Only Obama Adheres to Iran Deal, Others Pretend

Posted on October 11, 2015October 11, 2015 by Denise Simon

Primer:

SOURCE: Naharnet (Lebanon) 11 Oct.’15:”Fiery Scenes as Iran MPs Give Partial Nod to Nuclear Deal”, Agence France Press

SUBJECT: Iran’s ‘partial nod’ to nuclear deal

FULL TEXT: Iran’s parliament gave a partial nod to a nuclear deal with world powers Sunday but only after fiery clashes and allegations from a top negotiator that a lawmaker had threatened to kill him.

Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency, went on the attack for the government at the end of a boisterous debate where he and other officials were accused of having capitulated.

Ultraconservative lawmakers repeatedly warned of holes in the text of the agreement and criticized President Hassan Rouhani for suggesting MPs were deliberately delaying the deal.

Red with anger, Alireza Zakani, who headed a panel reviewing the accord, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, for two months, demanded “fundamental changes” to the text.

“This deal serves Wendy Sherman” and not Iran’s interests, Zakani said, referring to America’s senior negotiator in talks which resulted in the agreement in Vienna on July 14.

Hardliners in Tehran often railed against two years of diplomacy that led to the deal. Iran’s government says the accord will protect the country’s nuclear program while seeing sanctions lifted.

Despite Sunday’s[11 Oct] disagreements, the outlines of a motion titled “Iran’s Plan for Reciprocal and Proper Action in Implementing JCPOA” were approved by 139 of 253 lawmakers present.

One-hundred lawmakers voted against and 12 abstained. Iran has 290 MPs in total. They stopped short of endorsing the nuclear accord on Sunday and said specific details of the text are to be discussed and voted on Tuesday. Members of the U.S. Congress failed in September to torpedo the White House’s historic deal with Iran.

Salehi, an atomic scientist by training and a former foreign minister, hit out at what he said was the “immoral” behavior of some MPs in the way they had responded to talks and the deal.

Having to raise his voice, Salehi said: “Truth might be bitter for some… Listen. Listen. Hear me once and for all. Hear it from someone who is going be buried under cement.”

The latter remark was in reference to a lawmaker who Salehi said took a vow to kill him because the government agreed to remove and disable the core of a reactor at Arak, one of Iran’s nuclear sites.

“We negotiated within a framework and principles. Who set that framework? Me? A minimum and maximum was set for us,” Salehi said.

So-called red lines for the talks were also laid down by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the Supreme National Security Council that he oversees.

Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who led Iran’s diplomacy with the six powers, attended Sunday’s parliament session but he did not speak publicly. State television broadcast only live audio of the session over stills of the parliament, citing “opposition from Majlis authorities.”

However, pictures posted on social media sites showed the fierce exchanges.

Now to Obama:

Obama will be the only person sticking to Iran deal

By Amir Taheri

NYP: Sometime this week, President Obama is scheduled to sign an executive order to meet the Oct. 15 “adoption day” he has set for the nuclear deal he says he has made with Iran. According to the president’s timetable the next step would be “the start day of implementation,” fixed for Dec. 15.

But as things now stand, Obama may end up being the only person in the world to sign his much-wanted deal, in effect making a treaty with himself.

The Iranians have signed nothing and have no plans for doing so. The so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) has not even been discussed at the Islamic Republic’s Council of Ministers. Nor has the Tehran government bothered to even provide an official Persian translation of the 159-page text.

The Islamic Majlis, the ersatz parliament, is examining an unofficial text and is due to express its views at an unspecified date in a document “running into more than 1,000 pages,” according to Mohsen Zakani, who heads the “examining committee.”

“The changes we seek would require substantial rewriting of the text,” he adds enigmatically.

Nor have Britain, China, Germany, France and Russia, who were involved in the so-called P5+1 talks that produced the JCPOA, deemed it necessary to provide the Obama “deal” with any legal basis of their own. Obama’s partners have simply decided that the deal he is promoting is really about lifting sanctions against Iran and nothing else.

So they have started doing just that without bothering about JCPOA’s other provisions. Britain has lifted the ban on 22 Iranian banks and companies blacklisted because of alleged involvement in deals linked to the nuclear issue.

German trade with Iran has risen by 33 percent, making it the Islamic Republic’s third-largest partner after China.

China has signed preliminary accords to help Iran build five more nuclear reactors. Russia has started delivering S300 anti-aircraft missile systems and is engaged in talks to sell Sukhoi planes to the Islamic Republic.

France has sent its foreign minister and a 100-man delegation to negotiate big business deals, including projects to double Iran’s crude oil exports.

Other nations have also interpreted JCPOA as a green light for dropping sanctions. Indian trade with Iran has risen by 17 percent, and New Delhi is negotiating massive investment in a rail-and-sea hub in the Iranian port of Chah-Bahar on the Gulf of Oman. With help from Austrian, Turkish and United Arab Emirates banks, the many banking restrictions imposed on Iran because of its nuclear program have been pushed aside.

“The structures of sanctions built over decades is crumbling,” boasts Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.

Meanwhile, the nuclear project is and shall remain “fully intact,” says the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency, Ali Akbar Salehi.

“We have started working on a process of nuclear fusion that will be cutting-edge technology for the next 50 years,” he adds.

Even before Obama’s “implementation day,” the mullahs are receiving an average of $400 million a month, no big sum, but enough to ease the regime’s cash-flow problems and increase pay for its repressive forces by around 21 percent.

Last month, Iran and the P5+1 created a joint commission to establish the modalities of implementation of an accord, a process they wish to complete by December 2017 when the first two-year review of JCPOA is scheduled to take place and when Obama will no longer be in the White House. (If things go awry Obama could always blame his successor or even George W Bush.)

Both Obama and his Secretary of State John Kerry have often claimed that, its obvious shortcomings notwithstanding, their nuke deal with the “moderate faction” in Tehran might encourage positive changes in Iran’s behavior.

That hasn’t happened.

The mullahs see the “deal” as a means with which Obama would oppose any suggestion of trying to curb Iran.

“Obama won’t do anything that might jeopardize the deal,” says Ziba Kalam, a Rouhani adviser. “This is his biggest, if not the only, foreign policy success.”

If there have been changes in Tehran’s behavior they have been for the worst. Iran has teamed up with Russia to keep Bashar al-Assad in power in Syria, mocking Obama’s “Assad must go” rhetoric. More importantly, Iran has built its direct military presence in Syria to 7,000 men. (One of Iran’s most senior generals was killed in Aleppo on Wednesday.)

Tehran has also pressured Iraqi Premier Haidar al-Abadi’s weak government to distance itself from Washington and join a dubious coalition with Iran, Russia and Syria.

Certain that Obama is paralyzed by his fear of undermining the non-existent “deal” the mullahs have intensified their backing for Houthi rebels in Yemen. Last week a delegation was in Tehran with a long shopping list for arms.

In Lebanon, the mullahs have toughened their stance on choosing the country’s next president. And in Bahrain, Tehran is working on a plan to “ensure an early victory” of the Shiite revolution in the archipelago.

Confident that Obama is determined to abandon traditional allies of the United States, Tehran has also heightened propaganda war against Saudi Arabia, now openly calling for the overthrow of the monarchy there.

The mullahs are also heightening contacts with Palestinian groups in the hope of unleashing a new “Intifada.”

“Palestine is thirsty for a third Intifada,” Supreme Guide Khamenei’s mouthpiece Kayhan said in an editorial last Thursday. “It is the duty of every Muslim to help start it as soon as possible.”

Obama’s hopes of engaging Iran on other issues were dashed last week when Khamenei declared “any dialogue with the American Great Satan” to be” forbidden.”

“We have no need of America” his adviser Ali-Akbar Velayati added later. “Iran is the region’s big power in its own right.”

Obama had hoped that by sucking up to the mullahs he would at least persuade them to moderate their “hate-America campaign.” Not a bit of that.

“Death to America” slogans, adoring official buildings in Tehran have been painted afresh along with US flags, painted at the entrance of offices so that they could be trampled underfoot. None of the US citizens still held hostages in Iran has been released, and one, Washington Post stringer Jason Rezai, is branded as “head of a spy ring “in Tehran. Paralyzed by his fear of undermining the non-existent deal, Obama doesn’t even call for their release.

Government-sponsored anti-American nationwide events are announced for November, anniversary of the seizure of the US Embassy in Tehran. The annual “End of America” week-long conference is planned for February and is to focus on “African-American victims of US police” and the possibility of “self-determination for blacks.”

According to official sources “families of Black American victims” and a number of “black American revolutionaries” have been invited.

Inside Iran, Obama’s “moderate partners” have doubled the number of executions and political prisoners. Last week they crushed marches by teachers calling for release of their leaders. Hundreds of trade unionists have been arrested and a new “anti-insurrection” brigade paraded in Tehran to terrorize possible protestors.

The Obama deal may end up as the biggest diplomatic scam in recent history.

What? The JFK Warren Commission Report Cover-Up?

Posted on October 10, 2015October 10, 2015 by Denise Simon

Hah….say it isn’t so….C’mon…but who ordered the CIA to protect facts and sources? At least since most of us never trusted the Warren Commission Report, some new facts are revealed. Ever wonder why the entire file is not declassified, which is law after 50 years? (Ask Barack Obama).

Perhaps we need to storm George Washington University Archives Center and see what beyond this we can dig up after 50+ years.

Politico: John McCone came to the CIA as an outsider. An industrialist and an engineer by training, he replaced veteran spymaster Allen Dulles as director of central intelligence in November 1961, after John F. Kennedy had forced out Dulles following the CIA’s bungled operation to oust Fidel Castro by invading Cuba’s Bay of Pigs. McCone had one overriding mission: restore order at the besieged CIA. Kennedy hoped his management skills might prevent a future debacle, even if the Californian—mostly a stranger to the clubby, blue-blooded world of the men like Dulles who had always run the spy agency—faced a steep learning curve.

After JFK’s assassination in Dallas in November 1963, President Lyndon Johnson kept McCone in place at the CIA, and the CIA director became an important witness before the Warren Commission, the panel Johnson created to investigate Kennedy’s murder. McCone pledged full cooperation with the commission, which was led by Chief Justice Earl Warren, and testified that the CIA had no evidence to suggest that Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin, was part of any conspiracy, foreign or domestic. In its final report, the commission came to agree with McCone’s depiction of Oswald, a former Marine and self-proclaimed Marxist, as a delusional lone wolf.

But did McCone come close to perjury all those decades ago? Did the onetime Washington outsider in fact hide agency secrets that might still rewrite the history of the assassination? Even the CIA is now willing to raise these questions. Half a century after JFK’s death, in a once-secret report written in 2013 by the CIA’s top in-house historian and quietly declassified last fall, the spy agency acknowledges what others were convinced of long ago: that McCone and other senior CIA officials were “complicit” in keeping “incendiary” information from the Warren Commission.

According to the report by CIA historian David Robarge, McCone, who died in 1991, was at the heart of a “benign cover-up” at the spy agency, intended to keep the commission focused on “what the Agency believed at the time was the ‘best truth’—that Lee Harvey Oswald, for as yet undetermined motives, had acted alone in killing John Kennedy.” The most important information that McCone withheld from the commission in its 1964 investigation, the report found, was the existence, for years, of CIA plots to assassinate Castro, some of which put the CIA in cahoots with the Mafia. Without this information, the commission never even knew to ask the question of whether Oswald had accomplices in Cuba or elsewhere who wanted Kennedy dead in retaliation for the Castro plots.

While raising no question about the essential findings of the Warren Commission, including that Oswald was the gunman in Dallas, the 2013 report is important because it comes close to an official CIA acknowledgement—half a century after the fact—of impropriety in the agency’s dealings with the commission. The coverup by McCone and others may have been “benign,” in the report’s words, but it was a cover-up nonetheless, denying information to the commission that might have prompted a more aggressive investigation of Oswald’s potential Cuba ties.

Initially stamped “SECRET/NOFORN,” meaning it was not to be shared outside the agency or with foreign governments, Robarge’s report was originally published as an article in the CIA’s classified internal magazine, Studies in Intelligence, in September 2013, to mark the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination. The article, drawn from a still-classified 2005 biography of McCone written by Robarge, was declassified quietly last fall and is now available on the website of The George Washington University’s National Security Archive. In a statement to POLITICO, the CIA said it decided to declassify the report “to highlight misconceptions about the CIA’s connection to JFK’s assassination,” including the still-popular conspiracy theory that the spy agency was somehow behind the assassination. (Articles in the CIA magazine are routinely declassified without fanfare after internal review.)

Robarge’s article says that McCone, quickly convinced after the assassination that Oswald had acted alone and that there was no foreign conspiracy involving Cuba or the Soviet Union, directed the agency to provide only “passive, reactive and selective” assistance to the Warren Commission. This portrait of McCone suggests that he was much more hands-on in the CIA’s dealings with the commission—and in the agency’s post-assassination scrutiny of Oswald’s past—than had previously been known. The report quotes another senior CIA official, who heard McCone say that he intended to “handle the whole (commission) business myself, directly.”

The report offers no conclusion about McCone’s motivations, including why he would go to lengths to cover-up CIA activities that mostly predated his time at the agency. But it suggests that the Johnson White House might have directed McCone to hide the information. McCone “shared the administration’s interest in avoiding disclosures about covert actions that would circumstantially implicate [the] CIA in conspiracy theories and possibly lead to calls for a tough US response against the perpetrators of the assassination,” the article reads. “If the commission did not know to ask about covert operations about Cuba, he was not going to give them any suggestions about where to look.”

In an interview, David Slawson, who was the Warren Commission’s chief staff investigator in searching for evidence of a foreign conspiracy, said he was not surprised to learn that McCone had personally withheld so much information from the investigation in 1964, especially about the Castro plots.

“I always assumed McCone must have known, because I always believed that loyalty and discipline in the CIA made any large-scale operation without the consent of the director impossible,” says Slawson, now 84 and a retired University of Southern California law professor. He says he regrets that it had taken so long for the spy agency to acknowledge that McCone and others had seriously misled the commission. After half a century, Slawson says, “The world loses interest, because the assassination becomes just a matter of history to more and more people.”

The report identifies other tantalizing information that McCone did not reveal to the commission, including evidence that the CIA might somehow have been in communication with Oswald before 1963 and that the spy agency had secretly monitored Oswald’s mail after he attempted to defect to the Soviet Union in 1959. The CIA mail-opening program, which was later determined to have been blatantly illegal, had the code name HTLINGUAL. “It would be surprising if the DCI [director of central intelligence] were not told about the program” after the Kennedy assassination, the report reads. “If not, his subordinates deceived him. If he did know about HTLINGUAL reporting on Oswald, he was not being forthright with the commission—presumably to protect an operation that was highly compartmented and, if disclosed, sure to arouse much controversy.”

In the 1970s, when congressional investigations exposed the Castro plots, members of the Warren Commission and its staff expressed outrage that they had been denied the information in 1964. Had they known about the plots, they said, the commission would have been much more aggressive in trying to determine whether JFK’s murder was an act of retaliation by Castro or his supporters. Weeks before the assassination, Oswald traveled to Mexico City and met there with spies for the Cuban and Soviet governments—a trip that CIA and FBI officials have long acknowledged was never adequately investigated. (Even so, Warren Commission staffers remain convinced today that Oswald was the lone gunman in Dallas, a view shared by ballistics experts who have studied the evidence.)

In congressional testimony in 1978, after public disclosures about the Castro plots, McCone claimed that he could not have shared information about the plots with the Warren Commission in 1964 because he was ignorant of the plots at the time. Other CIA officials “withheld the information from me,” he said. “I have never been satisfied as to why they withheld the information.” But the 2013 report concluded that “McCone’s testimony was neither frank nor accurate,” since it was later determined with certainty that he had been informed about the CIA-Mafia plots nine months before his appearance before the Warren Commission.

Robarge suggests the CIA is responsible for some of the harsh criticism commonly leveled at the Warren Commission for large gaps in its investigation of the president’s murder, including its failure to identify Oswald’s motive in the assassination and to pursue evidence that might have tied Oswald to accomplices outside the United States. For decades, opinion polls have shown that most Americans reject the commission’s findings and believe Oswald did not act alone. Four of the seven commissioners were members of Congress, and they spent the rest of their political careers badgered by accusations that they had been part of a coverup.

“The decision of McCone and Agency leaders in 1964 not to disclose information about CIA’s anti-Castro schemes might have done more to undermine the credibility of the commission than anything else that happened while it was conducting its investigation,” the report reads. “In that sense—and in that sense alone—McCone may be regarded as a ‘co-conspirator’ in the JFK assassination ‘cover-up.’”

If there was, indeed, a CIA “cover-up,” a member of the Warren Commission was apparently in on it: Allen Dulles, McCone’s predecessor, who ran the CIA when the spy agency hatched the plots to kill Castro. “McCone does not appear to have any explicit, special understanding with Allen Dulles,” the 2013 report says. Still, McCone could “rest assured that his predecessor would keep a dutiful watch over Agency equities and work to keep the commission from pursuing provocative lines of investigation, such as lethal anti-Castro covert actions.” (Johnson appointed Dulles to the commission at the recommendation of then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy.)

The 2013 report also draws attention to the contacts between McCone and Robert Kennedy in the days after the assassination. In the wake of the Bay of Pigs disaster in 1961, the attorney general was asked by his brother, the president, to direct the administration’s secret war against Castro, and Robert Kennedy’s friends and family acknowledged years later that he never stopped fearing that Castro was behind his brother’s death. “McCone had frequent contact with Robert Kennedy during the painful days after the assassination,” the report says. “Their communication appears to have been verbal, informal and, evidently in McCone’s estimation, highly personal; no memoranda or transcripts exist or are known to have been made.”

“Because Robert Kennedy had overseen the Agency’s anti-Castro covert actions—including some of the assassination plans—his dealings with McCone about his brother’s murder had a special gravity,” the report continues. “Did Castro kill the president because the president had tried to kill Castro? Had the administration’s obsession with Cuba inadvertently inspired a politicized sociopath to murder John Kennedy?”

The declassification of the bulk of the 2013 McCone report might suggest a new openness by the CIA in trying to resolve the lingering mysteries about the Kennedy assassination. At the same time, there are 15 places in the public version of the report where the CIA has deleted sensitive information—sometimes individual names, sometimes whole sentences. It is an acknowledgement, it seems, that there are still secrets about the Kennedy assassination hidden in the agency’s files.

Bowe Bergdahl, Time Served

Posted on October 10, 2015October 10, 2015 by Denise Simon

Remember, Obama approved the ransom payment to Haqqani for Bergdahl, or was it? Perhaps it was to finish the prisoner swap details with both networks, the Taliban and Haqqani.

An Army officer is recommending that Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl face a lower-level court martial and be spared the possibility of jail time for leaving his post in Afghanistan, his lawyer said Saturday.
Defense attorney Eugene Fidell said Lt. Col. Mark Visger has decided Bergdahl’s case should go to a military system similar to civilian courts that handle misdemeanor charges. It limits the maximum punishment to reduction of rank, a bad conduct discharge and a short jail term, though that isn’t being sought, Fidell said. Military prosecutors charged Bergdahl in March with desertion and misbehavior before the enemy, a charge that could carry a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.

By The Associated Press – Associated Press – Saturday, October 10, 2015

Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl was handed over to U.S. special forces in May 2014 after nearly five years in captivity in Afghanistan. Here is a look at some of the key events from his capture until Saturday, when an Army officer recommended Bergdahl’s case should go to a military system that’s similar to civilian courts that handle misdemeanors:

June 30, 2009 – Bergdahl, who is serving with an Alaska-based infantry regiment, vanishes from a base in Afghanistan’s Paktika province near the border of Pakistan.

July 2, 2009 – Two U.S. officials tell The Associated Press on condition of anonymity that Bergdahl had “just walked off” his base with three Afghans after his shift.

July 18, 2009 – Taliban posts video online showing Bergdahl saying he was “scared I won’t be able to go home.” Bergdahl also says he was lagging behind a patrol when he was captured.

July 19, 2009 – Pentagon confirms missing U.S. solider in Afghanistan is Pfc. Bowe R. Bergdahl, 23, of Ketchum, Idaho.

July 22, 2009 – More than 500 people attend a vigil in Hailey, Idaho, to show support for Bergdahl and his family.

Dec. 25, 2009 – The Taliban releases a video showing Bergdahl apparently healthy and making a lengthy statement criticizing the U.S. military operation.

June 16, 2011 – The Army announces that Bergdahl has been promoted from specialist to sergeant.

June 30, 2011 – Bergdahl’s parents mark the second anniversary of their son’s capture at hometown event.

Aug. 29, 2011 – US officials tell the AP that direct U.S. talks with the Taliban had evolved to a substantive negotiation before they were scuttled by Afghan officials who feared the talks would undercut President Hamid Karzai.

May 9, 2012 – Bergdahl’s parents say they are hopeful that negotiations or a prisoner swap could bring their son home. Bob Bergdahl tells hometown newspaper that he’s concerned the U.S. government hasn’t done enough to secure his son’s release. The AP agreed in 2010 – at the request of the Pentagon and the White House – not to report on the proposed prisoner swap and ongoing negotiations, on the grounds that public discussion would endanger Bergdahl’s life. When Bergdahl’s parents began to discuss the deal publicly, the AP and other news organizations reported the proposed swap – a plan that would allow the transfer of five Taliban prisoners held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Weekend of May 27, 2012 – President Barack Obama calls Bergdahl’s parents to assure them that he and the U.S. Department of Defense were doing everything in their power to free Bergdahl.

June 29, 2012 – Bergdahl’s family and hometown marks the third anniversary of his capture. Parents release a statement saying they hope he’s released this year and can return home.

June 20, 2013 – The Taliban proposes a deal in which they would free Bergdahl in exchange for five of their most senior operatives at Guantanamo Bay.

July 9, 2013 – The Taliban close the office in Qatar that was serving as the site for negotiations with the U.S.

Jan. 15, 2014 – U.S. officials say they received a new video of Bergdahl that they believe was taken in the last month, showing Bergdahl is alive.

Feb. 18, 2014 – Bergdahl’s family says they are cautiously optimistic about reported renewed efforts by the Obama’s administration to win his freedom.

May 31, 2014 – Obama administration officials announce that Bergdahl was handed over to U.S. special forces by the Taliban in exchange for the release of five Guantanamo detainees. Bergdahl’s parents say they’re “joyful and relieved.” But debate quickly erupts over whether Bergdahl is a hero or a deserter.

June 2, 2014 – Afghanistan’s Foreign Ministry criticizes the U.S. for swapping Taliban prisoners at Guantanamo Bay to secure Bergdahl’s release. American officials tell The Associated Press that the Pentagon concluded in 2012 that Bergdahl walked away from his unit, something members of his unit had said put soldiers in danger.

June 4, 2014 – Bergdahl’s Idaho hometown cancels plans to celebrate his return, citing security concerns.

June 13, 2014 – Bergdahl arrives at Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio.

June 16, 2014 – The Army says it is investigating the facts and circumstances around Bergdahl’s disappearance.

Aug. 6, 2014 – The Army begins questioning Bergdahl, who by now has returned to regular duty, about his disappearance.

Aug. 21, 2014 – The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office says the Pentagon broke the law when it swapped Bergdahl for five Taliban leaders because it didn’t notify relevant congressional committees at least 30 days in advance and used money from a wartime account to make the transfer.

Dec. 19, 2014 – The Army says it has finished its investigation.

March 25, 2015 – Bergdahl is charged with desertion and misbehavior before the enemy.

March 26, 2015 – Bergdahl’s lawyer releases a note in which Bergdahl says he was repeatedly tortured by the Taliban.

Sept. 17, 2015 – An Article 32 hearing begins to determine whether Bergdahl should face a military trial for leaving his post.

Sept. 18, 2015 – The hearing ends, and the presiding officer will forward his recommendations to the leader of the U.S. Army Forces Command, who will decide whether it should be referred to a court-martial or be resolved in another manner.

Oct. 9, 2015 – Bergdahl’s attorney says an Army officer recommends that Bergdahl face a lesser court-martial, meaning it should go to a military system that’s similar to civilian courts that handle misdemeanor, as well as not spend time in jail.

ISIS, Toyota Trucks and the U.S. State Dept

Posted on October 10, 2015October 10, 2015 by Denise Simon

File this one under…..’shaking my head’.

Where did Islamic State get all those Toyota trucks?

The National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces was founded in Doha, Qatar in 2012. It is a lobby operation in Washington DC supporting the banner of the Free Syrian Army, presently led by Oubai Shahbander, a Washington-based advisor to the Syrian National Coalition.

Sadly, while the West attempted to support the anti-Assad forces in an admittedly failed program this week with particular emphasis on Russian intervention into Syria with bombing of only an estimated 10% of Islamic State forces, the U.S. has terminated this program. Many of those trained by Special Forces and the CIA fell victim to being kidnapped, killed or defected to Islamic State and those pesky Toyota rides were seized by ISIS fighting factions.

As airspace de-confliction talks continue between Russia and the United States, a decision was made by Secretary Carter to begin to support the Kurds instead as airstrikes by the U.S. has picked up some pace in the last two days.

Heh, perhaps the targets now being watched are convoys with U.S. State Department Toyota trucks in the hands of Islamic State.

Mystery of ISIS’ Toyota Army Solved: Evidence Show Transferring Was Through Turkey

The US Treasury has recently opened an inquiry about the so-called “Islamic State’s” (ISIS/ISIL) use of large numbers of brand-new Toyota trucks. The issue has arisen in the wake of Russia’s air operations over Syria and growing global suspicion that the US itself has played a key role in arming, funding, and intentionally perpetuating the terrorist army across Syria and Iraq.

ABC News in their article, “US Officials Ask How ISIS Got So Many Toyota Trucks,” reports:

U.S. counter-terror officials have asked Toyota, the world’s second largest auto maker, to help them determine how ISIS has managed to acquire the large number of Toyota pick-up trucks and SUVs seen prominently in the terror group’s propaganda videos in Iraq, Syria and Libya, ABC News has learned.

Toyota says it does not know how ISIS obtained the vehicles and is “supporting” the inquiry led by the Terror Financing unit of the Treasury Department — part of a broad U.S. effort to prevent Western-made goods from ending up in the hands of the terror group.

“This is a question we’ve been asking our neighbors,” Faily said. “How could these brand new trucks… these four wheel drives, hundreds of them — where are they coming from?”

Not surprisingly, it appears the US Treasury is asking the wrong party. Instead of Toyota, the US Treasury’s inquiry should have started next door at the US State Department.

Mystery Solved

Just last year it was reported that the US State Department had been sending in fleets of specifically Toyota-brand trucks into Syria to whom they claimed was the “Free Syrian Army.”

US foundation-funded Public Radio International (PRI) reported in a 2014 article titled, “This one Toyota pickup truck is at the top of the shopping list for the Free Syrian Army — and the Taliban,” that:

Recently, when the US State Department resumed sending non-lethal aid to Syrian rebels, the delivery list included 43 Toyota trucks.

Hiluxes were on the Free Syrian Army’s wish list. Oubai Shahbander, a Washington-based advisor to the Syrian National Coalition, is a fan of the truck.

“Specific equipment like the Toyota Hiluxes are what we refer to as force enablers for the moderate opposition forces on the ground,” he adds. Shahbander says the US-supplied pickups will be delivering troops and supplies into battle. Some of the fleet will even become battlefield weapons..

The British government has also admittedly supplied a number of vehicles to terrorists fighting inside of Syria. The British Independent’s 2013 article titled, “Revealed: What the West has given Syria’s rebels,” reported that:

So far the UK has sent around £8m of “non-lethal” aid, according to official papers seen by The Independent, comprising five 4×4 vehicles with ballistic protection; 20 sets of body armour; four trucks (three 25 tonne, one 20 tonne); six 4×4 SUVs; five non-armoured pick-ups; one recovery vehicle; four fork-lifts; three advanced “resilience kits” for region hubs, designed to rescue people in emergencies; 130 solar powered batteries; around 400 radios; water purification and rubbish collection kits; laptops; VSATs (small satellite systems for data communications) and printers.

It’s fair to say that whatever pipeline the US State Department and the British government used to supply terrorists in Syria with these trucks was likely used to send additional vehicles before and after these reports were made public.

The mystery of how hundreds of identical, brand-new ISIS-owned Toyota trucks have made it into Syria is solved. Not only has the US and British government admitted in the past to supplying them, their military forces and intelligence agencies ply the borders of Turkey, Jordan, and even Iraq where these fleets of trucks must have surely passed on their way to Syria – even if other regional actors supplied them. While previous admissions to supplying the vehicles implicates the West directly, that nothing resembling interdiction operations have been set up along any of these borders implicates the West as complicit with other parties also supplying vehicles to terrorists inside of Syria.

What Mystery?

Of course, much of this is not new information. So the question remains – why is the US Treasury just now carrying on with this transparent charade? Perhaps those in Washington believe that if the US government is the one asking this obvious question of how ISIS has managed to field such an impressive mechanized army in the middle of the Syrian desert, no one will suspect they had a role in it.

Of course, the trucks didn’t materialize in Syria. They originated outside of Syria and were brought in, and in great numbers, with the explicit knowledge and/or direct complicity of the US and its regional allies. Asking Toyota where the US State Department’s own trucks came from is another indication of just how lost US foreign policy, legitimacy, and credibility has become.

Russia’s intervention, and what should become a widely supported anti-terror coalition must keep in mind the criminality of the US and its partners when choosing its own partners in efforts to restore security and order across the Middle East and North Africa.

They Are Coming

Posted on October 9, 2015October 9, 2015 by Denise Simon

Per the FBI website: Good afternoon Chairman Johnson, Ranking Member Carper, and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the current threats to the homeland and our efforts to address new challenges, including terrorists’ use of technology to communicate—both to inspire and recruit. The widespread use of technology propagates the persistent terrorist message to attack U.S. interests whether in the homeland or abroad. As the threat to harm Western interests evolves, we must adapt and confront the challenges, relying heavily on the strength of our federal, state, local, and international partnerships. Our successes depend on interagency cooperation. We work closely with our partners within the Department of Homeland Security and the National Counterterrorism Center to address current and emerging threats.

Counterterrorism

Counterterrorism remains the FBI’s top priority, however, the threat has changed in two significant ways. First, the core al Qaeda tumor has been reduced, but the cancer has metastasized. The progeny of al Qaeda—including AQAP, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)—have become our focus.

Secondly, we are confronting the explosion of terrorist propaganda and training on the Internet. It is no longer necessary to get a terrorist operative into the United States to recruit. Terrorists, in ungoverned spaces, disseminate poisonous propaganda and training materials to attract troubled souls around the world to their cause. They encourage these individuals to travel, but if they can’t travel, they motivate them to act at home. This is a significant change from a decade ago.

We continue to identify individuals who seek to join the ranks of foreign fighters traveling in support of ISIL, and also homegrown violent extremists who may aspire to attack the United States from within. These threats remain among the highest priorities for the FBI and the Intelligence Community as a whole.

Conflicts in Syria and Iraq continue to serve as the most attractive overseas theaters for Western-based extremists who want to engage in violence. We estimate approximately 250 Americans have traveled or attempted to travel to Syria to participate in the conflict. While this number is lower in comparison to many of our international partners, we closely analyze and assess the influence groups like ISIL have on individuals located in the United States who are inspired to commit acts of violence. Whether or not the individuals are affiliated with a foreign terrorist organization and are willing to travel abroad to fight or are inspired by the call to arms to act in their communities, they potentially pose a significant threat to the safety of the United States and U.S. persons.

ISIL has proven relentless in its violent campaign to rule and has aggressively promoted its hateful message, attracting like-minded extremists to include Westerners. To an even greater degree than al Qaeda or other foreign terrorist organizations, ISIL has persistently used the Internet to communicate. From a homeland perspective, it is ISIL’s widespread reach through the Internet and social media which is most concerning as ISIL has aggressively employed this technology for its nefarious strategy. ISIL blends traditional media platforms, glossy photos, in-depth articles, and social media campaigns that can go viral in a matter of seconds. No matter the format, the message of radicalization spreads faster than we imagined just a few years ago.

Unlike other groups, ISIL has constructed a narrative that touches on all facets of life—from career opportunities to family life to a sense of community. The message isn’t tailored solely to those who are overtly expressing symptoms of radicalization. It is seen by many who click through the Internet every day, receive social media push notifications, and participate in social networks. Ultimately, many of these individuals are seeking a sense of belonging.

As a communication medium, social media is a critical tool for terror groups to exploit. One recent example occurred when an individual was arrested for providing material support to ISIL by facilitating an associate’s travel to Syria to join ISIL. The arrested individual had multiple connections, via a social media networking site, with other like-minded individuals.

There is no set profile for the susceptible consumer of this propaganda. However, one trend continues to rise—the inspired youth. We’ve seen certain children and young adults drawing deeper into the ISIL narrative. These individuals are often comfortable with virtual communication platforms, specifically social media networks.

ISIL continues to disseminate their terrorist message to all social media users—regardless of age. Following other groups, ISIL has advocated for lone offender attacks. In recent months ISIL released a video, via social media, reiterating the group’s encouragement of lone offender attacks in Western countries, specifically advocating for attacks against soldiers and law enforcement, intelligence community members, and government personnel. Several incidents have occurred in the United States and Europe over the last few months that indicate this “call to arms” has resonated among ISIL supporters and sympathizers.

In one case, a New York-based male was arrested in September after he systematically attempted to travel to the Middle East to join ISIL. The individual, who was inspired by ISIL propaganda, expressed his support for ISIL online and took steps to carry out acts encouraged in the ISIL call to arms.

The targeting of U.S. military personnel is also evident with the release of names of individuals serving in the U.S. military by ISIL supporters. The names continue to be posted to the Internet and quickly spread through social media, depicting ISIL’s capability to produce viral messaging. Threats to U.S. military and coalition forces continue today.

Social media has allowed groups, such as ISIL, to use the Internet to spot and assess potential recruits. With the widespread horizontal distribution of social media, terrorists can identify vulnerable individuals of all ages in the United States—spot, assess, recruit, and radicalize—either to travel or to conduct a homeland attack. The foreign terrorist now has direct access into the United States like never before.

In other examples of arrests, a group of individuals was contacted by a known ISIL supporter who had already successfully traveled to Syria and encouraged them to do the same. Some of these conversations occur in publicly accessed social networking sites, but others take place via private messaging platforms. As a result, it is imperative the FBI and all law enforcement organizations understand the latest communication tools and are positioned to identify and prevent terror attacks in the homeland.

We live in a technologically driven society and just as private industry has adapted to modern forms of communication so too have terrorists. Unfortunately, changing forms of Internet communication and the use of encryption are posing real challenges to the FBI’s ability to fulfill its public safety and national security missions. This real and growing gap, to which the FBI refers as “Going Dark,” is an area of continuing focus for the FBI; we believe it must be addressed given the resulting risks are grave both in both traditional criminal matters as well as in national security matters. The United States government is actively engaged with private companies to ensure they understand the public safety and national security risks that result from malicious actors’ use of their encrypted products and services. However, the administration is not seeking legislation at this time.

The FBI is utilizing all lawful investigative techniques and methods to combat the threat these individuals may pose to the United States. In conjunction with our domestic and foreign partners, we are rigorously collecting and analyzing intelligence information as it pertains to the ongoing threat posed by foreign terrorist organizations and homegrown violent extremists. We continue to encourage robust information sharing; in partnership with our many federal, state, and local agencies assigned to Joint Terrorism Task Forces around the country, we remain vigilant to ensure the safety of the American public. Be assured, the FBI continues to pursue increased efficiencies and information sharing processes as well as pursue technological and other methods to help stay ahead of threats to the homeland.

Intelligence

Integrating intelligence and operations is part of the broader intelligence transformation the FBI has undertaken in the last decade. We are making progress, but have more work to do. We have taken two steps to improve this integration. First, we have established an Intelligence Branch within the FBI headed by an executive assistant director (EAD). The EAD looks across the entire enterprise and drives integration. Second, we now have special agents and new intelligence analysts at the FBI Academy engaged in practical training exercises and taking core courses together. As a result, they are better prepared to work well together in the field. Our goal every day is to get better at using, collecting and sharing intelligence to better understand and defeat our adversaries.

The FBI cannot be content to just work what is directly in front of us. We must also be able to understand the threats we face at home and abroad and how those threats may be connected. Towards that end, intelligence is gathered, consistent with our authorities, to help us understand and prioritize identified threats and to determine where there are gaps in what we know about these threats. We then seek to fill those gaps and learn as much as we can about the threats we are addressing and others on the threat landscape. We do this for national security and criminal threats, on both a national and local field office level. We then compare the national and local perspectives to organize threats into priority for each of the FBI’s 56 field offices. By categorizing threats in this way, we strive to place the greatest focus on the gravest threats we face. This gives us a better assessment of what the dangers are, what’s being done about them, and where we should prioritize our resources.

Cyber

An element of virtually every national security threat and crime problem the FBI faces is cyber-based or facilitated. We face sophisticated cyber threats from state-sponsored hackers, hackers for hire, organized cyber syndicates, and terrorists. On a daily basis, cyber-based actors seek our state secrets, our trade secrets, our technology, and our ideas—things of incredible value to all of us and of great importance to the conduct of our government business and our national security. They seek to strike our critical infrastructure and to harm our economy.

We continue to see an increase in the scale and scope of reporting on malicious cyber activity that can be measured by the amount of corporate data stolen or deleted, personally identifiable information compromised, or remediation costs incurred by U.S. victims. For example, as the committee is aware, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) discovered earlier this year that a number of its systems were compromised. These systems included those that contain information related to the background investigations of current, former, and prospective Federal government employees, as well as other individuals for whom a federal background investigation was conducted. The FBI is working with our interagency partners to investigate this matter.

FBI agents, analysts, and computer scientists are using technical capabilities and traditional investigative techniques—such as sources, court-authorized electronic surveillance, physical surveillance, and forensics—to fight cyber threats. We are working side-by-side with our federal, state, and local partners on Cyber Task Forces in each of our 56 field offices and through the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force (NCIJTF), which serves as a coordination, integration, and information sharing center for 19 U.S. agencies and several key international allies for cyber threat investigations. Through CyWatch, our 24-hour cyber command center, we combine the resources of the FBI and NCIJTF, allowing us to provide connectivity to federal cyber centers, government agencies, FBI field offices and legal attachés, and the private sector in the event of a cyber intrusion.

We take all potential threats to public and private sector systems seriously and will continue to investigate and hold accountable those who pose a threat in cyberspace.

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Finally, the strength of any organization is its people. The threats we face as a nation have never been greater or more diverse and the expectations placed on the Bureau have never been higher. Our fellow citizens look to us to protect the United States from all of those threats and the men and women of the Bureau continue to meet—and exceed—those expectations, every day. I want to thank them for their dedication and their service.

Chairman Johnson, Ranking Member Carper, and committee members, I thank you for the opportunity to testify concerning the threats to the homeland and terrorists’ use of the Internet and social media as a platform for spreading ISIL propaganda and inspiring individuals to target the homeland, and the impact of the Going Dark problem on mitigating their efforts. I am happy to answer any questions you might have.

Recent Testimonies: 10.08.15

Threats to the Homeland James B. Comey, Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Statement Before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Washington, D.C.; 08.05.15

Inspector General Access Kevin L. Perkins, Associate Deputy Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Joint Statement with Department of Justice Associate Deputy Attorney General Carlos Uriarte Before the Senate Judiciary Committee , Washington, D.C.; 07.08.15

Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence, and the Challenges of Going Dark James B. Comey, Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Statement Before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Washington, D.C.; 07.08.15

Going Dark: Encryption, Technology, and the Balances Between Public Safety … James B. Comey, Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Joint Statement with Deputy Attorney General Sally Quillian Yates Before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Washington, D.C.; 06.18.15

FBI’s Plans for the Use of Rapid DNA Technology in CODIS Amy S. Hess, Executive Assistant Director, Science and Technology Branch, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Statement Before the House Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations, Washington, D.C.; 06.03.15

Terrorism Gone Viral: The Attack in Garland, Texas and Beyond Michael B. Steinbach, Assistant Director, Counterterrorism Division, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Statement Before the House Homeland Security Committee, Washington, D.C.; 04.29.15

Encryption and Cyber Security for Mobile Electronic Communication Devices Amy Hess, Executive Assistant Director, Science and Technology Branch, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Statement Before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Subcommittee on Information Technology, Washington, D.C.; 04.14.15

FBI’s Handling of Sexual Harassment and Misconduct Allegations Kevin L. Perkins, Associate Deputy Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Statement Before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Washington, D.C.; 03.25.15

FBI Budget Request for Fiscal Year 2016 James B. Comey, Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Statement Before the House Appropriations Committee, Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies, Washington, D.C.; 03.12.15

FBI Budget Request for Fiscal Year 2016 James B. Comey, Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Statement Before the Senate Appropriations Committee, Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies, Washington, D.C.