Category Archives: DOJ, DC and inside the Beltway

Major Gang Arrests in Boston, Immigrant MS-13

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El Salvador:

Gangs like the MS13 and Barrio 18 in El Salvador are rigid about enforcing the boundaries of their territory. This has dramatic repercussions for both the bus drivers who drive and the students who walk across these borders.

“This street is the limit — look. The frontline of the war is right here. Here there are gunshots every so often. Down there are MS13. Up there are Barrio 18 Revolucionarios. It is an L. And we are in the middle.”

So says a middle-aged man. He is the extortion negotiator for a bus and minibus route. That is his job. In a country where even Coca Cola or Tigo pay extortion, in El Salvador there are architects, street vendors, shoemakers, teachers, and extortion negotiators. The country’s reality creates jobs.  More details here.

Dozens said to be linked to El Salvador gang indicted in Boston area

Reuters:

Dozens of Boston-area residents linked to the Central American-based MS-13 street gang were being rounded up by law enforcement authorities on Friday after their indictments on racketeering conspiracy charges related to murders and other crimes, federal prosecutors said.

The indictment of 56 members, leaders and associates of “one of the largest criminal organizations in the United States” alleges that several of the accused played a role in the murders of at least five people since 2014 in Chelsea, Massachusetts, and East Boston, as well as at least 14 attempted murders.

In Massachusetts, MS-13 is largely composed of immigrants and descendants of immigrants from El Salvador, recruited through intimidation in local high schools in towns with heavy concentrations of residents with ties to Central America, prosecutors said.

“Violence is a central tenet of MS-13, as evidenced by its core motto – ‘mata, viola, control,’ translated as, ‘kill, rape, control,'” the U.S. attorney’s office for the District of Massachusetts said in a statement.

The indictment also accuses Massachusetts-based members of MS-13, also known as “La Mara Salvatrucha,” of selling narcotics and committing robberies to raise money to send to leaders of the gang jailed in El Salvador.

It was not immediately clear how many of the 56 people indicted were under arrest on Friday afternoon. The statement said that 15 of the accused were already in custody on federal, state or immigration charges.

A representative of the U.S. attorney’s office could not be reached immediately for comment.

The racketeering conspiracy charge – under the federal law known as RICO – alone carries a maximum prison sentence of 20 years, or even life if the underlying criminal activity carries the maximum penalty of life imprisonment, prosecutors said.

***

There is more to the story and here are some other chilling facts:

CIS.org: Since the recent surge in Central American immigrants crossing the southern border illegally, many have had questions about the Central American community in the United States. News accounts indicate that, in recent months, some 290,000 illegal immigrants (primarily from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador) have been settled, or will soon be settled, by the federal government.1 Listed below are some basic socio-demographic statistics for immigrants in the United States from these countries.

The figures below are for both legal and illegal immigrants from the public-use files of the 2012 American Community Survey, collected by the Census Bureau:

  • Population Totals: In 2012 there were 2.7 million immigrants from El Salvador (1.3 million), Guatemala (880,000), and Honduras (536,000) in the United States. Combined, the immigrant population from these three countries has grown 234 percent since 1990.
  • The Top-10 States of Settlement: California, Texas, New York, Florida, Maryland, Virginia, New Jersey, Massachusetts, North Carolina, and Georgia.
  • Illegal Immigrants: Department of Homeland Security estimates indicate that about 60 percent of immigrants from these three countries (1.6 million) are in the United States illegally.2
  • Language: Of immigrants from El Salvador, 70 percent report they speak English less than very well; for immigrants from Guatemala, it is 72 percent; and for immigrants from Honduras, it is 69 percent.
  • Home-ownership: Of households headed by Salvadoran immigrants, 41 percent are owner-occupied, as are 28 percent of Guatemalan households, and 29 percent of Honduran immigrant households. The corresponding figure for natives is 66 percent.

The figures below are for both legal and illegal immigrants from the public-use files of the March 2013 Current Population Survey, collected by the Census Bureau:

  • Educational Attainment: 54 percent of Guatemalan immigrants (ages 25 to 65) have not graduated high school. The figure for Salvadorans is 53 percent, and for Hondurans, 44 percent. The corresponding figure for native-born Americans is 7 percent.
  • Welfare Use: 57 percent of households headed by immigrants from El Salvador use at least one major welfare program, as do 54 percent of Honduran households, and 49 percent of Guatemalan immigrant households. Among native households it is 24 percent.3
  • Poverty: 65 percent of Honduran immigrants and their young children (under 18) live in or near poverty (under 200 percent of the poverty threshold). For Guatemalan and Salvadoran immigrants and their children, it is 61 percent. The corresponding figure for natives and their children is 31 percent.4
  • Health Insurance: 47 percent of Guatemalan immigrants and their young children (under 18) do not have health insurance. The figure for both Salvadoran and Honduran immigrants and their young children is 41 percent. The corresponding figure for natives and their children is 13 percent.5
  • Share Working: 77 percent of immigrants from El Salvador (ages 25 to 54) have a job, as do 74 percent of Guatemalan immigrants and 73 percent of Honduran immigrants. The corresponding figure for natives is 76 percent.

Too Damaging to Release, ah Hillary???

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Official: Some Clinton emails ‘too damaging’ to release

FNC: EXCLUSIVE: The intelligence community has now deemed some of Hillary Clinton’s emails “too damaging” to national security to release under any circumstances, according to a U.S. government official close to the ongoing review. A second source, who was not authorized to speak on the record, backed up the finding.

The decision to withhold the documents in full, and not provide even a partial release with redactions, further undercuts claims by the State Department and the Clinton campaign that none of the intelligence in the emails was classified when it hit Clinton’s personal server.

Fox News is told the emails include intelligence from “special access programs,” or SAP, which is considered beyond “Top Secret.”A Jan. 14 letter, first reported by Fox News, from intelligence community Inspector General Charles McCullough III notified senior intelligence and foreign relations committee leaders that “several dozen emails containing classified information” were determined to be “at the CONFIDENTIAL, SECRET, AND TOP SECRET/SAP levels.”

The State Department is trying to finish its review and public release of thousands of Clinton emails, as the Democratic presidential primary contests get underway in early February.

Under the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, there is an exemption that allows for highly sensitive, and in this case classified, material to be withheld in full — which means nothing would be released in these cases, not even heavily redacted versions, which has been standard practice with the 1,340 such emails made public so far by the State Department.

According to the Justice Department FOIA website, exemption “B3” allows a carve-out for both the CIA and NSA to withhold “operational files.” Similar provisions also apply to other agencies.

Fox News reported Friday that at least one Clinton email contained information identified as “HCS-O,” which is the code for intelligence from human spying.

One source, not authorized to speak on the record, suggested the intelligence agencies are operating on the assumption there are more copies of the Clinton emails out there, and even releasing a partial email would provide enough clues to trace back to the original – which could allow the identification of “special access programs” intelligence.

There was no comment to Fox News from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Office of the Intelligence Community Inspector General, or the agency involved. Fox News has chosen not to identify the agency that provided sworn declarations that intelligence beyond Top Secret was found in the Clinton emails.

Reached for comment by Fox News, a State Department official did not dispute that some emails will never be made public.

“We continue to process the next set of former Secretary Clinton’s emails for release under the FOIA process and will have more to say about it later,” the official said. “As always, we take seriously our responsibilities to protect sensitive information.”

The State Department was scheduled to release more Clinton emails Friday, while asking a D.C. federal court for an extension.

FBI investigators looking into the emails are focused on the criminal code pertaining to “gross negligence” in the handling and storage of classified information, and “public corruption.”

“The documents alone in and of themselves set forth a set of compelling, articulable facts that statutes relating to espionage have been violated,” a former senior federal law enforcement officer said. The source said the ongoing investigation along the corruption track “also stems from her tenure of secretary. These charges would be inseparable from the other charges in as much as there is potential for significant overlap and correlation.”

Based on federal regulations, once classified information is spilled onto a personal computer or device, as was the case with Clinton and her aides, the hardware is now considered classified at the highest classification level of the materials received.

While criticized by the Clinton campaign, McCullough, an Obama administration appointee, was relaying the conclusion of two intelligence agencies in his letter to Congress that the information was classified when it hit Clinton’s server — and not his own judgment.

Joseph E. Schmitz, a former inspector general of the Department of Defense, called the attacks on McCullough a “shoot the watchdog” tactic by Clinton’s campaign.

The developments, taken together, show Clinton finding herself once again at the epicenter of a controversy over incomplete records.

During her time as the first female partner at the Rose Law firm in Arkansas during the mid-1980s, she was known as one of the “three amigos” and close with partners Webb Hubbell and Vince Foster. Hubbell ended up a convicted felon for his role in the failure of the corrupt Madison Guaranty, a savings and loan which cost taxpayers more than $65 million. Hubbell embezzled more than a half-million dollars from the firm.

Foster killed himself in Washington, D.C., in July 1993. As Clinton’s partner in the Rose Law firm, he had followed the Clintons into the White House where he served as the Clintons’ personal lawyer and a White House deputy counsel.

Clinton’s missing Rose Law billing records for her work for Guaranty during the mid-1980s were the subject of three intense federal investigations over two years. Those records, in the form of a computerized printout of her work performed on behalf of Guaranty, were discovered under mysterious circumstances in the Book Room of the private White House living quarters.

The discovery of those records was announced during a  blizzard in January 1996 by attorney David Kendall, who still represents Hillary Clinton. After Clinton testified before a grand jury, prosecutors concluded there was insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt she committed perjury or obstruction of justice.

Despite Clinton’s recent public statements about not knowing how the technology works, at least one email suggests she directed a subordinate to work around the rules. In a June 2011 email to aide Jake Sullivan, she instructed him to take what appeared to be classified talking points, and “turn into nonpaper w no identifying heading and send nonsecure.”

A State Department spokesman could not say whether such a fax was sent.

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.