Category Archives: DOJ, DC and inside the Beltway

Obama Joins Europe Orders Labels on Israeli Products

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Obama Administration Orders Labeling of Israeli Goods

Memo directs ‘trade community’ to label Jewish goods

FreeBeacon: A memo issued earlier this month by the Obama administration directs the U.S. “trade community” and government partner agencies to explicitly label Israeli-made goods that have been produced in the West Bank.

The Jan. 23 directive states that it is “not acceptable” to label goods coming from Israeli companies in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as having been produced in “Israel.”

The order comes amid an effort by the European Union to label Israeli-made goods, a move the Israeli government called anti-Israel and that prominent anti-Semitism watchdog groups have condemned as among the worst incidents of anti-Semitism in 2015.

This is a shift from the administration’s previous position. A State Department spokesman told reporters in November that such labeling could be perceived as “a step on the way to a boycott” and said boycotts would be opposed by the administration.

But earlier this month, senior Obama administration officials defended the EU’s move and reaffirmed its position against “Israeli settlement activity.”

The new guidance references a decades-old administrative directive that sought to promote the import of Palestinian goods produced in the West Bank. The Obama administration is facing criticism for reinterpreting it and enforcing it to punish Israeli businesses.

The new memo, issued by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, is meant to “provide guidance to the trade community regarding the country of origin marking requirements for goods that are manufactured in the West Bank.”

Good produced in these areas are not to be labeled “with the words ‘Israel,’” according to the memo, which warns that inappropriate labeling will subject the products to “enforcement action” by Customs and Border Protection.

“Goods produced in the West Bank or Gaza Strip shall be marked as originating from ‘West Bank,’ ‘Gaza,’ ‘Gaza Strip,’ ‘West Bank/Gaza,’ ‘West Bank/Gaza Strip,’ ‘West Bank and Gaza,’ or ‘West Bank and Gaza Strip,’” according to the directive.

“It is not acceptable to mark the aforementioned goods with the words ‘Israel,’’ ‘Made in Israel,’ ‘Occupied Territories-Israel,’ or any variation thereof,” it states.

Goods that are erroneously marked as products of Israel will be subject to an enforcement action carried out by U.S. Customs and Border Protection,” the memo states. “Goods entering the United States must conform to the U.S. marking statute and regulations promulgated thereunder.”

Pro-Israel organizations have taken a firm stand against the explicit labeling of Jewish goods, with some viewing the latest memo as part of a larger effort to economically isolate Israel.

“This is an administration that slaps labels on Jewish goods on a Saturday and has the president give a Holocaust Remembrance speech the next Wednesday,” said Omri Ceren, a managing director at The Israel Project, an organization that promotes stronger U.S.-Israeli ties.

“It’s worse than incoherent. It needlessly alienates Israel at a time when the Middle East is falling apart and U.S. allies are looking for signals about whose side the administration is on,” he said.

A State Department official who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon on Thursday said that the department is aware of the new memo but does not view it as a shift in longstanding policy.

“We are aware that the U.S. Customs and Border Protection re-issued guidance on their marking requirements,” the official said. “There has been no change in policy or in our approach to enforcement of marking requirements.”

The latest guidance stands as a “restatement of previous requirements,” the official added. “CBP has made clear that it in no way supersedes prior rulings or regulations, nor does it impose additional requirements with respect to merchandise imported from the West Bank, Gaza Strip, or Israel.”

“Longstanding U.S. guidelines, dating to 1995, on country of origin product marking requires that products produced in the West Bank be marked as products of the West Bank, and products of Israel be marked as products of Israel,” the official explained.

Custom and Border Protection did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the memo.

By the Numbers: Muslim Opinions and Demographics

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By the Numbers is an honest and open discussion about Muslim opinions and demographics. Narrated by Raheel Raza, president of Muslims Facing Tomorrow, this short film is about the acceptance that radical Islam is a bigger problem than most politically correct governments and individuals are ready to admit. Is ISIS, the Islamic State, trying to penetrate the U.S. with the refugee influx? Are Muslims radicalized on U.S. soil? Are organizations such as CAIR, who purport to represent American Muslims accepting and liberal or radicalized with links to terror organizations?

The full document supporting the NUMBERS is found here.

• The main source of the numbers we used was the poll conducted by the Pew

Research center titled The World’s Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society. It is the

single largest and most reliable survey on Muslim attitudes around the world.

• The Pew Research Center did not survey the whole of the Muslim world. Muslims in

countries including Saudi Arabia, Iran, India and China were not surveyed.

According to their own numbers, Pew numerically surveyed only 67 percent of the

Muslim world. 1 Therefore, when we were computing averages and the like, we did

not use the number for the total Muslim population of the world (1.6 billion), but

rather the total population of the countries surveyed.

 

Another Secret Deal for Iran via Obama, Missile Technology

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It is apparent we don’t know enough with regard to who is in this country, why they are here and how they are being used and exploited as bargaining tools by the White House and John Kerry advancing Iran’s position in the world. John Kerry and the State Department have given into every request and thrown in so much more to sweeten the pot, but to what end is the big question.

IranWatch: Arrested on June 8, 2010, in connection with an indictment filed on June 2, 2010, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, charging Modanlo, along with Iranian citizens Hamid Malmirian, Reza Heidari, Mohammad Modares, Abdol Reza Mehrdad, and Sirous Naseri, with conspiring, between January 2000 and November 2007, to supply Iran with satellite technology and hardware in violation of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA); convicted, on June 10, 2013, of conspiracy to defraud the United States, violating the Iran Trade Embargo, and money-laundering; the remaining defendants in the case have not been arrested (as of June 2013).

Allegedly attended meetings with Iranian officials that facilitated contact with POLYOT, a Russian government-owned aerospace enterprise, which led to the launch of an Iranian satellite on October 27, 2005; allegedly chairman and managing member of New York Satellite Industries, LLC, which allegedly received $10 million from a front company, Prospect Telecom, as consideration for facilitating the agreement between Iran and POLYOT, as well as for providing telecommunications services as part of that agreement; New York Satellite Industries allegedly used Modanlo’s home address as its business address; allegedly served as chairman and president of Final Analysis, Inc., and was president of its subsidiary, Final Analysis Communication Services; reportedly was refused entry into Russia for attempting to acquire technical documentation on satellites and missiles to be transferred to Iran in violation of Russian export controls.

An Iranian-born naturalized U.S. citizen and a mechanical engineer; 52 years old (as of June 2013).

Potomac Man Sentenced To 8 Years In Prison For Conspiring To Illegally Provide Satellite Services To Iran

Exclusive: White House dropped $10 million claim in Iran prisoner deal

Reuters: Nader Modanlo was facing five more years in federal prison when he got an extraordinary offer: U.S. President Barack Obama was ready to commute his sentence as part of this month’s historic and then still-secret prisoner swap with Iran. He said no.

To sweeten the deal, the U.S. administration then dropped a claim against the Iran-born aerospace engineer for $10 million that a Maryland jury found he had taken as an illegal payment from Iran, according to interviews with Modanlo, lawyers involved and U.S. officials with knowledge of the matter.

The surrender of the U.S. claim, which has not previously been reported, could add to scrutiny of how the Obama administration clinched a prisoner deal that has drawn criticism from Republican presidential candidates and lawmakers.

A Washington-based spokesman for the Justice Department declined to comment on discussions over the $10 million, which the jury found that Modanlo was paid to help Iran launch its first satellite in 2005. Modanlo says the money was a loan from a Swiss company for a telecoms deal.

In the prisoner swap, five Americans held in Iran were released at the same time as seven Iranians charged or imprisoned in the United States were granted pardons or had their sentences commuted. The deal accompanied the Jan. 16 implementation of a landmark agreement that curbs Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.

Even after receiving the improved offer on Friday, Jan. 15, Modanlo said he didn’t budge at first. He wanted a chance to clear his name in court, he says.

“I was mostly disappointed that I have to give up my right to appeal,” Modanlo, 55, told Reuters in one of his first interviews since being released.

“If they believe in their justice system why would they deprive me of it? Let them prove me wrong.”

As part of their clemency agreements, all of the Iranians had to renounce any claims against the U.S. government. All but one had been accused of violating the economic sanctions the United States has enforced against Iran for decades.

Modanlo’s reluctance to accept Obama’s offer became an eleventh-hour complication to an otherwise carefully staged deal with Iran that had been negotiated in secret for months by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his Iranian counterpart.

He only agreed to accept the clemency offer on Saturday, Jan. 16 as the clock ticked toward what U.S. officials said was the final deadline, according to Modanlo and U.S. officials.

He was freed the next day from a federal prison near Richmond, Virginia. The release marked an abrupt conclusion to his case after a sprawling, decade-long investigation into Modanlo’s role in brokering Iran’s access to space technology. U.S. federal agents had pursued evidence from the suburbs of Washington to Switzerland and Russia.

Modanlo was serving the longest sentence of any of the seven Iranians and had the most extensive, established connections to Iran’s government.

He was also the only one known to have initially declined Obama’s offer, according to interviews with lawyers for the men.

An official at Iran’s interests section in Washington, Iran’s de facto embassy, testified in Modanlo’s defense at his 2013 trial. The same Iranian representative, Fariborz Jahansoozan, was instrumental in brokering the prisoner exchange in recent months, lawyers for those involved have said.

“This story is done and over with,” Jahansoozan said when reached by Reuters, declining to discuss the case in detail. “Please let it go and move forward.”

After two years in prison, Modanlo says he is finding that hard. “I know this cloud is going to be over my head forever,” he said.

 

AMERICAN DREAM SOURED

Modanlo grew up in northern Iran, the son of a wealthy landowner. As a child, he remembers watching the Apollo 11 mission in 1969 that put American astronauts on the moon and being inspired to become a space engineer.

Decades later, after moving to the United States and becoming a U.S. citizen, Modanlo had become a space entrepreneur with a company valued at $500 million.

He helped launch an American satellite from a Russian rocket in 1995. His company, Final Analysis, focused on the emerging field of low-orbit satellites for data services.

But a series of missteps drove the company into bankruptcy in 2001, and Modanlo was sued by a former partner, who accused him of selling missile technology to Iran.

Modanlo says U.S. authorities used the missile claim to win assistance from Switzerland in obtaining evidence against him. Raids at Modanlo’s Maryland home and office seized a truck load of documents and 120 computer hard drives but no supporting evidence for that claim, he said.

“They knew this was false. They knew I had no missile technology,” he said.

The ensuing investigation uncovered documents prosecutors say showed Modanlo brokered a deal between Iran and Russia to launch the satellite in exchange for a $10 million fee. A Maryland jury convicted him of sanctions violations after a six-week trial. He was sentenced to eight years in prison.

In an appeal, Modanlo’s lawyers argued that private communications between the trial judge and prosecutors had excluded evidence that could have changed the outcome.

Robert King, one of the judges who heard Modanlo’s appeal, admonished prosecutors for that practice in an October hearing.

U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein said the evidence against Modanlo had been disclosed in court and proved “beyond any reasonable doubt that Mr. Modanlo secretly helped Iran launch a satellite for $10 million.”

Modanlo said he felt certain the appeal would go his way. Then his lawyer told him that he would have to give up that appeal and be stuck with the $10 million forfeiture claim if he took the clemency offer.

“I waive my right to bring a claim against you, but your claim continues for God knows how many years against me?” Modanlo said. “After back and forth a number of times they agreed to take the $10 million off the table.”

After calls from his attorneys and Iranian representatives failed to convince Modanlo to take the clemency, it was a pleading and tearful call from his sister in Iran that finally made him relent, he said.

“If it was for me, I would never have taken the deal,” he said.

Another Blackberry Lost, Cheryl Mills Worried

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Clinton Chief Of Staff Lost Her Personal Blackberry, Which Contained Classified Emails

 Ross/DailyCaller: While working as Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff at the State Department, Cheryl Mills lost her personal Blackberry, on which she sent emails that the State Department has determined contain classified information. Records obtained by The Daily Caller through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit show Mills revealed that she lost her Blackberry in a March 20, 2010 email she sent to Bryan Pagliano, the State Department IT staffer who managed Clinton’s private email server.
“Somewhere b/w my house and the plane to nyc yesterday my personal bb got misplaced; no on [sic] is answering it thought [sic] I have called,” Mills wrote from her personal email account to the address Pagliano used when he worked on Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign.
Other State Department records indicate that Mills’ personal Blackberry appears to have been synced with her Gmail account. Many of the emails she sent from the personal account include footers which show they were sent from a Blackberry powered by AT&T.

Some of the emails Mills sent and received on the account contain information that the State Department has retroactively determined to have classified information.

In one such email, from Dec. 24, 2009, Clinton forwarded Mills a message she had received from Johnnie Carson, then the Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, who provided details from a conversation he had with French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner about a situation in Guinea.

“Pls review so we can discuss,” Clinton wrote to Mills and Jake Sullivan, her foreign policy aide.

In a Jan. 14, 2014 email, Rajiv Shah, who was in charge of U.S. Agency for International Development, emailed Clinton and Mills about Haiti. The email is heavily redacted because it contains now-classified information. The State Department has retroactively classified more than 1,300 emails housed on Clinton’s private server, though Clinton and the State Department maintain that the information was not considered classified when it was originated.

It is unclear if Mills recovered her Blackberry after first losing it. Her attorney did not return a request for comment. It is also unclear what other sensitive, government-related information Mills sent on her Blackberry and personal email account to other federal officials.

Blackberry usage by Clinton and her inner circle has been a growing area of focus in the ongoing scandal involving the Democratic presidential candidate’s use of a personal email account and a private server.

The Daily Caller reported earlier this month that in Aug. 2011, a top State Department official offered to provide Clinton with a government-issued Blackberry equipped with a state.gov email account after her personal Blackberry went on the blink. But Clinton aide Huma Abedin rejected the offer, claiming that the idea “doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

And on Monday, Fox News reported a video from 2013 in which Wendy Sherman, who served as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs under Clinton, admitted that Clinton and other State Department officials frequently used their Blackberries to send information that “would never be on an unclassified system.”

Clinton used only a personal Blackberry throughout her tenure at the State Department. Mills and Abedin used both personal and government-issued Blackberries.

There is some evidence that the State Department was concerned with the use of personal Blackberries separate and apart from the risk posed by losing them.

“I cannot stress too strongly… that any unclassified BlackBerry is highly vulnerable in any setting to remotely and covertly monitoring conversations, retrieving emails, and exploring calendars,” wrote Eric Boswell, then the head of State’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security, in a March 2009 memo.

Boswell also warned that the bureau had intelligence concerning “vulnerability” to Clinton’s Blackberry during her Feb. 9, 2009 trip to China. He also issued a warning about using Blackberries on “Mahogany Row,” the floor that houses the offices of top State Department officials at headquarters in Foggy Bottom.

In Feb. 2014, well before the Clinton email scandal broke, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki spoke to the issue using personal digital assistants (PDA) — such as Blackberries — that were not government issued.

“Classified processing and classified conversation on a personal digital assisted device is prohibited,” she told reporters.

 

Cheryl Mills Loses Personal Blackberry

Wounded Warriors Project Investigation, Just Wow

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I knew this three years ago but never knew the depths of the malfeasance. Imagine how much good the charity good deliver if egos and spending were guided and managed. The salaries at the top have always been outrageous.

Wounded Warrior Project Survey Video included in link

Action News Jax Investigates: Wounded Warrior Project under fire, accused of lavish spending on parties and salaries

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. —

On Tuesday, a CBS News investigation revealed lavish spending by a nationally recognized charity based in Jacksonville.

Wounded Warrior Project is under fire by former employees who say the group wastes millions in donor dollars on five-star hotels and booze.

“I’ll be damned if I let them drink away the hard earned spending of Americans,” Erick Millette told CBS News.

Action News Jax’s Catherine Varnum spoke with that whistleblower and he showed pictures of some of that lavish spending.

That evidence includes a video of a man identified as the CEO of Wounded Warrior Project, rappelling down the side of a five-star hotel during a conference paid for by the charity.

The whistle blower, who is a decorated veteran, told Action News Jax there were bar tabs of $2,500 dollars all paid for using money meant to help wounded veterans.

The television ads are well known: Veterans, heroes speaking on behalf of locally based Wounded Warrior Project, telling stories of wounded vets needing help.

“I was in a bad place. I was drinking myself to death. I was literally putting a gun in my mouth,” Millette said.

Millette served 2 tours in Iraq, earning a bronze star and Purple Heart. But the Army veteran also came home with a brain injury and PTSD. He turned to the Wounded Warrior Project for help.

“I thought it was the greatest thing. I really did,” Millette said.

After going on a retreat, he got a job as a spokesperson for Wounded Warrior Project, talking up the organization, even getting recognition from the president. But after two years, Millette quit.

“I started to notice just how the donor money was being spent and I became more uncomfortable,” Millette said.

He showed us pictures of a Mexican mariachi band brought in for a party. In one video, Millette said CEO Steven Nardizzi can be seen rappelling down side of the Broadmore hotel in Colorado during an all-expenses paid conference for employees.

Millette said despite living just miles away, he attended mandatory training at One Ocean in Atlantic Beach four separate times.

Catherine Varnum: “You live in Jacksonville?”

Millette: “I live in Jacksonville”

Varnum: “And they made you stay?”

Millette: “I was required to stay in a hotel on site,” Millette said.

Varnum: “Do you have any idea how much money is being spent on what you called the glitz and glamour versus going to warriors?

Millette: “No I don’t.”

“I think it’s an organization that’s saying one thing and doing another. I think they’re preying off the brave men and women who served this country,” Millette said.

Millette said he’s not speaking out as a disgruntled former employee but as a voice for so many others afraid to speak up about out of control spending.

“There’s a saying at Wounded Warrior Project, warriors call us, we don’t call warriors,” Millette said.

According to tax records obtained by CBS News, spending on conferences and meetings went from $1.7 million in 2010 to $26 million in 2014. That’s about the same amount of money the group spends on its combat stress recovery program.

Records on the organization’s own website show salaries for the top 12 employees totaled more than $2.7 million.

The group also posted on its Facebook page, saying in part, “Our salaries are consistent with industry standards and, rather than being excessive, have often fallen at the lower end of compensation paid at comparable organizations.”

According to Charity Navigator, which tracks charitable giving, Wounded Warrior Project spent 60 percent of its donations on veterans. Other veteran organizations average 90 percent. On Facebook, the group responded to several people who commented on their page, saying that number is false.

We reached out to Wounded Warrior Project and received the following statement:

“The CBS News piece had numerous factual errors and misrepresented the good work Wounded Warrior Project does on behalf of this nation’s injured veterans.

“Wounded Warrior Project leads the industry in transparency and reporting publicly our independently audited financial documents. Separate from our financials, we also make public all of our program information and impact metrics. These are readily available on our website for anyone to view.

“Based on our most recently independently audited financial statements, 80.6 percent of total expenditures went to provide 20 services and programs for Wounded Warriors and their families.

“Wounded Warrior Project is a Gold Standard Better Business Bureau accredited charity.

“We provide programs and services to more than 83,000 wounded veterans. Wounded Warrior Project works every day to ensure our programs meet the needs of our wounded veterans. We just launched our Warrior Care Network to help provide world-class mental health care for wounded veterans. Warrior Care Network represents a $100 million investment to ensure warriors struggling with the hidden wounds of war get the help they need. We will commit $500 million to our Independence Program and Long-Term Support Trust – two programs that directly help the most severely injured veterans.”