Hacking the Department of Energy, the Threat to You

Posted on September 10, 2015September 10, 2015 by Denise Simon

The USDOEnergy is a cabinet level department and while responsibility includes power, laboratories, it includes nuclear. The agency secretary is Earnest Moniz, most notable for being at the side of John Kerry during the Iran nuclear talks.

Hacking this agency is terrifying and added into this equation, in 1999 the FBI investigated how China obtained specific specifications for a particular nuclear device from Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Records: Energy Department struck by Cyber Attacks

USAToday: Attackers successfully compromised U.S. Department of Energy computer systems more than 150 times between 2010 and 2014, a review of federal records obtained by USA TODAY finds.

Cyber attackers successfully compromised the security of U.S. Department of Energy computer systems more than 150 times between 2010 and 2014, according to a review of federal records obtained by USA TODAY.

Incident reports submitted by federal officials and contractors since late 2010 to the Energy Department’s Joint Cybersecurity Coordination Center shows a near-consistent barrage of attempts to breach the security of critical information systems that contain sensitive data about the nation’s power grid, nuclear weapons stockpile and energy labs.

The records, obtained by USA TODAY through the Freedom of Information Act, show DOE components reported a total of 1,131 cyberattacks over a 48-month period ending in October 2014. Of those attempted cyber intrusions, 159 were successful.

“The potential for an adversary to disrupt, shut down (power systems), or worse … is real here,” said Scott White, Professor of Homeland Security and Security Management and Director of the Computing Security and Technology program at Drexel University. “It’s absolutely real.”

Energy Department officials would not say whether any sensitive data related to the operation and security of the nation’s power grid or nuclear weapons stockpile was accessed or stolen in any of the attacks, or whether foreign governments are believed to have been involved.

“DOE does not comment on ongoing investigations or possible attributions of malicious activity,” Energy Department spokesman Andrew Gumbiner said in a statement.

In all cases of malicious cybersecurity activity, Gumbiner said the Energy Department “seeks to identify indicators of compromise and other cybersecurity relevant information, which it then shares broadly amongst all DOE labs, plants, and sites as well as within the entire federal government.”

The National Nuclear Security Administration, a semi-autonomous agency within the Energy Department responsible for managing and securing the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile, experienced 19 successful attacks during the four-year period, records show.

While information on the specific nature of the attacks was redacted from the records prior to being released, numerous Energy Department cybersecurity vulnerabilities have been identified in recent years by the department’s Office of Inspector General, an independent watchdog agency.

After a cyber attack in 2013 resulted in unauthorized access to personally identifying information for more than 104,000 Energy Department employees and contractors, auditors noted “unclear lines of responsibility” and “lack of awareness by responsible officials.” In an audit report released in October of last year, the Inspector General found 41 Energy Department servers and 14 workstations “were configured with default or easily guessed passwords.”

Felicia Jones, spokeswoman for the Energy Department Office of Inspector General, said while there have been some improvements, “threats continue and the Department cannot let down its guard.”

Records show 53 of the 159 successful intrusions from October 2010 to October 2014 were “root compromises,” meaning perpetrators gained administrative privileges to Energy Department computer systems.

Manimaran Govindarasu, a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Iowa State University who studies cybersecurity issues involving the power grid, said the root compromises represent instances where intruders gained “super-user” privileges.

“That means you can do anything on the computer,” he said. “So that is definitely serious. Whether that computer was critical or just a simple office computer, we don’t know.”

Govindarasu said while there could be information in Energy Department computer systems concerning security plans or investments related to the nation’s power grid, the grid’s real-time control systems are operated by utilities and are not directly connected to the Energy Department’s computer systems.

The Energy Department federal laboratories, however, sometimes pull data on the operation of the grid from utilities for research and analysis.

Records show 90 of the 153 successful cyber intrusions over the four-year period were connected to the DOE’s Office of Science, which directs scientific research and is responsible for 10 of the nation’s federal energy laboratories.

A USA TODAY Media Network report in March found a physical or cyber attack nearly once every four days on the nation’s power infrastructure, based on an analysis of reports to the U.S. Department of Energy through a separate reporting system which requires utility companies to notify the federal agency of incidents that affect power reliability.

Amid mounting concerns, the oversight and energy subcommittees of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology will hold a joint hearing at 10 a.m. Thursday to examine vulnerabilities of the national electric grid and the severity of various threats.

The congressional committee’s charter for Thursday’s meeting, citing USA TODAY’s report in March, notes the growing vulnerability of the nation’s increasingly sophisticated bulk electric system.

“As the electric grid continues to be modernized and become more interconnected,” the charter states, “the threat of a potential cybersecurity breach significantly increases.”

Don’t Look Now, Cuban Refugees on top of Syrian/Mexican

Posted on September 10, 2015September 10, 2015 by Denise Simon

Every action has a reaction, actually a consequence. While America is generous and benevolent, it comes at a cost. That cost most often is impossible to measure.

Politicians and even presidential candidates have spoken positively in recent days about taking in refugees from the Middle East, but America already has an existing crisis and is there a quota or limitation? Hungary says no.

No country in the Gulf States is taking or has taken any refugees, and Kuwait for sure says no due to different backgrounds and culture.

The matter of Mexican, Central and Latin American refugees is well known, but more Cubans?

Cubans Flood Texas Ports After Thaw in Relations

Call it another immigration surge of the United States’ own making. But unlike last summer’s crisis of children and families arriving from Central America, lawmakers aren’t quick to call on this current group of refugees to go home.

From October 2014 to June 2015, about 18,520 Cubans have sought entry to the United States through Texas’ Laredo field office of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which includes ports from Del Rio to Brownsville. That’s compared to the 18,240 unaccompanied minors that were caught or surrendered to U.S. Border Patrol in the Rio Grande Valley from October 2014 through July of this year, according to CBP statistics.

If current trend holds, the number of Cubans seeking entry through Laredo will be about 24,700 this fiscal year. That’s about 60 percent more than 2014’s 15,600 and nearly twice as many as 2013’s 12,445.

The influx of Cubans to Texas is a result of the Obama administration’s efforts to normalize relations with the communist Castro regime, said Marc Rosenblum, deputy director of the U.S. Immigration Policy program at the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank.

“That is a jaw dropping statistic that I haven’t seen before,” Rosenblum said of the spike. “In general there is a suspicion among many Cubans that the special status that Cubans receive is in jeopardy.”

The special status is a policy allowing Cubans who make it to a U. S. port of entry to enter and seek legal permanent residency status, known as a green card, after one year. Unlike the Central Americans smuggled illegally through Mexico, the Cubans can travel freely through the country as they migrate northward.

“We’re seeing a surge that started with the announcement of normalized relations last year and there is a longer-term trend of people coming to Mexico rather than risking the sea voyage because [Mexico] is a more reliable way to go,” Rosenblum added.

Though the number of Central American minors is down from last summer’s massive wave when more than 46,000 came to Texas through the Rio Grande Valley, the political firestorm that surge created still rages.

Before taking office as Texas governor, Greg Abbott filed a lawsuit while attorney general to halt President Obama’s immigration policy that would have shielded millions of undocumented Texans from deportation. That policy is still on hold and Abbott cited last summer’s crisis as one reason he filed the lawsuit, claiming Texas witnessed firsthand the ill effects of Obama’s policies that included 2012’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

Texas Republican U.S. Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz have also cited Obama’s immigration policies as a magnet that lures more undocumented immigrants toward Texas and blasted the president during last summer’s surge. Cornyn filed legislation last summer that, if passed, would have allowed for the immediate deportations of Central Americans and Cruz has promised to scale back Obama’s immigration policies if elected president.

Neither Abbott nor Cornyn responded to a request for comment. Cruz, whose own father fled Cuba and settled in Texas, also declined to comment.

The current policy toward Cubans is an amended version of the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act, which applied to most immigrants from the island nation who sought entry to the United States. Under a revision agreed upon during the Clinton Administration, called the Wet Foot/Dry Foot policy, Cubans who reach the United States can apply for entry while Cubans found at sea are sent back home or to a third country. Rick Pauza, a spokesman for CBP in Laredo, said the current negotiations between the United States and Cuba have not affected long-standing policy regarding Cubans seeking entry to the country.

“Normally, if a Cuban national arriving at a Customs & Border Protection (CBP) port of entry or between ports expresses fear of return to Cuba or their country of last residence, he or she is inspected and may qualify for parole into the U.S.,” he said in an email. “CBP Officers and Agents will first verify the individuals’ citizenship, identity, and whether they have prior criminal or U.S. immigration history. After one year in the U.S., the Cuban national may be eligible under the Cuban Refugee Adjustment Act of 1966 to apply for lawful permanent residence.”

Immigrant rights’ groups have been critical of what they say is a double standard in U.S. immigration policy. They argue that instead of being detained or deported, a Central American or Mexican escaping persecution should be paroled in to the country like a Cuban is.

Rosenblum said that’s a valid argument.

“It’s hard to make the case that Cuba has uniquely difficult conditions that would justify the total unique status that Cubans arriving in the United States receive,” he said. “There are Cubans who are persecuted and who don’t have political freedoms but the situation there is certainly comparable to Central America or Mexico or a dozen other countries you can name around the world.”

In 2013, the estimated 18,000 Cubans who arrived at U.S. land ports were paroled into the country and subsequently awarded green cards, Rosenblum said.

Though Cuba and the United States have started a dialogue, Rosenblum said he didn’t see immediate change on the forefront.

“I think for sweeping change you would want to see legislation and that’s unlikely because this is a hard issue for Congress to take up, particularly as we enter an election season,” he said. But the administration could roll back current provisions that allow DHS to issue Cubans green cards. That notion could even garner some GOP support he added as some Republicans have already expressed concerns that some of the Cubans arriving in the United States could be considered criminals in their country. Rosenblum said that according MPI data, about 90 Cubans have been deported every year since 2009. Most of them had criminal records, he said.

Exactly How Many Chemical Weapons Red-lines?

Posted on September 10, 2015September 10, 2015 by Denise Simon

It must be said and remembered that Barack Obama and John Kerry demanded action on Syria due to the red-line being crossed. No one had the will, so chemical weapons have been used often and in Iraq as well.

When it was said by the American people, that Syria was not our war and we had no international obligation or interest, think again. Barack Obama today approved 10,000 Syrian refugees into our homeland, with the option of up to 30,000. Now, it is our problem.

US official: ‘IS making and using chemical weapons in Iraq and Syria’

BBC: There is a growing belief within the US government that the Islamic State militant group is making and using crude chemical weapons in Iraq and Syria, a US official has told the BBC.

The US has identified at least four occasions on both sides of the Iraq-Syria border where IS has used mustard agents, the official said.

The official said the chemical was being used in powder form.

The US believes the group has a cell dedicated to building these weapons.

“They’re using mustard,” the individual said of IS. “We know they are.”

The mustard agent was probably being used in powder form and packed into traditional explosives like mortar rounds, the official said.

When these weapons explode the mustard-laced dust blisters those who are exposed to it.

Alternative theories

The official said the intelligence community believes there are three possible explanations for how IS acquired the deadly chemical agent.

The most plausible in the eyes of intelligence community, according to the official, is that they are manufacturing it.

“We assess that they have an active chemical weapons little research cell that they’re working on to try and get better at it,” the official said.

The alternative theories are that IS militants found chemical weapons caches in Iraq or in Syria.

It is unlikely that militants found the chemical agent in Iraq, the official said, because the US military would have likely discovered it during the military campaign it waged in the country for about a decade.

The official said that militants were unlikely to have seized the chemical agent from the Syrian regime before the regime was forced to hand over its stockpile under the threat of US air strikes in 2013.

The most likely theory, the official said, was that it was being made using knowledge that is widely available, and pointed out that the mustard agent is not a complex chemical to produce.

The US government’s position continues to be that it is investigating claims of chemical weapons use in Iraq and Syria, but the official speaking to the BBC said that many intelligence agencies now believe there is now enough evidence to back up these claims.

The official requested anonymity because that person was not authorised to speak about it publicly.

***

Exclusive photos appear to show grisly effect of ISIS’ mustard gas attacks on Kurds

FNC: Kurdish forces battling ISIS in Iraq are suffering severe health effects and pleading with the international community for help after being attacked with chemical weapons including mustard gas, according to a western military expert embedded with them who provided gruesome photos backing the charges.

Exclusive images obtained by FoxNews.com show Kurdish fighters afflicted with the telltale burns and blisters sustained after fierce fighting as recently as last week in the mountainous Barzani Province. Fighters described being targeted by mortars that exploded to unleash clouds of toxic chemicals. Several are now being treated as recently as last week for severe burns and blisters, debilitating breathing problems and even blindness.

“The Kurdish forces have been attacked multiple times with chemical weapons – the last time was a week ago,” said Tony Schiena, of MOSAIC, a private military and intelligence outfit based in the U.S. and London that trains foreign militaries in tactical operations and intelligence gathering. “They are horrified, not only by the Islamic State’s use of mustard gas, but also chlorine, as well as another unidentified chemical agent they were told by foreign advisors could be sarin.”

“ … the way these symptoms changed over time, and the patients’ testimony about the circumstances of the poisoning all point to exposure to a chemical agent.”

– Pablo Marco, Doctors Without Borders

Sarin, a designated weapon of mass destruction, is a colorless and odorless nerve agent, while mustard gas is a chemical warfare agent widely used by the Germans in World War I.

Schiena, a former South African special operator hired to train Kurdish Peshmerga Special Forces in Iraq in counter terrorism and defensive tactics, told FoxNews.com he traveled with the head of Peshmerga military intelligence over the last several days through the mountains of the Barzani Province to the front lines. There, he met with base commanding generals, medics and victims of chemical weapons attacks who, in some cases, are still struggling a month after exposure.

Schiena said the fighters described a yellow gas that smelled like rotten onions and garlic, descriptions consistent with mustard gas. He said the Kurds desperately need masks and protective suits to continue their fight against the black-clad jihadist army. ISIS is armed with sophisticated weapons seized from Iraqi forces, plundered stockpiles from the arsenals of Saddam Hussein and an increasing number of improvised weapons, including chemicals, Schiena said.

For example, the Islamic State uses propane canisters filled with bolts and nails, valves added to either side, with a tail and wings welded on, to create a rocket that explodes on impact. The rocket disperses flaming hot bolts and nails as well as chemical weapons and can set off vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices such as a Hummer laden with explosives, or ordnances attached to suicide bombers.

One Kurdish soldier said that of 52 mortars ISIS launched at his team during one attack, three released yellow smoke that caused their skin to immediately water, discharge liquids, blister and create large wounds. Soldiers exposed to the gas vomited and experienced extreme abdominal pain and severe burning and itching eyes. Other mortars discharged a silver glittery substance that stuck to their skin like glue. The Kurdish soldiers said the Iraqi military also said ISIS used these chemical weapons on their forces.

“Imagine being the only organized force fighting this great evil on the front lines, getting hit by chemical weapons and you have nothing, not even a mask to protect yourself,” Schiena said.

Schiena appealed to Prince Ali of Jordan, who he said arranged for delivery of 1,000 gas masks, but said many more are needed. He questioned why the U.S. and other countries aren’t providing more support to the Kurdish fighters.

Ryan Mauro, national security analyst for the Clarion Project, said one key question is where the chemical weapons originated from.

“Are they from the old stockpiles that Saddam Hussein supposedly didn’t have, or did they come from the Syrian regime’s stockpile that they claim to have disarmed?” Mauro asked.

Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service BND has documented the Islamic State’s use of mustard gas, according to a Sept. 7 article in the German daily newspaper Bild, which said agents took blood samples from Kurds injured in clashes with ISIS in Northern Iraq.

While the U.S. Defense Department won’t confirm the Islamic State is using mustard gas, Pentagon spokeswoman Cmdr. Elissa Smith said officials have reviewed the most recent reports detailing the alleged use of chemical weapons by ISIS in Syria and Iraq.

“While we will not comment on intelligence or operational matters, let us be clear: Any use by any party, be it state or non-state actor, of a chemical as a weapon of any kind is an abhorrent act,” Smith said. “Given the alleged behavior of ISIL and other such groups in the region, any such flagrant disregard for international standards and norms is reprehensible.”

She said the U.S. military continues to work with coalition partners to ultimately “destroy” ISIS.

“More than 60 partners are contributing to this coalition along the key lines of effort including military support, countering ISIL’s finances, countering foreign fighters flows, exposing ISIL’s true nature, and providing humanitarian support,” Smith said.

The coalition also has been working with the government of Iraq to provide support through training and equipping. In addition, the U.S. is spending an average of $9.9 million a day, or $3.7 billion since Aug. 8, 2014, for 373 days of operations.

“We have seen that with effective training, equipping, and command and control, and backed by Coalition airpower, that the Iraqi forces absolutely have the will to fight,” Smith said. “We have seen this repeatedly from the Iraqi Security Forces, including the Kurdish Peshmerga — in Tikrit, in Baghdadi, in Haditha, at Sinjar Mountain, at Rabiya, and at Mosul Dam.”

Civilians also have been targets of the chemical weapons, according to the international medical organization Doctors Without Borders.

A family in the Azaz District in Northern Syria was attacked in their own home on Aug. 21 with a mortar that discharged a yellow gas.

The three-year-old girl and a five-day-old baby girl along with their parents arrived at a Doctors Without Borders hospital one hour after the attack, suffering from respiratory difficulties, inflamed skin, red eyes, and conjunctivitis. Within three hours they developed blisters and their respiratory difficulties worsened, the group reported.

“[Doctors Without Borders] has no laboratory evidence to confirm the cause of these symptoms,” said Pablo Marco, Doctors Without Borders’ program manager for Syria, in a statement. “However, the patients’ clinical symptoms, the way these symptoms changed over time, and the patients’ testimony about the circumstances of the poisoning all point to exposure to a chemical agent.”

Example: Depths of Chinese Hacking the U.S.

Posted on September 8, 2015September 8, 2015 by Denise Simon

Former Top FBI Lawyer and Counterintelligence Official Admits Chinese Hacked His Home Computer

September 8, 2015

China Allegedly Hacked Top Former FBI Lawyer

Jeff Stein, Newsweek

Marion “Spike” Bowman, a top former FBI lawyer and U.S. counterintelligence official who heads an influential organization of retired American spies, says a hacker from China penetrated his home computer, beginning with an innocent-looking email last spring.

“It was an email supposedly from a woman in China, and I exchanged correspondence with her a couple of times,” says Bowman, who was deputy general counsel to three FBI directors between 1995 and 2006. “She sent me a document that a friend of hers had supposedly written, in English, and wanted my opinion on it,” he tells Newsweek. She also sent him her picture.

“I never got around to replying, so I never heard from her again,” says Bowman, who went on to become deputy director of the National Counterintelligence Executive, which is tasked with developing policies to thwart foreign spies and terrorists.

But then, a week ago, he says, he got another message from China via his email account at George Washington University, where he has lectured on national security law since 2003.

“It was apparently from a university in China asking me come to speak at a conference on the environment”—not even remotely one of his areas of expertise, Bowman says. He called the FBI.

After a forensic examination of his machine, the FBI told him “they had found a malware type that’s designed to find out what’s on my computer,” Bowman says. “It wasn’t anything to infect it.” Still, just being able to read the contents of a target’s computer can reveal lots of valuable information like emails and documents, contact files with phone numbers and other personal data, like home addresses.

“Somebody who really knows what they’re doing” can wreak havoc, he says.

The FBI didn’t tell him exactly who was behind the hack, he says, “but they think they identified the woman” in a picture she sent along with one of her emails last spring. “It was somebody that they knew,” Bowman says. “I didn’t inquire any further.”

Before joining the FBI, Bowman was a Navy lawyer assigned to advise SEAL teams on clandestine operations, among other sensitive matters. His portfolio at the FBI gave him intimate knowledge of the details of operations to counter threats from foreign spy agencies.

“I still carry lots of deep Cold War secrets in my head,” he says, although not on his computer. But he is still very active in national security circles as chairman of the board of directors of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers, an organization with several thousand members nationwide, about half of them former CIA personnel.

Bowman’s revelation follows several months of bad news about the vulnerability of government computers to foreign hackers, the latest being a report published Monday saying that Chinese and Russian intelligence agencies are “aggressively aggregating and cross-indexing hacked U.S. computer databases” to catch American spies working overseas. China-based hackers breached about 22 million files held by the federal Office of Personnel Management, officials say.

“At least one clandestine network of American engineers and scientists who provide technical assistance to U.S. undercover operatives and agents overseas has been compromised as a result” of the Russian and Chinese exploitation of the files, the Los Angeles Times reported, citing two U.S. officials.

The story, Bowman says, was “pretty much on target.”

*** It obviously is much worse than we know for the Obama administration to sign off on a sanction and or other consequence ahead of the Xi’s visit to the United States next week.

U.S. may punish Chinese hacking before Xi’s visit

Imposing sanctions before this month’s summit could derail other priorities.

Top government officials are floating the idea of retaliating within the next week to Chinese cyberattacks, possibly by imposing targeted sanctions on some officials and firms, people familiar with the discussions say. But outside experts say it would be wiser to wait until after this month’s White House summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

“I heard from one person that it could be as early as next week,” Jim Lewis, director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Strategic Technologies Program, told POLITICO. He added, “I still think it would be best to wait for the summit.”

Calls for U.S. retalation to Chinese hacking have risen to a furor since the China-linked breach of highly sensitive security clearance forms from 21.5 million current and former federal employees, disclosed in June.

But imposing sanctions before the late-September summit would risk derailing a serious conversation on cyber issues along with myriad other topics, including China’s economic troubles, Chinese belligerence in the South China Sea and cooperation on climate change.

Some China watchers even suspect that the White House is trying to improve its bargaining position in advance of the summit by floating the possibility of sanctions in a serious way.

“My sense is that they’re floating the idea to try to create some kind of leverage in the meetings,” said Adam Segal, a China scholar and director of the Digital and Cyberspace Policy Program at the Council on Foreign Relations.

If the White House did impose sanctions before the meeting, it would be deeply embarrassing to the Chinese and to Xi personally and risk the Chinese doing something to downgrade the summit’s importance, Segal said. “I think if they’re going to do it before the summit, they’ve got to be prepared for the summit to really take a downward turn,” he said.

Business leaders are also dubious about imposing sanctions before Xi’s visit.

The White House should use the summit “as an opportunity to engage in effective dialogue on the cyber issue. If sanctions jeopardize that opportunity, we’d rather see them put it off,” the leader of a major industry organization said in an interview, speaking without attribution because he was speculating about government policy.

If the White House ultimately imposes targeted sanctions, the association leader added, the sanctions should be “based on transparent, credible evidence that’s legally sound.” They should also be designed with a clear path forward that, ultimately, leads to fewer China-linked cyberattacks, he said.

“Most business executives we’ve spoke with felt the indictments against Chinese PLA officers didn’t meet that test,” he added, referring to the May 2014 U.S. indictments of five hackers employed by China’s People’s Liberation Army. That was the Obama administration’s most significant diplomatic strike against Chinese hacking to date.

“[The indictments] didn’t seem to advance anything and they seemed to increase tension rather than reduce it around the issue,” the official said.

In the wake of the OPM hacks, some political leaders have called for much more belligerent responses to Chinese hacking. They include GOP White House contenders Mike Huckabee, who has urged the U.S. to hack back against the communist nation, and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who has suggested canceling the Obama-Xi summit entirely.

But even cyber hawks warned that aggressive action could backfire in advance of the summit.

“I think everything is going to basically be on hold until the Iran deal goes through and until after President Xi comes to meet with [President Obama],” said Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.), who was formerly ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee.

Ruppersberger added that “we have to eventually draw a line on cyberattacks,” and that the U.S. bargaining position relative to China may be improved now because of the tailspin in the Chinese stock market and other financial difficulties.

The White House has routinely declined to speak publicly about the possibility of sanctioning China for cyberattacks or any more forceful follow-up to the PLA indictments. Press secretary Josh Earnest has said several times that Obama plans to raise cyber concerns with Xi during their summit.

“There’s no doubt that the president will certainly raise, as he has in every previous meeting with his Chinese counterpart, concerns about China’s behavior in cyberspace,” Earnest said during an Aug. 26 news conference.

White House officials have determined they must respond to China’s hacking of OPM, but have been debating for months what the appropriate response should be and when to impose it, Lewis said.

The option of targeted cyber sanctions, which Obama created by executive order in April, has long been on the table along with additional indictments or some form of diplomatic protest, he said.

White House officials have fingered China for the OPM hack anonymously but have not done so, thus far, on the record.

A forceful response to the OPM hack and to Chinese theft of U.S. companies’ intellectual property and trade secrets has also been delayed by more pressing diplomatic priorities, Lewis said, including securing Chinese cooperation for a deal to halt Iran’s nuclear weapons program

“This administration has done more than any other on cybersecurity, but, in a lot of cases, it ends up being No. 2 because of the need to get agreement on other things,” Lewis said. “Cyber always ends up coming in second place, particularly when it comes to China.”

Pope Francis is Breaking the Catholic Doctrine, Revolt at Vatican

Posted on September 8, 2015September 8, 2015 by Denise Simon

On the very same day that the Kentucky clerk, Kim Davis is ordered released from jail by a local judge for adhering to her inalienable rights to her belief system, a religious debate is underway throughout America.

Anyone remember the Obama administration suing the Little Sisters of the Poor due to Obamacare and birth-control?

Inalienable rights, cannot be surrendered, sold, suspended or transferred at the behest of any government and Kim Davis stood stern.

Meanwhile, while so many issues challenge America, one place to normally seek stability, sense or morality is church, but such is not the case with the Catholic Church or the Vatican.

Due to Pope Francis and what most of the media is not saying, the Papacy and the Vatican is in crisis, in Rome and honestly across the globe.

The edge of a movement is underway at home and worldwide, the rise of the moral and religious compass.

A Conservative revolt is brewing in the Vatican as Pope Francis introduces more inclusive measures

VATICAN CITY — On a sunny morning earlier this year, a camera crew entered a well-appointed apartment just outside the 9th-century gates of Vatican City. Pristinely dressed in the black robes and scarlet sash of the princes of the Roman Catholic Church, the Wisconsin-born Cardinal Raymond Burke sat in his elaborately upholstered armchair and appeared to issue a warning to Pope Francis.

A staunch conservative and Vatican bureaucrat, Burke had been demoted by the pope a few months earlier, but it did not take the fight out of him. Francis had been backing a more inclusive era, giving space to progressive voices on divorced Catholics as well as gays and lesbians. In front of the camera, Burke said he would “resist” liberal changes — and seemed to caution Francis about the limits of his authority. “One must be very attentive regarding the power of the pope,” Burke told the French news crew.

Papal power, Burke warned, “is not absolute.” He added, “The pope does not have the power to change teaching (or) doctrine.”

Burke’s words belied a growing sense of alarm among strict conservatives, exposing what is fast emerging as a culture war over Francis’s papacy and the powerful hierarchy that governs the Roman Catholic Church.

This month, Francis makes his first trip to the United States at a time when his progressive allies are heralding him as a revolutionary, a man who only last week broadened the power of priests to forgive women who commit what Catholic teachings call the “mortal sin” of abortion during his newly declared “year of mercy” starting in December. On Sunday, he called for “every” Catholic parish in Europe to offer shelter to one refugee family from the thousands of asylum-seekers risking all to escape war-torn Syria and other pockets of conflict and poverty.

Yet as he upends church convention, Francis also is grappling with a conservative backlash to the liberal momentum building inside the church. In more than a dozen interviews, including with seven senior church officials, insiders say the change has left the hierarchy more polarized over the direction of the church than at any point since the great papal reformers of the 1960s.

The conservative rebellion is taking on many guises, in public comments, yes, but also in the rising popularity of conservative Catholic websites promoting Francis dissenters; books and promotional materials backed by conservative clerics seeking to counter the liberal trend; and leaks to the news media, aimed at Vatican reformers.

In his recent comments, Burke was also merely stating fact. Despite the vast powers of the pope, church doctrine serves as a kind of constitution. And for liberal reformers, the bruising theological pushback by conservatives is complicating efforts to translate the pope’s transformative style into tangible changes.

“At least we aren’t poisoning each other’s chalices anymore,” said the Rev. Timothy Radcliffe, a liberal British priest and Francis ally appointed to an influential Vatican post in May. Radcliffe said he welcomed open debate, even critical dissent within the church. But he professed himself as being “afraid” of “some of what we’re seeing”

Rather than stake out clear stances, the pope is more subtly, often implicitly, backing liberal church leaders who are pressing for radical change, while dramatically opening the parameters of the debate over how far reforms can go. For instance, during the opening of a meeting of senior bishops last year, Francis told those gathered, “Let no one say, ‘This you cannot say.’ ”

We have a serious issue right now, a very alarming situation where Catholic priests and bishops are saying and doing things that are against what the church teaches

Since then, liberals have tested the boundaries of their new freedom, with one Belgian bishop going as far as calling for the Catholic Church to formally recognize same-sex couples.

Conservatives counter that in the climate of rising liberal thought, they have been thrust unfairly into a position in which “defending the real teachings of the church makes you look like an enemy of the pope,” a senior Vatican official said on the condition of anonymity in order to speak freely.

“We have a serious issue right now, a very alarming situation where Catholic priests and bishops are saying and doing things that are against what the church teaches, talking about same-sex unions, about Communion for those who are living in adultery,” the official said. “And yet the pope does nothing to silence them. So the inference is that this is what the pope wants.”

A measure of the church’s long history of intrigue has spilled into the Francis papacy, particularly as the pope has ordered radical overhauls of murky Vatican finances. Under Francis, the top leadership of the Vatican Bank was ousted, as was the all-Italian board of its financial watchdog agency.

One method of pushback has been to give damaging leaks to the Italian news media. Vatican officials are now convinced that the biggest leak to date — of the papal encyclical on the environment in June — was driven by greed (it was sold to the media) rather than vengeance. But other disclosures have targeted key figures in the papal cleanup — including the conservative chosen to lead the pope’s financial reforms, the Australian Cardinal George Pell, who in March was the subject of a leak about his allegedly lavish personal tastes.

More often, dissent unfolds on ideological grounds. Criticism of a sitting pope is hardly unusual — liberal bishops on occasion challenged Benedict. But in an institution cloaked in traditional fealty to the pope, what shocks many is just how public the criticism of Francis has become.

In an open letter to his diocese, Bishop Thomas Tobin of Providence, Rhode Island, wrote: “In trying to accommodate the needs of the age, as Pope Francis suggests, the Church risks the danger of losing its courageous, countercultural, prophetic voice, one that the world needs to hear.” For his part, Burke, the cardinal from Wisconsin, has called the church under Francis “a ship without a rudder.”

Even Pell appeared to undermine him on theological grounds. Commenting on the pope’s call for dramatic action on climate change, Pell told the Financial Times in July, “The church has got no mandate from the Lord to pronounce on scientific matters.”

In conservative circles, the word “confusion” also has become a euphemism for censuring the papacy without mentioning the pope. In one instance, 500 Catholic priests in Britain drafted an open letter this year that cited “much confusion” in “Catholic moral teaching” following the bishops’ conference on the family last year in which Francis threw open the floodgates of debate, resulting in proposed language offering an embraceable, new stance for divorced or gay Catholics.

That language ultimately was watered down in a vote that showed the still-ample power of conservatives. It set up another showdown for next month, when senior church leaders will meet in a follow-up conference that observers predict will turn into another theological slugfest. The pope himself will have the final word on any changes next year.

Conservatives have launched a campaign against a possible policy change that would grant divorced and remarried Catholics the right to take Communion at Mass. Last year, five senior leaders including Burke and the conservative Cardinal Carlo Caffarra of Bologna, Italy, drafted what has become known as “the manifesto” against such a change. In July, a DVD distributed to hundreds of dioceses in Europe and Australia, and backed by conservative Catholic clergy members, made the same point. In it, Burke, who has made similar arguments at Catholic conferences, issued dire warnings of a world in which traditional teachings are ignored.

The pope does not have the power to change teaching (or) doctrine

But this is still the Catholic Church, where hierarchical respect is as much tradition as anything else. Rather than targeting the pope, conservative bishops and cardinals more often take aim at their liberal peers. They include the German Cardinal Walter Kasper, who has suggested that he has become a proxy for clergy members who are not brave enough to criticize the pope directly.

Yet conservatives counter that liberals are overstepping their bounds, putting their own spin on the pronouncements of a pope who has been more ambiguous than Kasper and his allies are willing to admit.

“I was born a papist, I have lived as a papist, and I will die a papist,” Caffarra said. “The pope has never said that divorced and remarried Catholics should be able to take Holy Communion, and yet, his words are being twisted to give them false meaning.”

Some of the pope’s allies insist that debate is precisely what Francis wants.

“I think that people are speaking their mind because they feel very strongly and passionately in their position, and I don’t think the Holy Father sees it as a personal attack on him,” said Chicago Archbishop Blase Cupich, considered a close ally of the pope. “The Holy Father has opened the possibility for these matters to be discussed openly; he has not predetermined where this is going.”

Stefano Pitrelli contributed to this report.