Refugee Resettlement Agency Courtesy of Clinton/Obama Appointees

Posted on August 4, 2016August 4, 2016 by Denise Simon

Revolving Door Sends Millions to Refugee Resettlement Agency Run by Former Clinton and Obama Appointees

A revolving door in the Democratic administrations of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama has sent millions of dollars in federal funding to the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants [USCRI], which is led by two former directors of the Office of Refugee Resettlement [ORR], the federal office that selects the voluntary agencies [VOLAGs] who get lucrative federal contracts to resettle refugees.

Breitbart: President Bill Clinton appointed Lavinia Limon as director of ORR in 1993, a position she held until the end of his administration. After a brief interlude at the Center for New American Communities, a project of the left-leaning National Immigration Forum, Limon was named executive director of USCRI in August 2001, a position she still holds.

In 2009, President Barack Obama appointed Eskinder Negash, an Eritrean refugee on Limon’s USCRI staff, as director of ORR. When Negash resigned abruptly in December 2014, he went back to USCRI, where he now serves as Vice President of Global Development.

Revenues at USCRI, his once and future employer, increased significantly while Negash served as director of the ORR. In FY 2006, USCRI revenues were $19 million. By 2015, they had grown to $50 million, more than 90 percent of which came from “government grants.”

ORR’s budget grew from $492 million in FY 2006 to $1.5 billion in 2014.

During his tenure at ORR, Negash’s performance was spotty at best, particularly with regards to his failure to provide Congress with the statutorily required annual reports in a timely manner. As Ann Corcoran wrote at Refugee Resettlement Watch back in 2012, three years after Negash’s arrival:

The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), is in complete disarray as regards its legally mandated requirement to report to Congress every year on how refugees are doing and where the millions of tax dollars are going that run the program. The last (and most recent) annual report to be sent to Congress is the 2008 report—so they are out of compliance for fiscal years 2009, 2010 and 2011. . . (The lack of reports for recent years signals either bureaucratic incompetence and disregard for the law, or, causes one to wonder if there is something ORR is hiding.)

To replace Negash as director of ORR, Obama selected another VOLAG executive, Bob Carey, Vice President of Resettlement and Migration Policy at the International Rescue Committee and “chair of Refugee Council USA, a coalition of NGOs working on issues affecting refugees, asylum seekers, displaced persons, victims of trafficking and victims of torture,” the Resettlement Industry’s Lobbying Group.

The twenty members of Refugee Council USA include all of the top VOLAGs whose main source of revenue comes from ORR grants, including Church World Service/Immigration and Refugee Program, Episcopal Migration Ministries, Ethiopian Community Development Council, HIAS, International Catholic Migration Commission, International Rescue Committee, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops/Migration & Refugee Services, U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, and World Relief.

Now the same lobbying group that Carey once chaired, Refugees Council USA, recently announced it wants to more than double the number of refugees allowed in to the United States in 2017—to 200,000, from approximately 70,000 in FY 2015 and an Obama administration “targeted level” of 85,000 in FY 2016, with much of the increase driven by the hasty push to admit 10,000 Syrian refugees this year.

The budget impact of such an increase would be enormous, possibly doubling ORR expenditures from $1.5 billion in FY 2014 to $3 billion or more in FY 2017.

The International Rescue Committee, whose CEO is the former United Kingdom Foreign Secretary David Miliband, had worldwide revenues in 2015 of $691 million, a $138 million increase from its $563 million revenues in 2014.

Most of that revenue (82 percent in 2015—or $572 million) came from “grants and contracts,” most from governments and related agencies around the world, including the federal government of the United States.

In contrast to the Bill Clinton and Barack Obama administrations, George W. Bush’s two appointed directors of ORR, Nguyen Van Nah and Martha E. Newton, did not participate in the revolving door back to lucrative employment at the VOLAGs they oversaw after they left ORR.

Van Nah, director from 2001 to 2006, became a professor of economics at Sacramento State University in California when he left ORR.

Newton, who succeeded Van Nah, went from ORR to become a consultant at her own firm, Health Strategies LLC.

Democratic appointees Limon, Negash, and Carey have worked tirelessly to expand both the budget of ORR and the party’s far-left, pro-refugee agenda.

It was during Limon’s tenure that the “Wilson Fish alternative program”was used as justification, without the corresponding statutory authority, to hire VOLAGS to operate resettlement programs in states that withdrew from the federal program. The enabling legislation made no mention of such a provision, but Limon and her colleagues pushed it through the HHS regulatory process without much public fanfare.

Currently, several USCRI operations–in Twin Falls, Idaho and Lowell, Massachusetts, for instance–are funded by ORR through this statutorily questionable Wilson Fish alternative program mechanism.

It was also during Limon’s tenure at ORR that the mix of nations of origin for refugees shifted dramatically.

In 1992, the year before Limon was named ORR director, the Near East Asia countries of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran, and the African countries of Angola, Burundi, Congo, Ethiopia,Liberia, Libya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, and Uganda —many of them majority Muslim—accounted for only nine percent of all resettled refugees.

But by 2001, Limon’s last year at the helm of ORR, these African and and Near East Asia countries accounted for 46 percent of all resettled refugees.

Operationally, USCRI has had its share of problems under Limon’s leadership.

In 2008, before Negash was named ORR director, USCRI’s Waterbury, Connecticut field office had its resettlement contract there canceled:

The State Department has canceled its contract with the agency responsible for resettling 64 Burmese refugees to Waterbury. In response, Connecticut’s congressional delegation has sent a letter of protest to the state department, asking it to give the International Institute of Connecticut more time to settle its problems.

This follows months of reports of poor housing, fractious relationships with volunteers, missed immunizations for students and insufficient assistance with daily tasks. The State Department brought the refugees here to escape the tyranny in their native Myanmar.

“I’ve heard of agencies being under investigation and there being a threat of canceling a contract, but this is the first time I’ve known about a particular case being canceled,” said Stephanie J. Nawyn, a sociologist at Michigan State University who studies resettlement. “I do think this is unusual.”

In Lowell, Massachusetts last month, a 13-year-old girl was allegedly sexually harassed by a recently arrived Syrian refugee:

A 22-year-old Syrian refugee is behind bars after only two months in the United States after he was accused Thursday night of inappropriately touching a 13-year-old girl at a state-run swimming pool in Lowell.

In Twin Falls, Idaho, USCRI’s local subcontractor, the College of Southern Idaho, is dealing with a national controversy involving three refugees and the sexual assault of a five-year-old girl.

Chobani Yogurt, the company that owns and operates the largest yogurt manufacturing facility in the world in Twin Falls, thanks in part to $54 million in federal and state grants, relies heavily on refugees brought in by USCRI and the College of Southern Idaho as employees. In 2015, CNN reported that 600 of the company’s 2,000 employees are refugees.

Even the far-left Michelle Goldberg, reporting at Slate, concedes, “There had been an incident involving three boys, ages 7, 10, and 14, and a mentally disabled 5-year-old girl [in Twin Falls].”

[Twin Falls county prosecutor Grant] Loebs described it to me as a “very serious felony.” On June 2, an 89-year-old neighbor discovered the children in the laundry room at the Fawnbrook Apartments, a low-income housing complex. The youngest boy is from Iraq while the older ones, brothers, are from an Eritrean family that passed through Sudanese refugee camps. (Most news reports have identified the older boys as Sudanese.) Only the youngest boy, Loebs said, is alleged to have touched the girl, though investigators suspect the 10-year-old might have as well; the elder boys reportedly made a video.

Because everyone involved in the case is a minor, the records were sealed. Nevertheless, on the evening of June 20, Twin Falls Police Chief Craig Kingsbury appeared at the weekly City Council meeting to update the anxious public as best he could. He announced that police had arrested the two older boys the previous Friday and that they were being held in juvenile detention. (Loebs later told me that the 7-year-old was also charged with a felony but wasn’t taken into custody because of his age.)

Despite these operational problems, Limon’s hold on the reins of USCRI appears to be secure.

Her job security, as well as her status within the politically powerful refugee resettlement industry, is undoubtedly enhanced by her ties with the Clinton and Obama administrations, which run long and deep.

In 2015, Limon attended an event sponsored by the Clinton Global Initiative, where she served on the same panel as Hamdi Ulukaya, the founder and CEO of Chobani Yogurt.

Limon appears to have done well from her life time career advancing refugee rights.

A 1972 graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, with a degree in sociology, Limon served as director of the International Institute of Los Angeles prior to being picked by Bill Clinton to head up the ORR in 1993.

In 2012, the last year for which such data is readily available, Limon received over $289,000 in compensation for her job as executive director of USCRI.

Peter Limon, who appears to be Limon’s brother, is also employed by USCRI as director of Business Development.

Russia IS in Ukraine and Planning Another Offensive

Posted on August 4, 2016August 4, 2016 by Denise Simon

Militants preparing offensive at Svitlodarsk bridgehead: Ukraine intelligence Militants are preparing for combat operations in the Donetsk and Slaviansk directions, the Main Directorate of Intelligence of Ukraine’s Defense Ministry wrote on Facebook.

Pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine accuse government soldiers of launching a new offensive near a prized but obliterated airport in the separatists’ de facto capital of Donetsk.

“The intelligence service has detected signs of enemy preparations for combat operations in the Donetsk and Slaviansk directions (Svitlodarsk bridgehead). From August 4 to 8, there is threat of an intensified offensive or raid actions to expand controlled areas,” the report read.

The militants also continue to conduct reconnaissance. In particular, the intelligence service spotted a reconnaissance group of the 9th separate Assault Marine Regiment (Novoazovsk) of the 1st Armed Corps (Donetsk) of the Russian Armed Forces. Sabotage and reconnaissance groups are also scheduled to make an appearance in the following settlements: Maiorsk, Zaitseve, Avdiyivka and Opytne, as well as Pisky, Krasnohorivka and Maryinka. In addition, the intelligence service has reported the arrival of railway cargo from the territory of the Russian Federation to Ilovaisk, comprising two railcars filled with anti-tank and anti-personnel mines, six railcars with ammunition, one railcar with medicines and another one with the uniforms. More here.
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Russia has been and is paying special attention to Ukraine. This was the case during tsarist and Soviet times. This is the case now. Consequently, Ukraine has been widely infiltrated by Russian agents, who help their “brotherly neighbors” direct the course of the Ukrainian state into the pro-Russian channel. These agents of influence are not only the Russian mass-media, like the Russian Vesti media conglomerate, the Opposition Bloc Party, the Ukrainian Choice organization (pro-Russian group created by Putin’s crony Viktor Medvedchuk — Ed.), the numerous parishes of the Moscow Patriarchate, and the Russian business structures that continue to operate in Ukraine. Russian agents have even infiltrated the structures that display their pro-Ukrainian orientation.

Putin’s “Brusilov Offensive” is based on isolating Ukraine from the West on the one hand and destabilizing Ukraine on the other. He has already accomplished portions of the plan; he may yet accomplish others. But we alone will determine to what extent we will resist this “offensive” and if we have enough endurance and the ability to be guided by cold reason. Read more here.

Given the Debt, Venezuela is out of Money

Posted on August 4, 2016August 4, 2016 by Denise Simon

How bad is it? Hey Bernie, Hillary….what say you? Could there be yet another insurgency coming into the United States of refugees?

A new decree issued by the Venezuelan government that forces workers to take agricultural jobs has been denounced as “forced labor” by human rights organizations and unions.

The Nicolás Maduro administration made the controversial regulation public on July 22, saying it was an attempt to curb the country’s widespread shortages of food.

The decree said the Venezuelan government, through the Labor Ministry, can arbitrarily force public and private companies to “lend” them employees for farm work.

In a statement on July 29, Amnesty International called the new system “forced labor.” More here.

Venezuelans carrying groceries cross the Simon Bolivar bridge from Cucuta in Colombia back to San Antonio de Tachira in Venezuela, on July 17, 2016 (AFP Photo/George Castellanos)

Fleeing the country

Bogota (AFP) – Venezuela’s economic crisis has sent a huge but largely ignored wave of people into Colombia, and many more could be on the way, a senior UN refugee official said.

“It’s a silent arrival of a lot of people who are crossing the border and staying illegally on the Colombian side,” said Martin Gottwald, the United Nations Refugee Agency’s representative in Colombia.

No exact figures are available, but the number of Venezuelans fleeing to Colombia is already “quite large,” and Colombia should prepare itself for more, Gottwald told AFP in an interview.

“The avalanche is probably going to increase, with or without the reopening of the border,” he said.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro closed the countries’ border in August 2015 after an attack on an army patrol. He blamed right-wing paramilitaries from Colombia.

The leftist leader briefly reopened it last weekend to allow Venezuelans to stock up on food, medicine and other basic supplies amid severe shortages in Venezuela.

Gottwald said a sizeable number of Venezuelans who entered Colombia probably never returned.

Venezuela’s cash could run out ‘within a year’

Venezuela is running out of money and time.

CNN: The country’s central bank only has $11.9 billion in reserves, down sharply from $30 billion in 2011. A few large debt payments are coming due soon. Starting in October, Venezuela owes a total of $4.7 billion in a series of payments.

Venezuela is in the midst of a deep economic, political and humanitarian crisis. Its citizens are suffering from massive food shortages and hospitals lack basic medicine and equipment. Experts say Venezuela has prioritized paying the debt over dealing with the shortages.

“Within a year they’re going to run out of money,” says Russ Dallen, an expert on Venezuela’s debt and managing partner at Caracas Capital, an investing firm in Miami. Dallen pointed out that the country has been almost “suicidal” in its focus on making debt payments.

Related: Venezuela is selling oil for food to Jamaica

Experts’ guesses vary over exactly how much time Venezuela has before it runs out of cash. But all agree that at this rate, Venezuela does not have enough reserves to make all its payments for the next two years.

Much of Venezuela’s reserves are in gold, some of which the country has shipped to Switzerland this year to help repay its debts. As of May, Venezuela had $7.4 billion of its reserves in gold. However, it sent more gold in June, Swiss data shows.

“It doesn’t seem that Venezuela is going to be able to make all payments for next year,” says Mauro Roca, a Latin American economist at Goldman Sachs (GS). “The probability for default is much higher for next year than this year.”

Related: What went wrong in Venezuela

It is a dire situation and ironic for a country that sits on the world’s largest oil reserves. It’s true that oil prices have dropped dramatically and Venezuela hasn’t been able to earn enough money for its oil. But whatever money Venezuela earns from its oil is going to pay down its debts to lenders like China, bondholders, oil drilling companies and importers.

Even oil drilling companies are starting to cut business in Venezuela. For instance, in April, Schlumberger said it would reduce operations in Venezuela due to unpaid bills. It’s also one of the key reasons why the country’s oil production has plunged to 13-year lows.

Related: Why Venezuela’s oil production plunged to a 13-year low

According to Bank of America (BAC), Venezuela’s imports — which include food and medicine — declined between 40% and 45% in the first five months this year compared to the same time a year ago. (There isn’t reliable government data on imports).

“It’s a dramatic cut…they’re making a big effort to pay the debt,” says Sebastian Rondeau, an economist at Bank of America. He estimates that Venezuela can make debt payments until April of next year. “Then the second half of next year is going to be very complicated.”

Related: Venezuela decree ‘amounts to forced labor’

There is still a chance that Venezuela could default this year. Venezuelan officials are currently working with bondholders of the country’s state-run oil company, PDVSA, to exchange short-term debt, which is due in October and November, with longer-term debt. If bondholders don’t agree, it could be a problem.

“It would just kick the can further down the road…we still think the government is highly likely to default over the next two years, if not in the next six months,” says Edward Glossop, an economist at Capital Economics, a research firm.

But China may be coming to Venezuela’s rescue. China is reportedly in talks to give Venezuela a one-year grace period on repaying its debt and only make interest payments. Since 2007, China has loaned Venezuela $65 billion and Venezuela has been slowly repaying that via oil shipments.

Last year, Venezuela shipped 579,000 barrels of oil per day on average to China, an audited financial statement from the country’s oil company shows. It appears China may now cut Venezuela some slack, so it can sell oil to bring in some money.

Regardless of a new debt deal or temporary relief from China, experts say Venezuela’s current path isn’t sustainable.

“It’s like saying how long can you hold your breath under water?” says Dallen.

$400M is but One Payment to Iran, from a 1996 Legal Case

Posted on August 3, 2016August 3, 2016 by Denise Simon

It is not ransom, it is not ransom…okay…well let’s go further shall we?

Justice Department Officials Raised Objections on U.S. Cash Payment to Iran

Some officials worried about message being sent, but were overruled, WSJ

Then, Obama violated his own Executive Order as noted here and dated February 5, 2012.

Why did we convert to cash in various currencies and not just wire the money into designated Iranian banks? Well the excuse is sanctions. And Iran demanded cash such that later purchases or transactions could not be monitored, so John Kerry was cool with that. The result was smuggling $400 million on pallets on an unmarked cargo plane that landed in the middle of the night. Smuggling?

What is bulk cash smuggling?

Bulk Cash Smuggling is a reporting offense under the Bank Secrecy Act, and is part of the United States Code (U.S.C.). The code stipulates:

Whoever, with the intent to evade a currency reporting requirement, knowingly conceals more than $10,000 in currency or other monetary instruments on the person of such individual or in any conveyance, article of luggage, merchandise, or other container, and transports or transfers or attempts to transport or transfer such currency or monetary instruments from a place within the United States to a place outside of the United States, or from a place outside the United States to a place within the United States, shall be guilty of a currency smuggling offense.

What authorities govern bulk cash smuggling offenses?

Title 31 U.S.C. § 5332 (Bulk Cash Smuggling) makes it a crime to smuggle or attempt to smuggle more than $10,000 in currency or monetary instruments into or out of the United States, with the specific intent to evade the U.S. currency reporting requirements codified in Title 31 U.S.C. §§ 5316 and 5317.

ICE HSI relies on other financial authorities granted under Title 31 U.S.C. (Money and Finance), specifically those related to violations of reporting requirements and structuring financial transactions, as well as criminal authorities, such as Title 18 U.S.C. § 1960 (Unlicensed Money Transporter/Transmitter), Title 18 U.S.C. § 1952 (Interstate and Foreign Travel or Transportation in Aid of Racketeering Enterprises) and Title 18 U.S.C. § 1956 (Money Laundering). These authorities allow ICE HSI to disrupt and dismantle criminal networks that move bulk cash, wherever they may operate.

What are monetary instruments?

Monetary instruments are financial instruments that can be used similarly to cash. Specifically, monetary instruments are defined on the second or reverse side of the FinCEN Form 105:

Coin or currency of the United States or of any other country.
Traveler’s checks in any form.
Negotiable instruments (including checks, promissory notes, and money orders) in bearer form, endorsed without restriction, made out to a fictitious payee, or otherwise in such form that title thereto passes upon delivery.
Incomplete instruments (including checks, promissory notes, and money orders) that are signed but on which the name of the payee has been omitted.
Securities or stock in bearer form or otherwise in such form that title thereto passes upon delivery.

Monetary instruments do not include the following:

Checks or money orders made payable to the order of a named person which have not been endorsed or which bear restrictive endorsements.
Warehouse receipts
Bills of lading. More here.

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Remember the plane was delayed for reasons no one was willing to declare but then John Kerry blamed it on a glitch with the passenger list.

There had been expectations that they would leave on Saturday, while the final round of talks on sanctions were taking place. But the Swiss plane carrying Jason Rezaian, the Washington Post’s Tehran bureau chief, Saeed Abedini, a pastor from Idaho and Amir Hekmati, a former Marine from Flint, Michigan as well as some of their family members did not leave until Sunday morning.

It had been reported when the plane took off that Nosratollah Khosravi-Roodsari, about whom little is known, was on board. But a senior U.S. official later said he was not traveling with the other released prisoners. More here.

It is also important to remember as Iran released 4 prisoners, the United States released 7. It is also important to remember that Obama had to issue a pardon for those 7 to be released.

Iran’s official state news agency, IRNA, named the Iranians set for release as Nader Modanlou, Bahram Mechanic, Khosrow Afghahi, Arash Ghahraman, Tooraj Faridi, Nima Golestaneh and Ali Saboonchi. Mechanic’s lawyer told Reuters that Mechanic, Faridi and Afghahi had been pardoned, but Mechanic and Faridi had not yet been freed from custody as their release was contingent on the four American prisoners leaving Iran. The U.S. government has yet to confirm the identities of the Iranians to be freed. All seven have the option of staying in the U.S. rather than returning to Iran. The U.S. State Department also dropped an international request to detain 14 Iranians on trade violations on Saturday, saying the extradition requests were unlikely to be successful. More here.

Okay, so with all of that, what about the rest of the money allegedly owed to Iran?

Well it seems someone needs to look at the lawsuit in clear detail as it was not filed until 1996. The U.S. response to the lawsuit is here in .pdf.

On August 12, 1996, the Islamic Republic of Iran filed aStatement of Claim (Doc . 1) in a new interpretive dispute againstthe United States, Case No . A/30, alleging that the United Stateshas violated its commitments under the Algiers Accords byinterfering in Iran’s internal affairs and implementing economicsanctions against Iran.

The Government of Iran, which has a long record of using terrorism and lethal force as an instrument of state policy, isseeking a ruling from the Tribunal that the United States hasviolated the Algiers Accords by intervening in Iran’s internalaffairs and enacting economic sanctions against it . Iran assertsthat the United States has violated two obligations under theAlgiers Accords : the pledge in Paragraph 1 of the GeneralDeclaration that it is and will be the policy of the UnitedStates not to intervene in Iran’s internal affairs, and therequirement in Paragraph 10 of the General Declaration to revokeall trade sanctions imposed in response to Iran’s seizing the

U.S . Embassy and taking 52 American hostages on November 4, 1979.

To hear the State Department spokesperson, Admiral Kirby (ret), John Kerry and the White House spokesperson Josh Earnest tell it, the U.S. was about to be rendered a decision by The Hague that we lost the case. Really when it began over kidnapping, hostages and terrorism? C’mon….

$400 Million for Iran is to Prop up Their Economy, ah Yeah, Sure

Posted on August 3, 2016August 3, 2016 by Denise Simon

Press Statement John Kerry Secretary of State Washington, DC January 17, 2016

The United States and Iran today have settled a long outstanding claim at the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal in the Hague.

This specific claim was in the amount of a $400 million Trust Fund used by Iran to purchase military equipment from the United States prior to the break in diplomatic ties. In 1981, with the reaching of the Algiers Accords and the creation of the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal, Iran filed a claim for these funds, tying them up in litigation at the Tribunal.

This is the latest of a series of important settlements reached over the past 35 years at the Hague Tribunal. In constructive bilateral discussions, we arrived at a fair settlement to this claim, which due to litigation risk, remains in the best interests of the United States.

Iran will receive the balance of $400 million in the Trust Fund, as well as a roughly $1.3 billion compromise on the interest. Iran’s recovery was fixed at a reasonable rate of interest and therefore Iran is unable to pursue a bigger Tribunal award against us, preventing U.S. taxpayers from being obligated to a larger amount of money.

All of the approximately 4,700 private U.S. claims filed against the Government of Iran at the Tribunal were resolved during the first 20 years of the Tribunal, resulting in payments of more than $2.5 billion in awards to U.S. nationals and companies through that process.

There are still outstanding Tribunal claims, mostly by Iran against the U.S. We will continue efforts to address these claims appropriately.

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Congress Probes White House-Linked Campaign to Deceive Media on Iran Nuclear Deal

Funder of pro-Iran ‘echo chamber’ met with White House nearly 30 times

FreeBeacon: A member of the House Intelligence Committee has launched a probe into whether a leading architect of the campaign to sell the Iran nuclear agreement last summer coordinated with the White House to mislead the media and the American public, according to documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

The inquiry is part of a larger effort by lawmakers to discern the origins of a shadow campaign that top White House officials admitted to running in order to enlist journalists and experts to boost support for the agreement.

The latest probe, launched by Rep. Mike Pompeo (R., Ill.), centers on Joe Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, a left-leaning foundation that quietly bankrolled a core part of the White House’s campaign to sell the nuclear agreement.

Cirincione visited the White House almost 30 times in the past few years during the administration’s diplomacy with Iran, prompting Pompeo to launch a wide-ranging probe into Ploughshares’ efforts to slant reporting on the Iran deal, according to a copy of that inquiry obtained by the Free Beacon.

Ploughshares has been engulfed in controversy since the Free Beacon and other media outlets exposed its efforts to fund media organizations that provided favorable coverage of the Iran deal, including National Public Radio. The organization also held strategy sessions with White House officials to force support for the deal in Congress.

New information from the Pompeo inquiry shows that Cirincione downplayed his ties to the White House’s pro-Iran efforts to create the impression that he was a neutral foreign policy observer. Cirincione did several interviews at NPR and other outlets boosting the nuclear deal, and billed himself as a top source for reporters seeking information about the administration’s diplomacy.

“After the Obama administration cited your organization, the Ploughshares Fund, as a key surrogate in its selling of the Iran nuclear deal, the attention of the media and the American public turned to your group,” Pompeo wrote in a Wednesday letter to Cirincione. “Ploughshares’ contributions, totaling $700,000 to National Public Radio (NPR) over the past several years, raised concerns of bias and journalistic ethics.”

“Specifically, your behavior as the leader of this organization during the Iran deal debate has left many with questions,” wrote Pompeo, who has been investigating these ties since the Free Beacon disclosed that NPR had cancelled an interview with the lawmaker, a deal critic, after receiving funds from Ploughshares.

Cirincione failed to disclose his organization’s close financial ties to the media outlet during multiple appearances on NPR, according to Pompeo.

“After news broke of Ploughshares’ significant financial contributions to NPR, it was also discovered that no disclosure of these gifts were made, either by you or by NPR, when you appeared on NPR on March 23, 2015,” the letter states. “This disclosure ‘breakdown’ prompted the NPR ombudsman to conduct a review of NPR’s processes.”

That internal review found that NPR violated journalistic ethics during its interviews with Cirincione.

“What is disturbing to outside observers is that NPR is ‘looking into why the Cirincione interview in particular did not raise any red flags’ at the time, though it obviously had to be corrected,” Pompeo writes.

“Your enthusiastic defense of Ploughshares’ conduct after these revelations did not acknowledge or apologize for any mistakes,” the lawmaker adds. “I do not yet know if your organization had similar problems with other news outlets. I am concerned that this NPR incident it is part of a broader pattern of deceit.”

Congressional insiders who spoke to the Free Beacon about the latest probe said Cirincionce has not come clean about why he failed to publicly disclose his close ties to the White House’s pro-Iran deal spin machine.

“There’s a real disconnect between what Ploughshares’ president is saying and what he’s doing,” said one senior congressional aide familiar with the inquiry. “The Associated Press’s and NPR’s accusations against him and his group are serious—yet he continues using Obama administration talking points and refuses to recognize the clear errors in how he behaved.”

“You cannot give hundreds of thousands of dollars to public radio and then go on public radio many times without disclosing those contributions,” the source added. “And he is just one member of the organized ‘echo chamber’ promoting Obama’s agenda—imagine how many more like him there are.”

Pompeo seeks to obtain further information about Ploughshares’ efforts to boost the deal, including whether it obfuscated its financial ties to NPR and other organizations.

The probe also asks about potential coordination between Cirincione and the White House.

“Did the White House contact you about your NPR interviews and request you use any material or talking points?” Pompeo writes. “You have visited the White House almost 30 times in the last few years—years that were very critical for debate on the Iran deal.”

“Your official visit to the White House on March 15, 2015 is questionably close to your March 23, 2013 appearance on NPR to discuss the Iran nuclear deal. Similarly, your official White House visit on April 6, 2010 was right before your April 12, 2010 NPR appearance,” the inquiry states.

Cirincione has denied on multiple occasions that the White House had created a pro-Iran deal operation, despite the disclosure of such an operation by top officials.

He also has taken aim at critics of the Iran deal by alleging that they are part of a larger conspiracy to promote war with Iran. This has included criticism of Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol and Sen. Ben Cardin (D., Md.), who Cirincione has referred to as “neocons.”

“Deeply disappointed [Senator Cardin] caved to the neocon, pro-war camp,” Cirincione tweeted in 2015 after Cardin expressed opposition to the deal. “Weak statement excusing his vote against the historic Iran Accord.”

Most recently, Cirincione appeared in a Ploughshares video about the deal titled, “How we won.”

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What is Iran saying?

(AFP). Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said Tuesday the United States had wasted the opportunity presented by the nuclear accord and prevented the two countries from working more closely on regional issues.

“As the supreme guide said, the nuclear agreement was a test,” Rouhani said in a televised address.

“If the United States had implemented the nuclear agreement with good faith and precision, and had reduced the obstacles and delays that we see today, we could have had more trust and engaged in negotiations on other subjects, which could have been in the interests of the region, the United States and us,” added the president, a moderate who pushed hard for the deal sealed in July 2015.

The agreement, which came into force in January, saw Iran accept curbs to its nuclear programme in exchange for a lifting of sanctions by world powers.

While observers say Iran has met its commitments, Tehran accuses Washington of continuing to block the Islamic republic from the international banking system, limiting its ability to benefit from the end of sanctions.

“Sadly, (the United States) did not successfully pass the test and has not precisely respected its commitments,” said Rouhani.

Rouhani said the agreement had already led to a significant rise in oil exports, but “in other sectors, things have moved slowly” due to the ongoing concerns of international banks, who fear they are still liable for prosecution by the US Treasury if they do business with Iran.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Monday that negotiations with the West were like a “lethal poison”.

“Six months on (from the nuclear deal), do we see any effect on people’s lives?” he asked.

The Americans “ask to negotiate on regional questions, but the experience of the nuclear negotiations proves that this would be a lethal poison and that we can’t trust them on any subject”, he said.