Clinton Lincoln Bedroom, 2017 Re-Run?

Clinton White House sleepover guests still writing checks

Friends who slept in Lincoln Bedroom shift donations from Bill to Hillary

by: Liz Essley Whyte

Oct. 26, 2015: This story has been updated.

Click here for the top 34 donor list.

For a first family, inviting guests to spend a night in the Lincoln Bedroom can pay dividends for decades.

Among donors to Democrat Bill Clinton’s campaigns first revealed as overnight guests of his White House and today still living, more than half are still giving — this time to Hillary Clinton.

The Center for Public Integrity published the first list of donors who nabbed a night in the Clinton White House — and whose stays sparked outrage and investigations — in its 1996 report, “Fat Cat Hotel.”

Of the 66 original “Fat Cats” still living, 34 have donated a total of $1.15 million to Hillary Clinton’s campaign or the super PACs supporting her since January 2013. With more than a year before the general election, the number of supporters and their donations may rise.

Most of the generous former guests contributed $2,700 to Hillary Clinton’s campaign account — the maximum amount allowed under federal law during the primaries. The Clinton campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

At least one of the faithful 2016 givers, who celebrated his 10th wedding anniversary in 1993 with a stay at the White House, is looking forward to a return stay in the chief executive’s mansion, courtesy of the Clintons.

“Last time I stayed in the Queen’s Bedroom, so I need to be upgraded to the Lincoln Bedroom,” said former Florida state Rep. Dick Batchelor, who orchestrated the first Florida fundraiser for Bill Clinton in 1991.

“I have no idea whether that would take place or not, but anybody who says they don’t want to visit the White House and spend the night is probably not telling the truth. If I had an opportunity to go back, I would absolutely go back,” he added. “I need to return the towels.”

The original 80 Fat Cats, including those who are now deceased, are only a portion of those who ultimately crashed at the Clinton White House.

The Clinton administration released records in 1997 showing that 938 guests had stayed at the mansion during the president’s first term, dwarfing the 284 who stayed during the previous administration.

And a Democratic National Committee memo showed that President Bill Clinton personally endorsed the idea of using sleepovers at the White House as a fundraising tactic — “Ready to start overnights right away,” he wrote.

At least another 404 guests stayed the night at the Clinton White House and Camp David after Hillary Clinton began campaigning for U.S. Senate in July 1999.

The invitations for sleepovers in the Lincoln Bedroom two decades ago drew fire during Bill Clinton’s presidency, as the press dug up details and Congress probed the chief executive’s fundraising efforts.

Many of the original Fat Cats were Clinton friends from Arkansas. But only eight of them have given to Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Another 18 Arkansas friends have not, while 10 are no longer living.

But that doesn’t mean Arkansan attitudes toward Hillary Clinton have cooled, said Skip Rutherford, a longtime Clinton strategist and former White House overnight guest.

“The people that I know that were friends of Bill’s are friends of Hillary’s,” said Rutherford, who said he hasn’t contributed to politicians since becoming dean of the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service. His wife, Billie, gave $2,700 to the 2016 Clinton campaign. “Politics is very personal in this state. And the Clintons touched a lot of people over the years. And so there’s a lot of loyal, good friends of the Clintons here.”

There are some turncoats: At least four of the former Clinton guests, on top of turning lukewarm on Hillary Clinton, have contributed to her Republican rivals for the nation’s highest office.

Texas oil magnate Truman Arnold, who served as finance chair for the Democratic Party in 1995 and has contributed to Democrats as recently as last year, gave $25,000 to Right to Rise USA, a super PAC backing former GOP Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. Arnold, who was in charge of Democratic fundraising in his role as finance chair, was caught up in the Lincoln Bedroom scandal as more than just a guest.

He once told journalists that he used a Clinton White House database to make sure donors were rewarded with perks, including Lincoln Bedroom stays. Arnold did not respond to requests for comment.

Little Rock bank executive Curt Bradbury and his wife Charlotte both gave to the campaign of Republican U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina; in addition, Curt Bradbury gave $25,000 to a super PAC supporting New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie and $100,000 to Right to Rise USA, the pro-Bush super PAC.

Bradbury said staying in the White House was “a little bit like sleeping in a museum.” Though he’s a lifelong conservative, he supported Bill Clinton because he is a “native son” of Arkansas.

“Bill’s politics in Arkansas don’t resemble anything I see in the Democratic Party now,” he said. “He was very pragmatic in Arkansas.”

Arkansas banker Warren Stephens, who has given mostly to Republicans but supported Bill Clinton’s first bid for the presidency, has contributed more than $216,000 to support the presidential bids of several GOP candidates, including Bush, Christie, Graham and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who has since dropped out of the race.

“The entire Democrat party has shifted pretty hard to the left,” Stephens said. “Our politics are a lot different.”

Several of the Hollywood honchos who once stayed at the Clinton White House have donated to Hillary Clinton, but others have yet to commit.

Director Steven Spielberg gave $1 million to a super PAC supporting the former secretary of state, as well as $2,700 to her campaign. And actor Tom Hanks, singer Barbra Streisand, producer David Geffen and actress Mary Steenburgen also supported the former first lady’s 2016 run.

“I don’t think there’s a human being in this world more qualified because of all of her experiences,” Steenburgen, an Arkansas native, told the Arkansas Times earlier this year. She has given $2,700 to the campaign fund. “I will be campaigning mightily.”

But comedian Chevy Chase, actor Richard Dreyfuss and producer Mike Medavoy have not given.

Dreyfuss called his kids from the Lincoln Bedroom and was awoken by Bill Clinton at 7:20 a.m. so they could talk politics, the Center for Public Integrity previously reported.

Even Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, a documentary filmmaker who stayed in the Lincoln Bedroom for the first night of Bill Clinton’s presidency and ended up sleeping there a total of 101 nights, has yet to donate to Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid.

Producer Medavoy, who supported Obama during the 2008 presidential primaries, said he plans to give soon.

“I will contribute at the time of my choosing,” he said. “When is none of your business.”

Medavoy said he supports Clinton this year because he doesn’t expect another viable candidate to emerge, not because he wants a return visit to the White House.

“I thought the president and Mrs. Clinton were gracious, nice. I thought the family was nice. I was very lucky, and I know it, to have been invited,” he said. “And I hope that it wasn’t just because I supported them and early, but because we basically agreed about what needed to be done in the world.”

Medavoy’s ex-wife Patricia Duff also stayed at the White House; she has given a total of $7,700 to Hillary Clinton’s campaign account and Ready PAC, formerly known as Ready for Hillary, which supports Clinton. One of Duff’s claims to fame is that she called Bill Clinton “one full-service president” after her stay in the executive mansion, reportedly angering the president.

(Update, Oct. 26, 2015, 5:51 p.m.: Duff did not respond to an initial request for comment, but contacted the Center for Public Integrity after the report was posted. She said via an emailed statement that the earlier accounts of her remarks perpetuated “an offensive myth that has been running for too long and completely fumbles the facts.” She added that her comment was taken “completely out of context.”

Duff said that she was at the White House with then-husband Medavoy and that the president knew that Medavoy had to get up early the next morning.

“We were both totally charmed when the President knocked on our door and brought Mike a cup of coffee as his wake up call. My sincere surprise at this homespun hospitality occasioned my completely sincere and innocent remark,” she wrote in her email. “We were delighted — and said so. I have never heard from anyone that the President was angry with me. Then, as now, I maintain a cordial relationship with both Secretary Clinton and the President.”)

Some of the former guests who have not yet donated to the Clinton 2016 effort may be waiting for the Democratic Party to choose a nominee. Others said they plan to give soon.

“Well of course I support Hillary because I’m crazy about her,” said Diane Carroll, whose husband Phillip Carroll once worked with the candidate at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock. “I just haven’t really gotten around to it, to tell you the truth.”

This story was co-published with Slate.

 

Oversight Cmte Moves to Impeach IRS Commissioner

Press Release:

Resolution Introduced to Impeach IRS Commissioner

WASHINGTONToday, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) and 18 members of the Committee introduced a resolution to begin proceedings in the U.S. House of Representatives to impeach Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Commissioner John Koskinen.

In introducing the resolution, Chairman Chaffetz said, “Commissioner Koskinen violated the public trust. He failed to comply with a congressionally issued subpoena, documents were destroyed on his watch, and the public was consistently misled. Impeachment is the appropriate tool to restore public confidence in the IRS and to protect the institutional interests of Congress. This action will demonstrate to the American people that the IRS is under repair, and signal that Executive Branch officials who violate the public trust will be held accountable.”

Specifically, Commissioner Koskinen violated the public trust in the following ways:

  • Failed to comply with a subpoena resulting in destruction of key evidenceCommissioner Koskinen failed to locate and preserve IRS records in accordance with a congressional subpoena and an internal preservation order.  The IRS erased 422 backup tapes containing as many as 24,000 of Lois Lerner’s emails – key pieces of evidence that were destroyed on Koskinen’s watch. 
  • Failed to testify truthfully and provided false and misleading information.  Commissioner Koskinen testified the IRS turned over all emails relevant to the congressional investigation, including all of Ms. Lerner’s emails.  When the agency determined Ms. Lerner’s emails were missing, Commissioner Koskinen testified the emails were unrecoverable.  These statements were false.
  • Failed to notify Congress that key evidence was missing.  The IRS knew Lois Lerner’s emails were missing in February 2014.  In fact, they were not missing; the IRS destroyed the emails on March 4, 2014.  The IRS did not notify Congress the emails were missing until June 2014 – four months later, and well after the White House and the Treasury Department were notified.   

 

Background:

In July, Chairman Chaffetz, along with 51 members of Congress, sent a letter to President Obama calling for the removal of IRS Commissioner John Koskinen. The White House did not respond.  The Committee released a video outlining a timeline of key events in the IRS targeting scandal.

List of cosponsoring members:

  • Ron DeSantis (FL-06)
  • Paul A. Gosar (AZ-04)
  • Scott DesJarlais (TN-04)
  • Blake Farenthold (TX-27)
  • Tim Walberg (MI-07)
  • Jody Hice (GA-10)
  • Gary Palmer (AL-06)
  • Mark Walker (NC-06)
  • Mick Mulvaney (SC-05)
  • Jim Jordan (OH-04)
  • Steve Russell (OK-05)
  • Earl L. “Buddy” Carter (GA-01)
  • Glenn Grothman (WI-06)
  • Cynthia M. Lummis (WY-AL)
  • Will Hurd (TX-23)
  • Justin Amash (MI-03)
  • Michael R. Turner (OH-10)
  • Thomas Massie (KY-04)

U.S. Spy vs. Israeli Spy on Iran

Some back story events leading up to the broken relationship between the Obama White House and Israel.

Spy vs. Spy, the Fraying U.S Israel Ties

WSJ: The U.S. closely monitored Israel’s military bases and eavesdropped on secret communications in 2012, fearing its longtime ally might try to carry out a strike on Fordow, Iran’s most heavily fortified nuclear facility.

Nerves frayed at the White House after senior officials learned Israeli aircraft had flown in and out of Iran in what some believed was a dry run for a commando raid on the site. Worried that Israel might ignite a regional war, the White House sent a second aircraft carrier to the region and readied attack aircraft, a senior U.S. official said, “in case all hell broke loose.”

The two countries, nursing a mutual distrust, each had something to hide. U.S. officials hoped to restrain Israel long enough to advance negotiations on a nuclear deal with Iran that the U.S. had launched in secret. U.S. officials saw Israel’s strike preparations as an attempt to usurp American foreign policy.

Instead of talking to each other, the allies kept their intentions secret. To figure out what they weren’t being told, they turned to their spy agencies to fill gaps. They employed deception, not only against Iran, but against each other. After working in concert for nearly a decade to keep Iran from an atomic bomb, the U.S. and Israel split over the best means: diplomacy, covert action or military strikes.

Personal strains between President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu erupted at their first Oval Office meeting in 2009, and an accumulation of grievances in the years since plunged relations between the two countries into crisis.

This Wall Street Journal account of the souring of U.S.-Israel relations over Iran is based on interviews with nearly two dozen current and former senior U.S. and Israeli officials.

U.S. and Israeli officials say they want to rebuild trust but acknowledge it won’t be easy. Mr. Netanyahu reserves the right to continue covert action against Iran’s nuclear program, said current and former Israeli officials, which could put the spy services of the U.S. and Israel on a collision course.

A shaky start

Messrs. Obama and Netanyahu shared common ground on Iran when they first met in 2007. Mr. Netanyahu, then the leader of Israel’s opposition party, the right-wing Likud, discussed with Mr. Obama, a Democratic senator, how to discourage international investment in Iran’s energy sector. Afterward, Mr. Obama introduced legislation to that end.

Suspicions grew during the 2008 presidential race after Mr. Netanyahu spoke with some congressional Republicans who described Mr. Obama as pro-Arab, Israeli officials said. The content of the conversations later found its way back to the White House, senior Obama administration officials said.

Soon after taking office in January 2009, Mr. Obama took steps to allay Israeli concerns, including instructing the Pentagon to develop military options against Iran’s Fordow facility, which was built into a mountain. The president also embraced an existing campaign of covert action against Iran, expanding cooperation between the Central Intelligence Agency and Mossad, the Israeli spy agency.

Mossad leaders compared the covert campaign to a 10-floor building: The higher the floor, they said, the more invasive the operation. CIA and Mossad worked together on operations on the lower floors. But the Americans made clear they had no interest in moving higher—Israeli proposals to bring down Iran’s financial system, for example, or even its regime.

Some covert operations were run unilaterally by Mossad, such as the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists, according to U.S. officials.

The first Oval Office meeting between Messrs. Obama and Netanyahu, in May 2009—weeks after Mr. Netanyahu became prime minister—was difficult for both sides. After the meeting, Mr. Obama’s aides called Ron Dermer, Mr. Netanyahu’s adviser, to coordinate their statements. Mr. Dermer told them it was too late; Mr. Netanyahu was already briefing reporters. “We kind of looked at each other and said, ‘I guess we’re not coordinating our messages,’ ” said Tommy Vietor, a former administration official who was there.

In 2010, the risk of covert action became clear. A computer virus dubbed Stuxnet, deployed jointly by the U.S. and Israel to destroy Iranian centrifuges used to process uranium, had inadvertently spread across the Internet. The Israelis wanted to launch cyberattacks against a range of Iranian institutions, according to U.S. officials. But the breach made Mr. Obama more cautious, officials said, for fear of triggering Iranian retaliation, or damaging the global economy if a virus spread uncontrollably.

Israel questioned whether its covert operations were enough, said aides to Mr. Netanyahu. Stuxnet had only temporarily slowed Tehran’s progress. “Cyber and other covert operations had their inherent limitations,” a senior Israeli official said, “and we reached those limitations.”

Mr. Netanyahu pivoted toward a military strike, raising anxiety levels in the White House.

The U.S. Air Force analyzed the arms and aircraft needed to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities and concluded Israel didn’t have the right equipment. The U.S. shared the findings, in part, to steer the Israelis from a military strike.

The Israelis weren’t persuaded and briefed the U.S. on an attack plan: Cargo planes would land in Iran with Israeli commandos on board who would “blow the doors, and go in through the porch entrance” of Fordow, a senior U.S. official said. The Israelis planned to sabotage the nuclear facility from inside.

Pentagon officials thought it was a suicide mission. They pressed the Israelis to give the U.S. advance warning. The Israelis were noncommittal.

“Whether this was all an effort to try to pressure Obama, or whether Israel was really getting close to a decision, I don’t know,” said Michéle Flournoy, who at the time was undersecretary of defense for policy.

Mr. Obama, meanwhile, was moving toward diplomacy. In December 2011, the White House secretly used then-Sen. John Kerry to sound out Omani leaders about opening a back channel to the Iranians.

At the same time, the White House pressed the Israelis to scale back their assassination campaign and turned down their requests for more aggressive covert measures, U.S. officials said.

The president spoke publicly about his willingness to use force as a last resort to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon—“I don’t bluff,” Mr. Obama said in March 2012—but some of Mr. Netanyahu’s advisers weren’t convinced.

In early 2012, U.S. spy agencies told the White House about a flurry of meetings that Mr. Netanyahu convened with top security advisers. The meetings covered everything from mission logistics to the political implications of a military strike, Israeli officials said.

Warning signs

U.S. spy agencies stepped up satellite surveillance of Israeli aircraft movements. They detected when Israeli pilots were put on alert and identified moonless nights, which would give the Israelis better cover for an attack. They watched the Israelis practice strike missions and learned they were probing Iran’s air defenses, looking for ways to fly in undetected, U.S. officials said.

New intelligence poured in every day, much of it fragmentary or so highly classified that few U.S. officials had a complete picture. Officials now say many jumped to the mistaken conclusion that the Israelis had made a dry run.

At the time, concern and confusion over Israel’s intentions added to the sense of urgency inside the White House for a diplomatic solution.

The White House decided to keep Mr. Netanyahu in the dark about the secret Iran talks, believing he would leak word to sabotage them. There was little goodwill for Mr. Netanyahu among Mr. Obama’s aides who perceived the prime minister as supportive of Republican challenger Mitt Romney in the 2012 campaign.

Mr. Netanyahu would get briefed on the talks, White House officials concluded, only if it looked like a deal could be reached.

The first secret meeting between U.S. and Iranian negotiators, held in July 2012, was a bust. But “nobody was willing to throw it overboard by greenlighting Israeli strikes just when the process was getting started,” a former senior Obama administration official said.

Israeli officials approached their U.S. counterparts over the summer about obtaining military hardware useful for a strike, U.S. officials said.

At the top of the list were V-22 Ospreys, aircraft that take off and land like helicopters but fly like fixed-wing planes. Ospreys don’t need runways, making them ideal for dropping commandos behind enemy lines.

The Israelis also sounded out officials about obtaining the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, the U.S. military’s 30,000-pound bunker-busting bomb, which was designed to destroy Fordow.

Mr. Netanyahu wanted “somebody in the administration to show acquiescence, if not approval” for a military strike, said Gary Samore, who served for four years as Mr. Obama’s White House coordinator for arms control and weapons of mass destruction. “The message from the Obama administration was: ‘We think this is a big mistake.’ ”

White House officials decided not to provide the equipment.

Messrs. Obama and Netanyahu spoke in September 2012, and Mr. Obama emerged convinced Israel wouldn’t strike on the eve of the U.S. presidential election.

By the following spring, senior U.S. officials concluded the Israelis weren’t serious about a commando raid on Fordow and may have been bluffing. When the U.S. offered to sell the Ospreys, Israel said it didn’t have the money.

Former Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who championed a strike, said Mr. Netanyahu had come close to approving a military operation against Iran. But Israel’s military chiefs and cabinet members were reluctant, according to Israeli officials.

While keeping the Omani talks secret, U.S. officials briefed the Israelis on the parallel international negotiations between Iran and major world powers under way in early 2013. Those talks, which made little headway, were led on the U.S. side by State Department diplomat Wendy Sherman.

Robert Einhorn, at the time an arms control adviser at the State Department, said that during the briefings, Mr. Netanyahu’s advisers wouldn’t say what concessions they could live with. “It made us feel like nothing was going to be good enough for them,” Mr. Einhorn said.

U.S. spy agencies were monitoring Israeli communications to see if the Israelis had caught wind of the secret talks. In September 2013, the U.S. learned the answer.

Yaakov Amidror, Mr. Netanyahu’s national security adviser at the time, had come to Washington in advance of a Sept. 30 meeting between Messrs. Netanyahu and Obama.

On Sept. 27, Mr. Amidror huddled with White House national security adviser Susan Rice in her office when she told him that Mr. Obama was on the phone in a groundbreaking call with Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani.

Mr. Amidror had his own surprise. During a separate meeting in the Roosevelt Room, he told several of Mr. Obama’s top advisers that Israel had identified the tail numbers of the unmarked U.S. government planes that ferried negotiators to Muscat, Oman, the site of the secret talks, U.S. officials said.

Mr. Amidror, who declined to comment on the White House discussions, said that it was insulting for Obama administration officials to think “they could go to Oman without taking our intelligence capabilities into account.” He called the decision to hide the Iran talks from Israel a big mistake.

U.S. officials said they were getting ready to tell the Israelis about the talks, which advanced only after Mr. Rouhani came to office. During the Sept. 30 meeting with Mr. Netanyahu, the president acknowledged the secret negotiations. The secrecy cemented Israel’s distrust of Mr. Obama’s intentions, Israeli officials said.

Mr. Samore, the former White House official, said he believed it was a mistake to keep Israel in the dark for so long. Mr. Einhorn said: “The lack of early transparency reinforced Israel’s suspicions and had an outsize negative impact on Israeli thinking about the talks.”

Israel pushed for the U.S. to be more open about the Iran negotiations. Ms. Rice, however, pulled back on consultations with her new Israeli counterpart, Yossi Cohen, who took over as Mr. Netanyahu’s national security adviser, according to U.S. and Israeli officials.
In exchanges with the White House, U.S. officials said, Mr. Cohen wouldn’t budge from demanding Iran give up its centrifuges and uranium-enrichment program. Israeli officials said they feared any deviation would be taken by the U.S. as a green light for more concessions.

In one meeting, Mr. Cohen indicated Mr. Netanyahu could accept a deal allowing Iran to keep thousands of centrifuges, U.S. officials said. Soon after, Mr. Cohen called to say he had misspoken. Neither side was prepared to divulge their bottom line.

In November 2013, when the interim agreement was announced, Mr. Samore was in Israel, where, he said, the Israelis “felt blindsided” by the terms. U.S. officials said the details came together so quickly that Ms. Sherman and her team didn’t have enough time to convey them all. Israeli officials said the Americans intentionally withheld information to prevent them from influencing the outcome.

Listening in

As talks began in 2014 on a final accord, U.S. intelligence agencies alerted White House officials that Israelis were spying on the negotiations. Israel denied any espionage against the U.S. Israeli officials said they could learn details, in part, by spying on Iran, an explanation U.S. officials didn’t believe.

Earlier this year, U.S. officials clamped down on what they shared with Israel about the talks after, they allege, Mr. Netanyahu’s aides leaked confidential information about the emerging deal.

When U.S. officials confronted the Israelis over the matter in a meeting, Israel’s then-minister of intelligence said he didn’t disclose anything from Washington’s briefings. The information, the minister said, came from “other means,” according to meeting participants.

Ms. Sherman told Mr. Cohen, Israel’s national security adviser: “You’re putting us in a very difficult position. We understand that you will find out what you can find out by your own means. But how can we tell you every single last thing when we know you’re going to use it against us?” according to U.S. officials who were there.

Mr. Netanyahu turned to congressional Republicans, one of his remaining allies with the power to affect the deal, Israeli officials said, but he couldn’t muster enough votes to block it.

U.S. officials now pledge to work closely with their Israeli counterparts to monitor Iran’s compliance with the international agreement.

But it is unclear how the White House will respond to any covert Israeli actions against Iran’s nuclear program, which current and former Israeli officials said were imperative to safeguard their country.

One clause in the agreement says the major powers will help the Iranians secure their facilities against sabotage. State Department officials said the clause wouldn’t protect Iranian nuclear sites from Israel.

Michael Hayden, a former director of the CIA, said the U.S. and Israel could nonetheless end up at odds.

“If we become aware of any Israeli efforts, do we have a duty to warn Iran?” Mr. Hayden said. “Given the intimacy of the U.S.-Israeli relationship, it’s going to be more complicated than ever.”

FBI Director Comey: The Ferguson Effect

FBI Director James Comey has visited several law enforcement agencies across the country to determine the ‘chill’ by law enforcement. The White House pushed back hard as did Amnesty International. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and former White House Chief of Staff even declared his police force in Chicago is in the fetal position.

The FBI keeps the statistics….

FBI chief again says Ferguson having chilling effect on law enforcement

Twice in recent days, FBI Director James B. Comey has stepped to a podium here and asserted that police across the nation are reluctant to aggressively enforce the law in the post-Ferguson era of smartphones and YouTube.

And twice his comments have drawn disagreement and derision from a host of sources, including civil rights activists, law enforcement officials and, on Monday, the White House.

“The available evidence at this point does not support the notion that law enforcement officers around the country are shying away from fulfilling their responsibilities,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Monday during a news briefing in Washington. “The evidence that we’ve seen so far doesn’t support the contention that law enforcement officials are somehow shirking their responsibility.”

Comey, nonetheless, stayed the course, telling thousands of police officials gathered here for a conference of the International Association of Chiefs of Police that a violent crime wave is gripping the nation’s major cities. And he suggested that police officers themselves are in part to blame, made gun shy by the prospect of getting caught on the next video of alleged police brutality.

The “age of viral videos” has fundamentally altered U.S. policing, Comey said Monday in a speech virtually identical to one he delivered last week at the University of Chicago Law School.

His comments have been interpreted as giving credence to the notion of a “Ferguson effect” — the theory that riots and racial unrest in places such as Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore, where police were accused of killing civilians, has prompted police officers to become more restrained. That, in turn, has theoretically resulted in an uptick in violent crime, as criminals become emboldened.

Comey acknowledged Monday that he has little evidence to support the theory.

“The question is, are these kinds of things changing police behavior around the country? The honest answer is: I don’t know for sure whether that’s the case,” he said, adding that “I do have a strong sense” that it’s true.

It’s “the one theory that to my mind and to my common sense, does explain” rising rates of urban violence in 2015.

Coming from the nation’s top law enforcement official, the remarks have landed like a bombshell in criminal justice circles, offending people across the political spectrum. Civil rights groups and activists have taken deep exception to the idea that crime rates might be linked to protests against police brutality.

Amnesty International USA executive director Steven Hawkins called Comey’s comments “outrageous” and “unsubstantiated.”

Policing groups, meanwhile, have been equally infuriated by the assertion that their officers have been somehow derelict in their duties, frightened by teenagers with cellphone cameras.

“Time and time again [Comey] generalizes about a segment of the population that he knows nothing about,” said James O. Pasco, executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police. “He has never been a police officer.”

Comey is “like the scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz,” Pasco said. “He wanders around pretending to be smart and then at the end they give him a diploma and he thinks he’s a genius. They swear him in as the director of the FBI and all of a sudden he’s an expert on what police officers are thinking.”

The speeches have also put Comey at odds with the White House, as President Obama is eager to take credit for lowering the crime rate.

As Comey was preparing to deliver his address Friday, Obama was hosting a criminal-justice forum at the White House, where he celebrated “incredible, historic reductions in crime over the last 20 years.”

“I know that there’s been some talk in the press about spikes that are happening this year relative to last year. I’ve asked my team to look very carefully at it — Attorney General Lynch has pulled together a task force — and it does look like there are a handful of cities where we’re seeing higher-than-normal spikes,” Obama said at the time. However, he added, “across the 93 or 95 top cities, it’s very hard to distinguish anything statistically meaningful.”

In his speech Monday, Comey also urged law enforcement leaders to stop engaging in an us-vs.- them tug of war with protesters from Black Lives Matter, the group that sprung up in the wake of the August 2014 shooting of a black teenager by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo.

Instead, Comey said, police chiefs should use the budding protest movement as a window into the minds of those they are charged with protecting.

“There is a line of law enforcement and a line of communities we serve, especially communities of color,” Comey said. “Each time somebody interprets ‘hashtag Black Lives Matter’ as anti-law enforcement, one line moves away. And each time someone interprets ‘hashtag police lives matter’ as anti-black, the other line moves away.”

Comey’s comments come weeks after he held a closed-door session with 100 city leaders and law enforcement officials from across the nation. At that meeting, many — including Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D) — reported that police morale was sinking in their towns amid ongoing scrutiny.

“We have allowed our police department to get fetal, and it is having a direct consequence,” Emanuel declared during the meeting. “They have pulled back from the ability to interdict . . . they don’t want to be a news story themselves, they don’t want their career ended early, and it’s having an impact.”

Comey said such feedback has served as inspiration for his recent speeches, in which he declared that violent crime rates are being inflated by a “a chill wind blowing through American law enforcement over the last year.”

“That wind is surely changing behavior,” Comey said, later adding: “We need to figure out what’s happening and deal with it now. I refuse to wait . . . these aren’t data points, these are lives.”

Govt Warns: Raise Your Shield

When one considers all the major hacking events including the Office of Personnel Management, this is truly a warning.

Sounds like they are telling us we are on our own but the advise is good and must be heeded.

NEWS RELEASE

National Counterintelligence and Security Center
Releases Social Media Deception Awareness Videos

Videos are second in a series released in the wake of the OPM records breach
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                                                      
ODNI News Release No. 21-15
October 23, 2015

Today the ODNI’s National Counterintelligence and Security Center released the second in a four-part series of videos from its “Know the Risk—Raise Your Shield” campaign.

The latest campaign videos focus on social media deception, and are intended to help build public awareness of the inherent dangers that the use of social media—Facebook, Twitter, etc.—could present when appropriate protective measures are not taken.  There are two videos: a shorter attention-grabber and a second longer video which provides details about social media deception, how government officials or the public can recognize threats and what steps can be taken to minimize the risk of being deceived.

“The information the social media deception videos and overall campaign convey will increase individuals’ awareness of the dangers in cyberspace and provide common-sense tools to protect themselves from bad actors, be they criminals or foreign intelligence entities,” said NCSC Director Bill Evanina.

The NCSC launched the campaign last month in the wake of the Office of Personnel Management records breach to help those individuals, government or otherwise, whose personal information has been compromised.  The launch videos focused on “Spear Phishing Attacks,” while the final sets of videos—to be released in November and December, respectively—will focus on human targeting and awareness for travelers.  Each release contains a 30-45-second overview video and a more in-depth two minute video.

The NCSC provides effective leadership and support to the counterintelligence and security activities of the U.S. Intelligence Community, the U.S. government, and U.S. private sector entities who are at risk of intelligence collection or attack by foreign adversaries.