Category Archives: Department of Defense

FBI Prevented from Using Open Source?

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‘ISIS Supporters’ Twitter Accounts Traced To UK Government Department’: Report

NDTV: London:  Hackers in Britain have claimed that a number of ISIS supporters’ social media accounts are being run from internet addresses linked to the UK government’s Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

A group of four young computer experts, who call themselves VandaSec, have unearthed evidence indicating that at least three ISIS-supporting accounts can be traced back to the DWP’s London offices, the ‘Daily Mirror’ reported.

Every computer and mobile phone logs onto the internet using an IP address, which is a type of identification number. The hacking collective showed the newspaper details of the IP addresses used by three separate so-called “digital jihadis” to access Twitter accounts, which were then used to carry out online recruitment and propaganda campaigns.

At first glance, the IP addresses seem to be based in Saudi Arabia, but upon further inspection using specialist tools they appeared to link back to the DWP.

The newspaper learned that the British government had sold on a large number of IP addresses to two Saudi Arabian firms.

After the sale completed in October of this year, they were used by extremists to spread their message of hate.

A Cabinet Office spokesperson said: “The government owns millions of unused IP addresses which we are selling to get a good return for hardworking taxpayers.

“We have sold a number of these addresses to telecoms companies both in the UK and internationally to allow their customers to connect to the internet. We think carefully about which companies we sell addresses to, but how their customers use this internet connection is beyond our control.”

The UK government has not revealed how much money it has made from the sale of IP addresses.

Now we have learned that DHS has an edit to not use social media or open source for reasons of profiling, which likely has handicapped the FBI from sourcing and connecting intelligence when it comes to cultivating data on would-be jihadists.

Jihadists are making their plans public. Why hasn’t the FBI caught on?

Each week, In Theory takes on a big idea in the news and explores it from a range of perspectives. This week we’re talking about Internet encryption. Need a primer? Catch up here.

WaPo: Rita Katz is the director of the SITE Intelligence Group and has spent nearly two decades tracking, studying and reporting on jihadists. She has testified before Congress and in terrorism trials, briefed the White House, and is the author of the book “Terrorist Hunter: The Extraordinary Story of a Woman who Went Undercover to Infiltrate the Radical Islamic Groups Operating in America.”

Following the terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif., FBI Director James Comey revealed to the Senate Judiciary Committee that one of the two Islamic State-inspired shooters in the May 3 attack in Garland, Tex., “exchanged 109 messages with an overseas terrorist” the morning of the attack. He followed up by saying that the FBI was unable to read those messages. His implication? Better regulation of message-disguising encryption technology could have revealed the shooters’ plans earlier and could help prevent attacks.

However, regulation of encryption is unlikely to provide the government with the counterterrorism benefit it says it will.  Jihadists’ main tool for planning and executing attacks in recent years has been social media — to which the government has full access — not encrypted messaging. In addition, regulation of one messaging technology will lead to immediate adaptation and the creation of ways to circumvent it.

In recent years, smartphones and social media have enabled users from around the world to communicate easily, safely and free of charge. Programs facilitating such communications sprouted, and jihadists — the Islamic State in particular — quickly adopted them as their main means of communication. For over three years, Twitter has been the Islamic State’s most important platform. High-level operatives within the group have used Twitter’s unencrypted direct messaging to recruit, give instructions for donating and plan attacks. Jihadists even rely on Twitter to promote their channels on other platforms, such as Telegram, which supporters would otherwise have difficulty finding.

Jihadists’ presence on social media has also spread the Islamic State around the world, with people of all ages, sexes and ethnicities leaving their families and friends to join the group. Social media use has been linked to executed and attempted lone-wolf attacks in the United States, Canada, Australia, France, Denmark and other Western nations.

The Garland, Tex., shooting — the only example Comey used  as an impetus to regulate encrypted technology — in fact makes the opposite point. Attacker Elton Simpson, who was under previous FBI terror-related investigations, used Twitter to openly follow and communicate with high-profile terrorists. His account was followed by prominent English-speaking Islamic State fighters and recruiters Abu Rahin Aziz and Junaid Hussain — both of whom for a long time were known to provide manuals on how to carry out lone-wolf attacks from Raqqa, Syria, before they were killed. Simpson also followed and communicated with Mohamed Abdullahi Hassan, a known American jihadist in Somalia who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.

Relatedly, the incitement for the Texas shooting came from Hassan’s 31st Twitter account. Simpson, a friend and follower of Hassan, retweeted the call and later requested that Hassan send him a direct message. We at SITE, using only open-source information, reported on the call before the attack took place, and the FBI had a week to investigate the matter before the shooting. Though only nine Twitter users retweeted the call for attack, the FBI failed to prevent it.

The encrypted messages Comey mentioned before the Judiciary Committee were discovered by the FBI only after the attack took place, but Simpson’s open-source communication was available far in advance. There is in fact no evidence that this or any of these other lone-wolf attacks could have been prevented by regulation of encryption technology.

In stark contrast, a proper, targeted open-source investigation could have. Yet the FBI is reluctant to recognize open-source as an important — arguably the most important — tool to track jihadists online.

It’s also important to note that jihadists are very quick to adapt online. In the past year alone, the Islamic State and al-Qaeda fighters have moved quickly from WhatsApp to Kik, Wickr, Surespot, then to Telegram – all different encryption programs created to give smartphone users safe and free text messaging available across multiple devices.  Jihadists are constantly ranking, debating and explaining which of the services is the safest and most effective. Regulation of these programs will take jihadists next to no time to circumvent; the U.S. government would be the one taking years to catch up. And even if successful, they may be able to regulate companies based in the United States, but such programs would appear everywhere else, from Russia to India to China

SITE’s leadership and continued success do not stem from access to secret databases. Our research, investigations and reporting are based on open-source information — social media, forums, websites, blogs, IP addresses — which can be immensely powerful if used wisely. Government agencies, however, seem blind to this bountiful intelligence resource, and too often rely solely on classified documents and back-end access to websites.

Rather than try to create backdoors to encrypted communication services, or use the lack thereof as an excuse to intelligence failures, the U.S. government must first know how to utilize the mass amount of data it has been collecting and to improve its monitoring of jihadist activity online. A focused approach of this sort is much more likely to lead to success in the war on terrorism.

 

Fallen Angel: Extortion 17 Facts and Documentary

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The Final Flight of Extortion 17

It was the deadliest helicopter crash in the history of U.S. special operations. Why did it happen?

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AirandSpaceMagazine: A few minutes past 2 a.m. on August 6, 2011, at a dusty forward operating base 40 miles south of Kabul, Afghanistan, the rotors of two U.S. Army CH-47D Chinooks began to turn. Operating with no lights save for the faint green glow of night vision goggles and cockpit instrument panels, the two helicopters, call signs Extortion 17 (“one-seven”) and Extortion 16, lifted into the darkness and accelerated toward a destination less than 20 miles west. 

Extortion 17 and its 38 occupants would not return. A Taliban fighter shot the helicopter out of the sky with a rocket-propelled grenade and all aboard were killed—the single greatest loss of American life in the Afghan war. Those killed ranked among the world’s most highly trained and experienced commandos, including 15 men from Gold Squadron of the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, popularly called SEAL Team 6. Just three months earlier, members of a counterpart SEAL Team 6 squadron successfully raided a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and killed Osama bin Laden. In light of that raid’s success, the shootdown of Extortion 17 incited a flurry of conspiracy theories: The Taliban were tipped off; it was a trap; it was retribution for the killing. No evidence has emerged to support any of these claims. Instead, two rigorous U. S. military investigations followed every moment of the mission to determine what went wrong on Extortion 17’s final flight. 

The mission had begun about four hours prior to the shootdown, when the two helicopters touched down side by side in Juy Zarin, a village in the bare rock-walled Tangi Valley of Wardak Province. As two U.S. Army AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, an Air Force AC-130 gunship, and a small fleet of unmanned surveillance aircraft orbited overhead, a platoon of the 75th Ranger Regiment and members of an Afghan special operations unit stormed down the rear ramps of the Chinooks and into the night. Their target: an Afghan named Qari Tahir and his group of fighters. Intelligence had revealed Tahir to be the senior Taliban chief of the Tangi Valley region, with probable ties to upper-echelon Taliban leadership in Pakistan. As the ground assault force rushed toward Tahir’s compound, Extortion 17 and 16 sped back to base, where they were refueled, and awaited word to extract the team, evacuate wounded, or race reinforcing troops to Juy Zarin.

When the two Chinooks had first touched down in the village, a group of eight fighters armed with AK-47 rifles and RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenade launchers bolted from the compound. One AH-64 crew, after identifying the men as enemy combatants, fired on them with their gunship’s 30mm cannon, killing six. The remaining two fighters ducked into a stand of trees and disappeared from the Apaches’ infrared scanners. Three hours after disembarking from the Chinooks, the assault force had secured the compound and detained a number of Tahir’s men, but they hadn’t found Tahir himself. Through sensors on manned and unmanned aircraft, U.S. forces observing the mud walls and terraces of the village saw new groups of fighters gathering and maneuvering. Mission commanders, believing that Tahir was likely among one of the groups, deployed an Immediate Reaction Force (IRF) to interdict them while the Rangers held the compound. Planners then chose a new landing zone for the IRF, but it was large enough to accommodate only one Chinook.

Faced with the possibility of confronting nine or 10 Taliban fighters, planners increased the reinforcement team from 17 to 32 men, formed around the 15-man SEAL group. The IRF also included two SEALs from another team, five Navy special operations support personnel, three Air Force special tactics airmen, seven Afghan National Army commandos, a translator, and a combat assault dog. The IRF commander then made a critical decision: In order to get everyone on the ground as quickly as possible and deny the Taliban time to react, he ordered the entire force to fly in Extortion 17. Extortion 16 flew empty.

Commanders frequently request CH-47 Chinooks to insert troops. The helicopters are capacious and fast, and they can perform well in Afghanistan’s performance-degrading high altitudes and heat. U.S. Special Operations Command possesses its own specialized Chinooks—MH-47s—flown by the ultra-secretive 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, the “Night Stalkers.” The MH-47s’ modifications include inflight refueling probes, additional and upgraded sensors, more powerful engines, and more powerful defensive weapons than their conventional counterparts. Night Stalker pilots and crew rigorously train for nighttime raids, like the one in Juy Zarin. 

image: http://thumbs.media.smithsonianmag.com//filer/77/c7/77c79562-4261-45db-b818-71bfc7255547/04z_dj2105_map_inset.jpg__800x450_q85_crop_upscale.jpgThe crash took place about 40 miles from Kabul, in the Taliban-thick Tangi Valley.
The crash took place about 40 miles from Kabul, in the Taliban-thick Tangi Valley.

Extortion 17 and 16 weren’t MH-47s and their crews were not Night Stalkers. The mission was flown by conventional pilots flying unmodified CH-47Ds. “It’s a math problem. There are more operations than can be supported by the 160th at any given time,” says Major Matthew Brady, a former 160th pilot and company commander.

The pilots and crew of Extortion 17, however, had ideal experience and abilities for the mission that night. At the flight controls were David R. Carter of the Colorado Army National Guard and copilot Bryan J. Nichols, a Kansas-based Army reservist. Nichols had deployed three times to combat zones, and Carter, with more than 4,000 hours of flight time, was one of the most experienced helicopter pilots in the U.S. military. He was also an instructor at the High Altitude Army National Guard Aviation Training Site (see “Triple Threat: High, Hot, and Heavy,” Aug. 2014), where many U.S. and foreign helicopter pilots train for mountainous and high-altitude flying, often before deployment to Afghanistan.

During a previous deployment to Iraq, Carter’s unit flew dozens of similar raids, which he often planned and led, and gained a reputation for working well with special operations troops. “Our area of operation was the entire country of Iraq, and every mission was at night,” says David “Pat” Gates, a pilot with Carter’s unit , the 2nd Battalion, 135th Aviation Regiment (2-135th), a Colorado Army National Guard unit based in Aurora, Colorado. “We were on goggles the whole time. We were supporting special operations, but not to the degree of the 160th. We didn’t do fast-rope inserts, building insertions, or anything like that.” Subsequent to their Iraq deployment, the unit flew the SEALs of Team 6 on practice raids around Fort Carson, Colorado, and during nighttime urban training in Denver, further cementing the 2-135th’s reputation with special operations units. At the time of the Juy Zarin raid, the battalion had been flying in Afghanistan for about two weeks.

Flying to the Tangi Valley for the second time, Extortion 17 and 16 took a different route, approaching from the northwest instead of the south. Six minutes from their estimated landing time, Extortion 16 broke away from the lead Chinook and orbited at a location close enough to help if needed. Extortion 17 sped alone toward the landing zone. 

For helicopter crews in Afghanistan, the most dangerous times are landing and taking off. Approaching to land or having just taken off, the craft is flying slow and low, so it presents a tempting target. But even a precisely aimed shot fired from an unguided weapon by a seasoned fighter is subject to the ballistics-altering whims of atmospheric variation, subtle and undetected flaws in launcher or projectile, and uncontrollable environmental factors such as wind gusts, large temperature variations, or even particulates in the air.

“There are a lot of bullets out there that say ‘To whom it may concern,’ ”says Major Doug Glover, a U.S. Marine F/A-18D weapons and sensors operator who was a senior watch officer for the Marine air operations center in southern Afghanistan. “The RPG is not a laser. It does not fly in a straight line, and there is no way to know what exact path it will take—just a fairly good idea of its trajectory.” 

Sometimes the enemy succeeds in delivering one of these “To whom it may concern” projectiles. In July 2010, an RPG-wielding fighter put a round into the tail boom of a Marine AH-1W Super Cobra, downing it and killing both pilots. In June 2005, a rocket-propelled grenade connected with the rear transmission of a 160th MH-47E Chinook as it attempted to come to a hover, downing it; all 16 on board were killed. In March 2002, two MH-47s were downed by machine gun and rocket-propelled grenade fire while close to ground level. “What we saw is that if the enemy knew where you were going to attack, they would back some guys with RPGs off 500 meters or so, to shoot during an ingress,” Glover explains. 

***

Now deep in the Tangi Valley, their night vision goggles showing the world around them in greenish hues, the IRF team members readied to hit the ground running as the pilots slowed Extortion 17 and descended toward the village. At 2:36 a.m., Extortion 17 requested an infrared spotlight, visible only through night vision goggles, to illuminate the landing zone. The crew of Slasher 02, the AC-130 circling above, flipped the switch on their powerful light. “Burn is on,” they radioed. Through the goggles, the landing zone shone brilliantly. Carter and Nichols continued the descent. “LZ is ice,” transmitted one of the Rangers on the ground, indicating the landing zone was free of enemy activity.

Seconds later, with the Chinook just over 100 feet off the ground and traveling at 58 mph, two or three previously unseen fighters emerged from the tower of a two-story building roughly 220 yards south of the helicopter, shouldering RPG launchers. They may have seen Extortion 17 and its landing zone through their own night vision goggles or simply aimed by sound alone. Two fired at roughly the same time. The first round sailed past the helicopter. The second slammed into one of the Chinook’s rear rotor blades and exploded, severing 10 feet of it. The torque of the spinning rotor assembly, now catastrophically imbalanced, ripped the rear pylon off the Chinook’s fuselage. The forward rotor system then tore off, stressed by the imbalance and the strain of carrying what would normally be a shared load. Less than five seconds after the RPG round hit, the helicopter spun uncontrollably, plummeting into a dry creek bed and erupting in a ball of fire that killed all on board.

The United States military continually works to improve protection for transport helicopters and their occupants, according to Glover and Brady. One of the most significant tactical evolutions of the Afghanistan conflict is the ever-heavier use of unmanned aerial systems and other airborne intelligence-gathering systems. Capable of loitering overhead for hours undetected, small fleets of unmanned craft passed imagery to mission planners before and during the raid at Juy Zarin, allowing them to recognize individual fighters, learn their habits, pinpoint where they slept, and identify the types of weapons they carried.

But U.S. forces didn’t know about every fighter during the raid, and they lost track of at least two—one of whom fired the deadly shot. Since the shootdown of Extortion 17, the military has continued to gain vital experience and equipment to enable an ever greater understanding of an enemy force, aiming to know every combatant and potential combatant and his weapon system before a raid. According to Glover, improved systems in place enable U.S. forces to monitor a target for days or even weeks prior to an operation, so they theoretically will know of even well-hidden potential RPG shooters throughout a village before transport helicopters first touch down.

The military has worked diligently to more tightly integrate gunship escorts with transport craft, according to Brady. While classification veils the specifics of these tactics, particularly for special operations raids, manned gunships can detect potential threats through a range of sensors and immediately attack if needed. Another tactic sometimes employed by gunships, according to Glover, is a show of force, in which pilots and crew fire into an empty field or stand of trees just before a transport helicopter prepares to land, using the sound of a gun alone to keep enemy heads down and fingers off triggers.

The two military investigations, one conducted by United States Central Command and one by the multi-service Joint Combat Assessment Team, pored over the details of the crash with excruciating focus and concluded that no planners or participants bore any fault regarding the circumstances leading to the shootdown of Extortion 17. Though both noted that airborne sensor coverage and closer AH-64 gunship escort should be considered in future operations, nothing could have kept the shooters from firing their RPGs that night. The Joint Combat Assessment Team report further noted that despite a robust deck of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets, none identified the location from which the shooters fired prior to the helicopter downing. 

The shooters’ origin remains a mystery. The two may have been those who escaped Apache cannon fire, or they may have split away from either of the groups that formed after the start of the raid. The duo may also have had no ties to Tahir or any of his suspected fighters, and attacked the helicopter on their own. Should the Apache pilots have fired into the stand of trees after the two fighters ducked out of sight? Should the Apaches, or the AC-130 overhead, have fired upon the groups of suspected Taliban that gathered in the village after the raid began?

Restrained by strict rules of engagement in force at the time, the helicopter crews could not have fired without a strong indication of hostile intent. Afghanistan has long been a counter-insurgency campaign: The United States’ strategy has been to win Afghan trust through cooperation and aid. Having studied and directly observed the counter-insurgency campaign in Afghanistan, I’ve watched commanders and individual American troops consistently lean far to the side of restraint to encourage Afghans to side with American interests long after U.S. forces have left. Because unarmed villagers, unaffiliated with the Taliban, could also have been in those trees and among the groups milling about the village, the gunships could not have fired. Following a “scorched earth” tactic may have killed the two shooters—and possibly a greater number of innocents—prior to Extortion 17’s return that night, but counterinsurgency doctrine dictates that such tactics lead to potentially far worse long-term consequences. 

With a keen understanding of the propaganda value of downing Coalition helicopters, the Taliban single them out as targets. Classified reports, published by Wikileaks, teem with notes from pilots and crew of all types of military helicopters who saw RPG attacks throughout the war. According to one Army report, in the three months prior to the Juy Zarin raid, as many as 17 RPGs were fired at helicopters over Wardak and Logar provinces, a relatively small part of the country. And while all military helicopters carry countermeasures for guided missiles, nothing can interdict the dumb luck of an unguided RPG round sailing through the air. The vast majority miss. “Chance is still part of the battlefield,” says Brady. “For every one that gets lucky, there are hundreds, even thousands, that zip by you.”

“As we’ve seen a number of times, there’s a point that a lucky shot is going to get you and there is only so much you can do to mitigate it,” says Glover, the Marine aviator. “To remove the risk of rocket-propelled grenades downing helicopters in Afghanistan 100 percent, you’d have to remove the opposable thumbs of every fighting-age male in the objective area, and that’s not how we win a counter-insurgency.”

9500 Visas Revoke Due to Terror,Where are they? Don’t Know

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FNC: The Obama administration cannot be sure of the whereabouts of thousands of foreigners in the U.S. who had their visas revoked over terror concerns and other reasons, a State Department official acknowledged Thursday.

The admission, made at a House oversight hearing examining immigrant vetting in the wake of major terror attacks, drew a sharp rebuke from the committee chairman.

“You don’t have a clue do you?” Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, told Michele Thoren Bond, assistant secretary for the Bureau of Consular Affairs.

Bond initially said the U.S. has revoked more than 122,000 visas since 2001, including 9,500 because of the threat of terrorism.

But Chaffetz quickly pried at that stat, pressing the witness about the present location of those individuals.

“I don’t know,” she said.

The startling admission came as members of the committee pressed administration officials on what safeguards are in place to reduce the risk from would-be extremists.

At issue is how closely the U.S. government examines the background of people seeking entry to the country, including reviews of their social media postings.

Leon Rodriguez, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, told committee members that such checks aren’t being done in an abundant manner, and he was not specific about when or how it would occur.

Lawmakers are trying to ascertain which safeguards are in place to ensure that extremists are not exploiting a variety of legal paths to travel to the United States.

One of the San Bernardino, Calif., shooters came to the U.S. on a K-1 fiancee visa last year despite the fact that the FBI believed she was already radicalized.

Tashfeen Malik came to the U.S. on a K-1 fiance visa in July 2014 and passed multiple background checks and at least two in-person interviews, one in Pakistan and another after she married Syed Farook. FBI Director James Comey has said Malik and Farook communicated privately online about jihad and martyrdom before they married.

Lawmakers at times angrily pressed officials on why even public social media wouldn’t routinely be looked at for vetting those trying to enter the country.

“If half the employers are doing it in the United States of America, if colleges are doing it for students, why wouldn’t Homeland Security do it?” said Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass. “We don’t even look at their public stuff, that’s what kills me.”

DHS did launch three pilot programs specifically aimed at reviewing social media postings as part of the immigration vetting process.

“There is less there that is actually of screening value than you would expect, at least in small early samples, some things seem more ambiguous than clear,” Rodriguez told lawmakers Thursday. He said foreign alphabets frequently used in social media posts were a challenge to translate.

“We all continue to believe there’s a potential for there to be information of screening value … particularly in high risk environments,” he added.

Both DHS and the State Department are reviewing the process for vetting visa applications, including the K-1 program, and have been directed by the White House to create specific recommendations for improvements.

DHS is specifically reviewing policies on when authorities at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services can look at social media posts as part of the process for evaluating applications for certain visas.

“There are some legal limits to what we can do,” Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said Wednesday. He added that he thinks reviews of social media should be done more often, but did not provide specifics.

During his opening remarks Chaffetz, said: “It is unclear how someone who so openly discussed her hatred of our country and way of life could easily pass three background checks. We need to understand how the breakdown happened with Malik and what we are doing to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Lawmakers have also pressed for changes to the Visa Waiver Program, which allows many citizens from 38 countries to travel to the United States without being subjected to the in-person interview required to receive a visa. Many fear that foreign fighters who carry western passports will be able to exploit that system to travel freely to the United States.

Earlier this month the House voted overwhelmingly to tighten controls on that program and require visas for anyone who has been to Iraq or Syria in the last five years. Security changes to the program were also included in the Senate version of a massive spending bill expected to be approved later this week.

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Hearing on Immigration and Visas December 17, 2015

PURPOSE:

• To review the screening process for foreign nationals entering the United States, including the ability to review social media as part of the vetting process.
• To assess the likelihood of foreign nationals exploiting the U.S. immigration system and examine vulnerabilities within that system.
• This hearing is a follow-up to an Oversight Subcommittee hearing last week, where a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official was unable to answer basic questions on the Agency’s ability to vet, track, and screen individuals who arrive in the United States.

BACKGROUND:

• Foreign nationals seeking to enter the U.S. must ordinarily obtain either an immigrant visa or a nonimmigrant visa. A third category of foreign nationals seeking entry into the U.S. are refugees, who enter under refugee status.
• An exception to the rule is the Visa Waiver Program (VWP), where an individual who seeks entry to the U.S. must apply for, and receive, a visa before entering the country. Currently, nationals of 38 countries can enter the U.S. without first obtaining a visa under the VWP.
• Under current law, two departments—the Department of State and DHS—play roles in administering the law and policies on immigration visas.
• In light of the attacks in San Bernardino, CA, Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) and Subcommittee Chairman Ron DeSantis (R-FL) sent a letter to DHS seeking information relating Tashfeen Malik’s entry into the U.S. on a fiancée visa.

 

Witnesses and testimonies

Name Title Organization Panel Document
The Honorable Anne C. Richards Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration U.S. Department of State Document
The Honorable Michele Thoren Bond Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Consular Affairs U.S. Department of State Document
The Honorable Alan Bersin Assistant Secretary for International Affairs, Chief Officer for the Office of Policy U.S. Department of Homeland Security
The Honorable Leon Rodriguez Director, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services U.S. Department of Homeland Security

Related Documents

Name Document
Credible Fear Claims Document

POTUS a Shiite? Anti-Israel Evidence….

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Congress Rejects Obama Move to Restore Funding for Anti-Israel U.N. Group

FreeBeacon: Congress has rejected a request by the Obama administration to restore U.S. funding for a United Nations organization long criticized for its anti-Israel bias, according to sources on Capitol Hill.

The Washington Free Beacon disclosed earlier this week that the Obama administration was pressuring lawmakers on Capitol Hill to restore around $80 million in annually funding to the U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, otherwise known as UNESCO.

Taxpayer funding to the organization was slashed in 2011 after UNESCO accepted Palestine as a member state, a move that violated U.S. law barring the funding of any U.N. group that skirts the peace process by prematurely admitting Palestine as a full member nation.

However, the State Department petitioned Democratic lawmakers on the Senate’s appropriations committee to restore UNESCO’s funding and grant the administration authority to provide an additional $160 million to help erase accrued debts.

The administration argued that the lack of funding was harming the United States’ credibility at UNESCO and contributing to a rise in anti-Israel actions, such as a recent move to label Jerusalem’s Western Wall as a Muslim holy site.

The State Department requested that a waiver be added to the Senate’s version of a sprawling yearly spending bill set to be approved by Congress before year’s end. However, that request was killed off by lawmakers and did not make its way into the final text of the bill.

The administration’s effort to restore UNESCO funding, despite a law banning it, raised concerns among Republican leaders and prompted several to take a stand against it.

Sen. Mark Kirk (R., Ill.), who spearheaded efforts to block the funding waiver, told the Free Beacon that Republican leadership in the Senate took a bold stand by rejecting the administration’s request.

“I thank congressional Republican leadership for working with Senator [Marco] Rubio and me to uphold a 25-year-old law and stop the Administration from air-dropping back-door funding to UNESCO, the U.N. organization whose anti-Israel member states have granted membership to the non-state actor of ‘Palestine’ and provocatively tried to designated the Western Wall in Jerusalem as a Muslim holy site,” Kirk told the Free Beacon in a statement.

German Jihadist Gives Testimony, Islamic State

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Back from the ‘Caliphate’: Returnee Says IS Recruiting for Terror Attacks in Germany

Photo Gallery: An IS Returnee Opens Up

Islamist extremist Harry S. wasn’t in Syria for long. But during his stay there, he claims, Islamic State leaders repeatedly tried to recruit him to commit terror attacks in Germany. Security officials believe he could be telling the truth.

Spiegel: It was an early summer morning in the Syrian desert, with not a cloud in the sky, when Mohamed Mahmoud asked those gathered around him: “Here are some prisoners. Which of you wants to waste them?”

Not long before, Islamic State (IS) had taken the city of Palmyra, and now jihadists from Germany and Austria were to participate in the executions of some of the prisoners taken in the operation. They drove to the site of the executions in Toyota pick-ups, bringing along an IS camera team in order to document the atrocity in the city of antique ruins. Even then, Mohamed Mahmoud was known to German security officials for his repeated propaganda-video calls to join the jihad. On that early summer day in Palmyra, though, he didn’t just incite others. He grabbed a Kalashnikov himself and began firing. That day, Mahmoud and his group of executioners are thought to have killed six or seven prisoners.

The story comes from someone who was in Palmyra on that day: Harry S., a 27-year-old from Bremen. “I saw it all,” he says.

Harry S. returned to Germany from Syria and is now in investigative custody. He has told security officials everything about the brief time he spent with Islamic State and has also demonstrated his readiness to deliver extensive testimony to German public prosecutors. He stands accused of membership in a terrorist group. His lawyer Udo Würtz declined to offer a detailed response when contacted, but said of his client: “He wants to come clean.”

German investigators are extremely interested in the testimony of the apparently repentant returnee, even as they are likely unsettled by what he has to say.

A Vital Witness

Harry S., after all, is more than just a witness to firing squads and decapitations. He also says that on several occasions, IS members tried to recruit volunteers for terrorist attacks in Germany. In the spring, just after he first arrived in Syria, he says that he and another Islamist from Bremen were asked if they could imagine perpetrating attacks in Germany. Later, when he was staying not far from Raqqa, the self-proclaimed Islamic State capital city, masked men drove up in a jeep. They too asked him if he was interested in bringing the jihad to his homeland. Harry S. says he told them that he wasn’t prepared to do so.

Harry S. was only in IS controlled territory for three months. Yet he might nevertheless become a vital witness for German security officials. Since the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris, fear of terrorism has risen across Europe, including in Germany, and security has been stepped up in train stations and airports. And the testimony from the Bremen returnee would seem to indicate that the fear is justified. Harry S. says that, during his time in the Syrian warzone, he frequently heard people talking about attacks in the West and says that pretty much every European jihadist was approached with the same questions he had been asked. “They want something that happens everywhere at the same time,” Harry S. says.

Harry S.’s path from the Bremen quarter of Osterholz-Tenever to the jihadists of Islamic State was not particularly remarkable. His radicalization was similar to many other young, directionless men from European suburbs, from the Molenbeek district of Brussels to Lohberg in Dinslaken. In Tenever, some of the residential towers are up to 20 stories tall.

Harry S. is of interest to German security officials also because he claims to...

Harry S. is of interest to German security officials also because he claims to have met Denis Cuspert (the former Berlin rapper known as Deso Dogg), and Mohamed Mahmoud, an Austrian Islamist thought to have a leadership role within Islamic State.

The son of parents from Ghana, Harry S. grew up in “difficult conditions,” according to a court file. His father left the family just as he was entering puberty. Even though Harry S. initially only managed to graduate from a lower tier high school in Germany, he dreamed of returning to his parents’ homeland and working as a construction engineer.

There was even a brief moment when it looked as though he was going to get control over his life. But then, in early 2010, he and some friends robbed a supermarket, getting away with €23,500, and flew to the island of Gran Canaria for a vacation. It wasn’t long before the authorities were on to them and Harry S. was sentenced to two years behind bars for aggravated theft.

A Dangerous Radical

In prison, he met a Salafist named René Marc S., the “Emir of Gröpelingen” — a man who Bremen officials consider to be a dangerous radical. It didn’t take long before prison officials noticed a “change in character” in Harry S. According to prison records, he converted to Islam and expressed “radical sentiments” about world events. After his release, the new convert visited the Furqan Mosque (which has since been shut down) in the Gröpelingen neighborhood of Bremen. At the mosque, he became part of a Salafist clique which sent at least 16 adults and 11 children to Syria in 2014.

Harry S. tried to make the journey as well. From Istanbul, he flew in April 2014 to Gaziantep, a large Turkish city near the border with Syria, but his trip came to a premature end. Turkish authorities arrested him and sent him back to Bremen, where he told police that he had wanted to help out in Syrian refugee camps. The authorities didn’t believe him and confiscated his passport in an effort to prevent him from making another attempt. On Tuesdays and Saturdays, he was required to report to the local police station.

But the authorities were still unable to prevent the Salafist from traveling to Syria to join the war. Harry S. simply grabbed an acquaintance’s passport and, with another Islamist from Bremen, traveled overland via Vienna and Budapest. This time, there were no police waiting for him at the border to Syria. Instead, he was met by smugglers who brought him across the border to an IS safe house set up for new arrivals from around the world.

Harry S., a large man with broad shoulders, was trained as a fighter in Syria. He claims to have been drilled in training camps together with 50 other men: sit-ups, hours of standing in the sun and forced marches lasting the entire day. Those who gave up were locked up or beaten. His Kalashnikov, it was driven home to him, should become like his “third arm” and he was told to keep the weapon in bed with him while sleeping.

Once he finished training, he says he was to become a part of a special unit, a kind of suicide squad for house-to-house combat. Harry S. claims that, during his brief time in Syria, he was never sent into battle — but he claims to know many young men, including Germans, who died in battle. “Luckily, I managed to get away,” he says.

Notorious German-Speaking Jihadists

The insights of the Bremen convert into Islamic State are of interest for security officials. Harry S. is the first returnee who can offer insight into the roles played by two notorious German-speaking jihadists who have joined Islamic State: Mohamed Mahmoud, an Islamist from Austria, and the former Berlin rapper Denis Cuspert (aka Deso Dogg). Rumors that they were recently killed in Syria have thus far not been confirmed by German officials.

Mahmoud initially attracted attention in Vienna for his radical Internet postings and spent four years in prison there. He then moved to Germany, where he founded a Salafist group called “Millatu Ibrahim” together with Cuspert. The association was banned by the German Interior Ministry three years ago, whereupon several members went underground, only to reappear as members of Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.

Harry S. met both Cuspert and Mahmoud in Raqqa. He sat together in a mosque with Cuspert and says the former rapper had just come back from the front. S. said his impression was that Cuspert was more important to Islamic State as the “hero” of propaganda videos used to attract Western recruits than as a fighter. Mahmoud, he said, had more influence and would hold ideology training sessions on Fridays in Raqqa. Mahmoud, Harry S. says, is “really dangerous,” adding that he had never before met such a disturbed person. After the executions in Palmyra, S. says, Mahmoud was proud of what he’d done.

SPIEGEL was unable to confirm everything that Harry S. said. But many of the details he mentioned are consistent both with the findings of security officials and with the testimony of other terror suspects.

‘Walked and Walked’

Plus, there is proof of the executions in Palmyra that Harry S. claims he saw. In the summer, Islamic State released a five-and-a-half minute video that was edited in some parts like a horror film. It was the first German-language execution video released by IS and it depicts two men kneeling between antique columns with Mahmoud and another Islamist from Germany standing behind them, weapons in hand. “Merkel, you dirty dog,” Mahmoud calls into the camera. “We will take revenge.” Then they shoot the prisoners in the head; a jihad hymn plays in the background.

Harry S. likewise makes a brief appearance in the video. Clad in camouflage, he carries an Islamic State flag across the picture. His defense attorney Udo Würtz says that his client didn’t directly participate in the executions. “He is a lackey who allowed himself to be misled by the propaganda of IS and who misled himself.”

Shortly after the executions in Palmyra, Harry S. began his journey out of Syria and back to Germany. He says he could no longer stand all of the violence. Despite his great fear that Islamic State could pursue and kill him as a traitor, he left secretly one evening and made his way to Turkey. “I walked and walked,” he says.

When Harry S. landed in Bremen on July 20, the police were waiting for him — with a warrant for his arrest.