Category Archives: FBI

Half of Those Remaining at Gitmo are Cleared for Release

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There remains a key question to be asked: If those remaining are not a risk or a threat then why has it taken a more than a decade to form this conclusion? Additional questions include how much are we paying other countries to take a detainee as no agreements or conditions have ever been published.

Is this the right time to be doing this? Not so much as noted here:

Key takeaways in this month’s Terror Threat Snapshot include:

– There have been 24 ISIS-linked plots or attacks against Western targets in the first half of 2015, up from 19 in all of last year.

– The number of homegrown terror plots since 9/11 has reached 116, tripling in just the past five years.

– Foreign fighters continue to flow into Syria and Iraq.  There has been an 80 percent increase in fighters traveling to the conflict zone since ISIS declared its “caliphate” one year ago.

– More than 200 Americans are believed to have traveled—or attempted to travel—to fight in Syria, a 33 percent increase overall since the beginning of this year.

  The full report is here.

Half of Guantánamo’s uncharged captives are OK’d to go

Musab Omar Ali al Madhwani in a photo from his 2008 prison profile provided to McClatchy by WikiLeaks.

Musab Omar Ali al Madhwani in a photo from his 2008 prison profile provided to McClatchy by WikiLeaks.

McClatchy: The Guantánamo parole board on Monday said it had cleared a Yemeni captive for release to resettlement outside his homeland, reaching a milestone:

Now, 33 of the last 76 captives at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba can go to nations providing security assurances that satisfy Secretary of Defense Ash Carter. Ten captives are charged with war crimes. So half of those long-held, uncharged detainees are now approved to go.

The figure could rise. Seventeen captives not currently facing charges await their parole board hearings, or decisions from them.

Musab Omar Ali al Madhwani, 36, “never held extremist views or any desire to harm Americans,” his U.S. military advocate told the Periodic Review Board on June 28. “I am confident Musab is honest in his intentions after Guantánamo” to pursue a career as an accountant, marry and have children.

Pakistani security forces captured him on Sept. 11, 2002, in a day of raids in Karachi, according to his 2008 prison profile, parts of which an updated assessment discredited. He arrived at Guantánamo on Oct. 28, 2002, after 30 or more days in CIA custody, according to a portion of the so-called Senate Torture Report on the spy agency’s secret prison network.

At Guantánamo, U.S. military intelligence dubbed him a member of the “Karachi Six,” calling him part of a six-member “al-Qaida operational cell intended to support a future attack” in the Pakistani port city, the country’s largest and most populous.

The decision released Monday by the board, however, noted that by March he had been “reassessed to be that of a low-level fighter” who was probably trying to get home to Yemen when he was arrested. The board said he should be resettled in a third country with “reintegration support” and security assurances.

His lawyer, Patricia Bronte, told the board that her client had grown at Guantánamo into someone she would welcome into her family home. She and two other no-charge defense lawyers who had represented him vowed to attend his wedding “regardless of where it takes place,” she said.

“Musab is no longer the shy, gullible youth whom two men convinced to run away from home and go to Afghanistan,” she said. Once, she added, he was “afraid of being alone in the dark.” Now, “he reaches out to calm his brothers’ fears and resolve their disputes.”

Madhwani was one of two Yemeni clients for whom Bronte bought socks and shoes last year after she noticed the men’s footwear looked scruffy. She said she didn’t mind the expense, but was disturbed by what appeared to be prison camp cost-cutting. The spokesman at the time called reports of shortages at the Most Expensive Prison on Earth “baseless”

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MIAMI (AP) — A review board has decided that a Saudi prisoner at Guantanamo Bay who attended flight school in the U.S. and was trained to make explosives by al-Qaida should continue to be held without charge.

The Periodic Review Board said in a decision released Friday that Ghassan Abdallah al-Sharbi should remain in custody at the U.S. base in Cuba because he remains a security threat.

Factors cited by the board include what it said was his past involvement in terrorism as well as “hostile behavior” while detained, including organizing confrontations between detainees and the guard force at the detention center.

A short statement added that “the board considered the detainee’s prior statements expressing support for attacking the United States, and the detainee’s refusal to discuss his plans for the future.”

The 41-year-old al-Sharbi attended Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona, and later went to a U.S. flight school, where he “associated with” two of the hijackers in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack, according to a profile released by the Pentagon before his review board hearing in June.

Authorities said he later received training by al-Qaida in the manufacture of improvised explosive devices and was captured in a raid on a terrorist safe house in Pakistan in 2002.

He faced charges that included providing material support for terrorism before the military commission at the base. But U.S. courts have ruled that material support at the time of the alleged offenses did not constitute a war crime that could be prosecuted at Guantanamo and the case was withdrawn. He cannot be tried in civilian court because Congress has prohibited the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to the U.S. for any reason, including prosecution.

Al-Sharbi is one of 76 prisoners held at Guantanamo, including 32 who have been approved for release and are awaiting transfer.

 

Refugees Have Temporary Status in U.S. but not under DHS

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The United States has been taking in refugees, migrants and asylees from Latin America and several dozen countries for decades. This is supposed to be a temporary condition but the truth is it has never been temporary.

Image result for manbij

Now with 45 million people from just 2015 displaced from their home countries around the world, there is a crisis that is hard to define much less solve. The United Nations is the lead organization that is under pressure to find solutions and world leaders are not in any kind of collective agreement. Meanwhile, there are people, mostly innocent that are suffering. This is a historical time, one that was in fact not only predictable but solvable if civil war, conflicts and terrorism was addressed long before it manifested.

At issue is the total cost of war where there is no end in sight but more, the cost of creating a viable and living long term solution for migrants to include education, healthcare, law enforcement, jobs, entitlements to list a few. No country is monetarily prepared for the future costs many yet to be known, studied or funded.

Related reading: Bodies found off coast of Libya as migrant toll climbs

The United States had every opportunity in 2011 to launch humanitarian action missions to offset refugee conditions especially as Islamic State was born, and predicted to become a global terror operation directly after Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed. He is the original father of Islamic State…al Qaeda in Iraq.

Image result for zarqawi

As a result of the long war in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, the complete damage to cities and towns where normal infrastructure has been destroyed, there is no viable location to go back to. There are no schools, hospitals, roads, buildings and commerce has stopped except for black markets and smuggling. Further, no countries are stepping up with funds to help rebuild or as many call it, nation building.

In summary, refugees are in fact a new permanent status for wherever they are located, including the United States.

Consequently, the United Nations is chartered with drafting a global solution with world leaders.

The first cut a the draft is found here.

In part from the NewYorkTimes: Refugees and migrants will be the biggest issue at the gathering of world leaders at the United Nations next month. President Obama plans to lead a meeting at the General Assembly in an effort to nudge countries to take in more refugees and contribute to countries that have taken them in for years.

The United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, also plans to hold a meeting on the plight of refugees and migrants. The document under negotiation will be the centerpiece of his meeting.

While the draft text has no force of international law, every sentence has been argued and negotiated. The resulting language is sometimes so vague that it is likely to bring little comfort to the millions of men, women and children who are seeking safety and opportunity abroad.

Eritrea, for instance, recently complained that the many references to human rights in the document were “redundant.” (A United Nations committee earlier this year accused Eritrea of atrocities against its own citizens.)

Russia resisted a sentence that called for countries to share in the “burden” of taking in refugees. (Russia takes in very few, except lately, from parts of Ukraine.)

The United States suggested a phrase asserting that detention is “seldom” good for children. Activists for immigrants and refugees found that suggestion so appalling that they fired off a letter on Friday to President Obama. They argued that any international agreement should make clear that detention is “never in the best interests of children” and should commit to ending the practice. (The United States detains children who arrive from Mexico without legal papers.)

Amnesty International said in a statement over the weekend that “with some states trying to dilute the agreement to suit their own political agendas, we may end up with tentative half-measures that merely reinforce the status quo or even weaken existing protection.”

This draft agreement sets out a long list of principles, most already enshrined in existing laws. It says refugees deserve protection and should not be sent back to places where they could face war or persecution. It urges countries to allow refugees to work and to let their children attend school, though it stops short of saying refugees have a right to either jobs or schools.

It asserts that migration can be good for the world, which is wording that migrant-sending countries wanted. It also calls for countries to take back their citizens if they travel illegally and fail to get asylum, which is what migrant-receiving countries, especially in Europe, wanted.

An early draft had proposed a global compact to allocate where refugees could be permanently resettled, but that proposal failed. African and Latin American countries wanted to know why the compact was on refugees alone, according to diplomats involved in the negotiations. Why not also have a compact on the rights of migrants, they asked.

The latest draft sets a 2018 deadline for two compacts — one for refugees, a second for migrants.

The draft text also says nothing about the rights of the 40 million people who are displaced in their own countries, or about those who are leaving their homes because of climate change.

 

 

Fake URL’s and Shortening During Arab Spring/Iran

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In 2014, it was reported but not widely so.

Edward Snowden leaked a top-secret GCHQ document which details the operations and the techniques used by JTRIG unit for propaganda and internet deception.

SecurityAffairs: The JTRIG unit of the British GCHQ intelligence agency has designed a collection of applications that were used to manipulate for internet deception and surveillance, including the modification of the results of the online polls. The hacking tools have the capability to disseminate fake information, for example artificially increasing the counter of visit for specific web sites, and could be also used to censor video content judged to be “extremist.” The set of application remembers me the NSA catalog published in December when the Germany’s Der Spiegel has revealed another disturbing article on the NSAsurveillance, the document leaked by tge media agency was an internal NSA catalog that offers spies backdoors into a wide range of equipment from major vendors.

The existence of the tools was revealed by the last collection of documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the applications were created by GCHQ’s Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG) and are considered one of the most advanced system for propaganda and internet deception. JTRIG is the secret unit mentioned for the first time in a collection of documents leaked by Snowden which describe the Rolling Thunder operation, the group ran DoS attack against chatrooms used by hacktivists. More here.

It is being reported again and it may be just good tradecraft by British intelligence.

British Spies Used a URL Shortener to Honeypot Arab Spring Dissidents

Motherboard: A shadowy unit of the British intelligence agency GCHQ tried to influence online activists during the 2009 Iranian presidential election protests and the 2011 democratic uprisings largely known as the Arab Spring, as new evidence gathered from documents leaked by Edward Snowden shows.

The GCHQ’s special unit, known as the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group or JTRIG, was first revealed in 2014, when leaked top secret documents showed it tried to infiltrate and manipulate—using “dirty trick” tactics such as honeypots—online communities including those of Anonymous hacktivists, among others.

The group’s tactics against hacktivists have been previously reported, but its influence campaign in the Middle East has never been reported before. I was able to uncover it because I was myself targeted in the past, and was aware of a key detail, a URL shortening service, that was actually redacted in Snowden documents published in 2014.

THE HONEYPOT

A now-defunct free URL shortening service—lurl.me—was set up by GCHQ that enabled social media signals intelligence. Lurl.me was used on Twitter and other social media platforms for the dissemination of pro-revolution messages in the Middle East.

These messages were intended to attract people who were protesting against their government in order to manipulate them and collect intelligence that would help the agency further its aims around the world. The URL shortener made it easy to track them.

I was able to uncover it because I was myself targeted in the past

The project is linked to the GCHQ unit called the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group or JTRIG, whose mission is to use “dirty tricks” to “destroy, deny, degrade [and] disrupt” enemies by “discrediting” them, according to leaked documents.

The URL shortening service was codenamed DEADPOOL and was one of JTRIG’s “shaping and honeypots” tools, according to a GCHQ document leaked in 2014.

Leaked GCHQ document listing shaping and honeypot tools used by JTRIG.

Earlier in the same year, NBC News released a leaked document showing that JTRIG attacked the hacktivist outfits Anonymous and LulzSec by launching Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks on chatroom servers know as Internet Relay Chat (IRC) networks.

The group also identified individuals by using social engineering techniques to trick them into clicking links—a technique commonly used by cybercriminals.

One slide showed a covert agent sending a link—redacted by NBC in the slide—to an individual known as P0ke. According to the slide, this enabled the signals intelligence needed to deanonymize P0ke and discover his name, along with his Facebook and email accounts.

In the fall of 2010, I was an early member of the AnonOps IRC network attacked by JTRIG and used by a covert GCHQ agent to contact P0ke, and in 2011 I co-founded LulzSec with three others. The leaked document also shows that JTRIG was monitoring conversations between P0ke and the LulzSec ex-member Jake Davis, who went by the pseudonym Topiary.

Through multiple sources, I was able to confirm that the redacted deanonymizing link sent to P0ke by a covert agent was to the website lurl.me.

Leaked GCHQ slide from document titled “Hacktivism: Online Covert Action.”

COVERT DISRUPTION

Further investigation of the URL shortener using public data on the web exposed a revealing case study of JTRIG’s other operations that used the DEADPOOL tool, including covert operations in the Middle East.

The Internet Archive shows that the website was active as early as June 2009 and was last seen online on November 2013. A snapshot of the website shows it was a ”free URL shortening service” to ”help you get links to your friends and family fast.”

Snapshot of lurl.me.

Public online resources, search engines and social media websites such as Twitter, Blogspot and YouTube show it being used to fulfill GCHQ geopolitical objectives outlined in previously leaked documents. Almost all 69 Twitter pages that Google has indexed referencing lurl.me are anti-government tweets from supposed Iranian or Middle Eastern activists.

The vast majority are from Twitter accounts with an egg avatar only active for a few days and have a few tweets, but there were a couple from legitimate accounts that have been tweeting for years, who have retweeted or quoted the other accounts tweeting from the URL shortener.

According to agency documents published by The Intercept, one of the strategies for measuring the effectiveness of an operation is to check online to see if a message has been “understood accepted, remembered and changed behaviour”. This could for example involve tracking those who shared or clicked on the lurl.me links created by GCHQ.

The group also identified individuals by using social engineering techniques to trick them into clicking links

Another JTRIG document published by The Intercept titled “Behavioural Science Support for JTRIG’S Effects and Online HUMINT Operations” can be used to understand the content associated with social media accounts that used the URL shortener.

JTRIG has an operations group for global targets, which then has a subteam for Iran, According to the document. It further states that “the Iran team currently aims to achieve counter-proliferation by: (1) discrediting the Iranian leadership and its nuclear programme; (2) delaying and disrupting access to materials used in the nuclear programme; (3) conducting online HUMINT; and (4) counter-censorship.”

The document goes on to detail the methods that JTRIG employs to achieve these goals, such as creating false personas, uploading YouTube videos, and starting Facebook groups to push specific information or agendas. Many of the techniques outlined are evident in social media accounts that aggressively use the URL shortener.

Page from leaked GCHQ document titled “Behavioural Science Support for JTRIG’S Effects and Online HUMINT Operations,” published at The Intercept.

AGENTS OF THE CAMPAIGN

There appear to be a small number of Twitter accounts that were only active during the month of June 2009, have very few followers, and repeatedly tweet the same content and links from lurl.me. One of the earliest and prolific accounts to tweet using the URL shortener is 2009iranfree.   Read more here from Motherboard.

Hillary’s Relationship with Russia is Approved Espionage

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Dealing with evil, the evil empire as President Reagan declared. Quite actually under the Barack Obama administration it is nothing more than groveling with the Kremlin.

The United States has an Open Skies Treaty. and one must question why. Further, the Russians have taken full advantage of it.

Then there was the red line threat by Obama where it was later dismissed and handed over to Putin to handle those chemical weapons in Syria for removal.

Then we heard about the Bill and Hillary deal with the Canadian operative on Uranium One giving over rights of U.S. uranium supply to Russia.

But now we have yet another operation concocted by the White House and the Hillary State Department and this one is a blockbuster as noted by going back in history through the original WikiLeaks cables.

It is highly suggested to read the full document below, as it summarizes how Hillary allowed trade secrets and professional Russian espionage within the United States.

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The full document is here.

FROM RUSSIA WITH Money

Hillary Clinton, the Russian Reset, and Cronyism

NYPost: Key players in a main component of the reset — a Moscow-based, Silicon Valley-styled campus for developing biomed, space, nuclear and IT technologies called “Skolkovo” — poured tens of millions of dollars into the Clinton Foundation, the report by journalist Peter Schweizer alleges.

As the Obama administration’s top diplomat, Hillary Clinton was at the center of US efforts on the reset in general and Skolkovo in particular, Schweizer argues.

Yet, “Of the 28 US, European and Russian companies that participated in Skolkovo, 17 of them were Clinton Foundation donors” or sponsored speeches by former President Bill Clinton, Schweizer told The Post.

“It raises the question — do you need to pay money to sit at the table?”

In one example cited by Schweizer, Skolkovo Foundation member and then-Cisco CEO John Chambers donated between $1 million and $5 million in personal and corporate cash to the Clinton Foundation, the report says.

But Skolkovo wound up making America less safe, Schweizer argues, because it shared advanced US technology that Russia can develop for both civilian and military applications, a concern raised already by Army and FBI officials.

Many of Skolkovo’s research projects involved “dual-use” technologies, meaning they would have both civilian and military uses, the report said, citing one in particular — a hybrid airship called an “Atlant” developed at the Skolkovo Aeronautical Center.

“Particularly noteworthy is Atlant’s ability to deliver military cargoes,” including “radar surveillance, air and missile defense and delivery of airborne troops,” the Skolkovo Foundation bragged in a document Schweizer cites.

Hillary Clinton personally launched the State Department’s efforts toward a Russian reset, presenting her Russian then-counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, with a prop reset button in Geneva in 2009.

The reset petered out by the end of 2011, when Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Hillary of fomenting Russian protests over suspicions of fraud in that year’s parliamentary elections.

But by then, the damage had already been done, Schweizer feels.

“I think the idea that you’re going to help develop a Russian version of Silicon Valley, which, by the way, will be controlled by the Russian government, and then not to expect that the technology will be siphoned off for military uses, is incredibly naive,” Schweizer said.

As early as 2010, cybersecurity experts also expressed deep concerns about Russia using Skolkovo to develop hacking capabilities.

Russia’s FSB spy agency — the successor to the KGB — reportedly keeps two of its information warfare “security centers” at Skolkovo, the report says.

“There certainly is an irony that as we are now concerned about Russian cyber-attacks on the US, that the reset played a role in enhancing their cyber-capabilities,” Schweizer said.

In this latest report, as in his book, “Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich,” Schweizer concedes he found no “smoking gun” evidence that any of the donors who poured cash into the Clinton coffers actually were promised, or received, any State Department favors in return.

“We don’t have an email or a pirated voice mail message saying, ‘We’ll give you money if you help us with Skokovo,’” Schweizer told The Post. “But what we do have is a pattern that shows a high percentage of participants in Skolkovo who happen to be Clinton Foundation donors.

“I think that everybody at the Russian reset table seems to walk away with something,” he added.

“The Clintons, they get their donations and speaking fees in the millions of dollars. The Russians get access to advanced US technology. The tech companies [that participated in the reset, including Cisco, Intel, Microsoft] get special access to the Russian market and workforce.

“But the American people get nothing. In fact, we get a rival — Russia — with enhanced technological capabilities. At best, that makes them a tougher competitor [in legitimate commerce],” Schweizer said.

“At worst, they get a more robust military, with technologies that we helped develop, and that can be sold to our enemies.”

The Clinton Foundation is sure to be a sore spot in Hillary’s campaign for the presidency, Schweizer predicted — tainted as it is, despite its laudable philanthropy.

“At the entire Democratic convention, they did not mention the Clinton Foundation once,” he said. “And it’s been the Clintons’ life work for 16-plus years.”

The Clinton campaign did not respond to requests from The Post for comment on the report.

“All I ask is that people look at the money. Who made the deals, who benefited from the deals,” Schweizer said. “We can’t get inside people’s heads as to why they did something, but we should follow the money.”

 

‘Breaking the Cross’, When not If…

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U.K. Police Chief Says Attack Is a Matter of ‘When, Not If’

In part from Newsweek: U.K. police are treating the prospect of an attempted extremist attack on home soil as an inevitability said the head of the Metropolitan police, The Guardian reports.

Over the last 12 months France, Germany, Belgium and Turkey have experienced deadly attacks claimed by militant group Islamic State (ISIS). Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe said he wanted to offer reassurance to the British public that the trend would not endanger the U.K., and said police vigilance has not changed.

“I know that with each new outrage and especially those on our doorstep in Europe, there is a greater sense of fear that Britain will be the next victim in this wave of cruel and mindless mass murder,” he said.

“Our threat level has been at severe for two years—it remains there. It means an attack is highly likely. You could say it is a case of when, not if.”

Hogan-Howe spoke as Britain’s most senior counter-terrorism police officer, assistant commissioner Mark Rowley, said the greatest advantage U.K. police had in preventing attacks was public assistance. The BBC reported that relevant hotlines receive over 3,600 calls a day and Rowley said even more input was appreciated. More here.

Breaking the Cross: Latest ISIS Magazine Aimed At Christians

Clarion: In a break in tone from previous issues the Islamic State’s Dabiq focuses on tackling Christianity in particular and western ideologies in general.

DISCLAIMER: Clarion Project does not endorse the contents of the Islamic State’s propaganda magazine Dabiq. We are sharing this information because we believe that to defeat the pernicious ideology of Islamism

IslamismGlossary Item

The interpretation of Islam as a governmental system in which strict Sharia law must be enforced; synonymous with Political Islam.

we need to expose and discredit it, which means revealing what the group says it believes and wants in full.

The fifteenth issue of the Islamic State’s Dabiq magazine is called Breaking the Cross and is targeted at discrediting Christianity and Western secularism.

Unlike previous issues which were primarily directed at Muslim-majority societies, this issue is full of propaganda aimed at converting non-Muslims to the Islamic State’s puritanical and bloodthirsty interpretation of Islam.

The foreword includes direct attacks on the ideologies of Christianity, feminism, secular liberalism and atheism, naming them individually and offering rebuttals. It also references the recent attacks in France and Germany and threatens further violent attacks.

The magazine puts forward a dual approach. On the one hand ISIS calls on the population of Europe to “abandon their infidelity and accept Islam, the religion of sincerity and submission to the Lord of the heavens and the earth.”

On the other they threaten continual warfare against those who do not, saying “we call you to reflect on these questions as the bloodthirsty knights of the Caliphate

CaliphateGlossary Item

An Islamic State where Sharia is the basis of governance; usually used in reference to past Islamic empires in the Middle East.

continue to wage their war of just terror against you.”

Sections include “Why we hate you and fight you” along with a conversion story “Why I came to Islam” from a former Christian woman from Finland. The piece focuses on the supposed inconsistencies in Christianity as opposed to the alleged purity and simplicity of Islam.

The main feature “Breaking the Cross” is an extended rebuttal of Christian and Jewish theology which sets forth the arguments to believe in Islam. The bulk of the theological arguments are fairly standard lines of attack about the alleged absurdity of the Trinity and the alleged corruption of scripture by Jews and Christians such as many imams might argue.

The leap from mainstream Islamic monotheism to the violent slaughter of anyone who disagrees with ISIS is not explained clearly.

The shift in emphasis to appeal to a European and Western audience comes at the same time as a shift in instructions to fighters not to attempt to travel to Islamic-State-held lands in Iraq and Syria, but simply to carry out terrorist attacks in their home countries.

Read the latest issue of the Islamic State’s propaganda magazine Dabiq: Breaking the Cross.

Read all the issues of the Islamic State’s propaganda magazine Dabiq, hosted on Clarion Project.