Category Archives: government fraud spending collusion

Deport Those Chinese Operatives Now

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Have you read the newly released book titled ‘Bully of Asia’ by Steven W. Mosher? China is the single largest threat to global stability and Russia and Iran in second and third place.

Have you heard of the Thucydides Trap? China is an ascending power and just who is paying attention? Have you studied the fact that China is a major enabler of North Korea’s aggression behavior including the most recent launch of the intercontinental ballistic missile?

China is a thief. China has dispatched operatives throughout the West under the guise of cultural exchanges, students, temporary workers and journalists. It is all about espionage and cyberwar.

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Hey State Department and DHS, get these operatives outta here. By the way, are there any sanctions on China with regard to PLA Unit 61398?

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Have you wondered what happened to that Obama Asia Pivot that he announced in 2011? The United States needs to pivot again and now.

Why?

This Beijing-Linked Billionaire Is Funding Policy Research at Washington’s Most Influential Institutions

The Chinese Communist Party is quietly reshaping public opinion and policy abroad.

FP: The Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), located just a short walk from Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C., is one of the top international relations schools in the United States. Its graduates feed into a variety of government agencies, from the State Department to the CIA, and the military. Its China studies program is especially well known; many graduates come away with expert knowledge of the language, culture, and politics of the United States’ most important strategic competitor.

In August, SAIS announced a new endowed professorship in the China Studies department as well as a new research project called the Pacific Community Initiative, which aims to examine “what China’s broader role in Asia and the world means for its neighbors and partners.”

What the SAIS press release did not say is that the money for the new initiatives came in part from the China-United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF), a Hong Kong-based nonprofit. CUSEF is a registered foreign agent bankrolled by a high-ranking Chinese government official with close ties to a sprawling Chinese Communist Party apparatus that handles influence operations abroad, known as the “united front.”

The China-U.S. Exchange Foundation’s partnership with a premier U.S. academic institution comes amid a Chinese Communist Party push to strengthen its influence over policy debate around the globe. The Chinese government has sought to repress ideas it doesn’t like and to amplify those it does, and its efforts have met with growing success.

Even as Washington is embroiled in a debate over Russian influence in U.S. elections, it’s China that has proved adept at inserting itself in American politics.

“The Chinese approach to influence operation is a bit different than the Russian one,” said Peter Mattis, a fellow at the Jamestown Foundation. “The Russian one is much more about an operational objective and they work backward from that objective, saying, ‘How do we achieve that?’” But on the Chinese side, Mattis said, “they focus on relationships — and not on the relationships having specific takeaway value, but that someday, some way, those relationships might become valuable.”

The Chinese seek a kind of “ecological change,” he explained. “If they cultivate enough people in the right places, they start to change the debate without having to directly inject their own voice.”

The China-U.S. Exchange Foundation was founded in 2008 by Tung Chee-hwa, a Hong Kong shipping magnate who later served as the chief executive of the former British colony, where he championed the benefits of close ties to Beijing. Tung’s Hong Kong-based nonprofit conducts academic and professional exchanges, bringing U.S. journalists, scholars, and political and military leaders to mainland China. It also has funded research projects at numerous U.S. institutions, including the Brookings Institution, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Atlantic Council, the Center for American Progress, the East-West Institute, the Carter Center, and the Carnegie Endowment for Peace.

Tung’s foundation’s ties to the united front are indirect, but important. Tung currently serves as the vice chairman of one of the united front’s most important entities — the so-called Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, which is one of China’s two rubber-stamp assemblies.

The body is one of Beijing’s most crucial tentacles for extending influence.

In its newest project with SAIS, the foundation describes the Pacific Community Initiative as a “joint research project.” David Lampton, director of the university’s China Studies Program, said in an August press release that the new professor “will also be responsible for running our Pacific Community Initiative and work closely with the China-U.S. Exchange Foundation in Hong Kong.”

Lampton also confirmed that CUSEF funded the new programs. “Both the Initiative and the Professorship were made possible through the support of the China-U.S. Exchange Foundation,” he said in an emailed statement to Foreign Policy.

But he denied that CUSEF had attached any intellectual strings to its funding.

“There are absolutely no conditions or limitations imposed upon the Pacific Community Initiative or our faculty members by reason of a gift or otherwise,” Lampton told FP. “We have full confidence in the academic integrity and independence of these endeavors.”

CUSEF denies it acts as a vehicle for Beijing’s ideological agenda or has “any connections” to the united front. “We do not aim to promote or support the policies of any one government,” wrote a spokesperson for the foundation in an email.

This isn’t the first time SAIS and the foundation have worked together; they co-sponsored a conference on China’s economy in Hong Kong in March 2016, according to the school’s website. But a professorship and a major research project offer an opportunity for broader reach — the kind of global influence that Chinese President Xi Jinping has made a centerpiece of his policies. In October, at the meeting of the Communist Party that sets the national agenda for the next five years, Xi called for an expansion of the party’s overseas influence work, referring to the united front as a “magic weapon” of party power.

That quest to shape the global view of China isn’t the same thing as soft power, said James Leibold, a professor at La Trobe University in Melbourne who researches Chinese influence in Australia, where Beijing’s recent influence operations have sparked a national controversy.

China is an authoritarian state where the Communist Party rules with an iron fist, Leibold said — and that is what Beijing is trying to export.

“What we’re talking about here is not Chinese influence per se, but the influence of the Chinese Communist Party.”

In a joint project like the one at SAIS, that influence can be subtle rather than being heavy-handed, said Jamestown’s Mattis. “It’s the ability to privilege certain views over others, to create a platform for someone to speak,” he said. “When you have a role in selecting the platform and generating what I presume they hope are some of the bigger reports on U.S.-China relations in the next few years, that’s important.”

One goal of the joint research project is, in fact, to “yield a white paper to be submitted for endorsement by both the U.S. and Chinese governments,” a CUSEF spokesperson wrote in an emailed statement to FP.

While CUSEF representatives stress that it is not an agent of the Chinese Communist Party, the foundation has cooperated on projects with the the People’s Liberation Army and uses the same Washington public relations firm that the Chinese Embassy does.

One of those PLA projects is the Sanya Initiative, an exchange program that brings together U.S. and Chinese former high-ranking military leaders. On the Chinese side, the Sanya Initiative is led by a bureau of the PLA that engages in political warfare and influence operations, according to Mark Stokes, executive director of the Project 2049 Institute.

Sometimes the results of such high-level exchanges aren’t subtle. In February 2008, PLA participants in the Sanya Initiative asked their U.S. counterparts to persuade the Pentagon to delay publishing a forthcoming report about China’s military buildup, according to a segment excised from the 2011 annual report of the congressional U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

The U.S. members complied, though their request was not successful.

Exchanges and partnerships are not CUSEF’s only initiatives. As a registered foreign agent, in 2016 it spent just under $668,000 on lobbying, hiring the Podesta Group and other firms to lobby Congress on the topic of “China-U.S. relations.” The foundation has spent $510,000 on lobbying to date in 2017.

CUSEF also keeps on retainer the consulting and public relations firm BLJ Worldwide LTD, the same firm the Chinese Embassy in the United States uses. According to FARA filings, CUSEF currently pays the firm $29,700 a month to promote the foundation’s work and run a pro-Beijing website called China US Focus.

Whether through websites, partnerships, or endowments, China has learned to wrap its message in a palatable wrapper of U.S. academics and intellectuals, according to Mattis.

“Who better to influence Americans than other Americans?” he said.

Congressman Conyers, an Icon and a Socialist

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House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi defended Rep. John Conyers as “an icon in our country” on Sunday, after noting he deserves “due process” as he faces allegations of sexual misconduct.

“We are strengthened by due process,” the California Democrat said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “Just because someone is accused — and was it one accusation? Is it two? I think there has to be — John Conyers is an icon in our country. He has done a great deal to protect women — Violence Against Women Act, which the left — right-wing — is now quoting me as praising him for his work on that, and he did great work on that.

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Great Nancy….do you also consider his other affiliations in your ‘icon’ remark?

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Observer: Our national panic regarding sexual harassment of women by powerful men has claimed its first scalp in the nation’s capital. As of now, Minnesota Democrat Al Franken is staying in the Senate, some embarrassing incidents notwithstanding, while Alabama Republican Roy Moore may get there yet, despite multiple reports of his dalliances with underage girls. Of course, the grabber-in-chief in the White House shows no signs of going anywhere either, at least until even worse videotapes appear.

Michigan Democrat John Conyers, however, has taken a direct hit and has stepped down from his House leadership roles, including as the ranking member of the powerful Judiciary Committee, in the wake of press reports which depict him as a serial harasser and worse. This is a stunning fall for the 27-term Congressman, at present the House of Representatives’ longest-serving member, who has been prominent on his party’s left wing for more than a half-century.

In other words, the 88-year-old Conyers is no average member of Congress. The results of the House Ethics Committee investigation of his relations with female staffers are not yet in, and let it be said that all Americans are innocent until proven guilty. However, the allegations against Conyers, if true, portray the esteemed veteran of the civil rights movement in a troubling light. For now, he’s professing his innocence and standing his ground, indicating he has no intention of resigning from the House, where he has served since 1965.

His defenders cite that the elderly Conyers grew up in a profoundly different age, and that he has not adapted to current sensitivities about sexual matters. That said, it probably didn’t help him that yesterday Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the House Minority Leader, brushed off allegations against Conyers with the statement that he “is an icon in our country.” The implication that there are different rules for icons didn’t sit well with some Americans—after all, Bill Cosby was a national icon too, until recently—and Pelosi’s soundbite seems certain to feature in Republican ads next year in advance of the midterm election.

Nevertheless, there’s considerable irony regarding how Conyers is being treated by fellow Democrats, given the party’s current obsession with Russian espionage and propaganda—at least when it involves Republicans. The so-called “resistance” to Donald Trump is all the rage right now among Democrats, particularly on the party’s left wing, of which Conyers has been a prominent member of since the mid-1960s. While Pelosi and other “resisters” denounce President Trump and Kremlin malfeasance non-stop these days, Conyers has been notably silent about Russian spy-games.

That’s because, whatever inappropriate things Conyers may (or may not) have done with female staffers, he’s unquestionably been uncomfortably pro-Moscow for decades. Cursory examination of Conyers’ words and actions reveal a politician who is, at best, a longstanding dupe of the Kremlin. Worst of all, this “secret” aspect to Conyers’ political life has been hiding in plain sight for years, something that polite people didn’t bring up at Georgetown soirées, yet which was known to anybody who can access Google.

However, in the current hothouse climate regarding Russian spies and lies in our nation’s capital, Conyers’ ties to the Kremlin need to be discussed. From the beginning of his political career, Conyers had close relations with prominent members of the Communist Party USA, and he was a longtime member of the National Lawyers Guild, a CPUSA-affiliated group, as well as a leader of its Detroit chapter. Conyers never made much effort to mask his associations with known CPUSA members, even after being elected to Congress. Keep in mind that, as proven by KGB files, the CPUSA was a wholly-owned Kremlin operation, clandestinely funded by Soviet spies, and operating under Moscow’s direction.

Conyers went further and associated with known KGB fronts. He was long active in the World Peace Council—which sounds like a Quaker-run group but was founded by the Kremlin at the beginning of the Cold War. The WPC followed the Moscow line religiously, serving as a conduit for KGB Active Measures against the West, regularly denouncing American “war-mongering” and “imperialism” while coordinating anti-NATO protests in many countries.

With the publication of the Mitrokhin archive in 1999, the KGB’s supervisory relationship to the WPC was made public, though it was obvious long before to anyone who wanted to see that the latter was a leading Kremlin front for espionage and propaganda. Not that Conyers was deterred from involvement with the WPC, and he helped establish its American chapter, the U.S. Peace Council. He addressed its inaugural meeting in Philadelphia in November 1979, alongside numerous KGB agents, including Romesh Chandra, a prominent Indian Communist who headed the WPC for decades and was a senior operative of the Soviet secret police.

Such public actions did not go undetected, and on occasion the press made note of Conyers’ ties to the WPC and other Soviet fronts, particularly in the early 1980s, when KGB Active Measures against NATO reached their peak. It should be noted that Conyers was hardly the only left-wing Democrat in Washington who cultivated links to Kremlin spy-fronts during the Cold War.

American counterintelligence had questions, too. Investigating members of Congress was always a touchy issue for our counterspies, given the political sensitivities, but Conyers’ chumminess with the KGB was noted in our Intelligence Community. The benign take on Conyers’ questionable associations was that he was a mere dupe, a “useful idiot” to use the proper term. Others weren’t so sure, and when I asked a veteran IC counter-intelligencer who had checked out Conyers back in the 1980s, he responded with a wry smile: “Do you really think anybody’s that stupid?”

Moreover, this isn’t just a historical matter. Conyers has continued to follow the Moscow line on countless issues down to the present day. Back in 2010, when WikiLeaks was busy dumping hundreds of thousands of stolen classified State Department files on the Internet, Conyers came to the defense of Julian Assange and his cyber-criminal gang, stating that WikiLeaks had committed no crimes. That was a remarkable thing for the then-chair of the House Judiciary Committee to say, particularly when the leadership of his own party—including President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton—proffered a radically different take on the case.

Since WikiLeaks barely bothers to conceal its Kremlin links these days, questions abound regarding Conyers’ public defense of the group which did so much damage to the Democrats and their presidential nominee in 2016. Even as relations with Moscow have soured since Russia’s seizure of Crimea and invasion of Ukraine in early 2014, Conyers has continued to spout Kremlin propaganda, as he has done for decades.

In June 2015, Conyers went on a tirade against Ukraine on the floor of the House, denouncing Kyiv’s military as “neo-Nazi”—a slander that was quickly parroted by Kremlin mouthpieces online. He stated that Ukraine should not get anti-aircraft missiles from Washington, citing as evidence the shootdown of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine in July 2014, the murder of 299 innocents—without noting that it was Russians, not Ukrainians, who downed the civilian airliner. It comes as no surprise that the bill amendment before the House to block anti-air missiles for Ukraine that was sponsored by Conyers was arranged by the notorious pro-Kremlin lobbyist Paul Manafort—the very same swamp macher who’s now facing indictments over his shady ties to President Trump and the Russians.

Conyers’ decades of spouting unfiltered Kremlin propaganda is so notorious in Washington that last year the Huffington Post, nobody’s idea of a right-wing outlet, ran a piece on him entitled “Putin’s Man in Congress.” That charge seems fair, based on the evidence, and is something that needs public discussion, particularly as Washington prepares to root out Moscow’s secret spy-propaganda apparatus in our nation’s capital.

That dirty apparat has been at work for decades. Kremlin disinformation didn’t begin with Donald Trump, and any thorough investigation of Russian espionage will reveal plenty of collaborators in Washington, on both sides of the political aisle. Some of them will even be Democratic “icons.” If the “resistance” isn’t willing to confront the bipartisan nature of the Kremlin’s clandestine political warfare against our country, they need to get out of the amateur counterspy business before they do real damage to our democracy.

The Pig Book, Federal Fumbles and High Risk Areas

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The General Accounting Office published a 2017 report on waste, fraud and abuse. Swell, right? Are there ever any corrections? Nah…but there are what is known as ‘high-risks’ areas….what?

Figure showing 3 new areas, 1 area removed, and how this compares to 2015

GAO is adding 3 areas to the High-Risk List, bringing the total to 34:

  • Management of Federal Programs That Serve Tribes and Their Members. GAO has reported that federal agencies, including the Department of the Interior’s Bureaus of Indian Education and Indian Affairs and the Department of Health and Human Services’ Indian Health Service, have ineffectively administered Indian education and health care programs and inefficiently developed Indian energy resources. Thirty-nine of 41 GAO recommendations on this issue remain unimplemented.
  • U.S. Government’s Environmental Liabilities. In fiscal year 2016 this liability was estimated at $447 billion (up from $212 billion in 1997). The Department of Energy is responsible for 83 percent of these liabilities and DOD for 14 percent. Agencies spend billions each year on environmental cleanup efforts but the estimated environmental liability continues to rise. Since 1994, GAO has made at least 28 recommendations related to this area; 13 are unimplemented.
  • The 2020 Decennial Census. The cost of the census has been escalating over the last several decennials; the 2010 Census was the costliest U.S. Census in history at about $12.3 billion, about 31 percent more than the 2000 Census (in 2020 dollars). The U.S. Census Bureau (Bureau) plans to implement several innovations—including IT systems—for the 2020 Census. Successfully implementing these innovations, along with other challenges, risk the Bureau’s ability to conduct a cost-effective census. Since 2014, GAO has made 30 recommendations related to this area; however, only 6 have been fully implemented.

OKLAHOMA CITY, OK – Senator James Lankford (R-OK) will release his annual federal government waste and solutions report during a press conference on Monday, November 27, 2017. This is the third volume of Lankford’s report entitled “Federal Fumbles: 100 ways the government dropped the ball.” The first report identified $105 billion in wasteful federal spending and about $800 billion in negative regulatory impact to the economy, and the second report listed $247 billion in wasteful spending and regulations. This year’s report will identify new examples of waste, inefficiency, and duplication in government, along with solutions to resolve each fumble.

2017

“Every American should have access to how their tax dollars are spent,” said Lankford. “I hope every member of Congress, the Administration, and staff will utilize Federal Fumbles as they consider budget requests, hold hearings, and discuss reform legislation. In the first 11 months of the new Administration, we’ve worked to roll back wasteful spending and a number of harmful and burdensome regulations from previous Federal Fumbles reports. There is a lot of work to still be done. Our $20 trillion national debt will continue to grow until we stop it with spending cuts, government reforms, and a growing economy. Federal Fumbles volume three is my to-do list for 2018.”

Click here for the last three years.

There was a Senate hearing in April on Waste, Fraud and Abuse.

Citizens Against Government Waste publishes a Pig Book each year as well.

Pork-barrel spending is alive and well in Washington, D.C., despite claims to the contrary. For the fifth time since Congress enacted an earmark moratorium that began in fiscal year (FY) 2011, Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) has unearthed earmarks in the appropriations bills.

In fact, members of Congress have steadily ramped up the use of earmarks in each year since the initiation of the earmark moratorium. The 2017 Congressional Pig Book exposes 163 earmarks in FY 2017, an increase of 32.5 percent from the 123 in FY 2016. The cost of earmarks in FY 2017 is $6.8 billion, an increase of 33.3 percent from the $5.1 billion in FY 2016. While the increase in cost over one year is disconcerting, the 106.1 percent increase over the $3.3 billion in FY 2012, the first year after the moratorium, is downright disturbing.

Publication of the 2017 Pig Book also marks 11 years since the record earmark amount of $29 billion in FY 2006. In order for earmarks to reach that level over the next decade, legislators would need to increase the cost of the items by just $2.3 billion annually. Unfortunately, this is not out of the question given the growth over the past five years.

You can actually type in a keyword and see what is in the 2017 data by clicking here. The Pig Book is published by government agency and you can review the results here.

Cottage Industry in U.S. for Refugee Resettlement

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There was a time when the U.S. State Department along with associated agencies including USAID and the CIA would work to migrate countries from communism to democracies. After the rise of militant Islam and terror attacks around the world, countless gestures have been launched to destroy terror including of course war. Stable countries are now vulnerable and susceptible to radical migrant refugees and migrants.

Europe is in the worst condition and the United States is functioning in much the same manner. We constantly hear that the United States was built on immigrants and we invite legal immigration. Few conceive the notion that immigrants would not seek out America if there home countries were stable, democratic and functioning especially when the United States sends billions each year offshore for assistance and stability.

Meanwhile, America continues to budget and appropriate funds for migrants and refugees in the United States and more coming.

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For an exact sample on how the states operate, this site provided some great insight using Michigan.

Do you wonder what the total and comprehensive costs are for refugee resettlement? Well, the General Accounting Office is to report those costs, yet there seems to be no recent report. Meanwhile see pages 8-9 for the resettlement numbers by state by clicking here.

FY 2017 Notice of Funding Opportunity for Reception and Placement Program

Funding Procedures

Under current funding procedures, each agency with which the Bureau enters into a Cooperative Agreement (CA) is provided $2,025 for each refugee it sponsors who arrives in the United States during the period of the CA and is verified to have been placed and assisted by the agency. The funding is intended to supplement private resources available to the applicant and may be used at the local affiliates at which refugees are resettled and only for the direct benefit of refugees and for the delivery of services to refugees in accordance with program requirements as described in the CA. In addition, the Bureau funds national R&P Program management costs according to separately negotiated and approved budgets based on the applicant’s sponsorship capacity.

The annual ceiling for refugee admissions will be established by the President following consultations with the Congress towards the end of FY 2016. The FY 2017 appropriation and refugee ceiling have not yet been determined. For planning purposes, applicants should use the following refugee admissions projections as a baseline, although they may not necessarily be the regional or total ceilings that will be set by the President for FY 2017. Projections by region are as follows:

Africa — 30,000

East Asia — 12,000

Europe and Central Asia — 5,000

Latin America and the Caribbean — 5,000

Near East and South Asia — 44,000

Unallocated Reserve — 4,000

In addition, applicants should include 7,000 Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) recipients in their planning.

As in previous years, applicants should base their placement plans provided to PRM in response to this notice of funding opportunity on the capacity of their network of local affiliates, which will have consulted with resettlement partners in their communities in order to ensure that the placement plans are reasonable and appropriate. Should the FY 2017 Presidential Determination and appropriation processes result in ceilings that are different from the total capacity that has been proposed by all approved applicants, the Bureau will work with approved applicants, as necessary, to develop a revised plan, as it has in previous years. If you can stand it, continue the stipulations and grant procedures here.

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It has become a cottage industry with almost zero checks and balances and your tax dollars? Well glad you asked. Check it:

Requirements to resettle refugees
To be selected as an R&P program agency, a non-governmental organization must apply to the PRM, which stipulates they meet three requirements:
1. Applicants must be “well-established social service providers with demonstrated case management expertise and experience managing a network of affiliates that provide reception and placement or similar services to refugees or other migrant populations in the United States;
2. (they must) have been in operation for at least three full years in non-profit status;
3. and document the availability of private financial resources to contribute to the program” (FY 2012 Funding Opportunity Announcement for Reception and Placement Program).

How it works 
Each agency enters into a Cooperative Agreement (CA) with the PRM and is provided $1800 per refugee it sponsors who arrives in the U.S. during the period of the CA. Resettlement agencies have voluntary agreements with the Office of Refugee Resettlement within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (US DHHS). The resettlement agencies generally receive seven to ten days notice prior to the arrival of a refugee so that they can assign a case manager, find housing, furniture, and purchase necessary household items. If the refugee has a relative or other tie already living in the U.S. (called an “anchor”), the resettlement agency usually establishes an agreement before the refugees arrive to determine the role the relative or tie will have in assisting the newly arrived refugee in accessing core services.

Service period & basic services
The R&P service period is thirty days long, but can be extended to up to ninety days if more time is necessary to complete delivery of R&P services, although some service agencies allow extensions of assistance based on a client’s needs. Basic support consists of the provision of:
1. Decent, safe, sanitary, and affordable housing
2. Essential furnishings
3. Appropriate food and food allowances
4. Necessary clothing
5. Assistance in applying for social security cards
6. Assistance in registering children in school
7. Transportation to job interviews and job training
8. At least two home visits
9. An initial housing orientation visit by a designated R&P representative or case manager
10. Assistance in obtaining health screening and mental health services
11. Obtaining employment services
12. Obtaining appropriate benefits
13. Referrals to social service programs
14. Enrollment in English as a Second Language instruction.
15. Pre-arrival processing & reception planning
16. Airport pickup
17. Hot meal on night of arrival
18. General case management
19. Development and implementation of a resettlement plan
20. Cultural orientation classes
21. Employment assessment and possible enrollment in UST’s employment program
22. Referrals to UST internal programs
23. Advocacy within government and social services agencies
24. Coordination of community volunteers that provide additional adjustment assistance
25. Follow up and basic needs support

If refugees are still in need of assistance after this 30-90 day period, they can seek aid from public benefit programs for up to seven years. Refugees retain their status as such for one year, and then are considered permanent residents for four years. After that, they can apply for U.S. citizenship.

Other services listed on our website are also accessible to our clients.  Some services are subject to office location.

 

What the Uranium One Documents Reveal

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Our Operations

Uranium One is engaged through its subsidiaries and joint ventures in uranium production, and in the exploration and development of uranium properties, in Kazakhstan, the United States, Tanzania and elsewhere. Uranium One is focused on low cost and low technical risk operations, with existing, near and medium-term production visibility in some of the world’s largest uranium resource jurisdictions.

Uranium One is a joint venture partner with JSC NAC Kazatomprom, the Kazakhstan state-owned atomic energy company, in six major producing uranium mines in Kazakhstan – Akdala, South Inkai, Karatau, Akbastau, Zarechnoye and Kharasan. The company also operates the Willow Creek uranium mine in Wyoming, and is the operator of, and owns a 13.9 percent interest in, the Mkuju River uranium development project in Tanzania.

Uranium One’s revenues are largely derived from the sale of uranium concentrates. The company sells its uranium to major nuclear utilities in Russia, Europe, North America, South America, Middle East and Asia.

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This was an internal coup advanced by the Obama administration. What is worse, where are those Hillary, State Department of CFIUS or White House related emails?

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William Campbell, the FBI informant, documented for his FBI handlers the first illegal activity by Russians nuclear industry officials in fall 2009, nearly a entire year before the Russian state-owned Rosatom nuclear firm won Obama administration approval for the Uranium One deal, the memos show.

Evidence gathered by an FBI undercover informant conflicts with several media reports as well as statements by Justice officials concerning the connections between a Russian nuclear bribery case and the Obama administration’s approval of the sale of uranium One to Russia’s state-owned Rosatom nuclear company. More here.

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During Campbell’s time working as a confidential informant, he was required by the Russians to launder large sums of money to financial institutions in Cyprus, Latvia and Seychelles. With Campbell’s help the FBI uncovered an extensive money Russian nuclear money laundering apparatus and Campbell was working solo. He was required to launder money, from his own salary, on particular days and times when Russian money handlers would be working at the banks. If he missed a scheduled pay time for any reason his Russian counterparts would threaten him, he told his attorney. He was also required on many occasions to deliver cash directly to those who were being paid off, most of which he recorded on hidden cameras for the FBI.

It didn’t end there. In order to keep his cover he spent many nights with his Russian counterparts drinking, collecting information and more importantly gaining their trust. He was in his early 60s and his once unblemished driving record ended with a DUI in 2008 and two other reckless driving charges in 2010 and 2012, said Toensing, who noted they were all misdemeanors.

THE PLAYERS

The cast of characters deep within the Russian nuclear agency also included another American businessman named Rod Fisk, whose company Transportation Logistics International, also known as TLI,  was the primary transport company for Russian enriched uranium sold to the United States.

Fisk passed away in 2011, and his Vice President Daren Condrey replaced him. In 2015, Daren Condrey, of Maryland, pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and conspiring to commit wire fraud, according to the DOJ.

Adding to the colorful array of Russian criminals the FBI was watching, was a Russian national named Vadim Mikerin. He was then a top official of the Russian nuclear arms subsidiary Tenex. Mikerin, who had close ties to elite members of the Kremlin, and who bragged in emails and documents about his families connections to current Russian President Vladimir Putin, would later become president of Tenam, the American subsidiary that began operations in 2010, according to the contract. Boris Rubizhevsky, another Russian national from New Jersey,  who was  president of the security firm NEXGEN Security, also pleaded guilty in 2015, to conspiracy to commit money laundering.  He served as a consultant to TENAM and to Mikerin. He was sentenced to prison last week along with three years of supervised release and a $26,500 fine, according to a recent Reuters report.

Mikerin was eventually arrested for a racketeering scheme that dated back to 2004, and included fraud, extortion and money laundering. But he only plead guilty to money-laundering. He was sentenced to 48 months in prison in December 2015. More here.

Vadim Mikerin (image from flickr.com by Tenam USA) / Flickr

 

Here are five revelations from those documents reviewed by The Hill:

Russia saw its purchase of Uranium One as part of a strategy to dominate global uranium markets, including making the United States more dependent on Moscow’s nuclear fuel.

Documents the informant gave the FBI clearly show that the purchase of Uranium One was seen by Russia and its American consultants as one tool in a strategy to “control” the uranium market worldwide. In the United States, that strategy focused on securing billions of new uranium contracts to create a new reliance on Russian nuclear fuel just as the Cold War-era Megatons to Megawatts program was ending.

Uranium One did export some of its U.S. uranium ore.

News organizations, including The Washington Post, continue to report none of Uranium One’s product left the U.S. after Russia took control. In fact, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) approved an export license for a third party trucking firm to export Uranium One ore to Canada for enrichment, and that some of that uranium ended up in Europe, NRC memos show. Uranium One itself admits that as much as 25 percent of the uranium it exported to Canada ended up with European or Asian clients through what is know in the industry as “book transfers.”

The FBI informant Douglas Campbell does have information to share with Congress about Rosatom’s Uranium One purchase.

Justice officials have suggested in recent stories that Campbell has little on Uranium One because his work forced on nuclear bribery involving a different Rosatom subsidiary. While it’s true Campbell’s undercover work focused on criminality inside the Rosatom subsidiary Tenex, he did gather extensive documents about Rosatom’s efforts to win approval to buy Uranium One.

The FBI did have evidence that Rosatom officials were engaged in criminality well before the Obama administration approved Rosatom’s purchase of Uranium One.

Evidence that a foreign company is involved in criminality can disqualify it from Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) approval to buy a sensitive U.S. asset. And Campbell helped the FBI recorded the first criminal activity by Rosatom officials inside its Tenex arm in November 2009, nearly an entire year before CFIUS approved Rosatom’s purchase of Uranium One.

Justice officials trusted the informant Campbell enough to keep him working undercover for six years and to pay him more than $51,000 once the convictions were secured.

A check obtained by The Hill shows the FBI paid Campbell an informant fee of more than $51,000 in January 2016, shortly after the last convictions in the Russian nuclear bribery case were made.