Category Archives: Cyber War

What About the P5+1 and Iran/North Korea

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If you are inclined to read about the technical cooperation agreement between North Korea and Iran go here.

 

Ed Schroeder’s Military Intelligence Report: Does Iran Have Secret Nukes in North Korea?

In October 2012, Iran began stationing personnel at a military base in North Korea, in a mountainous area close to the Chinese border. The Iranians, from the Ministry of Defense and associated firms, reportedly are working on both missiles and nuclear weapons. Ahmed Vahidi, Tehran’s minister of defense at the time,denied sending people to the North, but the unconfirmed dispatches make sense in light of the two states announcing a technical cooperation pact the preceding month.

The P5+1—the five permanent members of the Security Council and Germany—appear determined, before their self-imposed March 31 deadline, to ink a deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran regarding its nuclear energy program, which is surely a cover for a wide-ranging weapons effort. The international community wants the preliminary arrangement now under discussion, referred to as a “framework agreement,” to ensure that the country remains at least one year away from being able to produce an atomic device.

The P5+1 negotiators believe they can do that by monitoring Tehran’s centrifuges—supersonic-speed machines that separate uranium gas into different isotopes and upgrade the potent stuff to weapons-grade purity—and thereby keep track of its total stock of fissile material.

The negotiators from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia, and China are trying to get Tehran to adhere to the Additional Protocol, which allows anytime, anyplace inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog. If Iran agrees to the IAEA’s intrusive inspections, proponents of the deal will claim a major breakthrough, arguing for instance that Iran will not be able to hide centrifuges in undisclosed locations.

There were so many North Korean nuclear and missile scientists, specialists, and technicians at Iran’s facilities that they took over their own coastal resort there.

But no inspections of Iranian sites will solve a fundamental issue: As can be seen from the North Korean base housing Tehran’s weapons specialists, Iran is only one part of a nuclear weapons effort spanning the Asian continent. North Korea, now the world’s proliferation superstar, is a participant. China, once the mastermind, may still be a co-conspirator. Inspections inside the borders of Iran, therefore, will not give the international community the assurance it needs.

The cross-border nuclear trade is substantial enough to be called a “program.” Larry Niksch of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., estimates that the North’s proceeds from this trade with Iran are “between $1.5 billion and $2.0 billion annually.” A portion of this amount is related to missiles and miscellaneous items, the rest derived from building Tehran’s nuclear capabilities.

Iran has bought a lot with its money. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, thought to be Tehran’s chief nuclear scientist, was almost certainly in North Korea at Punggye-ri in February 2013 to witness Pyongyang’s third atomic test. Reports put Iranian technicians on hand at the site for the first two detonations as well.

The North Koreans have also sold Iran material for bomb cores, perhaps even weapons-grade uranium. The Telegraph reported that in 2002 a barrel of North Korean uranium cracked open and contaminated the tarmac of the new Tehran airport.

In addition, the Kim Jong Un  regime appears to have helped the Islamic Republic on its other pathway to the bomb. In 2013, Meir Dagan, a former Mossad director,charged the North with providing assistance to Iran’s plutonium reactor.

The relationship between the two regimes has been long-lasting. Hundreds of North Koreans have worked at about 10 nuclear and missile facilities in Iran. There were so many nuclear and missile scientists, specialists, and technicians that they took over their own coastal resort there, according to Henry Sokolski,  the proliferation maven, writing in 2003.

Even if Iran today were to agree to adhere to the Additional Protocol, it could still continue developing its bomb in North Korea, conducting research there or buying North Korean technology and plans. And as North Korean centrifuges spin in both known and hidden locations, the Kim regime will have a bigger stock of uranium to sell to the Iranians for their warheads. With the removal of sanctions, as the P5+1 is contemplating, Iran will have the cash to accelerate the building of its nuclear arsenal.

So while the international community inspects Iranian facilities pursuant to a framework deal, the Iranians could be busy assembling the components for a bomb elsewhere. In other words, they will be one day away from a bomb—the flight time from Pyongyang to Tehran—not one year as American and other policymakers hope.

The North Koreans are not the only contributors to the Iranian atom bomb. Iran got its first centrifuges from Pakistan, and Pakistan’s program was an offshoot from the Chinese one.

Some argue that China proliferated nuclear weapons through the infamous black market ring run by Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan. There is no open source proof of that contention, but Beijing did nothing while Khan merchandised Chinese parts, plans, and knowhow—its most sensitive technology—from the capital of one of its closest allies. Moreover, Beijing did its best to protect the smuggler when Washington rolled up his network in the early part of last decade. The Chinese, for instance, supported General Pervez Musharraf’s controversial decision to end prematurely his government’s inquiry, which avoided exposing Beijing’s rumored involvement with Khan’s activities.

And there are circumstances suggesting that Beijing, around the time of Khan’s confession and immediate pardon in 2004, took over his proliferation role directly, boldly transferring materials and equipment straight to Iran. For example, in November 2003 the staff of the IAEA had fingered China as one of the sources of equipment used in Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons effort. And as reported in July 2007 by The Wall Street Journal, the State Department had lodged formal protests with Beijing about Chinese enterprises violating Security Council resolutions by exporting to Tehran items that could be used for building atomic weapons.

Since then, there have been continual reports of transfers by Chinese enterprises to Iran in violation of international treaties and U.N. rules. Chinese entities have been implicated in shipments of maraging steel, ring-shaped magnets, and valves and vacuum gauges, all apparently headed to Iran’s atom facilities. In March 2011, police in Port Klang seized two containers from a ship bound to Iran from China. Malaysian authorities discovered that goods passed off as “used for liquid mixing or storage” were actually components for potential atomic weapons.

In the last few years, there has been an apparent decline in Chinese shipments to Iran. Beijing could be reacting to American pressure to end the trade, but there are more worrying explanations. First, it’s possible that, after decades of direct and indirect illicit transfers, China has already supplied most of what Iran needs to construct a weapon. Second, Beijing may be letting Pyongyang assume the leading proliferation role. After all, the shadowy Fakhrizadeh was reported to have traveled through China on his way to North Korea to observe the North’s third nuclear test.

Fakhrizadeh’s passage through China—probably Beijing’s airport—suggests that China may not have abandoned its “managed proliferation.” In the past, China’s proxy for this deadly trade was Pakistan. Then it was China’s only formal ally, North Korea. In both cases, Chinese policymakers intended to benefit Iran.

In a theoretical sense, there is nothing wrong with an accommodation with the Islamic Republic over nukes, yet there is no point in signing a deal with just one arm of a multi-nation weapons effort. That’s why the P5+1 needs to know what is going on at that isolated military base in the mountains of North Korea. And perhaps others as well.

Cheryl Mills, the Firewall for Hillary’s SpyNet

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Cheryl Mills: The Woman Who Knew Too Much?

The New York Times reports that Cheryl Mills, Hillary Clinton’s long-time henchwoman will not be joining the Presidential campaign now presumably in the final stages of formation. Why? Perhaps Mills is, to borrow a phrase from Alfred Hitchcock, the woman who knew too much.

Mills, who was the State Department’s counselor and chief of staff during the entirety of Hillary’s tumultuous tenure, is up to her waist in the Benghazi matter, where the overwhelming evidence is that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton put politics before the security and safety of U.S. citizens serving their country in that hell-hole.

Earlier this month, Judicial Watch obtained emails  through a federal lawsuit which contained multiple references to the, “so-called Benghazi Group. A diplomatic source told Fox News that was code inside the department for the so-called Cheryl Mills task force, whose job was damage control.”

Clearly Clinton, and Obama, were concerned about the “optics” and potential political fallout of the al-Qaeda 9/11 assault on the Benghazi consulate where four Americans were murdered less than 60 days from election day. The emails show Mills “running interference internally during the 2012 Benghazi terror attack.”

Specifically, Mills instructed then State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland “to stop answering reporter questions about the status of Ambassador Chris Stevens, who was missing and later found dead.” Nuland quickly demurred.

This is the same Nuland who objected to the original Benghazi talking points drafted by the CIA because they included references to the al Qaeda affiliate Ansar al-Sharia and to previous CIA warnings about terror threats in Benghazi. Nuland worried that any mention of the the CIA warnings “could be used by Members [of Congress] to beat the State Department for not paying attention to Agency warnings so why do we want to feed that? Concerned …”

Surely Nuland was given guidance by Mills.

Mills continued the cover-up by telling State Department employees to obstruct the 2013 congressional investigation. In June, 2013 Gregory Hicks, the former deputy chief of mission in Libya during the Benghazi attack, testified to Congress that Mills was “personally instructed to allow the RSO [Regional Security Officer], the acting deputy chief of mission, and myself to be personally interviewed by Congressman Chaffetz.”

In true Clinton form, Hicks said in a September 2013 interview that as a result of cooperating with Congress he was “punished” and “shunted aside, put in a closet,” not receiving a new assignment from State.

Like Nixon and his White House tapes, Hillary is now arguing that the e-mails are her personal property and she should decide what the American people get to read. While serving as secretary of State, Hillary Clinton no doubt sent and received countless emails pertaining to personal issues with no relevance to State Department issues via her private account. But Supreme Court precedent in the Nixon case seems clear: she doesn’t get to decide what to release and what not to.

What does this have to do with Ms. Mills? Mills is the trusted aide who reviewed the e-mail to decide which e-mails to erase. Mills joined Hillary in eschewing government e-mail so e-mails between her and her boss are illegally kept from public view  when they conducted public business.

Mills has another darker distinction. When the Palm Beach police seized the address book of convicted billionaire pedophile and friend of Bill, Jeffrey Epstein, they found the cell phone and personal e-mail address for Mills.

What did Hillary know of Epstein’s sexual abuse of underage girls? What did Hillary think Bill was doing when he and his now disaffected wingman Doug Band visited Epstein’s palatial Palm Beach home where neighbors say the POTUS partied until the wee hours with scores of women who were dropped off by limousine after the arrival of the presidential motorcade.

What did Hillary think Bill was doing on Epstein’s hedonistic island retreat where he was seen in the company of two 17 year-olds flown in from New York for the former Presidents amusement? Perhaps Mills can tell us.

Mills is a member of the Clinton Foundation’s Board of Directors, now under fire for taking millions from foreign governments, particularly those in the Middle East who oppress women and deny them the most basic human rights. Perhaps Mills has seen the e-mails that show the self-dealing nexus between Hillary’s stint at State and the avalanche  of cash the Clintons have scammed from foreign powers for a charity that spends more on luxury travel for the Clintons and a huge staff of political retainers than they do on charitable works to help actual people.

Pine not for Ms. Mills. As the Clintons demonstrated when they placed Epstein’s pedophilic pimp Ghislaine Maxwell in a job at a non-profit funded by the Clinton Foundation, the Clintons sometimes buy silence. Maxwell was granted immunity for her role in procuring underage girls for Epstein to molest. She was present when Bill partied in both Palm Beach and on Epstein’s orgy island, his private retreat in the carribean. Like Mills, Maxwell knows too much.

Or perhaps Mills should be concerned. Cheryl Mills figures into every scandal dogging Hillary Clinton and probably a few we don’t know about yet. As they did with James Carville, Dick Morris, Doug Band, and others the Clinton’s have no problem discarding staff when they are no longer useful. But sometimes, as in the case of former Clinton Security Chief Jerry Parks who knew chapter and verse on Bill Clinton’s sexual peccadilloes and whose brutal murder goes unsolved, those who know too much are silenced.

**** As an aside, my buddy Larry Klayman, at Freedom Watch filed a lawsuit against Hillary Clinton for operating a criminal enterprise, charges of racketeering.

 

Remember that Senate Immigration Bill? Background…

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Barack Obama pushed hard for the House to pass the Senate immigration bill. It was dead on arrival and with good reason. But there is a lil bit of history that somehow was never fully revealed.

The Senate immigration bill: Here’s what you need to know Months after their Jan. 28 announcement of a tentative compromise on immigration reform, the bipartisan “Gang of Eight” has finally unveiled its bill, or at least a summary of the proposal. It includes sweeping changes in treatment of both existing undocumented workers and aspiring immigrants.

Here are the key points, culled from summaries in the Post and Politico as well as the actual bill summary, posted by Talking Points Memo here. A good cheat sheet  is here.

There are several key items in this bill which has stalled however, there is a danger in coming months that new lifelines may be provided. Here is a disturbing sample inside the bill.

Six months after the bill’s passage, the Department of Homeland Security would have to submit two plans, one outlining a strategy for reducing traffic over high-risk areas on the Mexican border, and another for increasing fencing. The bill appropriates $3 billion for the department to carry out the first plan (through better drone surveillance and more border patrol officers, among other things) and $1.5 billion for it to carry out the latter. The National Guard would be allowed to be deployed to the border, and 3,300 new customs agents hired. If, by the fifth year the bill is in effect, 90 percent of crossers aren’t being apprehended and 100 percent of the border isn’t being surveilled, the bill would establish a commission of four border-state governors and add another $2 billion in security funding. The bill also requires the establishment of an electronic exit checking system at airports and sea ports in order to track the movements of visa holders. The real kicker on the influence of items in this bill must be noted. Put your seat belt on….Ask some hard questions of these names as you read below.

October 29, 2013

The Soros-funded National Immigration Forum (NIF) organized today’s “fly-in” of some 600 people to lobby House Republicans to pass the Schumer-Rubio amnesty bill (which Senator Rubio himself has now disavowed).
It started with a two-hour teach-in at the U.S Chamber of Commerce, with the usual suspects saying the usual things. (Watch it here.) I couldn’t stomach the whole thing, but there were some amusing bits: Al Cardenas, head of the American Conservative Union, said that we need immigration because our population is declining (in fact, even with zero immigration — zero — our population would continue to increase for generations, beyond which projections are meaningless).
Also, Tony Massif, lobbyist for California agribusiness, said that if we we don’t import more stoop labor from abroad, then we’ll have to import more food, meaning our enemies would “control our food supply.” (You know, because all that corn and wheat in the Midwest is being hand-harvested by Guatemalan peasants.)
Speakers were also pretending that amnesty and increased immigration were conservative initiatives by claiming that environmentalists and labor unions are responsible for the opposition to the Schumer-Rubio bill when, obviously, they’re among the bill’s chief backers. Anyway, that’s all boilerplate and hardly worth commenting on, as much as it might irk me. But I got to thinking about the groups hosting this thing and thought it’d be interesting to match up their principals and supporters with the Forbes 400 list.
Turns out that “Billionaires for Open Borders” isn’t just a catchy name — it’s the reality. Joining Soros (#19 on the Forbes 400) in backing today’s lobbying effort are a broad collection of his fellow billionaires. One of the co-hosts was Partnership for a New American Economy. Among the group’s co-chairmen: Michael Bloomberg (#10 on the Forbes 400), Steve Ballmer (#21), Rupert Murdoch (#30), Douglas M. Baker Jr. (#161), and Bill Marriott (#296). Another co-host was Fwd.us, founded by Mark Zuckerberg (#20) and including among its supporters Bill Gates (#1), Eric Schmidt (#49), Reid Hoffman (#103), John Doerr (#184), Stanley Druckenmiller (#184), John Fisher (#193), Barry Diller (#260), Sean Parker (#273), Jim Bryer (#352), Mark Pincus (was #212 in 2011, but fallen off since), Matt Cohler (worth a measly $400 million, but on the Forbes Future 400 list), Fred Wilson (#16 on Forbes Midas List of top tech investors), Ron Conway (#41 on the Midas List), and Richard Kramlich (#73 on the Midas List). That’s not to mention a whole list of mere multi-millionaires and even billionaires who didn’t make the cut. To adapt WFB’s famous quip, I’d rather be governed by the first 400 names in the Boston phone directory than the Forbes 400 List. JUST DAMN….

An Iranian Defection During Nuke Talks

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Pro-Hassan Rouhani Iranian editor defects while covering nuclear talks in Lausanne

Amir Hossein Motaghi says he no longer sees any “sense” in his profession as he could only write as he was told

A close media aide to Hassan Rouhani, the Iranian president, has sought political asylum in Switzerland after travelling to Lausanne to cover the nuclear talks between Tehran and the West.

Amir Hossein Motaghi, who managed public relations for Mr Rouhani during his 2013 election campaign, was said by Iranian news agencies to have quit his job at the Iran Student Correspondents Association (ISCA).

He then appeared on an opposition television channel based in London to say he no longer saw any “sense” in his profession as a journalist as he could only write what he was told.

“There are a number of people attending on the Iranian side at the negotiations who are said to be journalists reporting on the negotiations,” he told Irane Farda television. “But they are not journalists and their main job is to make sure that all the news fed back to Iran goes through their channels.

“My conscience would not allow me to carry out my profession in this manner any more.” Mr Mottaghi was a journalist and commentator who went on to use social media successfully to promote Mr Rouhani to a youthful audience that overwhelmingly elected him to power.

But he was also subject to the bitter internal arguments within the Iranian regime. One news website claimed he had been forced in to report to the ministry of intelligence weekly, and that he had been tipped off that he might be subject to arrest had he returned to Tehran.


He is said to have been a friend of Jason Rezaian, the Iranian-American reporter for the Washington Post who has been detained in Tehran, and to have campaigned privately for his release.

ISCA, which has come under fire from regime hardliners critical of Mr Rouhani, issued a statement denying that Mr Motaghi was in Lausanne to report for it.

“Amir Hossein Motaghi had terminated his contribution to ISCA and this news agency has not had any reporter at the nuclear talks, except for a photojournalist”, it said.

However, critics said Mr Mottaghi was “prey of the exiled counter-revolutionaries” and had gone to Lausanne with the sole purpose of seeking refugee status in Switzerland.

In his television interview, Mr Mottaghi also gave succour to western critics of the proposed nuclear deal, which has seen the White House pursue a more conciliatory line with Tehran than some of America’s European allies in the negotiating team, comprising the five permanent members of the UN security council and Germany.

“The US negotiating team are mainly there to speak on Iran’s behalf with other members of the 5+1 countries and convince them of a deal,” he said. ***

Meanwhile the clock is ticking to have a final framework agreement and both sides are saying there are some sticking points. But what is most chilling, is this interim agreement may NOT even be a written document with signatures but rather an oral gentlemen’s agreement. That requires repeating, an oral agreement with a handshake. Never has any world leader trusted Iran and John Kerry is asking the P5+1 to consider that? You be the judge.

 

Global Roadway with Fraud in Trade Agreements

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Being a fully connected world has major implications for fraud, terror and collusion. It is already a major security threat to not control borders and vet travelers. When it comes to foreign transportation, control and inspections receive little control as well.

Plans for superhighway linking Britain and America

The Russian proposal would allow Britons to travel overland from Britain to the United States

Plans for an ambitious 12,400-mile superhighway linking the Atlantic and the Pacific are reportedly being considered by Russian authorities.

The Trans-Eurasian Belt Development would see the construction of a vast motorway across Russia. It would connect with existing networks in Europe, making road trips to eastern Russia a far easier proposition. While roads do currently run across most of Russia, the quality tends to deteriorate the further you travel from Moscow.

The proposal, outlined in the Siberian Times, would see the road follow a similar route to the Trans-Siberian railway, through cities including Yekaterinburg, Irkutsk and Vladivostok. A new high-speed train line would also be constructed, along with pipelines for gas and oil. The rail network may also be extended to the Chukotka region of Russia and across the Bering Strait to Alaska – making overland trips from Britain to the US – via the Channel Tunnel – a possibility.


Much of eastern Russia’s road network is of poor quality (Photo: AP/Fotolia)

The idea, which developers hope will help boost tourism and make Russia a global transportation hub, was presented at a meeting of the Russian Academy of Science. But he added: “It will solve many problems in the development of the vast region. It is connected with social programs, and new fields, new energy resources, and so on.

“The idea is that basing on the new technology of high-speed rail transport we can build a new railway near the Trans-Siberian Railway, with the opportunity to go to Chukotka and Bering Strait and then to the American continent.”


The Trans-Siberian (Photo: Alamy)

The Trans-Siberian Railway links Moscow and Vladivostok, covers 9,258km (6,152 miles) and takes seven days to complete.

According to Anthony Lambert, Telegraph Travel’s rail expert: “The principal attraction of the journey is, of course, the Russian landscape – the vast panoramas and sense of immensity so vividly captured by such artists as Isaac Levitan and Ivan Shishkin. The taiga is mesmerising.

“Looking out at the panorama of larch, silver fir, pine and birch induces the kind of reverie that is one of the pleasures of train travel, a random stream of thoughts and images that drifts on like the forest. In clearings, villages that could have come from a Levitan or Shishkin painting break the spell and make one wonder what life must be like in such a remote land.”

Beyond questionable financiers of a global highway, the elites and government investments with carve-outs lead to other implications and policy decisions.

Leaked Pacific trade pact draft shows investment carve-outs sought

(Reuters) – Australia’s medicine subsidies, Canadian films and culture, and capital controls in Chile would be carved out from investment protection rules being negotiated in a Pacific trade pact, according to a draft text released by Wikileaks on Wednesday.

An investment chapter, dated Jan. 20, from the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal was released amid controversy over rules allowing companies to sue foreign governments, which critics say should be dropped from the pact.

The 55-page draft says countries cannot treat investors from a partner country differently from local investors, lays out compensation to be paid if property is expropriated or nationalized and sets out how to resolve disputes.

Consumer group Public Citizen said the definition of investment was too broad, covering even “failed attempts” to invest such as channeling resources to set up a business. But Center for Strategic and International Studies senior adviser Scott Miller said most treaties defined investment broadly and the draft was close to a publicly available U.S. model text.

Lise Johnson, head of investment law at the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment, said governments’ rights to regulate for environmental and public interest purposes seemed “very weak.” But Miller said they were not a big carve-out.

A footnote says that investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) rules do not apply to Australia, although it notes: “deletion of footnote is subject to certain conditions.”

The exemptions sought would protect countries from being sued by foreign corporations that complain they do not get the same treatment as domestic firms because of government actions, such as sovereign debt defaults or government procurement.

Mexico, Canada, New Zealand and Australia want a free pass for foreign investments requiring special approval, often for sensitive local sectors such as banking or communications.

Australia wants to exclude medical programs and Canada to exempt cultural sectors, including films, music and books.

An annex states that Chile’s central bank can impose capital controls and maintains restrictions on foreign investors transferring sale proceeds offshore.

Chile and other emerging markets have seen large inflows of foreign investment, which can push up currencies and destabilize the local economy.

Critics argue the rules give companies too much power to sue governments. But business groups say they are necessary to stop unscrupulous governments from discriminating against foreigners.

TPP countries hope to wrap up negotiations on the deal by midyear.

A U.S. Trade Representative spokesman said investment agreements sought to protect Americans doing business abroad and ensure the ability to regulate in the public interest at home.