Category Archives: government fraud spending collusion

The Wilful Reckless Handling of Classified Docs in DHS too?

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Okay, so we have had the issue at the U.S. State Department and now the Department of Homeland Security, so it begs the question, what other agencies? Further, Iran, Russia, China and North Korea are likely loving this.

Security? Heh….

Homeland Security Is Spilling a Lot of Secrets

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Bloomberg: The Department of Homeland Security suffered over 100 “spills” of classified information last year, 40 percent of which came from one office, according to a leaked internal document I obtained. Officials and lawmakers told me that until the Department imposes stricter policies and sounder practices to better protect sensitive intelligence, the vulnerabilities there could be exploited. Not only does this raise the threat that hostile actors could get their hands on classified information, but may lead to other U.S. agencies keeping DHS out of the loop on major security issues.

A spill is not the same as an unauthorized disclosure of classified information. A Homeland Security official explained that spills often include “the accidental, inadvertent, or intentional introduction of classified information into an unclassified information technology system, or higher-level classified information into a lower-level classified information technology system, to include non-government systems.”

Examples include: using a copier not approved for the level of classified information copied; failing to properly mark a classified product; transmitting classified information on an unclassified system like Gmail; or sending classified information to someone who, while having the proper level of clearance, is not authorized to read a section of information sent to them, the official said.

There were 119 of these classified spills reported throughout the Homeland Security Department in fiscal year 2015, according to the internal document, which itself is unclassified. The section with the most spills by far was the Office of Intelligence and Analysis, headquartered at building 19 of the Nebraska Avenue Complex in Washington, led by retired General Francis Taylor. This office is composed mostly of intelligence analysts assigned to produce and review classified reports that are often the work of other intelligence agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

One senior Homeland Security official told me that the intelligence and analysis office at DHS suffers from lax enforcement of the established policies and practices to protect classified information. This official said the numbers of classified spills in the internal report only represents those incidents that were officially reported, and the actual number is much higher.

S.Y. Lee, a department spokesman, told me that DHS does not comment on reports of leaked information, but that the department is currently having mandatory employee training sessions on the handling of classified and sensitive information.

“We take any report of mishandling of information very seriously, and when violations are discovered, the Department takes immediate, appropriate actions to address the situation,” he said. “DHS takes the protection of all our assets very seriously, and will continue to evolve our training and remediation efforts to address security needs and accountability to the American public.”

Experts on government secrecy and classified information handling told me that the number of spills alone does not directly prove that there is a larger cultural or policy problem at DHS. But there is a history of carelessness with e-mail at the department, and this new finding combined with anecdotal reports of bad practices indicate that there should be more investigation the intelligence and analysis division in particular.

“At a minimum, this raises a question about what’s going on at this corner of the agency,” said Steven Aftergood, director of the program on government secretary at the Federation of American Scientists. “If it is happening disproportionally in one part of the agency, that may mean that remedial measures are needed there, including security training, better oversight and similar steps.”

Spillages are a normal part of the classification system at the DHS and elsewhere, and there are formal procedures for addressing them because it’s understood that you cannot eliminate human error, he said. But if one intelligence shop is mishandling information from another part of the government, that could cause real problems in the interagency cooperation and intelligence-sharing.

“If they have a reputation as a shop with unreliable security, other agencies are going to think twice about sharing their most valuable information with Homeland Security,” Aftergood said. “It can hurt other agencies and it can rebound on them. It’s bad all around and should be corrected.”

Johannes B. Ullrich, dean of research for the SANS Technology Institute, said that it’s probable most of the classified spills were unintentional and the result of sloppiness more than anything else. But lax enforcement of policies meant to protect sensitive information also presents an opportunity for exploitation by malicious actors.

“If it’s accepted practice that you print documents and scan them in, for example, then it’s much easier for an insider to take advantage of that,” he said. “By reducing the unintentional spillage you make it easier to find the intentional ones.”

The House Homeland Security Committee is currently pushing DHS to implement new systems for monitoring employees who handle classified information. Last November, the House passed the DHS Insider Threat and Mitigation Act, which was sponsored by Representative Peter King, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee’s subcommittee on counterterrorism and intelligence. The bill would require Taylor, among other things, to develop a timeline for deploying workplace monitoring technologies, employee awareness campaigns, and education and training programs related to potential insider threats to the department’s critical assets. The Senate Homeland Security Committee marked up a companion bill earlier this month.

“In recent years, the department has made progress installing limited monitoring technology, but much more needs to be done,” King said in a statement. “Results from the existing systems demonstrate the need for more auditing and education for DHS employees.”

Classified spills are a government-wide problem and there’s no way to know if the incidents at the DHS intelligence shop have been exploited. But unless that office and the government as a whole does a better job of protecting classified information, it’s just a matter of time before real damage is done to U.S. national security

Lew Alcindor aka Eric Holder….But Its Okay?

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While US Attorney General, Eric Holder Used Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s Birth Name as His Official Email Address

Leopold/Vice:

Former US Attorney General Eric Holder is a huge fan of NBA hall of famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

So much so that Holder used Abdul-Jabbar’s birth name, Lew Alcindor, as an alias for his official Department of Justice (DOJ) email account, raising more questions about the email practices of top Obama administration officials, and about the ability of US government agencies to track down correspondence in response to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

The Lew Alcindor revelation was made in a February 16 letter that DOJ sent to VICE News and Ryan Shapiro, a historian and doctoral candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who specializes in national security research.

“For your information,” the letter said, “e-mails in the enclosed documents which use the account name ‘Lew Alcindor’ denote e-mails to or from former Attorney General Holder.”

The letter was part of about 500 pages of heavily redacted emails and other documents given to VICE News and Shapiro in response to a FOIA lawsuit filed in late 2014. The documents show that Justice Department officials sent emails to Lew Alcindor regarding calls from lawmakers for a federal investigation into claims that CIA personnel spied on Senate staffers while the Senate was drafting a report about the CIA’s torture program. Holder’s name does not appear anywhere in his Lew Alcindor email account.

The responses from Lew Alcindor, notably one about Senator Ron Wyden’s demand that the DOJ “reopen” an investigation into the CIA after the agency’s own internal watchdog upheld the spying allegations, are virtually all redacted. DOJ declined to launch a criminal probe into the matter, claiming there was insufficient evidence. (Earlier this month, Wyden confronted CIA Director John Brennan about the spying incident and tried to get him to acknowledge it was improper and would not happen again.)

Other documents center around messages sent to the DOJ by David Grannis, the former staff director of the Senate Intelligence Committee, about authorizing Senate staffers to return to a secure facility leased by the CIA so they could finish fact-checking and writing the torture report. Grannis brings up the DOJ’s subsequent “odd” request, communicated to Grannis through the CIA, that Senate staffers “receive a security refresher beforehand, highlighting especially the computer system’s audit feature.”

“Can you cast any light on what DOJ personnel meant by this, or why they said it? Seems odd for DOJ to get involved in the security procedures between the Agency and the Committee, so I wanted to make sure we understood DOJ’s recommendation,” Grannis wrote, suggesting that the DOJ gave credence to CIA claims that Senate staffers inappropriately gained access to a coveted internal CIA document that sparked CIA spying.

There are vast swaths of redacting black ink throughout the emails — including DOJ’s response to Grannis.

Last March, a week after the New York Times revealed that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton exclusively used a private email account to conduct official business while she was Secretary of State, Holder’s chief spokesman, Brian Fallon, disclosed that his boss had used three different aliases — all of which had a usdoj.gov domain — during his tenure as the nation’s top law enforcement official.

‘Will members of the public reviewing the records of Eric Holder’s tenure as attorney general understand emails purporting to be from Lew Alcindor are actually from him?’

Fallon made the disclosure less than a week before he announced that he would serve as lead press secretary for Clinton’s presidential campaign. Fallon identified two of the email accounts Holder previously used, but they weren’t the names of any known living person. Fallon declined to identify Holder’s third email alias other than to say that it was “based” on an athlete. (Before leaving the DOJ in April 2015, Holder had still been using the Lew Alcindor email address.)

Fallon, who exchanged many of the emails in the cache with Lew Alcindor, explained the rationale for the practice: to combat spam and to avoid being inundated with correspondence from the public.

A Justice Department spokesman told VICE News there was nothing improper or legally questionable about Holder using the identity of a living person for his email account. Nor was it in any way an attempt, he said, to thwart FOIA or the Federal Records Act, which requires government agencies to preserve federal records. DOJ officials who handle FOIA requests and congressional inquiries, the spokesman said, knew of Holder’s email aliases.

Yet DOJ and many other federal agencies, the State Department and FBI in particular, have been harshly criticized (including by VICE News) for poorly performing searches meant to capture emails from officials who use their true identities. Experts in FOIA law said Holder’s Lew Alcindor identity calls into question the ability of FOIA staff to locate all emails from an official who uses an alias.

Laura Sheehan, a spokeswoman for the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), said the email alias practice appears to be fairly common among agency heads in large government departments.

“There is no prohibition against it, so long as they can be linked to the actual name,” Sheehan said.

A few years ago, the former head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Lisa Jackson, came under fire from conservative lawmakers and open government advocates — and was accused of attempting to thwart open records requests and federal records retention laws — after it was revealed that she used the email alias Richard Windsor when conducting official business. An inspector general review into the practice concluded that EPA lacks “internal controls to ensure the identification and preservation of records when using private and alias email accounts for conducting government business.” The disclosure lead NARA to issue policy guidance to the heads of federal agencies on email management, which say:

Agencies must ensure that the name of an individual employee is linked with each account in order to comply with FOIA, discovery, and the requirement to transfer permanent email records… to NARA. In most cases, this requires the full name or readily identifiable nickname that is maintained on a distribution list.

In a Q&A with the Washington Post shortly thereafter, NARA’s chief records officer, Paul Wester Jr., said that while there is no prohibition against using email aliases, the practice makes it difficult to locate and turn over records in response to FOIA requests, and NARA does not condone it.

“We’ve been pretty clear with agencies it is not a good practice to follow, and we don’t recommend that they authorize the use of personal e-mail accounts or alias accounts to conduct their business,” Wester said. “There’s a higher probability the emails wouldn’t be documented properly with their broader record keeping systems.”

Anne Weismann, the executive director of good government group Campaign for Accountability, and an expert on FOIA, told VICE News that even though the DOJ has acknowledged that Holder used an email alias, and that DOJ’s FOIA staff is aware, “it still raises a question about whether the agency is properly documenting its work and preserving records under the Federal Records Act.”

“Will members of the public reviewing the records of Eric Holder’s tenure as [attorney general] understand emails purporting to be from ‘Lew Alcindor’ are actually from him?” Weismann said. “An investigation clearly is warranted.”

Several years ago, Weismann inquired with the DOJ about the number of email accounts associated with Holder and his deputies. The DOJ responded to her inquiry by saying Holder’s email address does not use his name.

“This protects his privacy and security and allows him to conduct official business efficiently via e-mail,” DOJ attorney Vanessa Brinkman wrote in a September 30, 2013 letter addressed to Weismann. (Brinkmann also signed the February 16 letter turned over to VICE News and Shapiro.)

Holder, who returned to his old law firm Covington after he left the DOJ, did not return a call for comment.

A DOJ spokesman said Attorney General Loretta Lynch uses an official DOJ email address to conduct government business, but “to help guard against security risks, the Attorney General does not use her given name in the handle of her email address.”

Douglas Cox, a law professor with the City University of New York School of Law whose research focuses on the intersection of information policy and national security, said he believes there is a “legitimate problem” with alias emails, “especially in the way agencies appear to be administering them.”

“Agencies are unnecessarily creating risks of undermining FOIA responses, subpoena responses, and discovery disclosures,” Cox said. “I also think alias emails are inconsistent with the letter and spirit of the federal record keeping laws.”

Cox said he understands why Holder would want to avoid being spammed and receiving unsolicited emails from the public, “but I don’t see what the justification would be for not configuring [[email protected]] so [Holder’s] actual name appears in internal emails.”

“Is there some reason why the identity of the sender has to be masked internally? And if so, then they must be tightly controlling who knows the alias, which in turn invites, if not guarantees, FOIA and record keeping problems,” Cox said. “When you consider the possibility, if not likelihood based on what we know, that alias emails are common practice among high-ranking officials across dozens of agencies, the risk of undermining FOIA searches and discovery requests within the various agencies approaches certainty.”

Meanwhile, Abdul-Jabbar, who legally changed his name in 1971, was unaware that Holder used his birth name for his official government email account. A spokeswoman for the former Los Angeles Lakers great declined to comment about the issue. Last year, Abdul-Jabbar interviewed Holder for a documentary he is producing on race. And in an interview with Politico around the same time, Holder said he idolized Abdul-Jabbar growing up and that the basketball legend had become a friend.

 

Lew

European Union: 10 Days to Collapse, $1.4 Trillion Euros

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EU has 10 days to see progress on migrant crisis or Schengen unravels: EU commissioner

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – European Union has 10 more days to see significantly lower inflows of migrants and refugees from Turkey “or else there is risk the whole system will completely break down”, EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos said on Thursday.

Avramopoulos was speaking after the bloc’s justice and home affairs ministers met in Brussels on Thursday in an effort to put a European solution to the crisis in place. A growing number of EU states are resorting to unilateral border tightening, unraveling the continent’s free-travel Schengen zone.

The study estimated that under a worst case scenario, in which the reintroduction of controls at EU borders pushed import prices up three percent, the costs to the bloc’s largest economy Germany could be as much as 235 billion euros between 2016 and 2025, and those to France up to 244 billion.

At a minimum, with import prices rising one percent, the study showed that a breakdown of Schengen would cost the EU roughly 470 billion euros over the next decade.

The cost would climb to 1.4 trillion euros, or roughly 10 percent of annual gross domestic product (GDP) in the 28-member EU bloc, under the more dire scenario.

“If border controls are reinstated within Europe, already weak growth will come under additional pressure,” said Aart De Geus, president of Bertelsmann.

Schengen was established over 30 years ago and now counts 26 members, 22 of which are EU members. But the system of passport-free travel has come under severe pressure over the past half year due to a flood of migrants entering Europe, mainly from the Middle East and Africa.

To stem the tide and to ensure they have an overview of who is entering their territory, many countries within Schengen have reintroduced border controls in recent months, leading to fears the whole system could collapse.

Underscoring the urgency of the issue, Germany’s Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere told public broadcaster ARD on Sunday that EU member states, which have been squabbling for months over how to tackle the migrant crisis, must agree a common approach within two weeks if they wanted to avoid such a fate.

In addition to being a devastating symbolic setback for Europe, a collapse of Schengen would increase the amount of time it takes for goods to be transported across European borders, raising costs for companies and consumers.

The Bertelsmann study, conducted by Prognos AG, estimated that the minimum costs to Germany and France would be 77 billion euros and 80.5 billion euros, respectively, over the period to 2025.

A collapse of Schengen would also increase costs for countries outside the zone, with the combined burden on the United States and China over the next decade estimated at between 91 billion and 280 billion euros, according to the study.

More here.

*** EU’s migration system close to ‘complete breakdown’

EuroNews: The EU’s migration system is on the point of complete breakdown, according to a top European Commission official.

Dimitris Avramopoulos, the European Commissioner for migration, issued the stark warning after a meeting between EU interior ministers on Thursday.

inRead invented by Teads

“In the next ten days, we need tangible and clear results on the ground, otherwise there is a danger, there is a risk that the whole system will completely break down. There is no time for uncoordinated actions,” he told reporters in Brussels.

A number of EU countries have introduced border checks amid disagreements over how to best handle the huge influx of refugees and migrants into Europe.

Austria irked some EU officials by calling a mini summit with Western Balkan nations – without inviting Greece or Germany

The Austrian government has also set a daily cap on how migrants per day are allowed to enter the country, ignoring a warning from European Commission lawyers

“We have to recover our ability to act – and that will only be possible when the European external border is protected,” said Johanna Mikl-Leitner, the Austrian interior minister.

“If Greece stresses over and over again that it is not possible to protect the Greek border…we have to ask the question if it’s possible that the external border of the Schengen area stays in Greece.”

The Schengen area is a passport-free travel zone including 26 countries, of which 22 are EU member states.

But the migration crisis, which saw more than a million people reach Europe last year, has left some observers to question whether the whole system may be at risk.

The influx of migrants has exposed divisions between EU governments, which are trading accusations of blame and resulting beggar-thy-neighbour policies to tighten border controls.

Belgium became the seventh Schengen member on Wednesday to introduce border checks as it became clear that a court in Lille would order the partial demolition of the infamous Calais ‘Jungle’ refugee camp.

 

The Core of the Hillary Server Controversy, Revealed

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Once a year, those who handle classified information must attend a refresher class on dealing with classified material and the consequences of violating the rules governing classified material. My guess is Hillary and her circle of aides and protectors waived themselves from attending. Obama approved?

I guess there is a good reason it is called ‘Foggy Bottom’.

Spy agencies say Clinton emails closely matched top secret documents: sources

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. spy agencies have told Congress that Hillary Clinton’s home computer server contained some emails that should have been treated as “top secret” because their wording matched sections of some of the government’s most highly classified documents, four sources familiar with the agency reports said.

    The two reports are the first formal declarations by U.S. spy agencies detailing how they believe Clinton violated government rules when highly classified information in at least 22 email messages passed through her unsecured home server.

    The State Department has already acknowledged that the emails contained top secret intelligence, though it says they were not marked that way. It has not previously been clear if the emails contained full classified documents or only some information from them.

    The agencies did not find any top secret documents that passed through Clinton’s server in their full version, the sources from Congress and the government’s executive branch said.

    However, the agency reports found some emails included passages that closely tracked or mirrored communications marked “top secret,” according to the sources, who all requested anonymity. In some cases, additional classification markings meant access was supposed to be limited to small groups of specially cleared officials.

Under the law and government rules, U.S. officials and contractors may not transmit any classified information – not only documents – outside secure, government-controlled channels. Such information should not be sent even through the government’s .gov email network.

The front-runner for the Democratic nomination for president and former secretary of state has insisted she broke no rules. Clinton’s lawyer, David Kendall, did not respond to a request for comment. Clinton campaign spokespeople did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Two sources said some of the top secret material was related to the CIA’s campaign of drone strikes against Islamist militants in the Middle East and South Asia.

That campaign has been widely reported by Reuters and other media outlets, but it officially is classified as a “Top Secret/Special Access Program” (SAP), meaning only a limited number of people whose names are on a special list are allowed to learn details about it.

One source said the reports identified some information in messages on Clinton’s server that came from human sources, such as confidential CIA informants, and some from technical systems, such as spy satellites or electronic eavesdropping.

The Clinton campaign criticized the State Department’s decision last month to withhold the 22 emails containing top secret information from the public, blaming it on “bureaucratic infighting” and “over-classification run amok.”

“As we have previously made clear, we are not going to speak to the content of the emails,” a State Department official said on Wednesday when asked about the intelligence agency reports.

Clinton’s use of a private server in her New York home for her government work is being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the State Department’s and spy community’s internal watchdogs and several Republican-controlled congressional committees.

Two of the sources told Reuters that one of the reports on the emails came from the CIA. Three sources said the other report came from the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA), which analyzes U.S. spy satellite intelligence.

A spokesman for NGA did not immediately respond to requests for comment. CIA spokespeople declined to comment.

The two spy agencies’ reports were sent to Congress in the past few weeks by the intelligence community inspector general, an official government watchdog for multiple spy agencies.

The inspector general’s office has confirmed that it requested the reports from two intelligence agencies, but didn’t identify them.

    It was unclear what the congressional committees that received the classified reports, the House and Senate intelligence and foreign relations panels, will do with them. The contents cannot be discussed publicly. The committees requested intelligence reports in connection with their efforts to ensure that government secrets are appropriately protected.

Sidebar:

Everyone who handles Classified Material signs the SF-312 that outlines handling according to EO 13526 that requires an annual refresher course for originators of Classified Materials. Section 1 outlines handling. Section 4 is agreement to punishment if violation is discovered. Text of SF-312 below:

1. Intending to be legally bound, I hereby accept the obligations contained in this Agreement in consideration of my being granted access to classified information. As used in this Agreement, classified information is marked or unmarked classified information, including oral communications, that is classified under the standards of Executive Order 13526, or under any other Executive order or statute that prohibits the unauthorized disclosure of information in the interest of national security; and unclassified information that meets the standards for classification and is in the process of a classification determination as provided in sections 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4(e) of Executive Order 13526, or under any other Executive order or statute that requires protection for such information in the interest of national security. I understand and accept that by being granted access to classified information, special confidence and trust shall be placed in me by the United States Government.

4. I have been advised that any breach of this Agreement may result in the termination of any security clearances I hold; removal from any position of special confidence and trust requiring such clearances; or termination of my employment or other relationships with the Departments or Agencies that granted my security clearance or clearances. In addition, I have been advised that any unauthorized disclosure of classified information by me may constitute a violation, or violations, of United States criminal laws, including the provisions of sections 641, 793, 794, 798, *952 and 1924, title 18, United States Code; *the provisions of section 783(b}, title 50, United States Code; and the provisions of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. I recognize that nothing in this Agreement constitutes a waiver by the United States of the right to prosecute me for any statutory violation.

The IAEA’s Big Challenge of Iran’s Nuclear Program

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  $150 billion or $50 billion, should take care of the financial shortfall. What say you?

The full GAO report here.

Will IAEA be able to verify Iran’s nuclear program

alMonitor: The UN nuclear agency will face “challenges” verifying Iran’s compliance with last year’s nuclear agreement, the US government watchdog said Feb. 23 in a new report that was immediately used as ammunition by critics of the deal.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) faces a budget and staffing shortfall that will require an extra $10 million per year for the next 15 years to monitor the deal, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The report goes on to detail the agency’s dependence on Iranian cooperation to access nuclear sites and the intrinsic difficulty in detecting undeclared activities such as weapons development and centrifuge manufacturing that do not leave a nuclear trace.

Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., said the report raises concerns about “the entity that we are putting all our marbles in.” He commissioned the report with Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., a fellow critic of the deal who also voted against it last year.

“Some of the preliminary findings cause concern for me about what the IAEA is capable of,” Menendez told Secretary of State John Kerry at a hearing on the department’s FY 2017 budget request. “The GAO [report] point[s] directly to future problems with monitoring, verifying and meeting requirements of the [Iran deal].”

Kirk used the report to call on Congress to prepare sanctions that can be imposed if Iran starts to cheat on its nuclear obligations. He and Menendez are pushing for the reauthorization of the Iran Sanctions Act, a decade-old law that expires at the end of the year.

“My biggest takeaway is lawmakers must come together in a bipartisan manner now to create an insurance policy for imposing crippling pressure if and when Iran once again cheats on nuclear inspections as it has so many times in the past,” Kirk said in a statement. “International inspectors, according to the GAO’s interim report, still face an ‘inherent challenge’ in detecting undeclared nuclear activities, including weapons development activities and centrifuge manufacturing. The report also cites concerns the IAEA’s decision to end investigations into Iran’s past nuclear weapons activities ‘could reduce the indicators at the IAEA’s disposal to detect undeclared activity.’ Indeed, GAO also warns the nuclear deal’s mechanism for IAEA inspectors to gain access to Iranian sites suspected of having undeclared nuclear activities remains ‘untested’ and cautions ‘it is too soon to tell whether it will improve access.’”

Among the concerns raised by the GAO report is the sheer amount of manpower the Iran deal will consume. The agency is expected to have to transfer 18 “experienced inspectors” and “nearly twice that number of other staff” to its Iran Task Force, the GAO concludes, raising concerns about proliferation in other countries.

The State Department is proposing a $191 million US contribution to the agency in its FY 2017 budget request, a $5 million increase over the current year, to help the agency meet its new obligations.

*** 

In part by Rubin at WaPo:

Last week the administration warned that a sale of Russian advanced jets to Iran would violate the United Nations ban on such equipment. Sanctions guru Mark Dubowitz tells me, “Congress should draw up a list of Russian and Iranian entities to be sanctioned, give the administration 30 days to impose sanctions on these entities, and, if there’s no action, move ahead with statutory designations of these entities.”

That thinking needs to be applied across the board, taking into account all aspects of Iran’s behavior. Iran acts with impunity because it is convinced (rightly) the administration will do nothing. If the White House won’t, then Congress must act. Full article here.