Euro Arms Pipeline to Middle East

Posted on July 28, 2016July 28, 2016 by Denise Simon

Making a Killing: The 1.2 Billion Euro Arms Pipeline to Middle East

An unprecedented flow of weapons from Central and Eastern Europe is flooding the battlefields of the Middle East.

Lawrence Marzouk, Ivan Angelovski and Miranda Patrucic BIRN Belgrade, London, Sarajevo

BalkanInsight: As Belgrade slept on the night of November 28, 2015, the giant turbofan engines of a Belarusian Ruby Star Ilyushin II-76 cargo plane roared into life, its hull laden with arms destined for faraway conflicts.

Rising from the tarmac of Nikola Tesla airport, the hulking aircraft pierced the Serbian mist to head towards Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

It was one of at least 68 flights that in just 13 months transported weapons and ammunition to Middle Eastern states and Turkey which, in turn, funnelled arms into brutal civil wars in Syria and Yemen, the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN, and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, OCCRP, has found. The flights form just a small part of €1.2 billion in arms deals between the countries since 2012, when parts of the Arab Spring turned into an armed conflict.

Belgrade Airport | BIRN

Meanwhile, over the past two years, as thousands of tonnes of weapons fly south, hundreds of thousands of refugees have fled north from the conflicts that have killed more than 400,000 people. But while Balkan and European countries have shut down the refugee route, the billion-euro pipeline sending arms by plane and ship to the Middle East remains open – and very lucrative.

It is a trade that is almost certainly illegal, according to arms and human rights experts.

“The evidence points towards systematic diversion of weapons to armed groups accused of committing serious human rights violations. If this is the case, the transfers are illegal under the ATT (United Nations’ Arms Trade Treaty) and other international law and should cease immediately,” said Patrick Wilcken, an arms-control researcher at Amnesty International who reviewed the evidence collected by reporters.

But with hundreds of millions of euros at stake and weapons factories working overtime, countries have a strong incentive to let the business flourish. Arms export licences, which are supposed to guarantee the final destination of the goods, have been granted despite ample evidence that weapons are being diverted to Syrian and other armed groups accused of widespread human rights abuses and atrocities.

Robert Stephen Ford, US ambassador to Syria between 2011 and 2014, told BIRN and the OCCRP that the trade is coordinated by the US Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, Turkey and Gulf states through centres in Jordan and Turkey, although in practice weapon supplies often bypass this process.

BIRN and the OCCRP examined arms export data, UN reports, flight records, and weapons contracts during a year-long investigation that reveals how thousands of assault rifles, mortar shells, rocket launchers, anti-tank weapons, and heavy machine guns are pouring into the troubled region, originating from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia and Slovakia.

Read all the documents used in the investigation at BIRN’s online library BIRN Source.

Since the escalation of the Syrian conflict in 2012, these eight countries have approved the shipment of weapons and ammunition worth at least 1.2 billion euros to Saudi Arabia, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, and Turkey.

The figure is likely much higher. Data on arms export licences for four out of eight countries were not available for 2015 and seven out of eight countries for 2016. The four recipient countries are key arms suppliers to Syria and Yemen with little or no history of buying from Central and Eastern Europe prior to 2012. And the pace of the transfers is not slowing, with some of the biggest deals approved in 2015.

Eastern and Central European weapons and ammunition, identified in more than 50 videos and photos posted on social media, are now in use by Western-backed Free Syrian Army units, but also in the hands of fighters of Islamist groups such as Ansar al-Sham, Al Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, ISIS, in Syria, factions fighting for Syrian President Bashar-al Assad and Sunni forces in Yemen.

On April 7, 2016, twitter User @bm27_uragan, who monitors the spread of weapons in the Syrian conflict, posted a video apparently of Free Syrian Army rebel using Serbian made Coyote M02 heavy machine gun in Southern Aleppo in Syria. The Coyote M02 has been independently identified as a Coyote M02.

Markings on some of the weapons identifying the origin and date of production reveal significant quantities have come off production lines as recently as 2015.

Out of the 1.2 billion euros in weapons and ammunition approved for export, about 500 million euros have been delivered, according to UN trade information and national arms export reports.

The frequency and number of cargo flights – BIRN and the OCCRP identified at least 68 in just over one year – reveal a steady flow of weapons from Central and Eastern Europe airports to military bases in Middle East.

The most commonly used aircraft – the Ilyushin II-76 – can carry up to 50 tonnes of cargo or approximately 16,000 AK-47 Kalashnikov rifles or three million bullets. Others, including the Boeing 747, are capable of hauling at least twice that amount.

But arms and ammunitions are not only coming by air. Reporters also have identified at least three shipments made by the US military from Black Sea ports carrying an estimated 4,700 tonnes of weapons and ammunition to the Red Sea and Turkey since December 2015.

One Swedish member of the EU parliament calls the trade shameful.

“Maybe they –[Bulgaria, Slovakia and Croatia] – do not feel ashamed at all but I think they should,” said Bodil Valero, who also served as the rapporteur for the EU’s last arms report.“Countries selling arms to Saudi Arabia or the Middle East-North Africa region are not carrying out good risk assessments and, as a result, are in breach of EU and national law.”.

OCCRP and BIRN talked to government representatives in Croatia, Czech Republic, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovakia who all responded similarly saying that they are meeting their international obligations. Some cited that Saudi Arabia is not on any international weapons black lists and other said their countries are not responsible if weapons have been diverted.

A question of legality

The global arms trade is regulated by three layers of interconnected legislation — national, European Union, EU, and international – but there are no formal mechanisms to punish those who break the law.

Beyond the blanket ban on exports to embargoed countries, each licence request is dealt with individually.

In the case of Syria, there are currently no sanctions on supplying weapons to the opposition.

As a result, the lawfulness of the export approval hinges on whether countries have carried out due diligence on a range of issues, including the likelihood of the arms being diverted and the impact the export will have on peace and stability.

Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia and Slovakia are signatories of the UN’s Arms Trade Treaty, which entered into force in December 2014, and lists measures to prevent the illicit trade and diversion of arms.

Member states of the EU are also governed by the legally-binding 2008 Common Position on arms exports, requiring each country to take into account eight criteria when accessing arms exports licence applications, including whether the country respects international human rights, the preservation of “regional peace, security and stability” and the risk of diversion.

As part of their efforts to join the EU, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro have already accepted the measures and have amended their national law. Serbia is in the process of doing so.

Weapons exports are initially assessed based on an end-user certificate, a key document issued by the government of the importing country which guarantees who will use the weapons and that the arms are not intended for re-export.

Authorities in Central and Eastern Europe told BIRN and the OCCRP that they also inserted a clause which requires the buyer to seek approval if they later want to export the goods.

Beyond these initial checks, countries are required to carry out a range of other risk assessments based on national and EU law and the ATT, although conversations with, and statements from, authorities revealed little evidence of that.

OCCRP and BIRN talked to government representatives in Croatia, Czech Republic, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovakia who all responded similarly saying that they are meeting their international obligations. Some cited that Saudi Arabia is not on any international weapons black lists and other said their countries are not responsible if weapons have been diverted. The three other countries did not respond to requests for comment.

The Czech Foreign Ministry was the only public body to directly address concerns about human rights abuses and diversions, saying it took into account both when weighing up an export licence and had blocked transfers on that basis.

How legal are these arms sales to the Middle East? Find out more here

Saudi Arabia – The weapons king

The Central and Eastern European weapons supply line can be traced to the winter of 2012, when dozens of cargo planes, loaded with Saudi-purchased Yugoslav-era weapons and ammunition, began leaving Zagreb bound for Jordan. Soon after, the first footage of Croatian weapons in use emerged from the battleground of Syria.

According to a New York Times report from February 2013, a senior Croatian official offered the country’s stockpiles of old weapons for Syria during a visit to Washington in the summer of 2012. Zagreb was later put in touch with the Saudis, who bankrolled the purchases, while the CIA helped with logistics for an airlift that began late that year.

While Croatia’s government has consistently denied any role in shipping weapons to Syria, former US ambassador to Syria Ford confirmed to BIRN and the OCCRP the New York Times account from an anonymous source of how the deal was hatched. He said he was not at liberty to discuss it further.

This was just the beginning of an unprecedented flow of weapons from Central and Eastern Europe into the Middle East, as the pipeline expanded to include stocks from seven other countries. Local arms dealers sourced arms and ammunition from their home countries and brokered the sale of ammunition from Ukraine and Belarus, and even attempted to secure Soviet-made anti-tank systems bought from the UK, as a Europe-wide arms bazaar ensued.

Prior to the Arab Spring in 2011, the arms trade between Eastern Europe and Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, UAE, and Turkey – four key supporters of Syria’s fractured opposition – was negligible to non-existent, according to analysis of export data.

But that changed in 2012. Between that year and 2016, eight Eastern European countries approved at least 806 million euros worth of weapons and ammunition exports to Saudi Arabia, according to national and EU arms export reports as well as government sources.

Jordan secured export licences worth 155 million euros starting in 2012, while the UAE netted 135 million euros and Turkey 87 million euros, bringing the total to 1.2 billion euros.

Qatar, another key supplier of equipment to the Syrian opposition, does not show up in export licences from Central and Eastern Europe.

Jeremy Binnie, Middle East arms expert for Jane’s Defence Weekly, a publication widely regarded as the most trusted source of defence and security information, said the bulk of the weapon exports from Eastern Europe would likely be destined for Syria and, to a lesser extent, Yemen and Libya.

“With a few exceptions, the militaries of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the UAE and Turkey use Western infantry weapons and ammunition, rather than Soviet-designed counterparts,” said Binnie. “It consequently seems likely that large shipments of such materiel being acquired by – or sent to – those countries are destined for their allies in Syria, Yemen, and Libya.”

BIRN and the OCCRP obtained confidential documents from Serbia’s Ministry of Defence and minutes from a series of inter-ministerial meetings in 2013. The documents show the ministry raised concerns that deliveries to Saudi Arabia would be diverted to Syria, pointing out that the Saudis do not use Central and Eastern European stock and have a history of supplying the Syrian opposition. The Ministry turned down the Saudi request only to reverse course more than one year later and approve new arms shipments citing national interest. Saudi security forces, while mostly armed by Western producers, are known to use limited amounts of Central and Eastern European equipment. This includes Czech-produced military trucks and some Romanian-made assault rifles. But even arms exports destined for use by Saudi forces are proving controversial, given their involvement in the conflict in Yemen.

The Netherlands became the first EU country to halt arms exports to Saudi Arabia as a result of civilian deaths in Yemen’s civil war, and the European Parliament has called for an EU-wide arms embargo.

Supply Logistics: Cargo flights and airdrops

Weapons from Central and Eastern Europe are delivered to the Middle East by cargo flights and ships. By identifying the planes and ships delivering weapons, reporters were able to track the flow of arms in real time.

Detailed analysis of airport timetables, cargo carrier history, flight tracking data, and air traffic control sources helped pinpoint 68 flights that carried weapons to Middle Eastern conflicts in the past 13 months. Belgrade, Sofia and Bratislava emerged as the main hubs for the airlift.

Most frequent were flights operated from Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. The flights were either confirmed as carrying weapons, were headed to military bases in Saudi Arabia or the UAE or were carried out by regular arms shippers.

The Middle East Airlift

At least 68 cargo flights from Serbia, Slovakia, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic have carried thousands of tons of munitions in the past 13 months to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Jordan, three key suppliers of the Syrian rebels.

These were identified through detailed analysis of airport timetables, cargo carrier history, flight tracking data, leaked arms contracts, end user certificates, and air traffic control sources.

Cargo flights from Central and Eastern Europe to the Middle East, and particularly military bases, were extremely uncommon before late 2012, when the upsurge in weapons and ammunition purchases began, according to EU flight data and interviews with plane-spotters.

The most commonly used aircraft – the Ilyushin II-76 – can carry up to 50 tonnes of cargo or approximately 16,000 AK-47 Kalashnikov rifles or three million bullets. Others, including the Boeing 747, are capable of hauling at least twice that amount.

Of the 68 flights identified, 50 were officially confirmed to have carried arms and ammunition:

Serbia’s Civil Aviation Directorate confirmed that 49 flights departing or passing through Serbia were carrying arms and ammunition from June 1, 2015 to July 4, 2016. The confirmation came following weeks of refusal to comment on grounds of confidentiality and after BIRN and the OCCRP presented its evidence, including photographs showing military boxes being loaded onto planes at Belgrade’s Nikola Tesla Airport on four different occasions.

An official at the Bulgarian National Customs Agency confirmed one flight, operated by Belarussian cargo carrier Ruby Star Airways, was carrying arms from the remote Bulgarian Gorna Oryahovitsa Airport to Brno–Turany Airport, the Czech Republic, and on to Aqaba, Jordan.

An additional 18 flights were identified as very likely to have been carrying arms and ammunition based on one of three variables: the air freight company’s history of weapons supplies; connections to earlier arms flights; or a destination of a military airport:

Ten flights were made to Prince Sultan Air Base in Al Kharj, Saudi Arabia and Al Dhafra Air Base in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, indicating the likely presence of weapons or ammunition. Additionally, 14 flights to Prince Sultan and Al Dhafra air bases are confirmed as having carried weapons during the same period by Serbia’s Civil Aviation Directorate.

Seven flights were operated from Slovakia and Bulgaria by Jordan International Air Cargo, part of the Royal Jordanian Air Force, which were revealed to have carried weapons and ammunition from Croatia to Jordan in the winter of 2012. Bulgarian retired colonel and counter-terrorism expert Slavcho Velkov, who maintains extensive contacts with the military, told BIRN and the OCCRP that the Sofia-Amman flights “were transporting weapons to Saudi Arabia, mostly for the Syrian conflict.” Additionally, one other flight operated by this airline is confirmed as having carried weapons during the same period by Serbia’s Civil Aviation Directorate.

One flight was operated by a Belarussian cargo carrier TransAVIAexport Airlines, which has a long history of transporting weapons. In 2014, the airline was hired by Serbian arms dealer Slobodan Tesic to transport Serbian and Belarussian weapons and ammunition to air bases in Libya controlled by various militant groups. The United Nations, UN, Sanctions Committee investigated the case and found potential breaches of UN sanctions, according to a 2015 UN report. Additionally, five flights operated by this airline are confirmed as having carried weapons during the same period by Serbia’s Civil Aviation Directorate.

Many of these flights made an additional stop in Central and Eastern Europe – meaning they were likely picking up more weapons and ammunition – before flying to their final destination.

EU flight statistics provide further evidence of the scale of the operation. They reveal that planes flying from Bulgaria and Slovakia have delivered 2,268 tons of cargo – equal to 44 flights with the most commonly used aircraft – the Ilyushin II-76 – since the summer of 2014 to the same military bases in Saudi Arabia and UAE pinpointed by BIRN and OCCRP.

Distributing the weapons

Arms bought for Syria by the Saudis, Turks, Jordanians and the UAE are then routed through two secret command facilities – called Military Operation Centers (MOC) – in Jordan and Turkey, according to Ford, the former US ambassador to Syria.

These units – staffed by security and military officials from the Gulf, Turkey, Jordan and the US – coordinate the distribution of weapons to vetted Syrian opposition groups, according to information from the Atlanta-based Carter Center, a think tank that has a unit monitoring the conflict.

“Each of the countries involved in helping the armed opposition retained final decision-making authority about which groups in Syria received assistance,” Ford said.

A cache of leaked cargo carrier documents provides further clues to how the Saudi military supplies Syrian rebels.

According to the documents obtained by BIRN and the OCCRP, the Moldovan company AeroTransCargo made six flights in the summer of 2015 carrying at least 250 tonnes of ammunition between military bases in Saudi Arabia and Esenboga International Airport in Ankara, the capital of Turkey, reportedly an arrival point for weapons and ammunition for Syrian rebels.

Pieter Wezeman, of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, a leading organisation in tracking arms exports, said he suspects the flights are part of the logistical operation to supply ammunition to Syrian rebels.

From the MOCs, weapons are then transported by road to the Syrian border or airdropped by military planes.

A Free Syrian Army commander from Aleppo, who asked to remain anonymous to protect his safety, told BIRN and OCCRP that weapons from Central and Eastern Europe were distributed from centrally controlled headquarters in Syria. “We don’t care about the county of origin, we just know it is from Eastern Europe,” he said.

The Saudis and Turks also provided weapons directly to Islamist groups not supported by the US and who have sometimes ended up fighting MOC-backed factions, Ford added.

The Saudis are also known to have airdropped arms and equipment, including what appeared to be Serbian-made assault rifles to its allies in Yemen.

Ford said that while he was not personally involved in negotiations with Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania over the supply of weapons to Syria, he believes that the CIA is likely to have played a role.

“For operations of this type it would be difficult for me to imagine that there wasn’t some coordination between the intelligence services, but it may have been confined strictly to intelligence channels,” he said.

The US may not have just played a role in the logistics behind delivering Gulf-sponsored weapons from Eastern Europe to the Syrian rebels. Through its Department of Defense’s Special Operations Command (SOCOM), it has also bought and delivered vast quantities of military materiel from Eastern Europe for the Syrian opposition as part of a US$500 million train and equip programme.

Since December 2015, SOCOM has commissioned three cargo ships to transport 4,700 tons of arms and ammunition from ports of Constanta in Romania and Burgas in Bulgaria to the Middle East likely as part of the covert supply of weapons to Syria.

The shipments included heavy machine guns, rocket launchers and anti-tank weapons – as well as bullets, mortars, grenades, rockets and explosives, according to US procurement documents.

The origin of arms shipped by SOCOM is unknown and the material listed in transport documents is available from stockpiles across Central and Eastern Europe.

Not long after one of the deliveries, SOCOM supported Kurdish groups published an image on Twitter and Facebook showing a warehouse piled with US-brokered ammunition boxes in northern Syria SOCOM would not confirm or deny that the shipments were bound for Syria.

US procurement records also reveal that SOCOM secured from 2014 to 2016 at least 25 million euros (27 million dollars) worth of Bulgarian and 11 million euros (12 million dollars) in Serbian weapons and ammunition for covert operations and Syrian rebels..

A Booming Business

Arms control researcher Wilcken said Central and Eastern Europe had been well positioned to cash in on the huge surge in demand for weapons following the Arab Spring.

“Geographical proximity and lax export controls have put some Balkan states in pole position to profit from this trade, in some instances with covert US assistance,” he added. “Eastern Europe is rehabilitating Cold War arms industries which are expanding and becoming profitable again.”

Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic boasted recently that his country could produce five times the amount of arms it currently makes and still not meet the demand.

“Unfortunately in some parts of the world they are at war more than ever and everything you produce, on any side of the world you can sell it,” he said.

Arms manufacturers from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia are running at full capacity with some adding extra shifts and others not taking new orders.

Saudi Arabia’s top officials – more used to negotiating multi-billion-dollar fighter-jet deals with Western defence giants – have been forced to deal with a handful of small-time arms brokers operating in Eastern Europe who have access to weapons such as AK-47s and rocket launchers

Middlemen such as Serbia’s CPR Impex and Slovakia’s Eldon have played a critical role in supplying weapons and ammunition to the Middle East

The inventory of each delivery is usually unknown due to the secrecy surrounding arms deals but two end-user certificates and one export licence, obtained by BIRN and the OCCRP, reveal the extraordinary scope of the buy-up for Syrian beneficiaries.

For example, the Saudi Ministry of Defence expressed its interest in buying from Serbian arms dealer CPR Impex a number of weapons including hundreds of aging T-55 and T-72 tanks, millions of rounds of ammunition, multi-launch missile systems and rocket launchers. Weapons and ammunition listed were produced in the former Yugoslavia, Belarus, Ukraine, and the Czech Republic.

An export licence issued to a little-known Slovakian company called Eldon in January 2015 granted the firm the right to transport thousands of Eastern European rocket-propelled grenade launchers, heavy machine guns and almost a million bullets worth nearly 32 million euros to Saudi Arabia.

BIRN and OCCRP’s analysis of social media shows weapons that originated from the former states of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, and Serbia, Croatia and Bulgaria are now present on the battlefields of Syria and Yemen.

While experts believe the countries continue to shirk their responsibility, the weapons pipeline adds more and more fuel to a white hot conflict that leads to more and more misery.

“Proliferation of arms to the region has caused untold human suffering; huge numbers of people have been displaced and parties to the conflict have committed serious human rights violations including abductions, executions, enforced disappearances, torture and rape,” said Amnesty’s Wilcken.

Additional reporting by Atanas Tchobanov, Dusica Tomovic, Jelena Cosic, Jelena Svircic, Lindita Cela, RISE Moldova and Pavla Holcova.

This investigation is produced by BIRN as a part of Paper Trail to Better Governance project.

DNC Email Hacks: GRU, Russian Military Intelligence

Posted on July 25, 2016July 25, 2016 by Denise Simon

In part from Motherboard: In the wee hours of June 14, the Washington Postrevealed that “Russian government hackers” had penetrated the computer network of the Democratic National Committee. Foreign spies, the Post claimed, had gained access to the DNC’s entire database of opposition research on the presumptive Republican nominee, Donald Trump, just weeks before the Republican Convention. Hillary Clinton said the attack was “troubling.”

It began ominously. Nearly two months earlier, in April, the Democrats had noticed that something was wrong in their networks. Then, in early May, the DNC called in CrowdStrike, a security firm that specializes in countering advanced network threats. After deploying their tools on the DNC’s machines, and after about two hours of work, CrowdStrike found“two sophisticated adversaries” on the Committee’s network. The two groups were well-known in the security industry as “APT 28” and “APT 29.” APT stands for Advanced Persistent Threat—usually jargon for spies.

CrowdStrike linked both groups to “the Russian government’s powerful and highly capable intelligence services.” APT 29, suspected to be the FSB, had been on the DNC’s network since at least summer 2015. APT 28, identified as Russia’s military intelligence agency GRU, had breached the Democrats only in April 2016, and probably tipped off the investigation. CrowdStrike found no evidence of collaboration between the two intelligence agencies inside the DNC’s networks, “or even an awareness of one by the other,” the firm wrote.

This was big. Democratic political operatives suspected that not one but two teams of Putin’s spies were trying to help Trump and harm Clinton. The Trump campaign, after all, was getting friendly with Russia. The Democrats decided to go public.

Digitally exfiltrating and then publishing possibly manipulated documents disguised as freewheeling hacktivism is crossing a big red line and setting a dangerous precedent

The DNC knew that this wild claim would have to be backed up by solid evidence. A Post story wouldn’t provide enough detail, so CrowdStrike had prepared a technical report to go online later that morning. The security firm carefully outlined some of the allegedly “superb” tradecraft of both intrusions: the Russian software implants were stealthy, they could sense locally-installed virus scanners and other defenses, the tools were customizable through encrypted configuration files, they were persistent, and the intruders used an elaborate command-and-control infrastructure. So the security firm claimed to have outed two intelligence operations.

Then, the next day, the story exploded.

On June 15 a WordPress blog popped up out of nowhere. And, soon, a Twitter account, @GUCCIFER_2. The first post and tweet were clumsily titled: “DNC’s servers hacked by a lone hacker.” The message: that it was not hacked by Russian intelligence. The mysterious online persona claimed to have given “thousands of files and mails” to Wikileaks, while mocking the firm investigating the case: “I guess CrowdStrike customers should think twice about company’s competence,” the post said, adding “Fuck CrowdStrike!!!!!!!!!”

Along with the abuse, the Guccifer 2.0 account started publishing stolen DNC documents on the WordPress blog, on file sharing sites, and by giving“a few docs from many thousands” to at least two US publications, The Smoking Gun and Gawker. Mainstream media outlets quickly picked up the story and covered the Clinton campaign’s opposition research on Trump in hundreds of news items that revealed pre-rehearsed arguments against the presumptive Republican nominee: that “Trump has no core”; that he is a “bad businessman;” and that he should be branded “misogynist in chief.” Donor lists were leaked along with personal contact details and juicy dollar amounts.

The Guccifer 2.0 account also claimed that it had given an unknown number of documents containing “election programs, strategies, plans against Reps, financial reports, etc” to Wikileaks. Two days later, Wikileaks published a massive 88 gigabyte encrypted file as “insurance.” This file, which Julian Assange could unlock by simply tweeting a key, is widely suspected to contain the DNC cache. On 13 July, almost a month after the hack became public, the intruders leaked selected files exclusively to The Hill, a Washington outlet for Congressional and political news, and then made the original files available later.

Nine days later, on July 22, just after Trump was officially nominated and before the Democratic National Convention got under way, Wikileaks published more than 19,000 DNC emails with more than 8,000 attachments—“i sent them emails, i posted some files in my blog,” Guccifer confirmed by DM, when asked if he shared all files with Julian Assange. Two days later, on July 24, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chair of Democratic National Committee, announced her resignation—the extraordinary hack and leak had helped force out the head of one of America’s political parties and threatened to disrupt Hillary Clinton’s nominating convention.

This tactic and its remarkable success is a game-changer: exfiltrating documents from political organisations is a legitimate form of intelligence work. The US and European countries do it as well. But digitally exfiltrating and thenpublishing possibly manipulated documents disguised as freewheeling hacktivism is crossing a big red line and setting a dangerous precedent: an authoritarian country directly yet covertly trying to sabotage an American election.

***

So how good is the evidence? And what does all this mean?

The forensic evidence linking the DNC breach to known Russian operations is very strong. On June 20, two competing cybersecurity companies, Mandiant (part of FireEye) and Fidelis, confirmed CrowdStrike’s initial findings that Russian intelligence indeed hacked Clinton’s campaign. The forensic evidence that links network breaches to known groups is solid: used and reused tools, methods, infrastructure, even unique encryption keys. For example: in late March the attackers registered a domain with a typo—misdepatrment[.]com—to look suspiciously like the company hired by the DNC to manage its network, MIS Department. They then linked this deceptive domain to a long-known APT 28 so-called X-Tunnel command-and-control IP address, 45.32.129[.]185.

One of the strongest pieces of evidence linking GRU to the DNC hack is the equivalent of identical fingerprints found in two burglarized buildings: a reused command-and-control address—176.31.112[.]10—that was hard coded in a piece of malware found both in the German parliament as well as on the DNC’s servers. Russian military intelligence was identified by the German domestic security agency BfV as the actor responsible for the Bundestag breach. The infrastructure behind the fake MIS Department domain was also linked to the Berlin intrusion through at least one other element, a shared SSL certificate.

The evidence linking the Guccifer 2.0 account to the same Russian operators is not as solid, yet a deception operation—a GRU false flag, in technical jargon—is still highly likely. Intelligence operatives and cybersecurity professionals long knew that such false flags were becoming more common. One noteworthy example was the sabotage of France’s TV5 Monde station on 9/10 April 2015, initially claimed by the mysterious “CyberCaliphate,” a group allegedly linked to ISIS. Then, in June, the French authorities suspected the same infamous APT 28 group behind the TV5 Monde breach, in preparation since January of that year. But the DNC deception is the most detailed and most significant case study so far. The technical details are as remarkable as its strategic context.

The metadata in the leaked documents are perhaps most revealing: one dumped document was modified using Russian language settings, by a user named“Феликс Эдмундович,” a code name referring to the founder of the Soviet Secret Police, the Cheka, memorialised in a 15-ton iron statue in front of the old KGB headquarters during Soviet times. The original intruders made other errors: one leaked document included hyperlink error messages in Cyrillic, the result of editing the file on a computer with Russian language settings. After this mistake became public, the intruders removed the Cyrillic information from the metadata in the next dump and carefully used made-up user names from different world regions, thereby confirming they had made a mistake in the first round. More comprehensive details here from Motherboard.

DNC Emails: Big Donors Get Big Jobs in Govt

Posted on July 25, 2016July 25, 2016 by Denise Simon

Votes kinda sorta matter but money, PAC’s, foreign contributions, big donors, bundlers matter more.

But it was not a good morning for Debbie Wasserman Schultz as she addressed Florida delegates.

DNC emails: Behind the scenes look at care of big donors

McClatchy: PHILADELPHIA: In May, after yet another State Dinner at the White House passed, major Democratic donor Cookie Parker dashed off a frustrated email that was forwarded to Democratic Party officials about her failure to receive any coveted invites or board appointments.

“I have been patient and not kicked up a stink because it is not my style. But as the Obama Administration winds down, I am feeling very down about this,” wrote Parker, founder and owner of KMS, a Los Angeles software company. “I raised a lot of money for the DNC for both cycles … and here I sit venting and feeling very much under appreciated.”

On another occasion, days before a coveted State Dinner for Nordic leaders, Democratic National Committee Chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz asked White House officials if they could find an extra ticket for another major donor, Florida lawyer Mitchell Berger.

On yet another, Erik Stowe, the DNC finance director for Northern California, outlined benefits given to different tiers of donors to the Democratic convention: priority booking at high-end hotels and tickets to major convention events and exclusive VIP parties.

Those were among the examples of special care – and sometimes special scrutiny – of major donors that were in thousands of leaked emails hacked from the DNC.

Many showed that while the White House often denies donors are given special treatment, the donors demand and expect it. And staff at the Democratic National Committee worked to reward donors with tickets to White House events and seats next to President Barack Obama based on a contributor’s financial generosity, many times after they blatantly asked for perks.

I think the DNC needs to get to the bottom of the facts and then take appropriate action on any of these emails Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook on ABC

About 20,000 emails were released Friday by WikiLeaks, which provided a searchable database of correspondence of seven DNC officials between January 2015 to May 2016. McClatchy could not independently verify the emails.

The White House and the DNC did not respond to requests for comment. Berger said he was grateful that Wasserman Schultz tried to get him into a State Dinner, though she was unsuccessful and he still has never been. He said both Democrats and Republicans try to reward donors. “It’s not necessarily an unusual thing thing for political parties to do,” he said. “This is my 11th presidential election. It’s not unusual.”

Other donors could not be reached for comment Sunday.

The emails include those that raise questions about the organization’s impartiality during the Democratic presidential primary between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, which cost chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz her job Sunday, and show how the DNC coordinated its message with others and responded to inquiries from journalists, including those at McClatchy.

Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Waserman Schultz will no longer be given a major speaking role at the Democrats’ convention that starts Monday ion Philadephia

The emails also show several instances where Democratic staffers disagreed about which donor was more worthy of the reward.

In one exchange, National Finance Director Jordan Kaplan and Mid-Atlantic Finance Director Alexandra Shapiro argue which contributor should be allowed to sit next to Obama at a DNC event.

Kaplan told Shapiro to move Maryland ophthalmologist Sreedhar Potarazu and give the seat to New York philanthropist Philip Munger because he is the largest donor to Organizing for America, a group that pushes Obama’s policies. “It would be nice to take care of him from the DNC side,” Kaplan wrote.

But Shapiro explained that the Potarazu family had contributed $332,250 while Munger had only donated $100,600.

[Get the political buzz of the day, every day from McClatchy]

In another email, Michael Rapino, chief executive officer and president of Live Nation Entertainment, wrote that he assumed he received an invitation to the Nordic state dinner because he was not happy to be passed over the previous time.

“I know they are trying to make it up to me bc I would not donate to his party said I was done with demo party bc they should have invited me to the Canadian state dinner given I am Canadian,” he wrote to a consultant, who passed the message to the DNC.

On another occasion, the emails showed several DNC staffers busy searching for a photo from a 2015 Kennedy Center Honors reception of Obama and a donor. They couldn’t find one but the donor kept contacting them. The last email noted, “The donor just emails me again. Any news?”

Yet another email noted that Democrats were trying to connect with donor Gus Arnavat, who served in the Obama administration as the executive director for the United States on the Inter-American Development Bank and could help them meet other donors. “He is working with a group of ambassadors who want to be in Philadelphia and coordinate their own event,” DNC communications director Luis Miranda explains in an email to a convention official.

It just goes to show you their exact moral compass. I mean, they will say anything to be able to win this. I mean, this is time and time again, lie after lie Republican Donald Trump

In the hunt for dollars, the DNC was sometimes, but not always, willing to overlook potential donors with questionable backgrounds, the emails show.

The DNC approved the attendance of Roy Black, a Miami-based attorney who has represented singer Justin Bieber on a driving under the influence charge; the founder of the sexually-charged “Girls Gone Wild” video series; baseball star Alex Rodriguez in a 2013 steroid case; and conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh.

In a May 12, 2016, email, DNC finance assistant Karina Marquez asked the committee’s vetting operation to review Black as one of six possible hosts for an Obama event. Black was approved to host an Obama event in 2007.

Kevin Snowden, a DNC deputy compliance officer, wrote in a May 12, 2016 email that “the only issue is Roy Black. New issues have come up since his last vet in February 2016.” White House aide Bobby Schmuck agreed in a May 12 email that Black shouldn’t host the event but it would be “fine” for him to attend.

The DNC vetted George Lindemann Jr. after he was convicted of three counts of wire fraud in 1995 in connection with a federal investigation into insurance fraud and horse killing.

“Finance asked us to vet as potential POTUS host/donor,” Chadwick Rivard, senior research supervisor, compliance, for the DNC, wrote in a May 9, 2016, email to DNC staffers and Schmuck.

An email with summary research notes on Lindemann said that after serving 21 months in prison he “has attempted to rehabilitate his image with philanthropic activity” and has made “sizeable contributions to Democratic and Republican candidates, committees and PACs. A few of these contributions have been returned.”

Schmuck sent an email to Claytron Cox, a DNC regional finance director, and wrote that Lindemann, Jr., “fails for everything.”

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/election/article91623012.html#emlnl=Morning_Newsletter#storylink=cpy

Another Terror Attack in Germany, Risks in USA

Posted on July 24, 2016July 24, 2016 by Denise Simon

Al Qaeda chief urges kidnappings of Westerners for prisoner swaps

Al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri has appeared in an audio interview calling on fighters to take Western hostages and exchange them for jailed jihadists, the monitoring service SITE Intelligence Group said on Sunday.

In recording posted online, Al-Zawahiri called on the global militant network to kidnap Westerners “until they liberate the last Muslim male prisoner and last Muslim female prisoner in the prisons of the Crusaders, apostates, and enemies of Islam,” according to SITE. More here from Reuters.

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A 21-year-old Syrian refugee was arrested on Sunday after killing a pregnant woman with a machete in Germany, the fourth violent assault on civilians in western Europe in 10 days, though police said it did not appear linked to terrorism.

The incident, however, may add to public unease surrounding Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-door refugee policy that has seen over a million migrants enter Germany over the past year, many fleeing war in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq.

German police said they arrested the machete-wielding Syrian asylum-seeker after he killed a woman and injured two other people in the southwestern city of Reutlingen near Stuttgart. Much more here from Newsweek.

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Related reading on NGO’s: UNHCR – Partnership in Resettlement

So what about the real vetting process in the United States you ask…..it is a great question.

After the Paris attacks, the White House called in 34 governors to discuss the policy and vetting process of refugees into the United States. While we focus on ‘Syrian’ refugees, they hardly make up the majority and it is this fact that must be noted. Even so, the White House, 3 days later published a chart of the vetting program and it does have some gaps (questions) that too must be answered.

‎Refugees undergo more rigorous screening than anyone else we allow into the United States. Here’s what the screening process looks like for them:

The full text is found here from the White House.

The admission of refugees to the United States and their resettlement here are authorized by the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), as amended by the Refugee Act of 1980. The INA defines a refugee as a person who is outside his or her country and who is unable or unwilling to return because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. In special circumstances, a refugee also may be a person who is within his or her country and who is persecuted or has a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. The maximum annual number of refugee admissions (refugee ceiling) and the allocation of these numbers by region of the world are set by the President after consultation by Cabinet-level representatives with members of the House and the Senate Judiciary Committees.

The Department of State’s (DOS’s) Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) is responsible for coordinating and managing the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program. Prospective refugees can be referred to the U.S. program by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), a U.S. embassy, or a designated nongovernmental organization (NGO), or in some cases, they can access the U.S. refugee program directly. PRM generally arranges for an NGO, an international organization, or U.S. embassy contractors to manage a Resettlement Support Center (RSC) that assists in refugee processing.

Following the consultations, the President issues a Presidential Determination that sets the refugee ceiling and regional allocations for that fiscal year. Once the Presidential Determination for a fiscal year has been issued, INA Section 207 also allows for additional refugee admissions in response to an “emergency refugee situation.” In such a situation, the President may, after congressional consultation, issue an Emergency Presidential Determination providing for an increase in refugee admissions numbers.

For FY2016, the Obama Administration initially proposed a refugee ceiling of 75,000 and held consultations with Congress on that proposal. The proposal reportedly included an allocation of 33,000 for the Near East/South Asia, the region that includes Syria.5 The Administration subsequently announced that the United States would admit at least 10,000 Syrian refugees in FY2016. On September 29, 2015, the Obama Administration released the Presidential Determination on Refugee Admissions for Fiscal Year 2016.6 It sets the FY2016 refugee ceiling at 85,000, with 79,000 admissions numbers allocated among the regions of the world and 6,000 admissions numbers comprising an unallocated reserve.7 The allocation for the Near East/South Asia region is 34,000.

Actual Admissions

In FY2015, the United States admitted 69,933 refugees. The Near East/South Asia region accounted for 24,579 admissions, of which 1,682 were Syrian refugees. In the first month of FY2016 (October 2015), total refugee admissions were 5,348, Near East/South Asia region admissions were 1,979, and Syrian admissions were 187. From October 1, 2010, through October 31, 2015, the United States admitted a total of 2,070 Syrian refugees.

Role of the Department of Homeland Security

USCIS adjudicates refugee applications and makes decisions about eligibility for refugee status. USCIS officers in the Refugee Corps interview each applicant in person and consider other evidence and information to determine whether the individual is eligible for refugee status. More comprehensive reading here.

WikiLeaks, Trump, Manafort, Kremlin, Oligarchs, DNC

Posted on July 22, 2016July 22, 2016 by Denise Simon

Today, July 22, 1016, WikiLeaks published 50,000 files from the DNC. For background, Julian Assange, the known manager of the entire WikiLeaks program appears to have some Belarus and Russia loyalties. Furthermore, Paul Manafort and Donald Trump have relationships as well. Could it be that Assange and the Kremlin have colluded in the U.S. elections and the DNC is waiting for the moment to destroy the general election process?

Julian Assange and Europe’s Last Dictator

The former WikiLeaks chief will moderate a public discussion about Belarus, more here.

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Related reading: Donald Trump and the Siberian Candidate

Manafort didn’t just represent oligarchs tight with the Kremlin. He became business partners with them. He ran a private equity fund in which the aluminum magnate (and Putin pal) Oleg Deripaska invested millions. As the Washington Post has shown, this fund didn’t exactly do much investing. In fact, Manafort struggled to account for the cash he received. And rather than pay back Deripaska, he apparently went underground. In 2014, Deripaska’s lawyers noted, “It appears that Paul Manafort and [his business partner] Rick Gates have simply disappeared”: Manafort’s vanishing became a joke in certain Republican circles. So why has Manafort suddenly felt comfortable re-emerging into public view? How did he square his debts with Putin’s ally? Another question for the campaign chairman: What are his dealings with the Kremlin? It’s clear that he has advanced its interests in Ukraine, where he managed the political rehabilitation of its favored candidate, Viktor Yanukovych. He also went into business with one of the Kremlin’s primary natural gas middlemen, Dmitry Firtash. To what extent did these relationships bring him into the inner sanctum of Russian power? More here from Slate.

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Trump himself and Russian oligarchs:

Trump On His Meeting In Moscow About A Potential Hotel Development: “The Russian Market Is Attracted To Me. I Have A Great Relationship With Many Russians, And Almost All Of The Oligarchs Were In The Room.” “A replica of Bayrock/Sapir’s Trump Soho hotel may be Moscow’s first big new hotel in ten years. Alex Sapir and Rotem Rosen of the Sapir Organization, co-developers on the Soho hotel at 246 Spring Street, met with Russian developer Aras Agalarov and Donald Trump over the weekend to discuss plans for the new project – Trump’s first in Russia. ‘The Russian market is attracted to me,’ Trump told Real Estate Weekly. ‘I have a great relationship with many Russians, and almost all of the oligarchs were in the room.’ Trump told REW that he is in talks with Agalarov and three other groups, and that there is no rush on a timeline for the project. He also did not disclose the hotel’s planned height or square footage, saying only that ‘it has to be a large development, big enough to justify the travel.'” [Real Estate Weekly, 11/12/13<http://therealdeal.com/2013/11/12/the-donald-sapir-execs-mull-bringing-trump-soho-to-moscow/>] More here.

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Taking this a step further due to known business relationships between Paul Manafort and the Kremlin, the cable below demonstrates one such item of evidence.

Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s top campaign chief has had previous business interactions with the Kremlin and events regarding Ukraine. As noted by this cable:

(U) Sensitive but unclassified, please handle accordingly. Not for internet distribution. 1. (SBU) Summary: Party of Regions’ U.S. campaign consultants Paul Manafort, Phil Griffin, and Catherine Barnes called on DCM and poloff March 10 to share Regions’ concerns about election organizational problems that they feared could call the legitimacy of the March 26 election into question. Manafort complained about the indifferent attitude of OSCE/ODIHR. He also claimed that the identified inadequacies were not mere oversights, but were intentional on the part of those in power, specifically Yushchenko and Our Ukraine; he said that Regions’ past experience allowed them to “see what was coming around the corner.” If these shortcomings were not fixed by March 14, the day the Rada would consider technical amendments to address problems, warned Manafort, they could call into question the integrity of the March 26 vote. Manafort acknowledged that the 2006 election cycle was considerably better than in 2004 but stressed that the U.S., ODIHR, and other western countries and institutions needed to be as supportive of the democratic process in 2006 as they had been in 2004, lest the impression be given that there were two sets of standards depending on who was in power. Manafort added that the people who felt that the 2004 elections had been stolen from them — and since he was not in Ukraine in 2004, he could not judge what had happened — would feel that it was happening to them again. End Summary. Regions concerns about voter lists, precinct committees ——————————————— ———- 2. (SBU) Manafort stated that “massive inaccuracies” in voter lists and the lack of formation of polling station committees (PSC) made it impossible for some voters to check the lists and seek administrative remedies. We noted that Ukrainian NGOs had identified the same concerns (reftel). In response to a question, Manafort suggested that the inadequacies were not mere oversights but were intentional on the part of those in power, specifically Yushchenko and Our Ukraine, and said that Regions’ past experience allowed them to “see what was coming around the corner.” If these shortcomings were not fixed, warned Manafort, they could call into question the integrity of the March 26 vote, and an “explosion” could result. We asked if he thought the problems he had cited resulted from acts of commission or omission. He replied that those in power had the ability to correct the problems. 3. (SBU) Regions had delivered specific information on their concerns to the prosecutors’ office, the Central Election Commission, OSCE/ODIHR, and now to the Embassy. Manafort complained that the ODIHR deputy head of Mission, Robert Cherreli, had met with a Regions delegation including an MP earlier March 10 dressed completely inappropriately (jeans, hiking boots, shirt hanging out). He also characterized ODIHR’s response to Regions’ concerns as “indifferent; they didn’t seem to be bothered about the allegations and did not plan on taking any action.” We pointed out that ODIHR’s mandate was as an observer mission, not a lobbying participant, and that OSCE member-state Russia in particular had been highly critical of ODIHR, accusing it in the past of exceeding its observer mandate. 4. (SBU) Manafort disputed this line of argument, which ODIHR itself had used in response to the Regions’ concerns, claiming: “everyone knows what OSCE does in these sorts of situations.” Manafort warned that western countries like the U.S. and institutions like OSCE/ODIHR were risking the appearance of not pushing as hard for high standards of democratic process in 2006 as they had in 2004, and that there could be negative consequences in the eyes of people who saw the “West made certain demands on the one hand when one group was in power but reacted differently, or stayed silent, when another group was in power.” We made clear that the U.S. position on the importance of free and fair elections was unchanged from 2004 to 2006. Manafort replied that the “perception” nevertheless was “out there.” 5. (SBU) Manafort added that the people who felt that the 2004 elections had been stolen from them — rightly or wrongly, that was how they felt — would feel that it was happening to them again. In apparent anticipation of our next statement, Manafort offered that he was not in Ukraine in 2004 and could not make a judgment of what had happened. What was past was past; he was concerned about the present. 6. (SBU) Manafort’s associate Catherine Barnes opened a folder with documents she said supported the Regions’ complaints. The most specific example cited was a Luhansk precinct (Oktyabr district) in which 10,000 eligible voters were supposedly missing from the list, including entire apartment blocks; 16,000 were listed incorrectly, mainly due to mistakes in translating from Russian into Ukrainian. Barnes said that the possible remedy in the works was a series of technical amendments the parliament (Rada) could pass March 14 to address the problems. There was consensus among Rada factions about certain corrections, but disagreement on others. 7. (SBU) Manafort claimed that CEC Chair Davydovych supported all the amendments under consideration and had characterized the condition of the voters’ lists as being worse than in 2004. In contrast, according to Manafort, President Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine representative had rejected a mechanism to allow voters recourse on election day to have the PSC add their names, vowing that Yushchenko would veto it, either with a direct veto or fail to sign the legislation, which would have the same effect, since the election would be less than two weeks away after the March 14 vote. He also said that, except for Our Ukraine, there was broad agreement among all political forces including Tymoshenko’s Bloc that the amendments were needed. We observed in reply that in the 2004 election, a district court or the territorial election commission could add someone to the voter list, but not the PSC itself. Our understanding of the proposed legislative fix under consideration in the Rada was that it would allow a local court to authorize same-day additions to the voter list, not PSCs. 8. (SBU) Manafort suggested that on March 14, two sets of amendments could be put to a vote in the Rada, one with consensus support, and the other including fixes supported by Regions and other parties, “including some orange parties,” but likely to be rejected by Yushchenko/Our Ukraine. This rejection could cause a “major problem” for perceptions of the elections’ legitimacy. Even though “it would not change the result, it could change the magnitude.” 9. (SBU) Catherine Barnes, Project Manager for the “Ukraine Election Integrity Project,” a Manafort sub-project to train Regions’ poll watchers in the standards of the code of conduct adopted by the Party for the 2006 election cycle, briefly mentioned her efforts, which have trained over 1200 Regions’ members. The materials she handed to the embassy about the integrity issues brief notes that while Regions expects to win handily, it “has serious concerns about the political will of the current government to conduct free and fair elections, concerns that are increasingly shared by the CEC and other political parties in the Verkhovna Rada.” 10. (SBU) We noted the great differences between the 2006 and 2004 election cycles. On the streets of Zaporizhzhya, there were nearly a dozen political party tents representing the entire political spectrum lined up right next to each other, without incident or problem; on the same street in 2004, only one color was allowed to be seen. Manafort, Griffin, and Barnes nodded in agreement, with Manafort adding: “and that’s why we have to ensure this opportunity to cement gains made isn’t lost.” 11. (SBU) DCM raised the case of Black Sea TV, a Tymoshenko bloc-affiliated station which had been subject to a court ruling to shut it down, based on a petition from a local Party of Regions branch citing a clause in the election law universally condemned by free media advocates. Manafort said that the action had not come at the request of the national Party of Regions, claimed that the petitioning party was not a local Regions branch per se but were supporters of Yanukovych, and suggested that in fact Yushchenko-affiliated forces had inspired the shut down action in a “Black PR” effort to besmirch Party of Regions’ reputation. DCM asked if Yanukovych had or planned to distance himself from these actions. Manafort replied that this was deemed unnecessary, because “the courts would take care of this.” 12. (SBU) We also raised the March 9 statement of Regions’ Campaign Chief Kushnariov, who had attacked US policy towards Ukraine, accused it of meddling in the election process by passing the repeal Jackson-Vanik amendment, granting Market Economy Status, and signing a bilateral WTO accession agreement to keep in power an “orange” government willing to “take instructions” from across the Atlantic. Kusnariov’s statement was posted on the Regions’ website. Manafort said that he would talk to Kushnariov, who had not mentioned it to him in their daily morning meeting; the statement was in Russian, but had not been posted on the English version of the site, Manafort added. 13. (U) Note: In comments to the media in Uzhhorod March 9 picked up by the UNIAN wire service, Ambassador underscored concerns over the voters’ lists and sufficient staffing of precinct commissions. Other views ———– 14. (SBU) Our Ukraine’s Anton Klymenko held a press conference March 10 alleging that Regions, not Our Ukraine, was involved in voter list manipulation in eastern Ukraine, and that the “new” voter lists for some precincts in Donetsk which had stripped off many “dead souls” on the 2004 rolls had been replaced by the voter lists used in 2004, when fraud in the East was prevalent. Yarema Bachinsky, who runs a USAID-funded election-related education project, said that at this point there is no way to confirm the mutual accusations, which echo the charges and counter charges made in the 2004 election cycle. Since the Central Election Commission has not officially indicated how many PSCs are not fully functional, it is difficult to assess the extent of concerns about voter lack of access to a mechanism to check and possibly correct their names. 15. (SBU) This perspective was echoed by ODIHR’s Political analyst Beata Martin-Rozumilowicz, who told us that Regions, NeTak and Communists are making an issue of the transliteration of names, alleging that either their voters won’t be able to vote or there is a possibility of double listing/voting. ODIHR doesn’t have any way of verifying the lack of access to non-functional PSCs, though they cited a report that the CEC deputy Chair told the Rada in mid-February that 7000 PSCs lacked enough commissioners to function. CEC members are supposed to go out to the provinces over the weekend of March 11-12 to assess the current state of readiness. Regarding the Rada consideration of amendments, Martin-Rozumilowicz added that the CEC has proposed one set of technical amendments, and the Party of Regions has proposed its own. 16. (SBU) Note: Following is the original text of memo handed to DCM only at the conclusion of the meeting. The consultants did not voice the appeal in the final paragraph preceding the note. Begin text: MEMORANDUM To: Sheila Gwaltny, Deputy Chief of Mission, US Embassy in Ukraine From: Paul Manafort, Davis Manafort Re: Meeting with OSCE-ODIHR Date: 10 March 2006 This morning, there was a meeting between the Party of Regions and OSCE-ODIHR to discuss the party’s grave concerns about massive inaccuracies in the Voters’ List and the problems in the formation and functioning of PECs which makes is impossible for voters in some areas to check the Voters’ List and seek administrative remedies. These meeting was not positively assessed by the Party of Regions, which interpreted the OSCE-ODIRH response as indifferent. During the meeting, POR representatives made a presentation on the massive problems with the Voters’ List that they have identified in there core regions in the South and East and provided extensive documentation on the magnitude of these problems. In once district in Lugansk, for example, 10,000 eligible voters are missing from the list and 16,000 are entered incorrectly. They also indicated that some 7,000 precinct election commissions have yet to be properly formed, which impedes the ability to check and correct the lists as envisioned by the law. POR sees these issues as potentially leading to the complete unraveling of elections in Ukraine if not dealt with before Election Day. It is working in consultation with other political parties in the Verhovna Rada and with the Chairman of the CEC to propose a series of technical amendments to the parliamentary election law to address these problems. These include steps to ensure the proper functioning of PECs, reducing the quorum required for PECs to make decisions, and providing for the addition of eligible voters to the Voters’ List at the polling stations on Election Day. There is broad consensus on the problems and on the technical remedies. The main hurdle to adoption of these technical amendments is the party of power, Our Ukraine. During the meeting with OSCE-ODIHR, the severity of the problems was established and documented. They indicated that there is a multi-party process underway in parliament to provide technical solutions was elaborated upon and that the key amendment, additions to the Voters’ List on Election Day is being opposed by Our Ukraine. POR asked for assistance from OSCE-ODIHR in urging the Government to join with other political parties to support the technical amendments to the law in order to avert a disaster on Election Day. These technical amendments must be adopted at the Verhovna Rada session that begins on 14 March and the President must immediately sign the amendments into law to ensure their implementation. OSCE-ODHIR indicated that it was aware of the problems and appreciated the documentation provided by POR. It promised to look into the problems and indicated that its long term observers were already in contact with POR representatives in the regions. It indicated, OSCE-ODIHR indicated however that as an observer mission that it cannot intercede in the political process. PbR impressions of the meeting where that OSCE-ODIHR, while cognizant of the problems and increasingly willing to investigate and report on them, appears to have no political will to prevent the impending disaster by encouraging the President to take the necessary and broadly supported steps to fix the problems that his Administration created. In order to stop this ticking time bomb, the intervention of the international community is needed. Without the leadership of the United States, it would appear that the time bomb is set to explode. Note: The meeting was attended by Elena Lukash, POR representative on the CEC and Victor Slauta, an MP representing POR and who serves on the parliamentary working group considering technical amendments to the parliamentary election law attended as did Catherine Barnes, election integrity advisor for Davis Manafort. OSCE-ODIHR was represented by the Deputy Head of Mission, Roberto Cherreli, the elections advisor Kamel Ivanov, and the legal advisor Hans Birchler. The Deputy Head of Mission showed up in casual attire (jeans, hiking boots, shirt hanging out), to meet a member of parliament, which suggests the seriousness with which the meeting was taken. End text. 14. (U) Visit Embassy Kiev’s classified website at: www.state.sgov.gov/p/eur/kiev. HERBST