Did Susan Rice Leak Classified Info on Purpose?

Posted on April 21, 2015April 21, 2015 by Denise Simon

There was a profound moment when the Prime Minister of Israel gave a presentation at the United Nations on Iran’s readiness of their break-out period on their nuclear weapon using a cartoon as a prop. The Obama administration later used it as satire against Netanyahu.

Capture

Seems, a year or so later, the White House is agreeing….pigs fly…..

Did Susan Rice Disclose Classified Info on Iran?

Bloomberg’s Eli Lake reports Tuesday that the Obama administration kept secret until the beginning of April Iran’s two to three month breakout time for a nuclear weapon, saying “the administration only declassified this estimate at the beginning of the month, just in time for the White House to make the case for its Iran deal to Congress and the public.”

Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, speaking to reporters on Monday, said that the administration has held this assessment for “quite some time.” Lake says that Brian Hale, a spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, confirmed Monday “that the two-to-three-month estimate for fissile material was declassified on April 1.”

However, at least one member of the administration publicly spoke about the two-to-three-month breakout time frame prior to April. On March 2, 2015, National Security Advisor Susan Rice addressed the annual AIPAC meeting and said the following [emphasis added]:

This is my third point—a good deal is one that would verifiably cut off every pathway for Iran to produce enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon. Every single one.

Any deal must prevent Iran from developing weapons-grade plutonium at Arak, or anywhere else.

Any deal must prevent Iran from enriching uranium at its nuclear facility at Fordow—a site we uncovered buried deep underground and revealed to the world in 2009.

Any deal must increase the time it takes Iran to reach breakout capacity—the time it would take to produce a single bomb’s worth of weapons-grade uranium. Today, experts suggest Iran’s breakout window is just two to three months. We seek to extend that to at least one year.

Rice’s disclosure suggests that either DNI spokesman Brian Hale is incorrect in his assertion that the assessment was declassified on April 1, or Rice revealed classified information.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Rice’s March disclosure.

From HotAir:

Only a few short weeks later, that framework nuclear deal appears increasingly dubious. Iran has demanded that it sunset after only five rather than ten years. The Islamic Republic also wants to operate twice the number of centrifuges agreed to in Switzerland. The administration insists that it will provide sanctions relief to Iran in stages, but Tehran contends that it will have total relief right up front. According to The Wall Street Journal, the mullahs learned on Friday that they will receive billions in unfrozen funds once a deal is signed even as American and Iranian warships engage in a tense standoff off the coast of Yemen.

Few believe that the complex international sanctions regime in place today, a web of commitments that took years to assemble, could “snap back” in the event that Iran failed to live up to its end of the deal. “[O]nly a credulous sixth-grader could imagine that in the event that there is some evidence of Iranian cheating (and the evidence inevitably will be murky, incomplete, and subject to debate) that countries such as France and Germany, which are eager to do business with Tehran, much less countries such as China and Russia, which are not only cozy with Tehran but hostile to Western interests in general, will agree to reimpose sanctions,” Commentary Magazine’s Max Boot observed.

While Netanyahu might not have accurately assessed Iran’s nuclear capabilities in 2012, he was apparently correct when he insisted earlier this month that “Iran’s breakout time from start of deal will be near zero.” Today, Americans are learning that the administration knew Netanyahu was telling the truth about Iranian breakout times even as it was mocking him before an audience of the president’s sycophantic and naïve Twitter fans. As The Daily Beat’s Eli Lake wrote on Tuesday, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and a spokesman with the Director of National Intelligence’s office both confirmed that Iran could have the materials necessary to construct a fissionable device before the autumn.

“Here is the puzzling thing,” Lake wrote, “When Obama began his second term in 2013, he sang a different tune.”

He emphasized that Iran was more than a year away from a nuclear bomb, without mentioning that his intelligence community believed it was only two to three months away from making enough fuel for one, long considered the most challenging task in building a weapon. Today Obama emphasizes that Iran is only two to three months away from acquiring enough fuel for a bomb, creating a sense of urgency for his Iran agreement.

Back in 2013, when Congress was weighing new sanctions on Iran and Obama was pushing for more diplomacy, his interest was in tamping down that sense of urgency. On the eve of a visit to Israel, Obama told Israel’s Channel Two, “Right now, we think it would take over a year or so for Iran to actually develop a nuclear weapon, but obviously we don’t want to cut it too close.”

On Oct. 5 of that year, Obama contrasted the U.S. view of an Iranian breakout with that of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who at the time said Iran was only six months away from nuclear capability. Obama told the Associated Press, “Our assessment continues to be a year or more away. And in fact, actually, our estimate is probably more conservative than the estimates of Israeli intelligence services.”

So, why mislead as this White House has misled when it invites an embarrassing rebuke like this? Because the lie is heard by all the right audiences, whereas the correction will languish in the obscure corners of the country where honesty remains a virtue.

Despite its mounting failures, the administration maintains its legitimacy by providing the smug and complacent reasons that justify their self-approbation. For many, the facts are fungible. So long as they believe in their hearts the president is brighter and more capable than his political opponents, no amount of demonstrable mendacity from the White House could shatter that belief. Even amid increasing evidence that this article of faith might not be true, the faithful will accept anything – even hastily constructed Twitter memes – so long as it affirms their creed.

“The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant,” Ronald Reagan said in a pivotal 1964 speech, “it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.” And this White House hopes to keep it that way.

There is Spying, Espionage and Stupidity

Posted on April 21, 2015April 21, 2015 by Denise Simon

The Virginia-based cyber security firm Mandiant recently released a report detailing one source of persistent cyber attacks, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. Mandiant estimates that since 2006, a single Chinese army cyberattack unit has compromised “141 companies spanning 20 major industries, from information technology and telecommunications to aerospace and energy,” using a “well-defined attack methodology, honed over years and designed to steal large volumes of valuable intellectual property.”

Mandiant explains that once these hackers have infiltrated an organization’s system, they “periodically revisit the victim’s network … and steal broad categories of intellectual property, including technology blueprints, proprietary manufacturing processes, test results, business plans, pricing documents, partnership agreements, and emails and contact lists”. On average, access to a victimized network is maintained for nearly a year.

Now for the Chinese human operatives….

State Dept. contractor allegedly paid by Chinese agent to spy on Americans – yet no charges filed

Newly unsealed court documents obtained by Fox News show a State Department contractor allegedly was paid thousands by an individual thought to be a Chinese agent in exchange for information on Americans — but despite an FBI probe, the Justice Department declined to prosecute.

A November 2014 FBI affidavit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, shows the bureau investigated the contractor for her admitted contact with individuals she believed to be Chinese intelligence officers.

The affidavit from agent Timothy S. Pappa states the translator, Xiaoming Gao, was paid “thousands of dollars to provide information on U.S. persons and a U.S. government employee.”

According to the documents, she admitted these meetings took place in hotel rooms in China for years, where she reported on her “social contacts” in the U.S. to an individual who went by the name of “Teacher Zhao.”

The detailed affidavit even goes on to say the translator briefly lived, “for free,” with a State Department employee — who held a top-secret clearance and designed high-security embassies, including the U.S. compound in Islamabad, Pakistan.

The State Department employee, who was not named, initially told the FBI he didn’t discuss his job with Gao, but later changed his statement.

According to the documents, Gao also told the FBI — during interviews in 2013 — that she once told “Teacher Zhao” about the travel plans of an American and ethnic Tibetan. This person told the FBI he ended up being interrogated by Chinese intelligence officers during a trip to Tibet, and a member of his family was imprisoned.

Yet the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D.C., which oversaw the case, recently declined to prosecute, allowing the documents to be unsealed. The office offered no further comment. The FBI also is saying nothing beyond the court documents that were filed to search a storage unit in suburban Washington, D.C.

On its face, a former senior Justice Department official said the decision not to prosecute is perplexing, because the case was unlikely to reveal investigative sources and methods.

“It’s not clear to me, based on the court files that were unsealed, how a prosecution of this person could possibly have compromised U.S. intelligence gathering,” Thomas Dupree, former deputy assistant attorney general under the George W. Bush administration, told Fox News. “If it jeopardizes or threatens to disrupt relations with another country, so be it. That you have to draw the line somewhere, and that we need to send a message that this sort of conduct and activity simply will not be tolerated.”

The State Department confirmed Xiaoming Gao worked for the Office of Language Services over a four-year period beginning in June 2010. This would have covered the tenures of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and sitting Secretary John Kerry.

“She was employed as a contract interpreter until February 2014, is not employed here anymore. And so any additional questions on this, I’d refer you to the FBI,” spokeswoman Marie Harf said.

When told the FBI was referring Fox News’ questions back to State, Harf responded: “I’m referring you back to them.”

The documents do not fully explain Gao’s side of the story.

Emails and phone calls to the consulting firm, which the translator listed on the web as her employer, have gone unanswered. Fox News extended an invitation to discuss the allegations. No attorney of record was filed with the court.

So Goes Greece, Goes the European Union?

Posted on April 21, 2015April 21, 2015 by Denise Simon

Stunned Greeks React To Initial Capital Controls And The “Decree To Confiscate Reserves”, And They Are Not Happy

Earlier today, following weeks of speculation, Greece finally launched the first shot across the bow of capital controls, when it decreed that due to an “extremely urgent and unforeseen need” (ironically the need was quite foreseen since about 2010, but that is a different story), it would be “obliged” to transfer – as in confiscate – “idle cash reserves” located across the country’s local governments (i.e., various cities and municipalities) to the Greek central bank.

Several hours later the decree which was posted in the government gazette has finally percolated among the population, and the response to what even ordinary Greeks realize is now the endgame, is less than exuberant.

Bloomberg reports, that “as Greece struggles to find cash to stay afloat, local authorities say they oppose a government decision to use their reserves for short-term financing.”

“The government’s decision to seize our reserves not only raises legal and constitutional issues, but also a moral one,” said George Papanikolaou, mayor of Glyfada, the third-largest municipality in the metropolitan region of Attica after Athens and Piraeus. “We have a responsibility to serve our citizens,” Papanikolaou said by phone on Monday. Glyfada has about 16 million euros in cash reserves, he said.

George is unhappy because as recently as tomorrow, he will find there is precisely zero euros in his public bank account, as all the money has now been forcibly sequestered by the government in order to repay future Troika, pardon, IMF obligations.

Sadly for Greece, this is the only option left as the money has now fully run out: Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras ordered local governments and central government entities to move their cash balances to the central bank for investment in short-term state debt.

From Bloomberg:

The decree to confiscate reserves held in commercial banks and transfer them to the Bank of Greece could raise as much as 2 billion euros ($2.15 billion), according to two people familiar with the decision. The money is needed to pay salaries and pensions at the end of the month, the people said.

“It is a politically and institutionally unacceptable decision,” Giorgos Patoulis, mayor of the city of Marousi and president of the Central Union of Municipalities and Communities of Greece, said in a statement on Monday.“No government to date has dared to touch the money of municipalities.”

It took the radical leftist one all of 2 months since coming to power.

And the punchline is that the use of confiscated proceeds is unclear: the government says it is to pay pensions and wages, but recall that the same government recently confiscated pensions to repay the IMF, so according to the chain of logic, the government first raided pensions, and now municipalities, just to repay the dreaded Troika.

The Athens city council and the union of municipalities and communities in Greece will convene tomorrow to debate the order, a press officer of the mayor’s office said.

And one everyone realizes what just happened, expect the riot cam and the Greek Pay-Per-Riot channel, which has been on hiatus since the summer of 2012, to be fully reactivated.

How to Create a New Country, Declare it SO

Posted on April 21, 2015April 21, 2015 by Denise Simon

Birth of a nation? Czech pol claims to have established new country in no-man’s land

Welcome to Liberland, population 250,000…and anyone else looking for a tax haven.

A self-professed Libertarian politician from the Czech Republic says he has created a new, sovereign country on the Croatian-Serbia border where citizens decide their own tax burden, property and individual rights are respected and the national motto is “Live and Let Live.”

Vít Jedlička, a member of the Conservative Party of Free Citizens, recently appointed himself president of the Free Republic of Liberland, a “micronation,” located on the banks of the Danube River in a 2.7-square-mile patch of what he says is unclaimed territory. Jedlička says neither neighboring nation claimed the land when they established their borders following the breakup of Yugoslavia, and claims international law allows his claim.

“The objective of the founders of the new state is to build a country where honest people can prosper without being oppressed by governments making their lives unpleasant through the burden of unnecessary restrictions and taxes,” reads a statement that could be a precursor to Liberland’s constitution.

Jedlička, a regional president of one of the Czech Republic’s northern districts, told FoxNews.com it was time for a new, independent state in Europe.

“We really felt restricted. We really felt under pressure,” Jedlicka said via a phone interview from Prague. “We really feel that Europe needs another tax haven. We need a place where people can prosper.”

Jedlička says he ran for office a total of five times in his native Czech Republic, always on a platform of tax reform.

“We couldn’t make our government lower taxes,” he said. “I tried hard to tell my politicians that we need to lower taxes. That we need to lower regulation.

“All my opponents told me, ‘you should have your own state to prove your ideas of liberty,’” he said. “So I did it.”

Jedlička began researching existing areas of land classified as terra nullius, or “no man’s land.” The small plot where he intends to build his nation, where the only resident agreed to the nation-building scheme, was one of the last in existence. Still, it is unclear whether Jedlička is on solid legal ground under international law. Neither Serbia nor Croatia will allow journalists into the area from its territory and the government of Croatia is not recognizing the newly formed nation.

“We do not consider them to be a nation. We consider them to be virtual trespassers and we do not take their claims very seriously,” an official for the Croatian Embassy in New York City told FoxNews.com.

“All my opponents told me, ‘you should have your own state to prove your ideas of liberty’…so I did it.”- Vít Jedlička, President of Liberland

An undeterred Jedlička said he has already received about 250,000 applications for citizenship and those people have already been approved, even though most will never live – or likely set foot in – Liberland. He boasted that Liberland has already received commitments from various investors, including one who is willing to set up a telecommunications infrastructure.

“We believe we can set up the last state on the planet. We are taking the best parts of the American Revolution and the U.S. Constitution and applying it here,” he said.

Lloyd Bonfield, an international business law professor at New York Law School said that it’s likely the land where Liberland set up is already part of an existing nation.

“One would probably need to go back to the UN-brokered armistice between Croatia and Yugoslavia in 1992 to ascertain the borders of Croatia,” Bonfield said. “If this land was not within Croatia’s borders, it likely remained part of Yugoslavia and that part of Yugoslavia is now Serbia. It is difficult to see how it would be part of neither.”

The Clinton’s and False Philanthropy

Posted on April 21, 2015April 21, 2015 by Denise Simon

The Latest Available Clinton Foundation Filings Appear Deceptive

by: Charles Ortel

My interest in the Clinton Foundation financial disclosures was originally sparked by an article written in the New York Times entitled “Unease at Clinton Foundation over Finances and Ambitions.”

Considering this article with the benefit of hindsight after having poured through reams of public filings and comments made by the Clinton Foundation as well as related parties, one wonders how seriously management, directors, and other employees take their manifold legal duties, particularly when it comes to making truthful and complete disclosures.

Since August 2013, few investigative reporters have dug deeply enough below the surface of Clinton Foundation filings, seeking and finding answers to questions concerning the stated financial performance of significant constituent entities as well as the consolidated whole.

I have completed a summary review of these filings, and have attached a report which answers a few key questions. Specifically:

What do Clinton Foundation disclosures tell informed readers about the stewardship of billions of dollars in “charitable contributions” sent to Little Rock, to New York City, to Boston, to London, and to Stockholm from numerous donors with modest means, from wealthy and powerful donors, and from a host of governments and government-connected benefactors?
Did management exercise vigilance to ensure that the Clinton Foundation actually carried out its original and its amended tax-exempt purposes?
Did directors take reasonable care, as fiduciaries, under applicable state, federal, and foreign laws to operate this charity serving, at all times, a public interest?
Are all business arrangements with material “related” parties fully and adequately disclosed in annual, publicly available filings that comparable charities regularly complete on time?

Or, do the Clintons, and others who operate the Clinton Foundation, function as Robin Hood in reverse? Do they dupe small, modest income donors to enrich themselves and cronies?

Headline Conclusions of the First Foundation Report

The truth is that it is difficult to perform penetrating analysis of publicly available financial information pertaining to the Clinton Foundation because, so far, it is not technically complete in numerous material respects.

The numbers that the Clinton Foundation supplies to the public in its legally mandated filings do not add up, are frequently incorrect, and appear to be materially misleading. In numerous cases, the Clinton Foundation appears to have followed inconsistent policies adding in appropriate portions of the various activities it pursued around the world to create “consolidated” financial statements.

As the attached report notes, In several instances portions were added only for some of the years in which the entities remained in operation, artificially enhancing purported financial results. In other cases, important elements of activity were improperly characterized and combined.

Meanwhile the Foundation solicits donations even though its informational filings are not in compliance with applicable law. Regulators at Federal, State, Local, and international levels are not doing what they should do to protect the public.

Why?

And how long must we wait before regulators at home and abroad remedy rampant and persistent deficiencies in the Clinton Foundation’s operating and disclosure practices.

The attached print report details ten specific concerns about the most recent Clinton Foundation filings. I invite your considered reaction.

Read the full interim report here.