Category Archives: Failed foreign policy

Huma Abedin’s Emails are Next Up

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State Department to release Huma Abedin email trove

Politico: The State Department has agreed to process for public release an archive of 29,000 pages of emails longtime Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin sent or received on a private account while working as deputy chief of staff to Clinton from 2009 to 2013.

Abedin turned over the collection of emails to State last year at the agency’s request following the controversy over the disclosure of Clinton’s exclusive use of a private email account while secretary of state. Unlike Clinton, Abedin had an official email account, but she was among senior officials asked to provide any work-related messages in their personal accounts after State officials became concerned that the agency did not have copies of all the official records it should.

State has been releasing portions of Clinton’s email trove on a monthly basis in connection with a court order, a process that is expected to conclude Jan. 29. That process has led to release of some emails Clinton and Abedin exchanged.

At a court hearing in September, a Justice Department attorney said State had no plans to process for release all of the emails submitted by Abedin and other top aides such as Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills and Director of Policy Planning Jake Sullivan.

However, a legal filing Monday in a lawsuit brought by the conservative group Judicial Watch indicated State has acceded to a request to process all the emails Abedin turned over, except for news articles and summaries.

“The parties have agreed that State will produce to Judicial Watch responsive, nonexempt records from within the recently received documents, excluding news clippings/briefings contained therein,” said the court filing (posted here).

The schedule the two sides agreed to has the disclosure of the records overlapping significantly with Clinton’s presidential campaign and will have the State Department ramping up release of Abedin’s private emails just as the agency winds down its disclosure of Clinton’s messages.

The agency has agreed to begin turning Abedin’s personal-account emails over to Judicial Watch in March at a rate of at least 400 pages a month, with releases complete by April 2017. U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell adopted the proposed schedule as an order later Monday.

“This is just an orderly way of getting these records, subject to court oversight,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in an interview Monday. “This is a review of each of those documents.”

In all the cases, the former officials or their lawyers selected the potential federal records from among the broader set of personal and work-related officials in the private accounts.

Fitton said the group wants to check Abedin’s messages against Clinton’s to see if the former secretary’s aide may have deemed some emails to be official that Clinton did not turn over to State.

“Obviously, she was as close an aide as you could have had to Mrs. Clinton. If Mrs. Clinton didn’t keep records she should have or destroyed or deleted them, maybe we can find them through Ms. Abedin. And Ms. Abedin’s activities are also controversial,” the conservative activist said.

An attorney for Abedin did not immediately respond to a request for comment. *** But more about Huma’s lawyer….Miguel Rodriguez……

Breitbart: Top Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin’s lawyer for the email investigation has a glaring conflict-of-interest in the case: he was an Obama administration “point person” on Benghazi who dealt with classified information and exchanged redacted emails with Hillary Clinton.

Miguel Rodriguez of the Washington law firm Bryan Cave is part of Abedin’s big-money legal team and is already handling communications with the government on her behalf during the scandal.

But Rodriguez brings some personal baggage to his role as Abedin’s counsel, as first noted by blogger Ron Brynaert.

Before joining Bryan Cave, Rodriguez served as deputy assistant secretary at Hillary Clinton’s State Department; then he was President Obama’s legislative director, where he became a “point person” on the administration’s Benghazi response.

“Once the attack piqued the interests of lawmakers, there were dozens of hearings, some of them classified,” the Washington Post reported in March 2013. “Senators and representatives had reports to review and questions they wanted answered about Benghazi. With the integrity and reputations of both Obama and Clinton on the line, Rodriguez emerged as a behind-the-scenes point person, colleagues said.”

Hillary Clinton spokesman Philippe Reines told the Post that “Miguel was not just in the thick of it; he was at the forefront of it. It was just an around-the-clock effort, and we leaned on Miguel as if he never left State.”

On October 28, 2010, Rodriguez pinged Abedin on a group email with subject line “Baby,” which Abedin forwarded to Hillary with the line “Fyi.” That entire email was completely redacted in the State Department’s ongoing release of some Clinton emails.

Rodriguez advised top Clinton staffer Jacob Sullivan in July 2010 on a hearing chaired by Sen. Bob Menendez regarding the Libyan “Lockerbie Bomber,” and Sullivan forwarded Rodriguez’s advice to Clinton.

“I asked who they think Menendez might want to call as a witness. They said Tony Blair. I laughed. They didn’t,” Rodriguez wrote.

Rodriguez offered advice to a Clinton State Department spokesman in a November 24, 2009 email that was forwarded directly to Clinton through her top aide Cheryl Mills.

“Our nominations wallah — perhaps you have met him already, Miguel Rodriguez — agrees with my gut that, if you are announced before the trip next week, you should probably send someone else in your place,” State Department official Matthew Rooney wrote to former Clinton State Department spokesman Ian Kelly. “Even though your day job gives you every reason to go, as soon as you are public you want to avoid any gesture that a Senator could interpret as presuming advice and consent.”

A representative for Rodriguez at Bryan Cave did not provide a comment for this report.

 

 

 

Obama Broke the Middle East Alliance and Equilibrium

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Imagine what the Obama administration is leaving as unfinished terror business for the next president and further, imagine what more can happen for the rest of 2016.

Shall we begin with HizBu’llah?

Russia Is Arming Hezbollah, Say Two of the Group’s Field Commanders

On the Syrian battlefield, Vladimir Putin’s planes and special forces work ever more closely with the Party of God—labeled ‘terrorist’ by Washington.
DailyBeast – BEIRUT — Lebanese Hezbollah field commanders with troops fighting in Syria tell The Daily Beast they are receiving heavy weapons directly from Russia with no strings attached. The commanders say there is a relationship of complete coordination between the Assad regime in Damascus, Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia. At the same time they say the direct interdependence between Russia and Hezbollah is increasing.

The United States and the European Union have both listed Hezbollah as a terrorist organization with global reach and accuse it of serving Tehran’s interests. But there is more to it than that. Organized, trained, funded, and armed by Iran with Syrian help after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, it initially gained fame for suicide bombings hitting Israeli, French, and American targets there, including the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut where 241 American servicemen were killed in 1983.

Hezbollah is directly receiving long-range tactical missiles, laser guided rockets, and anti-tank weapons from Russia.

Badran/FDD: In response to the crisis in relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran, following the latter’s assault on the Saudi consulate and embassy in Iran, the Obama administration has taken to the media to unleash a furious rebuke. But the administration’s condemnation was not aimed primarily at Tehran; instead it’s been largely directed at America’s longstanding ally: Saudi Arabia.

Administration officials have charged that, by executing radical Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr, the Saudis have exacerbated sectarian tensions in the region and jeopardized U.S. policy in Syria. “This is a dangerous game they are playing,” an unnamed U.S. official told the Washington Post. “There are larger repercussions,” including damage to “counter-ISIL initiatives as well as the Syrian peace process.” This is a common thread that runs through the administration’s briefings against the Saudis, which reveals the White House’s backing of Iran’s regional position over and against the traditional U.S. alliance system.

The claim that the Saudis were damaging the supposed Syrian “peace process” sounds surreal on its face. But it is quite revealing, not just about how the White House defines success, but also about its overall policy in Syria.

The administration believes it has achieved a critical diplomatic feat by bringing Iran into the diplomatic talks over Syria and that this constitutes a major breakthrough in itself. “The United States has succeeded in leading the international effort to bring all sides together to try to bring about a political resolution inside of Syria,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said in a briefing after the Saudi-Iranian spat. The way the administration sees it, for a true discussion to take place, all so-called “stakeholders” in Syria must be gathered around the table in order to reach a settlement.

The administration’s self-congratulation aside, it’s worth exploring what this means in practice. By declaring Iran a legitimate “stakeholder,” the White House is not only saying that Syria is a recognized Iranian sphere of influence, but it also is recognizing Iran’s “stake” as legitimate. In fact, President Obama stated explicitly last month that the solution in Syria should be one that allows the Iranians to ensure “that their equities are respected.”

This begs the question of what, exactly, is Iran’s “stake” or “equities” in Syria? The answer is straightforward: Iran’s interest is to maintain a logistical bridge to Hezbollah through which it could supply the group with missiles and arms, thereby enabling it to continue to threaten U.S. allies like Israel and destabilize the region. The White House’s legitimization of Iran as a stakeholder in Syria risks licensing Iran to continue arming Hezbollah.

But this was hardly the only cost of President Obama’s policy. The key for safeguarding Iranian interests in Syria is ensuring the continuity of the Syrian President Bashar Assad regime. And so, in order to obtain Iranian “buy-in,” the administration abandoned what’s supposed to be the main objective in Syria, which is the removal of Assad and his regime. Assad, the administration now concedes, gets to stay on for an indefinite period as part of an indeterminate “transitional period.” In other words, when it comes to Syria, not only did Obama force Iran down his allies’ throat — he also fully endorsed its position.

Now, to top it off, the administration is attacking the Saudis for supposedly jeopardizing a process designed to safeguard Iran’s unchanged objectives in Syria. As the White House sees it, the Saudis’ only job is to bring the Syrian opposition to the table essentially to sign a surrender. What’s more, as part of this process, Iran, which has underwritten and partaken in Assad’s mass slaughter, gets a say in determining which opposition groups are listed as terrorists.

When it comes to the case of Nimr, the radical Saudi Shiite cleric, the administration has applied the same core premise of its Syria policy — that Iran has legitimate “equities” in Arab countries that should be “respected.”

Since his execution, the administration has made a point of repeatedly disclosing that it had tried to intervene with the Saudis not to go ahead with Nimr’s execution. The administration is now saying that the Saudis were told that the Iranians would react negatively to Nimr’s execution. Hence, the Saudi decision, the administration is saying, was a wanton provocation of Iran.

The underlying premise of the administration’s position is not only that Iran has a legitimate claim to represent Arab Shiites but also that since it has claimed Nimr, a Saudi, as a protégé, the Saudi government should not touch him. Therefore, the message the administration was effectively sending the Saudis was that Iran has a say in domestic Saudi affairs.

The truth is that the Obama administration has been aligning with Iran’s regional position for a while now — certainly since the beginning of the Syrian revolution. With the nuclear deal now in hand, and with a year left in President Obama’s term, the White House is becoming explicit about this major shift in the historic U.S. position in the region.

The president’s position on the Saudi-Iranian row is a public announcement that his administration is dissolving its traditional alliance system, along with the regional order it had underwritten for decades, and embracing Iran instead.

*** The blame actually goes deeper on the migrant crisis:

Former Obama Adviser Dennis Ross: U.S. Inaction in Syria Led to Refugee Crisis and ISIS

Amb. Ross/Tower: The Obama administration’s failure to address the brutality of the Iran-backed regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria led to a “vacuum” that allowed “a humanitarian catastrophe, a terrible refugee crisis, a deepening proxy war and the rise of ISIL in Iraq and Syria” to occur, Dennis Ross, a former White House adviser to President Barack Obama, wrote in Politico on Sunday.

Ross explained that the administration’s failure to act stemmed from a reluctance to repeat the mistakes that the United States made during the Iraq War, but added that Syria was different from Iraq, as Syria would involve aiding “an internal uprising” against Assad rather than an American invasion. According to Ross, Assad had turned the uprising against him into a sectarian conflict in the hope that his Alawite sect and other Syrian minorities would have a stake in his survival.

Soon, thereafter, it was transformed into a proxy war largely pitting Saudi Arabia and Turkey against Iran. A vacuum was created not by our replacing the Assad regime but by our hesitancy to do more than offer pronouncements—by overlearning the lessons of Iraq, in effect. And, that vacuum was filled by others: Iran, Hezbollah and Iran’s other Shia militia proxies; Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar; Russia; and ISIL. Unless the U.S. does more now to fill this vacuum, the situation will spin further out of control.

Ross observed that the vacuum in Syria was part of a greater American retreat in the Middle East, which “has helped to produce the increasing competition between Iran and Saudi Arabia.” Without fear of American action, he argued, Qassem Soleimani– the commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps elite Qods Force– was transformed from a “shadowy figure” to one who was present at seemingly every major battle in Iraq and Syria. Eventually, given Iran’s continued aggressiveness and America’s passivity, Saudi Arabia sought to push back against Tehran on its own.

While Ross argued that the growing Iranian-Saudi tensions were not likely turn into a hot war, he noted that the escalation hurts efforts to address the humanitarian catastrophe in Syria. In addition, without the U.S. taking an active role in the Middle East, Russia actively entered and further complicated the fray. Until Moscow agrees to pressure Assad “to respect a ceasefire, stop the barrel bombs, and permit the creation of humanitarian corridors” to deliver food and aid to non-ISIS opposition groups, Ross wrote, there is no hope of getting Saudi Arabia or other Sunni nations to join the fight against ISIS.

In order to address the vacuum, Ross suggested that the U.S. take a number of steps to regain control of the situation without getting too deeply involved. These include putting “troops on the ground, including deploying spotters for directing air attacks, embedding forces with local partners perhaps to the battalion level, and using special operations elements for hit-and-run raids.”

 

In 2014, Ross noted that the administration’s growing closeness to Iran was concerning American allies in the Middle East. For “the Arabs, the fear is that the deal with come at their expense,” he explained. His recent suggestion that the administration must somehow restrain Iran’s client, Assad, before it can exert any influence in Syria demonstrates that this fear still remains intact.

Obama Road-blocked 113 Terror Investigations

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Obama Admin Stonewalling Investigation Into 113 Terrorists Inside United States

Kredo/FreeBeacon: Leading senators on Monday petitioned multiple Obama administration agencies to stop stonewalling a congressional investigation into the immigration histories of at least 113 foreign-born individuals implicated in terrorist operations after legally entering the United States, according to a copy of the letters.

The latest investigation comes just days after the Washington Free Beacon disclosed that an additional 41 foreign-born individuals who legally entered the United States had been arrested for planning a number of terror attacks.

(41 names are here posted by Senator)

Sens. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) and Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.) disclosed Monday that they had been pressuring the Obama administration for months to disclose the immigration histories of these foreign-born individuals implicated in terror plots.

Agencies including the Departments of State and Homeland Security have stonewalled these efforts, declining since mid-2015 to provide Congress additional information. This move has prompted speculation among lawmakers that the administration is withholding information to prevent the exposure of major gaps in the U.S. screening process for new immigrants.

“The American people are entitled to information on the immigration history of terrorists seeking to harm them,” Cruz and Sessions wrote to the secretaries of State and Homeland Security and the attorney general.

Similar requests for information issued sent in August and again in December have not been answered by the administration

The letter cites a recent Free Beacon report detailing that an additional 41 foreign-born individuals had been snagged on terrorism-related charges since 2014. The disclosure of these previously unknown accused terrorists brings the total number of foreigners brought up on terrorism charges to 113.

Sessions and Cruz note that at least 14 of those foreigners accused of terrorism were granted legal entrance to the United States as refugees.

“Many more came through other immigration programs,” they wrote. “A number of immigrant terrorists were even approved for citizenship. Others are the U.S.-born children of foreign migrants whose presence in the country would not be possible but for the immigration of their parents.”

Many of these recently implicated foreigners have been caught by authorities planning terrorist attacks on American soil, while others were found to be involved in efforts to provide funding and material to ISIS, according to an internal list of migrant terrorists codified by congressional sources and viewed by the Free Beacon.

Cruz and Sessions are requesting that the agencies in question fill out a chart that includes only partial information about the 113 accused terrorists.

A senior congressional aide familiar with the investigation said the soaring rate of immigration is taking a toll on the U.S. security establishment.

“The cost of high rates of Muslim immigration are clear: enormous security challenges combined with vast expenses to track and convict those here attempting to wound Americans,” the source said.

The letter comes amid a debate over immigration and an Obama administration plan to boost the number of refugees granted residence in the United States. Under the administration’s plan, an additional 170,000 new migrants from Muslim-majority countries will enter the country in 2016.

As these agencies continue to ignore requests for information, the senators blasted the Obama administration for “continuing to stonewall the request even after a follow-up letter was sent subsequent to the San Bernardino terrorist attack.”

The administration has still not provided senators further information about the immigration histories of the two attackers who went on a shooting spree late last year in San Bernardino, California.

After the attack, it was discovered that both had legally immigrated to the United States, despite expressing support on social media for ISIS.

Last week, the Justice Department indicted two Iraqi refugees living in the United States legally of conspiring to provide material support to ISIS.

Additionally, a Philadelphia police officer was ambushed by an assailant sporting “Muslim garb and wearing a mask,” according to local reports. It was later determined that the individual had pledged allegiance to ISIS.

FBI Expanding Clinton Investigation to Public Corruption

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There are 150 FBI agents assigned to work the Clinton public corruption scandal of which the Clinton Foundation is at the core.

FBI’s Clinton probe expands to public corruption track

EXCLUSIVE: The FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of private email as secretary of state has expanded to look at whether the possible “intersection” of Clinton Foundation work and State Department business may have violated public corruption laws, three intelligence sources not authorized to speak on the record told Fox News.

This new investigative track is in addition to the focus on classified material found on Clinton’s personal server.

“The agents are investigating the possible intersection of Clinton Foundation donations, the dispensation of State Department contracts and whether regular processes were followed,” one source said.

The development follows press reports over the past year about the potential overlap of State Department and Clinton Foundation work, and questions over whether donors benefited from their contacts inside the administration.

The Clinton Foundation is a public charity, known as a 501(c)(3). It had grants and contributions in excess of $144 million in 2013, the most current available data.

Inside the FBI, pressure is growing to pursue the case.

One intelligence source told Fox News that FBI agents would be “screaming” if a prosecution is not pursued because “many previous public corruption cases have been made and successfully prosecuted with much less evidence than what is emerging in this investigation.”

The FBI is particularly on edge in the wake of how the case of former CIA Director David Petraeus was handled.

One of the three sources said some FBI agents felt Petraeus was given a slap on the wrist for sharing highly classified information with his mistress and biographer Paula Broadwell, as well as lying to FBI agents about his actions. Petraeus pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor in March 2015 after a two-plus-year federal investigation in which Attorney General Eric Holder initially declined to prosecute.

In the Petraeus case, the exposure of classified information was assessed to be limited.

By contrast, in the Clinton case, the number of classified emails has risen to at least 1,340. A 2015 appeal by the State Department to challenge the “Top Secret” classification of at least two emails failed and, as Fox News first reported, is now considered a settled matter.

It is unclear which of the two lines of inquiry was opened first by the FBI and whether they eventually will be combined and presented before a special grand jury. One intelligence source said the public corruption angle dates back to at least April 2015.  On their official website, the FBI lists “public corruption as the FBI’s top criminal priority.”

Fox News is told that about 100 special agents assigned to the investigations also were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements, with as many as 50 additional agents on “temporary duty assignment,” or TDY. The request to sign a new NDA could reflect that agents are handling the highly classified material in the emails, or serve as a reminder not to leak about the case, or both.

“The pressure on the lead agents is brutal,” a second source said. “Think of it like a military operation, you might need tanks called in along with infantry.”

Separately, a former high-ranking State Department official emphasized to Fox News that Clinton’s deliberate non-use of her government email address may be increasingly “significant.”

“It is virtually automatic when one comes on board at the State Department to be assigned an email address,” the source said.

“It would have taken an affirmative act not to have one assigned … and it would also mean it was all planned out before she took office. This certainly raises questions about the so-called legal advice she claimed to have received from inside the State Department that what she was doing was proper.”

On Sunday,  when asked about her email practices while secretary of state, Clinton insisted to CBS News’ “Face The Nation,” “there is no there, there.”

One More Transferred from Gitmo, Bigger Implications

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The Department of Defense announces transfer of a Guantanamo detainee to Saudi Arabia. Leaves 103 detainees left at Gitmo. This transfer was approved in October.

General John Kelly, commander of U.S. Southern Command announced 150 Islamic militants in the Caribbean. A big issue that Gitmo does monitor but…..

Obama to make good on Guantanamo pledge: White House chief of staff

Reuters: President Barack Obama will make good on a promise to close the U.S. naval prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, his chief of staff Denis McDonough said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Obama will first present a long-awaited plan to Congress about how to close the facility, and seek its approval, McDonough said in an interview. If Congress fails to act, the White House will determine what steps to take, he said.

“He feels an obligation to the next president. He will fix this so that they don’t have to be confronted with the same set of challenges,” McDonough said.

Obama pledged during the 2008 presidential election campaign that he would close the military prison, which housed foreign terrorism suspects after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

That pledge, still unfilled, has been a feature of his annual State of the Union addresses to the nation ever since.

Obama has said the facility has been used as a recruiting tool in propaganda from groups like al Qaeda, and also is far too costly to maintain. There are 104 detainees left at the prison.

Where possible, his administration has transferred detainees to other countries. But there is a small number of detainees who the administration says it would like to detain in a U.S. facility for national security reasons.

Congress has explicitly banned the transfer of detainees to the United States.

McDonough declined to say whether Obama would close the prison using his own executive powers if Congress rejects his plan.

“I’m not an if-then guy,” he said.

NYT: Mohammad al Rahman al Shumrani is a 40-year-old citizen of Saudi Arabia. As of January 2010, the Guantánamo Review Task Force had recommended him for continued detention. A parole-like Periodic Review Board later recommended him for transfer. As of Jan. 11, 2016, he has been held at Guantánamo for 14 years.

JTF-GTMO Assessment 12 pages 

So what are the options for Barack Obama on those Gitmo detainees that no country will take in a transfer? Enough money and politics will force any country being strong-armed by the White House to take the worst of the worst. If not, there are other options. Obama can use his pen and force a Federal prison in the U.S. to take the remaining detainees or he can transfer the jihadis to another U.S. held prison facility/detention center in a foreign country.
Could it be a detention center in Afghanistan?
Could it be a detention center in Diego Garcia?
Could they be transferred to the control of the United Nations and be placed in a U.N. prison facility?
If he is successful in closing the detention facility what will happen to it? Could Obama cancel the lease with Cuba? Yes. Could the facility be transferred to Cuba and then handed over to Iran, Russia or China? Yes.
What is worse, Obama is bent on taking robust action on Gitmo such that the next administration cannot restore it after it is closed. This leaves few options for the next president or does it?
At issue is fundamentally, Naval Station Guantanamo Bay is a full service military base that provides regional security to the Caribbean and monitors activity in Central and South America. It also provides the Department of Homeland Security with assistance in migrant operations.

The base hosts numerous tenant commands including the Southern Command Joint Task Force-Guantanamo, Joint Task Force Guantanamo, US Naval Hospital and Branch Dental Clinic.

Other detachments located at the base are: Personnel Support Activity, Naval Atlantic Meteorology and Oceanography Command, Naval Media Center, Naval Communications Station, Department of Defense Dependent Schools, Navy Brig, and Fleet and Industrial Supply Center.

NAVSTA GTMO garrison facilities

The bay area is divided into two parts known as the outer and inner harbours. The inner harbour includes commercial ports while the outer harbour accommodates naval station and the main anchorage space. Pier and wharf facilities are located at the small inlets located between Corinaso Point and Deer Point.

Air facilities

NAVSTA GTMO had two airfields namely Leeward Point Field and McCalla Airfield. The operations at McCalla Airfield were ceased in 1976. The Leeward Point Field is the only active military airfield in the base. It has a single runway (10/28) measuring 2,438m x 61m and surfaced with asphalt.

Other base facilities and services

The naval station has four wind turbines generating 3,800kW electricity, enough to fulfil 25% its power requirements. A desalination plant capable of producing 2.25 million gallons of fresh water a day is attached to the base. The plant also produces a combined 15,000kw of electricity through its two turbine generators.

Guantanamo has had operations that includes air fields with aircraft including F8U Crusaders and A4D Skyhawks. It was also an anti-submarine center and a training center. It can handle and has handled 50 warships.
Further, the Haitian crisis , the Balkan crisis and the famous Cuban missile crisis.
Imagine a foreign government in control of U.S. naval infrastructure and technology. Just imagine.