WikiLeaks Posts the Hacked Emails of CIA Director

Yet another Obama administration placeholder that was using a private email for sensitive material.

Of particular note is the partially written summary on Iran from 2009, which appear to be the genesis and words the White House used to justify normalizing relations with the rogue nation. John Brennan was applying to obtain high security clearance to enter the Obama White House before 2009 and later assuming the role of the chief of the CIA.

*** “The United States has no choice but to find ways to coexist — and to come to terms — with whatever government holds power in Tehran,” Brennan said in the three-page memo. He added that Iran would have to “come to terms” with the U.S. and that “Tehran’s ability to advance its political and economic interests rests on a non-hostile relationship with the United States and the West.”

In the memo, Brennan advised Obama to “tone down” rhetoric with Iran, and swiped at former President George W. Bush for his “gratuitous” labeling of Iran as part of a worldwide “axis of evil.” Brennan also said the U.S. should establish a direct dialogue with Tehran and “seek realistic, measurable steps.” Although he didn’t specifically call for the regime of financial sanctions that the Obama administration, along with Europe, Russia and China, pushed against Iran, Brennan told the president-elect to “hold out meaningful carrots as well as sticks.” ***

In part, a deeper look at the text is as follows:

The Conundrum of Iran

Iran will be a major player on the world stage in the decades ahead, and its actions and
behavior will have a major and enduring impact on near- and long-term U.S. interests on
a wide variety of regional and global issues. With a population of over 70 million, xx
percent of the world’s proven oil reserves, a geostrategic location of tremendous
(enviable?) significance, and a demonstrated potential to develop a nuclear-weapons
program, the United States has no choice but to find a way to coexist—and to come to
terms—with whatever government holds power in Tehran. At the same time, the Iranian
Government also must come to terms with Washington, as Tehran’s ability to advance its
political and economic interests rests on a non-hostile relationship with the United States
and the West.
There are numerous hurdles that stand in the way of improved U.S.-Iranian relations, but
none is more daunting than the theocratic regime’s nearly 30-year track record of
engaging in transnational terrorism, both directly and indirectly, to advance its
revolutionary agenda. Tehran’s proclivity to promote its interests by playing the terrorist
card undermines its standing as a responsible sovereign state and calls into question
virtually all of its actions, even when pursuing legitimate political, economic, and
strategic interests. While the use of terrorism(*footnote on definition) is reprehensible
and of serious concern irrespective of the source, the wielding of the terrorism club by a
nation state such as Iran is particularly alarming and insidious because of the ability of a
government to use its instruments of national power to support, conceal, facilitate, and
employ terrorist violence. Specifically, a sovereign government has the ready ability to
provide all of the logistical requirements—e.g. the fabrication of official documentation,
explosives, and weapons; the protected use of diplomatic facilities, staff, and pouches;
and the provision of expertise, funding, and targeting intelligence—that can be used to
great effect to plan and carry out successful terrorist attacks. Too often, and for too long,
Iran has excelled at such activities.

An anonymous teen hacker claimed to have stolen a handful of files from CIA Director John Brennan’s private email account, U.S. officials reported on Monday.

CIA Director John Brennan emails

Today, 21 October 2015 and over the coming days WikiLeaks is releasing documents from one of CIA chief John Brennan’s non-government email accounts. Brennan used the account occasionally for several intelligence related projects.

John Brennan became the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency in March 2013, replacing General David Petraeus who was forced to step down after becoming embroiled in a classified information mishandling scandal. Brennan was made Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism on the commencement of the Obama presidency in 2009–a position he held until taking up his role as CIA chief.

According to the CIA Brennan previously worked for the agency for a 25 year stretch, from 1980 to 2005.

Brennan went private in 2005-2008, founding an intelligence and analysis firm The Analysis Corp (TAC). In 2008 Brennan became a donor to Obama. The same year TAC, led by Brennan, became a security advisor to the Obama campaign and later that year to the Obama-Biden Transition Project. It is during this period many of the Obama administration’s key strategic policies to China, Iran and “Af-Pak” were formulated. When Obama and Biden entered into power, Brennan was lifted up on high, resulting in his subsequent high-level national security appointments.

If you have similar official documents that have not been published yet, send them to WikiLeaks.

John Brennan Draft SF86

“National Security Position” form for John Brennan. This form, filled out by Brennan himself before he assumed his current position, reveals a quite comprehensive social graph of the current Director of the CIA with a lot of additional non-govermental and professional/military career details. (17 November 2008, Author: John Brennan)

Download PDF or view HTML version.

The Analysis Corporation

FAX from the General Counsel of the CIA to the Goverment Accountability Office about a legal quarrel between the CIA and “The Analysis Corporation”. TAC seems to have lost a tender for a US watchlist-related software project to a competitor. Issues seem to revolve around “growth of historical data” and “real-time responsiveness” of the system. (15 February 2008, Sender: CIA, Office of General Counsel, Larry Passar)

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Draft: Intel Position Paper

Challenges for the US Intelligence Community in a post cold-war and post-9/11 world; a calling for inter-agency cooperation, a ten-year term for the Director of the CIA and the Director of National Intelligence. It also demands the autonomy of the Intelligence Community, that it “… must never be subject to political manipulation and interference.” An unfinished paragraph is titled “Damaging Leaks of Classified Information”. (15 July 2007, Author: John Brennan)

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The Conundrum of Iran

Recommendations to the next President (assuming office in Jan. 2009) on how to play the figures on the U.S.-Iranian Chessboard (18 November 2007, Author: John Brennan)

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Torture

Letter from Vice Chairman Bond, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, to his fellow board members with a proposal on how to make future interrogation methods “compliant” and “legal”. Instead of listing all allowed methods, every kind of interrogation should be considered compliant, as long as it is not explicitly forbidden by the “Army Field Manual” (AFM). (May 2008)

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Torture Ways

A bill from July 2008 called “Limitations on Interrogation Techniques Act of 2008” explicitly list the forbidden interrogation techniques mentioned in the previous document and can be considered a direct implementation of the recommendations of Christopher Bond. (31 July 2008)

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54 in SW Border Detention Center from Terror Countries

ElPaso: Activists gathered Saturday to protest the treatment of 54 detainees who started a hunger strike at the El Paso immigration detention center.

Members of the Detained Migrant Solidarity Committee said they took issue with the alleged mistreatment of the 54 detainees from South Asia, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan. They are currently detained at the El Paso Processing Detention Center, 8915 Montana.

“The idea is to show solidarity for the hunger strikers,” said organizer Roxana Bendezu. “We had to communicate what was going on at the detention center very quickly. These people have stayed here for months. They are seeking asylum and should be processed and released right away.”

The 54 detainees started a hunger strike Wednesday. Organizers said all of the hunger strikers are seeking asylum and have passed the credible fear test, a measure immigration officials use when determining who is fleeing from danger and is in need of asylum. Some detainees have been held for as many as 11 months, organizers said.

Migrants from Terrorist Nations in Texas ICE Center Seeking Asylum

JudicialWatch: The Obama administration insists the southern border is secure, yet dozens of illegal aliens from terrorist nations entered the United States through Mexico and are being held in a Texas Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) processing center.

The detainees are nationals of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh and they are seeking asylum in the U.S. This week the 54 migrants from terrorist nations started a hunger strike to protest their detention at an ICE facility in El Paso. A local news report reveals that the foreign nationals “refused to eat or drink water” and a leftist immigrant advocacy group blasted the government for jailing the Afghans, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis without proper medical care.

One of the detainees released from the ICE processing center over the weekend said he arrived in El Paso after traveling from South America to Juarez, Mexico. He is a national of Bangladesh, his name is MD Nasir Uddin and he claims to be a refugee seeking asylum. In the news report Uddin complains that he was jailed for no valid reason and was not provided with an interpreter, legal documents or judgements against him. “We are not criminals and they don’t have any proof of criminals,” Uddin is quoted.

Just last month the U.S. issued a terrorism alert warning that militants in Bangladesh may be targeting westerners. “The U.S. government continues to receive information that terrorist groups in South Asia may also be planning attacks in the region, possibly against U.S. government facilities, U.S. citizens, or U.S. interests,” the bulletin states. “Terrorists have demonstrated their willingness and ability to attack locations where U.S. citizens or Westerners are known to congregate or visit.” Afghanistan and Pakistan have long been known as the headquarters of Al Qaeda’s global leadership and the State Department’s Country Reports on Terrorism offers all the juicy details.

The fact that individuals from these three terrorist nations have made it all the way to the U.S. through the Mexican border is downright alarming. Judicial Watch contacted officials from several Homeland Security agencies—including ICE and the Border Patrol—but none would comment on the 54 Afghans, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis held in El Paso. The reality is that it’s unlikely the story would have been covered if not for the hunger strike and involvement of a publicity-seeking immigrant advocacy organization. In fact, the focus of the El Paso news report is the “critical medical condition” of some of the detainees and the fact that one was held in solitary confinement.

The reality is that this is part of a very serious issue involving the dangerously porous southern border. Judicial Watch has covered this extensively and over the summer published a story detailing how Mexican drug cartels are smuggling foreigners from countries with terrorist links into a small Texas rural town near El Paso. To elude the Border Patrol and other law enforcement barriers, they use remote farm roads—rather than interstates—and they are being transported to stash areas in Acala, a rural crossroads located around 54 miles from El Paso on a state road. The foreigners are classified as Special Interest Aliens (SIA) by the U.S. government, which prefers to keep this from the American public.

ICE, WH, Sanctuary Cities and Sex Parties

America is losing her identity and in less than 10 years, it is all but gone. There are many reasons as noted below. Fasten your seat belt, this is chilling. Sadly, there is no topic or agency where corruption and scandal is exempt.

Sessions-Brat: 14 million MORE immigrants in 10 years, 5-times all U.S. high school seniors

WashingtonExaminer: If nothing is done to address legal and illegal immigration, some 14 million more immigrants will come to the United States over the next 10 years, according to a warning call from two congressional immigration critics.

In a full-page ad to run in Roll Call Tuesday, and previewed in the paper today, Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions and Virginia Rep. Dave Brat provided the raw data on the nation’s building immigration problem and blew the whistle on the so-called “Gang of Eight” proposal to ease immigration rules.

“Including all forms of immigration, the Census Bureau estimates another 14 million immigrants will enter the U.S. on net between now and 2025 — that’s almost five times the number of students who will graduate from public high school in America this year,” the two wrote.

And much of it is legal, and threatens U.S. workers, they added.

White House threatens to veto anti-sanctuary city bill, ahead of Senate test vote

FNC: The White House on Tuesday threatened to veto a Republican-backed bill that would crack down on so-called sanctuary cities by withholding funding to local governments that don’t cooperate with federal immigration officials.

The veto threat comes ahead of a critical Senate test vote Tuesday afternoon.

GOP sponsors furiously are trying to peel off a few Democrats to advance the Stop Sanctuary Cities Act, whose consideration comes months after a young woman’s murder in San Francisco allegedly at the hands of an illegal immigrant touched off a national debate over immigration law.

“Sanctuary cities and the associated violent crimes by illegal immigrants are reaching a critical point, and we cannot wait any longer to take action to protect Americans here at home,” sponsor Sen. David Vitter, R-La., said in a statement.

The White House, though, claimed in a written statement that the bill “fails to offer comprehensive reforms needed to fix the Nation’s broken immigration laws and undermines current Administration efforts to remove the most dangerous convicted criminals and to work collaboratively with State and local law enforcement agencies.”

According to the White House, it would “essentially turn State and local law enforcement into Federal immigration law enforcement officials, in certain circumstances.” The chamber’s top Democrat also has tried to discredit the measure by calling it “The Donald Trump Act,” linking its provisions to controversial statements made by the Republican presidential front-runner about illegal immigrants.

Government Worker Accused of Recruiting Co-Workers for Sex Parties

FreeBeacon: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is probing allegations that a supervisor during work time tried to recruit fellow employees to attend private sex parties at his home.

According to NBC NewsICE spokeswoman Lauren Mack confirmed that the federal agency has launched an internal misconduct investigation after a report in the San Diego Union-Tribune publicized the accusation about a supervisor in San Diego recruiting employees for “private sexual ‘swinger’ parties.”

The Tribune reported:

The accusation of “gross sexual misconduct” was made in a complaint submitted to the Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security earlier this year. … It says that employees at the ICE Enforcement Removal Operations office in downtown San Diego have been approached during work hours to participate in the parties held at the home of a supervisor in the office along with his wife, who is also an agent.The complaint says the recruitment has been going on for more than a year, and alleges the practice is coercive of subordinate employees and an abuse of authority.

In a statement, Mack emphasized that the government agency takes the accusation “seriously.”

“The agency takes all allegations of misconduct seriously,” she stated. “The matter you reference has been referred to ICE Homeland Security Investigations Office of Professional Responsibility for further investigation. That inquiry is ongoing and, as such, we are unable to offer further comment at this time.”

 

Never Before in History Now the Doomsday Supply

It boils down to Syria, the failed policy to control Bashir al Assad or remove him when the 5 year civil war has caused a global crisis. A country that once had a population of more than 20 million, today, an estimated 11 million Syrians are no longer in their home country. The crisis? The United Nations and member countries are out of money and resources to aid and provide humanitarian support for refugees any where they are located.

The United States as the historic world’s equalizer, failed to act in Syria for up to now 5 years….shameful as the consequences are worldwide and deaths are reported to be approaching 300,000 if not more.

The decision was made last month with no fanfare to break into the Doomsday inventory.

Arctic ‘Doomsday Vault’ opens to retrieve vital seeds for Syria

Deep in the side of a mountain in the Arctic archipelago is the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.

 

Known as the “Doomsday Vault,” this seed bank — operated by the Norwegian government and containing a seed of just about every known crop in the world — is meant to be humanity’s backup in the event of a catastrophe that devastates crops.

But it was not a natural disaster that has caused scientists to have to dip in and make the first significant withdrawal from the vault. Rather, it was the most preventable of man-made disasters — war.

The bloody conflict in Syria has left scientists at an important gene bank in Aleppo — where new strains of drought- and heat-resistant wheat have been developed over time — unable to continue their work in recent years.

Now, with no sign of conditions in Syria improving, scientists have begun recovering their critical inventory of seeds, sourced from around the Fertile Crescent and beyond, that have been in safekeeping beneath the Arctic ice.

The seeds are being planted at new facilities in Lebanon and Morocco, allowing scientists to resume the important research they’ve been doing for decades, away from the barrel bombs of Aleppo.

READ: Syrian war forces first ‘Doomsday Vault’ withdrawal

An important storehouse in the Fertile Crescent

The gene bank in Aleppo, run by the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas, is one of the most important in the world and includes more than 135,000 varieties of wheat, fava bean, lentil and chickpea crops, as well as the world’s most valuable barley collection.

“These are land races that were inherited from our grand-grandparents, most of them are unfortunately extinct now,” ICARDA Director General Mahmoud El-Solh said. “And this is where the cradle of agriculture (was)10,000 years ago. In this part of the world, many of the important crops were domesticated from the wild to cultivation.”

ICARDA representative Thanos Tsivelikas, who is overseeing the withdrawal from the vault, describes the operation as “a rescue mission; these seeds cannot be replaced.”

The ICARDA Aleppo center had sent nearly 80% of the seeds and samples to the Global Seed Vault as a backup by 2012, with its last deposit being in 2014.

And now, Solh and his ICARDA team have the challenge of keeping and reproducing one of humanity’s most important collections of food crop genetic lines.

Moved to neighboring Lebanon

Relocated to Lebanon, Solh opens the door to a vault on the Agricultural Research and Educational Center of the American University of Beirut campus in the Bekaa Valley. This is where the seeds ICARDA received back from Svalbard are housed.

Solh carefully shakes out a few wisps of what looks like wheat from a brown envelope. It is the plant from which the wheat we eat today originated 10 millennia ago.

“This is a source of desirable traits including drought tolerance, including heat tolerance, including resistance to disease and so forth. So this had lived through natural selection for over hundreds of years,” he said.

A 10-minute drive away and just across the mountain range from Syria, a new vault is being built by ICARDA.

To begin replenishing the stock, there are greenhouses nearby where the seeds will be planted, grown and reproduced. Once restocked, the seeds will once again become available for researchers and other seed vaults.

A parallel project is being set up in Morocco to ensure that humanity always has access to this irreplaceable cache of genetic material.

“Two-thirds of material is coming from dry areas which … are adapted to very harsh environments and have desirable traits” for drought, heat, cold, salinity and pests, Solh said.

Researchers are looking at ways to improve food crops with existing and extinct-in-nature genetic lines that are more adapted to the challenges that may lie ahead with global warming.

The answers could very well be in these specific seeds harvested from a specific moment in time. “This variety could help us adapt to climate change,” Solh said, holding up a small fava bean.

“You know that climate change is a reality and climate change is changing the whole environment in terms of more drought, hotter environments and even new diseases.”

ICARDA and others know that the past could very well contain the key to our future, though no one thought they would see such a mass withdrawal in their lifetime.

Hacking of Dow Jones and CIA Director?

Out of control…exactly where are the upgrades to all government systems to prevent hacking further…what about those pesky personal email accounts that continue to pop up with classified material?

Heh….so Barack Obama takes an opportunity several weeks ago when the Chinese President was in town to say stop hacking us…or did he?

In part from WashingtonFreeBeacon: A U.S. cybersecurity firm that works with the government has evidence that Chinese government-linked hackers violated the cyber agreement reached between President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping less than a month ago.

The Wall Street Journal reported that CrowdStrike Inc. will announce Monday that some of its customers fell victim to unsuccessful cyber attacks that violated the leaders’ Sept. 25 agreement to stop state-sponsored cyber attacks on companies for commercial gain.

According to the firm, customers from the technology and pharmaceutical industries that will remain unnamed were targeted by hackers linked to the Chinese government. A pair of hacking attempts occurred on the days before and after Obama hosted Jinping for a state dinner at the White House during which the leaders reached the agreement. Other attempted hacks continued through October.

The Obama administration is “aware” of the report from CrowdStrike.

“We are aware of this report. We’ll decline comment on its specific conclusions. We have and will continue to directly raise our concerns regarding cybersecurity with the Chinese,” a senior administration official stated.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper admitted last month that he did not have confidence that the deal between Obama and Jinping would stop China from launching cyber attacks on U.S. businesses.

*** So who exactly nailed the Director of the CIA, John Brennan? Well a Palestinian sympathizer who is a ‘stoner’. (No pun intended)

Teen stoner says he hacked CIA director’s AOL account

From NYPost: Hillary Rodham Clinton’s email scandal didn’t stop the head of the CIA from using his own personal AOL account to stash work-related documents, according to a stoner high school student who claims to have hacked into them.

CIA Director John Brennan’s private account held sensitive files — including his 47-page application for top-secret security clearance — until he recently learned that it had been infiltrated, the hacker told The Post.

Other emails stored in Brennan’s non-government account contained the Social Security numbers and personal information of more than a dozen top American intelligence officials, as well as a government letter about the use of “harsh interrogation techniques” on terrorism suspects, according to the hacker.

The FBI and other federal agencies are now investigating the hacker, with one source saying criminal charges are possible, law enforcement sources said.

“I think they’ll want to make an example out of him to deter people from doing this in the future,” said a source who described the situation as “just wild” and “crazy.”

“I can’t believe he did this to the head of the CIA,’’ the source added. “[The] problem with these older-generation guys is that they don’t know anything about cybersecurity, and as you can see, it can be problematic.”

In a series of phone conversations with The Post, the hacker described himself as an American high school student who is not Muslim and was motivated by opposition to US foreign policy and support for Palestine.

He wouldn’t reveal his name or say where he lived but made good on a promise to tweet “CWA owns John Brennan of the CIA” as a means of verifying his control over the @phphax Twitter account.

Hello guys this Twitter account is going now as things are starting to get hot, we will still be getting our words out though. 😉

If i go quiet on this account, the CIA losers have found me and I’m being tortured by their stupid methods of ruining a guys thoughts.

He explained “CWA” stood for “Crackas With Attitude,” which he said referred to him and a classmate with whom he smokes pot.

The hacker contacted The Post last week to brag about his exploits, which include posting some of the stolen documents and a portion of Brennan’s contact list on Twitter. The hacker’s Twitter page includes the Muslim Shahada creed, which translates as, “There is no god but Allah, Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.”

He said the stolen documents were stored as attachments to about 40 emails that he read after breaking into Brennan’s account on Oct. 12, more than six months after the controversy erupted over Clinton’s use of a private computer server to handle emails while serving as secretary of state.

The hacker said he used a tactic called “social engineering” that involved tricking workers at Verizon into providing Brennan’s personal information and duping AOL into resetting his password.

Brennan’s account was disabled as of Friday, he said.

He claimed he has repeatedly prank-called America’s top spy since August, once reciting Brennan’s Social Security number to him.

“He waited a tiny bit and hung up,” the hacker said.

And he also got into the online Comcast account of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and posted a redacted screenshot of a billing page. He claimed that he listened to Johnson’s voicemails.

In a statement, the CIA said: “We are aware of the reports that have surfaced on social media and have referred the matter to the appropriate authorities.”

*** Then to Dow Jones….

Bloomberg states that the ongoing investigation conducted by US authorities was probing allegations that there is a Russian gang behind the Dow Jones hack.

Dow Jones has provided further information on the data breach that the company has recently suffered.

A week ago, the CEO of Dow Jones & Co disclosed the incident confirming that 3,500 people were affected.

The Dow Jones firm confirmed it discovered unauthorized access to its customer payment system that occurred between August 2012 and July 2015.

The investigators believe that the attackers were searching for contact information of current and former Dow Jones subscribers, whom records include name, addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers.

“As part of the investigation to date, we also determined that payment card and contact information for fewer than 3,500 individuals could have been accessed, although we have discovered no direct evidence that information was stolen. We are sending those individuals a letter in the mail with more information about the support we are offering. If you do not receive such a letter, we have no indication that your financial information was involved,” the letter states published by the Dow Jones Chief Executive William Lewis .

Yesterday Bloomberg reported that the ongoing investigation conducted by the FBI, US financial watchdog the SEC, and America’s Secret Service were probing allegations that there is a Russian criminal ring behind the attack. According to the investigators, the Russian gang was financially motivated, the hackers search for unpublished financial data and news articles and press releases from the Dow Jones computers to get an edge on the market. Attackers are now stealing sensitive information and selling it to traders and operators in the industry.

“A group of Russian hackers infiltrated the servers of Dow Jones & Co., owner of the Wall Street Journal and several other news publications, and stole information to trade on before it became public, according to four people familiar with the matter.” states Bloomberg Business.