No Battle Plan to Defeat Boko Haram?

No battle plan for Boko Haram?  In November of 2013, Boko Haram got a terrorist designation by the State Department. It has proven ties to AQIM. Not only has Boko Harem been responsible and claimed responsibility for killing thousands of civilians but, they have killed countless construction workers and continue to kidnap girls for sex slaves. Boko Haram continues to bring a brutal and deadly campaign against the Nigerian government but also has done the same with a United Nations building as well as Western targets in country. So this begs the question, why has there been no authorization for a battle plan to terminate this terror group in Nigeria such as AFRICOM is begging for one to defeat Boko Haram?

AFRICOM Commander Wants Full Counterinsurgency Plan for Boko Haram  The top commander of U.S. troops in Africa said he would like the U.S. military to do more to fight the terrorist group Boko Haram, but that it’s up to Nigerian and U.S. policy officials to decide how much they’re willing to change the trajectory of that group’s violent stronghold on the region.

U.S. Africa Command’s Gen. David Rodriguez, who previously served as the No. 2-ranking commander of the Afghanistan war, said he believes to turn the tide against Boko Haram would require a full-scale counterinsurgency plan across four countries.

The group now controls a vast territory of northeast Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Niger. Two weeks ago, Boko Haram fighters killed roughly 2,000 people in one attack in the region. The episode drew delayed Western media attention and relatively muted responses from Western leaders. Critics at the time complained that Washington and allied leaders paid disproportionate attention to the terrorist attack in Paris against the satirical periodical Charlie Hebdo, which occurred the same week.

Rodriguez said he felt the international community was amply aware of Nigeria’s crisis and was taking steps to fight the terrorist threat. “But I totally agree that it has to be much more effective all the way around to change what’s going on there, the negative impact on the people, the number of people displaced is just staggering,” he said, at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

“I think it’s going to take a huge international and multinational effort there to change the trajectory of that … I think the Nigerian leadership and Nigerian militaries are really going to have to really improve their capacities to be able to handle that. … I hope that they let us help them more and more,” Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez answered critics of the international response to the terrorist groups by saying it was ultimately Nigeria’s responsibility to request additional U.S. help, which the general was eager to provide.

“We continue to look for a way to constructively support the Nigerian military efforts,” Rodriguez said, “and continue to work will all the nations around there.” But Nigeria has cancelled exercises with U.S. forces. “We hope that that gets better and we hope we are able to train and equip more and more,” he said.

Next month, Nigeria will hold its presidential elections as President Goodluck Jonathan faces increasing criticism that his government has downplayed the crisis and proven inept in its response. Secretary of State John Kerry just returned from Nigeria, where he urged calm amid concern that the security situation could threaten the elections and spark additional violence.

“What has come together is a ‘perfect storm’ of security threats,” said Peter Pham, director of the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center, testifying Tuesday before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. Pham listed Boko Haram’s continuing insurgency and terrorist attacks to neighboring countries beyond Nigeria, the possibly millions displaced by the conflict, and the economic pressure created by the falling price of oil.

“It’s Boko Haram version 3.0,” Pham told Defense One. “It’s a group that’s gone from being a violent extremist group, to a terrorist group carrying out attacks, suicide bombings and other acts of violence, to full-fledged insurgency, occupying territory, trying to set up a mini-government, a mini-caliphate of its own.”

Emmanuel Ogebe, manager for the Peaceful Polls 2015 Project promoting fair elections in Nigeria, said that while Boko Haram killed roughly 2,000 people in 2012, they have exceeded that in the first week of 2015.

“Boko Haram has led ISIS the last three years in atrocities,” he said. “It puzzles me to this day that Boko Haram does not get the attention that ISIS has … Paris got way more attention than the people of Baga ever did, even though the destruction of Baga was an extinction-level event.”

“I want to say that black lives matter when it comes to global terrorism as well,” he said.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn., said while much of the attention in the counterterrorism fight has been on other regions, over time, he’s going to make Africa more of a priority in the committee. “Certainly, [Boko Haram] have turned out to be an incredibly disruptive force, and much of our focus has been on what’s happening in Syria,” Corker told Defense One. “We need to be paying attention to what’s happening in Nigeria as well.”

Robert Jackson, principal deputy assistant secretary of State for African Affairs, said that the U.S. government supports the idea of a joint task force and wants the U.S. to continue training vetted Nigerian soldiers. But he added, “Peaceful and credible elections is a condition for greater [U.S.] engagement, and we want to get through that step first.”

“I think there’s a tremendous effort to combat Boko Haram,” Rodriguez said, referring to the military multinational task force, in all four nations. “In Nigeria, we have continued to build their naval security apparatus, it’s going very, very well, and we have expended our intelligence sharing efforts with them.” But much more is needed, he said.

Part of the complication of this training, Pham noted, are accusations that the Nigerian government and military have committed human rights abuses. By law, the U.S. cannot provide training or equipment to individuals or units that are implicated in human rights violations. While the Defense Department can grant exceptions for equipment and assistance necessary for disaster relief, national emergencies, or “extraordinary circumstances,” as determined by the secretary of defense, Pham said, no exception has ever been made in Africa to his knowledge. “Not every member or unit of the Nigerian military are human rights abusers,” he said. “To say it is all corrupt, inefficient, and violates human rights is painting with a very broad brush.”

Earlier this year, one round of a program by which U.S. Army instructors trained a battalion of Nigerian “rangers” was paused due to a lack of equipment, according to Pham. By a memorandum of understanding, the Nigerian government had agreed to buy the equipment its forces would need.

The Nigerian government spends roughly $5.8 to $6 billion of its budget on security, while its total economy is roughly half a trillion dollars, according to Pham. Its military is made up of some 90,000 active duty and 20-25,000 reserve components – “For a country of 180 million people, that’s disproportionately small,” he said.

When civilian rule was restored to Nigeria after a series of military takeovers in the 80s and 90s, the government essentially starved the military in order to protect against another coup. Now, Nigerian forces badly need the training the U.S. can uniquely provide, Pham said – but it will take time.

“To fight a group like [Boko Haram], you have to be not only a war-fighting Army, but one trained in counterinsurgency,” he said, echoing Rodriguez’ comments made hours earlier across Washington.

Rodriguez would not say whether the U.S. could to more to stop Boko Haram, short of full scale counterinsurgency, only that whatever level of U.S. military intervention he is tasked to provide is “a policy decision” that is not his to make.

Islamic State Funnels U.S. Dollars/Kills Former Marine

Islamic State has an operating wing in Pakistan and fundraising dollars are funneled through the United States. The attacked yesterday on the hotel in Libya killed an American, a former Marine. ISLAMABAD: Yousaf al Salafi – allegedly the Pakistan commander of Islamic State (IS) or Daish – has confessed during investigations that he has been receiving funds through the United States.

Law enforcing agencies on January 22 claimed that they arrested al Salafi, along with his two companions, during a joint raid in Lahore. However, sources revealed that al Salafi was actually arrested sometimes in December last year and it was only disclosed on January 22.

“During the investigations, Yousaf al Salafi revealed that he was getting funding – routed through America – to run the organisation in Pakistan and recruit young people to fight in Syria,” a source privy to the investigations revealed to Daily Express on the condition of anonymity.

Al Salafi is a Pakistani-Syrian, who entered Pakistan through Turkey five months ago. Earlier, it was reported that he crossed into Turkey from Syria and was caught there. However, he managed to escape from Turkey and reached Pakistan to establish IS in the region.

Sources said al Salafi’s revelations were shared with the US Secretary of State John Kerry during his recent visit to Islamabad. “The matter was also taken up with CENTCOM chief General Lloyd Austin during his visit to Islamabad earlier this month,” a source said.

Al Salafi also confessed that he – along with a Pakistani accomplice, reportedly imam of a mosque – was recruiting people to send them to Syria and was getting around $600 per person from Syria.

“The US has been condemning the IS activities but unfortunately has not been able to stop funding of these organisations, which is being routed through the US,” a source said.

“The US had to dispel the impression that it is financing the group for its own interests and that is why it launched offensive against the organisation in Iraq but not in Syria,” he added.                                                                               

 

There are reports that citizens from Libya, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India besides other countries are being recruited by the IS to fight in Syria. Posters and wall chalking in favour of the IS have also been seen in various cities in Pakistan.  Former U.S. Marine Killed by Islamic State’s Tripoli ‘Province’

Two gunmen entered the Corinthia Hotel in Tripoli Tuesday morning. When their shooting rampage was over, at least ten people had been killed. For jihadists in Libya, the hotel was an inviting target. Foreign diplomats, Western tourists and officials from Libya’s rival governments are known to frequent it. Indeed, the victims were five foreigners, including an American, and five Libyans.

The American killed in the attack has been identified as David Berry. According to the New York Daily News, Berry is a former U.S. Marine who worked as a security contractor for Crucible, LLC.  The company’s web site says that Crucible “provides high-risk environment training and global security solutions to employees of the U.S. Government, NGOs, and multinational corporations who live and work in dangerous and austere locations worldwide.” The company has not identified the client Berry was working for at the time of his death.

In the past, it could take weeks or months for a terrorist organization to take credit for an attack. Sometimes there is no claim of responsibility at all. Before the siege of the Corinthia Hotel had even been ended, however, a group calling itself the Islamic State’s province in Tripoli claimed on Twitter that the attack was the work of its members. In short order, the group posted photos of the two gunmen, identifying one as a Tunisian and the other as being from the Sudan.

The Islamic State, an al Qaeda offshoot that controls much of Iraq and Syria as a self-declared “caliphate,” announced the establishment of several “provinces” in North Africa and the Middle East in November of last year. The group’s provinces are more aspirational than real, as none of them controls much territory.

Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, who heads the Islamic State, argues that all other jihadist groups, and indeed all Muslims, in his provinces’ territories owe him their loyalty now that the caliphate has expanded. From Baghdadi’s perspective, this means that more established jihadist groups, such as al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in Yemen, are now null and void. AQAP, which rejects Baghdadi’s assumed role as “Caliph Ibrahim I,” naturally takes offense to the Islamic State’s proclamations. An already heated rivalry became even testier after the Islamic State’s announcement in November.

Baghdadi’s international sway is often exaggerated. The Islamic State has failed to usurp the power of organizations such as AQAP and Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), both of which remain loyal to al Qaeda emir Ayman al Zawahiri. AQIM and its allies maintain a strong presence in Libya. And we cannot be sure how much of an operational relationship there is between the Islamic State’s headquarters in Iraq or Syria and the groups that fight in Baghdadi’s name in Libya and elsewhere.

Regardless, the Islamic State’s international network, and the threat it poses to American interests, is real. The establishment of “provinces,” which was intended to cut into al Qaeda’s dominant share of the global jihadist market, has had some success.

In fact, Berry is not the first American victim of the Islamic State’s provinces.

Late last year, the Islamic State’s province in the Sinai claimed responsibility for the death of a petroleum worker named William Henderson. The Sinai province was formed by a faction of another group, Ansar Bayt al Maqdis (ABM), which split over the rivalry between al Qaeda and the Islamic State. Henderson was actually killed in August 2014, before ABM’s Sinai presence officially swore allegiance to the Islamic State’s Baghdadi. But there are credible reports of cooperation between ABM and the Islamic State before their formal alliance.

The Sinai province has launched a string of attacks already this year, focusing on Egyptian security forces and others.

Earlier this week, Islamic State spokesman Abu Muhammad al Adnani, announced the formation of a province in the “Khorasan,” a geographical region that covers Afghanistan, Pakistan and parts of neighboring countries. A former Pakistani Taliban leader was named as the Khorasan province’s “governor.” His deputy governor is a former Guantanamo detainee known as Abdul Rauf Khadim.

As is the case elsewhere, the Islamic State’s Khorasan province is not the strongest jihadist organization in its home turf. The Taliban, al Qaeda and their allies have a much firmer foothold in South Asia. And the Khorasan province’s leaders include jihadists who lost internal power struggles in their previous organizations, paving the way for the Islamic State to garner their allegiance. Khadim, for example, was once a senior Taliban commander. After Khadim was forced out of the Taliban, Khadim and his supporters threw their lot in with Baghdadi.  It wasn’t the pull of the Islamic State that led Khadim to switch allegiances, so much as the Taliban’s push, which was caused by Khadim’s disagreements with his fellow jihadists.

Still, Khadim has been an effective commander and the Khorasan province is already active in southern Afghanistan. There have been skirmishes between Baghdadi’s followers and their rivals in the Taliban, which is clearly gunning for Khadim. One report says that the Taliban has captured Khadim and dozens of his followers, but that has not been confirmed.

Obama has Normalized Two Enemies

A long time friend to the United States is Egypt and they placed the Muslim Brotherhood on a terror list as has the United Arab Emirates as well as Saudi Arabia. But even with a petition placed on the White House website to do the same, the White House rejected it. There is no dispute that the Obama regime continues to court the Muslim Brotherhood and it spills into other agencies including the State Department.

Muslim Brotherhood-Aligned Leaders Hosted at State Department 

Brotherhood seeks to rally anti-Sisi supportThe State Department hosted a delegation of Muslim Brotherhood-aligned leaders this week for a meeting about their ongoing efforts to oppose the current government of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi of Egypt, who rose to power following the overthrow of Mohamed Morsi, an ally of the Brotherhood, in 2013.One member of the delegation, a Brotherhood-aligned judge in Egypt, posed for a picture while at Foggy Bottom in which he held up the Islamic group’s notorious four-finger Rabia symbol, according to his Facebook page.

That delegation member, Waleed Sharaby, is a secretary-general of the Egyptian Revolutionary Council and a spokesman for Judges for Egypt, a group reported to have close ties to the Brotherhood.

The delegation also includes Gamal Heshmat, a leading member of the Brotherhood, and Abdel Mawgoud al-Dardery, a Brotherhood member who served as a parliamentarian from Luxor.

Sharaby, the Brotherhood-aligned judge, flashed the Islamist group’s popular symbol in his picture at the State Department and wrote in a caption: “Now in the U.S. State Department. Your steadfastness impresses everyone,” according to an independent translation of the Arabic.

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Another member of the delegation, Maha Azzam, confirmed during an event hosted Tuesday by the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy (CSID)—another group accused of having close ties to the Brotherhood—that the delegation had “fruitful” talks with the State Department.

Maha Azzam confirms that ‘anti-coup’ delegation, which includes 2 top [Muslim Brothers], had ‘fruitful’ conversations at State Dept,” Egypt expert Eric Trager tweeted.

Assam also said that the department expressed openness to engagement, according to one person who attended the event.

Trager, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), told the Washington Free Beacon that the State Department is interested in maintaining a dialogue with the Brotherhood due to its continued role in the Egyptian political scene.

“The State Department continues to speak with Muslim Brothers on the assumption that Egyptian politics are unpredictable, and the Brotherhood still has some support in Egypt,” he said. “But when pro-Brotherhood delegations then post photos of themselves making pro-Brotherhood gestures in front of the State Department logo, it creates an embarrassment for the State Department.”

When asked to comment on the meeting Tuesday evening, a State Department official said, “We meet with representatives from across the political spectrum in Egypt.”

The official declined to elaborate on who may have been hosted or on any details about the timing and substance of any talks.

Samuel Tadros, an Egypt expert and research fellow at the Hudson Institute who is familiar with the delegation, said that the visit is meant to rally support for the Muslim Brotherhood’s ongoing efforts against to oppose Sisi.

“I think the Muslim Brotherhood visit serves two goals,” Tadros said. “First, organizing the pro Muslim Brotherhood movement in the U.S. among the Egyptian and other Arab and Muslim communities.”

“Secondly, reaching out to administration and the policy community in D.C.,” Tadros said. “The delegation’s composition includes several non-official Muslim Brotherhood members to portray an image of a united Islamist and non-Islamist revolutionary camp against the regime.”

The delegation held several public events this week in Maryland and Virginia, according to invitations that were sent out.

Patrick Poole, a terrorism expert and national security reporter, said the powwow at the State Department could be a sign that the Obama administration still considers the Brotherhood politically viable, despite its ouster from power and a subsequent crackdown on its members by Egyptian authorities.

“What this shows is that the widespread rejection of the Muslim Brotherhood across the Middle East, particularly the largest protests in recorded human history in Egypt on June 30, 2013, that led to Morsi’s ouster, is not recognized by the State Department and the Obama administration,” Poole said.

“This is a direct insult to our Egyptian allies, who are in an existential struggle against the Muslim Brotherhood, all in the pursuit of the mythical ‘moderate Islamists’ who the D.C. foreign policy elite still believe will bring democracy to the Middle East,” Poole said.

*** But hold on as it gets worse. We have just seen where Yemen fell at the hands of the Houthis, an Iranian proxy militia. In fact it happened so fast, that I immediately posed the question ….has the State Department reached out to normalize relations with a terror faction that assumed control of Yemen, such that U.S. diplomatic personnel had to be immediately evacuated. The answer sadly is yes…..   Pentagon Confirms U.S. talks with Yemen’s Houthis   U.S. officials are holding discussions with representatives of the Shiite militia in Yemen who have forced the resignation of the country’s president, a Pentagon spokesman said Tuesday.

But the discussions with the Houthi militiamen do not amount to an agreement to share intelligence on al-Qaeda in Yemen, Rear Admiral John Kirby told reporters.

“Given the political uncertainty, it’s fair to say that U.S. government officials are in communication with various parties in Yemen about what is a very fluid and complex political situation,” Kirby said.

“It is also accurate to say that the Huthis, as participants in … these events, will certainly have reason to want to speak to international partners and the international community about their intentions and about how this process is going to unfold,” he said.

“The U.S. government is participating in those discussions.”

But asked if the Americans and Huthis were sharing intelligence on the movements of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), Kirby said: “There’s no intelligence sharing regimen with the Huthis. There’s no formal agreement to do that, and you need those kinds of formal agreements in order to be able to do that.”

Washington has vowed to keep up its fight against AQAP despite the turmoil gripping Yemen, where Western-backed President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi has stepped down after the militia seized the presidential palace.

The United States conducted a drone strike on Monday, killing three suspected Al-Qaeda militants, a tribal source told AFP.

Washington has long relied on Yemen’s government to help it target al-Qaeda extremists and a small contingent of U.S. special forces is deployed to the country to help its army battle AQAP, which U.S. intelligence officials view as the most dangerous branch of the jihadist network.

But U.S. officials are worried that the counter-terrorism and intelligence operations in Yemen will be jeopardized by the upheaval unfolding in Sanaa.

Michael Vickers, undersecretary of defense for intelligence, said last week at an Atlantic Council event that it was unclear if the aim of the Houthi militia “is to take over the state as much as it is to exercise influence and refashion it in a way that they think is more aligned with their interests.”

Russians Funding the Green Energy Agenda

Foreign Firm Funding U.S. Green Groups Tied to State-Owned Russian Oil Company

Executives at a Bermudan firm funneling money to U.S. environmentalists run investment funds with Russian tycoonsA shadowy Bermudan company that has funneled tens of millions of dollars to anti-fracking environmentalist groups in the United States is run by executives with deep ties to Russian oil interests and offshore money laundering schemes involving members of President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle.One of those executives, Nicholas Hoskins, is a director at a hedge fund management firm that has invested heavily in Russian oil and gas. He is also senior counsel at the Bermudan law firm Wakefield Quin and the vice president of a London-based investment firm whose president until recently chaired the board of the state-owned Russian oil company Rosneft.

In addition to those roles, Hoskins is a director at a company called Klein Ltd. No one knows where that firm’s money comes from. Its only publicly documented activities have been transfers of $23 million to U.S. environmentalist groups that push policies that would hamstring surging American oil and gas production, which has hurt Russia’s energy-reliant economy.

With oil prices plunging as a result of a fracking-induced oil glut in the United States, experts say the links between Russian oil interests, secretive foreign political donors, and high-profile American environmentalists suggest Russia may be backing anti-fracking efforts in the United States.

The interest of Russian oil companies and American environmentalist financiers intersect at a Bermuda-based law firm called Wakefield Quin. The firm acts as a corporate registered agent, providing office space for clients, and, for some, “managing the day to day affairs,” according to its website.

As many as 20 companies and investment funds with ties to the Russian government are Wakefield Quin clients. Many list the firm’s address on official documentation.

Klein Ltd. also shares that address. Documents filed with Bermuda’s registrar of companies list just two individuals associated with the company: Hoskins, Wakefield Quin senior counsel and managing director, and Marlies Smith, a corporate administrator at the firm.

According to documents filed with Bermuda’s registrar of companies, Klein Ltd. was incorporated in March 2011 “exclusively for philanthropic purposes,” meaning “no part of the net earnings … inures to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual.”

“The company does not propose to carry on business in Bermuda,” the documents stated.

The only publicly available documentation of any business conducted by Klein Ltd. were two Internal Revenue Service filings by the California-based Sea Change Foundation, which showed that Klein had contributed $23 million to the group in 2010 and 2011. Klein Ltd. was responsible for more than 40 percent of contributions to Sea Change during those years.

The foundation passed those millions along to some of the nation’s most prominent and politically active environmentalist groups. The Sierra Club, the Natural Resource Defense Council, Food and Water Watch, the League of Conservation Voters, and the Center for American Progress were among the recipients of Sea Change’s $100 million in grants in 2010 and 2011.

Neither Wakefield Quin nor Sea Change responded to multiple requests for more information about their relationships with Klein Ltd.

“None of this foreign corporation’s funding is disclosed in any way,” the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee wrote of the company in a report last year. “This is clearly a deceitful way to hide the source of millions of dollars that are active in our system, attempting to effect political change.”

The Sierra Club, which received nearly $8.5 million from Sea Change in 2010 and 2011, launched its “Beyond Natural Gas” campaign the following year. The effort has become one of the largest and best-funded environmentalist campaigns combating fracking and the extraction of natural gas in general.

Sea Change’s “skeletal staff quietly shovels tens of millions of dollars out the door annually to combat climate change. And that’s pretty much all it does,” noted Inside Philanthropy, which awarded the foundation its “sharpest laser focus in grantmaking” award last year.

Nathaniel Simons and his wife run the foundation and are, except for Klein Ltd., its only donors. Simons, a hedge fund millionaire who commutes to work across San Francisco Bay aboard a 50-foot yacht, also runs a venture capital firm that invests in companies that benefit from environmental and energy policies that Sea Change grantees promote.

Simons himself has ties to Klein Ltd. Several Wakefield Quin attorneys are listed as directors of hedge funds that his firm manages, and in which Sea Change has assets.

Senior counsel Rod Forrest was listed on documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission as a director of two investment funds, Medallion International Ltd. and Meritage Holdings Ltd., in which Sea Change had tens of millions invested while it received money from Klein Ltd.

Simons’ company runs the Meritage Fund. The Medallion Fund is run by Renaissance Technologies, the hedge fund management firm run by his father, billionaire and Democratic mega-donor Jim Simons. Both funds listed Wakefield Quin’s Hamilton, Bermuda, address on SEC filings.

Wakefield Quin’s Hoskins and Smith, as well as a number of other employees of Wakefield Quin, have worked in some capacity for companies or investment funds owned by or tied to Russian state-owned corporations and high-level officials in the country.

Hoskins, Forrest, and another Wakefield employee named Penny Cornell were all listed as executives of Spectrum Partners Ltd., a fund with offices in Moscow, Cypress, and Bermuda, Cornell at the address of Wakefield Quin’s offices.

According to a performance report for one of Spectrum Partners’ funds, its portfolio consisted of “Russian and CIS [former Soviet state] securities and securities outside of Russia or CIS but having significant economic or business involvement with Russia and/or CIS.”

As of 2008, more than half of the fund’s holdings were in the oil and gas sectors.

Numerous executives at Wakefield Quin have ties to Russian oil and gas companies, including Rosneft, which is majority-owned by the Russian government and in 2013 became the largest oil company in the world.

Hoskins is the vice president of a London-based company called Marcuard Services Limited, and a member of the firm’s board, according to its website.

The company’s president, and the chairman of its parent company, Bermuda-based Marcuard Holding Limited, is Hans-Joerg Rudloff. Rudloff is also a former vice-chairman of the Rosneft’s board.

Hoskins is also a director at a Bermuda-based subsidiary of Russian investment bank Troika Dialog. That firm organized an initial public offering for Timan Oil & Gas, which is run by Russian oligarch Alexander Lebedev.

The Environmental Policy Alliance, which provided the Washington Free Beacon with a copy of an upcoming report on Klein Ltd.’s Kremlin ties, said Wakefield Quin’s ties to environmental financiers and Russian oil barons merit closer scrutiny.

“The American public deserves to know whether environmentalists are attacking US energy companies at the behest of a Russian government that would like nothing more than to see their international competition weakened,” Will Coggin, a senior research analyst at the EPA, said in an emailed statement.

“In the face of mounting evidence, environmental groups are going to have to start answering hard questions about their international funding sources,” Coggin said.

The overlap between executives at firms with ties to Russian oil interests and a multi-million-dollar donor to U.S. environmentalist groups has some experts worried that Russians may be replicating anti-fracking tactics used in Europe to attack the practice in the United States.

“I have met allies who can report that Russia, as part of their sophisticated information and disinformation operations, engaged actively with so-called non-governmental organizations—environmental organizations working against shale gas—to maintain European dependence on imported Russian gas,” Anders Fogh Rasmussen, formerly NATO’s secretary general, said last year.

It is unlikely that the Kremlin is directly involved in doing so in the United States, according to Ron Arnold of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise.

“If anybody in Russia is behind all the secretive Bermuda investment house and law firm action, it’s most likely some oligarch bidding against U.S. competition,” he said in an email.

Arnold, the author of Undue Influence: Wealthy Foundations, Grant Driven Environmental Groups, and Zealous Bureaucrats That Control Your Future, said that the opacity of Klein Ltd.’s involvement with the Sea Change Foundation exemplifies attempts to shield the source of donations to such groups.

“In my experience of trying to penetrate offshore money funnels for U.S. leftist foundations and green groups, I have found that Liechtenstein, Panama and Bermuda are the Big Three green equivalents of the Cayman Islands for hedge fund managers—totally opaque and impervious to my specially designed research tools,” Arnold said.

Bergdahl, 5 Years and Forfeit Salary?

It is official, charges are likely to be rendered this week on Bowe Bergdahl. The chatter is recommending 5 years in prison and forfeiture of his salary during the time he defected. But is this enough if accurate? Read on to determine for yourself given the summary below.

The Unraveling

How the Obama administration’s story on Bowe Bergdahl and the Taliban fell apart

Late in the afternoon of Saturday, May 31, Barack Obama strode confidently to a lectern in the White House Rose Garden flanked by the parents of Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, a soldier who had gone missing from his platoon in the mountains of Afghanistan in June 2009.

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“This morning I called Bob and Jani Bergdahl and told them that after nearly five years in captivity, their son, Bowe, is coming home,” Obama said.

The president thanked service members who “recovered Sergeant Bergdahl and brought him safely out of harm’s way.” Obama also expressed gratitude to the diplomats who had handled the case, and he reported that his administration had “worked for several years to achieve this goal.” The president confirmed news reports from earlier in the day that Bergdahl had been freed as part of a prisoner exchange with the Afghan Taliban—a deal that was brokered by the government of Qatar. “As part of this effort, the United States government is transferring five detainees from the prison in Guantánamo Bay to Qatar,” he announced.

The Bergdahls were understandably emotional about the news and in brief statements thanked their friends and their government for supporting them through the long ordeal.

It was, for Obama, a fleeting moment of triumph. For more than a year, the president had been buffeted by events that he could not—or would not—control. The disastrous debut of Obamacare, the continuing fallout from the Benghazi attacks, the consequences of intelligence disclosures by Edward Snowden, the unfolding human tragedy in Syria, the Russian power play in Ukraine, the scandal that has engulfed the Veterans Administration—in one crisis after another, the man who once boldly declared his intent to be a transformative president had shown himself to be a reactive one.

But in the course of three days in late May, Obama sought to wrest control back by demonstrating progress on two of his longest-held goals: ending America’s overseas wars and closing the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. On May 28, in a commencement speech before cadets graduating from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Obama declared that all combat troops would be out of Afghanistan by the end of 2016. And three days later, in announcing the transfer of five senior Taliban officials, all designated at “high risk” to return to battle, Obama demonstrated his determination to shutter the detainee facility.

The morning after Obama announced the prisoner exchange, top national security officials from his administration fanned out on the Sunday talk shows. The job of explaining the president’s decision fell to defense secretary Chuck Hagel and national security adviser Susan Rice.

The president, recognizing the “acute and urgent situation” of the missing soldier, had an obligation to “prioritize the health of Sgt. Bergdahl,” Rice explained. “His life could have been at risk.” Waiting was not an option.

Bergdahl was a hero, she suggested, “an American prisoner of war captured on the battlefield” who had served his country with “honor and distinction.”

In an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union, Rice explained that the five Taliban commanders would be transferred to Qatar, where “they will be carefully watched” and “their ability to move will be constrained.”

Rice brushed off concerns that the United States had engaged in hostage negotiations with terrorists, emphasizing that the United States communicated indirectly with the Taliban through the Qataris. Hagel, for his part, was clear about the U.S. diplomatic partners on the exchange. “We didn’t negotiate with terrorists,” he insisted in an appearance on Meet the Press.

He downplayed the notion that the five Taliban commanders could present a threat to the United States, arguing that he wouldn’t sign off on any detainee transfer unless “our country can be assured that we can sufficiently mitigate any risk to America’s security.”

And then came the unraveling.

Many of Hagel’s and Rice’s key claims would be disputed quickly. Some would prove to be misleading, others simply false.

No risk to America’s security? Michael Leiter, the former head of the National Counterterrorism Center under Obama, said it was “very, very likely” that the five Taliban leaders would return to the fight. An intelligence official who briefed the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, Rob Williams, the national intelligence officer for South Asia, said that there is a high likelihood that at least four of the five freed prisoners, and possibly all of them, will rejoin the fight. Even Obama, after downplaying the threat, conceded that “absolutely” there was a chance they would take up arms against America.

Didn’t negotiate with terrorists? The United States engaged in “direct discussions with the Taliban in late 2011, early 2012,” a senior administration official acknowledged in a background briefing with reporters on May 31. The Taliban took possession of Bergdahl in Afghanistan, where the U.S. military can freely conduct operations, and quickly transferred him to the Haqqani network, a Taliban-associated group in Pakistan, where it cannot go. The Haqqani network held Bergdahl until shortly before his release. They were formally designated a terrorist group by the United States in September 2012. One of the early U.S. requests in the talks was a simple one: The Taliban had to renounce terrorism. They refused.

The freed Taliban figures will be carefully watched? A report by Reuters quoted a senior Gulf official on security provisions for the Taliban in Qatar as saying, “They can move freely within the country. Under the deal, they have to stay in Qatar for a year, and then they will be allowed to travel outside the country. .  .  . They can go back to Afghanistan if they want to.” Reuters further reported that the men “will not be treated as prisoners while in Doha and no U.S. officials will be involved in monitoring their movements while in the country.”

Bergdahl served with “honor and distinction”? “That’s not true,” Specialist Cody Full told The Weekly Standard. “He was a deserter. There’s no question in the minds of anyone in our platoon.”

Bergdahl’s rapidly declining health required immediate intervention to save his life? In a video of the hand-over released by the Taliban, Bergdahl appeared gaunt but walked without apparent difficulty to the waiting helicopter. Doctors at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany said he was having nutritional issues but listed him in “stable” condition. And, according to the Wall Street Journal, the video that generated the sense of urgency was filmed in December 2013, six months before the “emergency” prisoner exchange.

In the days following the announcement of the exchange, the public scrutiny of three aspects of the deal—Bergdahl’s disappearance, his health, and the threat posed by the release of the Guantánamo detainees—left Obama back where he started. His trip to Europe for a meeting of the G-7 was overshadowed by questions about the deal, and Obama found himself, once again, reacting to a crisis of his own making.

The Disappearance

Almost immediately after the Rose Garden ceremony, Bowe Bergdahl’s platoon mates began telling a story they’d been ordered to keep quiet. Bergdahl, they said, was a deserter. Specialist Full took to Twitter and in a long string of posts—interrupted only by short breaks for beer—provided his recollections of Bergdahl’s disappearance.

In a subsequent interview with The Weekly Standard, Full was blunt. “He was not a hero. What he did was not honorable. He knowingly deserted and put thousands of people in danger because he did. We swore to an oath, and we upheld ours. He did not.”

Specialist Josh Cornelison shared that view. “He walked off—and ‘walked off’ is a nice way to put it,” said Cornelison, the medic in Bergdahl’s platoon. “He was accounted for late that afternoon. He very specifically planned to walk out in the middle of the night.”

In total, nine members of Bergdahl’s squad have accused him of walking out on his fellow soldiers. An AR 15-6 investigation conducted by the Army came to the same conclusion, though it stopped short of formally classifying Bergdahl as a deserter because such a label requires knowledge of intent, which the Army investigators lacked.

Speaking out about the circumstances of Bergdahl’s departure took some courage. At the time of his disappearance, the soldiers were instructed not to talk about Bergdahl, his departure, or his possible whereabouts. That much is routine—any public discussion of the hostage could threaten his life and the lives of the troops and intelligence officials working to rescue him. But these soldiers were also asked to sign nondisclosure agreements. That step, a former senior Pentagon official says, is “highly unusual.”

Bergdahl’s platoon mates’ concern for his well-being quickly became a concern for their own. Within days of his disappearance, the U.S. military received intelligence reports that Bergdahl had deliberately sought out the Taliban. Evan Buetow, the platoon leader, told CNN’s Jake Tapper that they’d gotten a report that Bergdahl was in Yahya Khel, a village less than two kilometers away, asking villagers for someone who spoke English and could lead him to the Taliban. “I heard it straight from the interpreter’s lips as he heard it on the radio,” Buetow said. “There’s a lot more to this story than a soldier walking away.”

The minute-by-minute military log of Bergdahl’s disappearance and the subsequent rescue efforts was made public via WikiLeaks. And while that long, jargon-filled account includes reporting on Bergdahl’s asking for an English speaker, it does not include the rather important detail that the missing soldier, traveling without his weapon, was seeking the enemy.

Still, other soldiers have backed up Buetow’s version of events. And a Washington Post report on June 4 confirmed it. Villagers told the Post’s Kevin Sieff that Bergdahl was looking for the Taliban. Ibrahim Mankiel, the district intelligence chief, asked the obvious question: “Why would an American want to find the Taliban?”

While it’s important in the current context to avoid jumping to conclusions about Bergdahl’s motivations, those working to find him in rural Afghanistan—and trying to survive—didn’t have that luxury. In short order, Bergdahl had gone from fellow soldier to deserter to potential collaborator with the enemy. Did Bergdahl share valuable information with the Taliban—either voluntarily or under duress? A retired U.S. Army captain who led troops in both Afghanistan and Iraq tells The Weekly Standard that whatever the Army eventually finds out about Bergdahl’s possible cooperation with the enemy, his squad mates had to assume the worst—particularly after learning that he’d gone looking for their enemy. This officer says he would have told any soldiers who saw Bergdahl in a village to assume they were walking into an ambush.

That kind of suspicion may have been warranted. “Over the next couple of months, all the attacks were definitely far more directed,” Buetow told Tapper. “Before he left, we’d have IEDs go off virtually every day, but they were going off in front of the trucks .  .  . on the side of the road. Following Bergdahl’s disappearance, IEDs started going off directly under the trucks. They were getting perfect hits every time.” Soldiers in the region chased bogus leads on Bergdahl’s whereabouts that sometimes led to traps, well-orchestrated attempts to lure Bergdahl’s would-be rescuers into situations where they would be vulnerable to attack.

The results of the initial investigation into Bergdahl’s disappearance remain classified, and the administration has resisted congressional calls to make them public. When top Obama administration national security officials briefed senators on June 4, they expressed frustration with the public debate around Bergdahl’s departure, telling lawmakers that his fellow soldiers were more nuanced in their initial interviews than in their recent comments.

Still, it seems clear that Bergdahl, who walked away from his unit in the middle of a war and whose departure greatly increased risks to his fellow soldiers, was not “captured on the battlefield” and did not serve with “honor and distinction,” as Susan Rice had said. When Buetow was asked on Fox News what he thought when he heard Rice’s claim, he said, “It upset me.”

The Army has launched a second investigation into Bergdahl’s departure. Shortly after he was transferred to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, counter-intelligence interrogators peppered Bergdahl with questions about his disappearance and his time in captivity. What he says in those interviews—and what he doesn’t—will shape the investigation.

Bergdahl’s Health

Shortly after Bergdahl was handed over to the Americans on May 31, a helicopter whisked him to Bagram Air Base, and then he was flown to Germany. Doctors who evaluated him have provided few details, but they listed him in “stable condition and receiving treatment for conditions requiring hospitalization.” The statement cited only “attention to diet and nutrition needs” in its description of his treatment.

A National Security Council official who briefed reporters just two hours after the exchange took place said of Bergdahl: “He’s in good condition and able to walk.”

Susan Rice offered a similar assessment on This Week. Bergdahl “is said to be walking and in good physical condition.”

That must have been quite a surprise. In describing the urgency of the prisoner exchange, top Obama administration officials including Rice and Hagel offered descriptions of Bergdahl that made him sound as though he were near death. “We had information that his health could be deteriorating rapidly,” Hagel said on Meet the Press. “There was a question about his safety.”

Obama administration officials frequently used Bergdahl’s health to explain why they had decided to ignore the requirement in the National Defense Authorization Act to give Congress 30 days’ notice before transferring detainees from Guantánamo. Hagel acknowledged that the administration hadn’t given so much as a heads-up to key members of Congress until the transfers were already taking place, despite regular assurances—in public and in private—that Congress would be consulted. The withering criticism was bipartisan.

“Our views were clearly translated,” said Senator Dianne Feinstein, the Democrat from California who chairs the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, at a press availability on June 3. “So it comes with some surprise and dismay that the transfers went ahead with no consultation, totally not following the law.”

The more heat the administration received for ignoring Congress, the more dire their descriptions of Bergdahl’s health became. In a press briefing on June 2, White House spokesman Jay Carney pointed to “the state of his health” as one of the key reasons the White House had ignored the requirements of the NDAA.

But members of Congress, including top Democrats, weren’t buying it. “He was undernourished, not necessarily malnourished,” Feinstein said, pointing to a recent intelligence assessment. “Unless something catastrophic happened, I think there was no reason to believe he was in instant danger. There certainly was time to pick up the phone and call.”

On June 4, the Wall Street Journal published a lengthy story, sourced heavily to Obama administration officials, reporting that Bergdahl’s health was the main reason for the urgency of the exchange. “Two secret videos showing rapid deterioration in Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s health persuaded reluctant military and intelligence leaders to back the prisoner swap that has stoked a backlash,” the story began. According to the Journal, the Qatari government provided a proof-of-life video to the U.S. government in January 2014. It had been shot the month before, in December 2013.

The story did not explain why a video from late last year generated sudden urgency—six months later. Was additional intelligence gathered more recently that suggested Bergdahl might die without immediate intervention? If so, the administration has not cited it.

The Journal story quoted Shawn Turner, the spokesman for director of national intelligence James Clapper, explaining why his boss, previously skeptical of the prisoner exchange, now favored it: The intelligence community, Turner said, had “evidence that Sgt. Bergdahl’s health was failing and that he was in desperate need of medical attention.”

That same morning, the Taliban released a 17-minute propaganda video of the exchange. In the video, Bergdahl looks somewhat gaunt and confused, but otherwise healthy. He walks without assistance from a pickup truck to the U.S. forces who have come to retrieve him, and then on to the helicopter that will take him to Bagram.

A video isn’t enough to permit a medical diagnosis, of course, but there’s little question that images of Bergdahl were not consistent with the administration’s descriptions of him before his release. Neither are the things that top intelligence officials were telling lawmakers in closed briefings. When Clapper, the nation’s top intelligence official, answered questions on Capitol Hill Wednesday, he was asked directly if the United States had intelligence showing that Bergdahl’s health required immediate extraction. “The intel wouldn’t support that,” Clapper responded, according to sources familiar with his testimony.

By the evening of Wednesday, June 4, when the White House dispatched top national security officials to Capitol Hill to brief an all-Senate meeting, the administration was backing away from claims that Bergdahl’s health had required that the exchange take place when it did. Although the senators were shown the December proof-of-life video, administration briefers downplayed the urgent health issues that had been a key talking point over the previous several days. “It was a subtle, but a very real shift,” said one senator who attended the briefing. Instead, the briefers recast their argument, saying that they could not have told Congress because a leak about the negotiations could have killed the deal. That was the reason—not Bergdahl’s health—that Congress was not notified.

Sources say the briefers expressed bewilderment that people thought the administration had claimed Bergdahl’s health condition was so poor it threatened his life. “That fell flat,” said an official in the briefing. “Even Democrats weren’t buying it.”

Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, expressed skepticism. “His health was not the critical factor. .  .  . In that one video, you can tell he had been drugged .  .  . and he was in a different state five months ago.”

The Weekly Standard asked Turner, the DNI spokesman, to explain the discrepancies. He said that the Journal article had not used his entire statement and suggested that the edited version was misleading. In a new statement late Wednesday, Turner said: “Sgt. Bergdahl’s suspected deteriorating health was one of a number of factors that contributed to the DNI’s decision. It was not the only factor and certainly was not the determining factor. It was a data point—one of many.”

Subsequent requests for comment—about Clapper’s testimony and any fresh evidence that Bergdahl’s life had been in jeopardy—went unanswered.

If the administration was retiring the dangerously-poor-health talking point, someone forgot to tell the president and his secretary of defense.

Hagel, in an interview with the BBC that aired Thursday, went further: “It was our judgment based on the information that we had that his life, his health were in peril.”

Obama, one day after his top intelligence official rejected claims that Bergdahl’s health had made an emergency deal necessary, made the claim yet again. “We had a prisoner of war whose health had deteriorated and we were deeply concerned about it. And we saw an opportunity and we seized it.”

Guantánamo

The other side of that opportunity was the transfer of five senior Taliban commanders from captivity in Guantánamo to relative freedom in Qatar. The Taliban had been seeking the release of these five officials—plus another who died in prison—for more than three years. The assessments of the men conducted by Joint Task Force Guantánamo (JTF-GTMO) found that each one presented a “high risk” of returning to the battle if he were released. Other detainees had been assessed as lesser threats, and some had even been cleared for release. Not these prisoners.

“All five of those guys are exceptionally dangerous,” says Paul Rester, the former lead interrogator at Joint Task Force Guantánamo. “These are men who ran entire regions for the Taliban, they had thousands of fighters under their command. They survived the Soviets, they survived the civil war, they survived us, they survived Sam Scott’s Gitmo chicken.”

Rester and his team were responsible for the threat assessments of the detainees. An experienced interrogator, Rester got his start during the Vietnam war and first interviewed mujahedeen in the 1980s when the United States saw them as allies against the Soviet Union. Rester interrogated many of those at Guantánamo and in some cases got to know them well. He and his team rewrote their assessments every year.

“Those assessments only tell the story of how they constitute a risk to us,” he says. “They don’t tell you how they are revered in the population. They can think rings around us in that environment.”

When Obama came to Washington, he made clear that one of the immediate goals of his presidency would be to close the facility at Guantánamo. So the president set up his own team, the Guantánamo Review Task Force, made up of lawyers, military officers, intelligence analysts, and diplomats, who would make recommendations to the president about how to handle individual prisoners.

JTF-GTMO’s job was to assess each detainee’s intent and ability to harm the United States, its interests, and its allies. Its assessments were done by men and women who were chiefly concerned with prosecuting a war. The Guantánamo Review Task Force’s mandate was different. It was established simultaneously with President Obama’s order to shutter the facility in one year. That deadline proved impractical, but the task force was formed for the purpose of closing Guantánamo. Clearly, the task force was willing to accept more risk in detainee transfers than JTF-GTMO. Indeed, the task force recommended that dozens of detainees who were deemed “high risk” by JTF-GTMO be transferred.

But even the Obama team recommended that 48 of the remaining Guantánamo detainees be held indefinitely. All five Taliban commanders that Obama released last week were in this group.

For Rester, that’s significant. “We had the best military analysts on the planet look at these guys and recommend against transfer,” he says. “And then Obama’s team—this administration’s most knowledgeable, courageous, and liberal legal minds came to the same conclusion. They could not bring themselves to recommend these guys for transfer or release.”

Many of the intelligence officials who have worked on Guantánamo agree with them. In a hearing on June 4, Clapper was asked to assess the likelihood that these individuals would return to the fight on a scale of 1 to 10. Clapper gave one of the men an 8 and the other four a 9.

But Obama and his team are telling the public a different story. “I will not sign off on any detainee coming out of Guantánamo unless I am assured .  .  . that we can sufficiently mitigate any risk to American security,” said Hagel on Meet the Press.

Those risks are not mitigated. They’re enhanced.

“Unless the goal is to increase the combat power of the enemy, they should have remained under U.S. government control,” says one former intelligence official who worked on Guantánamo issues. “Those five in particular should have remained at Guantánamo at least until the last U.S. military person [in Afghanistan] has been withdrawn.”