundation in Texas, Atlas Texas Construction and Trading (a Houston-based contractor), Harmony Charters in Texas, and to other Gulen/Turkish entities around the United States and Turkey:  http://www.wbrz.com/videos/fbi-raid-another-scandal-for-charter-school-company/   

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12.11.13 — To read the full story about the FBI raid on the Gulen charter school, please read further: “FBI Raid Another Scandal for Gulen Charter School Company”

http://www.wbrz.com/news/fbi-raid-another-scandal-for-charter-school-company/   

EXCERPTS FROM THIS ARTICLE:

BATON ROUGE- Wednesday evening’s FBI raid on a charter school in East Baton Rouge is the latest item in a list of scandals involving the organization that holds the charter for the Kenilworth Science and Technology School.

Pelican Educational Foundation runs the school [and also Abramson] and has ties to a family from Turkey. The organization lost its school in New Orleans amid allegations of sexual misconduct among students that prompted a state investigation on campuses in the Crescent City and in Baton Rouge. It has also faced lawsuits and allegations from teachers about bad learning environments.

“It was an atmosphere where there was a double standard,” one former teacher told WBRZ News 2 in an investigation into the school in EBR. Former teachers were not happy with how things were handled when they spoke with a station reporter two years ago.

No one was ever charged in the sex allegations a school spokesperson pointed out Wednesday as federal investigators moved through the campus collecting items, putting them in boxes and then loading them into a van.

The school receives about $5,000,000 in local, state, and federal tax money. In 2012, the Pelican group was accused of improperly handling money by the Legislative Auditor. A report found about $8600 was improperly used to buy gifts for students who scored high on LEAP tests.

About the same time as allegations and lawsuits began dealing with Pelican charter schools, a BESE member took an improper trip on behalf of another Turkish organization. Linda Johnson, who is no longer on BESE, was fined for breaking the law by the ethics board. She got an all expenses paid trip to Turkey.

Kenilworth Science and Technology School will be open Thursday.

 

Failure: Secret Service from Treasury to DHS

Nothing says failure much like a club med attitude that is quite prevailing throughout government and when it comes to the Secret Service the symptoms are glaring.

There are lapses in security, in attendance, in pro-active measures, fraud and prostitutes. Fence jumpers are the most recent sign of lack of leadership and demands by those actually in the White House, when doors are unlocked, alarms are turned off and people and dogs are slow to respond, if at all.

After the Cartagena prostitute scandal, what took so long to find truth and begin to install real cures? Why did it take an outside investigation of the Secret Service to publish the problems?

‘USSS has two primary missions: (1) to safeguard the Nation’s financial infrastructure and payment systems and (2) to protect national leaders, visiting heads of state and government, designated sites, and high-profile events. USSS employs approximately 3,200 special agents, 1,300 uniformed officers, and more than 2,000 technical, professional, and administrative support personnel.’

The solutions? Ah yes, more dogs, more people, more training and a higher fence. No real mention of a culture problem and following existing policy and protocol. Now the question is how long will all these proposals take and at what cost to the taxpayer?

Panel Finds Deep Problems at Secret Service

Outside Experts Suggest Agency Seek Leader From Outside, Build Higher White House Fence

By Andrew Grossman, The Wall Street Journal

 WASHINGTON—The Secret Service needs more training, staff and a leader from outside its ranks to run an organization that has been stretched beyond its limits and become too insular, according to a panel of outside experts appointed to examine the agency.

Much of the report is classified and won’t be released publicly, but the executive summary suggests the panel found deep problems at the top of the Secret Service, which is tasked with protecting the president, his family and other dignitaries, as well as investigating financial crimes.

“The panel found an organization starved for leadership that rewards innovation and excellence and demands accountability,” the executive summary said.

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson appointed the panel to review presidential security and the Secret Service after a man jumped the White House fence and ran into the mansion in September, leading to the resignation of then-director Julia Pierson.

The Wall Street Journal reviewed an executive summary of its report, which was delivered to Mr. Johnson this week.

 

The panel also recommended one simple step to make the White House more secure: Quickly raise the 7½-foot fence around the compound, which is far too easy to climb. An extra 4 or 5 feet, plus outward curves on top, would make a big difference, the panel wrote in an executive summary of its report.

Mr. Johnson called the recommendations “astute, thorough and fair” and said he’d make sure they’re implemented. Speaking on MSNBC earlier in the day, he said the president and his family are safe.

“Some of the panel’s recommendations are similar to others made in past agency reviews, many which were never implemented,” he said. “This time must be different.”

Among the changes it recommends is to break with a long tradition of having insiders run the Secret Service and appoint an outsider to lead the agency.

Sequestration of the IRS

Conservatives are angry that the more than $1 trillion CRomnibus legislation recently passed. There are many good reasons for that, however, there are some tactical methods underway as a result of the legislation most of all the Internal Revenue Service.

Since the IRS targeting program broke, certain measures have been taken most of which includes lawsuits to gain access to the no longer missing emails and communications of those colluding against conservative organizations.

Inside the CRomnibus was a deep cut to the IRS budget. Yippee, or not so fast. These conditions may delay income tax returns processing and the same applies to refunds.

The War On The IRS: Congress Cuts Its Funding To Lowest Level Since 1998

House GOP Appropriators bragged that this year’s IRS budget is the lowest since 2008. But it is actually worse than that. In inflation adjusted dollars, the agency’s funding is lower than it has been since 1998, when Buffy was still slaying vampires and people were listening to Aerosmith before it was nostalgic.

For context, in 1998, taxpayers filed about 125 million individual returns. Last year, the agency had to process 145 million.

Technology has made some of that work easier—more than 90 percent of individual returns are now filed electronically, vastly reducing the amount of work for IRS staffers. But technology has also forced the agency to respond to growing numbers of hackers and identity thieves.

And while processing returns may be easier, taxpayers must sort through increasingly complex rules—most as result of laws passed by the same Congress that cuts the IRS budget. The agency ought to be providing more assistance and education to help them but, thanks to those budget reductions, it is providing less.

According to the Government Accountability Office, IRS has cut staff by 9 percent since 2009. Examinations of business returns dropped from 50 percent to one-third. In 2014, callers waited twice as long for an IRS response than they did in 2009, and fewer said they received service. The IRS has cut training costs by more than 80 percent.  The agency estimates its audit rate for partnerships and other pass-through business–where fraud and error are rampant– was 0.5 percent in 2011.

Now the IRS faces the unenviable task of trying to track who has health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, and calculate penalties for those who do not. Worse, it must sort out whether people received the right subsidies, and, if they did not, it must correct them.

Many tax administration experts have long feared the agency will be unable to get this right. And lower funding will make the task even more difficult. That, of course, is exactly what many anti-ACA lawmakers have in mind.

The IRS Commissioner is telegraphing a warning about the IRS. A possible shutdown is forecasted. Then a hiring freeze has been invoked.

Our hiring — already limited at a ratio of one hire for every five people who leave — will be frozen with only a few mission-critical exceptions,” he wrote in an email to employees. “We will stop overtime except in critical situations.”

But there’s potentially more to come, as IRS leadership decides what else to cut over the next nine months of the fiscal 2015 budget, he warned. Koskinen also said IRS leadership is “consulting with the leadership of the NTEU” — referring to the National Treasury Employees Union, meaning the cuts in some way could affect employees.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/irs-budget-cuts-113651.html#ixzz3MHlLxtg0 

 

 

CyberWar on America Costs Close to a $Trillion

It is not just North Korea, the cyber warriors are also in Ukraine, China, Syria, Russian and Iran. America has some defenses, but normal users and the business industry has few robust and intolerant choices against cyber attacks.

We need to challenge Congress to declare cyber attacks as an act of war given the heavy costs to theft, risk and attacks on harden targets including the power grid systems, transportation, food, banks, water, yet most of all intelligence and military secrets.

The most recent attack on Sony intranet system is pointing to North Korea as having the cyber-soldiers and that brigade is called Unit 121.

Defense News: Military planners and security experts have intensified their shouts of concern about the development of cyber weapons and the distinct possibility of a cyber war. Cyber warfare is not new. It has been in modern military doctrine for the past decade not to mention the number of terrorist groups who have threatened the use of cyber weapons against the west. However, what has changed is the number of countries that posess these capabilities today.
The North Korean military created a new unit that focuses solely on cyber warfare. The unit, dubbed Unit 121, was first created in 1998 and has steadily grown in size and capability since then. Interest in establishing cyber war forces shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, but North Koreas intense effort stands out among the top ten nations developing cyber weapons.
Unit 121 Capabilities Assessment:
Force Size: Originally 1,000 — Current Estimate:17,000
Budget: Total military budget $6 billion USD. Cyber Budget $70+ million. North Koreas military budget is estimated to be the 25th largest in the world.
Goal: To increase their military standing by advancing their asymmetric and cyber warfare.
Ambition: To dominate their enemys information infrastructure, create social unrest and inflict monetary damage.
Strategy: Integrate their cyber forces into an overall battle strategy as part of a combined arms campaign. Additionally they wish to use cyber weapons as a limited non-war time method to project their power and influence.
Experience: Hacked into the South Korea and caused substantial damage; hacked into the U.S. Defense Department Systems.
Threat Rating: North Korea is ranked 8th on the Spy-Ops cyber capabilities threat matrix developed in August of 2007.
Capabilities
Cyber Intelligence/Espionage: Basic to moderately advanced
weapons with significant ongoing development into cyber intelligence.
Offensive Cyber Weapons: Moderately advanced distributed
denial of service (DDoS) capabilities with moderate virus and malicious code capabilities.
North Korea now has the technical capability to construct and deploy an array of cyber weapons as well as battery-driven EMP (electro magnetic pulse) devices that could disrupt electronics and computers at a limited range.
In the late spring of 2007, North Korea conducted another test of one of the cyber weapons in their current arsenal. In October, the North Koreans tested its first logic bomb. A logic bomb is a computer program that contains a piece of malicious code that is designed to execute or be triggered should certain events occur or at a predetermined point of time. Once triggered, the logic bomb can take the computer down, delete data of trigger a denial of service attack by generating bogus transactions.
For example, a programmer might write some software for his employer that includes a logic bomb to disable the software if his contract is terminated.
The N Korean test led to a UN Security Council resolution banning sales of mainframe computers and laptop PCs to the East Asian nation. The action of the United Nations has had little impact and has not deterred the North Korean military for continuing their cyber weapons development program.
Keeping dangerous cyber weapons out of the hands of terrorists or outlaw regimes is next to impossible. As far back as 2002, White House technology adviser Richard Clarke told a congressional panel that North Korea, Iraq and Iran were training people for internet warfare. Most information security experts believe that it is just a matter of time before the world sees a significant cyber attack targeted at one specific country. Many suggest the danger posed by cyber weapons rank along side of nuclear weapons, but without the physical damage. The signs are there. We need to take action and prepare for the impact of a cyber war.

North Korea’s Elite Hackers Who Live Like Stars In Luxury Hotel 

Unit 121 is known to have two distinct functions: to carry out disruptive attacks against systems primarily in the United States and South Korea, both for purposes of sabotage and intelligence gathering, and to defend North Korea from incoming cyber attacks.

North Korea, however, has very little internet infrastructure, which analysts say actually gives the country an advantage. While North Korea can launch massive attacks against the West — the Sony attack being just the latest — outside nations can do little to damage North Korea’s own internal digital systems because they largely don’t exist.

Inside North Korea, use of the internet is strictly limited to government approved personnel. Ordinary citizens may utilize only an intranet run by Kim Jong Un regime, which allows access to government approved sites and state-operated media, but no access to what the rest of the world knows as the internet and the World Wide Web.

Instead, according to a report prepared in 2009 by a U.S. military intelligence analyst, Steve Sin, the Unit 121 hackers operate mostly from the luxurious Chilbosan in Shenyang, China, pictured below, a facility with amenities that would be unknown to all but the top level government elites inside North Korea, an impoverished country racked by famine.

The hotel is located in a military-controlled region of China just three hours from the border with North Korea. The central headquarters of Unit 121 is located in Pyongyang, in a district called Moonshin-dong, near the Taedong River

In fact, by North Korean standards, the cyber hackers of Unit 121 (also referred to as “Bureau 121″) are treated like superstars, afforded high-class lifestyles inconceivable to the vast majority of North Korean citizens.

In addition to Sin’s report, the Hewlett-Packard corporation conducted its own investigation into the threat posed by Unit 121 — which was created in 1998 and operates with a budget of more than $6 billion. Much of the information known about the highly-secretive unit comes from those reports, and from North Korean defectors who have passed information to U.S. and South Korean intelligence.

According to those accounts, the hackers who comprise the unit are the cream of North Korea’s academic crop in math and computer science, hand-picked from high schools around the country, who are then sent to study at Keumseong, the top high school in the North Korea capital of Pyongyang.

From there, the candidates who pass a rigorous series of tests and trials are sent to study at top universities — and then sent to Russia and China for an additional year of specialized training in computer hacking and cyberwar techniques.

Unit 121 is believed responsible for an attack on 30,000 computers inside South Korean banks and media companies in 2013, an attack that security experts say bore strong similarities to the Sony hack.

Against South Korea, North Korea allegedly has already carried out a series of disruptive and destructive operations in the past few years. Discounting previous distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on websites, the first major cyber-attack attributed to North Korea was on April 12, 2011, which paralyzed online banking and credit card services of Nonghyup Agricultural Bank for its 30 million customers. This is the first instance where North Korea used a disc wiping tool. While its ATMs were fixed within a couple days, some of the online services had taken more than two weeks to return to normal operating status, with 273 out of 587 servers destroyed. The second incident occurred in March 20, 2013, which used similar but improved tactics from April 2011. It was timed to simultaneously target multiple banks and broadcasting agencies with disc wiping tools and was preceded by an extensive advanced persistent threat campaign. The scale of the March 20 attack demonstrated that North Korea has at least one dedicated, permanent cyber unit directed against carefully selected targets and that they have the means to penetrate, exploit, and disrupt target systems and networks with sufficient secrecy.