Category Archives: China

Secret Service has Large Quiet Office in Hoover, Alabama

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Primer: The U.S. Secret Service maintains Electronic Crimes Task Forces, which focus on identifying and locating international cyber criminals connected to cyber intrusions, bank fraud, data breaches, and other computer-related crimes. The Secret Service’s Cyber Intelligence Section has directly contributed to the arrest of transnational cyber criminals responsible for the theft of hundreds of millions of credit card numbers and the loss of approximately $600 million to financial and retail institutions. The Secret Service also runs the National Computer Forensic Institute, which provides law enforcement officers, prosecutors, and judges with cyber training and information to combat cyber crime.

HOOVER, Ala. — The classrooms, tucked above a municipal court here in the Birmingham suburbs, are a long way from the White House. But walk through a set of secured doors and into the futuristic-looking work space, and you will find an important wager by the agency best known for protecting presidents, the Secret Service.

Only it has almost nothing to do with earpiece-wearing agents or armored cars.

Though the Secret Service may be better known for keeping government executives safe, it also has a mandate to investigate and fight financial and other cybercrimes. And in an era of overworked protection details and nonstop cybercrime, it could use some help.

So here at the National Computer Forensics Institute, the pupils are hardened police officers, prosecutors and, occasionally, a judge. Instruction mimics what the agency teaches its own special agents. And tuition is not only free, but the Secret Service throws in travel, room, board and, for police officers, tens of thousands of dollars of technology to set up their own forensics labs back home.

Data is extracted from mobile phones for use in a class on prosecution in Hoover. Kevin D. Liles for The New York Times

In exchange, the Secret Service has quietly empowered a network of thousands of law enforcement officers across the country capable of processing digital evidence and indebted to the agency that taught them.

“The threat nature has increased in the world, and the threats are all more and more integrated with the digital world,” said Ben Bass, the special agent in charge of the institute. “So assimilating that into what we do is really important.”

The institute opened in 2008 as a partnership between the Secret Service and the state of Alabama, which contributed space and money for its construction. At the time, few state and local law enforcement agencies had the capability to process digital evidence found on computers and cellphones, even as it was exploding in volume and importance. That left agencies heavily reliant on the Secret Service and the F.B.I. for processing and created a years long backlog in many cases.

The Secret Service reasoned that it would be critical to the future of its mission — not to mention the effectiveness of local and state law enforcement — to try to change that. The program remains the only one of its kind and scale in the country.

Though its protective mission occupies the public’s attention, the Secret Service has been investigating crimes since 1865, when President Lincoln saw the need to create a small force of investigators within the Treasury Department to combat counterfeit currency that was undermining American markets. That mandate has changed and widened in the decades since, along with threats to the country’s financial systems, and the agency now investigates bank fraud, credit card fraud, identity theft, child exploitation as well as counterfeiting.

It does so with a reasonably small force. The majority of the Secret Service’s 3,300 agents work out of field offices. The F.B.I., by comparison, has more than 13,000. To amplify its effect, the agency relies on dozens of electronic and financial crimes task forces across the country, where local and state law officers and people in academia and businesses work alongside its own agents.

The help has arrived at the right time for the agency, where in recent years low morale, high attrition and more people to protect in more places have conspired to pinch resources. Because protection is a nonnegotiable task, investigations often take the hit.

The effect can be significant. In the 2016 fiscal year, the agency spent 65 percent of its time on protection and 35 percent on investigative work, according to calculations it shared with members of the House Oversight Committee. That was an election year, when protection demands are highest. But it appears the ratio for this fiscal year — which only included the last month or so of the campaign — has not changed much, with 60 percent of time going to protection through the end of May. Typically it would be about 40 percent for a post-campaign fiscal year.

Robert Novy, the deputy assistant director for investigations, said the task forces help ensure that cases continue to move forward regardless of protection demands. He also said that they have begun to free the Secret Service’s own staff to focus on larger-scale cyberthreats and high-dollar financial crimes.

“By elevating their capacities and capabilities, it allows us to focus on finding ways to counter more significant financial threats,” Mr. Novy said.

Still, building the program has proved challenging. A decade after it first opened its doors, the institute trains about 1,100 people a year. But it is running at between 30 percent and 40 percent of capacity because of a shortage of federal funds. For some programs, would-be enrollees can wait as long as three years.

Its financial outlook remains uncertain. President Trump’s 2018 budget proposal zeroed out the program, though Randolph D. Alles, the agency’s new director, told lawmakers last month that he considered it “critical” to the agency and would move money from elsewhere in his budget to pay for it if need be. At the same time, lawmakers in the House and Senate have introduced legislation that could stabilize its funding.

A break room at the institute.
Kevin D. Liles for The New York Times

The institute’s finances appeared to be on few minds on a recent early summer day in Hoover, where a class of two dozen prosecutors sat in neat classroom rows, computers humming beside their feet, as data from the cellphone of a fictitious drug smuggler flashed onto their computer screens. The evidence was all there in ordered folders: call logs, texts, even compromising photographs of a would-be drug dealer, made visible by powerful software and a few patient instructors.

One room away and a few hours later, two dozen police officers packed into a wood-trimmed mock courtroom listened to another instructor hold forth from the witness stand on the ins and outs of being a good forensics witness. The key, he said, is balancing the use of technical details like “master boot records” and “disk partitions” with the bigger picture a less tech-savvy jury can more easily grasp.

“I need to be able to understand it so I can translate it when I go before a panel of 12 people,” said Jennifer Eugene, a prosecutor from New Jersey, describing her experience in front of a jury. “The law has not caught up with where the technology is.”

A five-week course for police on the basics of computer evidence recovery is the most popular, and graduates of the course leave here with $28,000 worth of technology and the ability to search seized computers for evidence of a crime. A similar course on mobile devices is growing in popularity. And more advanced courses cover network intrusion.

A classroom where a course on network intrusion is taught.
Kevin D. Liles for The New York Times

Prosecutors and judges can take shorter courses meant to familiarize them with digital evidence, which is still relatively new to many courtrooms.

But the mutual benefits of the program were on display, too. Frank Garibay, a detective with the San Antonio Police Department who had returned to the institute as a proctor after taking coursework himself, said his training here had transformed what his department could do.

It had also meant that when officials from the Texas Rangers and Homeland Security Investigations zeroed in on an illegal gambling ring in Texas, they could turn to the Secret Service’s San Antonio-based electronic crimes task force, including Mr. Garibay, for help.

The Secret Service paid for members of its task force to travel to the small South Texas town of Falfurrias for a weekend to set up a war room to process digital evidence.

The operation ended up taking down about a dozen illegal casinos, recovered almost $6 million, exposed drug and human trafficing rings, and ultimately public corruption.

 

Kushner’s Chinese EB-5 Investment Ploy

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Exclusive: Jared Kushner’s White House connection still being used to lure Chinese investors

CNN: Jared Kushner’s status as a top aide to President Donald Trump was used to lure Chinese investors to his family’s New Jersey development, even after his family’s company apologized for mentioning his name during a sales pitch in May, CNN has found.

References to Kushner are part of online promotions by two businesses that are working with Kushner Companies to find Chinese investors willing to invest in the 1 Journal Square development in exchange for a US visa.
The promotions are posted in Chinese and refer to Kushner Companies as “real estate heavyweights,” going on to mention “the celebrity of the family is 30-something ‘Mr. Perfect’ Jared Kushner, who once served as CEO of Kushner Companies.”
One posted online in May by the company US Immigration Fund, a private business based in Florida, also contains a reference to Kushner’s appearance on the cover of December’s Forbes Magazine, under the headline “This guy got Trump elected.” The post was removed shortly after CNN contacted the company for comment.

For US Immigration Fund’s WeChat page: click here 

 The promotions are aimed at bringing in investors who pay at least $500,000 apiece and in exchange get US visas, and potentially green cards, for themselves and their families if the development meets certain criteria. The deals are part of a legal US government program called EB-5, which grants up to 10,000 immigrant visas per year.
One webpage posted in March by Chinese company Qiaowai that remains on the company’s page on the popular Chinese social media site WeChat mentions Trump and suggests he supports the program: “Even some members of Trump’s family have participated in the growth of the EB-5 program … the “Kushner 88″ panoramic New Jersey apartment project … The lead developer on the now-completed project was Kushner Companies which is linked to Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.” It goes on to say, “Given this, in the Trump era, the EB-5 program is likely to receive support and be expanded.”

From Qiaowai WeChat page: click here

 A Kushner Companies spokesperson, in response to CNN’s questions about the webpages, said “Kushner Companies was not aware of these sites and has nothing to do with them. The company will be sending a cease and desist letter regarding the references to Jared Kushner.”
A former White House ethics expert tells CNN the EB-5 program already raises a potential government-backed quid pro quo — favorable immigration status in exchange for investment dollars. And he says any use of the President’s son-in-law as a marketing tool is ethically unacceptable.
“What is not authorized is any arrangement where someone gets preference for their visa if they give money to a company that is controlled by the family of a United States government official,” said Richard Painter, a former chief ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush.
“And unfortunately,” says Painter, “that implication was made in the selling efforts for this project.”
Painter is referring to an investment “road show” that Nicole Meyer attended in May in Beijing. Meyer, the sister of Jared Kushner, was speaking at an event in which she was trying to attract wealthy Chinese investors to the 1 Journal Square project.
During the presentation, Meyer reminded investors of her brother’s recent role in American politics: “In 2008, my brother Jared Kushner joined the family company as CEO,” Meyer told a crowd, adding he “recently moved to Washington to join the administration.”
The comments coincided with a visual display, which included a photograph of Trump.
Meyer’s comments led to strong criticism that the Kushner family was using Jared Kushner to attract investment dollars through the EB-5 program.
The company quickly apologized, and separately, Jared Kushner’s attorney released a statement saying Kushner had no knowledge of the promotion and was no longer involved financially in the 1 Journal Square project.
“As previously stated, he will recuse from particular matters concerning the EB-5 visa program,” Kushner’s attorney, Blake Roberts, said in a statement.
US Immigration Fund, a company based in Jupiter, Florida, seemed to blame others for the post, saying in a statement, “The post in question was originally posted by a 3rd party immigration consultancy firm on its company WeChat and was reposted to USIF’s WeChat by the company’s Chinese social media consultant. The post is several months old and hasn’t had any interaction by followers, however, it has since been removed from the company WeChat.”
Qiaowai, a Chinese immigration company that organized the events where Kushner’s sister spoke, did not respond to CNN’s request for comment. The webpage on its WeChat site that references Kushner remained online as of Wednesday afternoon.
EB-5 investment advisor Michael Gibson tells CNN it makes sense that the companies marketing the Kushner project in China have continued to use Kushner’s name to promote their project, because he says Chinese investors are drawn to developments they believe are backed by individuals with government connections: “They want to make sure they get the green card,” Gibson told CNN. “So if they see a public official associated with the project that gives them the impression that this project is safe enough for them to invest in.”
The EB-5 program has faced criticism for straying from its original intent. The program was designed by Congress in the 1990s to bring foreign money into rural and blighted urban areas to spark development and job growth.
After the economic recession of 2008, the program began expanding to become a low-interest source of income for developers who have used EB-5 investment money to fund high-end residential towers and retail projects in areas like Manhattan, Jersey City, New Jersey, and Miami.
Gary Friedland, a scholar in residence at New York University’s Stern School of Business who has studied the program, said developers have found ways to manipulate census tract data to place their projects within “targeted employment areas,” which legally reduces the amount investors must pay — down from $1 million to $500,000 — to qualify for EB-5 benefits.
Emails obtained by CNN from the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development show a representative for US Immigration Fund in January asked a New Jersey official to issue a letter certifying the Kushner’s 1 Journal Square as within an area with low employment.
After an official responded that the project did not qualify due to its location within a census tract with an unemployment rate below the national average, a consultant for another company asked that the state combine six census tracts together. Days later, the state approved the Kushner Companies’ project, documents show.
Friedland says practices like this allow luxury developers to take advantage of incentives meant to lure investments to lower-income areas: “The money flows to affluent areas, not the targeted areas Congress intended to benefit,” he said.
On June 1, three Democratic lawmakers wrote a letter to Kushner Companies current president Laurent Morali asking for an explanation on the company’s ongoing use of the EB-5 program and the nature of its relationships with Qiaowai and US Immigration Fund.
Kushner Companies has not yet responded to the letter, according to the office of Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont.

Opioid Crisis Then and Now

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The Opioid Crisis Is Dire. Why We Need a National Conversation About It Separate From Obamacare.

Let’s be honest—the opioid crisis in America is huge, it is severe, and it is devastating. But this partisan-fought legislation just isn’t the place to put that funding. And it would likely do little to help stem and reverse the opioid crisis.

First, it’s not as though funding for opioid treatment and recovery has been absent from the federal budget. As recently as last month, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, was touting signed legislation that spent more than $1 billion to fund recovery programs.

This money was authorized separately from the debate over Obamacare in two pieces of legislation known as the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act and the 21st Century Cures Act.

We know that prevention programs have worked in the past, whether they pertain to forest fires or drunk driving or, for that matter, the massive reduction in drug use we witnessed in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Such a prevention program for the opioid crisis must start with leadership from the White House in leading these conversations and highlighting the devastation of substance abuse initiation.

It requires detailing what is driving the opioid epidemic—namely, illegal fentanyl, heroin, and other illegal drug use and diversion. It requires more law enforcement—from border and customs policies and cracking down on cartels to international initiatives. And it requires messaging to our youth. More here.

Socrata

This Isn’t the First U.S. Opiate-Addiction Crisis

Doctors overprescribed painkillers in the 19th century. Eventually, they stopped.

Problem and solution. Source: Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago/Getty Images

Bloomberg: The U.S. is in the throes of an “unprecedented opioid epidemic,” reports the Centers for Disease Control. The crisis has spurred calls for action to halt the rising death toll, which has devastated many rural communities.

It’s true that there’s an opioid epidemic, a public health disaster. It’s not true that it’s unprecedented. A remarkably similar epidemic beset the U.S. some 150 years ago. The story of that earlier catastrophe offers some sobering lessons as to how to address the problem.

Opioids are a broad class of drugs that relieve pain by acting directly on the central nervous system. They include substances such as morphine and its close cousin, heroin, both derived from the opium poppy. There are also synthetic versions, such as fentanyl, and medications that are derived from a mix of natural and synthetic sources, such as oxycodone.

Opioid addiction can take many forms, but the current crisis began with the use and abuse of legal painkillers in the 1990s, and has since metastasized into a larger epidemic, with heroin playing an especially outsized role.

All of this is depressingly familiar. The first great U.S. opiate-addiction epidemic began much the same way, with medications handed out by well-meaning doctors who embraced a wondrous new class of drugs as the answer to a wide range of aches and pains.

The pharmacologist Nathaniel Chapman, writing in 1817, held up opium as the most useful drug in the physician’s arsenal, arguing that there was “scarcely one morbid affection or disordered condition” that would fail to respond to its wonder-working powers. That same year, chemists devised a process for isolating a key alkaloid compound from raw opium: morphine.

Though there’s some evidence that opiate dependency had become a problem as early as the 1840s, it wasn’t until the 1860s and 1870s that addiction became a widespread phenomenon. The key, according to historian David Courtwright, was the widespread adoption of the hypodermic needle in the 1870s.

Prior to this innovation, physicians administered opiates orally. During the Civil War, for example, doctors on the Union side administered 10 million opium pills and nearly three million ounces of opium powders and tinctures. Though some soldiers undoubtedly became junkies in the process, oral administration had all manner of unpleasant gastric side effects, limiting the appeal to potential addicts.

Hypodermic needles by contrast, delivered morphine directly into a patient’s veins with no side effects, yielding immediate results. As Courtwright notes: “For the first time in the entire history of medicine near-instantaneous, symptomatic relief for a wide range of diseases was possible. A syringe of morphine was, in a very real sense, a magic wand.”

An enthusiastic medical profession began injecting morphine on a vast scale for all manner of aches and pains, much the way that a more recent generation of doctors began prescribing Oxycontin and other legal drugs in a reaction against widespread undertreatment of pain. Wounded veterans became addicts, but so, too, did people suffering from arthritis. Women also became addicts en masse, thanks to the practice of treating menstrual cramps – or for that matter, any female complaint of pain – with injections of morphine.

Skeptics in the medical profession warned about the dangers of administering too much morphine. Yet these warnings generally fell on deaf ears. Some of the problem lay with the doctors themselves. One well-regarded doctor put it this way: “Opium is often the lazy physician’s remedy.”

But distance played a role, too. Doctors traveling dirt roads on horseback couldn’t always follow up with patients in pain, and so they left their charges with vials of morphine. Well-meaning doctors who might otherwise resist administering morphine also faced pressure from patients and families to do so. If they refused, it was easy to find a doctor who would comply.

In the end, though, the medical profession largely solved the problem on its own. As awareness of physicians’ role in fostering addiction spread, medical schools taught aspiring doctors to avoid prescribing morphine except under carefully controlled circumstances. The growing availability of milder analgesics – salicylates like aspirin – made the job easier, offering a less powerful, but far safer, alternative to morphine.

While the younger generation of doctors stigmatized morphine, the problem was increasingly linked to older, poorly trained doctors who had come of age in an era when the hypodermic needle was touted as a cure-all. A study in 1919, for example, found that 90 percent of opiate prescriptions in Pennsylvania came from only a third of the state’s doctors, most of whom were over 50 years old.

As the medical profession started to police its ranks, shaming those who enabled addiction, the epidemic began to burn itself out. “Old addicts died off faster than new ones were created,” writes Courtwright. The smaller group of addicts who became the face of opiate addition tended to be poorer “pleasure users” who picked up the habit in the criminal underworld.

Today’s opioid epidemic is similar to the one that came and went over a century ago. While there is plenty of room for government assistance in funding treatment for addicts, never mind regulation of drugs, history suggests that the medical profession will ultimately play the most important role.

There are some promising signs. The number of opioid prescriptions written by doctors has dropped by small amounts over the past few years, though some of the evidence suggests that the decline has more to do with patients anxious about the potential for addiction.

Still, it took decades during the 19th century for doctors to shy away from injecting patients with morphine for the slightest complaint. It may take just as long before doctors kick the habit of prescribing powerful pain pills.

CENTCOM Cmdr. Votel Explains What is Ahead in the World

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CentCom commander Votel steels for next chapter in world’s most dangerous region

TAMPA — As the man in charge of U.S. Central Command, Army Gen. Joseph Votel oversees American military operations in 20 nations that comprise the world’s most dangerous and complex region.

Army Gen. Joseph Votel, commander of the U.S. Central Command, sat down for an interview Wednesday with the Tampa Bay Times in his office at MacDill Air Force base. [MONICA HERNDON | Times]


Army Gen. Joseph Votel, commander of the U.S. Central Command, sat down for an interview Wednesday with the Tampa Bay Times in his office at MacDill Air Force base. [MONICA HERNDON | Times]

A Minnesota native and former commando chief with 37 years in the service, Votel helps develop plans to battle Islamic State, the Taliban and other jihadis. All the while, he must navigate challenges from the Russians and Iranians, political tensions among U.S. allies, and the regional fallout of the enduring Arab-Israeli strife.

On Wednesday, Votel, 59, sat down with the Tampa Bay Times in his office at MacDill Air Force Base for a rare one-on-one interview to talk about his 16 months on the job. He discussed a wide range of issues over nearly an hour.

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Among the highlights: Iraqi forces will need to shift from combat mode to security mode to protect against a shrinking ISIS, the military is expanding its work with the Russians against a common enemy, and the Iranian regime remains the most destabilizing influence in the CentCom region.

Talk about the new authorities you have been given under the Trump administration.

The president has granted authority down to the secretary of defense (allowing) us to be more agile and more responsive to a very complex, developing situation. We want to enable our people forward with all authorities and decision-making capability they have and I think we have done that. And that’s certainly been reinforced by the new administration but frankly it’s something we started under the old administration.

Can you offer an example of how that’s worked?

Sure, the most pertinent example is Mosul. We are advising, accompanying, assisting, enabling Iraqi forces all around that city. That means providing (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) support for them, fire support for them, and in order to provide that most effectively, you really have to allow our advisors that are with them to make those decisions, to be responsive, to take advantage of opportunities we see, to help forestall advances by the enemy. We can’t make that decision back at a centralized in Iraq and certainly not back at here in Tampa or Washington or anywhere else.

ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi — dead or alive? And does it matter anymore?

I have no idea. I have nothing to tell me one way or the other. I certainly have seen all the reporting on it. I guess in one extent it does matter. I hope that he is (dead), frankly. I think it could be viewed as another blow to them. That said, we’ve been doing this long enough to know that leaders are killed and we’ve killed plenty of them. And that there’s always somebody who is going to step up into those positions so we shouldn’t think that just killing Baghdadi is the key here. He can be replaced. So in that regard, it may not matter as much.

After the fall of Mosul and defeat of ISIS, how can Iraq come together with so many divergent interests?

In many ways this is the hard part of what we are doing here. The political aspect of this, the humanitarian aspect of this, is always more difficult than the military things, so this is the challenge before us. The political side always takes a bit longer. As we went into the fight in Mosul, we had very good cooperation between the government of Iraq and the Kurdish Regional Government. Absolutely vital for success was the ability of leaders to come together and set aside their differences for a period of time to beat ISIS. I consider that to be a very successful approach here, and it has given the ability now, as we move into the more difficult political aspects, a way to address that. Certainly there are things that are going to have to be addressed. It won’t be easy, but there’s a basis for doing it.

On Sept. 27, the Kurds will hold a referendum about independence. How much of an additional challenge is that?

Being able to have the Kurdish Regional Government and the government of Iraq work together on Mosul was a key factor in the overall success of this, so I’m concerned the referendum could add a little friction into the remaining operations here that could effect things. But I am very trustful in our diplomatic efforts to address that I know there are things ongoing here. The timing may not be best for what we still have left to be done here but I am hopeful that with our engagement we will minimize that.

How concerned are you about ISIS 2.0 and what can be done to prevent that?

I think we should all be concerned about that. One thing we have learned about this organization is that they are adaptive. I think what we’ll see now is smaller cells, we’ll see stay-behind elements, we’ll see pockets that will begin to take on more of an insurgent-guerilla type approach as opposed to an Islamic army that we saw back in the beginning. We have to be prepared for that, so that some of the things that we will do as we look to that is we will look to adjust some of our coalition training efforts for the Iraqi security forces to ensure that can move from doing large-scale operations like they have been doing in places like Mosul to now doing wide-area security operations, where they have to go out and have to address a network, address small elements. We really need to return to that.

Classic Special Operations Forces missions?

More of what perhaps we have seen in the past, and an important point is keeping the pressure on. The people of Iraq should take great pride in what they have accomplished and the coalition should take great pride in what they’ve enabled, but we can’t rest on our laurels. There’s still a lot of fighting left to do, a lot left to be done in the city of Mosul. There’s certainly a lot more to be done in Ninewa and across the country and in Syria as well. So we should reflect on what we’ve accomplished but we have to stay on this more until its over.

How do you engage the Sunnis?

That has to come through the government of Iraq. I think the prime minster, a very good man, recognizes the importance of that and hopefully he will continue to do that. It is pretty noteworthy to watch him up in city of Mosul, which is largely a Sunni city, and how well he was received up there and how he reached out and did all that. These are all the earmarks of a leader at war. He was performing as the commander in chief. I would also highlight that one of the things again on this point of the prime minister as commander in chief, one of the things he was absolutely strident on throughout this, was as we conducted the operation in Mosul, was ensuring that we did everything we could to protect that population up there, a population that was largely Sunni. And this was a horrible, challenging fight up there, and certainly, there have been civilian casualties. But I will tell you, through the prime minister’s leadership and his direction to his leaders and our support for them, I think we should be very proud of the way we conducted ourselves.

The battle for Raqqa is now on. How long will that take?

We are not going to make any time estimates on this. You just watched what took place in (Mosul), a city of 1.6 million, 1.7 million people. It took nine months. Raqqa is probably 300,000 to 400,000 people, but it’s in an area that again has had a long time to prepare and the forces we are operating in Syria are different than the forces we are operating with in Iraq. We’re not talking about the Iraqi army that has ministries to lead it. Now we are talking about a much more indigenous force made up largely of Syrian Arabs and Kurds — and Kurds are part of that indigenous force. They don’t have all the trappings of a big army, so I think it is important for people to understand the context of what we are doing here. A large city, an indigenous force, a well-prepared enemy. And by the way, an enemy now that has suffered a significant defeat, so they are running out of space there. We would expect they are going to fight harder, and more aggressively than they are and a large part of that is going to be exploited again. So I think it is going to be a challenging fight and it will take months.

Talk about the cease fire in southern Syria. How’s that working and what do you have to do?

Obviously, I would tell you we are paying very, very close attention, but there are no immediate equities for CentCom or the Department of Defense. That’s still very much being worked out. We have not been told to do anything with respect to that.

What are your thoughts on working with the Russians?

The word we use is not cooperation, but it is deconfliction and that is principally what we are doing. I have characterized this interchange as being very professional military to military interchange and I think trust certainly has to be earned over time here. But I will tell you the deconfliction line that we have had in place and has become more robust over time, meaning that not only do our air components talk to each other but (Army Lt. Gen. Stephen) Townsend (in charge of the ground war against Islamic State) now has the ability to talk to his counterpart.

As the White House looks at other options for working with Russians in Syria, are you comfortable sharing intelligence with them?

We don’t share any intelligence with them. I’m not authorized to do that. That’s not the nature of the relationship.

If the White House said it wanted some sharing of intelligence with the Russians, would you be comfortable with that?

If we are directed, we certainly would.

Talk about Iran and your concerns about their influence in the region.

I think Iranian influence is significant in the region, and as I have said and others have said, Iran is perhaps the most destabilizing. I should say the Iranian regime, not the Iranian people. I want to make sure I call a distinction between that. The Iranian people are culturally rich and deep and have a place in the region here, but the Iranian regime and their activities, particularly those under the Qods Force (special forces) element I think are the most destabilizing factor in the region long-term.

As the battle space shrinks and so many groups are fighting over the same dirt, and nations outside your region get involved, like Turkey and Israel, how concerned are you about something going wrong?

This is always present and when you look at the layers of complexity in a place like Syria, you’ve got extremists, a civil war, you’ve got ethno-sectarian challenges, whether Arabs and Kurds or Sunni and Shia or Turks and Kurds. Then there is the influence of state actors like Russia and Iran and you have legitimate concerns from a country like Turkey, for example. They have a very legitimate concern about terrorism that emanates from organizations like the PKK and other things there that I think are a concern. The concern for us is that when we do things, they have second or third order of effects that trip over into these other layers of complexity and really make things much more difficult to work. And that’s why I think the importance of deconfliction lines, the ability to talk, to make sure that, hey, this is what we are doing, here’s where we are focused — it has allowed us to prevent escalation, escalatory events, in some situations. I think it has been very, very, very vital.

The situation with Syrian Kurdish allies must be particularly vexing given the Turkish feelings towards them and the fact that they are also among the best fighting forces as allies.

We certainly acknowledge the Turkish concern. I think as you’ve seen, (Defense) Secretary (James) Mattis and a variety of others do and we support it 100 percent. Our intention is to be as transparent and as clear in terms of what we are doing here as we can be and I think that is working for us and again that’s another way of helping work through this complexity.

What additional complexities do the Israelis, who’ve fired on Syrian regime targets, present?

You just highlighted the complexity. One of the underlying challenges of course has been not only the Israeli-Palestinian issue but the Israeli-Arab issue that is an underlying current for a long time in this particular theater, so it certainly adds another level of complexity on top of all the blankets of complexity we have here that we have to be cognizant of. And again, we have to communicate and make sure people understand what’s happening here so I think it does highlight it.

Given the shared concern about Iran, do you see greater cooperation between Israel and Sunni nations in the region?

I think there is an opportunity, certainly, for that and I think that’s probably a better question for Israel or the other nations there to answer. But we certainly would encourage that.

Lets talk about the situation between Qatar and the nations blockading it. You have to work with all those nations. How is it going?

There have been some impacts, they’ve been mitigable to this particular point, but it is concerning to us. I’d prefer as a military man to see these differences addressed in a different way than perhaps they are now, through dialogue and discussion as opposed to some of the approaches that have been chosen. Nonetheless, that’s been done and we are where we are here, so I am grateful to our Department of State to get out there and help us work through some of these things and do that and help minimize the impact of what’s going on.

You said there are some impacts. What are those impacts?

The impacts are it potentially takes people’s focus off the common things we really want to be working on, like Iran, for example. It creates a disunity among a group of people that we rely on here. And again, to this point, these have been very mitigable in terms of what we are doing, so it is not significantly impacting what we are doing. But over time I think perhaps it could.

In a worst case scenario, what could that be?

At the very extreme of this it could be more direct action between these parties. The other thing more probable is it could lead to more lack of cooperation. I mean, we rely on all these partners. It’s no surprise that we have a big airbase in Qatar that supports our operations across the region, so we rely on that to make sure we can pursue our objectives and the common objectives here. I am concerned long-term a rift like this can, I think, effect relationships.

Let’s shift to Afghanistan, where there are still nearly 9,000 U.S. troops with plans to send more. Can the Afghans handle the fight?

What you seen over last couple of years is that the Afghan security forces are in the lead. They have been able to deal with the situations they are dealing with (like) attempts by the Taliban to come in and take over major urban areas. We’ve seen the Afghans be able to get after that and to take areas back and to prevent some of that. Where they’ve tried to expand into areas that are of importance to the Afghan government, around the capital — to the north, on the south, out in the east and in some areas they’ve been able to do some operations to take that — they’ve had, I think some success against the ISIS elements that exist in Afghanistan so they’ve done that. The Afghans have taken a lot of casualties. They’ve paid a very, very heavy price for that and they are engaged every day. And so that toll that takes over time is significant and it’s resulted in a situation where there is a bit of a stalemate here and so what we have to look at is how we help them move forward over that

Can you talk about your recommendation to the president for new troop levels in Afghanistan and what do you want those troops to do?

A: I won’t talk about what my specific military advice was up the chain of command that is still under consideration, so it is really inappropriate for me to talk about my specific (recommendations). I am satisfied that both (Army) Gen. (John) Nicholson (commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan) and I have had our ability to have input into the process and I am confident that the chain of command will take that on board and make some decisions here in terms of that. But that’s still underway here right now.

Can you talk about what the additional troops should do?

I think what we have to do is look at how we optimize the successes that the Afghan security forces have achieved, so I think one of the bright spots that you see in the Afghan security forces is their special operations capability. I think we need to look at how do we enable that more in the future. They’ve been very good. They’ve been the principle response force They’ve been a key element here to the fight as we’ve moved forward. So how do we double down on that aspect? Another aspect of that has been the budding Afghan air force. It’s not very big. It’s not as capable as it needs to be. But it has demonstrated some capability. On one of my most recent visits was down to the south part of the country, I was able to talk among the corps commander and what he was telling me about was how some of the aircraft that we have been able to get to them, the A-29s, have been very, very successful at doing close air support. Afghan air force supporting Afghan forces. This is good. We need to double down on that. The Afghans are in the process of moving their border control forces from ministry of the interior over to the ministry of defense. That’s a good move. That’s a very positive move. We need to look at how we can support that. The Afghan police have certainly had challenges and so we have to look at how we help them perform more of their appropriate police functions in holding area.

The Taliban has made significant gains. How confident are you that the Afghans can defend themselves?

I think I am confident, with our sustained assistance, I think they can. I think a very good factor here has been President (Ashraf) Ghani, and he does have a long-term vision. He’s laid out a four-year approach here for how he kind of sees things he’s done for the coalition and I think the response from the NATO partner and others has been very, very good in terms of that. As I think I’ve commented to you, I’m a soldier who went to Afghanistan in as early as October of 2001. I was in the first wave. I went there, so I want to be hopeful for Afghanistan. I want to see them succeed. But it’s going to take something — we’re turning a big ship here and there are challenges. There are challenges of corruption, there are challenges with bad governments, challenges of disenfranchisement, all kinds of things that have to be addressed. And we have to stay focused on all of those things. It isn’t just about fire power, and advisors and things like that. It’s addressing all of these other things and making this a professional force and doing things we talked about with (non-commissioned officers) here. It really is about a very comprehensive approach. It is going to take time and we have to be able to sustain that over time. We’ll be able to mitigate the troop levels and other things based on the situation and stuff like that. I’m confident that we can make decisions on that, but what’s important is the sustained support.

Do you see sustained support in the form of continued U.S. troop presence in both Afghanistan and Iraq and for how long?

I think as long as it takes. But again, these enter into policy decisions so I don’t want to get out ahead of the policy makers. But from my perspective, as a military man and CentCom commander, I think when we provide assistance we have to be prepared to sustain that. We can’t just come in and do something and leave. You know we did that in Afghanistan in the past and we saw what happened as a result of that. We did that in Iraq and we saw what happened as a result of that. So I think we have to be cognizant of paying attention to the lessons of the past here and trying not to repeat those things.

Anything else you want to add?

I think in the wake of a great success like Mosul here, the thing I want the people of Tampa and the American people to recognize is that we are very, very proud of our partners in Iraq and all the coalition partners. They should continue to be proud of how our country is being represented. They should be very, very proud of the men and women we have out there, doing our nation’s bidding. I certainly am.

Chinese Spy Ship, Alaska Coast During Missile Defense Test

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A Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptor is launched from the Pacific Spaceport Complex Alaska in Kodiak, Alaska, during Flight Test THAAD (FTT)-18 on July 11, 2017. During the test, the THAAD weapon system successfully intercepted an air-launched intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) target. Grant Ferowich

Chinese spy ship lurks off coast of Alaska during missile defense test

(CNN) A Chinese spy ship has been sailing in international waters off the coast of Alaska for several days, having first arrived in the area shortly before the test of a US missile defense system, multiple US officials have told CNN.

US Navy Capt. Scott Miller, spokesperson for the North American Aerospace Defense Command, said the ship is believed to be a “communications” or “intelligence” vessel and confirmed it has been in the area for the last few days.
Miller would not speculate on the reason for the ship being there.
Army-Navy Type 815 Dongdiao-class auxiliary general intelligence (AGI) vessel. According to the PLA report cited by the China Daily, the PLA Navy now operates six electronic reconnaissance vessels. The report also gave specific information about the ships such as their capabilities and functions. The Tianlangxing arrived off the coast of Alaska shortly before the July 11 test of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system against an intermediate-range ballistic missile. More here.
Two US military officials told CNN that the ship is operating approximately 100 miles off the Alaska coast in international waters.
The officials pointed out that the Chinese ship is operating legally and said the US does not have security concerns about the vessel.
US ships also regularly operate in international waters near China.
The officials said it is possible the ship was there to observe the recent successful Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system test off Alaska, but the US has no way of confirming that intent.
However, one official told CNN that it was rare for China to operate this type of ship in that area and that it was reasonable to assume it was there to observe the test.
China has long protested the US-South Korea decision to deploy THAAD to the Korean peninsula, saying that it could be used to target Chinese missiles.
South Korean and US officials say the system would be used to intercept missiles coming from North Korea.
The same official said that the US had observed similar Chinese vessels in recent days sailing off the coast of Guam and shadowing a joint US-Australia military exercise named Talisman Sabre. The official added this level of activity was unusual.

Published on Jul 28, 2016

The U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA), Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS) Operational Test Agency, Joint Functional Component Command for Integrated Missile Defense, U.S. European Command, and U.S. Pacific Command conducted a complex operational flight test of the BMDS demonstrating a layered defense architecture.

The test, designated Flight Test Operational-02 Event 2a, was conducted in the vicinity of Wake Island and surrounding areas of the western Pacific Ocean. The test stressed the ability of Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) weapon systems to negate two ballistic missile threats while Aegis BMD simultaneously conducted an anti-air warfare operation.
Video by Ben Listerman
Missile Defense Agency