Category Archives: Failed foreign policy

Eastern Europe Readiness for War with Russia

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NATO puts 300,000 troops on ‘high alert’ in readiness for a confrontation with Russia as fears grow Putin is preparing to attack the West

  • Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg putting 300,000 troops on ‘high alert’ 
  • Military intelligence are worried about Putin’s new Armata battle tank  
  • UK stalled new tank design as heavy armour is not useful against jihadis

Nato chiefs, thrown into a panic by fears that Russian President Vladimir Putin might attack the West, are scrambling to put together a force of 300,000 troops which they can put on ‘high alert’.

Relations between Russia and the West have plunged in the last year, with Moscow’s insistence on backing its Syrian ally, President Bashar al-Assad, at all costs leading to serious tension with the US, Britain and France.

Most Nato members cut their defence spending dramatically since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 but Russia has been bolstering its military capabilities, holding parades involving more than 100,000 troops each year.

Nato soldiers stand on a pontoon bridge constructed across the Vistula river in Poland during the NATO Anaconda-16 exercise earlier this year

Nato soldiers stand on a pontoon bridge constructed across the Vistula river in Poland during the NATO Anaconda-16 exercise earlier this year

DailyMail: Moscow has been throwing its weight around in recent years – in 2008 Russian troops humiliated the Georgians and in turn the White House by invading South Ossetia and Abkhazia in support of pro-Moscow rebels.

Nato members like Estonia, Poland and Romania, who are feeling increasingly threatened by Moscow, are now being promised a rapid deployment force.

Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told The Times this week: ‘We have also seen Russia using propaganda in Europe among Nato allies and that is exactly the reason why Nato is responding. We are responding with the biggest reinforcement of our collective defence since the end of the Cold War.

‘We have seen Russia being much more active in many different ways.

‘We have seen a more assertive Russia implementing a substantial military build-up over many years; tripling defence spending since 2000 in real terms; developing new military capabilities; exercising their forces and using military force against neighbours,’ added Mr Stoltenberg. More here.

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Russia’s hybrid war actions:

Montenegro says “nationalists from Russia” planned to kill prime minister

IanAllen: Authorities in the former Yugoslav Republic of Montenegro say that “nationalists from Russia” and Serbia were behind a failed plot to kill the country’s prime minister and spark a pro-Russian coup in the country. As intelNews reported last week, the coup allegations surfaced on October 16, after 20 Serbians and Montenegrins were arrested by authorities for allegedly planning a military coup against the government of Montenegro. The arrests took place on election day, as Montenegrins were voting across the Balkan country of 650,000 people.

On Sunday, at a press conference in Montenegro’s capital and largest city, Podgorica, the country’s Chief Special Prosecutor, Milivoje Katnić, reiterated claims that the failed coup aimed to prevent the reelection of Prime Minister Milo Đukanović, whose push for Montenegro to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has prompted strong objections from Moscow. Katnić told journalists that the plotters had hired a “long-distance sharpshooter” who was “a professional killer”, for the task of killing Đukanović. After killing the Prime Minister, the plotters had planned to storm the parliament and prompt a pro-Russian coup in the former Yugoslav Republic, said the special prosecutor. He added that authorities had confiscated weapons, military uniforms and nearly $140,000 in cash that were found in the possession of the alleged coup plotters.

Asked about the fate of the 20 alleged coup plotters, Katnić said that 14 of them remained in custody in Podgorica, while six others had been extradited to Serbia. The Serbian government of Prime Minister Vučić has accepted Montenegro’s allegations that the coup was hatched in Serbia and has offered to help investigate alleged links between the plotters and the Russian state. However, said Katnić, his team of investigators had no evidence of direct involvement by Russia in the alleged coup plot. But, he said, “two nationalists from Russia”, whom he did not name, were among the leaders of the plot. In a press statement, Katnić’s office said that other coup plotters in addition to the 20 men arrested, remained at large, having escaped from Serbia. They could now be in Russia, he said. Moscow has not responded to the claims by the Montenegrin authorities.

*** Denise has interview Nolan Peterson on Ukraine

Back to Ukraine, ready for the Russian Invasion

Nolan Peterson: Kiev, Ukraine—The young man never told anyone he was going to war.

The 20-year-old student at Kiev’s Taras Shevchenko National University slipped away in June 2014 to join a civilian paramilitary group fighting in eastern Ukraine.

The young man, whose name was Sviatoslav Horbenko, was a star pupil at the university’s Institute of Philology, where he studied Japanese. When he transferred from a university in Kharkiv, a city in eastern Ukraine, during his third year, he had to retake 17 exams.

He aced them all.

“There was no bellicose air about him,” said Serhiy Yanchuk, an associate professor at Taras Shevchenko University and coordinator of the university’s Students Guard, a volunteer militia comprising students and faculty.

“He never acted or behaved aggressively for his personal cause,” Yanchuk said. “He was friendly, warm hearted, and an easy-going person. One would surely want to be a friend of such a guy.”

At his father’s behest, the younger Horbenko moved to Kiev and settled into life and his studies at Taras Shevchenko National University.

And then, a few months after the war began in the summer of 2014, Sviatoslav Horbenko disappeared. Without telling his friends, family, or teachers, he joined Right Sector, a civilian volunteer battalion, to fight at the battle for the Donetsk airport.

Olexander Horbenko ultimately was able to track Sviatoslav down at boot camp. The father tried to dissuade his son from going to war. But Sviatoslav was determined.

“That was my last meeting with him alive, our unforgettable conversation,” Olexander Horbenko later said. “Sviatoslav considered defending his fatherland as his duty, and he developed the strong bonds of military comradeship.” Read the full story here.

 

Nadhmi Auchi is Back, Preventing War Crimes on Assad?

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-الأنبار-629x330.jpg Militant fighters of the Islamic State. File photo
As we witness tragedy beyond definition in Syria, it is becoming clear why Barack Obama has been largely absent on a policy in Syria. He has an old Chicago friend in the mix.

WikiLeaks: 29 Feb 1960 Foreign Service Dispatch from the US Embassy in Baghdad to the US Department of State, six scanned pages, declassified.

The document reports the terms of imprisonment and other sentences, imposed as a result of the 7 Oct 1959 Baath party assassination plot against the then Iraqi Prime Minister, Abdul al-Karim Qassim.

Notable figures sentenced include Saddam Hussien (“Saddam Husayn al-Tikriti”, Trial Group I) and the British-based Iraqi billionaire, Nadhmi Auchi, who was sentenced to three years “rigorous imprisonment” (“Nadhmi Shakir Awji”, Trial Group IV). More here. 

Rebel shelling kills over 80 civilians in Syria’s Aleppo

 

 

 

ARANews: Raqqa – A top security official in the ranks of the Islamic State (ISIS) radical group was reported dead on Sunday, after a US-led coalition hit his car with an airstrike in the western countryside of Raqqa Governorate, in northeastern Syria.

“The airstrike killed at least five ISIS members, including al-Othman who used to lead the ISIS security department in Tabqa,” local media activist Abdulkarim al-Yousef told ARA News.

The raid comes as part of the coalition’s policy to target and hunt ISIS jihadi leaders.

“The drone attack was carried out based on information from local sources trusted by the Syrian Democratic Forces,” an SDF spokesman told ARA News.

The strike coincided with the announcement of the battle for Raqqa by the Kurdish-Arab alliance of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

Raqqa is deemed a de-facto capital for the ISIS’ self-declared Caliphate.

The US-backed SDF has established a new operations room to coordinate the battle for Raqqa against the Islamic State (ISIS). “On November 5th, the SDF established a new operations room known as the Euphrates Wrath to intensify coordination between the various military factions participating in the battle for Raqqa.”

Reporting by: Jamil Mukarram | Source: ARA News

Syrian propagandists have found the ideal launderers for their message: Western journalists

Tablet: Bashar al-Assad’s regime has pulled off a grotesque PR coup by corralling a number of prominent American journalists from outlets like The New York Times, National Public Radio, The Washington Post, and The New Yorker to participate in a conference designed to legitimize the rule of Syria’s genocidal head of state. The conference held Sunday and Monday in Damascus, was organized by the British Syrian Society, a “foundation” chaired by Assad’s father-in-law, the London-based physician Fawaz Ahkras. The larger purpose of the conference appears to be raising money for the regime and its war effort, in part by relieving sanctions against major regime figures.

Many of the participants (here is a partial list of attendees) are British journalists, like Christina Lamb of The Sunday Times, and other UK figures drawn from Akhras’ London contacts. Indeed, the conference is meant to have something of a British ambiance, which is why it’s being conducted according to “Chatham House rules”—a phrase that misleadingly (and hilariously) suggests that the British foreign office is convening the panels. It seems unlikely that the Syrian intelligence officers speaking at the event, like Col. Samer, know Chatham House Rules from Hama Rules, nor do they care. The point is to legitimize the regime’s message with a vague atmosphere of Western ideas and methods—which is why having Western journalists in the audience, and even on panels, is important to the regime. Attending a conference that features at least four Syrian regime officials who are currently sanctioned for their role in Assad’s war crimes, are, among others, the New York Times’ Beirut correspondent Anne Barnard, NPR’s Alison Meuse, and Dexter Filkins of The New Yorker

The stated purpose of the Damascus conference is to “facilitate a better understanding of a very complicated crisis.” And presumably journalists in attendance have rationalized their participation to their editors along those exact lines: Since we’re covering the other side of a war, they’re no doubt explaining, it’s a good thing to hear the Assad regime’s side of the story. And since we can’t get into Damascus safely otherwise, it’s fine if we go under the protection of the regime. How else could we get in there?

There’s a simple test for whether such excuses are valid: Will the Assad government provide access to non-regime figures, like the citizens that Assad and his allies have starved in the town of Madaya? Will the regime provide them access to the countless opposition figures, including peaceful activists, the regime has put in prison and tortured? The answers are “of course not” and “under no circumstances.”

So, why go? For the camaraderie? For the sheer joy of doing journalism with other journalists in comfortable surroundings, while 200,000 Syrians are trapped, starving and under military assault, in the ruined city of Aleppo? For the great Middle Eastern food?

To get a sense of what attending a conference put on by a genocidal regime is like, here are some pictures from the twitter feed of Suzan Haidamous of The Washington Post, one of the journalists attending the Damascus conference. She deleted them after posting the pictures Sunday, the first day of the conference, perhaps after one of the subjects expressed concern that pictures of journalists being fed lavishly in the middle of Damascus—perhaps courtesy of the Syrian regime—as Assad and his allies starved Syrian civilians close by might damage the reputations of those depicted in the photos.

In the first picture, from left to right, are Dexter Filkins of The New Yorker; Haidamous; Nour Samaha, who has written for Foreign Policy and The Atlantic, Rania Abouzeid, who has contributed to TIME and The New Yorker; and Nabih Bulos, a special correspondent with the Los Angeles Times. Hashtags for this picture included #Goodtimes and #journalism.

*** Suzan Haidamous, who was enthusiastically promoting her participation in the Assad whitewash “conference” in Damascus, deleted these pics 1/

So, here they are, for the record: with Dexter Filkins, Haidamous, Nour Samaha, Rania Abouzeid, and Nabih Bulos. 2/

In the second picture, from left to right, are Anne Barnard, The New York Times Beirut bureau chief, Heba Saleh of the Financial Times; Hwaida Saad of The New York Times; and Haidamous. Hashtags here included #news and #reporting

That one was posted with the hashtags and . A couple more appropriate ones were left out: 3/

And here’s the second deleted pic, with Haidamous, Hwaida Saad, Heba Saleh, and Anne Barnard. For the record. 4/4 pic.twitter.com/82fxmJ0lXu

That one was posted with the hashtags and . A couple more appropriate ones were left out: 3/

Slaughter in the playground: Six young children are killed on a break between lessons as ‘President Assad’s troops’ bomb a Syrian nursery school
A boy winces as he receives treatment at a hospital in Ghouta, an opposition-controlled suburb of the capital, Damascus, on Sunday

A boy winces as he receives treatment at a hospital in Ghouta, an opposition-controlled suburb of the capital, Damascus, on Sunday
The White Helmets volunteer group posted this photo on social media purportedly showing a victim of the nursery attack on Sunday 

The White Helmets volunteer group posted this photo on social media purportedly showing a victim of the nursery attack on Sunday

More here from DailyMailUK.

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RCP: A British citizen of Iraqi descent, Mr. Auchi, 70, is a billionaire, the 279th richest man in the world, according to a Forbes magazine survey last year. A great deal of Mr. Auchi’s money was made doing business with the regime of Saddam Hussein, much of it under the table. In 1987, Mr. Auchi helped French and Italian firms win a huge oil pipeline contract in Iraq, chiefly by paying off Iraqi officials, according to testimony given by an Italian banker to prosecutors in Milan. In 2003, he was convicted for his role in what was then the largest scandal in French history, involving payoffs from executives of the oil company now known as Total to political figures in Spain, Germany and Africa.

“‘He has been able to collect British politicians the way other people collect stamps,’ wrote Nick Cohen in a 2003 profile of Mr. Auchi in the left wing British newspaper the Observer.

“Mr. Auchi was a leading supplier of arms to Saddam’s regime. A former Belgian ambassador to Luxembourgcharged that a bank in Luxembourg owned principally by Mr. Auchi laundered funds — including Oil-For-Food money — for Saddam and other Islamic dictators.

“‘The name Nadhmi Auchi was just another name for Saddam’s intelligence service, or so we thought,’ said Nibras Kazimi, a former Iraqi dissident who is now a visiting scholar at the Hudson Institute in WashingtonD.C.

“Mr. Auchi is a business partner of Syrian-born businessman Antoin ‘Tony’ Rezko, who has supported Mr. Obama financially since his first run for the Illinois state senate in 1996.

“Mr. Rezko currently is in jail awaiting trial on charges he extorted money from firms seeking to do business with the state of Illinois…. Rezko’s bail was revoked Jan. 28 when the trial judge learned that he, friends and relatives had been wired $3.5 million [in May 2005] from firms in Lebanon controlled by Mr. Auchi. The judge feared Mr. Rezko was about to flee the country….

“Mr. Rezko has described Mr. Auchi as a ‘close friend.’ Mr. Auchi says they have only a business relationship. They’ve been partners in a chain of pizza restaurants in Wisconsin and in a major real estate development inRiverside Park in Chicago.

“The connection between Mr. Auchi and Sen. Obama is tenuous. But given Mr. Auchi’s shady past, his history of bribing politicians, it’s not unreasonable to ask if [he], through Mr. Rezko, was trying to buy influence with a rising political star [Obama].”

 

 

U.S. Military ‘Inside’ and Prepared for Cyber Wars

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U.S. Govt. Hackers Ready to Hit Back If Russia Tries to Disrupt Election

by Ken Dilanian, William M. Arkin and Cynthia McFadden

NBC: U.S. military hackers have penetrated Russia’s electric grid, telecommunications networks and the Kremlin’s command systems, making them vulnerable to attack by secret American cyber weapons should the U.S. deem it necessary, according to a senior intelligence official and top-secret documents reviewed by NBC News.

American officials have long said publicly that Russia, China and other nations have probed and left hidden malware on parts of U.S critical infrastructure, “preparing the battlefield,” in military parlance, for cyber attacks that could turn out the lights or turn off the internet across major cities.

It’s been widely assumed that the U.S. has done the same thing to its adversaries. The documents reviewed by NBC News — along with remarks by a senior U.S. intelligence official — confirm that, in the case of Russia.

U.S. officials continue to express concern that Russia will use its cyber capabilities to try to disrupt next week’s presidential election. U.S. intelligence officials do not expect Russia to attack critical infrastructure — which many believe would be an act of war — but they do anticipate so-called cyber mischief, including the possible release of fake documents and the proliferation of bogus social media accounts designed to spread misinformation.

On Friday the hacker known as “Guccifer 2.0” — which U.S. officials say is a front for Russian intelligence — tweeted a threat to monitor the U.S. elections “from inside the system.”

As NBC News reported Thursday, the U.S. government is marshaling resources to combat the threat in a way that is without precedent for a presidential election.

The cyber weapons would only be deployed in the unlikely event the U.S. was attacked in a significant way, officials say.

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U.S. military officials often say in general terms that the U.S. possesses the world’s most advanced cyber capabilities, but they will not discuss details of highly classified cyber weapons.

James Lewis, a cyber expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says that U.S. hacks into the computer infrastructure of adversary nations such as China, Russia, Iran and North Korea — something he says he presumes has gone on for years — is akin to the kind of military scouting that is as old as human conflict.

“This is just the cyber version of that,” he said.

In 2014, National Security Agency chief Adm. Mike Rogers told Congress that U.S. adversaries are performing electronic “reconnaissance” on a regular basis so that they can be in a position to disrupt the industrial control systems that run everything from chemical facilities to water treatment plants.

“All of that leads me to believe it is only a matter of when, not if, we are going to see something dramatic,” he said at the time.

Rogers didn’t discuss the U.S.’s own penetration of adversary networks. But the hacking undertaken by the NSA, which regularly penetrates foreign networks to gather intelligence, is very similar to the hacking needed to plant precursors for cyber weapons, said Gary Brown, a retired colonel and former legal adviser to U.S. Cyber Command, the military’s digital war fighting arm.

“You’d gain access to a network, you’d establish your presence on the network and then you’re poised to do what you would like to do with the network,” he told NBC News. “Most of the time you might use that to collect information, but that same access could be used for more aggressive activities too.”

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Brown and others have noted that the Obama administration has been extremely reluctant to take action in cyberspace, even in the face of what it says is a series of Russian hacks and leaks designed to manipulate the U.S. presidential election.

Administration officials did, however, deliver a back channel warning to Russian against any attempt to influence next week’s vote, officials told NBC News.

The senior U.S. intelligence official said that, if Russia initiated a significant cyber attack against critical infrastructure, the U.S. could take action to shut down some Russian systems — a sort of active defense.

Retired Adm. James Stavridis, who served as NATO commander of Europe, told NBC News’ Cynthia McFadden that the U.S. is well equipped to respond to any cyber attack.

“I think there’s three things we should do if we see a significant cyber-attack,” he said. “The first obviously is defending against it. The second is reveal: We should be publicizing what has happened so that any of this kind of cyber trickery can be unmasked. And thirdly, we should respond. Our response should be proportional.”

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The U.S. use of cyber attacks in the military context — or for covert action — is not without precedent.

During the 2003 Iraq invasion, U.S spies penetrated Iraqi networks and sent tailored messages to Iraqi generals, urging them to surrender, and temporarily cut electronic power in Baghdad.

In 2009 and 2010, the U.S., working with Israel, is believed to have helped deploy what became known as Stuxnet, a cyber weapon designed to destroy Iranian nuclear centrifuges.

Today, U.S. Cyber Command is engaged in cyber operations against the Islamic State, including using social media to expose the location of militants and sending spoof orders to sow confusion, current and former officials tell NBC News.

One problem, officials say, is that the doctrine around cyber conflict — what is espionage, what is theft, what is war — is not well developed.

“Cyber war is undefined,” Brown said. “There are norms of behavior that we try to encourage, but people violate those.”

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UK Announces New Policy on Cyber Attacks: ‘We Will Strike Back in Kind’

The interactions of the Active Cyber Defence program

In recognition of the risk cyber attacks pose, the government’s 2015 Strategic Defence and Security Review classified cyber as a Tier One threat to the UK – that’s the same level as terrorism, or international military conflict. …

AtlanticCouncil: [W]e must keep up with the scale and pace of the threat we face. So today I am launching the government’s National Cyber Security Strategy for the next 5 years. The new strategy is built on three core pillars: defend, deter and develop, underpinned by £1.9 billion of transformational investment.

First of all Defend. We will strengthen the defences of government, our critical national infrastructure sectors like energy and transport, and our wider economy. We will work in partnership with industry to apply technologies that reduce the impact of cyber-attacks, while driving up security standards across both public and private sectors. We will ensure that our most sensitive information and networks, on which our government and security depend, are protected.

In practice, that means government taking a more active cyber defence approach – supporting industry’s use of automated defence techniques to block, disrupt and neutralise malicious activity before it reaches the user. The public have much to gain from active cyber defence and, with the proper safeguards in place to protect privacy, these measures have the potential to be transformational in ensuring that UK internet users are secure by default.

We are already deploying active cyber defence in government and we know it works: we’ve already successfully reduced the ability of attackers to spoof government e-mails as a key example. Until 6 weeks ago we were seeing faking of some @gov.uk addresses, such as ‘[email protected] ’. Criminals have been using these fake addresses to defraud people, by impersonating government departments. 50,000 spoof emails using the [email protected] address were being sent a everyday – now, thanks to our interventions, there are none.

The second pillar is deterrence. We will deter those who seek to steal from us, threaten us or otherwise harm our interests in cyberspace. We’re strengthening our law enforcement capabilities to raise the cost and reduce the reward of cyber criminality – ensuring we can track, apprehend and prosecute those who commit cyber crimes. And we will continue to invest in our offensive cyber capabilities, because the ability to detect, trace and retaliate in kind is likely to be the best deterrent. A small number of hostile foreign actors have developed and deployed offensive cyber capabilities, including destructive ones. These capabilities threaten the security of the UK’s critical national infrastructure and our industrial control systems.

If we do not have the ability to respond in cyberspace to an attack which takes down our power networks leaving us in darkness, or hits our air traffic control system, grounding our planes, we would be left with the impossible choice of turning the other cheek and ignoring the devastating consequences, or resorting to a military response. That is a choice that we do not want to face – and a choice we do not want to leave as a legacy to our successors. That is why we need to develop a fully functioning and operational cyber counter-attack capability. There is no doubt in my mind that the precursor to any future state-on-state conflict would be a campaign of escalating cyber-attacks, to break down our defences and test our resolve before the first shot is fired. Kinetic attacks carry huge risk of retaliation and may breach international law.

But in cyber space those who want to harm us appear to think they can act both scalably and deniably. It is our duty to demonstrate that they cannot act with impunity. So we will not only defend ourselves in cyberspace; we will strike back in kind when we are attacked.

And thirdly development. We will develop the capabilities we need in our economy and society to keep pace with the threat in the future. To make sure we’ve got a pipeline talented of people with the cyber skills we need, we will increase investment in the next generation of students, experts and companies.

I can announce we’re creating our latest cyber security research institute – a virtual network of UK universities dedicated to technological research and supported by government funding. The new virtual institute will focus on hardware and will look to improve the security of smart phone, tablets and laptops through innovative use of novel technology. We’re building cyber security into our education systems and are committed to providing opportunities for young people to pursue a career in this dynamic and exciting sector. And we’re also making sure that every young person learns the cyber life-skills they need to use the internet safely, confidently and successfully.

These three pillars that I’ve outlined – deter, defend and develop – are all supported by our new National Cyber Security Centre, based in Victoria in central London.

For the first time the government will have a dedicated, outward-facing authority on cyber – making it much simpler for business to get advice on cyber security and to interact with government on cyber security issues. Allowing us to deploy the high level skills that government has, principally in GCHQ, to support the development of commercial applications to enhance cyber security.

The Centre subsumes CERT UK and will provide the next generation of cyber security incident management. This means that when businesses or government bodies, or academic organisations report a significant incident, the Centre will bring together the full range of technical skills from across government and beyond to respond immediately. They will link up with law enforcement, help mitigate the impact of the incident, seek to repair the damage and assist in the tracing and prosecution of those responsible.

Across all its strands, the National Cyber Security Strategy we’re publishing today represents a major step forward in the fight against cyber attack.

Excerpts from “Speech Launching the National Cyber Security Strategy,” by Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond, Nov. 1, 2016.

Kaine, Hillary’s VP, but Her Cabinet Secretary Choices?

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So, an earlier post from this site listed a handful of names that would likely find a home in the Hillary Clinton White House if elected. Use your imagination, there are hundreds of other names to be added, yet the list below will help you with the Marxists that could be ahead.

Pray for the FBI and a political earthquake ahead…

If Hillary Wins, Who Will be in the White House….

  

Due to this Podesta email with Hillary aide/lawyer, Cheryl Mills, could this list below which appears to be the initial VP choice list be amended to be some of her Cabinet picks? Any and all of these names are terrifying including the former military given their PC bent style while in active service.

At least we don’t have Vicious Sidney Blumenthal on the list but he for sure will lurk in the shadows..

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Re: People worth looking at

To: [email protected]
Date: 2016-03-12 19:59 Subject:
Re: People worth looking at

The Hillary Morocco Money Thing was Real with Twists

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While there is the matter of Hillary and Bill with the Morocco thing, we cannot dismiss lil miss Michelle Obama and her relationship with the King as noted in the summer of 2016.

King Mohammed VI hosted an iftar meal in honor of the First Lady of the United States, Michelle Obama, on Tuesday night in Marrakech.

King Mohammed VI Hosts Iftar in Honor of US First Lady Michelle Obama

Using vague words, twisting sentences and altering priority of facts is all part of damage control within the Hillary inner circle.

When it comes to the Hillary event with this Morocco King, wow even the press operating on a tip or two gets places on a spinning wheel. The Clinton Foundation and it seems the Hillary inner circle as well as the State Department certainly placed their attention on the King. Why:

King Mohammed VI    King Mohammed VI  More from Forbes

 

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Inside the Clintons’ Moroccan money ‘mess’

Aides publicly downplayed Clinton’s role, while privately doing damage control and working to keep foreign money.

161103_clinton_morocco_ap_1160.jpg
A portrait of Moroccan King Mohamed VI is on display as then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton meets with Foreign Minister Saad Eddine Othmani in Rabat, Morocco, in 2012 on her whistle-stop diplomatic tour. | AP Photo

Politico: Hillary Clinton’s top advisers downplayed her involvement in arranging a lavish Clinton Foundation conference in Marrakech last year, but behind the scenes they acknowledged her pivotal role and worked to minimize fallout from it.

After media inquiries about the role of Clinton and the king of Morocco in setting the stage for the conference, Clinton confidants, including her husband, Bill, scrambled to craft a new foreign contribution policy that looked tougher but still let them accept the Moroccan cash, according to hacked emails released by WikiLeaks.

The picture that emerges from the emails — as well as from interviews with a half dozen people familiar with the foundation’s inner workings and other contemporary reporting — shows Clintons’ confidants becoming acutely sensitive to criticism of the foundation’s foreign fundraising around the time Clinton was preparing to launch her presidential campaign.

The Moroccan saga also provides a window into the Clinton teams’ internal decision-making process on thorny ethics issues, as well as the occasionally less-than-forthcoming manner in which they deal with scrutiny.

It’s an approach that is familiar to longtime Clinton watchers and one that will be tested immediately if Clinton emerges victorious on Tuesday in her closer-than-expected race against Republican Donald Trump. Congressional Republicans have vowed to launch a series of investigations from Day One of a Clinton presidency, possibly starting even before she’s sworn in, including into whether she accorded special treatment during her time as secretary of state to donors who wrote huge checks to support her family’s foundation, its meetings, operations or endowment.

When it comes to Morocco, there’s no evidence that Clinton provided special treatment to the royal family or companies in which it’s invested as a result of their donations to her family’s foundation.

But there is evidence that Clinton’s aides sought to downplay a long and lucrative relationship between her family and that of Moroccan King Mohammed VI, even as her aides were trying to bring in a huge sum of cash through the monarch. And human rights watchdogs contend that the relationship played a role in the Clinton State Department — and the Clinton Foundation — turning a blind eye toward abuses by authorities in the Moroccan-occupied territory of Western Sahara.

Clinton’s own State Department advisers in 2011 flagged human rights concerns and the Western Sahara push for self-governance as among the “issues of sensitivity with Morocco when it comes to the Western Sahara,” according to an email released this year by the State Department in response to Freedom of Information Act litigation.

The Marrakech meeting of the foundation’s Clinton Global Initiative (or CGI) promised to increase attention on this thorny relationship, given that it was scheduled for early May 2015 — less than a month after Clinton would announce her candidacy. The timing sparked a vigorous debate among Clinton’s aides about whether she should go, which was revealed by emails hacked from the Gmail account of Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta and disseminated starting last month by WikiLeaks.

Clinton’s right-hand aide, Huma Abedin, argued forcefully that her boss was obligated to attend the CGI conference because “her presence was a condition for the Moroccans to proceed so there is no going back on this.”

Buttressing Abedin’s argument, the Morocco meeting was included in a 2014 internal foundation memo released by WikiLeaks about “Secretary Clinton’s Foundation work.”

After a bit of pushback from other aides questioning the wisdom of Clinton’s attendance, Abedin in a January 2015 email made the financial case for Clinton going to Marrakech, suggesting that she had helped arrange a massive contribution for the foundation from the king of Morocco.

Referring to Clinton by her initials “HRC,” Abedin wrote that the meeting “was HRC’s idea, our office approached the Moroccans and they 100 percent believe they are doing this at her request. The King has personally committed approx $12 million both for the endowment and to support the meeting. It will break a lot of china to back out now when we had so many opportunities to do it in the past few months. She created this mess and she knows it.”

On the other side of the debate was Robby Mook, who would go on to become Clinton’s campaign manager. He argued that Clinton needed to back away from her commitment to attend the CGI meeting in Marrakech, as well as other foundation events and paid speeches, while also distancing herself from the foundation, as a whole.

“We really need to shut Morocco and these paid speeches down,” Mook emailed Podesta in February 2015. A few days later, he emailed Podesta and Abedin a Wall Street Journal article about ethical questions arising from an increase in foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation. The article did not mention the Morocco meeting or its funding, but Mook, alluding to Clinton’s impending campaign launch, asserted “This is why Morocco would be such a problem — more of this the first week she’s out selling her story.”

The following week, Mook in a memo to Podesta, Abedin and ex-Clinton State Department chief of staff Cheryl Mills flagged what he called “Foundation vulnerability points.” While he did not expressly single out the Marrakech CGI meeting, it would seem to have triggered several of the vulnerabilities he listed, including “Money from foreign governments” and “Overseas events with foreign leaders or government,” as well as “lavish/high-end hotels for events” and Clinton “attending Foundation events.”

After the vulnerability memo, the WikiLeaks email trail on the Morocco meeting fell silent.

That changed on April 7 — just five days before Clinton would announce her candidacy. POLITICO, acting on a tip about the role of Clinton and the king in arranging the conference and a $1 million sponsorship from a Moroccan-government-owned phosphate company active in Western Sahara called OCP, emailed a foundation spokesman with a number of questions. Did Clinton plan to follow through on her commitment to attend the conference and would the foundation continue holding overseas conferences during a then-imminent Clinton presidential campaign, POLITICO asked.

The spokesman immediately forwarded the email to top aides to the Clintons. Within minutes, Bill Clinton’s chief of staff Tina Flournoy sent an email with the subject line “Morocco” to Podesta and Mills. “We have press calls on their contributions,” she wrote.

The spokesman responded to POLITICO’s inquiry saying “it’s unlikely that Secretary will attend,” but requesting not to be named in the resulting story revealing OCP’s $1 million sponsorship.

The anonymous spokesman did not answer follow-up questions about the king’s role in arranging the donations.

In fact, the spokesman tried to cast doubt on reporting that Clinton and the king discussed the possibility of a foundation meeting in Morocco, and that Abedin was involved in “subsequent high-level planning conversations.”

Later, when asked to explain the discrepancy between their initial answers and Abedin’s characterization in the WikiLeaks emails, Brian Cookstra, a different foundation spokesman, bristled. “It sounds like you are suggesting we misled you which is a serious accusation, and it’s not accurate,” Cookstra said. “We stand by our original answers on this,” he said, explaining, “we have no record of” Clinton and the king “discussing this personally.”

However, emails released by the State Department suggest a personal relationship between Clinton and the king, showing Clinton and her staff arranging conversations with the king and other Moroccans. But Cookstra said “Discussions handled by her office may have been exploratory — they were before the meeting was set or the location was finalized, and do not constitute the kind ‘high-level planning conversations’ the CGI staff undertake for every meeting.”

The anonymous spokesman in the days before Clinton’s announcement also ignored POLITICO’s questions about whether the foundation would continue accepting foreign donations and holding overseas events during her campaign.

Instead, the WikiLeaks email show that Clintons’ aides began a debate about crafting a new policy that would bar the foundation from holding overseas conferences or accepting foreign donations during Clinton’s presidential campaign — with a couple notable exceptions.

“CGI will no longer conduct CGI-International events nor accept any funding from foreign government hosts of such events after the already-scheduled events in May (CGI-Morocco) and June (CGI-Greece) of 2015,” read a draft of a document containing several “Foundation Policies Adjustments.” The draft, which was emailed to top Clinton aides seven hours after POLITICO’s initial inquiry and was among the documents included in the Podesta Gmail hack, also indicated that Hillary Clinton would resign from the foundation’s board and “will no longer be available to fundraise for the Foundation’s programs and activities.”

Among the first questions about the draft came from CGI chief Bob Harrison, who emailed the group, “What about the Morocco money?”

“Morocco money exception is included in there,” responded foundation executive Maura Pally.

Ultimately, Hillary Clinton did not attend the CGI conference in Marrakech, sending her husband and daughter in her stead.

The king was traveling during the CGI conference and did not attend, but POLITICO revealed that he loaned one of his palaces to Bill and Chelsea Clinton to stay in during their time in Marrakech. The conference included a mix of plenary sessions in which corporations pledged to spend millions on humanitarian causes — including expanding access to clean water access and education in the Middle East and Africa — and an extravagant Moroccan feast with a hookah lounge and a nine-piece band playing traditional Moroccan Gnawa music at a five-star resort on the outskirts of Marrakech.

Cookstra said the king did not donate any money to the foundation and never has, despite once having been listed on a donor roll as having pledged as much as $500,000 to help build Bill Clinton’s presidential library (the foundation says the donation never came through).

Officials at the Moroccan Embassy in Washington did not respond when asked whether the king had originally committed the $12 million referenced in Abedin’s email. They also didn’t answer questions about the role of Clinton or the king in initiating the meeting or whether the king expected Clinton to attend the meeting, and skipped it himself because she did.

The Clinton Foundation did not respond to questions about whether the conference was Hillary Clinton’s idea, whether the king had committed $12 million or why Clinton’s aides weren’t more forthcoming originally when asked about the roles of Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin and the king in initiating the meeting.

“We’ve addressed what you’ve asked,” Cookstra said.

Josh Gerstein contributed to this report.