Category Archives: FBI

Fake U.S. Embassy in Ghana for 7 Years, Embarrassed?

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Is anyone at the U.S. State Department embarrassed that a fake embassy operated in Ghana for 7 years, anyone? Hello John Kerry, did you question Hillary at all on this. She was there in 2012. It should be noted that in 2012 Gene Cretz was the U.S. Ambassador to Ghana and he was also the Ambassador to Libya just prior to Ambassador Chris Stevens. Something really seems to smell here. Anyone response from Samantha Power, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, did she ever visit the country?

 SofRep

The Secretary will be going to Ghana, which is one of our most important democratic and development partners in Africa. She will be attending the funeral tomorrow of the late John Atta Mills. President Mills was recently in the United States to attend the G-8 meeting at Camp David, and five weeks before that he was in the United States on a state visit to meet with President Obama. You will all recall that on July 11th of 2009, President Obama traveled to Ghana on his trip to Africa and made his famous speech outlining our policy, in which he said we wanted partnership and not patronage, we wanted a mutual respectful and responsible relationship between the United States and Africa, and where he urged Africa to strengthen its democratic institutions, famously saying Africa needs strong institutions, not strong men.

Ghana has been a democracy, a multiparty democracy, since 1992. It has had some of the best elections in Africa. There have been changes not only of presidency but also of the political party in power. It probably has one of the best democracies on the continent, and it certainly has one of the most well-known and respected election commissioners on the continent.

Ghana has had a smooth transition since the death of John Atta Mills. The Vice President was sworn in very quickly without any political upheaval or turmoil. The country will have presidential elections in December. We think those elections will be like the last ones, hotly contested between the two leading parties. But we expect those elections will be free, fair, and transparent, and that they will also be peaceful and internationally monitored.

The Secretary will have an opportunity to meet with the new President, President Mahama, at his residence shortly after we arrive in Accra this evening. It’s out of respect and appreciation for the close relationship that President Mahama is doing this. We regard him as a friend of the United States. He is a Muslim in predominantly a Christian country, but the religious relationships between Muslims and Christians across Ghana is very, very good (inaudible). More here from the State Department spokesperson.

**** Now for the fake part and wonder if Hillary or Barack or John even went to the embassy which is standard protocol and if they did, they knew it was fake. Where there Marines protecting the building? Hah…

**** The exterior of the fake embassy in Accra, in an undated photo.

The exterior of the fake embassy in Accra, in an undated photo.  (State Dept.)

State Dept: No visas from fake American embassy in Ghana used to enter US

None of the altered visas issued at a fake U.S. embassy in West Africa for seven years appears to have been used to enter the United States, the State Department said Monday.

State Department spokesman John Kirby said the visas were created from bought, stolen or otherwise illegally obtained passports.

U.S. officials this summer discovered and shuttered the fake embassy in Accra, Ghana. However, news reports about the criminal operation began to appear only in the past several weeks, following a Nov. 2 posting on the State Department’s website.

The embassy building flew a U.S. flag every morning for three days a week, and inside the building was a picture of President Obama.

The operation was purportedly run by Ghanaian and Turkish organized crime rings that “were able to pay off corrupt officials,” the State Department said in November.

And those who posed as consulate employees were in fact Turkish citizens who spoke English and Dutch.

Responding to skeptical reporters’ questions Monday, Kirby said those who bought the fake visas likely didn’t try to enter the country with them or were stopped at the border because the visas were of “pretty poor quality.”

He also said valid U.S. visas contain the kind of digital data that is nearly impossible to replicate.

A fake Netherlands embassy in Ghana also was shuttered in this summer’s sting.

Kirby said Monday that he has no reports of other fake operations but that the joint task force that shuttered the fake embassies, Operation Spartan Vanguard, continues to look for them.

The task force is led by U.S. Diplomatic Services and includes Canadian embassy officials and local police.

Those who bought the fake visas paid as much as $6,000.

Kirby also said Monday that none of the fake visas was stolen from the real U.S. embassy in Ghana.

The raids led to the recovery of 150 passports from 10 countries and visas from the U.S., India, South Africa and the European Schengen zone.

Those involved in the scheme would drive “to the most remote parts of West Africa” to find visa applicants and transport them to Accra, the State Department said. They also used fliers and billboards to lure victims from Ghana, Ivory Coast and Togo.

VA Secretary McDonald is an Ass

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Citizens Against Government Waste does a remarkable job as a watchdog over waste, fraud and abuse. Hat tip to this organization for their stellar work and notably this item on VA Secretary Robert McDonald.

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CAGW Names VA Secretary Robert McDonald November Porker of the Month

Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) named Secretary of Veterans Affairs (VA) Robert McDonald its November 2016 Porker of the Month for giving bonuses to some of the senior executives who were involved in the continuing hospital wait-times scandal.

Despite assurances by Sec. McDonald and President Obama that the wait-times scandal was isolated to Phoenix and that the department has solved the problem, numerous VA inspector general (IG) reports over the last year have confirmed that thousands of veterans still languish in the VA’s single-payer system. They are waiting for care mainly due to the department’s abject failure to solve its corrosive culture, which led to the scandal in the first place.  Data released on June 3, 2016 found that the number of patients who have waited more than a month to see a doctor exceeded a half a million since the beginning of 2016, and no improvement was seen in any month so far this year.

In the face of this continued mismanagement, an October 28, 2016 USA Today report found that the VA had provided $177 million worth of bonuses to its nearly 189,000 employees in 2015.  Included in that total were more than 300 senior executives, some of whom were intimately involved in the ongoing wait-times scandal at the Phoenix VA hospital as well as facilities nationwide.

In an April 7, 2016 USA Today investigation, some of these same officials in 19 states were exposed as routinely “zeroing out” wait times for veterans and concealing the true length of delays.  Astonishingly, VA supervisors themselves instructed schedulers to fabricate wait times at medical facilities in seven states.

Sec. McDonald’s May 23, 2016 attempt to reassure veterans and taxpayers of his focus on reform failed in an epic fashion when he compared veteran wait times to lines at Disney theme parks.  Those comments, along with the payment of bonuses to corrupt VA executives, seems to clearly illustrate Sec. McDonald’s flagrant disregard for reforming his beleaguered department.

CAGW President Tom Schatz said, “The thoughtless payment of bonuses to shady VA bosses is despicable.  Sec. McDonald was heralded as a private-sector business leader who could turn around a troubled department.  Instead, Sec. McDonald is even worse than a standard issue Washington bureaucrat.  As I said after Sec. McDonald made his callous Disney comparison, he is Frozen in the past, and perhaps the fish from Finding Nemo need to be called on to help the VA find a new leader.”

The last time Secretary McDonald testified before the Senate:

For rewarding corrupt VA bosses and failing to ensure that veterans get timely care, CAGW names VA Secretary Robert McDonald its November 2016 Porker of the Month.

Citizens Against Government Waste is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.  Porker of the Month is a dubious honor given to lawmakers, government officials, and political candidates who have shown a blatant disregard for the interests of taxpayers.

Obama Admin Illegally Raiding Funds to Pay for Refugees

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There is still time to begin impeachment hearings on these people, schedule Oversight hearings and refer to DoJ from criminal prosecution as it is Congress alone that designates exactly where money is to be allocated and spent.

Meanwhile it seems HHS and the Office of Refugee Resettlement does not think some of these agencies need all the dollars assigned to them, perhaps that too is yet another place to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse if those agencies can in fact due without the raided funds. In the end, the Obama administration along with Sylvia Burwell have violated standing law with twisted priorities to non-citizens…yup illegals.

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Feds cut $167 million in domestic programs to house, feed illegals for just 1 month

WT: The Department of Health and Human Services is raiding several of its accounts, including money for Medicare, the Ryan White AIDS/HIV program and those for cancer and flu research to cover a shortfall in housing illegal youths pouring over the border at a rate of 255 a day.

HHS is trying to come up with $167 million to fund the Office of Refugee Resettlement that is accepting the youths, according to the Center for Immigration Studies.

Policy Director Jessica Vaughan said that insiders have told her that the funding crisis has forced the department to squeeze programs for money.

She just revealed on the CIS website:

“An average of 255 illegal alien youths were taken into the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) every day this month, according to the latest figures the agency provided to Congress. This is the largest number of illegal alien children ever in the care of the federal government. To pay for it, the agency says it will need an additional one or two billion dollars for the next year – above and beyond the $1.2 billion spent in 2016 and proposed for 2017 – depending on how many more arrive. For now, the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), where ORR resides, is diverting $167 million from other programs to cover the cost of services for these new illegal arrivals through December 9, when the current continuing resolution expires.”

The money, she said, pays for “shelters, health care, schooling, recreation, and other services for the new illegal arrivals, who typically were brought to the border by smugglers paid by their parents, who often are living in the United States illegally.”

What’s more, it will pay for just one month.

Her sources said the following programs are being hit to pay for the illegals, about half of which the government will lose contact with.

— $14 million from the Health Resources and Services Administration, including $4.5 million from the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program and $2 million from the Maternal and Child Health program.

— $14 million from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for contagious disease prevention and treatment and other critical public health programs.

— $72 million from the National Institutes of Health, for research on cancer, diabetes, drug abuse, mental health, infectious diseases and much more.

— $8 million from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, for treatment and prevention programs.

— $8 million from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

— $39 million from the Children and Families Services Program.

— $4 million from the Aging and Disability Services Programs.

— $3 million from the Public Health and Social Services Emergency Fund, including more than $1 million from the Pandemic Influenza and BioShield Fund.

Rehab Program with Fun Activities in Saudi is Fake

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Europe is trying to install and measure effectiveness of rehab programs for convicted and known terrorists. Such is the case in the United States with the DHS/WH program on Countering Violent Extremism, a euphemism to terrorist and such is the case for the failed programs in Europe. So, have these tests been modeled after those of Saudi Arabia? Let’s find out from a terrorist himself. Not sure, but memory tells us that the Guantanamo detainees actually did all of these activities during detention including having a soccer field.

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Gitmo prisoner reveals that Saudi ‘terrorist rehab’ center is a scam

Gitmo prisoner reveals that Saudi ‘terrorist rehab’ center is a scam

Photo: Kate Brooks/Redux

NYPost: Counterterrorism experts have long suspected Saudi Arabia’s “rehabilitation” center for terrorists does a poor job of de-radicalizing jihadists. But a Saudi detainee at Guantanamo Bay now reveals it’s actually a recruiting and training factory for jihad.

According to recently declassified documents, senior al Qaeda operative Ghassan Abdullah al-Sharbi told a Gitmo parole board that the Saudi government has been encouraging previously released prisoners to rejoin the jihad at its terrorist reform school, officially known as the Prince Mohammed bin Naif Counseling and Care Center.

The Obama administration has praised the effectiveness of the Saudi rehab program — which uses “art therapy,” swimming, ping-pong, PlayStation and soccer to de-radicalize terrorists — and conditioned the release of dozens of Gitmo prisoners, including former Osama bin Laden bodyguards, on their enrollment in the controversial program.

To date, 134 Saudi detainees have been transferred to the Saudi reform camps in Riyadh and Jeddah. Last year, nine Yemeni detainees were sent there, as well, and more are expected to follow over the next two months, as President Obama strives to meet his campaign goal of closing Gitmo.

Photo: Kate Brooks/Redux

Al-Sharbi dropped a bombshell on the Gitmo parole board at his hearing earlier this year when he informed members that the Saudi kingdom was playing them for suckers. “You guys want to send me back to Saudi Arabia because you believe there is a de-radicalization program on the surface.

“True. You are 100 percent right, there is a strong — externally, a strong — de-radicalization program. But make no mistake, underneath there is a hidden radicalization program,” al-Sharbi added. “There is a very hidden strong — way stronger in magnitude — broader in financing, in all that.”

Al-Sharbi is one of the longest-serving, and most unrepentant, prisoners at Gitmo. A Saudi national with an electrical engineering degree from King Fahd University, he attended a US flight school associated with two of the 9/11 hijackers. He traveled to Afghanistan in the summer of 2001 and trained at an al Qaeda camp, building IEDs to use against allied forces.

Al-Sharbi was captured March 28, 2002, at an al Qaeda safehouse in Faisalabad, Pakistan, with senior al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah. According to his US intel dossier, he told interrogators that “the US got what it deserved from the terrorist attacks on 9/11.”

Given a chance at parole after 14 years, however, al-Sharbi was surprisingly frank with the board.

He explained that Riyadh is actively recruiting and training fighters to battle Iranian elements in neighboring Yemen and Syria. Saudi views Shiite-controlled Iran as a regional threat to its security.

“They’re launching more wars and the [United] States is backing off from the region,” he said. “They’re poking their nose here and here and there and they’re recruiting more jihadists, and they’ll tell you, ‘Okay, go fight in Yemen. Go fight in Syria.’ ”

Al-Sharbi said the Saudis also are “encouraging” former detainees “to fight their jihad in the States.”

Photo: Getty Images

“It’s not like a past history,” he said. “It’s increasing.”

A growing body of evidence backs up his claims. Last month, for example, a WikiLeaked email from Hillary Clinton revealed, citing US intelligence sources, that Saudi Arabia has provided “clandestine financial and logistic support to” ISIS and other Sunni terrorist groups in the region.

Al-Sharbi said the kingdom is playing a double game.

“They will proudly tell you they will fight terrorism,” he said. “That means they will support it.”

Al-Sharbi told the Gitmo board he doesn’t want to enroll in the Saudi rehab program, because he would be used to “fight under the Saudi royal cloak.”

“This is in the cause of a king. This is not a true jihad,” he said. “And I’m not going to Saudi unless I am sure they’re not gonna be using me.”

The Saudi rehab ruse has carried a lot of weight with the Gitmo parole board. Earlier this year, it released “Saudi al Qaeda recruiter and fighter” Muhammed Al Shumrani after his lawyers insisted that repatriating him to Saudi Arabia and enrolling him in its “well-established reintegration program” would cure his admittedly “problematic behavior.”

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Photo: Kate Brooks/Redux

Last year, the defense team of longtime bin Laden bodyguard Abdul Rahman Shalabi insisted that the same Saudi rehab program would make sure he’s reformed. In approving his release, the board said that it was “confident about the efficacy of the Saudi program.”

In both cases, US intelligence warned the board that the hardened terrorists would more than likely “re-engage in terrorist activity.”

By Riyadh’s own numbers, some 20 percent of the terrorist enrollees at its rehab club — which features golf carts, palm trees and an Olympic-size pool — go back to the jihad, returning to the ranks of the Taliban or al Qaeda. US officials believe the recidivism rate is much higher, but Saudi Arabia does not disclose criteria for evaluation.

One high-profile failure was Said Ali al-Shihri. After his graduation from the Saudi program, he returned to Yemen, where he ran an al Qaeda branch and helped plan the deadly bombing of the US Embassy and mastermind the failed plot to blow up a 2009 Christmas flight over Detroit, before a drone-fired missile finally caught up to him.

The Saudi center is more holiday resort than halfway house for paroled inmates. Jihadists are rewarded with gourmet meals, video games, ping-pong, jacuzzis and newly furnished private apartments reserved for conjugal visits. They also are allowed unescorted visits to family members. In September, the center granted “beneficiaries” Eid al-Adha holiday vacation for 12 days.

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Photo: Getty Images

Graduates are further rewarded with young brides and new cars.

Lending credence to al-Sharbi’s charges, the three-month program includes a few hours a day of lessons in Islam from Saudi clerics and “Shariah specialists.”

“Beneficiaries spend 15 hours a week in the Shariah program,” according to a local Jeddah press report, which is triple the amount of time devoted to psychological counseling.

Al-Sharbi’s parole was declined; he is still in Gitmo, along with 60 detainees — down from the 241 who were there when Obama started his term.

But with the administration rushing to reduce that number even further before the end of Obama’s term, how many more jihadists will be released into this highly suspect program?

Congress has an obligation to ask hard questions: Is this a pre-emptive campaign to prevent terror attacks or more likely an incubator for facilitating more attacks?

Why Obama will not Release KSM from Gitmo

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KSM’s response to questions: “The Islamic Response to the Government’s Nine Accusations”

ksm-gitmo

A horrifying look into the mind of 9/11’s mastermind, in his own words

What is it like to stare into the face of evil? James E. Mitchell knows.

WaPo: In his gripping new memoir, “Enhanced Interrogation: Inside the Minds and Motives of the Islamic Terrorists Trying To Destroy America,” Mitchell describes the day he was questioning Khalid Sheik Mohammed, when the 9/11 mastermind announced he had something important to say. “KSM then launched into a gory and detailed description of how he beheaded Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl,” Mitchell writes. Up to that moment, the CIA did not know KSM had personally carried out the murder. When asked whether it was “hard to do” (meaning emotionally difficult), KSM misunderstood the question. “Oh, no, no problem,” KSM said, “I had very sharp knives. Just like slaughtering sheep.”

To confirm his story, the CIA had KSM reenact the beheading so that it could compare the features of his hands and forearms to those in the video of Pearl’s murder. “Throughout the reenactment, KSM smiled and mugged for the cameras. Sometimes he preened,” Mitchell writes. When informed that the CIA had confirmed that he was telling the truth, KSM smiled.

“See, I told you,” KSM said. “I cut Daniel’s throat with these blessed hands.”

This is the pure evil Mitchell and his colleagues confronted each day at CIA “black sites.” “I have looked into the eyes of the worst people on the planet,” Mitchell writes. “I have sat with them and felt their passion as they described what they see as their holy duty to destroy our way of life.”
*** As a reminder, this is a video of a short interview with Mr. Mitchell.

The world has heard almost nothing from KSM in the 15 years since the 9/11 attacks, but Mitchell has spent thousands of hours with him and other captured al-Qaeda leaders. Now, for the first time, Mitchell is sharing what he says KSM told him.

Mitchell is an American patriot who has been unjustly persecuted for his role in crafting an interrogation program that helped stop terrorist attacks and saved countless lives. He does not shy from the controversies and pulls no punches in describing the interrogations. If anything, readers may be surprised by the compassion he showed these mass murderers. But the real news in his book is what happened after enhanced interrogations ended and the terrorists began cooperating.

 

Once their resistance had been broken, enhanced interrogation techniques stopped and KSM and other detainees became what Mitchell calls a “Terrorist Think Tank,” identifying voices in phone calls, deciphering encrypted messages and providing valuable information that led the CIA to other terrorists. Mitchell devotes an entire chapter to the critical role KSM and other detainees played in finding Osama bin Laden. KSM held classes where he lectured CIA officials on jihadist ideology, terrorist recruiting and attack planning. He was so cooperative, Mitchell writes, KSM “told me I should be on the FBI’s Most Wanted List because I am now a ‘known associate’ of KSM and a ‘graduate’ of his training camp.”

KSM also described for Mitchell many of his as yet unconsummated ideas for future attacks, the terrifying details of which Mitchell does not reveal for fear they might be implemented. “If we ever allow him to communicate unmonitored with the outside world,” Mitchell writes, “he could easily spread his deviously simple but potentially deadly ideas.”

But perhaps the most riveting part of the book is what KSM told Mitchell about what inspired al-Qaeda to attack the United States — and the U.S. response he expected. Today, some on both the left and the right argue that al-Qaeda wanted to draw us into a quagmire in Afghanistan — and now the Islamic State wants to do the same in Iraq and Syria. KSM said this is dead wrong. Far from trying to draw us in, KSM said that al-Qaeda expected the United States to respond to 9/11 as we had the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut — when, KSM told Mitchell, the United States “turned tail and ran.” He also said he thought we would treat 9/11 as a law enforcement matter, just as we had the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and the USS Cole in Yemen — arresting some operatives and firing a few missiles into empty tents, but otherwise leaving him free to plan the next attack.

“Then he looked at me and said, ‘How was I supposed to know that cowboy George Bush would announce he wanted us ‘dead or alive’ and then invade Afghanistan to hunt us down?’” Mitchell writes. “KSM explained that if the United States had treated 9/11 like a law enforcement matter, he would have had time to launch a second wave of attacks.” He was not able to do so because al-Qaeda was stunned “by the ferocity and swiftness of George W. Bush’s response.”

But KSM said something else that was prophetic. In the end, he told Mitchell, “We will win because Americans don’t realize . . . we do not need to defeat you militarily; we only need to fight long enough for you to defeat yourself by quitting.”

KSM explained that large-scale attacks such as 9/11 were “nice, but not necessary” and that a series of “low-tech attacks could bring down America the same way ‘enough disease-infected fleas can fell an elephant.’ ” KSM “said jihadi-minded brothers would immigrate into the United States” and “wrap themselves in America’s rights and laws” until they were strong enough to rise up and attack us. “He said the brothers would relentlessly continue their attacks and the American people would eventually become so tired, so frightened, and so weary of war that they would just want it to end.”

“Eventually,” KSM said, “America will expose her neck for us to slaughter.”

KSM was right. For the past eight years, our leaders have told us that we are weary of war and need to focus on “nation building at home.” We have been defeating ourselves by quitting — just as KSM predicted.

But quitting will not bring us peace, KSM told Mitchell. He explained that “it does not matter that we do not want to fight them,” Mitchell writes, adding that KSM explained “America may not be in a religious war with him, but he and other True Muslims are in a religious war with America” and “he and his brothers will not stop until the entire world lives under Sharia law.”