Rogue and the State Department

Posted on May 13, 2014May 13, 2014 by Denise Simon

It appears that one of the most convoluted processes in Washington DC is the State Department procedure to add to the Terrorism List, FTO (Foreign Terror Organization).

Putting Boko Harem on the FTO took an epic effort to do so after Hillary Clinton refused, even with petitions from those in the intelligence community and from General Carter Ham, commander at AFRICOM. Then, it was not until January 13 of 2013 did John Kerry move to put Ansar al Sharia on the FTO list when more than 20 months ago they attacked both diplomatic posts in Benghazi.

So, what about other terror organizations or rogue nations like Korea? Late in the Bush administration, North Korea was removed from the FTO in an attempt to temper strained talks over DPRK’s nuclear weapons program. It was at that time too, North Korea had a different leader who was not quite as unpredictable as Kim Jung Un is now. That effort by the Bush administration failed, so why no move by Hillary Clinton or John Kerry to add DPRK back to the list? Ah, that is where the convoluted rub and debate begins again.

News of North Korea is dominated right now by Pyongyang’s threats to carry out yet another nuclear test, which would be its fourth since 2006, and its third since President Obama took office. Among the perils, given North Korea’s longtime habit of peddling its weapons to rogue recipients around the globe, is that North Korean nuclear arms could end up in the hands of terrorists. All the more reason, then, to ask why the Obama administration has not put North Korea back on the U.S. blacklist of State Sponsors of Terrorism.

For more than two decades, from 1987-2008, the U.S. — with good reason — listed North Korea as a terror-sponsoring state. That changed in 2008, when the Bush administration, in a desperate attempt to salvage a dissolving 2007 North Korean nuclear freeze deal, offered Pyongyang the gift of taking North Korea off the state terrorism blacklist.

This was part of the Six Party negotiating process with North Korea, which the State Department at the time described as give-and-take: “action for action.” But, as Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen noted in a 2011 congressional hearing, North Korea pocketed the concession and walked away: ”North Korea promised to accept the transparent verification of its denuclearization when it was removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism by the Bush administration in October of 2008. But Pyongyang reneged on that promise and withdrew from the six-party talks after getting what it wanted.” Since then, Obama has stuck with the Bush folly, failing to restore North Korea to the blacklist.

That may sound like the least of the North Korean outrages that need addressing. But putting Kim Jong Un’s murderous weapons emporium back on the U.S. list of terror-sponsoring states is one of the easiest and least costly moves that Washington could make. Failure to do so not only gives Pyongyang a pass, but sets a terrible example for the current Iran nuclear talks in Vienna. In the Iran case, a senior U.S. administration official has described a nuclear bargaining process similar to the North Korea action-for-action debacle. This time, it is couched as “step by step, in a reciprocal way, matching the actions that Iran commits to take.”

In the State Department’s latest annual roundup of “Country Reports on Terrorism” released April 30, and covering 2013, North Korea was again excused from any state ties to terror. State summarizes the excuse with one blinkered sentence: “The Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK) is not known to have sponsored any terrorist acts since the bombing of a Korean Airlines flight in 1987.”

The same State Department report goes on, however, to note that North Korea has yet to resolve the nightmare of Japanese citizens kidnapped by the North Korean government: “The Japanese government continued to seek a full accounting of the fate of 12 Japanese nationals believed to have been abducted by DPRK state entities in the 1970s and 1980s. As of the end of December, 2013, the DPRK had yet to fulfill its commitments to reopen its investigation into the abductions.”

For Washington bureaucrats, this brand of terrorism may seem a distant matter. For the families of those kidnapped, and quite likely for any surviving victims trapped for decades in totalitarian North Korea, it is an act of terror that does not quit. Right now the Obama administration is deploring the kidnapping of Nigerian schoolgirls by members of the terrorist group Boko Haram — and rightly so. State-authored kidnapping by North Korea deserves no lesser outrage. Nor does it warrant any statute of limitations, especially given North Korea’s refusal to fully account for, or render up, its human plunder.

Nor did North Korea confine its abductions to Japan. As recently as 2005, the State Department included a note which has since dropped out of its annual summaries: “There are also credible reports that other nationals were abducted from locations abroad” — including an estimated 485 civilians from South Korea since the 1950-53 Korean War. A 2011 report from the Washington-based Committee for Human Rights in North Korea gave an even more damning account of North Korean abductions, alleging that North Korea’s abductions were more numerous than officially described, and included people of at least 14 different nationalities, kidnapped not only from Japan and South Korea, but from countries such as China, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Malaysia and Thailand. To this list it would be reasonable to add American citizen Kenneth Bae, arrested while touring North Korea in 2012, and sentenced there to 15 years of hard labor.

As for the argument that North Korea is not known to have sponsored any recent terrorist acts, therefore it does not belong on the state terrorism list — this is disingenuous. Yes, it’s been a while since North Korea was caught red-handed carrying out terrorist acts as spectacular as its 1987 inflight bombing of a South Korean airliner over the Andaman Sea — which killed all 115 people on board. But, as a 2010 Congressional Research Service (CRS) report spells out, the criteria which the Secretary of State is expected to consider also include “supplying a terrorist organization with planning, training, logistics , and lethal material support…or providing other types of assistance that could provide material support for the terrorist organization’s activities.”

By that standard, North Korea qualifies as a geyser of terror-linked activity. The State Department currently lists four countries as state sponsors of terrorism: Iran, Syria, Cuba and Sudan. Since North Korea was removed from the terror-sponsoring list in 2008, it has been caught in illicit weapons trafficking with all of the first three — Iran, Syria and Cuba.

A Wiki-leaked secret U.S. government cable dated 2009, and signed by then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, points to North Korean dealings with the fourth state on the terror-sponsoring list, Sudan. The cable states: “The U.S. government has information that in 2008, Sudan was negotiating a weapons deal with with the North Korean government that included purchasing North Korean medium-range ballistic missiles, short-range missiles, and anti-tank missiles.” The cable goes on to express U.S. concern about “information indicating that Sudanese entities or individuals might be engaging in missile cooperation with North Korea.”

The U.S. government has been sparing in its public release of details regarding North Korean weapons traffic. But more can be gleaned from media dispatches and other accounts, including the annual reports of the United Nations Panel of Experts on North Korea sanctions.

The most recent UN panel report, released this past March, notes that North Korea, in violation of UN sanctions, “has been, and remains actively engaged in trade in arms and related materiel,” and as part of this weapons traffic “also exports services or assistance.” As it happens, many of the recent examples cited in these UN reports involve North Korean dealings with terror-sponsoring states. For instance, this latest UN report lists, among other North Korean infractions, the export in 2012 of missile parts, shipped aboard a Chinese vessel enroute to Syria. The shipment was seized when the vessel made a stop in South Korea.

The same UN report goes into considerable detail about the arms cargo from Cuba, seized by Panama last year aboard a North Korean ship, the Chong Chon Gang. According to the manifest, the ship was carrying sugar. Hidden under the bags of sugar was a weapons stash including ammunition, surface-to-air missile system components, and two disassembled MiG-21 jet fighters, plus an additional 15 MiG-21 engines. Confronted with the evidence, Cuban authorities said the arms were being shipped to North Korea to be repaired and returned.

The 2014 UN report also describes rocket parts, “highly likely” to have been made in North Korea, found in a 500 ton weapons shipment interdicted by the Israeli Navy in 2009 about the vessel Francop, enroute to Syria from from North Korea’s longtime weapons customer, Iran. Earlier UN panel reports, going back to 2010, describe such instances as South Korea’s seizure of a shipment of “protective garments…deemed to have utility for chemical protection,” which had been loaded aboard a container ship enroute to Syria from the North Korean port of Nampo. In 2009, Thai authorities interdicted 35 tons of arms and related materiel, listed as “mechanical parts,” aboard an Ilyushin-76 aircraft coming from North Korea, which had landed at the Bangkok airport to refuel. The illicit cargo included 240 mm rockets, rocket-propelled grenades and man-portable surface-to-air missiles. The consignee was an outfit called Top Energy Institute, in Iran.

The list goes on. Citing dispatches from the French, Israeli and South Korean media, as well as the London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, the 2010 CRS report (“North Korea: Back on the Terrorism List?”) summarizes a web of North Korean training, help and weapons provision to the Iranian-backed Lebanon-based terrorist group Hezbollah. The same report goes on to summarize accounts of North Korean ties to the terrorist Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, and North Korea’s cozy relationship with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which in turn has a “close relationship” with Hezbollah.

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Geithner, When the Lies Began

Posted on May 13, 2014May 13, 2014 by Denise Simon

Alright, let us review.

1. Geithner took control of $350 Billion to keep America from the financial abyss.

2. Geithner’s father was the chief manager of the Ford Foundation’s Microfinance in Indonesia system that was developed by Stanley Ann Dunham, Barack Obama’s mother.

3. Larry Summers was Tim Geithner’s mentor.

4. Geithner was a member of the Council of Foreign Relations and Policy Director for the International Monetary Fund.

5. Geithner came to the financial rescue of Bear Sterns, Goldman Sachs and AIG but left Lehman Brothers to die on the vine.

6. Geithner also did not pay $35,000 personally owed to Social Security and Medicare through payroll taxes while working for the IMF. Only through an audit did he get caught and paid up.

7. If Geithner was so experienced in the matter of global and domestic banking and financial systems, then he failed at never predicting the 2008 global financial crisis.

8. Geithner worked at the Bank of International Settlements and is a member of the Bilderberg Group.

So now, Geithner has authored a book titled Stress Test and the text reveals he did not enjoy his time at the Federal Reserve or much less the constant edits to lie about many issues at the behest of the White House, especially Dan Phieffer. This is telling as the lies from the White House began from day one and pressure was applied to all cabinet secretaries to do the same.

Hat tip to Deborah Soloman at the Wall Street Journal.

Former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, whose time in Washington was often colored by accusations he was too close to Wall Street and did little to help Main Street, uses his 538-page book “Stress Test” to largely defend and explain the decisions he made during the financial crisis.

“The inconvenient truth of financial-crisis response is that the actions that feel right are often wrong,” he writes. Mr. Geithner, who was tapped by President Barack Obama to lead the Treasury and before that was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, says he was right to avoid the populist push for blood, including refusing to upend bonus payments to employees of American International Group Inc.

He also acknowledges a tepid response to the housing crisis, saying “I wish we had expanded our housing programs earlier, to relieve more pain for homeowners.”

Here are five takeaways from Mr. Geithner’s book:

Obama’s Financial Rescue: Mr. Geithner reveals dissension between himself and another top member of the Obama administration, Lawrence Summers, saying the two initially disagreed about the best approach to fixing struggling banks.

Mr. Summers wanted to take a more forceful approach and essentially nationalize “zombie” banks that were proved to be insolvent, Mr. Geithner writes, while he wanted to take a more wait-and-see approach by forcing all the banks to undergo “stress tests” that would reveal how much of a capital shortfall they had. Those with a gap that hindered their ability to withstand losses would be required to raise more capital or submit to tough government restrictions to get taxpayer money.

Mr. Geithner writes that while he was away at the G-20 meeting in Europe, Mr. Summers convinced two Treasury officials to make the Summers strategy “sound like a cool hawkish approach that would make the President a populist hero, while ours sounded like an equivocating dovish approach that would make the President seem cowed by banks.”

Mr. Geithner says Mr. Summers “often implied that while the President stood for bold problem solving, I stood for tentative half-measures.” He recounts a meeting in the Oval Office where Mr. Summers described their respective approaches and told Mr. Obama ‘I’m much closer to you, Mr. President’.”

In the end, Mr. Summers’s approach was nixed by former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel who, upon learning it could cost the government hundreds of billions of dollars, exclaimed “There’s no more f— money!”

Lehman Brothers: Mr. Geithner was widely known as favoring a more forceful approach to Lehman Brothers, the investment bank that ultimately filed for bankruptcy after it was unable to find a buyer or get a government bailout. In his book, he points that out as a source of friction between himself, former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

As Mr. Paulson continued to draw a line in the sand and declare there would be no government bailout of Lehman, Mr. Geithner writes: “I began to worry that he actually meant it.”

Mr. Geithner says the three policymakers “didn’t want to bolster the impression that government handouts were available upon request” but says while that made sense as a bargaining position “I didn’t think it made sense as actual public policy.”

“This was one of the few times during the crisis when there was any distance between Hank and me. There was even some distance between Ben and me.”

AIG: Mr. Geithner’s arguably biggest drubbing came in March 2009, when it was revealed that AIG, the giant insurer that owed its survival to a $182 billion U.S. government lifeline, was going to pay its workers $165 million in bonuses. Mr. Geithner, who helped engineer the rescue of AIG, was caught off guard by the bonuses and says he called Edward Liddy, whom the government had hand-picked to run AIG, and told him “This is going to kill us and you.”

Mr. Geithner says he knew it was going to be a deeply unpopular decision but defended his refusal to undo the bonuses, saying it would have violated a contract and called into question what other types of guarantees the government was willing to abridge.

“I was instinctively skittish about the U.S. government breaking contracts, especially at a time when all sorts of commitments had been called into question. We weren’t Venezuela.”

Mr. Geithner also reveals he was uncomfortable when Mr. Obama suggested Mr. Geithner would try to reclaim some of the money.

Mr. Obama, in public remarks, said Mr. Geithner would “use [our] leverage and pursue every single legal avenue to block these bonuses and make the American taxpayers whole,” he said. “I want everybody to be clear that Secretary Geithner has been on the case.”

Mr. Geithner writes that “we didn’t think we could claw back the bonuses that had already been obligated and even if we could modestly reduce future payouts, raising public expectations seemed unwise.”

He adds: “I didn’t see the need to remind everyone that I was ‘on the case,’ either.”

Dodd-Frank: Mr. Geithner has perhaps his harshest words for members of Congress, suggesting some used the financial overhaul law as a Christmas tree to win points and favors without considering what was best for the financial system.

He recounts a meeting with Sen. Scott Brown, then a Massachusetts Republican, saying that he made it clear in a meeting he “liked the idea of financial reform and expected to be with us. But without any irony or self-consciousness he said he needed to protect two financial institutions in Massachusetts from the Volcker Rule’s restrictions.”

Mr. Geithner writes that Mr. Brown then furrowed his brow, turned to his aide and asked “Which ones are they, again?”

Housing: Mr. Geithner acknowledges the slow pace of help for homeowners, who were supposed to be among the first on “Main Street” to receive attention in the new administration. “One of every eight mortgages was in foreclosure or default” and yet the administration’s programs “were off to an embarrassingly slow start.”

Mr. Geithner says the lack of help frustrated Democrats who were already uneasy about the amount of assistance the government was giving to large banks. “I held a bunch of meetings with angry Democrats who derisively questioned the depth of our commitment to help homeowners.”

Mr. Geithner recounts how, after a dinner with “disgruntled progressive leaders,” his chief of staff, Mark Patterson, told Mr. Geithner he “needed to stop trying to explain all the barriers that made it harder to do more on housing.” John Podesta one of the dinner guests and a former White House chief of staff, had told Mr. Patterson that Mr. Geithner was “only making it worse.”

Mr. Obama, too, was frustrated and Mr. Geithner says he “kept urging us to think big, to think bold, to consider anything that would help homeowners in distress.”

But Mr. Geithner says the biggest problem was a severely weak economy, which had rendered so many mortgages underwater—worth less than their mortgages—that there was little the government could do to help people build up equity.

The administration fiddled with the homeowner programs several times, but ultimately didn’t come up with a bigger foreclosure-mitigation effort.

Iran Declares Victory for Assad in Syria

Posted on May 11, 2014May 11, 2014 by Denise Simon

Well John Kerry and Barack Obama delivered a nuclear weapons program victory for Iran so it stands to reason that Iran is doing the same and declaring victory for el Assad of Syria. Regardless of the foreign weapons, MRE’s and non-lethal assistance the White House and the State Department have provided to the wrong rebel factions in Syria, it is a waste of millions upon millions of U.S. dollars which is the least of the matter given the growing larger terror threat in the region. Only last week did Israel have to close off parts of the Golan Heights to mounting threats but now it seems the barrel bombs and TOW missiles provided to Assad opposition forces of all kinds of militia descriptions have been defeated in many districts in Syria.

So enter Iran and officially declaring victory. Sure this can be a public relations ploy but they DO often work and given the recent captures of many cities and bombings of a historical treasures and buildings, Assad is winning with the long help of Iran, Russia and even Kuwaiti millionaires.

Iran and its close ally President Bashar al-Assad have won the war in Syria, and the US-orchestrated campaign in support of the opposition’s attempt to topple the Syrian regime has failed, senior Iranian officials have told the Guardian.

In a series of interviews in Tehran, top figures who shape Iranian foreign policy said the west’s strategy in Syria had merely encouraged radicals, caused chaos and ultimately backfired, with government forces now on the front foot.

“We have won in Syria,” said Alaeddin Borujerdi, chairman of the Iranian parliament’s national security and foreign policy committee and an influential government insider. “The regime will stay. The Americans have lost it.”

Terrorism perpetrated by al-Qaida-linked jihadist groups and individuals armed and funded by Sunni Muslim Arab countries was now the main threat facing the Syrian people, Borujerdi said. Many foreign fighters who had travelled to Syria from Britain and other European countries could soon return. “We are worried about the future security of Europe,” he said.

Amir Mohebbian, a conservative strategist and government adviser, said: “We won the game in Syria easily. The US does not understand Syria. The Americans wanted to replace Assad, but what was the alternative? All they have done is encourage radical groups and made the borders less safe.

“We accept the need for change in Syria – but gradually. Otherwise, there is chaos.”

Shia Muslim Iran is Assad’s main regional backer and has reportedly spent billions of dollars propping up the regime since the first revolt against the president broke out in March 2011. Along with Russia, the regime’s principal arms supplier, it has consistently bolstered Assad in the teeth of attempts to force him to step down.

Western analysts say Iran is engaged in a region-wide power struggle or proxy war, extending beyond Syria, with the Sunni Arab states of the Gulf, principally Saudi Arabia.

Tehran thus has an obvious interest in claiming victory for the Alawite Syrian regime, which is fighting mostly Sunni rebels, they say. Iranian officials and regional experts deny that is their motive.

Majid Takht-Ravanchi, deputy Iranian foreign minister, said the priority was to accept the rebellion had failed and to restore stability in Syria before next month’s presidential elections. “Extremism and turmoil in Syria must be tackled seriously by the international community. Those countries that are supplying extremist forces must stop helping them,” he said.”Iran has good relations with the Syrian government, though that does not mean they listen to us,” Ravanchi said. He denied Iran had supplied weapons and Revolutionary Guards combatants to help defeat the rebels, as western intelligence agencies have claimed. “Iran has a diplomatic presence there. There is no unusual presence. We have no need to arm the Syrian government,” he said.

Despite its influence with Damascus and Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia militia fighting alongside government forces, Iran has been largely excluded from international talks to forge a peace settlement owing to US and British objections that Tehran does not accept the need for Assad to quit .

But following last week’s rebel retreat from the strategic city of Homs, the so-called capital of the revolution, some western politicians and commentators have also reached the conclusion that Assad has won.

The US and its Gulf Arab allies have supplied funding, equipment and arms to the Syrian rebels. Last year, the US president, Barack Obama, appeared on the point of launching air and missile attacks over the Assad government’s use of chemical weapons, but Obama’s last-minute decision to pull back was interpreted in Tehran and Damascus as a sign the US was having second thoughts and was not wholly committed to winning the war.

“I think the Americans made a big mistake in Syria and I think they know it, though they would never say so,” said Mohammad Marandi, a Tehran university professor. “If they had accepted the Annan plan in 2012 [which would have left Assad in place pending a ceasefire and internationally monitored elections] we could have avoided all this.”

“Iran sincerely believed it had no other option but to support the Assad government. Anything else would have resulted in the collapse of Syria and it falling into the hands of extremists,” he said.

More than 150,000 people are believed to have died in the Syrian conflict and at least 9 million have been displaced.

So Breaker 19 to John Kerry, this is HQ, what is your 20? Rather what is the 20 of your failed foreign policy, diplomatic efforts and saving Christian lives at least in ANY country in the Middle East? We have lost count on the policy failures and by the way terrorists don’t become terrorist due to being poor and indigent…….stop using Barack Obama’s failed rhetoric….oh never mind….

DoJ, DHS has a Terrorists Hands off List

Posted on May 11, 2014May 11, 2014 by Denise Simon

While Prime Minister Cameron of Great Britain has performed an investigation on Islamists in his country, Cameron put out a rather weak statement revealing his concern for an emerging threat. Better late than never Cameron. Only a few months ago, Saudi Arabia listed the Muslim Brotherhood on their terror list and we currently know how aggressive Egypt is getting with the Muslim Brotherhood.

As of yet however the United States, that is all areas beyond the DC beltway need to put out an Amber Alert to locate the real Barack Obama policy on the Muslim Brotherhood as he has given an edict to the Department of Justice, the Military and the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as Customs and Border Patrol that there in fact a hands off list, at least for some ‘key’ terrorists belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood operating in the United States.

Need more proof? Our stellar friends over at Judicial Watch have struck again and are doing yeoman’s work to wade to the bottom of the matter.

Quote in part “The Obama administration appears to have a terrorist “hands off” list that permits individuals with extremist ties to enter the country, according to internal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) documents obtained by a United States Senator.

It’s unimaginable that any government would do this, but it seems like the Obama administration is constantly breaking new ground. The disturbing details of this secret initiative were made public this week by Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, who has obtained DHS electronic mail discussing what could be a terrorist “hands off” list. The exchange includes a 2012 email chain between U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) asking whether to admit an individual with ties to various terrorist groups. The individual had scheduled an upcoming flight into the U.S., according to an announcement issued by the senator.

The person was believed to be a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and a close associate and supporter Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, according to the mail exchange obtained by Grassley’s office. The terrorist suspect had also been in secondary inspection “several dozen times of the past several years,” the agency emails reveal, but had not undergone a secondary inspection since 2010. This seems to imply that the suspect has been on the U.S. government’s radar for some time.”

Now remember we do have border states the join foreign countries, BUT, given the notion that anyone can fly into the United States with the ‘looking the other way’ approach by the State Department, DHS and the FBI, all 50 states are border states.

So Senator Grassley is still waiting for someone to come up with the goods, meaning some real answers to his letter broaching several issues and questions.

For Immediate Release May 6, 2014

Grassley Inquires About Terrorist “Hands Off” list; CBP Promises to Brief

            WASHINGTON – Senator Chuck Grassley today released internal Department of Homeland Security emails discussing an alleged terrorist “hands off” list allowing individuals with potential terrorist ties into the United States. The emails were attached to a letter he sent to the Department of Homeland Security inquiring about the “hands off” list and an individual who DHS may have admitted into the United States as a result. Senator Grassley also released the response from Customs and Border Protection, in which it committed to provide a detailed briefing on the particular case.
Grassley made his initial inquiry on February 3, 2014, after receiving the internal Department of Homeland Security emails regarding the admittance of individuals into the United States with potential terrorist ties.   One of the emails says that an individual “has sued CBP twice in the past and that he’s one of the several hands off passengers nationwide.” According to the emails, the individual was allegedly a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and a “close associate” of a supporter of “Hamas, Hizbollah, and (Palestinian) Islamic Jihad.”
Grassley recently received the response from Customs and Border Protection. Grassley said he looks forward to his staff receiving the detailed briefing promised in its letter.
Here’s the text of Grassley’s February 3, 2014 letter. A signed copy can be found here. The response from Customs and Border Protection can be found here.
February 3, 2014
VIA ELECTRONIC TRANSMISSION
The Honorable Jeh Johnson Secretary Department of Homeland Security 3801 Nebraska Avenue, NW Washington, D.C. 20528
Dear Secretary Johnson:
My office recently received copies of disturbing internal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) e-mails regarding the admittance of individuals into the United States with potential ties to terrorism.
The May 2012 e-mail chain between U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) surrounds the question of whether to admit someone who had scheduled an upcoming flight into the U.S. Allegedly, the individual was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and a “close associate” of a supporter of “Hamas, Hizbollah, and (Palestinian) Islamic Jihad.” According to the same e-mail, the individual had been in secondary inspection “several dozen times of the past several years,” but had not had a secondary inspection since 2010.
One of the responses to the initial e-mail states: “The [CBP National Targeting Center (NTC)] Watch Commander advised that the subject has sued CBP twice in the past and that he’s one of the several hands off passengers nationwide. . . . Apparently his records were removed in December 2010 and the DHS Secretary was involved in the matter.”   The e-mail continues:
I’m puzzled how someone could be a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial, be an associate of [redacted], say that the US is staging car bombings in Iraq and that [it] is ok for men to beat their wives, question who was behind the 9/11 attacks, and be afforded the luxury of a visitor visa and de-watchlisted. It doesn’t appear that we’ll be successful with denying him entry tomorrow but maybe we could re-evaluate the matter in the future since the decision to de[-]watchlist him was made 17 months ago.
In order to understand the events described in these e-mails, please provide the Committee with answers to the following questions:
1)    Why was this individual removed from the watchlist in December 2010?
2)    Please describe the nature, extent, and reasons for the involvement of the DHS Secretary or her staff in the removal of the individual from the watchlist.
3)    What is the current watchlist status of this individual?
4)    How many people are on the “hands off” list mentioned in the email?
5)    What qualifies someone to receive the “hands off” designation?
6)    Does filing a lawsuit result in being designated “hands off” and thus avoiding secondary security screenings?
7)    Who makes the determination that an individual should be considered “hands off”?
I would appreciate receiving answers to these questions by March 3, 2014. Should you have any questions regarding this letter, please contact Tristan Leavitt of my staff at (202) 224-5225. I look forward to your prompt response.
Sincerely,
Charles E. Grassley Ranking Member
cc: The Honorable Thomas Carper, Chairman U.S. Senate, Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
The Honorable Tom A. Coburn, Ranking Member U.S. Senate, Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
Carlton I. Mann, Acting Inspector General U.S. Department of Homeland Security

1. Attachment at 2. 2. Id. at 1. 3. Id.

Sure with American citizens that obey the law received the same kinds of generosity and grace from the very government agencies that work for us. Where is the outrage people?

Who are Paul Pillar and Martin Indyk?

Posted on May 9, 2014May 9, 2014 by Denise Simon

Do you ever wonder who creates political agendas when it comes to foreign policy? Do you wonder who works behind the scenes with whom and why?

When it comes to major opposition to policy you can be sure there are those who would rather stay hidden and there are two people you should be introduced to, Paul Pillar and Martin Indyk.

The hidden mission of both of these men goes to foreign policy and mostly Israel. To put it simply, anti-Semitism. There was an article in Newsweek magazine regarding epic spying by the Israelis inside the United States. What is more, the State Department has stopped some interesting visa travel authorizations of Israelis coming to America, when in fact Israel is an open visa country. That however did not matter to Hillary Clinton and most especially to John Kerry. This is slowly painting the picture on why John Kerry has taken an aggressive stand to blame Israel for the failed peace talks with the Palestinians. But who advised John Kerry? Enter Paul and Martin.

Paul Pillar, a retired CIA intelligence officer and the main named source in this week’s Newsweek article, ‘Israel Won’t Stop Spying on the U.S.,’ which was rejected by Israeli officials, is also an outspoken supporter of the American Studies Association boycott of Israeli universities, according to an article he wrote for The National Interest.

“As a matter of intent, justice, legality, and morality, the recent decision by the American Studies Association to boycott Israeli academic institutions is a righteous action,” Pillar wrote in December.

The ASA boycott was condemned by over two hundred university presidents and many human rights organizations around the world.

In his article supporting the ASA boycott, Pillar said, ”The government of Israel, while paying lip service to the idea of a Palestinian state, occupies indefinitely, and continues to colonize, land that Israel conquered in a war it initiated 46 years ago and is home to Palestinian Arabs, and in so doing is depriving Palestinians not only of self-determination but of most of their political and civil rights as well as keeping them in economic subjugation.”

“Israel is the occupier. It is easily the most powerful state in the region. It is in control. The Israeli government could make such a settlement a reality within weeks if it decided to. It instead prefers to cling to conquered land rather than to make peace, and to continue the colonization that threatens to put a peace out of reach.”

The Jewish Independent, which flagged Pillar’s column in the wake of the controversy over his comments in Newsweek, said, “This, folks, is Newsweek’s source on how the Zionist spies are undermining America.”

The publication said the Newsweek article, written by Jeff Stein for his ‘SpyTalk’ column, was reminiscent of the anti-Semitic accusations of the hundred-year old French ‘Dreyfus Affair,’ when a Jew was accused of spying to throw attention away from internal corruption.

“There are many species of antisemitism, and as history progresses, they are becoming numerous, but this one has been around for several centuries,” The Jewish Independent wrote. “It has the aroma of a campaign generated by a politico-military establishment against the foreigner Jew, the swarthy Johnny-come-lately meddling in our affairs. There are no specific charges, but there are heaping insinuations about how those Israelis are taking advantage of our generosity, biting the very hands that feed them.”

Stein’s article was built mostly around unnamed sources, with the exception of Pillar and a named FBI source.

Stein wrote in Newsweek:

“Israel’s espionage activities in America are unrivaled and unseemly, counterspies have told members of the House Judiciary and Foreign Affairs committees, going far beyond activities by other close allies, such as Germany, France, the U.K. and Japan. A congressional staffer familiar with a briefing last January called the testimony ‘very sobering… alarming… even terrifying.’ Another staffer called it ‘damaging.’”

“The intelligence agencies didn’t go into specifics, the former aide said, but cited ‘industrial espionage—folks coming over here on trade missions or with Israeli companies working in collaboration with American companies, [or] intelligence operatives being run directly by the government,’ which I assume meant out of the [Israeli] Embassy.”

“As Paul Pillar, the CIA’s former national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia, told Newsweek, old habits are hard to break: Zionists were dispatching spies to America before there even was an Israel, to gather money and materials for the cause and later the fledgling state. Key components for Israel’s nuclear bombs were clandestinely obtained here. ‘They’ve found creative and inventive ways,’ Pillar said, to get what they want.”

“Now U.S. intelligence officials are saying—albeit very quietly, behind closed doors on Capitol Hill—that our Israeli ‘friends’ have gone too far with their spying operations here.”

While the Newsweek article focuses on Israeli spying, the core of the issue was actually about harmonizing visa processes to allow Israelis quicker access into the United States.

Last month, New York Congresswoman Grace Meng and others pressed the U.S. State Department to report data that showed that 32 percent of Israelis aged 21 to 27 were refused B-2 tourist visas in 2013, double the 16 per cent refused in 2009.

Rather than a question of spying, Meng, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said, “The Department conceded that efforts to spot and prevent visa abuse is what led to the increase.”

When she formally requested the visa denial data from U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in March, Meng said she sought to confirm what she and other political leaders had learned – that Israelis who had served in the Israel Defense Forces were being refused travel visas to prevent them from working as undocumented salespeople for ‘Dead Sea’ products in U.S. shopping malls.

Among a list of steps that the State Department offered to take to improve the situation, the capstone was that it would create, with the Department of Homeland Security, a joint U.S.-Israeli working group to help make Israel eligible for the Visa Waiver Program.

The Visa Waiver Program, which applies to 28 countries, has a series of technical and protocol requirements, with the biggest hurdle being to have issued new electronic passports.

Buried after Newsweek‘s accusations of Israel spying, Stein cites an unnamed congressional aide as saying, “You’ve got to have machine-readable passports in place—the e-passports with a data chip in them. The Israelis have only just started to issue them to diplomats and senior officials and so forth, and that probably won’t be rolled out to the rest of their population for another 10 years.”

Then Stein wrote, “But U.S. counterspies will get the final word. And since Israel is as likely to stop spying here as it is to give up matzo for Passover, the visa barriers are likely to stay up.”

It should also be noted that Paul Pillar campaigned for John Kerry and wrote speeches for him.

Meet Martin Indyk. Last night he spoke at the Washington Institute on the matter of the failed peace talks. One quote is especially notable: ‘

Israelis don’t seem to appreciate the highly negative impact on the Palestinian public of the IDF’s demolition of Palestinian homes, or military operations in populated Palestinians towns that are supposed to be

the sole security responsibility of the Palestinian Authority, or the perceived double standard applied to settlers involved in “price tag” attacks. Palestinians cannot imagine how offended and suspicious Israelis become when they call Jews only a religion and not a people. Israelis cannot understand why it took a Palestinian leader 65 years to acknowledge the enormity of the Holocaust; Palestinians cannot understand why their leader should have been denigrated rather than applauded for now doing so. And the list goes on and on.

The upshot of these competing narratives, grievances and insensitivities is that they badly affected the environment for negotiations. While serious efforts were under way behind closed doors, we tried to get the leaders and their spokesmen to engage in synchronized positive messaging to their publics. Instead, Prime Minister Netanyahu was understandably infuriated by the outrageous claims of Saeb Erekat, the Palestinian chief negotiator no less, that the Prime Minister was plotting the assassination of the Palestinian president. And Abu Mazen was humiliated by false Israeli claims that he had agreed to increased settlement activity in return for the release of prisoners.’

Paul Pillar was at war with the Bush administration not only on Iraq and National Intelligence Estimates but he was also the leaker to the NYT’s and connected at the hip to the liberal journalist there by the name of Mark Mazzeti.

It should be noted once again, the Palestinians don’t want and never have wanted a peace agreement or a two state solution, they make huge money and have achieved fame over the cottage industry of a fake two state solution. Some one please tell John Kerry, but he likely already knows.

Now when it comes to the quiet battle in the Senate over the release of the CIA files on enhanced interrogation led by Dianne Feinstein….you can bet she has collaboration with Paul.