Category Archives: Department of Defense

7700 Terrorists at the Southern Border

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Oh….another leak and no word from the Department of Homeland Security….

Leaked FBI Data Reveal 7,700 Terrorist Encounters in USA in One Year; Border States Most Targeted

Breitbart: Leaked documents with sensitive FBI data exclusively obtained by Breitbart Texas reveal that 7,712 terrorist encounters occurred within the United States in one year and that many of those encounters occurred near the U.S.-Mexico border. The incidents are characterized as “Known or Suspected Terrorist Encounters.” Some of the encounters occurred near the U.S.-Mexico border at ports-of-entry and some occurred in between, indicating that persons known or reasonably suspected of being terrorists attempted to sneak into the U.S. across the border. In all, the encounters occurred in higher numbers in border states.

Some of the documents pertain to the entire U.S., while others focus specifically on the state of Arizona. The documents are labeled, “UNCLASSIFIED/LAW ENFORCEMENT SENSITIVE” and contain data from the FBI-administered Terrorist Screening Center, the organization maintaining the Terrorist Screening Database, also known as the “Terror Watch List.”

 CNN

The leaked FBI data are contained in a fusion center’s educational materials, specifically the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center’s (ACTIC) “Known or Suspected Terrorist (KST) Encounters Briefing” covering from July 20 2015 through July 20 2016. The leaked documents are composed of 10 individual pages, but Breitbart Texas chose to release only nine of them due to page 10 containing contact information for ACTIC.

Page Two of the documents contains a map of the entire U.S. with the numbers of encounters per state. The states with the highest encounters are all border states. Texas, California, and Arizona–all states with a shared border with Mexico–rank high in encounters.

Page Three shows a map of where the encounters occurred in the state of Arizona. The majority from this map occurred in Phoenix, a major destination point for people who illegally cross the U.S.-Mexico border. The map also shows that encounters occurred at ports-of-entry, likely from persons either walking up and asking for asylum or from Sinaloa cartel attempts to smuggle them into the U.S. in vehicles. Most significantly, the map shows that many of the encounters occurred near the border outside of ports-of-entry, indicating that persons were attempting to sneak into the U.S.

Page Six shows a pie chart indicating that the majority of encounters in Arizona were with Islamic known or suspected terrorists, both Sunni and Shi’a. Eighty-nine encounters were Sunni, 56 were Shi’a, 70 were “Other International Terrorist Groups or Affiliates,” and only 52 were with “Domestic Terrorism.”

Page 7 contains definitions to help understand the maps.

Breitbart Texas provides the leaked documents and data below: (Go here to see all pages)

Page 1 of 9 by Brandon Darby on Scribd

Related reading:

2012: Inside a secret U.S. Terrorist Screening Center

(CBS News) The Terrorist Screening Center is one of the U.S. government’s most secure buildings. It is home to the nation’s top secret terrorist databases.

For CBS to gain access, no sound could be recorded and only one agent could be identified, Tim Healy.

He is the FBI veteran who currently runs the center.

“We are the only country in the world that has a terrorist watch list.”

The center was founded in 2003 in response to the 9/11 attacks. Their job is to gather intelligence about possible terrorists both in the United States and abroad.

The watch list contains about 520,000 people world wide suspected of having ties to terrorism. Names on the list are added and subtracted daily, but who in on the list remains a secret.

“We don’t confirm anyone’s existence on the watch list,” said Healy.

In addition to the watch list, Healy oversees a second more critical list, the “No Fly List”.

“If you have information that the guy wants to blow up a plane, I can keep him off a plane,” said Healy. “If I’ve [got] information he wants to conduct a terrorist attack, I can keep him off a plane.”

There are about 20,000 people on the “No Fly List”. Seven-hundred of them are Americans and they are considered too much of a risk to allow onto an airplane.

Names on the various watch lists surface each day in calls to the center. For example, each time a police officer run someone’s ID through a computer, that person is checked against the lists.

“So if you are speeding, you get pulled over, they’ll query that name. And if they are encountering a known or suspected terrorist, it will pop up and say call the Terror Screening Center,” said Healy. “So now the officer on the street knows he may be dealing with a known or suspected terrorist.”

The center averages about 55 encounters a day from people who are known or suspected terrorists.

In most cases, according to Healy, the encounters do not produce arrests, but they do provide additional intelligence.

“[The] location of where the guy’s going. What he’s doing [and] additional associates that the subject is hanging around.”

Throughout the Terrorist Screening Center are placed artifacts from various terrorist attacks including Oklahoma City federal building, the USS Cole bombing, and the World Trade Centers. All sober reminders of how important their work is.

For Tim Healy and the workers of the Terrorist Screening Center, failure is not an option. They measure their success by what doesn’t happen.

*****

On September 16, 2003, the President signed Homeland Security Presidential Directive-6 (HSPD-6), requiring the establishment of an organization to “consolidate the Government’s approach to terrorism screening and provide for the appropriate and lawful use of Terrorist Information in screening processes.” Specifically, the Attorney General was directed to create a new organization to consolidate terrorist watch lists and provide 24-hour, 7-day a week operational support for federal, state, local, territorial, tribal, and foreign government as well as private sector screening across the country and around the world. As a result of this presidential directive, the Terrorist Screening Center (TSC) was created. As of the end of fiscal year (FY) 2004, the TSC was a $27 million organization with approximately 175 staff.

San Bernardino to New York: Deobandi Courtesy of Barack and Hillary

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Ahmad Rahami Posted Radical Videos in 2010, Went to Syria: Sources

   

Ahmad Khan Rahami spent time at Pakistan seminary tied to Taliban

Guardian: Exclusive: Suspect in New York and New Jersey bombings spent three weeks in 2011 at Kaan Kuwa Naqshbandi madrassa, source says, amid questions of terrorism links

Ahmad Khan Rahami, the man suspected of placing bombs in New York and New Jersey last weekend, spent time in a religious seminary in Pakistan closely associated with the Afghan Taliban, according to a government official.

The 28-year-old, who was born in Afghanistan but became a US citizen, spent time at the Kaan Kuwa Naqshbandi madrasa on his two visits to Pakistan, a security official working for the government of Balochistan province told the Guardian.

Rahami spent three weeks in 2011 receiving “lectures and Islamic education” at the school in Kuchlak, a dusty cluster of villages 20km north of Quetta, the provincial capital of Balochistan, he said.

Kuchlak is a well-known hub for the Taliban, the Islamist movement that has waged a 15-year insurgency against local and Nato forces in nearby Afghanistan. It is home to many madrasas, the seminaries intimately linked with the Taliban, originally a movement of religious students.

US officials have revealed basic details about Rahami’s two visits to Pakistan, the first in 2011 when he spent a couple of months in Quetta and got married and almost a year in 2013 when he also made a car journey to Afghanistan.

But very little information has emerged from inside Pakistan about what Rahami did during his visits.

Related reading: U.S. State Dept/Pakistan Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor

The government official, who did not wish to be named because he was speaking about a highly sensitive subject, said Pakistani security agencies have tried to “hide all the details of his visits to Quetta” and keep as much information as possible out of the media.

Rahami, he said, also visited other sensitive areas in the province, including Surkhab and Nushki, where former Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansoor was killed by a US drone in May.

Pakistan has long been accused of playing a “double game” with the US, both supporting the Nato counterinsurgency in Afghanistan and allowing the Taliban to use its territory a vital rear base.

A western expert on the Taliban said Abdul Samad, the Afghan owner of the Kuchlack madrasa, was an important local figure.

“The madrasa is a place where you have multiple Afghan Taliban going there and hanging out in [Samad’s] court, as well as active ISI officers,” he said, referring to the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate, an army-run spy agency.

“Samad is the kind of person who should have been shut down long ago but enjoys a high degree of protection,” he said.

Despite being part of the mystical, Sufi strain of Islam, which many hardliners abhor, Samad is highly respected by the movement, he said.

A Karachi-based cleric told the Guardian the school was a sizeable operation, with more than 200 students.

Despite several attempts to reach Samad for comment, the Guardian was unable to make contact with the madrasa.

Although the Taliban’s leadership is often described as the “Quetta Shura” many analysts consider Kuchlak to be the actual command centre for many senior members of the movement.

The Taliban’s white flags have been reportedly seen flying in the town’s graveyards and Shahbaz Taseer, a Pakistani kidnapped by militants in Lahore in 2011 and held for more than four years, was released in Kuchlak in March by the Taliban.

Rahami’s father Mohammad Rahami has said his son had grown increasingly interested in Islamist movements, watching Taliban and al-Qaida videos, and listening to their poetry. Rahami had also shown sympathy towards the Taliban, a former employer said.

Related reading: San Bernardino/ The Islamic Center of Riverside or Brooklyn

Given the Taliban has long avoided entanglement in international jihad, insisting it is interested only in forcing foreign troops out of Afghanistan, it is unlikely Rahami was operating under instruction when he planted his bombs. A notebook found on Rahami when he was captured after a shootout on Monday suggests he may have been inspired by the Islamic State group.

But the claim Rahami attended an important Taliban-sympathising madrasa could be embarrassing for Pakistan at a time the country is under intense international criticism, not least from India, which accused Pakistan this week of hosting “the Ivy League of terrorism”.

Anwar-ul-Haq Kakar, a spokesman for the Balochistan government, said that because more than 1 million Afghan refugees lived in the province it was “difficult to know what sort of activity is being conducted by some individuals”.

“Filtering out the terrorist influences in such a huge community is a very difficult task,” he said.

Nor could the government be expected to be aware of a US traveller such as Rahami, who has “deep links in the host community”.

“If he was not spotted by the CIA and FBI or Homeland Security, then this shows that it is really global problem,” he said.

*** The basis for the swap of the Taliban 5 out of Guantanamo for Bowe Bergdahl? It all seems Qatar was the core and interlocutor for the Taliban. Clinton and Obama managed the failed process.

Negotiations with the Taliban initiated by the United States were for getting all factions to talk to each other.  Why bother talking to the Taliban? The answer is that, as both President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made clear while I served as special representative, the war in Afghanistan is going to end politically and we would either shape that end or be shaped by it. If there is ever to be peace in Afghanistan, Afghans will need to talk to other Afghans about the future of Afghanistan. Since the Taliban today officially refuses to talk to Kabul’s representatives, getting to these talks might require a US effort to help open the door.

Those US-Taliban talks, which lasted from mid-2011 to March 2012, ultimately failed. While many details rightly remain classified, here are three of the lessons I learned sitting across the negotiating table from the Taliban that may be helpful to those who may seek to reopen the dialogue with them or others who need to talk to an insurgent group in some present or future conflict:

Set clear conditions and moral guidelines and stick to them. These need not be preconditions. Indeed, before talks with the Taliban began, Secretary Clinton made clear that while the US had no preconditions for talking to them, Washington would support reconciliation with only those insurgents who met three important end conditions: Break with al Qaeda, end violence, and live inside an Afghan Constitution that guarantees the rights of all individuals, especially women. Force must be backed by diplomacy, and diplomacy must be backed by force. Talking with the Taliban was part of the larger “diplomatic campaign” Secretary Clinton launched in 2011 to complement the military surge President Obama had ordered in 2009. This diplomatic campaign tried to harness all of the instruments of non-military power to support Afghanistan, such as development assistance, private-sector investment and support for civil society. As part of this effort, we organized international meetings in Istanbul, Bonn, Chicago and Tokyo, at which nations and international organizations pledged future political and material support for Afghanistan. These conferences were also designed to send the Taliban clear messages that the international community was committed to supporting Afghanistan beyond 2014. More here.

Last item of note: In part from Newsweek: The groups targeting the state follow the Deobandi interpretative tradition of Islam. This is important because this means that they share a significant common organizational infrastructure. For example, they rely on mosques and madrassas that adhere to the Deobandi tradition of Islam. When 9/11 happened and Pakistan was forced to work with the Americans, these Deobandi groups were furious. Many of these groups came to know Al-Qaeda through their association with the Taliban in Afghanistan. [The Afghan Taliban emerged from Deobandi madrassas in Pakistan.] And these Deobandi groups were furious that the Pakistani state was aiding the overthrow, not only of the Taliban government, but the only government in the world that was exercising a Deobandi version of Sharia [Islamic law]. After 9/11…[some] of these Deobandi groups began fracturing and disobeying the [Pakistani] state. That’s when the insurgency began. Over time these Deobandi organizations began calling themselves the Pakistani Taliban.

Cold War Part 2: Spy Networks and Cyber Warfare

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Adding more spies and operatives…seems to be a global trend and not lost on Russia.

FP: Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to Kommersant, is planning a major overhaul of the country’s security services. The Russian daily reported that the idea of the reforms is to merge the Foreign Intelligence Service, or SVR, with the Federal Security Service, or FSB, which keeps an eye on domestic affairs. This new supersized secret service will be given a new name: the Ministry of State Security. If that sounds familiar, it should — this was the name given to the most powerful and feared of Joseph Stalin’s secret services, from 1943 to 1953. And if its combination of foreign espionage and domestic surveillance looks familiar, well, it should: In all but name, we are seeing a resurrection of the Committee for State Security — otherwise known as the KGB.

The KGB, it should be remembered, was not a traditional security service in the Western sense — that is, an agency charged with protecting the interests of a country and its citizens. Its primary task was protecting the regime. Its activities included hunting down spies and dissidents and supervising media, sports, and even the church. It ran operations both inside and outside the country, but in both spheres the main task was always to protect the interests of whoever currently resided in the Kremlin. With this new agency, we’re seeing a return to form — one that’s been a long time in the making.

There was a time, not so long ago, when Russian leaders sought to create a depoliticized security structure. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the reform of the KGB became an immediate, pressing issue. The agency was not reliably under control: The chairman of the KGB at the time, Vladimir Kryuchkov, had helped mastermind the military coup attempt aimed at overthrowing Mikhail Gorbachev that August. But new President Boris Yeltsin had no clear ideas about just how he wanted to reform the KGB, so he simply decided to break it into pieces.

The largest department of the KGB — initially called the Ministry of Security; then, later, the Federal Counterintelligence Service (FSK); then, even later, the FSB — was given responsibility solely for counter-espionage and counterterrorism operations. The KGB’s former foreign intelligence directorate was transformed into a new agency called the Foreign Intelligence Service, or SVR. The division of the KGB responsible for electronic eavesdropping and cryptography became the Federal Agency of Government Communications and Information, or FAPSI. A relatively obscure directorate of the KGB that guarded secret underground facilities continued its functions under a new name: the Main Directorate of Special Programs of the President, or GUSP. The KGB branch that had been responsible for protecting Soviet leaders was renamed the Federal Protective Service, or FSO, and the Soviet border guards were transformed into an independent Federal Border Service, or FPS.

The main successor of the KGB amid this alphabet soup of changes was the FSK. But this new counterintelligence agency was stripped of its predecessor’s overseas intelligence functions. The agency no longer protected Russian leaders and was deprived of its secret bunkers, which fell under the president’s direct authority. It maintained only a nominal presence in the army. In its new incarnation, the agency’s mission was pruned back to something resembling Britain’s MI5: to fight terrorism and corruption. More here from FP.

Related reading: ‘Cyber Cold War’ rhetoric raises alarms

What is the United States doing?

IN 2015, as China and Russia boost their military presence in the resource-rich far north, U.S. intelligence agencies are scrambling to study potential threats in the Arctic for the first time since the Cold War, a sign of the region’s growing strategic importance.

Over the last 14 months, most of the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies have assigned analysts to work full time on the Arctic. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence recently convened a “strategy board” to bring the analysts together to share their findings.

In addition to relying on U.S. spy satellites orbiting overhead and Navy sensors deep in the frigid waters, the analysts process raw intelligence from a recently overhauled Canadian listening post near the North Pole and a Norwegian surveillance ship called the Marjata, which is now being upgraded at a U.S. Navy shipyard in southern Virginia.

****  And we are playing catch up in Washington DC and in key locations around the globe when it comes to Russia. Adding more technology is great and it does have value but not like that of having human intelligence in theater.

**** Decades After Cold War’s End, U.S.-Russia Espionage Rivalry Evolves

So what does Britain’s MI6 have to say?

Reuters: The Islamist terrorist threat to the West will endure for years to come because simply taking back territory from Islamic State will not solve the deeper global fractures which have fostered militants, Britain’s foreign intelligence chief has said.

In his first public comments outside Britain, the head of the Secret Intelligence Service said globalization, the information revolution, a deepening sectarian divide in the Middle East and failed states would ensure that terrorism remained a threat.

When asked by the Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan at a panel discussion in Washington whether the apex of the Islamist terrorist trajectory had been reached, MI6 chief Alex Younger said: “Regrettably this is an enduring issue which will certainly be with us for our professional lifetime.”

“I would have to forecast that whilst it is wholly desirable to remove territory you will have a persistent threat representing some of the deep fault lines that still exist in our world,” he said.

Islamic State militants have lost territory in Iraq and Syria though they have claimed responsibility for a range of attacks against the West.

His remarks were shown on a recording posted on Wednesday by the Center for Cyber and Homeland Security at the George Washington University.

Younger, as chief of MI6, is one of the West’s most powerful spies and rarely speaks in public. He was appointed in 2014 by then Prime Minister David Cameron.

MI6 operates overseas and is tasked with defending Britain and its interests.

Younger said terrorism was fueled by a host of fractures across the world.

“It is fueled by a deepening sectarian divide in the Middle East and there are some deep social, economic and demographic drivers to the phenomenon we know as terrorism,” he said.

Sadly, I have to include this item when it comes to Donald Trump. We already know that Hillary has her own vast spy network. But when Trump has Carter Page who is deeply connected to Moscow, more questions and investigations need to happen, and frankly they are. This all comes at the same time IT professionals are proving that Russia is indeed using cyber spy tactics effectively.

Hey Yahoo Users…..a Big Problem was Finally Admitted, HACKED

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Yahoo confirms 500 million accounts compromised in huge data breach

FNC: Yahoo has confirmed that hackers stole information from at least 500 million user accounts in what it describes as a “state-sponsored” attack.

In a statement released Thursday, Yahoo’s Chief Information Security Officer Bob Lord said that the information was stolen from the company’s network in late 2014. “The account information may have included names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, hashed passwords (the vast majority with bcrypt) and, in some cases, encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers,” he said.

However, an ongoing investigation into the hack suggests that stolen information did not include unprotected passwords, payment card data, or bank account information, according to Lord. Payment card data and bank account information are not stored in the affected system, he added.

The investigation has found that the attacker is no longer in Yahoo’s network. The internet giant said that it is working with law enforcement.

Yahoo is notifying potentially affected users and asking them to promptly change their passwords.

Early on Friday Recode reported that Yahoo was set to confirm a major data breach of its systems in 2012 that compromised the personal data of 200 million accounts.

**** 

PYMNTS: Yahoo did announce over the summer that is was investigating a possible data breach wherein hackers claimed to have accessed 200 million Yahoo user accounts that they were selling online.

“It’s as bad as that,” one source told re/code. “Worse, really.”

And a hack that is “bad” on its best description and “worse” than 200 million accounts going up for sale on the dark web may only be the beginning of Yahoo’s troubles this week, since the firm is also in the midst of trying to close a $4.8 billion sale of its core business — which is at the center this hack — to Verizon.

If the scale of liability is large enough, it could be a costly problem for Yahoo’s new owners — and the firm’s shareholders are likely to worry that it could lead to an adjustment in the price of the transaction. As of now the deal is moving forward as it goes through a variety of regulatory clearances. The deal must also pass final muster with Yahoo’s shareholders. Representatives of both firms have recently began meeting to review the Yahoo business and to make sure the transition runs smoothly. We’re sure those meeting will be delightfully fun this week.

If this is the same hack that was reported over the summer, the actor behind the mayhem is an infamous cybercriminal named “Peace.” Peace was, by his own admission, selling credentials of 200 million Yahoo users from 2012 on the dark web for just over $1,800. The data allegedly included user names, easily decrypted passwords, personal information like birth dates and other email addresses. At the time (in August 2016) Yahoo noted being “aware of the claim,” but did not confirm or deny it. However, at the time Yahoo did not issue a password reset recommendation.

If this hack is what it seems to be, it will be a depressing coda on CEO Marissa Mayer’s run at the head of Yahoo. Though brought in to turn the firm around, Mayer was unable to find traction for a reset, refocused Yahoo — which eventually precipitated the sale.

CIA, John Brennan, Gus Hall and that Polygraph Test

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This is the same guy who defended Jihad as ‘Legitimate Tenet of Islam’.

John Brennan: The President’s strategy is absolutely clear about the threat we face. Our enemy is not “terrorism” because terrorism is but a tactic. Our enemy is not “terror” because terror is a state of mind, and as Americans we refuse to live in fear. Nor do we describe our enemy as “jihadists” or “Islamists” because jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam, meaning to purify oneself or one’s community, and there is nothing holy or legitimate or Islamic about murdering innocent men, women, and children. More here.

CIA director fretted his vote for communist

CNN:John Brennan on Thursday recalled being asked a standard question for a top security clearance at his early CIA lie detector test: Have you ever worked with or for a group that was dedicated to overthrowing the US?
“I froze,” Brennan said during a panel discussion about diversity in the intelligence community at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s annual conference. “This was back in 1980, and I thought back to a previous election where I voted, and I voted for the Communist Party candidate,”
Brennan was responding to a question about barriers to recruiting diverse candidates for the intelligence fields, including whether past records of activism could hurt someone applying for a clearance later in life.
The CIA director said the agency’s mission is to protect the values of the Constitution — which include free speech.
“We’ve all had indiscretions in our past,” he said, adding neither some drug experimentation nor activism was a non-starter. “I would not be up here if that was disqualifying.”
He proceeded to tell the story of his test.
“I froze, because I was getting so close to coming into CIA and said, ‘OK, here’s the choice, John. You can deny that, and the machine is probably going to go, you know, wacko, or I can acknowledge it and see what happens,'” Brennan said.
He said he chose to be forthcoming.
“I said I was neither Democratic or Republican, but it was my way, as I was going to college, of signaling my unhappiness with the system, and the need for change. I said I’m not a member of the Communist Party, so the polygrapher looked at me and said, ‘OK,’ and when I was finished with the polygraph and I left and said, ‘Well, I’m screwed.'”
But he soon got his admission notice to the CIA and was relieved, he said, saying that though the agency still had long strides to make in accepting gay recruits and minorities, even then it recognized the importance of freedom.

“So if back in 1980, John Brennan was allowed to say, ‘I voted for the Communist Party with Gus Hall’ … and still got through, rest assured that your rights and your expressions and your freedom of speech as Americans is something that’s not going to be disqualifying of you as you pursue a career in government.”
So, who was Gus?
Well he died in circa 2000 in New York and did run for president of the United States more than once.

By the end of his life he had become a lonely Communist stalwart in a post-Communist world. Those who sought him out for interviews at party headquarters on West 23rd Street in Manhattan found a genial white-haired man presiding over ”a museum of history,” as he put it. Pictures of his family shared space with a portrait of Lenin (a gift from Leonid I. Brezhnev); a wood sculpture from Fidel Castro and a tapestry of Karl Marx, courtesy of Erich Honecker, the former leader of East Germany.

”The struggle between those who own the wealth and those whose labor produces the wealth is one flaw in capitalism that will lead to socialism,” Mr. Hall said in 1996, repeating the familiar Marxist formulation.