Category Archives: government fraud spending collusion

Mass Transfer out of Gitmo: Detainees to UAE

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PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) – Fifteen prisoners at Guantanamo Bay have been released to the United Arab Emirates in the single largest transfer of detainees during the Obama administration.

The release of 12 Yemeni nationals and three Afghans comes amid a renewed push to whittle down the number of detainees held at the U.S. base in Cuba. The men have been cleared for transfer by U.S. government departments and agencies.

The Pentagon says 61 detainees remain at Guantanamo.

President Barack Obama has been seeking to close the detention center amid opposition from Congress.

Naureen Shah is Amnesty International USA’s director of national security and human rights. She says Monday’s transfers are a “powerful sign that President Obama is serious about closing Guantanamo before he leaves office.”

**** Photo from Miami Herald, click here for more details.

ABC: The latest batch of released prisoners had mostly been held without charge for some 14 years at Guantanamo. They were cleared for release by the Periodic Review Board, comprised of representatives from six U.S. government agencies.

The UAE successfully resettled five detainees transferred there last year, according to the Pentagon.

Lee Wolosky, the State Department’s special envoy for Guantanamo’s closure, said the U.S. was grateful to the United Arab Emirates for accepting the latest group of 15 men and helping pave the way for the detention center’s closure.

“The continued operation of the detention facility weakens our national security by draining resources, damaging our relationships with key allies and partners, and emboldening violent extremists,” Wolosky said.

Obama has been seeking to close the detention center amid opposition from Congress, which has prohibited transferring detainees to the U.S. for any reason. The administration has been working with other countries to resettle detainees who have been cleared for transfer.

According to Amnesty, one of the Afghans released to the UAE alleged that he was “tortured and subjected to other cruel treatment” while in U.S. military custody. The man, identified only as Obaidullah, was captured by U.S. special forces in July 2002 and allegedly admitted to acquiring and planting anti-tank mines to target U.S. and other coalition forces in eastern Afghanistan.

In clearing him for transfer, the review board said he hasn’t expressed any anti-U.S. sentiment or intent to re-engage in militant activities. However, a Pentagon detainee profile also said he provided little information and they had little “insight into his current mindset.”

One of the Yemeni men sent to the UAE was identified as Zahir Umar Hamis bin Hamdun, who traveled to Afghanistan in 1999 and later apparently acted as a weapons and explosives trainer.

A Pentagon profile from September 2015 said he expressed dislike of the U.S., which they identified as “an emotion that probably is motivated more by frustration over his continuing detention than by a commitment to global jihad.”

***** One such detainee profile:

Detainee to UAE

Did Hillary Lie to the FBI?

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It is unlikely Hillary lied to the FBI during her three hour interview. Why? If she was asked easy questions including questions where she could claim no memory, then the entire interview was purely theater. It is important to note that the Director of the FBI, James Comey was not in attendance for this interview. It is stunning that a presidential candidate and a top government official was being interviewed and the FBI Director was not a participant. Why? Again, the questions were thin on substance and hardly probing and perhaps pre-planned. But Congress is about to have possession of the records.

His July 5 announcement – which led to the Department of Justice officially dropping the case – also resulted in Comey having to testify before Congress, which he did two days later. 

There, he was asked about Clinton’s interview with the FBI.

Comey divulged that the three-hour interview hadn’t taken place under oath and thus no official transcript would be available.

Notes from the interview, however, existed and Republicans have been trying to get their hands on those for the past month. More here.

 

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Congress could get record of FBI’s Clinton interview over emails by this week

FNC: Some of the FBI files on the agency’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server exclusively for government business while serving as secretary of state could be given to a House oversight committee as early as this week, a congressional source confirmed with Fox News on Sunday.

The matter has been progressing since early July, when a formal request was made by Congress for the file, the remaining block appears to rest within the Justice Department.

The FBI, after interviewing Clinton last month, concluded its investigation of Clinton’s use of a private server, confirming publicly that 113 classified emails were sent and received by Clinton, as well as 2,000 that were classified after the fact.

FBI Director James Comey said investigators found at least three emails that contained classified markings, adding that the Democratic presidential nominee was “extremely careless.” However, he did not recommend criminal charges, and the Justice Department closed the case.

While Clinton has insisted nothing was marked classified at the time, the investigation found otherwise, with the emails containing a portion marking (C for confidential, the lowest level of classification). Fox News first reported that some of the emails were marked classified in June.

The Oversight Committee has formally asked if Clinton committed perjury during her Benghazi testimony in October 2015, because her statements to Congress appear to conflict with the FBI’s findings. Clinton has maintained she was truthful in her FBI interview.

Fox News is told that the FBI and Justice Department have confirmed the receipt of the committee’s request.

Congressional investigators — led by House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman GOP Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah — have been aggressively seeking the entire file, including a summary of Clinton’s interview, known as a “302.”

However, the document is considered highly classified, because Clinton’s FBI session included questions on the 22 top secret emails that are too damaging to national security to make public.

Note that, it is standard for FBI interviews not to be recorded, so there is no transcript, but agents take extensive notes and they form the basis for the written report known as the “302.”

The possible release of the file to congressional investigators was first reported by CNN.

The House Oversight Committee questioned Comey for over five hours in July after he said no reasonable prosecutor would pursue criminal charges.

Update on Hillary’s Donations, Tax Returns, Emails, on My

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Guccifer 2.0 has been busy toward the end of the week with a new release found below:

As you see the U.S. presidential elections are becoming a farce, a big political performance where the voters are far from playing the leading role. Everything is being settled behind the scenes as it was with Bernie Sanders.

I wonder what happened to the true democracy, to the equal opportunities, the things we love the United States for. The big money bags are fighting for power today. They are lying constantly and don’t keep their word. The MSM are producing tons of propaganda  hiding the real stuff behind it. But I do believe that people have right to know what’s going on inside the election process in fact.

To make a long story short, here are some DCCC docs from their server. Make use of them.

Publication Passwords

2016 Cycle Passwords

Coordinated Shared Passwords

Special thanks to Nirali Amin for the list of passwords.

2016-08-08_174450

By the way, the complexity of the passwords leaves much to be desired.

Here are more docs from the DCCC server.

Copy of 114th Congressional Contacts

2016-08-08_175149

FL-18 Campaign Overview

FL-18 Campaign Overview Appendix

2016-08-08_1753032016-08-08_175623

These docs are from Nancy Pelosi’s PC

Pelosi_Carroll Event Memo

pe1

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Clinton Releases 2015 Tax Returns — Here’s Where 96 Percent of Their Charitable Donations Went

TheBlaze and Mediaite: Of the $10.6 million Hillary and Bill Clinton earned last year, they gave more than $1 million to charity, according to a tax filing released by the Democratic presidential nominee’s campaign Friday.

As it turns out, 96 percent of the Clintons’ 2015 charitable donations went to the Clinton Family Foundation, a tax-exempt charity owned by the Clintons but separate from the well-known Clinton Foundation. According to the tax release, the Clintons donated $42,000 to Desert Classic Charities and $1 million to the Clinton Family Foundation.

Interestingly, as the Daily Caller pointed out, the money donated to Desert Classic soon funneled back to the Clintons as the charity donated $700,000 to the Hillary, Bill and Chelsea Clinton Foundation. The money was donated for work on obesity programs.

In 2012, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney became the subject of much scrutiny for his charitable donations. The former Massachusetts governor earned $14 million and gave $4 million to charity. Many progressive pundits hit Romney because a majority of his charitable giving went to the Mormon church and part of it was gifted to a foundation controlled by his family.

The Clintons’ charity work has been criticized ever since the release of Peter Schweitzer’s 2015 book “Clinton Cash.” The author asserts that many of the embattled Clinton Foundation’s donations from foreign and domestic people occurred alongside favorable treatment from Clinton’s State Department.

This comes amid a new release of Clinton emails seemingly showing a tangled relationship between the State Department and the Clinton Foundation during Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state.

The FBI pushed the Department of Justice to launch an integrity probe into the Clinton Foundation, but the agency denied, claiming there was not enough evidence of wrongdoing to justify such an investigation.

**** Oh Bill, what have you been doing lately?

Bill Clinton netted $1.6 million from for-profit colleges

WashingtonExaminer: Bill Clinton netted $1.6 million last year from a pair of for-profit education companies that caused controversy for the future president during Hillary Clinton’s time as secretary of state.

Laureate Education paid Bill Clinton nearly $1.1 million in 2015, according to tax returns released by his wife’s campaign Friday. GEMS Education, a Dubai-based firm, paid him more than $560,000.

Both companies are major donors to the Clinton Foundation.

Bill Clinton’s lucrative consulting contracts with the corporations have raised questions about how closely his personal fortune is linked to his philanthropic activities.

What’s more, the State Department handed Laureate’s chairman taxpayer-funded grants under Hillary Clinton’s watch.

** Be sure to click the link below for the income graphic.
Bill and Hillary Clinton Total Income | Graphiq

Douglas Becker, CEO of Laureate, also heads a nonprofit group called the International Youth Foundation, which netted millions from the U.S. Agency for International Development in 2010. USAID is an arm of the State Department.

The Clintons have weathered criticism in the past for promoting affordable or free higher education while accepting a paycheck from one of the largest for-profit college education firms in the world.

Bill Clinton said he ended his time as the honorary chancellor of Laureate in April of last year, the same month Hillary Clinton launched her presidential bid.

Contracts with GEMS and Laureate have earned Bill Clinton more than $15 million. That sum padded the additional millions he pocketed from speaking fees thanks to engagements he booked around the world while Hillary Clinton served as the nation’s chief diplomat.

 

CENTCOM Reports Altered to Follow Obama’s Lead

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Not all intelligence professionals complied with the reports declaring in Congressional testimony conditions that were dramatically worse than what Barack Obama was telling the American people. The consequence of the top CENTCOM staff altering and filtering factual summaries can never be fully measured however, immediately after General Mattis left CENTCOM, the process was changed and reporting began to go south. When General Austin replaced Mattis, collaboration and use of all intelligence tools were amended. Timing is important such that the fall of Ramadi and Fallujah happened but notably within days of Obama making the declaration that Islamic State was the JV team, Mosul fell.

The United States officially left Iraq in 2011, there were an estimated 700 terror fighters that remained, within several months the number grew to several thousand while the top count going into 2014 it was 31,000. Today, Islamic State has functional operating cells in 24 countries. Attention to al Qaeda, Boko Haram, the Taliban and other terror factions has been eliminated from the political lexicon.

The Congressional 17 page report is.

House probe: Central Command reports skewed intel on ISIS fight

FNC: Intelligence reports produced by U.S. Central Command that tracked the Islamic State’s 2014-15 rise in Iraq and Syria were skewed to present a rosier picture of the situation on the ground, according to a bombshell report released Thursday by a House Republican task force.

The task force investigated a Defense Department whistleblower’s allegations that higher-ups manipulated analysts’ findings to make the campaign against ISIS appear more successful to the American public.

The report concluded that intelligence reports from Central Command were, in fact, “inconsistent with the judgments of many senior, career analysts.”

Further, the report found, “these products also consistently described U.S. actions in a more positive light than other assessments from the [intelligence community] and were typically more optimistic than actual events warranted.”

Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., who was involved in the House report, said Thursday the data was clearly “manipulated.”

“They wanted to tell a story that ISIS was the JV, that we had Al Qaeda on the run,” he told Fox News. “This is incredibly dangerous. We haven’t seen this kind of manipulation of intelligence … in an awfully long time.”

It is unclear how high up the reports in question went, though the task force found “many” Central Command press releases, statements and testimonies were “significantly more positive than actual events” as well.

The joint task force report blamed “structural and management changes” at the CENTCOM Intelligence Directorate starting in mid-2014 for the intelligence products. Surveys provided to the task force, according to the report, showed 40 percent of analysts later claimed they “had experienced an attempt to distort or suppress intelligence.”

The report also said senior leaders relied on details from coalition forces rather than “more objective and documented intelligence reporting,” using this as a rationale to change reports – sometimes “in a more optimistic direction.”

The Defense Department inspector general is now taking a close look at the findings – and looking for more possible whistle-blowers. The joint task force described its assessment released Thursday as an “initial report” and continues to investigate.

“The facts on the ground didn’t match what the intelligence was saying out of the United States Central Command,” Pompeo said.

The Pentagon did not comment in depth on the report, citing the ongoing IG investigation.

However, spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Patrick L. Evans said the intelligence community assessments are “based on multifaceted data related to the current security environment.”

“Experts sometimes disagree on the interpretation of complex data, and the Intelligence Community and Department of Defense welcome healthy dialogue on these vital national security topics,” he said in a statement.

When the allegations initially surfaced last year, the White House insisted no one in the administration pressured anyone, and suggested blame may rest with the military.

Meanwhile there is Rosneft, Deeper Russian Terror

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Primer: From January 2015

Foreign Firm Funding U.S. Green Groups Tied to State-Owned Russian Oil Company

Executives at a Bermudan firm funneling money to U.S. environmentalists run investment funds with Russian tycoons, a shadowy Bermudan company that has funneled tens of millions of dollars to anti-fracking environmentalist groups in the United States is run by executives with deep ties to Russian oil interests and offshore money laundering schemes involving members of President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle. One of those executives, Nicholas Hoskins, is a director at a hedge fund management firm that has invested heavily in Russian oil and gas. He is also senior counsel at the Bermudan law firm Wakefield Quin and the vice president of a London-based investment firm whose president until recently chaired the board of the state-owned Russian oil company Rosneft.In addition to those roles, Hoskins is a director at a company called Klein Ltd. No one knows where that firm’s money comes from. Its only publicly documented activities have been transfers of $23 million to U.S. environmentalist groups that push policies that would hamstring surging American oil and gas production, which has hurt Russia’s energy-reliant economy.

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Why is this important? Arms trafficking….there is always a darker side including people. Anyone remember the name Viktor Bout?

 Photo: CNN

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Notorious Russian arms dealer ‘refused US offer for lighter sentence’

FITSANAKIS: The wife of Viktor Bout, the imprisoned Russian arms dealer dubbed ‘the merchant of death’, said he rejected an offer by his American captors who asked him to testify against a senior Russian government official. Born in Soviet Tajikistan, Bout was a former translator for the Soviet military. After the end of the Cold War, he set up several low-profile international air transport companies and used them to transfer large shipments of weapons that fueled wars in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe. He made millions in the process and acquired international notoriety, which inspired the Hollywood blockbuster Lord of War. But his business ventures ceased in 2008, when he was arrested in Bangkok, Thailand, by the United States Drug Enforcement Administration, with the cooperation of the Royal Thai Police. He was eventually extradited to the US and given a 25-year prison term for supplying weapons to the Afghan Taliban, and for trying to sell arms to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Bout is currently serving his sentence at the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center in New York.

In a newspaper interview on Tuesday, Bout’s wife, Alla Bout, said her husband could have gotten away with a considerably lighter sentence had he agreed to testify against a senior Russian government official. Speaking to Moscow-based daily Izvestia, Alla Bout said her husband had been approached by American authorities after being extradited to the United States from Thailand. He was told that US authorities wanted him to testify against Igor Sechin, a powerful Russian government official, whom American prosecutors believed was Bout’s boss. In return for his testimony, US prosecutors allegedly promised a jail sentence that would not exceed two years, as well as political asylum for him and his family following his release from prison. Alla Bout added that her husband’s American lawyers were told by the prosecution that the ‘merchant of death’ “would be able to live in the US comfortably, along with his wife and daughter”, and that his family could stay in America during his trial “under conditions”. Alla Bout claimed she was told this by Bout himself and by members of his American legal team.

From 2008 to 2012, Sechin, who has military background, served as Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister. Today he heads the Board of Directors of Rosneft, a government-owned oil extraction and refinement company, which is considered one of the world’s most powerful business ventures. Many observers see Sechin as the most formidable man in Russia after Russian President Vladimir Putin. He is also believed to be a senior member of the Siloviki, a secretive group of government officials in the Putin government who have prior careers in national security or intelligence. Although Bout and Sechin have never acknowledged having met each other, some investigators of Bout’s weapons-trading activities believe that the two were close allies. It is believed that the two men first met in Angola and Mozambique in the 1980s, where they were stationed while serving in the Soviet military. But the two men deny they knowing each other. According to Alla Bout, Viktor told his American captors that he “never worked for Sechin and did not know him in person”. He therefore turned down the prosecution’s offer and was handed a 25-year sentence. When asked by the Izvestia reporters whether Bout was simply protecting the powerful Russian government official, Alla Bout insisted that the two “have never even met, not once”.

**** Igor Sechin

Forbes: Igor Sechin may be the left hand man to the World’s Most Powerful Man, but that didn’t stop him or his giant oil company, Rosneft, from landing on a U.S. visa and financial sanctions list announced after the Russian military intervention in the Ukraine. “Putin trusts him more than anyone else,” says Russian expert Mark Galeotti of NYU. “And if Putin trusts you, power and wealth always follow.” Suffice it to say that the Kremlin is one of Rosneft’s major stockholders.