Egypt on Full Terror Alert from Islamic State

Egypt – On the 10th of Rabī’ al-Ākhir, Islamic State covert units blew up a house rigged with explosives when it was stormed by a number of murtadd Egyptian policemen and their commanding officers on al-Haram Street in Giza, killing 10 of them – including officers – and injuring 20 more, including Muhammad Amīn, the chief of the investigations division for al-Haram. Just 11 days later, two soldiers of the Khilāfah set out towards a security checkpoint belonging to the murtadd Egyptian police in the region of al-Munīb in Giza. More here from the most recent issue of Dabiq, the Islamic State online publication.

   

Islamic State posts video threatening to blow up Giza Pyramids, Sphinx

MadaMasr: The Islamic State posted a new video threatening to destroy Egypt’s Giza Pyramids, the last remaining wonder of the ancient world, along with the Sphinx. The video also revealed footage of the militant group’s alleged destruction of the ancient Assyrian temple of Nabu in Iraq.

Released on Tuesday, the video includes images of the ancient temple of Abu Simbel in the Aswan governorate in Egypt, warning that the militant group will destroy such “idols.”

An Islamic State member, identified in the video as Abu Nasser al-Ansari, calls on Muslims not to identify with the history and cultural heritage of ancient artifacts and “idols” because they “are the works of infidels and Satan.” Early Muslim leaders were determined to destroy the pyramids in Egypt, yet “despite their intentions, this was not possible,” the militant explained.

“Today, however, we do have the means to carry out this great endeavor,” Ansari stated.

The video moves to an Islamic State member standing outside the ancient temple of Nabu in Iraq, who talks about of the responsibility of “believers” to destroy idols, while a bulldozer is seen plowing through the 2,500 year-old monument. Another segment of the video shows part of the temple being destroyed using explosives.

The video’s narrator claims that contemporary Muslims are following in the footsteps of the infidels, taking pride in temples built by idolaters “on the basis that they represent civilization.”

“What some people refer to as civilization – such as the pyramids and large idols — are in fact symbols of repression, ignorance, and moral degeneracy of those deviant societies,” the narrator states. “Civilization is not measured according to their buildings and construction works, but is measured by how peoples obey God’s ordinances.”

Egyptian news outlets, however, have largely dismissed the threats against any ancient Egyptian artifacts. The state-owned Al-Akhbar news portal reported on Wednesday that it would be impossible to execute operations of this scale, as police forces guard the Giza Pyramids complex heavily.

In its coverage on Wednesday, the privately owned Youm7 news portal also cited the presence of x-ray machines at the entrances to the Giza Pyramids, surveillance cameras, a bomb squad at the site, sniffer dogs, as well as a large number of police personnel and guards from the Antiquities Ministry, as reasons why the Islamic State’s cannot carry out its latest terrorist threat.

However, despite the heavy security presence within the pyramids complex, armed assailants managed to shoot dead two policemen at the entrance of the site in June 2015, although no militant group claimed responsibility for the incident.

Since its emergence in 2014, the Islamic State and its affiliates have destroyed large parts of the Nineveh Wall in Mosul, an ancient Assyrian gateway lion in Syria’s Islamic State-controlled Raqqa province, along with the temples of Baalshamin and Bel in Palmyra, and artifacts found within the Museum of Mosul.

The Islamic State’s destruction has not been limited to pagan temples and artifacts, but also a host of Shi’a shrines and tombs, old Christian monasteries and churches, and the Ottoman-era Tal Afar Citadel in northern Iraq.

Egypt’s police and Armed Forces have been engaged in counter-terrorism campaigns for several years in the Sinai peninsula in attempt to flush out radical armed Islamist elements – particularly the group formerly known as Ansar Beit al-Maqdes, which pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in November 2014, changing its name to the Province of Sinai.

CIA Personnel may have been Compromised Due to Hillary Emails

Anyone remember the Valerie Plame affair, the outing of her position at the CIA?

The names of some CIA personnel could have been compromised in release of Clinton emails

WASHINGTON (AP) – The names of CIA personnel could have been compromised not only by hackers who may have penetrated Hillary Clinton’s private computer server or the State Department system, but also by the release itself of tens of thousands of her emails, security experts say.

Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, turned over to the State Department 55,000 emails from her private server that were sent or received when she was secretary of state.

Some contained information that has since been deemed classified, and those were redacted for public release with notations for the reason of the censorship.

At least 47 of the emails contain the notation “B3 CIA PERS/ORG,” which indicates the material referred to CIA personnel or matters related to the agency. And because both Clinton’s server and the State Department systems were vulnerable to hacking, the perpetrators could have those original emails, and now the publicly released, redacted versions showing exactly which sections refer to CIA personnel.

“Start with the entirely plausible view that foreign intelligence services discovered and rifled Hillary Clinton’s server,” said Stewart Baker, a Washington lawyer who spent more than three years as an assistant secretary of the Homeland Security Department and is former legal counsel for the National Security Agency.

If so, those infiltrators would have copies of all her emails with the names not flagged as being linked to the agency.

In the process of publicly releasing the emails, however, classification experts seem to have inadvertently provided a key to anyone who has the originals. By redacting names associated with the CIA and using the “B3 CIA PERS/ORG” exemption as the reason, “Presto – the CIA names just fall off the page,” Baker said.

The CIA declined to comment.

A U.S. official said the risk of the names of CIA personnel being revealed in this way is “theoretical and probably remains so at this time.” The official, who did not have the authority to publicly address the matter, spoke on condition of anonymity and would not elaborate.

Steven Aftergood, who directs the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy, said even if any identities were revealed, they might be the names of analysts or midlevel administrators, not undercover operatives.

“I don’t think there’s any particular vulnerability here,” Aftergood said.

Clinton has acknowledged that the email server, set up in the basement of her New York home, was a mistake. But she says she never sent or received anything that was marked classified at the time of transmission. Clinton, who was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, insists the personal server she used was never actually breached.

hillary clinton emails

The AP discovered last year that Clinton’s private server was directly connected to the internet in ways that made it more vulnerable to hackers. A recent State Department inspector general’s report indicated the server was temporarily unplugged by a Clinton aide at one point during attacks by hackers, but her campaign has said there’s no evidence the server was hacked.

In each year from 2011 to 2014, the State Department’s poor cybersecurity was identified by its inspector general as a “significant deficiency” that put the department’s information at risk. Another State Department inspector general report revealed that hacking attempts forced Clinton off her private email at one point in 2011.

Then in 2014, the State Department’s unclassified email system was breached by hackers with links to Russia. They stole an unspecified number of emails. The hack was so deep that State’s email system had to be cut off from the internet while experts worked to eliminate the infestation.

Baker points out another instance where Clinton’s server might have been hacked.

A March 2, 2009, email warned against State Department officials using Blackberries. Eric Boswell, assistant secretary of state, says the “vulnerabilities and risks associated with the use of Blackberries … considerably outweigh their convenience.”

Nine days later, another email states that Clinton approached Boswell and says she “gets” the risk. The email also said: “Her attention was drawn to the sentence that indicates we (the diplomatic security office officials) have intelligence concerning this vulnerability during her recent trip to Asia.”

Clinton traveled to China, Indonesia, Japan and South Korea in February 2009.

At Least 12 Former Gitmo Detainees Killed Americans Since

They were not even the worst of the worst. Has anyone tracked those 5 Taliban released for Bergdahl?

“Despite the current restrictions of the [Memorandum Of Understanding], it is clear… that the five former detainees have participated in activities that threaten U.S. and coalition personnel and are counter to U.S. national security interests–not unlike their activities before they were detained on the battlefield.,” the Intelligence Committee statement said.

Last year, the non-partisan Government Accountability Office also found that the Obama administration violated the law on the Bergdahl swap.

Related reading: House Report Taliban 5 Report

About 12 released Guantanamo detainees implicated in attacks on Americans

WaPo: The Obama administration believes that about 12 detainees released from the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have launched attacks against U.S. or allied forces in Afghanistan, killing about a half-dozen Americans, according to current and former U.S. officials.

In March, a senior Pentagon official made a startling admission to lawmakers when he acknowledged that former Guantanamo inmates were responsible for the deaths of Americans overseas.

The official, Paul Lewis, who oversees Guantanamo issues at the Defense Department, provided no details, and the Obama administration has since declined to elaborate publicly on his statement because the intelligence behind it is classified.

But The Washington Post has learned additional details about the suspected attacks, including the approximate number of detainees and victims involved and the fact that, while most of the incidents were directed at military personnel, the dead also included one American civilian: a female aid worker who died in Afghanistan in 2008. The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter, declined to give an exact number for Americans killed or wounded in the attacks, saying the figure is classified.

The official added: “Because many of these incidents were large-scale firefights in a war zone, we cannot always distinguish whether Americans were killed by the former detainees or by others in the same fight.”

Military and intelligence officials, responding to lawmakers’ requests for more details, have provided lawmakers with a series of classified documents about the suspected attacks. One recent memo from the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), which was sent to the House Foreign Affairs Committee after Lewis’s testimony, described the attacks, named the detainees involved and provided information about the victims without giving their names.

But lawmakers are prohibited from discussing the contents of that memo because of its high classification level. A similar document provided last month to the office of Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.), a vocal opponent of Obama’s Guantanamo policy, was so highly classified that even her staff members with a top-secret clearance level were unable to read it.

“There appears to be a consistent and concerted effort by the Administration to prevent Americans from knowing the truth regarding the terrorist activities and affiliations of past and present Guantanamo detainees,” Ayotte wrote in a letter to Obama this week, urging him to declassify information about how many U.S. and NATO personnel have been killed by former detainees.

Rep. Edward R. Royce (R-Calif.), who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has also written legislation that would require greater transparency surrounding the transfer of Guantanamo detainees.

Royce and Ayotte are among the lawmakers who opposed a road map for closing the prison that the White House submitted to Congress earlier this year. That plan would require moving some detainees to U.S. prisons and resettling the rest overseas.

“The administration is releasing dangerous terrorists to countries that can’t control them, and misleading Congress in the process,” Royce said in a statement. “The president should halt detainee transfers immediately and be honest with the American people.”

Just under 700 detainees have been released from Guantanamo since the prison opened in 2002; 80 inmates remain.

Secrecy about the top-security prison, perched on an inaccessible corner of Cuba, is nothing new. The Bush administration for years refused to provide a roster of detainees until it was forced to do so in a Freedom of Information Act case in 2006. To this day, reporters have never been able to visit Camp 7, a classified facility that holds 14 high-value detainees, including the five men on trial for organizing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Both the Bush and Obama administrations have provided only limited information on current and former detainees; most of what the public knows about them comes from defense lawyers or from documents released by WikiLeaks.

According to a 2012 report from the House Armed Services Committee, the Defense Intelligence Agency ended the practice of naming some suspected recidivists in 2009 when officials became concerned that it would endanger sources and methods.

National Security Council spokesman Myles Caggins said it was difficult to discuss specific cases in detail because the information was classified.

“But, again, we are committed to being forthcoming with the American people about our safe and responsible approach to Guantanamo detainee transfers, including about possible detainee re-engagement in terrorist activities,” he said.

One Republican aide who has reviewed the classified material about the attacks on Americans said the information has been “grossly overclassified.”

Administration officials say that recidivism rates for released Guantanamo inmates remain far lower than those for federal offenders. According to a recent study, almost half of all federal offenders released in 2005 were “rearrested for a new crime or rearrested for a violation of supervision conditions.” Among former Guantanamo detainees, the total number of released detainees who are suspected or confirmed of reengaging is about 30 percent, according to U.S. intelligence.

Nearly 21 percent of those released prior to 2009 have reengaged in militancy, officials say, compared with about 4.5 percent of the 158 released by Obama.

Human rights activists say the statistics are suspect and cannot be verified because the administration provides almost no information about whom it is counting and why.

Most of those suspected of re-engagement are Afghan, reflecting the large numbers of Afghans detained after the Sept. 11 attacks and the ongoing war there. More than 200 Afghan prisoners have been repatriated from the prison.

Officials declined to identify the woman killed in Afghanistan in 2008. But there are two female aid workers killed that year who might fit the description.

Cydney Mizell, a 50-year-old employee of the Asian Rural Life Development Foundation, was abducted in Kandahar as she drove to work. Her body was never recovered, according to a former colleague who said he was told about a month later that she had died.

Another woman, Nicole Dial, 30, a Trinidadian American who worked for the International Rescue Committee, was shot and killed the same year south of Kabul, along with two colleagues.

Relatives of Mizell and Dial said they have not been in touch with the FBI for years. Dial’s brother said he was unaware of a former Guantanamo detainee being involved in his sister’s killing.

Mizell’s stepmother said she was never told the exact circumstances of her daughter’s death or who abducted her.

“She was definitely killed,” Peggy Mizell said. “I figured she was shot.”

Migrants linked to 69,000 would-be or actual crimes in Germany

Inviting in people of unknown backgrounds under the banner of humanitarian objectives is a dangerous policy, when innocent citizens are victims. This is occurring in the United States with wild abandon, yet apathy reigns and there are no real grass-roots efforts to demand and restore order or security.

Even if cases go to court, the judicial systems in Europe and in the United States render feeble sentences which is worse and almost no one is deported. Discretionary application of the law for the sake of an alleged culture, humanity and for refugee/asylum conditions with grow instability, clog and corrupt processes and cause illness or death.

Below, in the case of Germany the publication of this condition translate to a situation that is likely worse than actually being reported especially when Merkel had control over a media blackout.

Migrants linked to 69,000 would-be or actual crimes in Germany in first three months of 2016: police

Reuters: Migrants in Germany committed or tried to commit some 69,000 crimes in the first quarter of 2016, according to a police report that could raise unease, especially among anti-immigrant groups, about Chancellor Angela Merkel’s liberal migrant policy.

Immigrants are escorted by German police to a registration centre, after crossing the Austrian-German border in Wegscheid near Passau, Germany, October 20, 2015. REUTERS/Michael Dalder

There was a record influx of more than a million migrants into Germany last year and concerns are now widespread about how Europe’s largest economy will manage to integrate them and ensure security.

The report from the BKA federal police showed that migrants from northern Africa, Georgia and Serbia were disproportionately represented among the suspects.

Absolute numbers of crimes committed by Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis – the three biggest groups of asylum seekers in Germany – were high but given the proportion of migrants that they account for, their involvement in crimes was “clearly disproportionately low”, the report said.

It gave no breakdown of the number of actual crimes and of would-be crimes, nor did it state what percentage the 69,000 figure represented with respect to the total number of crimes and would-be crimes committed in the first three months of 2016.

The report stated that the vast majority of migrants did not commit any crimes.

It is the first time the BKA has published a report on crimes committed by migrants containing data from all of Germany’s 16 states, so there is no comparable data.

The report showed that 29.2 percent of the crimes migrants committed or tried to commit in the first quarter were thefts, 28.3 percent were property or forgery offences and 23 percent offences such as bodily harm, robbery and unlawful detention.

Drug-related offences accounted for 6.6 percent and sex crimes accounted for 1.1 percent.

In Cologne at New Year, hundreds of women said they were groped, assaulted and robbed, with police saying the suspects were mainly of North African and Arab appearance. Prosecutors said last week three Pakistani men seeking asylum in Germany were under investigation after dozens of women said they were sexually harassed at a music festival.

The number of crimes committed by migrants declined by more than 18 percent between January and March, however, according to the report.

SITREP Afghanistan: Taliban, Contractors, Troop Levels

Two members of an NPR news crew, David Gilkey and Zabihullah Tamanna, were killed on Sunday while traveling in southern Afghanistan.

CNN: “They were traveling with an Afghan army unit when the convoy came under fire. Their vehicle was struck by shell fire,” according to a statement by NPR.

Two other NPR crew members, correspondent Tom Bowman and producer Monika Evstatieva, “were in a following vehicle,” NPR head of news Michael Oreskes told CNN. “Tom and Monika were not hurt.”

david gilkey npr

Sunday’s attack marks the first time in the 46-year history of NPR that one of its journalists has been killed on assignment.

Gilkey, 50, was an award-winning staff photographer and video editor for NPR. In the 15 years since the 9/11 attacks, he returned time and time again to Afghanistan and other conflict zones.

“David was profoundly committed to coverage of both Afghanistan and Iraq,” Oreskes said. “He wanted to know what was happening to the people there. I think that’s why he kept going back — because he wanted to understand what was happening to the soldiers and civilians.”

Watchdog: Afghanistan’s lapis lazuli is a ‘conflict mineral’

An international anti-corruption watchdog says Afghanistan’s war is being fueled by the country’s mining sector, with armed groups — including the Taliban — earning $20 million from illegal mining of lapis lazuli.

A report by Global Witness released on Monday says that lapis lazuli, a blue stone almost unique to Afghanistan, should be classified as a “conflict mineral.”

 

It says the northern Badakhshan province where lapis lazuli is concentrated has been “deeply destabilized” by violent competition for control of the mines between local strongmen, law makers and the Taliban.

Badakhshan is a microcosm of what is happening across Afghanistan, with mining being the Taliban’s second biggest source of income, after drugs.

The Taliban insurgency is in its 15th year.

Afghanistan’s mineral assets are believed to be worth billions of dollars.

How Obama’s Afghanistan plan is forcing the Army to replace soldiers with contractors

WaPo: Current restrictions on U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan and a heavy reliance on civilian contractors are eroding the skills and cohesion of units deployed to the country, according to information from the Army given to the House Armed Services Committee and provided to The Washington Post.

According to an Army document, the use of civilian labor in one of the Army’s combat aviation brigades, or CABs, in Afghanistan has had negative side effects because the contractors are being used in lieu of the brigade’s maintenance soldiers. Those soldiers should be deploying with their units, but are not because of the “constrained troop level environment” in Afghanistan, the document says.

“Aviation maintainers not deploying with their [brigades] results in an erosion of skill and experience essential to soldier and leader development,” Army officials said in the document. “The atrophy of these critical skills erodes the brigade’s ability to deploy in the future and sustain itself in an expeditionary manner to locations that may not permit the deployment of contractors.”

According to the Army document, three CABs have deployed to Afghanistan since 2013 with reduced maintenance staffs. A typical CAB usually deploys with 1,500 soldiers but can swell above 2,500 depending on the mission. In 2013, a brigade deployed with 1,900 troops, but as U.S. forces were reduced in Afghanistan, a brigade of only 800 deployed in 2015. Despite the reduction in troop levels, the brigade was still expected to maintain and fly its roughly 100 aircraft.

Currently, the 4th Infantry Division’s CAB is deployed to Afghanistan and provides “country-wide aviation support,” according to a breakdown of U.S. forces in Afghanistan that was compiled by the Institute for the Study of War. It primarily provides rotor-wing support in the form of helicopter gunships and transports.

According to the Army document, only 6 percent of the 4th’s CAB is dedicated to maintaining aircraft. That small number is specifically for recovering aircraft that land or crash in a hostile environment. Instead, 427 civilian personnel — at a cost of $101 million annually — are maintaining the CAB’s fleet of helicopters. Through 2014 and 2015, 390 contractors maintained both the 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions’ aircraft for $86 million when their CABs were deployed to Afghanistan.

While U.S.-led combat operations in Afghanistan officially ended in 2014, last fall, as the Taliban gained momentum throughout the country, President Obama agreed to keep about 9,800 U.S. troops in Afghanistan through 2016, and 5,500 into 2017.

Although the troop levels are low compared to the 45,000 deployed at the start of 2014, the number of uniformed service members in Afghanistan is only part of the U.S. war effort there. As of April, 26,000 Pentagon contractors are in Afghanistan, about half of whom are assigned to logistics and maintenance duties, according to publicly available reports.

Although the number of contractors has almost always exceeded the number of uniformed troops in Afghanistan, the ratio of civilian employees compared to U.S. military personnel has more than doubled in the past two years, from 1.34 to 2.92.

“I am not at all convinced that the only units affected are the combat aviation brigades,” Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Tex.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said in a recent interview. “Aside from financially … is there a potential that it increases the risk that our folks face just because of these political limits? Those questions are certainly worthy of a significant deep dive on the part of the committee.”

***** Obama being asked about force levels:

Washington, DC- Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) and nine members of the Senate Armed Services Committee sent a letter to President Obama regarding U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan. “A timely decision on U.S. force levels is necessary so that our allies and partners can generate forces and make appropriate pledged for the Resolute Support Mission beginning in January 2017,” the bipartisan group of senators wrote. “We urge you to announce any changes to our current planned force levels ahead of the relevant NATO conferences, giving the strong consideration to the assessment of your military commanders and to conditions on the ground.”

The letter was signed by Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR), Senator John McCain (R-AZ), Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Senator Deb Fischer (R-NE), Senator Joe Donnelly (D-IN), Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA), Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Senator Angus King (I-ME).

The text of the letter can be found below. Additionally, click here to read the letter.

Dear President Obama:

We appreciate your continued willingness to consider adjustments based on the security situation in Afghanistan to preserve and build upon the hard fought gains achieved over the past 14 years. In recent months, the Senate Armed Services Committee has heard from General Nicholson, General Campbell, and General Votel – the senior military commanders closest to the fight – that the security situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating, which challenges the ability of the Afghan government to provide stability and security for its people.

 

We understand that General John Nicholson is in the process of completing his assessment of the capabilities and associated troop levels he believes will be necessary in Afghanistan to confront a resurgent Taliban, a reviving Al Qaida, and a rising Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, and will make recommendations in the near future. As the Commander on the ground, we believe that his recommendations should be given extraordinary weight. We also believe that the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan should be based on conditions on the ground and that considerations on troop levels should be driven first by what capabilities are needed to protect our national security interests in Afghanistan, and second by the number of troops it takes to enable those capabilities.

Furthermore, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) will hold its Force Generation Conference beginning on June 8th and the NATO Summit in Warsaw will begin on July 8th. It is important that our allies and partners understand any changes to our planned force levels for Afghanistan before those key events to determine and plan for the number of troops they will commit to operations in Afghanistan in 2017. As has long been the case, we believe our NATO Allies and partners will follow our lead in Afghanistan. In February, General Campbell testified to Congress that “If our number continues to go down, NATO will absolutely reduce their commitment to Afghanistan.” Additionally, we do not think we are going to learn anything in the next several months that we do not know now. Should you decide to revise the planned number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan for 2017, we urge you to announce such a decision before the relevant NATO conferences convene and inform our partners and allies of that decision so they can plan accordingly.

In summary, a timely decision on U.S. force levels is necessary so that our allies and partners can generate forces and make appropriate pledges for the Resolute Support Mission beginning in January 2017. We urge you to announce any changes to our current planned force levels ahead of the relevant NATO conferences, giving the strongest consideration to the assessment of your military commanders and to conditions on the ground.

Sincerely,

Senator John McCain

Senator Joe Manchin

Senator Kelly Ayotte

Senator Jeanne Shaheen

Senator Deb Fischer

Senator Joe Donnelly

Senator Tom Cotton

Senator Tim Kaine

Senator Lindsey Graham

Senator Angus King