Category Archives: FBI

Day After Benghazi PDB, Obama Did not Take

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Barack Obama skipped his daily intelligence briefing one day after the Benghazi attacks on September 11, 2012. The president’s briefer handed a written copy of the presidential daily briefing to a White House usher and then briefed Jack Lew, who was then serving as White House chief of staff. But Obama, who sometimes avails himself of the oral briefing that is offered along the written intelligence product, did not ask for such a briefing the day after the attacks on U.S. facilities in Libya. TWS

Below is the testimony, including citations and redactions:

THE SEPTEMBER 12 SITUATION REPORT AND THE PRESIDENT’S DAILY BRIEF

The very first written piece produced by CIA analysts regarding the Benghazi attacks was an overnight Situation Report written very early in the morning on September 12, 2012. This piece included the line “the presence of armed assailants from the outset suggests this was an intentional assault and not the escalation of a peaceful protest.” While that line was correct—the attacks were an intentional assault and not the escalation of a peaceful protest—Michael Morell, Deputy Director, Central Intelligence Agency, noted it was a “crucial error that [came] back to haunt [the CIA].”1 This was an error, according to Morell, because that line was not written by analysts but rather a “senior editor” who “believed there needed to be some sort of bottom line” in the piece.2 Morell labeled it a “bureaucratic screw-up” and claims that since similar language did not appear in the CIA assessment the following day, September 13, it was evidence to critics that “the intelligence community was politicizing the analysis.”3

1 MICHAEL MORELL, THE GREAT WAR OF OUR TIME: THE CIA’S FIGHT AGAINST TERRORISM—FROM AL-QA’IDA TO ISIS 217 (2015) [hereinafterMORELL].

2 Testimony of Michael Morell, Deputy Dir., Central Intelligence Agency, Tr. at 25 (Sept. 28, 2015) [hereinafter Morell Testimony].

3 MORELL, supra note 1, at 218.

4 Morell Testimony at 28.

Though Morell learned this information second-hand4 and put it in his book, the Select Committee spoke directly to individuals with first-hand accounting of the events. In reality, the “senior editor” was the Executive Coordinator of the Presidential Daily Brief; she included the language about the intentional assault and not the escalation of a peaceful protest; and this “bureaucratic screw-up” resulted in this individual taking the piece to the White House, presenting it to Jacob Lew, Chief of Staff to the President, and delivering it to an usher to give to the President.

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Insertion of the Language

The Executive Coordinator described to the Committee when she first saw the September 12 update:

A: So the analysts came in to brief me—I don’t remember what time that was, but my guess is probably somewhere between 3 and 4. And the piece that he gave to me was much longer than this.

And we had a difference of opinion on one piece of the intelligence. He believed that this was a spontaneous event and was not open to the idea that it wasn’t a spontaneous event. And I disagreed because, you know, I had 20 years of Army experience. You know, this is the military person in me. And I said, I just can’t buy that something that’s, you know, this coordinated, this organized, and this sophisticated was something that they just, you know, did on, you know, the spur of the moment. I said, we have to consider the fact that that might not be the case.

He had a lot of good arguments. You know, it was the anniversary of 9/11, there was the video in Cairo, there were a number of other things happening that, you know, would seem to suggest that it was spontaneous. But just being military and seeing, you know, what we were seeing in the traffic, I was like, I don’t think that this is—I don’t think we can discount the possibility that this was a, you know, coordinated, organized, preplanned attack.

Q: When you say when you were seeing what you were seeing in the traffic, what does that mean?

A: So the things they were talking about, how organized that it was, in the press reporting. There was a lot of press that was coming back and talking about, you know, like, how they were breaching and, you know, like, how it was sort of phased, right? It was coming across to me, reading, you know, the open press at the time, that this was a phased attack. And I would be very surprised if a phased attack was something that was just, all of a sudden, you know, “Hey, guess what? Let’s go have an attack today because these other things are happening.” I don’t think

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According to the manager of the analysts, none of her analysts believed the sentence regarding an intentional assault should have been included. The manager testified:

A: And so the POTUS coordinator inserted this sentence because she felt strongly that it was an intentional assault against our consulate.

Q: And—

A: But there was no—nothing to base that on, no reporting.

Q: And that view is the view of that single editor. Is that right?

A: Yes.

Q: Was there anyone—any of the analysts on your team that thought that sentence should have been included?

A: No.

Q: And the reason your team and your analysts felt so strongly was because there was no reporting to support that. Is that correct?

A: Correct. We just—you can’t make a call without an evidentiary base to support it.8

8 Id. at 100-101.

However, without solid evidence pointing in either direction—spontaneous or not—the Executive Coordinator was sure to be careful with her language. She merely wanted to leave open the possibility that it was an intentional assault and the language she chose reflected that possibility—not a conclusion. She told the Committee:

Q: —your choice of the word “suggests,” is that to couch it—

A: Yes.

Q: —to say that this may have happened, as opposed to it definitively happened?

A: Correct.

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Q: Okay. And was that a deliberate —

A: It was leaving the door open that this is what it suggests, but that doesn’t mean this is what it is.9

9 PDB Testimony at 37.

10 Id. at 29.

11 Id. at 26.

The analysts and the Executive Coordinator were not able to reach a consensus on the language in the piece. The analysts, who had went up to the 7th Floor of the CIA headquarters to brief the Executive Coordinator on the piece, returned to their desks. The Executive Coordinator testified:

Q: Okay. And was there a resolution between you and him—

A: Not really.

Q: —on how to proceed?

A: No.

Q: No. Okay. So how did your conversation or interactions with him end?

A: I told him I would think about, you know, what he had said. And I said, you know, I will to talk to somebody.10

The Executive Coordinator, however, did not make the decision to include the language of an intentional assault on her own, and she did not do it in a vacuum based solely on her experience. Members of her staff, which numbered roughly 15, talked with individuals outside CIA headquarters about what was going on. She told the Committee:

Q: In terms of picking up the phone and calling anybody outside of the building, is that something you did to acquire information?

A: We did. Yes.11

She also discussed the matter with another analyst who had expertise in regional issues. The Executive Coordinator testified:

We had—I was very lucky because we had another—we had a MENA analyst that was a PDB briefer. She was the, I want to

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say, the SecDef briefer. And so I went over and I talked to her and I said, “Hey, this is what the analyst says. Here’s my opinion. You know, what are your thoughts, having covered this area, you know, pretty extensively in your career?” And she agreed with me.

We discussed it, we had a conversation about it and—you know. And so I made the decision to change the wording to make sure that we at least addressed the possibility that this was a planned attack.12

12 Id. at 29.

13 Testimony of Dir. of the Office of Terrorism Analysis, Central Intelligence Agency, Tr. at 23 {Nov. 13, 2015) [hereinafter OTA Director Testimony].

She also testified:

A: There was a lot of discourse about this at the PDB. I mean, the other PDB briefers and I, that’s the only resource I have at the time. And I never would make an assessment all on my own and just be like, this is it. I mean, we would do—

Q: I understand.

A: We talk about it, we’re sounding boards for each other. So there was a lot of discussion. And, yes, I’m sure that the supervisor of the young man who wrote this, we had that conversation. Like, are you sure that this is what you want to say. And yes, when I wrote this, I didn’t feel like I was saying you’re wrong and I’m right. All I was trying to do was say, look, we need to leave the door open in case this is not a spontaneous attack. We want to be able to wait until there’s more information, and so that’s why I use the word “suggests.” I didn’t say this is an intentional assault. It suggests that it is.

The manager of the analysts who disagreed with the Executive Coordinator, however, concedes that the Executive Coordinator was right with her analysis. She testified:

Q: And she was right?

A: In the event, yes, she was right.13

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Similarly, Michael Morell concedes the sentence was accurate. He testified:

Q: So the sentence ended up being accurate?

A: Yeah. Absolutely.14

14 Morell Testimony at 25.

15 PDB Testimony at 41.

16 Id. at 6.

17 Id. at 41.

The President’s Daily Brief

When the Executive Coordinator finished inserting the accurate sentence regarding the “intentional assault and not the escalation of a peaceful protest” into the September 12 piece, she put it into the “book” she prepared each day for the President and his Chief of Staff.15 This “book” is otherwise known as the President’s Daily Brief, or the PDB.

Normally, upon completion of the PDB, the Executive Coordinator would travel to the White House, brief the Chief of Staff, and if the President required a briefing, she would brief the President. She testified:

So during the weeks that I produced the PDB, I would produce it, and then they would drive me to the White House, and I would produce—or I would brief Jack Lew first, who was the Chief of Staff. And if the President required a brief during that day or chose to take a brief, then I would give him a brief, and if not, then his briefer—then the DNI would brief him.

When we were on travel, I always briefed the President. That was my responsibility whenever we would fly.16

On September 12, 2012, the morning after the Benghazi attacks, the Executive Coordinator—the individual presenting the President with his Presidential Daily Brief—traveled to the White House. That day, however, she did not present the PDB to the President.17 Instead, she gave it to an usher. She testified she presented the PDB—with the accurate sentence regarding the “intentional assault and not the escalation of a peaceful protest”—to Lew:

A: So it depends. If we’re traveling, then I present it to the President personally. And if he has questions—usually the only questions he usually asks—

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Lawyer. We’re not going to talk about what the President said or your conversations with him.

A: Okay. So if we’re in town and we’re not traveling then I bring it to the White House, and I personally brief Jack Lew. And I hand the President’s book to the usher, and the usher presents it to the President.

Q: So normally in Washington, when you’re here in town, you’re not sitting across from the President, him looking at the book, and he may be asking you questions?

A: No.

Q: How did it happen on the 12th that day?

A: I was here. So we were not traveling yet. We were in D.C. So I would have—I had a driver, and the driver drives me to the White House. I drop off the book first with the usher and then I go down and I brief Jack Lew.

Q: Okay. And what time was that on the 12th?

A: So we always arrive by 7:00, and so it would’ve been around 7:00. I mean, I’m assuming around 7:00.

Q: So that day at 7:00, the booklet that has been put together, you take it to the White House, you visit with Jack Lew and then someone walked it into—

A: No. First we give the brief to the usher. So my driver drops me off at the front gate. I go through—

Q: You actually physically hand the document—or the material.

A: Yeah, I physically hand the material to the usher and then I walk back down with my briefcase and go see Jack Lew and wait for him and then I brief him.

Q: Okay. And with Mr. Lew, did you talk about this SITREP?

Lawyer: We’re not going to discuss what specific information was provided to any White House staff in any PDB.

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Q: But you did talk with Mr. Lew that day?

A: I did.18

18 Id. at 66-67.

19 Morell Testimony at 25.

20 Team Chief Testimony at 30-31.

Fallout

Morell labeled the insertion of the language by the Executive Coordinator a “bureaucratic screw-up.” This language made it into a piece that was put in the President’s Daily Brief, which was briefed to Lew, and possibly shared with the President. Such a “bureaucratic screw-up,” therefore, has far reaching implications if it occurs with any regularity.

Michael Morell told the Committee that what occurred was a “big no-no.” He testified:

She was, I’m told, a long-time military analyst with some expertise in military matters, no expertise in North Africa and no expertise in this particular incident. She added that, right? That’s a no-no, that’s a no-no in the review process business.19

The manager of the analysts who disagreed with the Executive Coordinator called what occurred an analytic “cardinal sin.” She testified:

What she did was, frankly, in the analytic world, kind of a cardinal sin. I mean, the job of the POTUS coordinator—so we had the two analysts stay overnight. Their job is to copy edit these things and make sure that if there is some analysis in there, that the evidentiary techs sort of hang together; that it actually makes sense because it does go to the—it’s a big deal. I mean, it goes to very senior policymakers. So–20

The OTA Director also said that what occurred was a problem:

Q: Okay. Is that a problem that the senior DNI editor had the final sign-off on this as opposed to the analysts, and that person is inserting something in there that the analysts adamantly disagree with?

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A: In my personal view, yes.21

21 OTA Director Testimony at 43.

22 Morell Testimony at 25-26.

23 Team Chief Testimony at 30-31.

Despite this “bureaucratic screw-up”—which occurred in relation to the Benghazi attacks, one of the few, if only, times in history outside scrutiny has ever been applied to the PDB process—Morell and others at the CIA told the Committee this occurs infrequently. Morell testified:

Q: So from my perspective, I’m very new to this arena, it seems like it’s a problem that you have these rigorous processes in place, and on this particular occasion a piece is going before the President and somebody inserts a sentence that substantively changes the meaning of a bullet point without any additional review by the analysts who wrote the piece.

A: Yes. You’re absolutely right.

Q: That’s a problem in your eyes as well?

A: Yes.

Q: And how often does something like that occur?

A: Not very. You know, in my experience, one or twice a year.22

The manager of the analysts who disagreed with the Executive Coordinator testified:

Q: Is that something that in your 8 years prior you had ever seen or heard of happening?

A: No.23

She also testified:

A: Oh, I’m sure I did, yeah. I mean, it was unheard of and it hasn’t happened since.

Q: Okay.

A: It’s a big deal.24

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24 Team Chief Testimony at 35-36.

25 Morell Testimony at 26.

26 Id. at 27.

Morell, himself once the head of the PDB staff, told the Committee how he would have responded if a senior editor had made such a substantive edit over the objections of the analysts:

A: And this—you know, I ran—I’ve ran the PDB staff, right, as part of the jobs I had. I would have reprimanded, orally reprimanded, not in a formal sense, right—

Q: Sure.

A: —called this person in my office and said, you know, what happened? And if it turned out to be exactly what I just explained to you, I would have said, don’t ever do that again.25

Morell also suggested how to ensure such a “bureaucratic screw-up” doesn’t happen in the future. He told the Committee:

Q: Is there any way to prevent these types of insertions by senior reviewers in the future?

A: Well, I said, it doesn’t happen very often, right.

Q: But it happened in this case, though.

A: So it’s not a huge problem, right, it doesn’t happen very often. The way you prevent it is twofold, right? You make it very clear when somebody shows up to the PDB staff what their responsibilities are and what their responsibilities are not, you’re not the analyst. And, two, when something—when something does happen, even something very minor, right, you make it very clear then that they overstepped their bounds. That’s how you prevent it.26

The Executive Coordinator, however, has a different point of view than Morell, the OTA Director, and the manager of the analysts. She did not view this as a “bureaucratic screw-up” at all, but rather exactly the job she was supposed to be doing. She acknowledged the disagreement with the analysts the night of the Benghazi attacks, testifying:

Q: Okay. And I know we talked about it, but how unusual, I

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guess, was this disagreement, this type of disagreement?

A: It was pretty unusual. Most of the time, we were able to, you know, just sort of agree on language, and they’ll gave you a face like, “Okay,” they’ll roll their eyes, they’ll be like, “All right, you know, that’s not as strong of language as I would like.” But, you know, a lot of times, you know, we soften the language because we just don’t know for sure. So, you know, we’ll change from, you know, “believe with high confidence” to—I’m like, do you really believe with high confidence, or do you really think that’s maybe medium confidence?

And I sort of saw my role as, you know, like, a mentor because I’d been in intelligence for 20 years. So a lot of times, you know, I would tell the analysts, you know, this is good tradecraft, but it will be better analysis if you take into consideration these things which you may or may not have considered.27

27 PDB Testimony at 38.

28 Id. at 31.

However, the fact that she inserted language into the piece was not a “no-no” or a “cardinal sin,” but rather something that was ultimately her decision, not the analysts’. This directly contradicts what Morell said about the Executive Coordinator overstepping her bounds. She testified:

But I do know that, you know, when I talked to [senior CIA official], you know, in the interview process and also, you know, subsequent to that, he basically said that you’re the PDB briefer, you are the last, you know, line of defense and, you know, it’s your call. So if there’s something in there that, you know, bothers you, you know, coordinate it out, and then if you can’t come to an agreement, it’s your, you know, responsibility. So I did not take that lightly.28

Since it was a responsibility she did not take lightly, she only modified such language when there was ample evidence to support it. She told the Committee:

But yes. I mean, we don’t—I rarely ever—in fact, I can’t remember any time that I’ve ever made, you know, a call just based on press reporting, so I’m sure there was other

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A: Yeah.

Q: There was discussion. It seemed to be—the consensus was that it was the right call.

A: Yes.

Q: Okay. The consensus by those at the roundtable.

A: At the roundtable, yes.31

31 Id. at 43-44.

32 Id. at 42.

33 OTA Director Testimony at 43.

One of the briefers at the roundtable was an analyst who came from the Middle East and North African desk at the CIA, and was a colleague of the analysts who disagreed with the Executive Coordinator the night of the attack.32

The testimony received by the Committee on this topic presents a dichotomy between two parties. On the one hand, CIA personnel present a picture that what occurred was a major error and breach of protocol. On the other hand, the Executive Coordinator, who works for ODNI, testified she was told when she took the job that she had the final call on language in analytic pieces, though changing substantive language was something exercised judiciously. Since the Benghazi attacks, the analysts have been instructed to stay with the PDB editors until the final piece is with the ODNI official.33 Given how the situation unfolded early in the morning of September 12, 2012, it is unclear how this new guidance would have altered that particular outcome.

Two of the first pieces produced by the CIA analysts in the wake of the Benghazi attacks contained errors either in process or substance. Both of these pieces became part of the President’s Daily Brief. While the Committee only examined intelligence pieces regarding the Benghazi attacks, discovering errors in two pieces—on successive days, on one single topic—that became part of the President’s Daily Brief is extremely problematic for what should be an airtight process. Whether these errors are simply a coincidence or part of a larger systemic issue is unknown. The September 12 piece, along with the egregious editing and sourcing errors surrounding the September 13 WIRe, discussed in detail above,

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raise major analytic tradecraft issues that require serious examination but are beyond the purview of this Committee.

 

Cruz Led Senate Hearing on Militant Islam, Who Refused to Show?

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Willful Blindness

Code Pink Confronts Cruz at Senate Hearing on Islamic Terror, Says He Has a ‘Serious Case’ of Islamophobia

Washington, D.C. – Code Pink was in attendance for Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) hearing to address to White House’s downplaying of Islamic terror on Tuesday – and they immediately made their presence known. Standing in their infamous bright pink shirts with signs that read “Islamophobia is un-American,” they began by asking the room if anyone was “suffering from Islamophobia.”

When Cruz walked in, they asked him the same thing. 

The senator kept his cool, slammed down the gavel and began the hearing. He opened his remarks by referencing the terror attack at Fort Hood in 2009 waged by Nidal Hasan. Cruz noted the innocent people Hasan had slaughtered and how he chanted “allahu akbar” during his rampage. When Cruz accidentally mispronounced “allahu Akbar,” Code Pink and other attendees laughed out loud. More from TownHall

Obama Admin Refuses to Inform Congress of ‘Islamic Terrorism’ in U.S.

Officials ignore congressional call to testify about radicalism

FreeBeacon: Senior Obama administration officials refused to appear before Congress on Tuesday to explain the recent decision to purge all references to “Islamic terrorism” and radicalism from public documents, according to disclosures made Tuesday on Capitol Hill.

Top officials from the Justice Department and FBI declined to appear on Capitol Hill to answer questions from lawmakers about domestic terror attacks and an administration policy of scrubbing references to Islamic terrorism and similar terms from government materials, lawmakers said.

The policy has thwarted attempts by federal authorities to stop an increasing series of terror attacks from taking place on United States soil, according to Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas), chair of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on oversight.

In the past year the Obama administration has twice ordered that mentions of the terror group ISIS and “Islamic terrorism” be purged “from highly significant public records,” Cruz said.

One such effort took place in the aftermath of the recent terrorist shooting in Orlando in which the administration censored 911 transcripts of calls made by the shooter.

These efforts came amid other campaigns by the Department of Homeland Security to force its personnel to remove references to “jihad,” “sharia,” and other similar terms from material focused on methods to counter violent extremism, Cruz said.

“I would like nothing more than to speak with a government official about these bizarre decisions and omissions, especially in light of the most recent terrorist attack in Orlando by a radicalized man who had been interviewed three times by the FBI,” Cruz said.

“Indeed, this subcommittee invited two such witnesses: John P. Carlin, an assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice’s National Security Division, and Michael B. Steinbach, the executive assistant director for the FBI’s National Security Branch,” he said. “Both have refused to appear.”

Cruz blamed the administration’s policy for contributing to recent terror attacks in Orlando, San Bernardino, and Boston.

There has been a “consistent effort by this administration to scrub any reference to radical Islamic terrorism, to pretend the threat does not exist, and tragically as a consequence of that, over and over again, we have instances where the administration has ample evidence of radical Islamic terrorists,” Cruz said.

“The consequence of a willful blindness, of a policy that is a matter of administration policy, refusal to acknowledge the threat, means over and over again this administration has allowed the threats to go forward,” he added.

The administration “had declined to appear and explain” this policy and rationale behind it despite multiple requests from Congress.

“Are government officials prohibited from debating anything about Islam?” Cruz asked. “We would like to hear an explanation for that.”

The efforts to avoid using these terms have been longstanding in the Obama administration.

Muslim advocacy groups forced the FBI to purge some 876 documents from its training materials because they were deemed “offensive” in March 2012, Cruz explained.

“One article was purged because it was ‘highly inflammatory’ and ‘inaccurately argues the Muslim Brotherhood is a terrorist organization,’” he added.

In lieu of the Obama administration officials, the subcommittee heard from a range of outside terrorism experts and the government whistleblower who disclosed attempts by the Obama administration to purge many names from the U.S. terror watch list.

The Obama administration has come under further criticism for failing to properly combat ISIS abroad, a strategy that some lawmakers say could enable the terror group to carry out attacks inside the United States.

“I fear that in spite of continued attacks on our homeland, our military response to ISIS does not adequately reflect the direct nature of this threat to the United States,” Sen. Bob Corker (R., Tenn.), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said during a separate Tuesday hearing on the U.S. strategy to combat ISIS.

“I think many of us grow frustrated when the administration’s optimistic rhetoric often does not match the results,” Corker said.

ISIS Kill List Targets American Civilians, But do They Know?

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Is anyone telling the civilians they are targets of Islamic State? Nope…Anyone explain why? The military? the FBI? The police? Is anyone collaborating, coordinating and protecting citizens?

 

ISIS ‘Kill Lists’ Increasingly Target U.S. Civilians

Report: Calls for random attacks by hacking groups illuminate ‘evolving terror threat’

FreeBeacon: Pro-ISIS hacking groups have started including American civilians along with military, government, and law enforcement personnel on “kill lists,” consistent with the terror group’s effort to expand attacks to random targets and instill fear in the public, according to a new report.

The SITE Intelligence Group, an organization that monitors jihadist propaganda, examined eight lists recently circulated online by pro-ISIS hacking groups, including some that name random civilian targets.

“These lists, with targets spanning drone operators to random civilians, appear to have achieved at least part of their presumed intentions: heightened alert by government workers, FBI visits to startled civilians, and significant media attention,” SITE wrote in its report.

Eight lists released over the course of two months this year have targeted federal government employees, military personnel, state and local government officials, and random residents of New York and Texas. While most of the kill lists have not been pushed through official ISIS channels, fighters and supporters of the terror group have promoted the targets through social media.

“This embrace of random targets, though new within the context of hackers’ kill lists, is nonetheless consistent with IS’ methodology, and demonstrates application of attack instructions from IS’ leadership and affiliates,” the report explained, using another name for the Islamic State, or ISIS.

ISIS has inspired self-radicalized terrorists who have launched attacks inside the United States. Omar Mateen, a U.S. citizen, pledged allegiance to the terror group during conversations with 911 operators during a gun attack that killed 49 victims at an Orlando gay club earlier this month. The couple who opened fire on a San Bernardino, California, holiday party last December are also believed to have pledged support to ISIS.

The FBI declined to comment specifically on investigative matters related to the kill lists but said that the agency routinely notifies people and organizations of information collected during investigations that could be “perceived as potentially threatening in nature.”

“Potential threats may relate to individuals, institutions, or organizations, and are shared in order to sensitize potential victims to the observed threat, and to assist them in taking proper steps to ensure their safety,” Matthew Bertron, a representative for the FBI’s National Press Office, told the Washington Free Beacon.

Kill lists from pro-ISIS hacking groups have become increasingly abundant since the so-called Islamic State Hacking Division called for attacks on 100 military personnel in March of last year, and later released lists targeting 10 Italian Army officers and over 1,000 military and government personnel. While this particular hacking group—once headed by ISIS fighter Junaid Hussain before he was killed in an airstrike—has focused on military and government personnel, others have emerged to target civilians and local officials.

A pro-ISIS group called the United Cyber Caliphate, for example, released five different target lists between March and May of this year. The lists publicized personal information about 11 Tennessee state county board members; 3,600 New York citizens; and 1,543 Texas residents, according to SITE’s report. Two lists each separately included information about 50 federal government employees, including workers from the Departments of State, Defense, and Navy.

While the list of New York residents was removed from the hosting site where it was posted, the lists with information on individuals in Tennessee and Texas remained online.

Another group named the Caliphate Cyber Army also released two lists, one of which called for attacks on 56 New Jersey state police staff and another that targeted 36 Minnesota state police officers.

While inactive between September 2015 and May of this year, the Islamic State Hacking Division also recently released names and personal information of 76 U.S. military personnel who work with drones.

“In just over a year, kill lists from pro-IS hacking groups have not only become more abundant, but have also expanded in terms of target selection,” the SITE report stated. “Between March and May of this year, kill lists by these groups have expanded beyond conventional criteria to random civilian targets, instructing to ‘shoot them down.’”

The lists are consistent with ISIS ideology supporting attacks on all non-Muslims living in countries at war with the terror group, according to SITE.

“This shift in target selection shows a new method in serving a long-standing function of IS and other jihadi groups: instill widespread fear into governments and the public,” the report stated. “As IS spokesman Abu Muhammad al-‘Adnani stated in a September 2014 speech, Muslims should kill any non-Muslim living in countries warring with the group, with no distinction of ‘whether he is a civilian or military.’”

The promotion of the lists also highlights ISIS militants’ exploitation of social media to recruit and inspire attacks, regardless of the fact that the pro-ISIS hacking groups do not appear to be publicly coordinating with one another.

“Given the power and ease of social media, along with the increasing ubiquity of Internet access and smart phones, every IS supporter can act as their own online media group, recruitment office, or fundraising organization. Likewise, every IS-supporting hacker can use their skills to serve the group’s goals, whether they be a fighter or a supporter in non-combat zones,” the report stated.

The SITE Intelligence Group could not confirm that the groups obtained the information by hacking into government or other private systems but said that it was both possible and plausible. The report noted that some of the information on the lists is available through public channels though they “appear to be compiled via non-public sources, especially when factoring what would be immense labor and difficulty required to manually compile the information via those public sources.”

The Islamic State Hacking Division is believed to have obtained data for its list targeting over 1,000 U.S. military personnel from Ardit Ferizi, a Kosovo citizen who hacked into a U.S.-based company’s servers to harvest the information. The Justice Department charged Ferizi with computer hacking, identity theft, and providing material support to ISIS last October.

Benghazi: GOP Report 100+ Witnesses, No Video to Blame

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The full 800 page report is here.

During the first attack, the only focus the White House and the State Department was to concoct a blame, no one cared at the terrifying moments about a response or rescue while Panetta delivered the orders for a military response. Exactly how many lives were at risk at the time is still somewhat unknown, but rather estimated…simply put all their lives were in peril.

It shows that the State Department assessment of the situation in Benghazi in 2011 and 2012 noted rising crime levels, rampant firearm ownership, and a high risk of militia violence in the security vacuum left by the toppling of Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi. The precarious security situation, according to the report, was exacerbated by inadequate security at the Benghazi outpost, which was plagued by equipment failures, a lack of manpower and relied on an often-disorganized local militia for protection. Read more here from CNN and their summary.

*****

EXCLUSIVE –  The claim that the fatal 2012 Benghazi terrorist attacks were sparked by an anti-Muslim video was crafted in Washington by Obama administration appointees and reflected neither eyewitness nor real-time reports from the Americans under siege, according to the final report of the GOP-led Benghazi Select Committee.

The GOP report, released Tuesday, followed by less than a day a report by the Democrats on the panel saying that security at the Benghazi, Libya facility was “woefully inadequate” but former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton never personally denied any requests from diplomats for additional protection. More from FNC.

House Republicans’ Report Sheds New Light on Benghazi Attack

NBC: After a more than two-year investigation into the 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, House Republicans are set to release a lengthy report Tuesday recounting the events that led to the deaths of four American diplomats.

It sheds new light on the breakdown in the U.S. military’s response to the attack and offers new details about why U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens was at the compound in the Libyan city with only two State Department bodyguards, months after the British and others had evacuated the area.

NBC News obtained the first 175-page section of the full 800-page House Select Committee on Benghazi report that will be released later Tuesday. The Democratic minority released its own report Monday.

One section of the report seems to allege that U.S. officials fundamentally misunderstood who their allies were at the time. The Republican majority’s report found that 35 Americans were saved not by a “quasi-governmental militia” as previous reports concluded, or even a group the U.S. saw as allies. Instead, the report determines that the Americans were saved by the “Libyan Military Intelligence,” a group composed of military officers under the Moammar Khaddafy regime, the Libyan dictator who the U.S. helped topple just one year earlier.

The February 17 Martyr Brigade, “recommended by the Libyan Government and contractually obligated to provide security to the Mission Compound,” had fled, the report found. “In other words, some of the very individuals the United States helped remove from power during the Libyan revolution were the only Libyans that came to the assistance of the United States on the night of the Benghazi attacks,” the report states.

Last fall, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified before the Benghazi committee that Stevens had originally chosen to serve in Benghazi because “he understood America had to be represented there at that pivotal time.”

In previously unreported details, the Republican majority of the committee found that Stevens traveled to the U.S. mission that week to both fill a temporary staffing gap and to spearhead an effort to make Benghazi a permanent diplomatic post.

Witnesses told the committee Stevens was laying the groundwork for a visit by Secretary Clinton just one month later and “the hope was to establish a permanent consulate in Benghazi for the Secretary to present to the Libyan government during her trip.”

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Discussions were already underway in Washington for how to fund the upgrades, and one month before the end of the fiscal year there was pressure to assemble a package before available funds were lost.

The report highlights the military’s failure to carry out Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s order to deploy forces to Benghazi and the lengthy delay that prevented the military assets from arriving at the embassy in Tripoli until 2 p.m. the day after the Benghazi attack.

“What was disturbing from the evidence the Committee found was that at the time of the final lethal attack at the Annex, no asset ordered deployed by the Secretary had even left the ground,” the report states.

Previous accounts blamed the “tyranny of time and distance” plus the failure to have airplanes ready for the significant delay in moving military assets. But the report states conflicting orders from State Department and Pentagon officials over whether Marines should wear military uniforms or civilian attire also played a role.

In a newly revealed two-hour secure video conference on the night of the attacks led by White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and attended by Clinton and others, State Department officials raised concerns about the diplomatic sensitivities of the attire to be worn by assets launched.

In an interview with the Committee, Patrick Kennedy, the under secretary or Management at State, described the department’s sensitivity as wanting to “make sure that the steps we were taking would enhance the security of our personnel, not potentially diminish the security of our personnel.”

According to one commander, the report states, as forces prepared to deploy, “during the course of three hours, he and his Marines changed in and out of their uniforms four times.”

Further, several witnesses told the committee that despite Panetta’s orders, the operating plan was not to insert any asset into Benghazi. “Their understanding was that the assets needed to be sent to Tripoli to augment security at the Embassy, and that the State Department was working to move the State Department personnel from Benghazi to Tripoli.”

Republicans on the committee were critical of high-level officials in Washington for mistakenly thinking that the attacks were over and the crisis had passed by the time the emergency video conference convened, which the report alleges contributed to the confusion.

The report also finds that then-Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral James Winnefeld, did not participate in the secure call because “he had left to return to his residence to host a dinner party for foreign dignitaries.” He received one update during the dinner on the attacks.

The section of the report devoted to the Benghazi assault concludes “the response to the attacks suffered from confusion and miscommunication circulating between agencies.”

A total of 107 witnesses were interviewed for the report, including 81 never before questioned by Congress and 9 eyewitnesses to the attacks, Republicans on the committee told NBC News. The committee also received and reviewed more than 75,000 new pages of documents.

Democrats on the House Select Committee on Benghazi had a sharply different view even before seeing the Republicans’ report. The minority version released Monday concludes that “the U.S. military could not have done anything differently on the night of the attacks that would have saved the lives of the four brave Americans killed in Benghazi.”

Ranking Member Elijah Cummings early Tuesday called the Republican report “partisan” but could offer no additional comment because “we haven’t read it because Republicans didn’t want us to check it against the evidence we obtained.”‎

Democrats also attacked Republicans over the committee’s process, including what they describe as “grave abuses,” such as excluding Democrats from interviews, concealing exculpatory evidence, withholding interview transcripts, leaking inaccurate information, issuing unilateral subpoenas, sending armed Marshals to the home of a cooperative witness, and even conducting political fundraising “by exploiting the deaths of four Americans.”

The Democrats chastised committee chairman Trey Gowdy who they said “personally and publicly accused Secretary Clinton of compromising a highly classified intelligence source.”

Democrats did acknowledge, as had been previously determined, that “security measures in Benghazi were woefully inadequate as a result of decisions made by officials in the Bureau of Diplomatic Security.” But their report concluded, “Secretary Clinton never personally denied any requests for additional security in Benghazi.”

Reacting to the GOP report early Tuesday, State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner said: “We have made great progress towards making our posts safer since 2012. We have been working to respond to the extensive findings and recommendations of the independent Accountability Review Board, closing out 26 out of its 29 recommendations.”

A Select Committee spokesman dismissed the Democrats’ report as “rehashed, partisan talking points” aimed at defending Hillary Clinton.

NBC News was awaiting comment from the White House on the report released by the Republican majority on the committee.

 

Clinton, for her part, has repeatedly denounced the committee’s purpose. “There have been seven investigations led mostly by Republicans in the Congress and they were non-partisan and they reached conclusions that, first of all, I and nobody did anything wrong but there were changes we could make,” Clinton said during a TODAY town hall on Oct. 5, 2015. “This committee was set up, as they have admitted, for the purpose of making a partisan political issue out of the deaths of four Americans. I would have never done that.”

Oh, So Now the Justice Dept. is Mandating PC Training

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Any bets that the FBI does in fact make a criminal referral on Hillary and the Justice Department will not advance the case for prosecution? Anyone? Maybe they will use the ‘implicit bias’ against women as a reason….. Sheesh, read on, ensure your seat belt is securely buckled.

 

Exclusive: Justice Department mandates ‘implicit bias’ training for agents, lawyers

Reuters: The U.S. Justice Department will announce on Monday that more than 33,000 federal agents and prosecutors will receive training aimed at preventing unconscious bias from influencing their law enforcement decisions, department officials told Reuters.

The training will bring Justice Department employees in line with many local police departments across the country that have implemented bias prevention plans following a spate of shootings of unarmed black men by white police officers.

Nationwide protests following those shootings blamed police bias for unnecessary use of force against minorities.

The department had been criticized for not developing its own policies to combat bias after recommending local police do so at the direction of a task force created by President Barack Obama after riots in 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri.

In a memo to Justice Department employees obtained by Reuters, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates said the program targets “implicit biases” – subtle, unconscious stereotypes or characterizations nearly everyone makes about certain groups of people.

“But implicit bias also presents unique challenges to effective law enforcement, because it can alter where investigators and prosecutors look for evidence and how they analyze it without their awareness or ability to compensate,” Yates said in the memo.

The training will be mandatory for all Justice Department agents and prosecutors and will be rolled out over the next year, Yates said.

Arrest data compiled by some police departments have shown that black and Hispanic men are more likely to be stopped by police than others, suggesting officers may be exerting implicit bias in deciding whom to question or apprehend.

The Justice Department will use a model developed by the Police Executive Research Forum, a nonprofit organization that provides expertise on policing issues, designed to make people aware of attitudes they may hold about certain races, genders, nationalities and other characteristics.

The Justice Department employs more than 5,800 attorneys and 28,000 law enforcement agents across four agencies: The Federal Bureau of Investigation, Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, and the U.S. Marshals Service.

Police departments such as those in Baltimore, New York City, Seattle, New Orleans and Los Angeles have training programs in place that help officers recognize biases they may carry but not be aware of following a national outcry against police bias in minority communities.

Asked why the Justice Department only now has begun such training for its employees, Yates said success in local jurisdictions caused the federal government to consider it as well.

“This program has been so well-received by our state and local counterparts, we thought it was something we should be offering to our federal agents, frankly, to get our own house in order,” Yates said in an interview with Reuters.

Yates and the heads of other Justice Department components will begin their own implicit bias training course on Tuesday. Attorney General Loretta Lynch will announce the initiative in Phoenix on Tuesday when she travels there as part of her community policing tour, said a Justice Department official.

Department of Homeland Security employees, which include 60,000 border patrol officers and agents, will not be subject to the training.

Yates said the Justice Department hopes to serve as a model for other federal agencies that have not yet addressed implicit bias.

**** We already have a bias at Justice, and training for more to the left?

As a former lawyer at the Justice Department noted about Loretta Lynch in her confirmation hearing some factual details about the departments at Main Justice:

Bias in Hiring:
A devastating report by the Department of Justice inspector general in 2013 found deep polarization, mismanagement, and harassment of conservative employees as well as a litmus test imposed in hiring attorneys in the Civil Rights Division — namely, experience with liberal civil-rights organizations, which translates to experience working for the institutional Left. In short, only ideological allies need apply. As a result, the inspector general’s report found that the Civil Rights Division “passed over candidates who had stellar academic credentials and litigation experience with some of the best law firms in the country” and recommended that this litmus test be abolished. Former assistant attorney general Tom Perez specifically rejected reforms to end the biases in Civil Rights Division hiring. Will Lynch commit to implementing the recommendations made by the DOJ inspector general for more equitable and non-partisan attorney hiring? What will she do to stop the harassment of career employees not considered “liberal enough” that is outlined in the IG report? Free Speech Over the last six years, the Justice Department has brought a series of flimsy civil cases against peaceful abortion-clinic protesters under the Federal Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE). Case after case has been thrown out by federal courts, often after a scolding by the judge that the case lacked merit. These cases squelched the First Amendment rights of anti-abortion protesters, who may have been the victims of political targeting. In one case, the court assessed sanctions that the DOJ didn’t even appeal. What will Lynch do to fix this problem? Will she commit to requiring higher evidentiary findings in any recommendation for new prosecutions against religiously motivated abortion protesters?
Department Misconduct:
Two individuals remain employed in important positions at the Justice Department despite findings that they engaged in gross prosecutorial misconduct or outright perjury. One is Karla Dobinski. Dobinski is a lawyer who was involved in a prosecution against New Orleans police officers for civil-rights violations in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Dobinski was tasked with serving as head of the “taint team” to protect the defendant police officers’ constitutional rights. A scathing opinion by federal judge Kurt Engelhardt points out that a number of DOJ lawyers, including Dobinski, engaged in a secret blogging campaign during the course of the trial to leak evidence about the case, as well as to bolster or weaken the credibility of trial witnesses. Yet Dobinski still is employed by DOJ. She even works in the component currently investigating other police departments. Will Lynch agree to review the matter for possible disciplinary action against Dobinski? Another Justice Department employee, Stephanie Celandine Gyamfi, was found to have engaged in perjury during the course of the DOJ inspector general’s 2013 investigation. This wasn’t any ordinary perjury, since it involved the integrity of American elections. According to the IG report, Gyamfi, who works in the Voting Section, was asked about confidential internal legal memoranda leaked to the Washington Post. She denied any knowledge of the leaks until she was confronted with documents showing her participation. The IG report says she told IG investigators that she “did not regret posting comments online, except to the extent that it resulted in questioning from the OIG.” Yet she still works in the very same Voting Section and has been neither disciplined nor terminated. Will Lynch agree to review the matter for possible disciplinary action against Gyamfi? When judges accuse DOJ lawyers of prosecutorial abuse or other such misbehavior, as has happened in numerous cases over the past six years, what actions will Lynch take to discipline or terminate those employees?
Funding Democratic Political Databases:
The Justice Department has been moving tax money toward a voter database used by Democratic candidates. Catalist is a massive database containing voter files used by left-wing organizations that is so inaccurate that an organization using its database was the subject of numerous complaints in Virginia in 2012 for sending voter-registration applications to “dead relatives, children, family members in other states, non–U.S. citizens . . . and residents’ cats and dogs.” The Justice Department has been funding experts and political-science professors in its litigation who used Catalist in various ways. Will Lynch agree to stop using Catalist data? Racialist Assaults on Voter-ID Laws The Justice Department has hired expert witnesses to attack election-integrity laws who have testified that blacks are “less sophisticated” than whites and therefore less able to “figure out” how to register, comply with voter-ID requirements, or get to the polls to vote. The DOJ has paid these professors hundreds of thousands of dollars to provide this offensive testimony. Does Lynch agree with this testimony, or will she terminate the contracts of experts who have such a patronizing view of black voters? Does she believe, as Eric Holder does, that voter-ID laws are racist, and does she disagree with the Supreme Court’s decision upholding such laws in 2008 in Crawford v. Marion County? Most important, the 2013 IG report makes it clear that Eric Holder and others in the leadership of the Civil Rights Division demoted the head of the Voting Section, Christopher Coates, because Holder did not want Coates to pursue cases where whites were being discriminated against and because Coates was asking attorney applicants whether “they would be capable of enforcing the Voting Rights Act in a race-neutral manner.” In other words, it seems that Holder did not believe in the race-neutral enforcement of federal anti-discrimination laws such as the Voting Rights Act. Lynch should be asked if she shares this view that the Voting Rights Act protects only blacks and other minority groups from discrimination. Such a view should disqualify anyone from being attorney general.
The Death Penalty and Racial Bias in the Justice System:
Lynch said in 2002 that the application of the death penalty against blacks and Hispanics evidenced a systematic disregard for minority citizens. Lynch would not apply the death penalty even if it could be applied perfectly, according to a 2002 Vera Institute of Justice report, simply because of its supposed disparate impact on minorities. “You can be as fair as possible in a particular case, but the reality is that the federal death penalty is going to hit harder on certain groups,” she said. Although the death penalty is less common in federal prosecutions, if Lynch is confirmed, she will likely face death-penalty decisions, particularly in terrorism prosecutions. Given her race-based opposition, Lynch should be asked whether she will refuse to authorize her prosecutors to seek the death penalty because of the race of the accused or whether she will recuse herself from such decisions.
In April 2014, Lynch participated in a conference in New York City organized by the Justice Department’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. The DOJ report on the conference had a list of “action items” that included the statement that “racial bias is pervasive” in our society, a claim that most Americans would disagree with and for which the evidence is, at best, equivocal. It is critical for members of the Senate to determine whether Lynch shares the view that racial bias is pervasive and, if so, how that will affect her decision-making as attorney general. Immigration Enforcement and Prosecutorial DiscretionEric Holder and President Obama have stretched the concept of prosecutorial discretion beyond recognition in order to avoid enforcing federal statutes they disagree with on policy grounds. Lynch must be asked whether she believes that the president’s immigration policy is constitutional and whether she believes that, as attorney general, she can refuse to enforce a federal statute against whole categories of offenders. This includes refusing to enforce federal drug laws in states that have decriminalized or legalized marijuana. This last question is particularly important, because it is also related to other issues, such as the refusal of DOJ to present the contempt citations of Eric Holder and Lois Lerner to a federal grand jury. Federal law (2 U.S.C. §194) requires the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, currently Ronald Machen, to bring such a contempt citation before a federal grand jury for action.
Machen has refused to do so. Does Lynch believe it is appropriate for the U.S. Attorney not to comply with this federal statute? Under Eric Holder’s leadership, the department where we formerly worked has been politicized to an unprecedented extent. These confirmation hearings are vital to finding out whether Loretta Lynch will continue policies that have damaged the administration of justice and the reputation of the Justice Department, or whether she will put the department back on the path toward being a highly professional, objective law-enforcement agency dedicated to the rule of law. Read the full article here from National Review.