Category Archives: Department of Homeland Security

Terror Incubation in Europe and U.S.

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Israel says Iran building terror network in Europe, US

AP ~ NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — Israel’s defense minister on Wednesday accused Iran of building an international terror network that includes “sleeper cells” that are stockpiling arms, intelligence and operatives in order to strike on command in places including Europe and the U.S.

Moshe Yaalon said Iran aims to destabilize the Middle East and other parts of the world and is training, funding and arming “emissaries” to spread a revolution. He said Tehran is the anchor of a “dangerous axis” that includes Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut, Sanaa and other cities in the region.

“The Iranian regime through the Iranian Revolutionary Guard corps is building a complex terror infrastructure including sleeping cells that are stockpiling arms, intelligence and operatives and are ready to act on order including in Europe and America,” Yaalon said after talks with his Cypriot counterpart.

Israel considers Iran the biggest threat to the region, citing its support for anti-Israel militant groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, and has been an outspoken critic of the international nuclear deal with Iran.

The Israeli defense minister offered no direct evidence of such sleeper cells existing in the U.S. or Europe, but referred indirectly to the case of a Hezbollah member who was jailed in Cyprus last June following the seizure of nine tons of a chemical compound that can be converted into an explosive.

A Cypriot court sentenced Lebanese Canadian Hussein Bassam Abdallah to six years in prison after prosecutors said he admitted that Hezbollah aimed to mount terrorist attacks against Israeli interests in Cyprus using the ammonium nitrate that he had been ordered to guard at the Larnaca home of another official of the Iranian-backed group.

Yaalon said Cypriot authorities had “defeated attempts by Hezbollah and Iran to establish a terror infrastructure” on the island that aimed to expand “throughout Europe.”

Yaalon said that apart from the refugee crisis, the war in Syria has resulted in “widespread infiltration by murderous, merciless terror organizations” that belong to global jihad and are partly funded by Iran.

He said that requires western nations to counter attempts to carry out “massive terror attacks.”

Yaalon’s trip to Cyprus was the first official visit by an Israeli defense minister to the east Mediterranean island.

***

Up To 5,000 Islamic State Trained Jihadists Could Be At Large In Europe — Says U.K. Head Of Europol –‘ Islamic State, And/Or, Other Religious Terror Groups,’ Actively Planning Mass Casualty Attack/s Somewhere In Europe 

FC: Robin Wainwright, the British head of Europol, Europe’s International Crime Agency, in an interview with Germany’s Neue Osnabrucker Zeitung newspaper warned that “up to 5,000 jihadists could be at large in Europe, after training with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.”  

Justin Huggler, reporting in the February 19, 2016 edition of London’s The Telegraph, writing from Berlin, writes that “Europol estimates the number of EU citizens who have slipped back [into Europe] after training in the Middle East, is between 3,000 – 5,000..  “Europe is currently facing the highest terror threat in more than ten years,” according to Mr. Wainwright.  “We can expect the Islamic State, or other religious terror groups to stage an attack somewhere in Europe — with the aim of achieving mass casualties among the civilian population.”

The Core of the Hillary Server Controversy, Revealed

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Once a year, those who handle classified information must attend a refresher class on dealing with classified material and the consequences of violating the rules governing classified material. My guess is Hillary and her circle of aides and protectors waived themselves from attending. Obama approved?

I guess there is a good reason it is called ‘Foggy Bottom’.

Spy agencies say Clinton emails closely matched top secret documents: sources

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. spy agencies have told Congress that Hillary Clinton’s home computer server contained some emails that should have been treated as “top secret” because their wording matched sections of some of the government’s most highly classified documents, four sources familiar with the agency reports said.

    The two reports are the first formal declarations by U.S. spy agencies detailing how they believe Clinton violated government rules when highly classified information in at least 22 email messages passed through her unsecured home server.

    The State Department has already acknowledged that the emails contained top secret intelligence, though it says they were not marked that way. It has not previously been clear if the emails contained full classified documents or only some information from them.

    The agencies did not find any top secret documents that passed through Clinton’s server in their full version, the sources from Congress and the government’s executive branch said.

    However, the agency reports found some emails included passages that closely tracked or mirrored communications marked “top secret,” according to the sources, who all requested anonymity. In some cases, additional classification markings meant access was supposed to be limited to small groups of specially cleared officials.

Under the law and government rules, U.S. officials and contractors may not transmit any classified information – not only documents – outside secure, government-controlled channels. Such information should not be sent even through the government’s .gov email network.

The front-runner for the Democratic nomination for president and former secretary of state has insisted she broke no rules. Clinton’s lawyer, David Kendall, did not respond to a request for comment. Clinton campaign spokespeople did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Two sources said some of the top secret material was related to the CIA’s campaign of drone strikes against Islamist militants in the Middle East and South Asia.

That campaign has been widely reported by Reuters and other media outlets, but it officially is classified as a “Top Secret/Special Access Program” (SAP), meaning only a limited number of people whose names are on a special list are allowed to learn details about it.

One source said the reports identified some information in messages on Clinton’s server that came from human sources, such as confidential CIA informants, and some from technical systems, such as spy satellites or electronic eavesdropping.

The Clinton campaign criticized the State Department’s decision last month to withhold the 22 emails containing top secret information from the public, blaming it on “bureaucratic infighting” and “over-classification run amok.”

“As we have previously made clear, we are not going to speak to the content of the emails,” a State Department official said on Wednesday when asked about the intelligence agency reports.

Clinton’s use of a private server in her New York home for her government work is being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the State Department’s and spy community’s internal watchdogs and several Republican-controlled congressional committees.

Two of the sources told Reuters that one of the reports on the emails came from the CIA. Three sources said the other report came from the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA), which analyzes U.S. spy satellite intelligence.

A spokesman for NGA did not immediately respond to requests for comment. CIA spokespeople declined to comment.

The two spy agencies’ reports were sent to Congress in the past few weeks by the intelligence community inspector general, an official government watchdog for multiple spy agencies.

The inspector general’s office has confirmed that it requested the reports from two intelligence agencies, but didn’t identify them.

    It was unclear what the congressional committees that received the classified reports, the House and Senate intelligence and foreign relations panels, will do with them. The contents cannot be discussed publicly. The committees requested intelligence reports in connection with their efforts to ensure that government secrets are appropriately protected.

Sidebar:

Everyone who handles Classified Material signs the SF-312 that outlines handling according to EO 13526 that requires an annual refresher course for originators of Classified Materials. Section 1 outlines handling. Section 4 is agreement to punishment if violation is discovered. Text of SF-312 below:

1. Intending to be legally bound, I hereby accept the obligations contained in this Agreement in consideration of my being granted access to classified information. As used in this Agreement, classified information is marked or unmarked classified information, including oral communications, that is classified under the standards of Executive Order 13526, or under any other Executive order or statute that prohibits the unauthorized disclosure of information in the interest of national security; and unclassified information that meets the standards for classification and is in the process of a classification determination as provided in sections 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4(e) of Executive Order 13526, or under any other Executive order or statute that requires protection for such information in the interest of national security. I understand and accept that by being granted access to classified information, special confidence and trust shall be placed in me by the United States Government.

4. I have been advised that any breach of this Agreement may result in the termination of any security clearances I hold; removal from any position of special confidence and trust requiring such clearances; or termination of my employment or other relationships with the Departments or Agencies that granted my security clearance or clearances. In addition, I have been advised that any unauthorized disclosure of classified information by me may constitute a violation, or violations, of United States criminal laws, including the provisions of sections 641, 793, 794, 798, *952 and 1924, title 18, United States Code; *the provisions of section 783(b}, title 50, United States Code; and the provisions of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. I recognize that nothing in this Agreement constitutes a waiver by the United States of the right to prosecute me for any statutory violation.

The IAEA’s Big Challenge of Iran’s Nuclear Program

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  $150 billion or $50 billion, should take care of the financial shortfall. What say you?

The full GAO report here.

Will IAEA be able to verify Iran’s nuclear program

alMonitor: The UN nuclear agency will face “challenges” verifying Iran’s compliance with last year’s nuclear agreement, the US government watchdog said Feb. 23 in a new report that was immediately used as ammunition by critics of the deal.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) faces a budget and staffing shortfall that will require an extra $10 million per year for the next 15 years to monitor the deal, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The report goes on to detail the agency’s dependence on Iranian cooperation to access nuclear sites and the intrinsic difficulty in detecting undeclared activities such as weapons development and centrifuge manufacturing that do not leave a nuclear trace.

Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., said the report raises concerns about “the entity that we are putting all our marbles in.” He commissioned the report with Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., a fellow critic of the deal who also voted against it last year.

“Some of the preliminary findings cause concern for me about what the IAEA is capable of,” Menendez told Secretary of State John Kerry at a hearing on the department’s FY 2017 budget request. “The GAO [report] point[s] directly to future problems with monitoring, verifying and meeting requirements of the [Iran deal].”

Kirk used the report to call on Congress to prepare sanctions that can be imposed if Iran starts to cheat on its nuclear obligations. He and Menendez are pushing for the reauthorization of the Iran Sanctions Act, a decade-old law that expires at the end of the year.

“My biggest takeaway is lawmakers must come together in a bipartisan manner now to create an insurance policy for imposing crippling pressure if and when Iran once again cheats on nuclear inspections as it has so many times in the past,” Kirk said in a statement. “International inspectors, according to the GAO’s interim report, still face an ‘inherent challenge’ in detecting undeclared nuclear activities, including weapons development activities and centrifuge manufacturing. The report also cites concerns the IAEA’s decision to end investigations into Iran’s past nuclear weapons activities ‘could reduce the indicators at the IAEA’s disposal to detect undeclared activity.’ Indeed, GAO also warns the nuclear deal’s mechanism for IAEA inspectors to gain access to Iranian sites suspected of having undeclared nuclear activities remains ‘untested’ and cautions ‘it is too soon to tell whether it will improve access.’”

Among the concerns raised by the GAO report is the sheer amount of manpower the Iran deal will consume. The agency is expected to have to transfer 18 “experienced inspectors” and “nearly twice that number of other staff” to its Iran Task Force, the GAO concludes, raising concerns about proliferation in other countries.

The State Department is proposing a $191 million US contribution to the agency in its FY 2017 budget request, a $5 million increase over the current year, to help the agency meet its new obligations.

*** 

In part by Rubin at WaPo:

Last week the administration warned that a sale of Russian advanced jets to Iran would violate the United Nations ban on such equipment. Sanctions guru Mark Dubowitz tells me, “Congress should draw up a list of Russian and Iranian entities to be sanctioned, give the administration 30 days to impose sanctions on these entities, and, if there’s no action, move ahead with statutory designations of these entities.”

That thinking needs to be applied across the board, taking into account all aspects of Iran’s behavior. Iran acts with impunity because it is convinced (rightly) the administration will do nothing. If the White House won’t, then Congress must act. Full article here.

 

Judiciary Cmte; Muslim Brotherhood, Terror Organization

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Yes!!!

Feb 24 2016

Judiciary Committee Calls on Administration to List Muslim Brotherhood as a Terrorist Organization

Washington, D.C.  – The House Judiciary Committee today approved by a vote of 17-10 the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act of 2015 (H.R. 3892), which calls on the State Department to recognize the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization in order to better protect national security.

The Muslim Brotherhood, which was founded in Egypt in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna, remains headquartered in Egypt but operates throughout the world. The Muslim Brotherhood’s strategic goal “in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.” It has supported Islamist terrorism directly through fundraising and extortion, and has been designated as a terrorist organization by several U.S. allies in the Middle East.

H.R. 3892 would have a threefold effect: the Administration would actually have to deny admittance to aliens tied to the Muslim Brotherhood; persons who provide material support to the Muslim Brotherhood would be subject to federal criminal penalties; and the Treasury Department would be able to require U.S. financial institutions possessing or controlling any assets of the Muslim Brotherhood to block all financial transactions involving those assets.

Below is a statement from House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and Representative Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.), the author of this legislation, on today’s Committee vote.

Chairman Goodlatte: “The Muslim Brotherhood’s embrace of terrorism and the very real threat it poses to American lives and the national security of the United States make it long overdue for designation.  The bill passed by the House Judiciary Committee today calls the State Department to do the right thing and designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization. This will make it less likely that members of the Muslim Brotherhood will be able to enter the United States. I thank Congressman Diaz-Balart for introducing this bill and urge the House of Representatives to consider it immediately.”

Rep. Diaz-Balart: “The Muslim Brotherhood continues to pose a global threat. The jihadist movement actively supports and finances terrorist networks around the world, including al-Qaeda and Hamas. The United States must recognize and sanction the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization as part of our national security strategy. I thank Chairman Goodlatte for his leadership and assistance in getting this bill through committee, and I look forward to working with him when it is brought to the floor.”

brotherhood

*** In part from JPost: Just a few years ago, the conventional wisdom in Washington, DC, was that the Muslim Brotherhood would be a moderating force in the Middle East and bring democracy to the region. But not three years after the beginning of the “Arab Spring,” the people of countries like Egypt and Tunisia removed their Muslim Brotherhood- led governments. Other Middle Eastern nations have taken measures to designate the organization as a terrorist group and banned their activity entirely. Even our British allies have opened an official investigation into the group’s activities and connection to violent extremism. More here.

*** Gatestone:

  • “[T]he organization of the Muslim Brotherhood is a terrorist organization, and anyone who asks either to reconcile with them, to join them or to ally with them is himself a terrorist.” — Refaat Saïd, leader of Egypt’s Socialist party, al-Tagammu’, and previously close friend of former Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide, Mahdi Akef.
  • It should come as no surprise, then, that the motto of Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis is also the verse singled out by Hassan al Banna: “Fight them until there is no fitnah [discord], and [until] the religion, all of it, is for Allah.” [Qur’an, Sura VIII, verse 39]
  • The link between the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas is clear, and confirmed by Article 2 of the Charter of Hamas, which reads: “The Islamic Resistance movement is one of the wings of the Muslim Brothers in Palestine”.  Complete details here.

     

     

Nightmare for Taxpayers According to an IRS Bulletin

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IRS is warning taxpayers of a new surge in tax-related incidents

It is a nightmare for taxpayers according to an IRS bulletin there is a 400 percent surge in tax-related phishing and malware incidents.

This year the IRS already reported 1,026 malware and phishing incidents, compared to 254 this time last year.

SecurityAffairs: The IRS is warning taxpayers of newer forms of attacks aiming victims into disclosing credentials to third-party tax preparation service accounts.

“The Internal Revenue Service renewed a consumer alert for e-mail schemes after seeing an approximate 400 percent surge in phishing and malware incidents so far this tax season.” states the bulletin. “The emails are designed to trick taxpayers into thinking these are official communications from the IRS or others in the tax industry, including tax software companies. The phishing schemes can ask taxpayers about a wide range of topics. E-mails can seek information related to refunds, filing status, confirming personal information, ordering transcripts and verifying PIN information.”

The IRS Commissioner John Koskinen used the adjective “dramatic” to describe this surge in tax-related incidents inviting taxpayers to watch out for scammers.

“This dramatic jump in these scams comes at the busiest time of tax season,” said Koskinen. “Watch out for fraudsters slipping these official-looking emails into inboxes, trying to confuse people at the very time they work on their taxes. We urge people not to click on these emails.”

Threat actors are very interested in using the tax season as a lure, in a common attack scenario victims receive an email containing links to the domain used to serve malware. In other cases, the attackers used emails with attachments that include documents embedding malicious macros. Once the victims open the document, the macro drops a malware on the victim’s machine, including dreaded ransomware like CryptoLocker, TeslaCrypt and Locky.

These are the alarming statistics provided by the IRS:

  • There were 1,026 incidents reported in January, up from 254 from a year earlier.
  • The trend continued in February, nearly doubling the reported number of incidents compared to a year ago. In all, 363 incidents were reported from Feb. 1-16, compared to the 201 incidents reported for the entire month of February 2015.
  • This year’s 1,389 incidents have already topped the 2014 yearly total of 1,361, and they are halfway to matching the 2015 total of 2,748.

Recently IRS services were abused by crooks to target taxpayers, in May 2015 the Internal Revenue Service was breached by hackers that “used an online service provided by the agency” to access data for more than 100,000 taxpayers. The IRS issued an official statement on the incident and specified that the compromised system was “Get Transcript.” The Transcript service could be used by taxpayers to get a transcript online or by mail to view their tax account transactions.

In August 2015, the Internal Revenue Service disclosed a new review of its system, revealing that 334,000 taxpayers (more than three times it initially estimated) may be affected by the hack it announced in May.

A couple of weeks ago the IRS detected roughly unauthorized attempts using 464,000 unique SSNs, and 101,000 attempts allowed crooks in generating PINs.

The U.S. Internal Revenue Service confirmed that cyber criminals abused the Electronic Filing PIN application running on irs.gov that allows taxpayers to generate a PIN that they can use to file tax returns online.

Pierluigi Paganini