What did Putin Know About Flynn?

Posted on July 6, 2017July 6, 2017 by Denise Simon

U-S lawmakers say there is new evidence that Soviet-era leaders were backing plans for a secret war to be fought by Soviet agents in America during the cold war.

Former agents of the Soviet intelligence service, the K-G-B, say there were plans for sabotage, assassination, and perhaps even the use of small nuclear devices on U-S soil as late as the 1970’s. And you think Moscow is trustworthy? Remember, China and Russia are the lead team now dealing with the North Korea threat.

Disinformation across ages: Russia’s old but effective weapon of influence

Fragment of the cover of Disinformation, a book by Ion Mihai Pacepa, ex-deputy chief of communist Romania’s foreign intelligence, and law professor Ronald J. Rychlak

Article by: Marko Mihkelsoni

I. The Metropol gala

It may have seemed like any other Thursday in Moscow. The dismally overcast sky and near-freezing temperature lay heavy on the city, heralding the darkening days of winter. On that morning, the historical Art Nouveau-style Hotel Metropol Moscow, situated between the Kremlin and the FSB (formerly KGB) headquarters, was slowly and quietly filling with important guests. It is unlikely that many passers-by noticed the members of Russia’s power elite, headed by President Vladimir Putin, arriving one by one at the hidden entrance.

It was 10 December 2015. Russia’s global propaganda television channel RT (formerly Russia Today) was celebrating its 10th anniversary with a lavish gala. The organizers had put great effort into hand-picking the guests: the tables were filled with high-calibre figures active in the fields of politics, the economy, and propaganda.

When analyzing images taken at the event in light of the information available today, it is immediately clear to a watchful eye that this was a carefully planned Russian active influence operation. Its main objective was not to promote the television channel but to prepare for the massive interference in the upcoming US presidential elections.

Retired US General Michael T. Flynn had taken his place at Putin’s right hand. By that time, it was well known in Moscow that Flynn could play a key role in advising presidential candidate Donald Trump on national security issues. A battle-hardened veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Flynn’s pronounced negativity towards Islam suited Russia very well.

Putin and General Flynn at the celebration of RT anniversary in Moscow, 10 December 2015. Photo: Mikhail Klimentyev

Flynn did not fail to meet the expectations of those who had ordered the speech. For 40,000 dollars, the retired general scolded Obama’s administration for its Middle East policy and kept mum about Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, as well as the many civilian casualties of air strikes in Syria. One must not forget that during the Metropol gala the international situation was rather tense, especially when it came to Russia’s relationship with the West. Only a couple of weeks had passed since Turkey had shot down a Russian Su-24M attack aircraft on 24 November 2015. Flynn was not bothered by this.

Putin did not shy away from egging Flynn on during their dinner-table talk. Having essentially been removed from the position of director of the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), Flynn had a bone to pick with President Barack Obama. Thus, Putin’s jaundiced views on Obama and Hillary Clinton fell on fertile ground. Flynn admitted in a later interview with Dana Priest of The Washington Post that the only thing he remembers from his table talk with Putin was the latter’s deep mistrust of the Obama administration.

Flynn had likely been under surveillance for a while. When he was still the director of the DIA in 2013, the three-star General Flynn received an unusually warm welcome in Moscow. He was the first—and so far the only—high-profile US officer to have entered the headquarters of Russia’s Main Intelligence Agency (GRU). Flynn himself remembers this with great pride because he was asked to conduct a masterclass on the professional development of leadership. The mind boggles at the thought of what the listeners made of him at the time. After all, countering the activities of the US and its allies was and continues to be one of the GRU’s main priorities.

Nevertheless, it is evident that Flynn ending up as the main guest at the December 2015 gala was no coincidence; the role of RT commentator was merely a suitable cover. However, Flynn was not the only one to attract attention on that table of ten bigwigs.

Right across from Putin sat another fateful figure from the US—the Green Party’s presidential candidate Jill Stein, who is known for her accentuated friendliness towards Russia. She also made a presentation at the gala, although her presence was advertised more modestly than Flynn’s. Still, it was Stein who became the dark horse of the November 2016 elections.

To-be U.S. presidential candidate Jill Stein in Moscow’s Red Square, December 2015. Screenshot from a video

Stein drew more votes in the swing states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan than Trump’s margin of victory over Hillary Clinton. Stein received the votes of 1.4 million people nationwide, i.e. 1% of voters. All this could have been an additional reason for stopping Clinton from becoming president.

Putin was not the only one gracing Flynn and Stein with his undivided attention at the main table. The conversation was steered by the then Kremlin Chief of Staff and former KGB general Sergey Ivanov, the president’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov (who is also regarded in intelligence circles as Putin’s national defence adviser), one of the Kremlin’s leading propaganda chiefs Alexey Gromov, and RT’s Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan, who is known to be friends with Putin.

In order to help Flynn and Stein blend in with the crowd, the main table also included Willy Wimmer, a veteran German politician from Angela Merkel’s party and a former member of the Bundestag (1976–2009), and the former Czech foreign minister, Cyril Svoboda. Both are also known for their pro-Russian attitude. For instance, Wimmer has said that pursuing an anti-Russia policy is a crime against the whole of Europe. As expected, Wimmer’s analysis has no room for Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, because he believes that the coup in Kyiv was caused by the West.

The picture of what transpired at the Metropol would be incomplete without mention of Julian Assange, whose presentation was broadcast via a live link and who was later suspected of leaking 20,000 emails stolen from the server of the US Democratic Party; former Mayor of London Ken Livingstone, who has justified Russia’s aggression against Ukraine with the need for protection from NATO; and a former analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency, Raymond McGovern, who had become a scandalous political activist in the 1990s. McGovern later admitted to having voted for Stein in the 2016 elections.

As the event at the Metropol drew to a close, few people realized that something big was happening. Back then, nobody outside his immediate circle knew Flynn. Today, his name features in the international media almost every day, and with good reason. The most dramatic outside interference in the US presidential elections is a fact, and Flynn played one of the key roles in it.

Trump and Flynn during the 2016 presidential race. Photo: George Frey

Even though his career as President Trump’s national security adviser was cut short, his suspicious and covert ties managed to cause serious damage to the reputation of the US as the leader of the Western world. The story does not end there. One thing is certain: this is the first time the global public has felt the reach of Russia’s influence operations and the professionalism of its subterfuge so clearly. Many see this as something new and unexpected but, in reality, it was a long time coming.

II. The Marquis de Custine’s timeless testament

In 1839, a French aristocrat, the Marquis de Custine, traveled to Russia to seek support for his reactionary views. He was resentful of the representative democracy of his own country and thought it would lead to mob rule. He was a well-known travel writer and had published eloquent accounts of Spain and Italy.

Custine got the idea to write about Russia from the 1835 book by Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, in which the author foretells a great future for Russia and the US. Custine was later called “the Russian Tocqueville”.

He spent most of his time in Russia in Saint Petersburg, but he also visited Moscow and Yaroslavl. Custine was interested in the lives, customs, and mindsets of both the aristocracy and common folk. His hopes of finding support for his ideas in Russian authoritarianism were promptly crushed. He was especially appalled by the fact that Russians were ready to cheerfully collaborate with their own enslavers.

Having collected only one year’s worth of immediate impressions and information, Custine managed to turn the material into a book titled La Russie en 1839, which captures the nature of Russia extremely well. The book was so successful that for a long time it was banned by the Russian authorities. The unabridged version of Custine’s book was finally published in Russia 157 years later, in 1996.

Among other things, the author noticed the tendency of Russians to deceive their guests or alter reality. Custine wrote that everything in the country was an illusion and the professional misleading of foreigners was a practice only known in Russia.

In 1839, Custine recorded the thoughts of a noble Russian companion on the role of lie in his government’s policy

A former US ambassador in Moscow, General Walter Bedell Smith, wrote an introduction to the English edition of Custine’s book in 1951. Smith stressed that Custine’s political analysis was “so penetrating and timeless that it could be called the best work so far produced about the Soviet Union.” All of today’s extensive historical books on Russia owe thanks to Custine’s contribution. In Russia, however, the Frenchman is seen as the father of classic Russophobia.

Custine was not the first or only person to draw attention to Russia’s “Susaninist” nature. Even during the Livonian War (1558–83), the tsar’s negotiators tried to leave the misleading impression that Tallinn was situated on ancient Russian land and that Livonia should, therefore, be ruled by Moscow. The “villages” of Prince Potemkin, a favorite of Catherine the Great, have even acquired a proverbial meaning.

III. The KGB and the beginnings of disinformation as a science

The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 changed everything. All previous experiences paled before the extent to which deliberate lying, deception and misleading became a conscious choice in the forge of the Bolshevik special services. In the course of a century, many people from all over the world, from popes to presidents, from countries to international organizations, witnessed the disinformation skills of the Cheka/GPU/NKVD/KGB/FSB and the implementation of active influence measures in the service of Russian foreign policy.

The use of disinformation as a tactical weapon of influence became organized as early as 1923, when the Deputy Director of the GPU, Józef Unszlicht, formed a special disinformation unit to conduct active intelligence operations. Born in Poland, Unszlicht was one of the founders of the Cheka and saw disinformation as an excellent opportunity to create successful diversions in open Western societies.

On 22 December 1922, Unszlicht and Roman Pillar wrote to Stalin’s Politburo that the special disinformation unit should focus on the creation and distribution of misleading information. The best way to spread disinformation in a credible manner was to use the media of open societies. Stalin and the Politburo approved the proposal and urged Unszlicht to proceed.

The first notable and successful use of disinformation was Operation Trust. This ran from 1923 to 1927 with the aim to mislead the White Army and monarchist organizations in exile and foreign intelligence institutions with false information about an extensive resistance organization, Trust, operating within the Soviet Union. The illusion helped to lure many anti-Soviet (Boris Savinkov and Pavel Dolgorukov) and foreign (Sidney Reilly) agents into Russia, who were then arrested and executed. Interestingly, both the beginning and the end of the operation had close ties to Estonia and Latvia.

Trial of Boris Savinkov, an ardent anti-Bolshevik, who was lured to the USSR by Soviet secret services in August 1924. He was sentenced to 10-year imprisonment and was said to have committed suicide in jail in May 1925. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Trust was followed by a number of other known and less-known operations that have provided material for hundreds of books. One of the best sources is the collection of notes made by Vasili Mitrokhin during his 30 years as a KGB archivist before he fled to the West in 1992. The historian Christopher Andrew has written two hefty books based on these notes.

Another person who deserves a mention is Ion Pacepa, a general in the Romanian communist special service Securitate, who fled to the US in 1978. In 2013, he published the book Disinformation, in which he uses his own immediate knowledge to shed light on the creation of false narratives such as the framing of Pope Pius XII as “Hitler’s Pope” during World War II.

In the Soviet Union, disinformation became a science in its own right and was honed to perfection over the years. The term was first used in The Great Soviet Encyclopaedia in 1952, where it was presented as classic disinformation. According to the book, disinformation constitutes false news distributed in the media with the intention of misleading the public. The entry added that such tactics were used by the West against the Soviet Union. The truth was, naturally, the exact opposite.

Curiously, “disinformation” did not enter Western dictionaries until the late 1980s. The English word is directly derived from the Russian дезинформация [dezinformatsiya — ed.].

In the late 1960s, the Director of the KGB, Yuri Andropov, took disinformation as a successful instrument of influence to a whole new level. Andropov himself said that

“disinformation is like cocaine—sniff once or twice, it may not change your life. If you use it every day, though, it will make you an addict—a different man.”

andropov-plaque

FSB reinstalled the memorial plaque to Andropov, which was dismantled in 1991, on its Moscow headquarters in December 1999, shortly before ex-FSB director Vladimir Putin became acting president of Russia. Photo: Anatoly Novak

In general, it is customary for foreign intelligence services to be created on the basis of collected information to advise a country’s political authorities in matters of foreign relations. However, in addition to collecting past facts, the tasks of Russian foreign intelligence involve manipulating the future.

Furthermore, the masterclass of Russian special services includes the creation of a new past to destabilize the opponent, which is then used to tamper with the latter’s international image. I will look at Estonian examples later, but Russian attempts to change the past to serve its foreign-policy interests are best illustrated by the subject of World War II.

It is crucial to understand that the fall of the Soviet Union changed nothing. The KGB was broken up and reorganized, but its tasks remained roughly the same. Mistrust in the Western system of values and security persisted.

For instance, in his 2007 book Comrade J, Pete Earley uses the story of Sergei Tretyakov, a high-ranking Russian intelligence officer who defected while at the UN in 2000, to demonstrate how Moscow continued with active intelligence and influence operations against the US even in the 1990s, the friendliest period in their relationship.

Tretyakov makes a thought-provoking statement in the book:

I want to warn Americans. As a people, you are very naive about Russia and its intentions. You believe because the Soviet Union no longer exists, Russia now is your friend. It isn’t, and I can show you how the SVR [Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service — ed.] is trying to destroy the US even today and even more than the KGB did during the Cold War.

Thanks to the endless possibilities of the internet, disinformation and national propaganda acquired an entirely new meaning with the rise to power of the former KGB intelligence officer and FSB director Vladimir Putin in 1999. The KGB’s machinery was polished and harnessed to serve Russia’s imperialist interests. The state quickly assumed control over the media, and the leading television stations became the world’s most professional propaganda outlets.

The authorities turned their attention to information security, which quickly found its way into new strategy documents. Its nuances were made famous by Russian general and current Chief of the General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, in his notorious doctrine.

The introduction of social media and its rapid development have proved to be an unprecedented goldmine for intelligence services. The distribution of disinformation is considerably easier in today’s world than it was in the late 1980s, for instance.To compare: it took more than three years for the KGB’s Operation INFEKTION to succeed in spreading a global rumor that the HIV virus originated from the Pentagon’s biological weapons program. This information leak first appeared in a small pro-Soviet Indian paper, Patriot, on 17 July 1983. Two years later, this was referenced by a popular Soviet weekly, Literaturnaya Gazeta, as the source of the scandalous story. From there it found its way to the front page of a British tabloid, and by April 1987 the fake news had been published by the mainstream media of 50 countries.

A standard message featured by a leftist paper within the AIDS disinformation campaign

On the eve of the decisive round of the 2017 French presidential elections, the favorite, Emmanuel Macron, fell victim to a massive hacking attack. The database of his e-mails and other documents went viral on a file-sharing service within minutes. In the space of just three hours, the post was shared around 47,000 times, and half a day later it was trending worldwide on Twitter. Even though Russia has denied involvement, the cyber trails prove otherwise.

In the noughties, several Western intelligence leaders were already complaining that Russia had become more active than it had been during the Cold War, but this went largely unnoticed. Russia was off the radar while the focus lay on Afghanistan and the Middle East in general. The Western political elite began to regard Russia as a threat only after the occupation and annexation of Crimea. This also brought Moscow’s activities back into the sights of intelligence services.

IV. Estonia as a target of Russian information attacks

Depicting Estonia (and Latvia) as a country that discriminates against minorities and promotes Nazism has been one of Russia’s largest and most consistent international deception operations in the last 25 years. The reasons for this are numerous, the main one being Moscow’s strategic interest in restoring its authority over the Baltic States. Russia became particularly pushy in the 1990s when Estonia and the other Baltic States were applying for membership of NATO and the European Union.

On 4 December 1991, only three months after the restoration of independence, the Estonian foreign ministry was forced to send its Soviet counterpart a note condemning President Mikhail Gorbachev’s hostile attitude towards the Baltic States during his appearance on Soviet Central Television the previous day. Gorbachev first blamed the Baltic States for violating the human rights of minorities and then added that Russians, Ukrainians and other minorities living in the Baltic States had requested protection from the Soviet Union. Estonian diplomats treated this as a threat to national security.

Active measures continued to be taken in this spirit on both diplomatic and journalistic levels for years. Essentially, it has not stopped, even today. The situation was particularly severe in the 1990s when Russia tried to influence the West to ignore the Baltic States. Moscow also tried to discourage Estonia from adopting the Aliens Act in 1993 by issuing threats bordering on the undiplomatic.

For instance, on 18 June 1993, the then Russian deputy foreign minister, Vitaly Churkin, who later became Russia’s Permanent Representative to the UN, said on Radio Moscow that: “Russian-Estonian relations are clearly deteriorating. We are currently preparing a package of serious diplomatic, political and perhaps not only political measures with regard to Estonia.” Six days later, President Boris Yeltsin said that Estonia had “forgotten” geopolitical and demographic reality and threatened that Russia had the means to refresh its memory. Foreign Minister Andrey Kozyrev did not hold back on 14 August 1993, saying that international relations in the Baltic States had “strong potential for violence and unrest.”

On 23 August 1993—exactly 54 years after the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact—Yeltsin’s press secretary, Vyacheslav Kostikov, naively stated that

“the forces that try to push Russia out of the Baltic States must consider that Russia governed the Baltic geopolitical area for centuries and it has invested great material and intellectual resources into its development.”

On 2 March 1994, Artur Laast, a diplomat at the Estonian Embassy in Moscow, was invited to the Russian foreign ministry, where the head of the Second European Department, Yuri Fokin, made a threatening oral statement about President Lennart Meri’s criticism of Russia in his speech at the annual Matthiae-Mahl dinner in Hamburg on 25 February. The memo of the meeting ends with Laast quoting the Russian diplomat: “If the course that is focused on aggravating the relations between the two neighboring countries does not change, Estonia will assume full responsibility.”

In the 1994 report “Russian Threats to Estonia” by the embassy in Moscow, an Estonian diplomat discusses political hazards among other questions. The author of the report writes that Russia

“attempts to influence Estonia by damaging us on the international arena. For this, it uses the well-known thesis of violating the human rights of the Russian minority, spreads rumors that Estonia has become a transit country for crime and that Estonian citizens participate in military conflicts in Tajikistan and Chechnya, and accuses us of supporting separatism in Russia.”

These are only a few examples from the archive of the Estonian foreign ministry that illustrate Russia’s diplomatic pressure on Estonia, but also on the West. At the time, occupying forces were still in Estonia. The troops were withdrawn on 31 August 1994.

When the First Chechen War broke out at the end of 1994, Russian media gave extensive coverage to a false news story about alleged Baltic female biathletes serving as snipers on Dudayev’s side. As the so-called “White Tights,” the phantom snipers even featured in songs.

From my time as a foreign correspondent in Moscow, I clearly remember a detailed, multi-page account in the daily Moskovskiye Novosti of how Estonians were skilled and disciplined killers: all this to distort our image and influence public opinion at home and abroad.

World War II has remained one of the main arguments in the information war against Estonia over the last 25 years. The tension grew at the beginning of Putin’s tenure and finally led to the Bronze Night events in 2007. Russia has not made much progress on this matter or on other topics.

Russian anti-Estonian cartoon attacks Estonian schools as an alleged hotbed of Nazism as opposed to Russian/Soviet-style “peace education.” Source: newsbalt.ru

Estonia has now been a member of NATO and the EU for 13 years and will use its presidency of the EU Council to collaborate with other member states to implement more effective means to combat Russia’s information attacks and disinformation campaigns.

V. In place of an epilogue

In 1930, Professor Dmitry Manuilsky of Moscow’s Leninist School of Political Warfare wrote that Russia was creating the world’s most progressive peace movement to lull the West to sleep. Convinced that a war between the two great systems was inevitable, Manuilsky thought that

“foolish and decadent capitalist countries will be happy to use the opportunity to cooperate with us to bring about their own destruction. They will use every opportunity to become friends. As soon as the enemy lets their guard down, we will crush them with our iron fist.”

The Soviet empire used various means to achieve its geopolitical goals and, to an extent, world domination. At the forefront of the campaign in the free world were the “useful idiots” and agents of influence.Moscow took good care of its mouthpieces. In the 1980s, French communists were paid 24 million dollars, while Americans received 21 million dollars. Finnish communists received a generous reward of 16.5 million dollars for their pro-Russian views. During the final two decades of the Soviet Union, Moscow distributed more than 400 million dollars of such benefits all over the world, mainly to extremist communist movements.

The fight for the hearts and minds of the free world was on, and it has not subsided even today. Russia’s new clients are mainly extremist forces of both left and right, and by supporting them Moscow tries to weaken the integrity of the European Union and NATO, disrupt the internal stability of their member countries, and create the circumstances for a Finlandization of Europe.

Russia has managed to make a right mess of America’s domestic politics. However, the Dutch and French elections provided some assurance that Moscow’s influence operations have limits and that Europe is not disintegrating. Then again, the fight continues and it is too early to draw any final conclusions.

The international debate has provided many good ideas and political suggestions to counter Russia’s aggression, information attacks, and propaganda. History provides good counsel, even here.

On 14 April 1950, only 12 months after the founding of NATO, the US National Security Council’s special task force presented President Harry Truman with top-secret report No. 68. The 58-page document was essentially the basis for the US long-term policy on the Soviet Union, which culminated with the victory in the Cold War in the late 1980s. The report described the challenge posed by the Soviet Union as something that could cause “the destruction not only of this Republic but of civilization itself.” The Soviet Union was treated as the exact opposite of the US, with Moscow’s expansionist policy deemed a great threat to the security of the free world.

Among other topics, the report also highlighted the fight against the Soviet Union’s influence operations. The document stressed that the campaign for truth must above all become a fight for people’s minds.

Putin boasts of Russia’s fight against ISIS in Syria to the filmmaker Oliver Stone showing a U.S. video from Afghanistan. Screenshots from Stone’s film The Putin Interviews (2017)

A lot has changed by 2017 but, in general, Russia and the US, together with the latter’s allies, remain in fundamental opposition. Hence it is vital that the allies’ conflict-avoidance strategy looks beyond the false hope of solving problems with meaningless dialogue.

Report: Terror Acts Committed by Refugees

Posted on July 5, 2017July 5, 2017 by Denise Simon

Terror-related acts committed by refugees widespread, according to new report

FNC: At least 61 people who came to the United States as refugees engaged in terrorist activities between 2002 and 2016, according to an explosive new report coming on the heels of the Supreme Court’s reinstatement of much of President Trump’s travel ban.

The alarming report by the Heritage Foundation identified scores of refugees, including many who came prior to 2002, as having taken part in activities ranging from lying to investigators about terror plots, to actually taking part in them. The report, aimed at reforming the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, or USRAP, calls for stricter limits and restrictions on refugees.

“There is no universal right to migrate, resettlement is not the solution to mass displacement, and U.S. policymakers have a responsibility to ensure that the United States takes in only as many refugees as it can safely vet and assimilate,” the report states. “The United States operates the program not because it is obligated to resettle refugees, but because the U.S. is a humane country and USRAP serves its national interests.”

Refugee Admissions Totals from Global Regions to the U.S. (The Heritage Foundation )

The report, written by policy analyst David Inserra, could lend weight to the Trump administration’s effort to curtail the number of refugees who come to the U.S. every year. But perhaps most worrisome, the report warns that no amount of refugee vetting can account for the “1.5 generation” — those who come to the U.S. with peaceful intentions and then become radicalized while living in America.

ISIS GUNNED DOWN PREGNANT WOMEN, BABIES, FORMER NAVY SEAL RECALLS

“Given the threat that we found in the 1.5 generation, more needs to be done in the U.S. assimilation process,” said John Cooper, spokesman for the Heritage Foundation. “We can’t vet an 8-year-old to see if he will become a terrorist when he turns 18 or 28. Instead, we as a country need to rethink the way we assimilate refugees, and immigrants as a whole for that matter.

The Vetting Process for Refugees Coming to the U.S. (The Heritage Foundation )

“In the past few decades, the United States has drifted from its strong assimilation ethos, and the terrorism in Europe paints a disturbing picture of where non-assimilation leads,” he added.

The Trump administration has taken measures to both limit and more tightly screen refugees. Earlier this year, the administration reduced the number of refugees that it would accept this fiscal year from the Obama administration’s intended 110,000 to 50,000 – and that cap has almost been reached.

“A review is especially critical following the Obama administration’s rapid, and largely unprecedented, expansion of the program in the final year of his administration,” Cooper added. “Any administration has a responsibility to ensure all existing refugee and immigration programs, including the USRAP, best serve U.S. interests.”

A U.S. State Department official told Fox News the administration will soon provide guidance regarding those already scheduled for travel before last week’s Supreme Court decision lifting an injunction against Trump’s executive order banning travel from six mostly Muslim countries plagued by terror.

EUROPEANS VOW MORE HELP TO STEM LIBYA-ITALY MIGRANT FLOW

But the report leaves little doubt that the perpetrators of future terror attacks are already here, including some who may not yet be radicalized. It recommends a long-term focus be placed on migrants “embracing an American creed, learning English and gaining an education” which will in turn help them to develop and sustain “an American identity and sense of belonging.”

The report also supported the widely reported claim that refugees coming to the U.S undergo more vetting than any other immigrants coming to the country under other types of programs and visa categories. The vetting process for refugees typically takes 18 to 24 months from the time of the initial referral by the U.N. refugee agency, but “in the waning months of the Obama administration the U.S. reduced the time to as little as three months for Syrians by surging resources to the region.”

It also mandated that a “foolproof vetting system” is impossible, with obvious limitations, such as lack of identification or forged documents especially when fleeing war.

“To be as cost-effective as possible – which saves the most lives – the U.S. should focus the majority of its refugee efforts on helping front-line states care for the refugees they shelter,” the report states.

Specifically, the report suggests that the U.S. can do more to urge Middle Eastern countries – most notably the oil-wealthy Gulf States – to resettle Syrian and Iraqi refugees.

“Many Syrian and Iraqi refugees share similar cultural and religious values with the people of the Gulf States, which have the financial capacity for resettlement,” the report found. “Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have donated hundreds of millions of dollars each for relief efforts, but the U.S. should urge the Gulf States to increase their aid for their Arab Muslim neighbors by resettling Syrians with all the rights and protections due to refugees.”

As it stands, the Gulf States are not signatories to the U.N. Refugee Protocol and thus do not offer refugee status. They will admit some primarily as migrant workers or to reunify families.

Fraud is also a cause for concern, according to the report. It cites as an example the Dadaab refugee camp in northern Kenya, which was exposed several years ago for developing an entire industry centered on “coaching applicants” and selling resettlement slots for as much as $10,000.

The report goes on to outline ways in which the U.S. could minimize fiscal costs and improve economic outcomes by establishing private resettlement programs on a trial basis rather than relying solely on government. But above all, the report emphasizes the need to ensure the program first and foremost puts America first.

It argues that refugee resettlement can indeed advance national interests by enabling the U.S. to “assert American leadership in foreign crisis,” providing “the U.S. with a way to respond positively to intractable crisis” and assisting allies and partners in crisis. But reviews by the Trump team to the program to achieve this objective are crucial.

***

Deeper dive from the U.S. State Department:

What is the Bureau’s role in the Department of State?

The Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) is one of the State Department’s “functional,” as opposed to “geographic” bureaus. This indicates a Bureau that focuses on a particular issue wherever it arises around the world. As described in our mission statement, our focus is refugees, other migrants, and conflict victims. Our goal is to protect these people, who are often living in quite dangerous conditions.

The Bureau’s mission statement:

The mission of the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) is to provide protection, ease suffering, and resolve the plight of persecuted and uprooted people around the world on behalf of the American people by providing life-sustaining assistance, working through multilateral systems to build global partnerships, promoting best practices in humanitarian response, and ensuring that humanitarian principles are thoroughly integrated into U.S. foreign and national security policy.

What does the Bureau do internationally?

The Bureau works with the international community to develop humane and what are termed “durable” solutions to their displacement. The three durable solutions, are:

Repatriation – going home when they are no longer at risk of persecution

Local Integration – settling permanently in the country to which they have fled

Resettlement – settling permanently in a third country

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), fewer than 1% of refugees worldwide are ever resettled. However, although resettlement often is the durable solution of “last resort,” it remains a vital tool for providing international protection and for meeting the special needs of individual refugees who are unable to return home.

Are internally displaced persons (IDPs) part of the Bureau’s portfolio?

Internally displaced persons are people who have been displaced from their homes but who have not crossed an internationally recognized border. The Bureau supports the work of UNHCR and ICRC when these organizations respond to the needs of internally displaced persons.

Numerous other organizations, such as UNICEF, the World Food Program, and others also provide assistance to IDPs that complement the activities of UNHCR and ICRC. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) funds the work of these other international organizations as well as non-governmental organizations to respond to IDP needs as well.

Who does the work?

The Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM) has approximately 130 civil service and foreign service staff. On the foreign aid side, we are divided into geographic offices. Our program to resettle refugees in the United States is handled by our Admissions Office. We also have a policy office that monitors and evaluates the relief work conducted by the organizations we fund.

How does the Bureau deliver assistance to refugees?

The Bureau does not operate refugee camps, or otherwise give aid directly to refugees. Instead, in the interests of effectiveness and efficiency, we work with the United Nations (UN) and other international organizations, as well as with non-governmental organizations, that operate these programs. The Bureau manages the contributions to these organizations, and monitors the programs we fund: we make sure they are working properly and ascertain that they are in line with U.S. government policies.

For instance, take the refugee relief set-up on the border between Thailand and Burma. Many of the camps were built with assistance from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The Burmese refugees receive health services, in part, from a private American charity, International Medical Corps. In Bangkok, the refugee resettlement center, called an “overseas processing entity,” handles cases of Burmese referred for resettlement, and is managed by another U.S.-based group, the International Rescue Committee. All these groups receive funding from the Bureau.

PRM Year in Review 2016 Infographic
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Allowing Kaspersky Labs in the U.S. Defies Logic

Posted on July 4, 2017July 4, 2017 by Denise Simon

Germany next:Germany big target of cyber espionage and attacks: government report

Barack Obama’s sanction and executive order hardly went far enough on Russia. For Russian Laws and Regulations and Implications for Kaspersky Labs and certificates, go here.

Documents link Russian cybersecurity firm to spy agency

WASHINGTON — U.S. intelligence agencies have turned up the heat on Kaspersky Lab, the Moscow-based cybersecurity giant long suspected of ties to Russia’s spying apparatus.

Now, official Kremlin documents reviewed by McClatchy could further inflame the debate about whether the company’s relationship with Russian intelligence is more than rumor.

The documents are certifications issued to the company by the Russian Security Service, the spy agency known as the FSB.

Unlike the stamped approvals the FSB routinely issues to companies seeking to operate in Russia, Kaspersky’s include an unusual feature: a military intelligence unit number matching that of an FSB program.

“That strikes me as much more persuasive public evidence,” said Paul Rosenzweig, a former deputy secretary for policy at the Department of Homeland Security. “It makes it far more likely that much of the rumor and uncertainty about Kaspersky are true.”

For years, suspicions that Kaspersky is connected to Russia’s spying network have dogged the company, a leading global seller of anti-virus programs. Founder and CEO Eugene Kaspersky studied cryptography, programming and mathematics at an academy operated by the KGB, the FSB’s Soviet-era predecessor, and then worked for the Ministry of Defense.

Since he established the company, it has grown to serve more than 400 million users worldwide, according to its website, and is the largest software vendor in Europe. Its security software is also widely available in the United States.

U.S. agencies also use it, with Kaspersky a subcontractor on federal software contracts. The Democratic National Committee has also used the software, even after its emails were breached last summer by Russian hackers.

But during investigations into Russia’s meddling in last year’s U.S. elections, concerns have grown that Kaspersky software could somehow be used to launch a cyberattack on the U.S. electric grid or other critical infrastructure, such as railroads, airlines or water utilities. ABC News reported in May that the FBI warned industry leaders about those risks last year at a meeting confirmed by McClatchy.

One of Kaspersky’s certificates that carries a military intelligence unit number.
GREG GORDON/MCCLATCHY/TNS

In recent days, two events kept Kaspersky in the news: FBI agents fanned out to interview Russian Kaspersky employees based in the United States, and a Senate committee approved legislation to curb federal use of the company’s products.

Even so, no proof has ever been made public to refute the company’s denials that it has connections to Russian intelligence.

The documents obtained by McClatchy, however, could provide additional evidence that the clandestine FSB has a tight relationship with Kaspersky.

In a statement to McClatchy, the company did not directly address the reference to an FSB military unit number in several of its certificates dating to 2007. The certificates are posted on Kaspersky’s website.

Kaspersky said the FSB’s certification review “is quite similar to that of many countries,” including those of the European Union and the United States. It includes an analysis of the company’s source code “to ensure that undeclared functionality and security issues — like backdoors — do not exist,” the company said.

However, Russia’s certification reviews do not require the company to divulge “the necessary information to permit those (spy) organizations to bypass products’ security mechanisms,” Kaspersky said.

After this story was initially published, the company said it and other high-tech companies that seek to sell products to the Russian government receive their certifications from the Center for Information Protection and Special Communications, known by the FSB military unit number on Kaspersky’s certificates.

A former Western intelligence official who examined the documents for McClatchy described as “very unusual” the assignment of a military intelligence number on Kaspersky’s certificates.

In Russia’s closed society, the FSB retains the right to access any company’s data transmissions, and no firm is allowed to use encryption to block the intelligence agency’s intrusions, the former Western spy said.

Kenneth Geers, a former NATO expert who is a fellow at the Washington-based Atlantic Council, also reviewed the company’s FSB certificate.

Geers said he could not say with certainty the degree to which the documents show a connection between Kaspersky and the FSB.

But “the suggestion is that this is a government op (operation), a unit with a direct government affiliation,” he said.

“No one should be surprised if there are closer relationships between IT vendors and law enforcement, worldwide, than the public imagines,” Geers said.

Case in point: Whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that American telecommunications companies shared vast amounts of personal data with the U.S. National Security Agency, where Geers once worked.

It’s possible, Geers said, that Kaspersky’s software contains a secret “backdoor” to allow Russian special services access for law enforcement and counterintelligence purposes.

“If such a secret backdoor exists, I would not be shocked,” Geers said. “A worldwide deployment of sensors may be too great a temptation for any country’s intelligence services to ignore.

“Kaspersky may also have been required by Russian authorities to participate in a quiet business partnership with the government,” he said.

A former CIA station chief in Moscow agreed that Kaspersky may have had little choice.

“These guys’ families, their well-being, everything they have is in Russia,” said Steve Hall, who later headed the agency’s Russian operations before retiring in 2015.

Kaspersky is “a Russian company,” Hall said. “Any time (Russian President Vladimir Putin) wants Kaspersky to do something — anything — he’ll remind them that’s where their families are and where their bank accounts are. There’s no doubt in my mind it could be, if it’s not already, under the control of Putin.”

Kaspersky has rejected any notion that it might be an intelligence front, citing its years of delivering quality products.

“As a private company, Kaspersky Lab has no ties to any government, and the company has never helped, nor will help, any government in the world with its cyber espionage efforts,” Eugene Kaspersky said in May during an “Ask Me Anything” session on the website Reddit.

Many cyber experts, including those with federal government backgrounds, have praised the quality of Kaspersky software. The company also has a record of exposing cyberattacks, including the U.S. government’s Stuxnet attack that disabled Iran’s nuclear weapons development even though the Iranian equipment wasn’t connected to the Internet.

But several other experts said they were “not shocked” by the disclosure of the language in Kaspersky’s FSB certificate.

“It is common view around the intelligence community that (Kaspersky) is treated (by the Kremlin) like an arm of the Russian government,” said a former Obama administration cyber official, who asked for anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Kaspersky has attracted an unwanted spotlight lately in the Justice Department’s investigation headed by special counsel Robert Mueller into whether the Kremlin colluded with President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign.

At a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing in May, Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., raised concerns about Kaspersky.

Rubio asked of intelligence agency chiefs, “Would any of you be comfortable with the Kaspersky Lab software on your computers?”

Before him were, among others, the leaders of the FBI, CIA and the National Security Agency.

Each said “no.”

The FBI interviews of Kaspersky employees were conducted June 27, after disclosures that the company paid retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn more than $11,000 in consulting fees last fall before he began a short-lived stint as Trump’s national security adviser.

The day after the interviews, the Senate Armed Service Committee approved legislation that would bar the Pentagon from buying Kaspersky products.

“The ties between Kaspersky Lab and the Kremlin are very alarming,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H. “This has led to a consensus in Congress and among administration officials that Kaspersky Lab cannot be trusted to protect critical infrastructure, particularly computer systems vital to our nation’s security.”

Her amendment to the defense authorization bill prohibiting Pentagon purchase of the software as of October 2018 won overwhelming approval.

If the amendment becomes law, there could be consequences, a Russian news agency reported. It quoted a top Kremlin communications official, Nikolai Nikiforov, as warning that if the United States freezes out Kaspersky, Putin’s government could not rule out retaliation.

The FBI declined to comment. But the bureau has long suspected that some of Kaspersky’s American-based employees were engaging in intelligence activities, said a U.S. government official, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Federal agencies have at least 20 contracts in which Kaspersky products are used. The General Services Administration makes them available on an approved product list for much of the government.

CDW, a top government tech contractor that has provided Kaspersky software and maintenance through four contracts with the Consumer Safety Product Commission (as recently as May 23), declined to say whether it plans to continue offering Kaspersky software.

Dell, the giant computer manufacturer, offers Kaspersky in many of its products. The company did not respond to a request for comment.

So why do federal agencies still use Kaspersky software if there has been such uneasiness about it inside national security circles?

“Under acquisition rules, it is very difficult for an agency to rely on classified information in order to make purchasing decisions,” said J. Michael Daniel, White House cybersecurity coordinator during the Obama administration.

“A lot of acquisition officers didn’t seek out that information because they couldn’t use it in the decision-making process,” said Daniel, now president of the Cyber Threat Alliance, a group committed to improving cyber defenses.

The U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Russian cyber operatives pirated thousands of emails from the Democratic National Committee beginning in 2015 helped trigger the inquiries into possible Kremlin interference in the election.

But two months after the DNC disclosed that its servers had been hacked — in an apparent attempt to help prevent further intrusions — the party purchased Kaspersky software on Aug. 25, 2016, for $137.46, according to Federal Election Commission records. It was the only federal political committee that reported buying Kaspersky software in the 2016 cycle, according to FEC records.

A DNC spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

For its part, the company publishes a blog that advises consumers about computer viruses. The U.S. government official said, though, that in the past Kaspersky has aroused suspicions as to why it warns about some computer bugs but not others.

The firm’s presence has become so embedded in the U.S. economy that the company sponsors a Ferrari Formula One racing team, robotic competitions for children and is among the corporate sponsors of an upcoming conference of the National Conference of State Legislatures.

“They have a big public relations wing,” said the U.S. government official who spoke on condition of anonymity. “They’re fully aware they’re under the microscope.”

Finally, a University is Sued over Discrimination

Posted on July 3, 2017July 3, 2017 by Denise Simon

Discrimination is happening at college campuses across the country. Not only is it happening by plots of students, campus selective organizations but it includes university administrators and professors.

Here comes a lawsuit that just may set legal standing and fire a shot across the bow of other universities. Lawsuits require discovery and once documents as well as electronic communications are submitted, we may see a larger coordination and collusion. Frankly, it could lead to RICO.

Hat tip the LP.

Image result for San Francisco State University BusinessInsider

Image result for San Francisco State University

San Francisco State University Accused of Pervasive Anti-Semitism in Groundbreaking Federal Lawsuit Filed by Students and Members of the Jewish Community

SAN FRANCISCO, CA, JUNE 19, 2017 — A group of San Francisco State University students and members of the local Jewish community today filed a lawsuit alleging that SFSU has a long and extensive history of cultivating anti-Semitism and overt discrimination against Jewish students. According to the suit, “SFSU and its administrators have knowingly fostered this discrimination and hostile environment, which has been marked by violent threats to the safety of Jewish students on campus.” The plaintiffs are represented by a team of attorneys from The Lawfare Project and the global law firm Winston & Strawn LLP.

The lawsuit, which was filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California and also names as defendants the Board of Trustees of the California State University System, SFSU President Leslie Wong and several other University officials and employees, alleges that “Jewish students at SFSU have been so intimidated and ostracized that they are afraid to wear Stars of David or yarmulkes on campus.”

The lawsuit was triggered following the alleged complicity of senior university administrators and police officers in the disruption of an April, 2016, speech by the Mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat. At that event organized by SF Hillel, Jewish students and audience members were subjected to genocidal and offensive chants and expletives by a raging mob that used bullhorns to intimidate and drown out the Mayor’s speech and physically threaten and intimidate members of the mostly-Jewish audience. At the same time, campus police – including the chief – stood by, on order from senior university administrators who instructed the police to “stand down” despite direct and implicit threats and violations of university codes governing campus conduct.

The lawsuit states that “SFSU has not merely fostered and embraced anti-Jewish hostility -it has systematically supported … student groups as they have doggedly organized their efforts to target, threaten, and intimidate Jewish students on campus and deprive them of their civil rights and their ability to feel safe and secure as they pursue their education at SFSU.” SFSU continues to affirm its preference for those targeting the Jewish community, according to the lawsuit, by claiming to handle such incidents successfully by removing the Jewish students from their lawful assembly without allowing them the opportunity to exercise their free speech rights.”

Making matters worse, no actions were ever taken by SFSU against the disruptive students, no disciplinary charges were ever filed, and no sanctions were ever imposed against the groups or students responsible for committing these acknowledged violations.

“Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is the underpinning of the modern American ethos of equal protection and anti-discrimination. This case isn’t about Jews, it’s about equal protection under the law,” says Brooke Goldstein, Lawfare Project Director. “If the courts fail to apply Title VI in this context, we are creating a massive loophole that will ultimately be exploited to target other marginalized minority communities. If we refuse to enforce anti-discrimination law for Jews, if we say Jews don’t deserve equal protection, it will erode constitutional protections for everyone. Jews must be protected the same as any other minority group, or the bedrock of civil rights law will crumble.”

In addition to the disruption of the speech by Nir Barkat, the lawsuit describes a long list of discrimination, intimidation and mistreatment of Jewish students at SFSU. Following are just a few examples:

In 1994, a ten-foot mural was erected on SFSU’s student union building that portrayed yellow Stars of David intertwined with dollar signs, skulls and crossbones, and the words “African Blood.”

In 1997, a banner depicting an Israeli flag with a swastika next to an American flag with a dollar sign was hung over the same wall where the 1994 mural had been painted.

In April of 2002, posters appeared around campus advertising an event called “Genocide in the 21st Century,” featuring a dead baby on the label of a soup can, surrounded on either side by Israeli flags.

In May of 2002, following a Peace rally, a small group of Jewish students were targeted by a large group of students who shouted bigoted and offensive remarks, including “Hitler didn’t finish the job,” “Get out or we’ll kill you,” and “Go back to Russia.”
In 2009, SFSU hosted on-campus events that advocated for the elimination of the Jewish state of Israel.

In 2016, President Wong complained that in all his years, he had never seen a university donor withhold a pledge because of a “political issue.” A Jewish Studies faculty member told him, “the physical safety of Jewish students is never a political issue.” President Wong replied, “on this, we will have to agree to disagree.”

In 2017, when specifically asked whether Zionists are welcome at SFSU, President Wong refused to provide the only proper answer: “Yes.” Instead, President Wong demurred, stating “That’s one of those categorical statements I can’t get close to. . . . Am I comfortable opening up the gates to everyone? Gosh, of course not.”

While SFSU actively supports virulently anti-Jewish and groups and events at the university, according to the lawsuit, its administrators have done just the opposite for Jewish students. “SFSU has repeatedly denied Plaintiffs’ student groups, including Hillel and the Jewish fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi equal access to campus events that welcome other non-Jewish student organizations at the University… The anti-Jewish animus pervading SFSU’s campus is as ubiquitous as it is hostile. Jews are at best ignored, but more often ostracized in every corner of the university community. While other groups are able to host events, obtain permits and participate in “tabling” at student fairs, Jewish groups are customarily forced to fight for these basic rights as tuition-paying students, no matter how hard they work to follow processes correctly and avoid controversy.”

The lawsuit comes at a crucial time for Jewish students across the United States. According to the lawsuit, “Anti-Semitic incidents at colleges and universities have been rising at exponential rates, doubling from 2014 to 2015 and increasing from 90 to 108-another 20 percent-from 2015 to 2016…According to the FBI hate crimes statistics from 2015 (the most recent year calculated), anti-Jewish incidents accounted for 57 percent of all religiously motivated hate crimes.”

Furthermore, the suit was filed just four days after an announcement by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), which is tasked with federal enforcement of Title VI on university campuses, stating that the office would be “scaling back” investigations into discrimination against “whole classes of victims.” It is abundantly clear that, unless courageous Jewish students like these plaintiffs bring lawsuits to enforce their own civil rights, they will have no other recourse than to suffer the discrimination in perpetuity.

“Anti-Semitism, like any other form of racism, is totally repugnant and cannot be countenanced. This lawsuit intends to address the rampant anti-Jewish animus pervasive at SFSU. Jews are entitled to the same civil rights as all Americans,” says Lawrence Hill, a senior partner at Winston & Strawn LLP and member of The Lawfare Project’s Board of Directors. “When our universities, which are supposed to be institutions of tolerance that encourage freedom of expression, instead foment prejudice and suppress free speech, we cannot stand idly by. College students are America’s future. Their minds shouldn’t be poisoned with hate and their voices shouldn’t be silenced by a mob.”

Amanda Berman, The Lawfare Project’s Director of Legal Affairs, who has been investigating SFSU for more than 14 months, added “Every couple of weeks, another anti-Semitic incident occurred; another Jewish student faced harassment or intimidation on campus; another member of Hillel or AEPi was targeted; another openly degrading comment surfaced from a member of the administration; or another student faced recalcitrance when trying to benefit, the same as all other students, from the opportunities and privileges of enrollment at SFSU. These defendants seem to believe that they are above the law, that discrimination against Jews is entirely acceptable, and that their response to criticism must go only so far as to placate Jewish donors. It is time for profound institutional change at SFSU, and since the faculty and administration is entirely unwilling to pursue such a goal, Jewish victims of this pervasively hostile environment have been left with no choice but to ask a federal court to compel it.”

A copy of the complaint can be found here.

Court Takes Iran’s Real Estate in New York

Posted on July 3, 2017July 3, 2017 by Denise Simon

Primer: Under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, executive orders and U.S. Department of Treasury regulations, the violations were clear and Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry chose to ignore all of this due to the back channel negotiations regarding the Iranian nuclear deal that was launched.

Iran Sanctions and Real Estate Investments in the U.S.

Trump inherited Bank Melli, one of Iran’s largest state-controlled banks, as a tenant when he purchased the General Motors Building on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, according to public records reviewed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and the Center for Public Integrity. The Trump Organization kept the bank on as a tenant for four more years after the U.S. Treasury Department designated Bank Melli in 1999 as being controlled by the Iranian government.

U.S. officials later alleged that Bank Melli had been used to obtain sensitive materials for Iran’s nuclear program. U.S. authorities also alleged that the bank had been used between 2002 and 2006 to funnel money to a unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard that has sponsored terrorist attacks — a period that overlapped with the time the bank rented office space from Trump. More here.

Hold on…..there are the Clinton’s interaction in this too. The Alavi Foundation bank accounts were held at Bank Melli.

Clintons Received Money from ‘Front for the Government of Iran’

As President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry close in on a nuclear deal with Iran, it’s worth remembering that the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation received money from “a front for the government of Iran” called the Alavi Foundation.

The front gave the Clintons $30,000 between April 2005 and March 2006, according to tax forms. This occurred years after law enforcement officials tied the group to Iranian radicals. “The center is funded by the New York-based Alavi Foundation, which law enforcement officials say is closely tied to the mullahs who dominate Iran,” the Washington Post reported in 2003. More here.

By the way, it goes beyond New York: Assets of the Alavi Foundation and Assa Corp., including bank accounts owned by 650 Fifth Avenue Company, the Alavi Foundation and Assa Corp.; and properties owned by the foundation are located in New York, Maryland, Virginia, Texas and California. Some are Iranian owned and managed mosques. More here.

Image result for alavi foundation new york DW

NEW YORK— A jury in New York on Thursday found that the U.S. government may seize a Manhattan office building from a nonprofit foundation accused of violating U.S. sanctions against Iran.

The jury in a Manhattan federal court said the Alavi Foundation, majority owner of an office tower at 650 Fifth Avenue, knew that its partner and the building’s minority owner, Assa Corp, was a front for Iran, and helped conceal the fact.

Jurors said the government had proven that the property was involved in or traceable to money laundering.

The government wanted to seize the 36-story building, which could be worth nearly $1 billion, to benefit people with legal judgments against Iran relating to bombings and other attacks.

“In this trial, 650 Fifth Avenue’s secret was laid bare for all to see,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Joon Kim in Manhattan, whose office represented the government.

“On behalf of all of our clients, we are extremely pleased with the decision and the verdict handed down today,” said James Bernard, a lawyer for the judgment holders.

“The Alavi Foundation is disappointed by today’s verdict and by the court’s decision in the related cases and is considering its options,” said John Gleeson, a former federal judge who represented the foundation at trial.

Alavi was founded in 1973 as the Pahlavi Foundation by the then-Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. It describes its mission as promoting the study of Persian and Islamic culture in the United States, and also funds schools and free clinics.

The tower at 650 Fifth Avenue was built at the shah’s behest in 1978 to provide a source of income. After the Islamic Revolution in 1979 that ousted the shah, Iran’s new government replaced much of Alavi’s board of directors.

In 1989, Alavi entered into a partnership with Iran’s state-controlled Bank Melli under which Alavi owned a majority share of the building, and the bank owned the rest through a subsidiary, Assa.

The case turned on whether Alavi knew that Assa was still owned by Bank Melli after the United States imposed sanctions on Iran in 1995.

Lawyers for the government argued that it did, but kept distributing rental income to Assa anyway, while working to conceal its ownership from U.S. authorities.

Gleeson argued that the foundation was led to believe that Bank Melli was sold before the sanctions took effect.

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