Category Archives: Department of Defense

A Yemeni Gitmo ‘Forever Prisoner’, Approved for Release

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So much for the ‘forever prisoner’ as this will likely apply to the rest of the forever prisoners.

Parole board OKs Yemeni’s release from Guantánamo on fifth review

MiamiHerald: The Guantánamo parole board has approved the release of a Yemeni “forever prisoner” on his fifth review, the latest sign that showing up at a Periodic Review Board hearing actually helps a captive win release from the downsizing war-on-terror prison in Cuba.

The decision, released by the Pentagon Monday, means 27 of the 80 captives currently held at the U.S. detention center in Cuba can leave to a transfer deal that satisfies Secretary of Defense Ash Carter.

Salem bin Kanad, about 40, got to Camp X-Ray in the second week of its existence and was profiled as a veteran jihadist who left his homeland for Afghanistan a year ahead of the 9/11 attacks.

 

He was initially captured by the Northern Alliance in late 2001 and held at a prison fortress near Mazar-i-Sharif where captives staged an uprising in which CIA agent Johnny Spann was killed, according to a leaked 2008 prison profile. Fellow revolt survivor John Walker Lindh at one point cast Kanad as a commander of their Taliban-linked force, the profile said.

But subsequent U.S. intelligence assessments recast him as having a “low-level leadership role” in a Taliban front-line unit. It cast him alternately as “mostly compliant” with his guards and having “an extremist mindset” that “has continued to praise terrorist groups and activities.”

The Periodic Review Board first considered Kanad’s case in January 2014 and concluded that his release could present a “significant threat to the security of the Untied States.” He didn’t go to his hearing and neither did he offer information about his family or a plan for employment after Guantánamo. The board reviewed his file three times in 2015 and upheld that opinion.

Then he went before the board April 5 but it is not known what he told them. At Kanad’s request, according to the Pentagon, the transcript of his hearing was withheld from the public.

But, according to his file, a military officer assigned to his case provided the board with information about his family, their commitment to help him reintegrate into an Arabic-speaking society and his agreement to participate in a rehabilitation program — an argument that apparently won the favor of the board. He has a father and siblings in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and would like to join them, study English and computer science and launch a career in sales to support them there.

“The board encourages the detainee to continue regularly attending classes” at Guantánamo, it wrote in its May 5 decision to approve his transfer, “and continue engaging with family members to prepare himself for transfer.”

The decision comes at a busy time — as the board is hearing from an unprecedented nine captives in a single month, May. It follows the Pentagon’s April 16 transfer of nine Yemenis with similar close family in the Saudi Kingdom to a rehabilitation program there.

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JTF-GTMO Assessment:

  1. (S) Recommendation: JTF-GTMO recommends this detainee for Continued Detention

Under DoD Control (CD). JTF-GTMO previously recommended detainee for Continued

Detention Under DoD Control (CD) on 1 January 2007.

  1. (S//NF) Executive Summary: Detainee is a member of al-Qaida. Detainee served as a

sub-commander in Usama Bin Laden’s (UBL) 55th Arab Brigade during hostilities against

US and coalition forces.1 Detainee is assessed to have commanded the Tameem Center on

the Khwaja Ghar front lines and received basic and advanced training, including tactics and

artillery, at probably the al-Qaida al-Faruq Training Camp in Afghanistan. Detainee

acknowledged traveling to Afghanistan expressly for jihad in 2000, and his name was found

on al-Qaida affiliated documents. Detainee’s passport was used to attempt entry into Iraq by

suspected al-Qaida operatives and his true identity is in question. JTF-GTMO determined

this detainee to be:

  • A HIGH risk, as he is likely to pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies.Prior History: Detainee belongs to the Bin Kinad tribe. Detainee finished high

    school and then worked on a small farm for approximately six months before leaving for

    Afghanistan. Detainee was issued a passport on 31 July 2000 in Aden, YM and departed

    Yemen for Afghanistan in approximately October 2000. For his full summary file, go here.

China, Unfettered Espionage Against U.S.

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Did China Just Steal $360 Billion From America?

Gordon G. Chang/Forbes:

“The FBI has obtained information regarding multiple malicious cyber actor groups that have compromised sensitive business information from U.S. commercial and government networks through cyber espionage,” warned the law enforcement agency on the 2nd of this month. At about the same time, the Department of Homeland Security and the Defense Security Service of the Department of Defense issued similar alerts.

The principal group in question is believed to be the one codenamed APT6. The three letters stand for Advanced Persistent Threat, and this group appears to be among the first tagged as an “APT.”

Kurt Baumgartner of Russian firm Kaspersky Lab suggests APT6 is state-sponsored.That sounds correct because as Craig Williams WMB -4.47% at Talos, a part of Cisco, notes, it is “an advanced, well-funded actor.”

Baumgartner declined to identify APT6’s nationality, but others have. Vice Media’s Motherboard reports that experts think the group is Chinese. As the FireEye security firm notes, APT6 is “likely a nation-state sponsored group based in China.”

In any event, APT6 has caught the attention of the FBI. The group also appears to be the subject of the Bureau’s February 12 alert.

Related reading from the FBI

The February 12 alert says the group in question was attacking U.S. networks “since at least 2011,” but Baumgartner thinks it was active as early as 2008.

In September of last year during Xi Jinping’s state visit, President Obama said the U.S. and China had reached “a common understanding on the way forward” on cybertheft. Washington and Beijing, he said, had affirmed the principle that neither government would use cyber means for commercial purposes.

China indeed affirmed that principle, and the agreement was, as Adam Segal and Tang Lan write, “a significant symbolic step forward.” The pair correctly note that “trust will be built and sustained through implementation.”

As might be expected, there was little implementation on the Chinese side at first. CrowdStrike , the cyber security firm, for instance, in October reported no letup in China’s cyber intrusions into the networks of American corporates.

Related: Economic Terrorism

Beijing, according to the Financial Times, has since reduced its cyber spying against American companies. As Justin Harvey of Fidelis Cybersecurity told the paper, “What we are seeing can only be characterized as a material downtick in what can be considered cyber espionage.”

And FireEye noted that all 22 Chinese hacking units identified by the firm as attacking American networks discontinued operations.

Nonetheless, the Obama administration is not declaring victory quite yet, and for good reason. “The days of widespread Chinese smash-and-grab activity, get in, get out, don’t care if you’re caught, seem to be over,”says Rob Knake, who once directed cyber security policy at the National Security Council and is now at the Council on Foreign Relations. “There’s a consensus that activity is still ongoing, but narrower in scope and with better tradecraft.”

Whether espionage is overt or not, the damage to American business is still large. According to the May 2013 report of the Blair-Huntsman Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property, “The scale of international theft of American intellectual property is unprecedented—hundreds of billions of dollars per year, on the order of the size of U.S. exports to Asia.”

William Evanina, America’s chief counterintelligence official, told reporters in November that hacking espionage costs U.S. companies $400 billion each year and that China is responsible for about 90% of the attacks. Beijing’s haul, therefore, looks like something on the order of $360 billion.

And how do we know the Chinese are culprits? For one thing, bold Chinese cyber thieves like to show their victims the information they have stolen.

Moreover, the U.S. government has gotten better at attribution, going from being able to attribute one-third of the attacks to more than two-thirds. The improvement is largely due to the government’s partnership with the private sector. Microsoft, Google, and Twitter, for example, will share information if they detect attacks on their customers.

And their customers are still getting attacked. “We continue to see them engage in activity directed against U.S. companies,” said Admiral Mike Rogers, the head of U.S. Cyber Command, in early April in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee. “The questions I think that we still need to ask is, is that activity then, in turn, shared with the Chinese private industry?”

It’s right for Rogers to be cautious, but it would be strange for Chinese hackers not to share as they have done in the past. At the moment, there is little reason for Beijing to stop hacking, because Washington is not willing to impose costs on China for its “21st century burglary.”

There was the May 2014 indictment of five officers of the People’s Liberation Army for cyberattacking American businesses, like Alcoa and U.S. Steel, and the United Steelworkers union. That move, while welcome, was overdue and only symbolic. The Blair-Huntsman Commission suggested an across-the-board tariff on Chinese goods, but the imposition of a penalty of that sort is unlikely without a radical change of thinking in Washington.

Therefore, the FBI, even after all these years, is just playing catch up. The February alert is a tacit admission that the U.S. government is not in control of its own networks said Michael Adams, who served in U.S. Special Operations Command. “It’s just flabbergasting,” Adams told Motherboard. “How many times can this keep happening before we finally realize we’re screwed?”

The People’s Republic of China is still committing monumental thefts in large part because successive American governments cannot get beyond half-measures.

Beijing may be an intruder, but Washington somehow finds it unseemly to lock the door and punish the thief.

 

Twitter Cutting off Intel Agencies

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Perhaps we must be reminded that Twitter is the platform of choice for Islamic State. Through Twitter, connections and conversation can be cultivated and used to glean activity, locations, photos, videos, names and organizations. Perhaps it would be important to remember that during the bin Ladin raid in Abbottabad, a local used Twitter to describe what was happening real time. Journalists in areas of hostilities also use Twitter to report live action and terror movement.

Twitter with this decision will also likely affect the work of the FBI when it comes to solving other worldwide criminal activity such as child-trafficking, slavery and exploitation. Shameful. There is a volunteer team that searches Twitter daily for terror accounts and removes them since Twitter refuses to cooperate. There are an estimated 40,000 ISIS Twitter accounts daily. What about hostages and beheadings like James Foley?

Knowing the importance and success of Islamic State on Twitter, the U.S. State Department even launched their own Twitter strategy, now this decision by Twitter is aiding the enemy.

Twitter cuts intel agencies off from analysis service: report

Washington (AFP) – Twitter has barred US intelligence agencies from accessing a service that sorts through posts on the social media platform in real time and has proved useful in the fight against terrorism, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The newspaper, in its report Sunday evening, cited a senior US intelligence official as saying that Twitter seemed worried about appearing too cozy with intelligence services.

Twitter owns about a five percent stake in Dataminr, which uses algorithms and location tools to reveal patterns among tweets. It is a powerful tool for gleaning useful information from the unending stream of chatter on Twitter.

Dataminr is the only company that Twitter authorizes to access its entire real-time stream of public tweets and sell it to clients, the Wall Street Journal said.

The move was not publicly announced and the newspaper cited the intelligence official and people familiar with the matter.

Dataminr executives recently told intelligence agencies that Twitter did not want the company to continue providing services to them, the report said.

Dataminr information alerted US authorities to the November attacks in Paris shortly after the assault began, the Wall Street Journal said.

It has also been useful for real-time information about Islamic State group attacks, Brazil’s political crisis and other fast-changing events.

Twitter told the newspaper in a statement that its “data is largely public and the US government may review public accounts on its own, like any user could.”

The development comes as high-profile tech companies in the US face off against the government on how information should be shared in the fight against terrorism.

Earlier this year, the FBI paid more than $1 million (880,000 euros) to a third party to break into an iPhone used by one of the shooters in a killing spree in San Bernardino, California, after Apple refused to help authorities crack the device.

The tech giant cited concerns over digital security and privacy.

Russia is Getting Away with it All

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Russia Establishes New Military Base in Palmyra: Activists

Local activists claim Moscow has founded a second base in the desert city after taking over the Hmeimim military base in Lattakia last year

The Palmyra Coordination Committee released a statement on Sunday stating that Russia has established a second military base in Syria located in the area of Palmyra, Idleb province.

The statement added that the Islamic State group and Syrian regime forces facilitated handing the ancient city over to the Russians.

“Locals were forcibly displaced by regime and Russians bombings as well as [ISIS] while Assad today with international sponsorship gives Russians the right to violate the property of the people of Palmyra in reward [for] their efforts [by] occupying the city and violating locals’ property.”

The Committee also released footage with the statement showing a Russian military base surrounded by barbed wire.

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UN accuses Syrian government of blocking aid to Aleppo

The UN has accused the Syrian government of refusing UN appeals to deliver aid to 905,000 people, including in war-torn Aleppo, as the city suffered another day of attacks despite efforts to secure a ceasefire. “We seem to be having new possible besieged areas on our watch, we are having hundreds of relief workers unable to move in Aleppo,” UN humanitarian adviser Jan Egeland said after a weekly humanitarian meeting of nations backing the Syria peace process.”It is a disgrace to see while the population of Aleppo is bleeding their options to flee have never been more difficult than now.”

Russia has said a new ceasefire to halt fighting in Aleppo could be imminent, with Syria’s divided northern city hit by a wave of violence that has killed more than 270 people since 22 April.

Reports on Wednesday said at least three people had died in new attacks in the city, as rebel forces pressed an offensive against government troops on the city’s western outskirts.

With the UN Security Council to hold urgent talks on the crisis later on Wednesday, diplomatic efforts to stem the violence shifted to Germany where Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier was to meet UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura, Syria’s main opposition leader Riad Hijab and France’s top diplomat Jean-Marc Ayrault.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said late on Tuesday he hoped to agree on a freeze of fighting in Aleppo “in the near future, maybe even in the next few hours”, after meeting de Mistura in Moscow. Full story here.

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Close Encounters With Jets Show Russia’s Anger at NATO Buildup, U.S.

NYT’s/ WASHINGTON — When the Pentagon complained about a Russian fighter plane performing a barrel roll near an Air Force reconnaissance plane in international airspace over the Baltic Sea on April 29, a quick response came from Moscow, which claimed that the American plane did not have its transponder turned on.

“The U.S. Air Force has two solutions,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in a sharp statement. “Either not to fly near our borders or to turn the transponder on for identification.” (American officials said the transponder had, indeed, been turned on.)

With that, American officials and foreign policy experts said, Russia delivered its response to President Obama’s decision this year to substantially increase the deployment of heavy weapons, armored vehicles and other equipment to NATO countries in Central and Eastern Europe. The move is meant to deter Russia from further aggression in the region.

By sharply ramping up so-called intercepts of American ships and planes in Central and Eastern Europe, Russia is demonstrating its anger over the increased American military presence in a region it considers part of its backyard, White House officials said. They called the Russian actions harassment.

Obama administration officials said they interpreted Russia’s statement as a demand that the United States stay out of the Baltics — and that is not going to happen, these officials said.

“We’re going to continue to fly, and we’re going to continue to operate in the Baltic Sea,” Mr. Carpenter said. “This is not going to change our activities one iota.”

But the game of chance underway in the skies and on the seas of Central and Eastern Europe could lead to miscalculations, American officials warn. More from the NYT’s here.

There Goes Afghanistan

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While we have been at war, or maybe not so much lately in Afghanistan, the forgotten war, the Taliban and al Qaeda have partnered once again in earnest. Further, al Qaeda is successfully competing for fighters, those leaving Islamic State. The reemergence of al Qaeda will likely go well in collaboration with the Taliban due in part to the Taliban’s increased revenue sources.

There are about 10,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan; about 8,500 of them are soldiers.

Current plans call for that number to drop to about 5,000 in 2016, but the top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John Campbell, testified on Capitol Hill earlier this month that he wants “greater flexibility” to potentially keep more troops in-country. More from ArmyTimes.

Taliban Gets ‘Windfall’ from Poppy Harvest to Fund Offensives

The Taliban will reap “windfall” profits from a bumper poppy harvest in Afghanistan this spring to fund coming offensives, a U.S. military spokesman in Kabul said Thursday.

“The poppy crop is really the engine that provides all the money that fuels the Taliban,” and the insurgents were expected to benefit from “this very good poppy crop that they had this year,” said Army Brig. Gen. Charles H. Cleveland.

“As a result, we do expect an uptick in Taliban efforts to attack” when the harvest is completed later this month, with offensives focused on southwestern Helmand province, the center of the Afghan narcotics trade, Cleveland, the deputy chief for communications of the Resolute Support mission, said in a video briefing from Kabul to the Pentagon.

Taliban fighters in recent weeks essentially dropped the fight to assist in the harvest, giving respite to the struggling 215th Division of the Afghan National Security Forces in Helmand province, Cleveland said.

“A lot of the Taliban fighters have been out harvesting the poppy,” he said. Once the harvest is complete later this month, “We think that will be the next big Taliban push,” he said. “We think it will come in Helmand.”

The poppy trade in in Afghanistan supplies about 90 percent of the world’s heroin and is estimated by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime to be worth about $3 billion annually to the Afghan economy.

Narcotics trafficking goes virtually unimpeded in Afghanistan. The U.S. has dropped its eradication and crop substitution efforts. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration still has an office in Kabul but no longer conducts field operations.

The United Nations estimated that the poppy crop fell by about 19 percent last year mostly due to poor weather, but plentiful rain this year was expected to produce a bumper crop.

“We are happy that we had a good harvest this year compared with previous years,” Abdul Rahim Mutmain, a farmer in Helmand, told The New York Times.

“There is no security concern for a single laborer being checked or robbed by the police,” he said. “The entire district is under Taliban control and the bulk of the harvesters are Taliban.”

A typical Afghan farmer can get $200 for a kilogram of opium produced from poppy, according to the United Nations. The same amount of green beans will fetch $1.

Cleveland said the U.S. has 700 to 800 troops in Helmand now to advise and assist the 215th Division in preparing for the expected Taliban offensive. The troops, including Special Forces and Army 10th Mountain Division troops, mostly work out of the grounds of the old Camp Leatherneck, the former headquarters for the U.S. Marine presence in Afghanistan, Cleveland said.

The Taliban’s strength and funding will be factors in the recommendations to higher command and President Barack Obama of Army Gen. John Nicholson, the new commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, on whether to continue with the planned U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Cleveland said Nicholson was expected to complete his assessment later this month. The U.S. currently has about 9,800 troops in Afghanistan and the current plan calls for that number to be reduced to about 5,500 by the end of this year.

Al-Qaeda Said To Boost Taliban Fight Against Afghan Government

al-Qaeda is working more closely with the Taliban in Afghanistan and could bolster the militant group’s fight against government forces, a NATO spokesman says.

“By themselves, we don’t think that they pose…a real significant threat, to the government of Afghanistan,” spokesman Brigadier General Charles Cleveland said on May 5.

“But because we think that Al-Qaeda is…beginning to work more with Taliban, they can present a bit of an accelerant for the Taliban. They can provide capabilities and skills and those types of things.”

Last fall, the head of Al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahri, announced his backing for the new Taliban leader, Mullah Akhtar Mansur.

“Since that time, we have seen more interaction” between the two groups, Cleveland said.

He estimated that there are 100 to 300 Al-Qaeda members in Afghanistan.

“Although they have been significantly diminished, they do have the ability to regenerate very quickly, and they still do have the ability to pose a threat,” he said.

Cleveland said the Taliban will also get a boost this year from a bumper crop for poppies, its main source of funding.

***** The Afghanistan Failing Economy aids the Taliban

CNN: Several would-be recruits who talked to a local freelance cameraman working for CNN said the only reason they joined the Taliban was because they couldn’t put food on the table.
“I want to join them because of the lack of jobs and my other economic problems,” the first recruit told us.
OPINION: Why Obama can’t turn back on Afghans
The second man, who showed us his high school diploma, told us he’d been to university and still couldn’t find a job. The Taliban offered him more than he could earn in the army, he claimed.
“I don’t have anything to do with their viewpoints. My only reason to join them is my economical problems and unemployment,” he added.
A seven-month Taliban veteran who was trying to convince the pair to join their fight told us he’d been working for a foreign company who let him go when they ran out of contracts. It wasn’t long before he realized the Taliban were the only game in town, he said.
“I spent all my savings to feed my family and didn’t have another source of income, so I joined them.” More from CNN.