Category Archives: 2nd Amendment

He Did it, He Turned Over the Fast and Furious Documents

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  Maybe the whistleblowers will receive some vindication like Sharyl Attkisson.

Obama relents in fight over Fast and Furious documents

Politico: Four years after asserting executive privilege to block Congress from obtaining documents relating to a controversial federal gun trafficking investigation, President Barack Obama relented Friday, turning over to lawmakers thousands of pages of records that led to unusual House votes holding Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt in 2012.

In January, a federal district court judge rejected Obama’s executive privilege claim over records detailing the Justice Department and White House’s response to Operation Fast and Furious, a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives investigation that may have allowed as many as 2,000 firearms to pass into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.

In her ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson did not turn down Obama’s privilege assertion on the merits. Instead, she said authorized public disclosures about the operation in a Justice Department inspector general report essentially mooted the administration’s drive to keep the records secret.

Both sides had until midnight Friday to file an appeal. Instead, the Obama administration turned over a set of documents to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

“In light of the passage of time and other considerations, such as the Department’s interest in moving past this litigation and building upon our cooperative working relationship with the Committee and other Congressional committees, the Department has decided that it is not in the Executive Branch’s interest to continue litigating this issue at this time,” Justice Deparment legislative liaison Peter Kadzik wrote in a letter Friday to House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah).

Justice Department spokesman Patrick Rodenbush confirmed that the administration does not plan to appeal. He argued that Jackson’s ruling validated Obama’s initial claim of privilege.

“The Department of Justice is pleased that the district court … continued to recognize that the deliberative process component of the executive privilege exists and was a valid basis for the Department to withhold certain documents when requested by the House in 2011. Although the Department disagrees with the district court’s conclusion that the privilege was overcome in this particular case by disclosures and statements made in other contexts, the Department has decided not to appeal the court’s judgment and has provided a production of documents to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform,” Rodenbush said in a statement.

While the House largely won in the January decision, it did file an appeal earlier Friday afternoon, apparently unaware of the administration’s plans to comply with the judge’s order. The appeal suggested that House leaders were dissatisfied with aspects of Jackson’s rulings that narrowed the set of documents the administration had to turn over.

“As we’ve long asserted, the Committee requires and is entitled to these documents,” Chaffetz said in a statement. “They are critical to the Committee’s efforts to complete meaningful oversight. The Committee has a duty to understand and shine light on what was happening inside DOJ during the time of this irresponsible operation. Yet DOJ has obstructed our investigative work for years.”

After getting word that the Justice Department was turning over records, Chaffetz updated his statement, indicating that the House plans to press its appeal to get records beyond the ones the administration is providing.

“Today, under court order, DOJ turned over some of the subpoenaed documents. The Committee, however, is entitled to the full range of documents for which it brought this lawsuit. Accordingly, we have appealed the District Court’s ruling in order to secure those additional documents,” Chaffetz said.

Guns sold by dealers or informants used in the ATF operation wound up at numerous crime scenes in Mexico and the U.S. In December 2010, two of the weapons were found at the scene of the murder of a Border Patrol agent in Arizona.

Obama’s privilege claim in the Fast and Furious fight was broad-ranging, seeking to cover not only internal deliberations about how to respond to congressional inquiries but also discussions about media strategy related to the congressional probes.

The June 2012 claim in the Fast and Furious case was the only formal assertion of executive privilege by Obama to try to defeat a congressional demand for records or testimony, though the administration has raised executive privilege concerns when declining to comply with other congressional inquiries. Most of those were resolved through negotiations. The administration has also asserted executive privilege in response to a variety of Freedom of Information Act lawsuits.

 

 

 

 

 

Facebook’s Selective Censorship? Closed Groups….

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Primer: Facebook owns WhatsApp.

Even more curious the New York Times did the study and provided the results to Facebook…Zuckerberg, what say you?

Facebook Groups Act as Weapons Bazaars for Militias

NYT: A terrorist hoping to buy an antiaircraft weapon in recent years needed to look no further than Facebook, which has been hosting sprawling online arms bazaars, offering weapons ranging from handguns and grenades to heavy machine guns and guided missiles.

The Facebook posts suggest evidence of large-scale efforts to sell military weapons coveted by terrorists and militants. The weapons include many distributed by the United States to security forces and their proxies in the Middle East. These online bazaars, which violate Facebook’s recent ban on the private sales of weapons, have been appearing in regions where the Islamic State has its strongest presence.

This week, after The New York Times provided Facebook with seven examples of suspicious groups, the company shut down six of them.

The findings were based on a study by the private consultancy Armament Research Services about arms trafficking on social media in Libya, along with reporting by The Times on similar trafficking in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

A seller based in Tripoli, Libya, offered components of a man-portable antiaircraft defense system, or Manpads, in a closed Facebook group. Armament Research Services

1. The Weapons Have Included Heavy Machine Guns and Heat-Seeking Missiles

Many sales are arranged after Facebook users post photographs in closed and secret groups; the posts act roughly like digital classified ads on weapons-specific boards. Among the weapons displayed have been heavy machine guns on mounts that are designed for antiaircraft roles and that can be bolted to pickup trucks, and more sophisticated and menacing systems, including guided anti-tank missiles and an early generation of shoulder-fired heat-seeking antiaircraft missiles.

Last year ARES said it had documented an offer on Facebook to sell an SA-7 gripstock (pictured above), the reusable centerpiece of a man-portable antiaircraft defense system, or Manpads, a weapon of the Stinger class. Many of these left Libyan state custody in 2011, as depots were raided by rebels and looters. ARES said it documented Libyan sellers claiming to have two complete SA-7s for sale, two additional missiles and three gripstocks. An old system, SA-7s are a greater threat to helicopters and commercial aircraft than to modern military jets.

Machine guns, rifles and a shotgun advertised on Facebook groups in Libya.

2. Others Are the Standard Arms of Militant and Terrorist Groups

Machine guns and missiles form a small fraction of the apparent arms trafficking on Facebook and other social media apps, according to Nic R. Jenzen-Jones, the director of ARES and an author of the report. Examinations by The Times of Facebook groups in Libya dedicated to arms sales showed that sellers sought customers for a much larger assortment of handguns and infantry weapons. The rifles have predominantly been Kalashnikov assault rifles, which are used by many militants in the region, and many FN FAL rifles, which are common in Libya.

All of these solicitations violate Facebook’s policies, which since January has forbidden the facilitation of private sales of firearms and other weapons, according to Monika Bickert, a former federal prosecutor who is responsible for developing and enforcing the company’s content standards.

Images from Facebook groups selling weapons in Iraq.

3. Weapons Sales Greased by Social Media Sites Have Become a Feature of Many Conflicts

The use of social media for arms sales is relatively new to Libya. Until a Western-backed uprising against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in 2011, which ended in his death at the hands of an armed mob, the country had a tightly restricted arms market and limited Internet access. But social media-based weapons markets in Libya are not unique. Similar markets exist in other countries plagued in recent years by conflict, militant groups and terrorism, including arms-sales Facebook groups in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

On Monday, The Times shared links for seven such groups with Facebook to check whether they violated the rules. By Tuesday, Facebook had taken down six of the groups. Ms. Bickert said that one Facebook group — which displayed photographs of weapons but only discussed them and expressly forbade sales — had survived the company’s scrutiny.

Online weapons markets in Iraq and Libya.

4. Facebook’s Rules on Arms Sales Are Related to Changes in How Facebook Is Used.

Ms. Bickert described the company’s policies as evolutionary, reflecting shifts in its social media ecosystem.

“When Facebook began, there was no way to really engage in commerce on Facebook,” she said. But in the past year, she noted, the company has allowed users to process payments through its Messenger service, and has added other features to aid sales. “Since we were offering features like that, we thought we wanted to make clear that this is not a site that wants to facilitate the private sales of firearms.”

A Facebook user in Syria shared an image of Islamic State fighters.

5. Facebook Relies on Users to Report the Arms Trafficking It Bans

Ms. Bickert said the most important part of Facebook’s effort “to keep people safe” was to make it easy for users to notify the company of suspected violations, which can be done with a click on the “Report” feature on every Facebook post.

In this way so-called Community Operations teams — Facebook employees who review the reports in dozens of languages — can examine and remove offending content. How effective the policy is, in practice, is unclear. Several groups from which the photographs for this article were downloaded operated on Facebook for two years or more, accumulating thousands of members before Facebook announced its ban on arms sales.

This trafficking occurred in countries where the Islamic State is at its most active and where armed militias or other designated terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda, have a persistent presence. In all four countries, government forces do not control large areas of territory and civil society is under intense pressure. Christine Chen, a Facebook spokeswoman, said the company relied on the nearly 1.6 billion people who visit the site every month to flag offenders. “We urge everyone who sees violations to report them to us,” she said.

Pistols have been widely sold and sought on Facebook in Libya.

6. In Libya, Widespread Pistol Sales on Facebook

ARES has documented many types of buyers and sellers. These include private citizens seeking handguns as well as representatives of armed groups buying weapons that require crews to be operated effectively, or appearing to offload weapons that the militias no longer wanted. Different markets have different characteristics. In Libya, fear of crime seemed to drive many people to buy pistols, Mr. Jenzen-Jones said. “Handguns are disproportionately represented,” he said. “They are widely sought after — primarily for self-defense and particularly to protect against carjackings — with many prospective buyers placing ‘wanted’ posts.” They were also expensive, ranging from about $2,200 to more than $7,000 — a sign that demand outstrips supply.

Military weapons originating in the United States have been sold through Facebook groups in Iraq.

7. Weapons Provided to Allies in Iraq Have Filled Facebook Sales Pages

In Iraq, the Facebook arms bazaars can resemble inside looks at the failures of American train-and-equip programs, with sellers displaying a seemingly bottomless assortment of weapons provided to Iraq’s government forces by the Pentagon during the long American occupation. Those include M4 carbines, M16 rifles, M249 squad automatic weapons, MP5 submachine guns and Glock semiautomatic pistols. Many of the weapons shown still bear inventory stickers and aftermarket add-ons favored by American forces and troops.

Such weapons have long been available on black markets in Iraq, with or without advertising on social media. But Facebook and other social media companies seem to provide new opportunities for sellers and buyers to find one other easily; for sellers to display items to more customers; and for customers to peruse and haggle over a larger assortment of weapons than what is available in smaller, physical markets.

A TOW launcher, a wire-guided anti-tank missile system, was advertised on a Facebook group in Syria with this message: “There is a TOW launcher, brand new, whoever wants it should contact us via private messages or WhatsApp.”

8. In Syria, Weapons Identical to Those Distributed to Rebels by the United States Are Offered for Sale

Similarly, weapons identical to those provided by the United States to Syrian rebels have also been traded on Facebook and other social media or messaging apps. In one recent example, a seller in northern Syria — who identified himself as a student, photographer and sniper — offered a pristine-looking Kalashnikov assault rifle that he said came from the Hazm Movement, which received weapons from the United States before the movement was defeated by the Nusra Front, a Qaeda affiliate. He noted on Facebook that the rifle was new and had “never fired a shot,” and hinted of either a bonus gift or a discount.

 

Obama Claims a New Power, Illegals Benefit

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Obama Claims Power to Make Illegal Immigrants Eligible for Social Security, Disability

Jeffrey/CNS: Does the president of the United States have the power to unilaterally tell millions of individuals who are violating federal law that he will not enforce that law against them now, that they may continue to violate that law in the future and that he will take action that makes them eligible for federal benefit programs for which they are not currently eligible due to their unlawful status?

Through Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, President Barack Obama is telling the Supreme Court exactly this right now.

The solicitor general calls what Obama is doing “prosecutorial discretion.”

He argues that under this particular type of “prosecutorial discretion,” the executive can make millions of people in this country illegally eligible for Social Security, disability and Medicare.

On April 18, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case. Entitled United States v. Texas, it pits President Obama against not only the Lone Star State, but also a majority of the states, which have joined in the litigation against the administration.

At issue is the policy the administration calls Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents, which would allow aliens in this country illegally who are parents of citizens or lawful permanent residents to stay in the United States.

“The Executive Branch unilaterally created a program — known as DAPA — that contravenes Congress’s complex statutory framework for determining when an alien may lawfully enter, remain in, and work in the country,” the attorney general and solicitor general of Texas explained in a brief submitted to the Supreme Court on behalf of the states seeking to block the policy.

“DAPA would deem over four million unlawfully present aliens as ‘lawfully present’ and eligible for work authorization,” says the Texas brief. “And ‘lawful presence’ is an immigration classification established by Congress that is necessary for valuable benefits, such as Medicare and Social Security.”

In the administration’s brief, the solicitor general admits that the president’s DAPA program does not convert people illegally in the United States into legal immigrants. He further asserts that the administration at any time can decide to go ahead and remove these aliens from the country.

“Deferred action does not confer lawful immigration status or provide any defense to removal,” he says. “An alien with deferred action remains removable at any time and DHS has absolute discretion to revoke deferred action unilaterally, without notice or process.”

Despite this, he argues, the administration can authorize aliens here illegally on “deferred action” to legally work in the United States.

“Without the ability to work lawfully, individuals with deferred action would have no way to lawfully make ends meet while present here,” says the administration’s brief.

Nonetheless, the solicitor general stresses that “deferred action” does not make an illegal immigrant eligible for federal welfare.

“In general,” he says, “only ‘qualified’ aliens are eligible to participate in federal public benefit programs, and deferred action does not make an alien ‘qualified.’… Aliens with deferred action thus cannot receive food stamps, Supplemental Security Income, temporary aid for needy families, and many other federal benefits.”

But, he says, aliens here illegally with deferred action will be eligible for “earned-benefit programs.”

“A non-qualified alien is not categorically barred, however, from participating in certain federal earned-benefit programs associated with lawfully working in the United States — the Social Security retirement and disability, Medicare, and railroad-worker programs — so long as the alien is ‘lawfully present in the United States as determined by the (Secretary),'” says the solicitor general.

The “secretary” here is the secretary of Homeland Security.

“An alien with deferred action is considered ‘lawfully present’ for these purposes,” says the solicitor general.

So, as explained to the Supreme Court by Obama’s solicitor general, when DHS grants an alien here illegally “deferred action” under the president’s DAPA policy, that alien is not given “lawful immigration status” and can be removed from the country “at any time.” However, according to the solicitor general, that alien will be authorized to work in the United States and will be “considered ‘lawfully present'” for purposes of being eligible for “the Social Security retirement and disability, Medicare, and railroad-worker programs.”

The U.S. Constitution imposes this straightforward mandate on the president: “(H)e shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”

When the Supreme Court agreed in January to hear U.S. v. Texas, it made a telling request. It asked the parties to argue whether Obama’s DAPA policy “violates the Take Care Clause of the Constitution.”

The Obama administration has taken care of just one thing here: It has constructed a convoluted — and unconvincing argument — it hopes will provide the activists on the Supreme Court with a cover story to explain why this president need not faithfully execute the nation’s immigration laws.

 

Obama Commuting Sentences, Take Away his Pen

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I am not too sure we should be surprised, this is a global mission of Barack Obama for terrorists and state sponsors of terror like Cuba and Iran. There are no consequences and following law much less treaties is something Obama is loathe to do. He simply uses his pen to sign clemency notifications or waivers.

BaltimoreSun: President Barack Obama commuted the prison sentences of 61 drug offenders on Wednesday including more than a third serving life sentences, working to give new energy to calls for overhauling the U.S. criminal justice system.

All of the inmates are serving time for drug possession, intent to sell or related crimes. Most are nonviolent offenders, although a few were also charged with firearms violations. Obama’s commutation shortens their sentences, with most of the inmates set to be released on July 28.

Obama, in a letter to the inmates receiving commutations, said the presidential power to grand commutations and pardons “embodies the basic belief in our democracy that people deserve a second chance after having made a mistake in their lives that led to a conviction under our laws.”

In a bid to call further attention to the issue, Obama planned to meet Wednesday with people whose sentences were previously commuted under Obama or Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. The White House said the former inmates would share their experiences about the challenges of re-entering society after incarceration.

One of the inmates, Jesse Webster of Chicago, is serving a life term for intent to sell cocaine and filing false tax returns. Another, Byron McDade of Bowie, Md., got 27 years for cocaine-related charges as well. In both cases, judges in the cases later said publicly it was too harsh, though sentencing guidelines often prevent judges from being more lenient. Webster and McDade will both be released later this year.

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He is not stopping either.

Politico: White House promises to speed up clemency program

White House Counsel Neil Eggleston rebutted critics who’ve questioned whether the administration is truly committed to its clemency initiative.

Obama has commuted the sentences of 248 federal prisoners, mostly low-level drug offenders affected by mandatory minimum drug sentences, including 61 on Wednesday. While that’s more than the past six presidents combined, the pace of commutations since the Justice Department announced its clemency initiative two years ago has disappointed advocates. The White House has promised to pick up the pace, but so far, acceleration has been halting. That’s about to change, Eggleston said on Friday at a POLITICO Playbook Breakfast.

“No more eating, sleeping or drinking until we get all these commutations done,” Eggleston recalled telling his staff after Obama met on Wednesday with people who’d had their sentences commuted in the past.

So far, Obama’s commutations have come in batches released every few months. December’s was the biggest set to date, at 95. At that time, too, administration officials promised more speed. On Friday, Eggleston said he believes the “infrastructure is now very much in place” to file and process clemency petitions.

“You’re going to start seeing a lot more very quickly,” Eggleston said. “I think you’re going to start seeing them on a more regular basis. I did want to get a little out of the notion that each one had to be more than the one before because that’s sort of an artificial floor.”

Despite interest from tens of thousands of prisoners, it has turned out there aren’t so many federal prisoners who meet the initiative’s strict criteria for clemency, which include serving for at least 10 years and strong standards for nonviolence.

The Clemency Project 2014, a coalition of volunteer lawyers, said it has reviewed 30,000 requests for clemency and filed nearly 600 petitions, with another 100 nearing completion. (So far, most of Obama’s commutations did not originate with the Clemency Project, but their petitions are making up an increasingly substantial percentage of the total, and Eggleston praised their efforts on Friday.)

Eggleston also directly responded to complaints lodged by former Pardon Attorney, Deborah Leff, whose January resignation letter was obtained by USA Today.

Leff complained that her office did not have enough resources to fulfill the goals of the clemency initiative and that she did not have access to the White House counsel’s office.

“The pardon attorney’s office has a little more resources, which is good, and I have regular dealings with the pardon attorney directly, so to the extent that Ms. Leff was complaining about that, that was solved. Actually, it was solved before she left,” Eggleston said. “And so I think that we’re moving forward in a pretty good way here.”

Eggleston also rejected “out of hand” an argument — floated most recently in a New York Times editorial — that there can’t be meaningful pardon reform until that agency is moved out of the Department of Justice, because federal prosecutors are trained to put people in jail, not get them out.

“They’re quite committed to this,” Eggleston said of Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and the acting pardon attorney, Robert Zauzmer.

“I was a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York in the 1980s, prosecuted a lot of drug crimes,” Eggleston said, “and I’m quite committed to this also.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2016/04/white-house-clemency-speeding-up-221467#ixzz44b5QJfZs
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Belgium, France, Greece, Holland, Sweden, Germany, Iraq, Syria The Network

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The most chilling and terrifying summary outside of the 9/11 Commission Report.

Go slow reading this and absorb it in total then consider how it can happen here at home. Has ISIS caused real fear in America? The results are here.

The inside story of the Paris and Brussels attacks

By Paul Cruickshank, CNN

For the photo essay go here.

This story is based on French police documents on the investigation into the Paris attacks obtained by CNN and interviews with investigators over the last four months, as well as the public statements of Belgian and French prosecutors.

(CNN)The night that shook Paris started with three rental cars: three cars with three teams of terrorists maneuvering through the Friday evening traffic, armed with the weapons of war.

A little before 9 p.m., a Renault Clio driven by Salah Abdeslam, the Paris plotter captured on March 18 in Brussels, pulled up outside the national stadium. An international soccer friendly match between France and Germany was just kicking off and 80,000 fans, including French President Francois Hollande, were already inside. Three men got out of the car and headed toward the stands.
One of them — Bilal Hadfi, a young French citizen living in Belgium — can be seen on surveillance video speaking into a cell phone. The other two were Iraqis who had slipped into Europe weeks before by posing as refugees. One of the trio was dressed in a Bayern Munich football team jogging suit. Concealed underneath their clothes were shrapnel-filled suicide vests held together with tape.
A few miles away, a black Seat Leon weaved toward the busy cafe district of Paris. The man behind the wheel, an already notorious Belgian ISIS operative named Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was on the phone speaking to Hadfi at the stadium to make sure everything went according to plan. In the passenger seats, two of his childhood friends, Chakib Akrouh and Salah Abdeslam’s older brother, Brahim, clutched their Kalashnikovs, readying themselves.
Not far away, a black Volkswagen Polo with another trio of heavily armed terrorists headed toward the Bataclan concert hall, where hundreds had gathered to hear the American rock band Eagles of Death Metal. The French ISIS fighters in the car — Ismael Omar Mostefai, Samy Amimour and Foued Mohamed-Aggad — had all recently been on the front lines in Syria, and were moments away from carrying out the worst massacre in the modern history of France.

A night of terror

It is still not clear why the stadium attackers arrived slightly late for the game, but eyewitness accounts suggest they did not have tickets. A security guard at Gate R told French police that starting at 9.05 p.m., he blocked a man resembling one of the Iraqi stadium attackers four times from trying to trick his way in, according to French police documents. One eyewitness interviewed by police remembered seeing three attackers, including Salah Abdeslam, talking to one another after being refused entry into the stadium.
Interrogated after his capture four months later, Abdeslam claimed he had been assigned to blow himself up at the stadium but backed out, according to Paris prosecutor Francois Molins, who said the claim should be treated with caution.
The French police reports make clear that eyewitness accounts are not always reliable and, in the case of the many interviewed after the Paris attacks, were sometimes contradictory. What is clear is that at a certain point after dropping off the stadium attackers, Salah Abdeslam drove away with his suicide vest.

Explosion at the Stade de France

At 9:20 p.m., the first of what would be several large bangs thundered across the stadium. The Iraqi suicide bomber — who according to the security guard had been trying to sneak in — blew himself up outside Gate D, killing one other person. A doctored Syrian passport in the fake name of Ahmad al Mohammad would later be found near what remained of his right foot.
At the moment of the first blast, Bilal Hadfi, the young Belgian member of the stadium attack team, was still on the phone with Abaaoud, the plot ringleader, who was impatiently maneuvering his Seat rental car through the traffic on Rue Bichat to get to the cafe district. Inside the car were his childhood friends Brahim Abdeslam and Chakib Akrouh. The elder Abdeslam brother had traveled from Belgium to Syria in January 2015, where like Akrouh he had joined ISIS.

Kalashnikov fire in the cafe district

Their attack began at 9:25 p.m. when a car in front of Abaaoud blocked his path. Five shots were fired from the Seat Leon, killing the driver of the car. According to some eyewitnesses, Abaaoud stopped the car in the middle of the road, turning on the blinking hazard lights. Shouting “Allahu akbar,” Arabic for “God is great,” all three terrorists then got out of the vehicle and sprayed the terrace and windows of the Cambodge and Carillon cafes with their Kalashnikovs, killing 13 people.
At 9:30 p.m., a second bang was heard in the stadium. A second suicide bomber, dressed in the colors of Bayern Munich, detonated his vest outside Gate H. Fortunately, no one was killed. Hollande, the French president, would soon be evacuated from the stadium. The third suicide bomber detonated his explosive vest 20 minutes later, next to a McDonald’s restaurant near the stadium, injuring over 50, including seven seriously.
By the time of the second explosion at the Stade de France, the Seat Leon was at a new location. At 9:32 p.m., Abaaoud’s team got out of the vehicle, again shouted “Allahu akbar” and opened fire at revelers at the Casa Nostra and Bonne Biere cafes near the Place de la Republique, killing five. One of the surviving eyewitnesses noticed one of the shooters was wearing orange sneakers, Abaaoud’s footwear selection that night.
Night of terror: Paris attacks
The killers then jumped back in the car. At 9:36 p.m., the cafe killers opened fire on La Belle Equipe cafe, killing 19. As at the other cafes, most of those who lost their lives were sitting on the outdoor terraces. Eyewitnesses later recalled the gunmen did not speak to each other as they calmly sprayed the cafes and cars traveling down the road with bullets.
The car again sped off to a new location. At 9:40 p.m., Abaaoud dropped off Brahim Abdeslam at the Comptoir Voltaire cafe. According to eyewitnesses interviewed by police, he was wearing a hooded jacket over several layers of clothing when he brusquely entered the covered interior terrace of the establishment. He smiled at the other patrons, apologized for interrupting their dinner, then blew himself up. Their killing done for the night, Abaaoud and Akrouh drove up toward the Montreuil suburb of Paris, where they would abandon the car.

The Bataclan attack: ‘We’re starting’

At around 9:40 p.m., Bataclan attackers Ismael Omar Mostefai, Samy Amimour and Foued Mohamed-Aggad parked their Volkswagen Polo in front of the concert hall. At 9:42 p.m., one of them took out a Samsung smartphone and sent a last text to a cell phone located in Brussels: “We’re getting going; we’re starting.” They then tossed the Samsung phone into a garbage can near the entrance of the Bataclan.
The phone was later recovered and has provided key information to investigators. They believe one of the men who received the text message in Belgium outranked Abaaoud in the Paris attack conspiracy. He has been identified as Mohammed Belkaid, an Algerian confectioner turned ISIS operative who was killed on March 15 in Brussels. Investigators believe he was the overall commander of the ISIS cell behind the Paris attacks as well as the attacks that shook Belgium five months later.
Investigators believe Belkaid was being assisted in Brussels on the night of the Paris attacks by Najim Laachraoui, the cell’s suspected bomb-maker, who went to Syria in February 2013 and returned to Belgium using a fake identity. On March 22, 2016, Laachraoui was one of two suicide bombers who detonated suitcase bombs at the Brussels airport.
MORE: New Paris attacks suspect named
In total, 21 phone calls and two text messages were exchanged between the Samsung phone and the cell phone geolocated in Belgium after the latter phone went active, 24 hours before the Paris attack.
Investigators believe Belkaid and Laachraoui provided direction to the Paris attackers from Brussels before, during and after the night of the attacks, using multiple cell phones. According to French police reports obtained and viewed by CNN, the second of those cell phones, geolocated in precisely the same area in Belgium as the first, was communicating with Hadfi at the stadium and with Abaaoud’s cafe team as the attacks unfolded, suggesting the attack was being coordinated in real time from Brussels.

The encryption app

Several hours earlier, at 2:14 p.m., the Bataclan attackers had downloaded the encryption messaging app Telegram onto their Samsung smart phone, according to police reports. No recovered content from the messaging app is mentioned in the French police documents, suggesting there were likely communications by the Bataclan attackers that will never be recovered.

As well as offering end-to-end encryption, the Telegram messaging app offers an option for users to “self-destruct” messages. At 4:39 p.m. on November 13, one of the attackers downloaded detailed floor plans of the Bataclan venue onto the Samsung phone and conducted online searches for the American rock band playing there that night, the Eagles of Death Metal.
Almost all of the 89 people killed inside the Bataclan lost their lives during the first 20 minutes of the attack. The gunmen first killed three people on the sidewalk outside the concert hall, then entered and moved to the floor area of the venue, peppering the concertgoers with automatic fire, while shouting “Allahu akbar.”

Inside the Bataclan

As one fired his weapon, the other reloaded so they could kill as efficiently as possible. Researching the floor plans appears to have paid off for the perpetrators. As some of those inside tried to escape through an emergency exit, they found a third terrorist waiting for them on the other side, according to the French police documents.
According to the eyewitnesses cited in the French police documents, the attackers spoke perfect French, taunting those lying wounded on the floor  of the concert hall by saying, “Anybody who moves, I’m going to kill.”

‘Where are those Yanks?’

After the initial wave of killing, the gunmen stopped and asked each other “Where is the singer? Where are those Yanks? It’s an American group, you’re bombing us with the Americans, so we’re going to hit the Americans and you,” according to an eyewitness cited in the police documents.
The terrorists then addressed those fighting for their lives on the floor, telling them they had been dispatched from Syria by ISIS to carry out the attack to avenge French airstrikes in Iraq and Syria.
At 10 p.m., two local French police officers arrived at the venue. Although only armed with handguns, they managed to take out Samy Amimour. As Amimour fell mortally wounded to the floor, he triggered his suicide vest. According to police documents cited by Le Monde, when the other two terrorists opened fire on the police officers from above, they were forced to retreat.
The two surviving terrorists, Mostefai and Aggad, then took some of the surviving hostages, and according to documents cited by Le Monde, herded them to an L-shaped corridor deeper inside the building. According to police documents obtained by CNN, by then the terrorists had seized several cell phones from concertgoers to try to access the Internet but could not find a signal.

Hostage rescue

By 10:45 p.m., France’s rapid response commandos, a unit known as RAID, were on the scene. According to the French police documents obtained by CNN, they started communicating with the hostage-takers from outside the corridor via cell phone. The terrorists threatened to start executing their prisoners unless they received a signed paper promising that France would leave Muslim lands.
At around that time, Abaaoud, the Paris team leader, was spotted by a witness outside the Bataclan concert hall, apparently barking orders into a hands-free cell phone to the two surviving terrorists inside. Investigators later traced the cell phone he was using that night to the area outside the Bataclan. After abandoning the Seat Leon in Montreuil, he had ridden the metro back into the center of town to coordinate the final phase of the attack.
Just after midnight, the RAID commandos stormed the corridor, rescuing all the hostages alive. According to eyewitness reports cited by Le Monde, Mostefai and Aggad were cut down by police bullets. At least one of them managed to detonate his suicide vest.

A second attack is thwarted

Seven terrorists in the 10-man attack team were now dead. Only Salah Abdeslam, Abaaoud and Akrouh remained alive. Their attack was the deadliest in Europe since the 2004 Madrid train bombings. The death toll would soon rise to 130, with hundreds of others injured. Only fast detective work over the next few days prevented the death count from increasing further.
Instead of returning to a house rented by the cell in Bobigny, Abaaoud and Akrouh set up a makeshift camp that night in a small wooded area near a highway overpass near Rue des Bergeries in Aubervilliers, not far from the national stadium.

A helpful cousin

This is when Abaaoud’s female cousin Hasna ait Boulahcen came into the picture.
According to close associates interviewed by French police, she had been in love with Abaaoud ever since nearly marrying him when she was 16 and had stayed in touch with him online after he joined ISIS in Syria. According to others interviewed by police, she had recently herself become radicalized and had started wearing a full veil.
According to French police documents, Boulahcen received several calls from Belgium between November 13 and November 16 to guide her to Abaaoud’s location. The working assumption is these calls were placed by Belkaid or Laachraoui in Brussels, asking her to help Abaaoud find a place to stay.

She met him in his hideout late in the evening of November 15, according to French police documents. Police received a tip about the meeting the following day from a female confidential witness who had accompanied Boulahcen to the hideout. When this witness was eventually interviewed, she told police she had met a man wearing orange sneakers who claimed he had taken advantage of refugees to come to France with 90 others to carry out attacks.
French police began monitoring Boulahcen’s phone and following her after the tipoff, and also put the wooded area in Aubervilliers under surveillance, according to police documents.
According to the female confidential witness, Abaaoud was planning a followup attack on the La Defence shopping district in Paris on November 19, while his accomplice was hoping to hit a police station. In order to help them carry out the attack, Boulahcen was given 4,000 euros to buy suits and shoes for Abaaoud and Akrouh.
On November 17, the cell’s commander, Belkaid, accompanied by Laachraoui, transferred 750 euros to Boulahcen from a Western Union office in Brussels so she could rent lodging for Abaaoud and Akrouh. Boulahcen then contacted somebody she knew in the criminal underworld to arrange for the men to stay at a ramshackle dwelling with no running water in Saint-Denis. That night she went to the wooded area to pick up Abaaoud and Akrouh in a taxi and took them to the property at about 10:30 p.m.
Just a few hours later, in the early morning of November 18, RAID commandos moved against the residence. The firefight that followed was so intense, one of the ceilings caved in. Akrouh detonated his suicide vest, Abaaoud was also killed, and Boulahcen suffocated to death, according to the police documents.

Slipping through the net

After driving away from the stadium on the night of November 13, Salah Abdeslam abandoned his Renault Clio rental car in the 18th district and then jettisoned his suicide vest in a trash can in the southern Paris suburb of Montrouge.
Around 11 p.m., Abdeslam called Mohammed Amri, a friend from Brussels, to ask him to pick him up. A few hours later, Amri and a second friend, Hamza Attou, picked Abdeslam up in the capital and drove him back to Belgium.
Their car was stopped three times before it reached the Belgian border, including at 9 a.m. near the town of Cambrai, but the men were not detained because French police had not yet established that the Volkswagen Polo that was recovered outside the Bataclan had been rented by Salah Abdeslam.
After their arrest in Brussels later that day, Amri and Attou — who face trial for helping Abdeslam escape — told investigators that he was in a state of emotional distress and threatened to blow up the car unless they drove him to Brussels. When they dropped Abdeslam off in the city, he melted away, and for months the trail for him went completely cold.

Investigators get a break

Fast forward to March 15, and investigators got a lucky break.
When Belgian and French police arrived at what they thought was an abandoned residence which intelligence suggested was connected to the Paris attack, three terrorists inside opened fire on them.
One of them was Belkaid, the cell’s commander, an Algerian ISIS operative who had helped coordinate the Paris attacks by phone from Belgium. He provided covering fire as the other two fled, and was later shot dead by a Belgian police sniper.
When police moved in they found Abdeslam’s fingerprints and DNA and other evidence suggesting he had been in the apartment recently. They also found a Kalashnikov, ammunition, an ISIS flag and detonators, raising concern the men inside may have been planning an attack. The trail of Europe’s most wanted terrorist had gone from stone cold to red hot.
Abdeslam would soon make a critical mistake. After fleeing from the apartment, Abdeslam and an accomplice using the fake identity “Monir Ahmed Alaaj” phoned an associate who was under surveillance, according to a senior Belgian counterterrorism  official. “He came right into our net,” the official told CNN.

As a result, three days later police located Abdeslam and “Alaaj” in Molenbeek and took them into custody. Investigators had no idea that just a few miles across Brussels, the remaining members of his ISIS cell were accelerating an attack plan that had already been in the works.

A drumbeat of terror

The road to the Paris attacks began several months earlier, when an ISIS media team in Syria arranged for the attackers to be filmed in a gruesome propaganda video. Nearly all the attackers who later gathered in Paris are seen clutching the throats of prisoners in orange jumpsuits before beheading them. “If it’s not with our knives it will be with our Kalashnikovs. It’s an order from our emir Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to fight you in your lands, and Allah willing our appointment will be on the Champs Elysees,” declared the future Bataclan attacker Mostefai.
Western intelligence agencies believe the top leadership of ISIS signed off on the Paris plot. The group has set up an external operations division reporting up to Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, one of Baghdadi’s top deputies, according to U.S. officials.

Laying the groundwork

Abaaoud was assigned the task of leading the attack team in Paris. Radicalized in jail in Belgium for a string of robberies he committed with Saleh Abdeslam, he had risen up the ranks of ISIS after first traveling to Syria from Belgium in early 2013. Later that year, Abaaoud briefly returned to Belgium to abduct his 13-year-old brother Younes, who his family believes has since been killed in Syria, according to French police documents.
During his stay in Belgium, Abaaoud received a phone call from Mehdi Nemmouche, a French ISIS fighter who is the prime suspect in the May 2014 killings of four people at a Jewish museum in Brussels, suggesting a possible role in that attack. When Abaaoud returned to Syria in January 2014, according to the testimony of a French ISIS fighter, he was assigned to an internal security unit of ISIS before being tasked with organizing plots against Europe.

Plotting against France

Abaaoud escaped the dragnet and returned to Syria. According to French police documents, one of those interrogated in Belgium in the weeks after the plot was thwarted was Abaaoud’s childhood friend Salah Abdeslam, who claimed he did not share Abaaoud’s radical views.
Back in ISIS’ Syrian de facto capital, Raqqa, Abaaoud worked feverishly with several other French-speaking ISIS operatives to set in motion a string of plots against France.
A key figure in the group was Fabien Clain, a veteran French jihadi about 10 years Abaaoud’s senior, who European intelligence agencies believe is a driving force behind Dar al-Islam, ISIS’ French magazine. Before arriving in Syria, Clain had spent jail time in France for recruiting for al Qaeda in Iraq and, as CNN has previously reported, also threatened to attack the Bataclan concert hall.

During the course of 2015, Dar al-Islam’s repeated threats against France did not escape the notice of European counterterrorism officials. The day after the Paris attacks, it was Clain who claimed responsibility on behalf of ISIS, suggesting he played a senior role in the conspiracy.

Looking for recruits

According to a senior Belgian counterterrorism official, Clain and Abaaoud were on the lookout for fresh recruits who could be given quick training for a week or two and then sent back to Europe to launch attacks.
The first plot Abaaoud and Clain allegedly instigated was a plan by Sid Ahmed Ghlam, a Paris-based student, to attack a church in Paris. Ghlam made two trips to Turkey, where he met with operatives connected to Clain who assigned him to launch an attack. The plot was thwarted in April 2015 after Ghlam accidentally shot himself in the leg.
In June 2015, Nicholas Moreau, a French suspected ISIS recruit, was taken into custody by French authorities after being deported from Turkey. He was later charged with being part of a conspiracy with relation to a terrorist enterprise. Under interrogation, he claimed Abaaoud was “the principal commander of future attacks in Europe” and had been charged by ISIS with examining the background of potential recruits for those attacks, according to French police documents. Although analysts believe Moreau exaggerated Abaaoud’s importance, it was clear he was quickly becoming one of the caliphate’s most dangerous operatives.

Weapons training in the park

That same June, Abaaoud assigned Reda Hame, a French ISIS recruit, to return to France and launch an attack on a crowded concert venue. Hame claimed he had backed out of the planned attack when he was arrested by French authorities.
CNN has obtained the transcript of his August 13 interrogation by French police. Rame claimed he had been provided hands-on weapons training, including in the use of Kalashnikovs and grenades, by Abaaoud in a park in Raqqa in early June. According to Hame, Abaaoud gave him his assignment, “choosing an easy target, like a group of people, a concert for example, where there is a crowd. He specified that after carrying out the attack I should wait for security services to arrive and die while taking out the hostages. He added that if lots of civilians were hit, the foreign policy of France would change.”
A few minutes later Hame was asked if he was aware of any attacks in the works against France. “All I can tell you is that it’s going to happen soon. It’s a veritable factory over there — they are really looking to hit France or Europe,” Hame replied.
Hame also revealed that ISIS had set up an elaborate encrypted communication system so that it could keep in touch with its European operatives. In Raqqa, he said, he was instructed to encrypt communications with a software tool called Truecrypt, which authorities found on a thumb drive he had been given by Abaaoud. Hame said he had been taught to copy a message into the software, select an encryption option and then paste the message into a password-protected sharing site.
“An English-speaking expert on clandestine communications I met over there had the same password,” Hame told interrogators. “It operated like a dead letter drop.”
There were also links to Abaaoud in an attempted attack on a high-speed train heading toward Paris later in August 2015, which was thwarted by the heroic intervention of three Americans. The gunman, Ayoub el Khazzani, had connections to associates of Abaaoud, according to French police documents.

Moving fighters into Europe

Although investigators do not yet have a complete picture, they believe most of the 10-man attack team entered Europe in the late summer and early autumn of 2015.
In early August, Salah Abdeslam took a ferry from Greece to Italy in the company of Ahmed Dahmani, a Belgian associate. It is not clear if they were in Greece to pick up operatives coming back from Syria. All 10 of the Paris attackers except Salah Abdeslam were featured in the ISIS video filmed in Syria and released after the attack. Dahmani, who investigators believe was part of the broader Paris attack conspiracy, was subsequently arrested in Turkey after boarding a flight from Amsterdam the day after the attacks.
On September 9, Salah Abdeslam was checked at the Hungarian-Austrian border on his way back to Belgium in a rented Mercedes, on one of two trips that month that Belgian investigators suspect were to pick up members of the cell who had worked their way from Syria through Greece and the Balkans.
In the car with him that day were two key figures in the Paris conspiracy: Belkaid, the cell’s commander, and Laachraoui, the suspected bomb-maker, who had slipped into Europe from Syria using fake identities and had been picked up by Abdeslam in Hungary.
Abaaoud, the attack team leader in Paris, had slipped into Europe by the end of September. Investigators later established through eyewitness accounts that he had been present at some point that month on the Greek island of Leros. It is still not clear whether he disembarked in Leros or went there to pick up other members of the cell.
Two other ISIS operatives are thought to have entered Europe through Leros that September. One was the man later arrested with Salah Abdeslam in Brussels on March 18 who carried the fake identity papers of “Monir Ahmed Alaaj.” The other was carrying a Syrian passport in the name of Naim el Hamed. German investigators believe both men were picked up at a hotel near a refugee center in Ulm, Germany, by Salah Abdeslam and driven to Brussels on October 3.
That same day, the two Iraqis tasked with blowing themselves up at the Stade de France disembarked on Leros from a boat carrying almost 200 migrants. They used doctored Syrian passports to register as refugees and then took a ferry to Athens, before traveling through the Balkans to Hungary, then Austria. They then joined the other members of the conspiracy in Belgium.

Building bombs in safe houses

Investigators have established that the group gathered in at least three safe houses in Belgium in the weeks before the attack. An apartment they rented on Rue Henri Berge in the Brussels district of Schaerbeek on September 1 served as the bomb factory. Here the group manufactured the high explosive TATP and inserted it into suicide vests. It is not yet known who made the bombs. A sewing machine used to stitch together the vests, as well as the fingerprints of Salah Abdeslam and the DNA of Laachraoui, were later found at the property. Laachraoui’s DNA was also found on parts of the suicide vests used by the Paris attackers.
According to Belgian public broadcaster RTBF, the apartment was rented by Mohammed Bakkali, a Belgian extremist. He — along with Salah Abdeslam, Mohammed Belkaid and Najim Laachraoui — played a key role in the logistics and planning of the attack, officials told CNN. Bakkali was arrested in Brussels on November 26 and faces trial. According to a senior Belgian counterterrorism official, police recovered surveillance footage at his residence of an official working at a Belgian nuclear site.
On September 3, the conspirators rented an apartment on Rue de Fort in Charleroi, Belgium, where Abaaoud’s fingerprints were subsequently found. And on October 5, Laachraoui rented a large villa with a climate-controlled cellar in the small town of Auvelais near Charleroi, where traces of Abaaoud’s presence were also found, according to a senior Belgian official.

Rental cars and final preparations

Between November 11 and November 13, rental cars arranged by Salah Abdeslam shuttled back and forth to Belgium, ferrying the attackers to Paris. After the attacks, authorities recovered surveillance footage showing the attackers stopping off at various highway service stations en route. One of the drivers, Mohamed Abrini, a Belgian-Moroccan from Molenbeek, is still at large.
The Bataclan attackers congregated at the “City” hotel in the Paris suburb of Alfortville. Syringes were later found in one of their rooms, which investigators believe were used to add the final detonating chemical necessary to arm the suicide vests.
The stadium and cafe attackers stayed at a dilapidated house on the Rue Georges Tarral, in the northeastern suburb of Bobigny, rented by Brahim Abdeslam. At 8:30 p.m. on November 13, an eyewitness saw a Renault Clio pulling away from the residence. Driven by Salah Abdeslam, it made its way toward the national stadium just a few miles away in Saint-Denis to launch the opening phase of an attack that would traumatize France.

The Brussels attack

The very same ISIS cell behind the Paris attacks launched last week’s twin attacks on Brussels, killing at least 32.
After Salah Abdeslam returned to Brussels the day after the Paris attacks, he went to ground in a safe house unknown to Belgian police in the Forest district of Brussels. There he was reunited with Belkaid, who investigators believe was the commander of the cell that carried out both the Paris and Brussels attacks. Investigators believe Belkaid was preparing a Paris-style gun and bomb attack in Brussels or a series of attacks on the city involving at least two attack teams, and that Abdelsam was primed to participate. At a bomb factory at the Rue Max Roos in Schaerbeek, the cell had prepared a large quantity of TATP for the attack.
When their safe house in the Forest district was discovered and Belkaid was killed and Abdeslam was arrested, investigators believe the remaining conspirators accelerated their plans to avoid capture.
Early in the morning of March 22, three men were picked up by a taxi driver at the bomb factory in Schaarbeek. He later told investigators the men brought down so many bags — later found to be filled with explosives — that they had to leave one behind.
Just before 8 a.m., their attack began at the airport. Two of the men detonated explosives they had placed in luggage on a trolley, killing about a dozen. They were later identified as the bomb-maker Laachraoui and Ibrahim al Bakraoui, a former bank robber who had tried to travel to Syria earlier in 2015 before being detained near the Turkish-Syrian border and deported by Turkey. The third suspected airport bomber, seen in a light jacket and hat on surveillance video, fled the scene and is still at large. He failed to explode his device, which was detonated by authorities later in a controlled explosion.

At 9:11 a.m., Bakraoui’s brother Khalid, also a former bank robber, blew himself up at the Maalbeek metro station, killing at least 20. Investigators later established he had rented Salah Abdeslam’s hiding place in the Forest district of Brussels and the Charleroi safe house used by the Paris attackers, underlining the close connections between the Brussels and Paris plots. A second suspect seen on surveillance video with a bag at the station is still at large.
So far, according to French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, eight people with direct links to the Paris attacks are in custody in Belgium and two in France. Eight others are wanted by European security services in connection with the Paris and Brussels attacks, according to a security bulletin distributed the day after the attacks. A source with access to the document provided details to CNN.
Various suspects on the list spent time relatively recently in Belgium, France, Holland, Sweden and Germany, underlining the Europe-wide reach of the network. One of those on the list is “Naim el Hamed,” the operative picked up by Salah Abdeslam in Ulm, Germany, who is suspected to have played an operational role in the Brussels attacks, according to a source close to the investigation. Another is Yoni Patrick Mayne, a Belgian-Malian extremist who traveled with Abaaoud to Syria in January 2014 and who may have subsequently faked his own death.
Fabien Clain, Mohammed Abrini and an unknown number of others also remain at large.