Category Archives: Gangs and Crimes

How Terrorists use Encryption

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How Terrorists Use Encryption

June 16, 2016

Author(s): Robert Graham

CTC: Abstract: As powerful encryption increasingly becomes embedded in electronic devices and online messaging apps, Islamist terrorists are exploiting the technology to communicate securely and store information. Legislative efforts to help law enforcement agencies wrestle with the phenomenon of “going dark” will never lead to a return to the status quo ante, however. With the code underlying end-to-end encryption now widely available, unbreakable encryption is here to stay. However, the picture is not wholly bleak. While end-to-end encryption itself often cannot be broken, intelligence agencies have been able to hack the software on the ends and take advantage of users’ mistakes.

Counterterrorism officials have grown increasingly concerned about terrorist groups using encryption in order to communicate securely. As encryption increasingly becomes a part of electronic devices and online messaging apps, a range of criminal actors including Islamist terrorists are exploiting the technology to communicate and store information, thus avoiding detection and incrimination, a phenomenon law enforcement officials refer to as “going dark.”

Despite a vociferous public debate on both sides of the Atlantic that has pitted government agencies against tech companies, civil liberties advocates, and even senior figures in the national security establishment who have argued that creation of “backdoors”[1] for law enforcement agencies to retrieve communications would do more harm than good, there remains widespread confusion about how encryption actually works.[a]

Technologists have long understood that regulatory measures stand little chance of rolling back the tide. Besides software being written in other countries (and beyond local laws), what has not been fully understood in the public debate is that the “source code” itself behind end-to-end encryption is now widely available online, which means that short of shutting down the internet, there is nothing that can be done to stop individuals, including terrorists, from creating and customizing their own encryption software.

The first part of this article provides a primer on the various forms of encryption, including end-to-end encryption, full device encryption, anonymization, and various secure communication (operational security or opsec) methods that are used on top of or instead of encryption. Part two then looks at some examples of how terrorist actors are using these methods.

Part 1: Encryption 101 

End-to-End Encryption
A cell phone already uses encryption to talk to the nearest cell tower. This is because hackers could otherwise eavesdrop on radio waves to listen in on phone calls. However, after the cell tower, phone calls are not encrypted as they traverse copper wires and fiber optic cables. It is considered too hard for nefarious actors to dig up these cables and tap into them.

In a similar manner, older chat apps only encrypted messages as far as the servers, using what is known as SSL.[b] That was to defeat hackers who would be able to eavesdrop on internet traffic to the servers going over the Wi-Fi at public places. But once the messages reached the servers, they were stored in an unencrypted format because at that point they were considered “safe” from hackers. Law enforcement could still obtain the messages with a court order.

Newer chat apps, instead of encrypting the messages only as far as the server, encrypt the message all the way to the other end, to the recipient’s phone. Only the recipients, with a private key, are able to decrypt the message. Service providers can still provide the “metadata” to police (who sent messages to whom), but they no longer have access to the content of the messages.

The online messaging app Telegram was one of the earliest systems to support end-to-end encryption, and terrorists groups such as the Islamic State took advantage.[2] These days, the feature has been added to most messaging apps, such as Signal, Wickr, and even Apple’s own iMessage. Recently, Facebook’s WhatsApp[3] and Google[4] announced they will be supporting Signal’s end-to-end encryption protocol.

On personal computers, the software known as PGP,[c] first created in the mid-1990s, reigns supreme for end-to-end encryption. It converts a message (or even entire files) into encrypted text that can be copy/pasted anywhere, such as email messages, Facebook posts, or forum posts. There is no difference between “military grade encryption” and the “consumer encryption” that is seen in PGP. That means individuals can post these encrypted messages publicly and even the NSA is unable to access them. There is a misconception that intelligence agencies like the NSA are able to crack any encryption. This is not true. Most encryption that is done correctly cannot be overcome unless the user makes a mistake.

Such end-to-end encryption relies upon something called public-key cryptography. Two mathematically related keys are created, such that a message encrypted by one key can only be decrypted by the other. This allows one key to be made public so that one’s interlocutor can use it to encrypt messages that the intended recipient can decrypt through the private-key.[d] Al-Qa`ida’s Inspire magazine, for example, publishes its public-key[5] so that anyone using PGP can use it to encrypt a message that only the publishers of the magazine can read.

Full Device Encryption
If an individual loses his iPhone, for example, his data should be safe from criminals.[e] Only governments are likely to have the resources to crack the phone by finding some strange vulnerability. The FBI reportedly paid a private contractor close to $1 million to unlock the iPhone of San Bernardino terrorist Syed Rizwan Farook.[6]

The reason an iPhone is secure from criminals is because of full device encryption, also full disk encryption. Not only is all of the data encrypted, it is done in a way that is combined or entangled[7] with the hardware. Thus, the police cannot clone the encrypted data, then crack it offline using supercomputers to “brute-force” guess all possible combinations of the passcode. Instead, they effectively have to ask the phone to decrypt itself, which it will do but slowly, defeating cracking.[f]

Android phones work in much the same manner. However, most manufacturers put less effort into securing their phones than Apple. Exceptions are companies like Blackphone, which explicitly took extra care to secure their devices.

Full disk encryption is also a feature of personal computers. Microsoft Windows comes with BitLocker, Macintosh comes with FileVault, and Linux comes with LUKS. The well-known disk encryption software TrueCrypt works with all three operating systems as does a variation of PGP called PGPdisk. Some computers come with a chip called a TPM[g] that can protect the password from cracking, but most owners do not use a TPM. This means that unless they use long/complex passwords, adversaries will be able to crack their passwords.

Hillary, Emails, Russia, Foundation, Crisis, ALERT

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Russia Is Reportedly Set To Release Clinton’s Intercepted Emails

Reliable intelligence sources in the West have indicated that warnings had been received that the Russian Government could in the near future release the text of email messages intercepted from U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail server from the time she was U.S. Secretary of State. The release would, the messaging indicated, prove that Secretary Clinton had, in fact, laid open U.S. secrets to foreign interception by putting highly-classified Government reports onto a private server in violation of U.S. law, and that, as suspected, the server had been targeted and hacked by foreign intelligence services.

The reports indicated that the decision as to whether to reveal the intercepts would be made by Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin, and it was possible that the release would, if made, be through a third party, such as Wikileaks. The apparent message from Moscow, through the intelligence community, seemed to indicate frustration with the pace of the official U.S. Department of Justice investigation into the so-called server scandal, which seemed to offer prima facie evidence that U.S. law had been violated by Mrs Clinton’s decision to use a private server through which to conduct official and often highly-secret communications during her time as Secretary of State. U.S. sources indicated that the extensive Deptartment of Justice probe was more focused on the possibility that the private server was used to protect messaging in which Secretary Clinton allegedly discussed quid pro quo transactions with private donors to the Clinton Foundation in exchange for influence on U.S. policy.

The Russian possession of the intercepts, however, was designed also to show that, apart from violating U.S. law in the fundamental handling of classified documents (which Sec. Clinton had alleged was no worse than the mishandling of a few documents by CIA Director David Petraeus or Clinton’s National Security Advisor Sandy Berger), the traffic included highly-classified materials which had their classification headers stripped. Russian (and other) sources had indicated frustration with the pace of the Justice Dept. probe, and its avoidance of the national security aspects of intelligence handling. This meant that the topic would be suppressed by the U.S. Barack Obama Administration so that it would not be a factor in the current U.S. Presidential election campaign, in which President Obama had endorsed Mrs Clinton.

Moscow’s discreet messaging about a possible leak of the traffic, in time to impact the U.S. elections, was designed to pressure faster U.S. legal action on the matter, but was largely due to Russian concerns about possible U.S. strategic policy in the event of a Hillary Clinton presidency.

Apart from the breach of U.S. Federal law in the handling of classified material, the Clinton private server was, according to GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs analysts, always likely to have been a primary target for foreign cyber warfare interception operations, particularly those of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Russia, and North Korea (DPRK), but probably also by others, including Iran.

 

EXCLUSIVE: Cryptic NY Filing Reveals Clinton Foundation’s Millions In Foreign Donations

DCCallerNewsFoundation: Clinton Foundation officials used an obscure New York state charity board filing amendment to disclose that the non-profit received $17.7 million in donations from foreign governments while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, the Daily Caller News Foundation has learned.

The specific foreign governments involved and the particular amounts they each gave were not disclosed on the document, entitled “Exhibit A” and filed to the public charity division operated by New York Attorney General Eric Schneidermann, a Democrat. The money was given between 2010 and 2013 when Clinton was America’s chief diplomat.

The amended document included a line that was present in November 2015 when the foundation announced revised federal tax filings for the four years. The line added in January 2016 said: “All other government grants came from foreign governments” with a total figure for each of the four years that equalled $17.7 million.

The foreign donations are still not listed on the financial portion of the foundation’s web site despite a claim in November by the non-profit’s president, Donna Shalala, that “there is nothing to suggest that the foundation intended to conceal the receipt of government grants, which we report on our website.”

Criticism of the the latest revelation concerning Clinton Foundation tax returns came from across the ideological spectrum.

Leslie Lenkowski, an expert on philanthropy who was appointed by former President Bill Clinton in 1993 as a founding director of the Corporation for National and Community Service, a government-operated volunteer organization, told TheDCNF that the Clinton Foundation was “an appearance of a conflict of interest waiting to happen.”

President George W. Bush later appointed Lenkowski to also serve as CEO of the corporation in 2001.

Similarly Sandra Miniutti, vice president of Charity Navigator, which grades and ranks the financial disclosures of charities, said her group expects more transparency, not less from non-profits.

“I think more transparency is better than less and this is an issue that the public is questioning.  Yeah, they should make it a point to be more transparent about it and share that information,” she told TheDCNF.

Former U.S. Attorney Joseph DiGenova told TheDCNF that the foundation’s failure to break out foreign government donations specifically was part of an effort to “protect” Clinton while she headed the Department of State.

“There is no doubt that the foundation purposely refused to make public certain things as a way of protecting the Secretary of State during her tenure,” DiGenova charged. “The entire process to hide information from the public is completely inconsistent with a public charity.”

DiGenova predicted that “the new revelations will up the ante for the FBI.  This will just add fodder to the ongoing investigation.” The former federal prosecutor also doubted that the $18 million figure was accurate.

“There is no reason to believe that the $18 million figure is complete,” he said, citing the “unreliability” of past foundation accountings. “It may very well be much, much more.”

Cleta Mitchell, a partner in the Washington, D.C. law office of Foley & Lardner LLP who frequently represents conservative nonprofits, slammed the Clintons for “their determination to disguise what they are doing.”

The New York filings also were unusual in that the latest foundation submission constituted a third “official” revised version of the Clinton Foundation’s financial statements for those years.

Clinton officials last November publicly issued a second revision to their Internal Revenue Service form 990 filings that covered the same four years.

At the time, foundation officials revealed at least 29 separate “amendments,” including new revenue numbers and income from Clinton speaking engagements.  But foundation officials did not list dollar amounts from foreign government donations.

During Clinton’s tenure at State, the foundation operated in at least 29 countries, including places that contained rampant corruption such as Nigeria, Uganda, Ukraine, Haiti, Mozambique, China and South Africa.

The amended Exhibit A also revealed how foreign government gifts vastly overshadowed domestic government contributions during her State Department tenure.

In the foundation’s revised 2010 filing, $7.8 million of $8.8 million in all government grants originated from foreign governments, according to the exhibit. In 2011, $2 million of the $3 million were foreign donations.

In 2012, $3.5 million came from foreign governments while only $300,000 came from domestic government sources.  And in 2013, nearly 100 percent of the $4.4 million of the government donations came from overseas governments. Only $23,000 came from U.S. government entities, according to the exhibit.

The disclosures likely will fuel charges by presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who claims Clinton turned her secretaryship into a huge “hedge fund” where “the Russians, the Saudis and the Chinese all gave money to Bill and Hillary and got favorable treatment in return.” Trump demanded that the foundation return $25 million from the Saudis.

Clinton defended the foundation but admitted last week in a Politico interview that in “one or two instances” some foreign donations aiming to influence her office may have “slipped through the cracks.”

A 2008 Memorandum of Understanding between the Clinton Foundation and Valerie Jarrett, then-vice-chairwoman of President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team attempted to limit and in some instances to ban foreign government to the Clinton Foundation and its many projects.

The FBI currently has two criminal investigations involving Clinton and the foundation, with one focused on her use of a private email server located in her New York home to conduct official diplomatic business instead of a secure government communication channel.

The second investigation is focused on allegations of “pay-to-play” efforts in which Clinton traded policy or other official actions in return for contributions by foreign donors to the foundation.

DiGenova and Mitchell were also critical of Schneidermann for his inaction on the foundation’s filing.

“One has to wonder what the New York State Attorney General is doing,” DiGenova said. “He’s a very partisan Democrat.  And it is readily apparent that he intends to do nothing about the Clinton Foundation.”

Mitchell agreed, saying “the Attorney General of New York has a statutory and fiduciary responsibility to conduct an investigation into the Clinton Foundation to determine whether this entity is engaged in fulfilling its charitable mission.”

Neither the Clinton Foundation nor Schneidermann responded to TheDCNF’s request for comment.

Europe has an Unaccompanied Children Crisis Too

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New World Dis-Order

Unaccompanied child refugees: ‘These children aren’t seen as children’

A network of 30 European NGOs supporting missing and exploited children have come together to tackle the rising problem of missing refugee children

Guardian: Human smugglers increasingly combine smuggling with exploitation and their victims are often children,” says Federica Toscano. “At chaotic border situations, it happens that smugglers deliberately separate refugee children from their parents to exploit them.’’

“We also hear that families at the border between Greece and Macedonia have been forced to ‘pay’ smugglers with one of their children,” continues Toscano. “Smugglers have come to realise they can make much more profit by taking advantage of vulnerable people. And the most vulnerable people are children.”

Toscano is well-placed to know. She works for Missing Children Europe, a network of thirty European NGOs that are active in the field of missing and sexually exploited children. Since its foundation in 2001, MCE has focussed on different groups of missing children (pdf). Half of the cases of children that disappear in Europe are runaways: those who run away from home or institutions after a history of violence or abuse. More than a third are abducted by parents.

Related reading: Invisible refugees: ‘You are the only organisation that has ever visited us’ 

But the most recent category is unaccompanied child refugees. “This group only makes up 2% of cases, which is a low percentage,” says Delphine Moralis, the secretary general of MCE, “but that doesn’t say anything about the magnitude of the problem. These children are seldom reported as missing. That’s why we find it so important to focus on this problem too.’’

Earlier this year Europol stated that at least 10,000 unaccompanied child refugees have gone missing in Europe. A recent EU report warned that these children have become targets for criminal gangs, who exploit them in the sex industry or force them to beg, steal or smuggle drugs.

But MCE believe the true number to be far higher than 10,000. Toscano says that “in Italy alone 5,000 refugee children have gone missing. And Germany reported that in 2015 almost 6,000 of these children have disappeared.’’

The organisation has been aware of the problem for some time. “As far back as 2005 a Belgian study showed that one fourth of unaccompanied children seeking asylum went missing within the first 48 hours upon arrival. So it’s no news to us.”

But for a whole range of reasons, many of these disappearances go unreported. “First of all, there’s no sense of urgency,” explains Toscano. “When a child refugee goes missing, the general assumption is that he or she has a plan, and that the child is resilient. The police and social services don’t feel the same sense of urgency as when the child is from their own country. They are not aware of the risks these children run, that they might fall victim to exploitation. So nothing is really done.’’

The lack of formal procedures when these children disappear is another problem. “Much depends on the goodwill of the single professional involved,” says Toscano. “There is no common system to collect information about missing children in Europe. There are good practices, but they’re very local. So the traffickers just go to another area.’’

MCE was founded fifteen years ago in 2001, when it became clear that European cooperation on this issue was seriously lacking. “I was working for a Belgian NGO at the time when two Belgian girls went missing,” says Moralis. “On the third day of their disappearance a judge called us and said: ‘We have no idea where these children are, they could be anywhere in Europe, we really need your help now.’ There was no other way to tackle the problem but by contacting one by one all the 309 European organisations working in this field. That’s when we realised it was necessary to create a network of contact points for missing children.”

The organisation facilitates training of professionals to respond better to the disappearance of child refugees. It also exerts pressure on European institutions to provide clear rules and legislation to protect these children. This year, MCE has published a handbook (pdf) on good practises to help prevent and respond to unaccompanied children going missing.

“We try to be as practical as possible,” says Toscano. “You can do so much to prevent a child from disappearing. Just a simple example: when a child arrives in a shelter and is given food, he may think he has to pay for it. When he has no money, he will try to escape as soon as possible. Workers should take time to explain everything to the child … Sometimes these children don’t even realise it when they are exploited. Their traffickers tell them all kinds of lies to make them extra vulnerable. They say: watch out for authorities, they will lock you up.’’

They also closely monitor development throughout Europe. Toscano has been collecting information on missing children in Europe through the EU co-funded SUMMIT project (pdf). This included a study into interagency cooperation around unaccompanied migrant children done through surveys and interviews with hotlines for missing children, professionals at refugee reception centres, guardians and law enforcement in the UK, Italy, Greece, Cyprus, Spain, Belgium and Ireland.

As a result they are hearing from the frontlines. “We know that there are networks of child traffickers that operate in different countries,” says Toscano. “For example, when a refugee child has been exploited in Eritrea and claims asylum in the Netherlands, there will be another criminal gang waiting to exploit him there. Traffickers have excellent lines of communication. When a child has a history of trafficking, the risk that he will be trafficked again is very high.”

According to Moralis, the closing of borders means that lots of refugees are stuck in bad conditions: “This makes them more vulnerable and creates more opportunities for criminals. How is it possible that all this is going on in Europe and nobody seems to know where these children are?”

“Our main aim is to raise awareness that these children are children,” says Toscano. “It’s very simple. You’d think that everyone would be aware of this, but it is certainly not the case. Not for authorities, not for members of the civil society, nor for the general public. These children usually aren’t seen as children, but as people who just come here and use resources that we want to use for something else.’’

Militant Islam, Obama Admin Forbidden Terms

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A distinction needs to be made. Radical extremists are for the force multipliers, those like Anwar al Awlaki. The militants like Mohammed Emwazi are born from the radicals and they are the deadly enforcers of the Islamic doctrine and Sharia.

Don’t blame the FBI for failures, with particular regard to the worst terror attack in American by a gunman, Orlando. Blame the White House. All the Q&A sessions, congressional testimony and press briefings by FBI Director James Comey have had an underlying message, a cry for help, attention and support.

Don’t blame the intelligence community including CENTCOM and the Pentagon for battlefield or rules of engagement failures. That belongs to the entire White House national security team. The Office of National Intelligence has also been affected.

This is not political correctness at all, it is a Barak Obama edict, sensitivity to Islam across our homeland and across the globe. Obama has had a strident mission since he assumed the Oval Office to create a Muslim protective shield. This is beyond dispute.

While not in any chronological order, there are some very key decisions that were made and continue to be made by the Obama administration that affect our national security and this generational war titled the Overseas Contingency Operation.

In April of 2009, Barak Obama delivered ‘The New Beginnings’ speech. In this presentation he spelled out his full agenda in what was to become the long-term mission to elevate Muslims and their organizations at home and globally. The White House objectives have been successful and consequential.

With the new beginning announced, Obama extended his same purpose throughout government agencies, law enforcement and policies as a mandatory doctrine.

‘Just before that Christmas Day attack, in early November 2009, I was ordered by my superiors at the Department of Homeland Security to delete or modify several hundred records of individuals tied to designated Islamist terror groups like Hamas from the important federal database, the Treasury Enforcement Communications System (TECS). These types of records are the basis for any ability to “connect dots.”  Every day, DHS Customs and Border Protection officers watch entering and exiting many individuals associated with known terrorist affiliations, then look for patterns. Enforcing a political scrubbing of records of Muslims greatly affected our ability to do that. Even worse, going forward, my colleagues and I were prohibited from entering pertinent information into the database.’ Philip Haney, The Hill.

Directly after the 9/11 attack, the Bush administration did reach out to the Muslim communities to determine who was with peace and national security and who perhaps gave clues of a larger and hidden condition that could be festering that would prove clues to more domestic security challenges.

Then came the Holyland Foundation trial in 2007/2008. The material facts and conditions of the domestic threat, people, money, collaboration and global consequence all converged in a courtroom in Texas.

During the Holy Land trial, FBI Agent Lara Burns testified in court that CAIR was a front for HAMAS. One trial exhibit submitted by federal prosecutors – and stipulated to by the defense in the case – explained that these organizations were dedicated to a “civilizational-jihadist process” to destroy America from within and replace the Constitution with sharia (Islamic law):

The Ikhwah [Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and “sabotaging” its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion [Islam] is made victorious over all other religions. (p. 21)

Federal prosecutors specifically cited this internal Muslim Brotherhood planning document as the strategic goal of these U.S.-based Islamic groups – the very same group advising the Obama Administration. The federal judge in the Holy Foundation case agreed with the case presented by the federal prosecutors had made regarding these organizations, stating in one ruling that “the Government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations with CAIR, ISNA and NAIT with HLF…and with HAMAS.” (p. 14-15) More important details here from the CounterjihadReport.

The Department of Justice under Eric Holder was included in the full protection of the terror networks and associated people. Congressman Gohmert of Texas challenged AG Holder to no avail in a chilling exchange.

Here is where the ‘words matter’ material documentation began. The Obama administration took this agenda to new standard.

In 2009, DHS published via the Office of Intelligence and Analysis Assessment a ‘Rightwing Extremism’ document, pinpointing those that may challenge the Obama Muslim doctrine. Additionally, DHS posted The Department of Homeland Security launched a ‘Do’s and Dont’s bulletin.

The entire complexion of the Department of Homeland Security began to change with new personnel and outreach under Secretary Janet Napolitano. The outreach extended to law enforcement agencies of which LAPD demonstrates.

The order to purge documents, training materials and database was made. The proof is here.

Barak Obama was not finished. In 2015, the White House introduced a strategy for CVE, Counter Violent Extremism.

Then comes the foreign policy of Obama. All deference to Iran began before Obama assumed the White House in 2009 and continues today. Secret back channels to Iran using Ambassador Burns began in 2008. Further, there is Iraq and Syria with Islamic State. Documents here on ISIS prove the intelligence and forecasts were known, available and delivered.

This would not be complete without mentioning China, Russia or North Korea where policies are non-existent.

The Paris attack was a slaughter and Obama found it wise to snub the solidarity march with other world leaders.

Obama touted Yemen as one of his successes but the country collapsed. Finally, the Obama policy doctrine crumbled and the cause was fully explained here. Obama wilfully recoiled as he and Hillary did on Benghazi.

It really no longer matters that Barak Obama, Hillary Clinton or John Kerry refuse to use key terms to describe militant Islam, the entire well verse and informed world have defined it for them. What does matter beyond the words are the policies and refusals of missions, strategies and conditions to keep America, her interests and allies safe.

It is no wonder there is no global respect for the Obama administration and there is much less to fear from her.

In summary, Obama owns this terror, owns this jihad and owns the death as well as the genocide. This is his legacy, he owns it as his own scarlet letter.

 

 

Latin America, Hezbollah Moving Cocaine, Funding Terror

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Hezbollah moving ‘tons of cocaine’ in Latin America, Europe to finance terror operations

 

Taylor/Dinan/WashingtonTimes: Hezbollah’s terrorism finance operations are thriving across Latin America months after the Drug Enforcement Administration linked the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group to drug cartels in the region, U.S. lawmakers were told this week.

Former DEA operations chief Michael Braun said Hezbollah is “moving [multiple] tons of cocaine” from South America to Europe and has developed “the most sophisticated money laundering scheme or schemes that we have ever witnessed.”

The agency announced in February that it had arrested several Hezbollah operatives accused of working with a major Colombian drug cartel to traffic drugs to Europe and launder money through Lebanon. Those arrests come against a backdrop of rising fears in Washington about smuggling connections between Middle East terrorist groups and the Western Hemisphere.

Hezbollah has “metastasized into a hydra with international connections that the likes of [the Islamic State] and groups like al Qaeda could only hope to have,” Mr. Braun told the House Financial Services Committee.

Adding to concerns about security threats from Central and South America, intelligence reports have also tracked how smugglers managed to sneak illegal immigrants from the Middle Eastern and South Asia straight to the doorstep of the U.S. — including helping one Afghan who U.S. authorities say was part of an attack plot in North America.

Immigration officials identified at least a dozen Middle Eastern men smuggled into the Western Hemisphere by a Brazilian-based network that connected them with Mexicans who guided them to the U.S. border, according to internal government documents reviewed this month by The Washington Times.

 

Those smuggled included Palestinians, Pakistanis and the Afghan man who Homeland Security officials said had family ties to the Taliban and was “involved in a plot to conduct an attack in the U.S. and/or Canada.”

Concerns about Hezbollah’s activities in Latin America have surged the DEA’s announcement in February that top operatives from the group’s so-called Business Affairs Component, or BAC, “have established business relationships” with South American drug cartels such as the Colombia-based Oficina de Envigado, a crime syndicate “responsible for supplying large quantities of cocaine to the European and United States drug markets.”

The DEA said several of the BAC’s Europe-based operatives had been arrested on charges of trafficking drugs and laundering money from South America to purchase weapons and finance the group’s military activities in Syria. The agency described an intricate network of money couriers who collect and transport millions of euros in drug proceeds from Europe to the Middle East.

 

“The currency is then paid in Colombia to drug traffickers,” it said, adding that “a large portion of the drug proceeds was found to transit through Lebanon, and a significant percentage of these proceeds are benefiting terrorist organizations, namely Hezbollah.”

The DEA said seven countries, including France, Germany, Italy and Belgium, were involved in an ongoing investigation. But few details were provided about how many suspects had been apprehended or where they are being held.

Officials said the most significant arrest was of Mohamad Noureddine, whom the DEA accused of being a Lebanese money launderer for Hezbollah. A week prior to the announcement, the Treasury Department had imposed sanctions freezing any U.S. accounts tied to Mr. Noureddine as well as to Hamdi Zaher El Dine, another suspected money launderer.

Decades of activity

U.S. officials have long been wary of Hezbollah, a Shiite Islamic group.

While it has a mainstream political arm in Lebanon, officials have linked the group to terrorist attacks in various corners of the world over the past 25 years — the vast majority targeting Israel. The State Department listed Hezbollah as a terrorist organization in the late 1990s and has characterized Iran as a leading state sponsor of terrorism largely on grounds that it supplies the group with weapons.

But the full scope of Hezbollah’s operations has long been a subject of debate in Washington. The DEA’s recent claims followed years of speculation about Iranian activities in Latin America.

Responding to pressure from Republican lawmakers, the State Department conducted a formal probe into the matter in 2013 and issued a report claiming that Iran was not supporting any active terrorist cells in the region.

While the report said the number of Iranian officials operating in Latin America had increased, the report concluded Tehran had far less influence in Latin America than critics claimed.

But former officials like Mr. Braun, who retired as DEA chief of operations in 2008, say Hezbollah is extremely active in the region.

President Obama signed the “Hizballah International Financing Prevention Act” last year, authorizing a range of actions, including sanctions, to block Hezbollah’s ability to fund itself.

Emanuele Ottolenghi, a senior fellow on Iran and illicit finance with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told lawmakers at Wednesday’s hearing that Congress and the administration should use the law to “aggressively focus” on Hezbollah’s presence in Latin America.

Brazilian connection

Mr. Ottolenghi pointed to the group’s “vast network of support,” particularly in Brazil, which is home to some 7 million people of Lebanese descent, including an estimated 1 million Shiite Muslims.

“Hezbollah generates loyalty among the local Shia communities by managing their religious and educational structures,” Mr. Ottolenghi told the hearing. “It then leverages loyalty to solicit funds and use business connections to its own advantage, including, critically, to facilitate its interactions with organized crime.”

He cited a 2014 report by the Brazilian newspaper O Globo that outlined a connection between Hezbollah and the Primeiro Comando da Capital, a Sao Paulo-based prison gang, which is widely regarded to be among the country’s biggest exporters of cocaine.

“Drug cartels need middlemen, as well as commodity and service providers, for the supply line and delivery to cartels in Colombia, Venezuela and Central America,” Mr. Ottolenghi said. “They need assistance facilitating transit to West Africa before drugs cross the Sahara on their way to Western Europe and enabling the producers, refiners and cartels to launder their revenues and acquire the accessories for the trade in the process.”