Category Archives: government fraud spending collusion

Going Deeper on the Latest Release of Hillary’s Emails

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Click here to see a sample email thread on Libya and the internal threat level, note the names, note USAID and further that even a Blackberry was used to participate in the email chain. There is significant reference to the WFP which is was the corrupt World Food Program.

Early August – HRC works to construct a $1.5 billion assets package to be approved by the Security Council and sent to the TNC. That package is working through its last hurdles. We cannot even begin to estimate the real long term cost to the United States over the Libya debacle.

Latest batch of Clinton emails contains 66 more classified messages

FNC: The latest batch of emails released from Hillary Clinton’s personal account from her tenure as secretary of state includes 66 messages deemed classified at some level, the State Department said early Friday.

In one email, Clinton even seemed to coach a top adviser on how to send secure information outside secure channels.

All but one of the 66 messages have been labeled “confidential”, the lowest level of classification. The remaining email has been labeled as “secret.” The total number of classified emails found on Clinton’s personal server has risen to 1,340 with the latest release. Seven of those emails have been labeled “secret.”

In all, the State Department released 1,262 messages in the early hours of Friday, making up almost 2,900 pages of emails. Unlike in previous releases, none of the messages were  searchable in the department’s online reading room by subject, sender or recipient.

Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, has repeatedly maintained that she did not send or receive classified material on her personal account. The State Department claims none of the emails now marked classified were labled as such at the time they were sent.

However, one email thread from June 2011 appears to include Clinton telling her top adviser Jake Sullivan to send secure information through insecure means.

In response to Clinton’s request for a set of since-redacted talking points, Sullivan writes, “They say they’ve had issues sending secure fax. They’re working on it.” Clinton responds “If they can’t, turn into nonpaper [with] no identifying heading and send nonsecure.”

Ironically, an email thread from four months earlier shows Clinton saying she was “surprised” that a diplomatic oficer named John Godfrey used a personal email account to send a memo on Libya policy after the fall of Muammar Qaddafi.

Another message includes a condolence email from the father of U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl following the 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi.

The note from Bob Bergdahl, which was forwarded to Clinton by Sullivan, reads in part, “Our Nation is stumbling through a very volatile world. The ‘Crusade’ paradigm will never be forgotten in this part of the world and we force our Diplomats to carry a lot of baggage around while walking on eggshells.”

After seeing the email, Clinton directed her assistant Robert Russo to “pls [sic] prepare [a] response.” Bowe Bergdahl was freed from Taliban capitivity in May 2014 as part of a prisoner swap. He faces a court-martial for desertion in August.

*** The how about getting a name wrong?

FNC: In a scene that could have been taken straight from the HBO show “Veep,” Hillary Clinton blasted her staff after addressing the Tunisian foreign minister by the wrong name in a call two days after the 2012 Benghazi attacks.

The embarrassing exchange was contained in the tranche of emails released by the State Department overnight.

In the initial email, Clinton aide Monica Hanley told Clinton ahead of her call with her Tunisian counterpart that the official’s first name is, “Rasik [raseek].”

But four minutes later, Hanley corrected herself:

“Its Rafik, not Rasik.”

Too late. The damage had already been done.

“That’s too bad since I just used the wrong name. I MUST only be [given] correct information,” Clinton wrote back, five minutes after receiving the update.

 

 

Iraqi Arrested in Houston, Terror Plot

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Iraqis Refugees Arrested on Terrorism Charges

Cases could hurt Obama plans to take Syrians seeking asylum
Authorities arrested two Iraqi refugees on terrorism-related charges Thursday, in a move that undercuts President Obama’s plans to bring 10,000 Syrian refugees to the U.S. this year.

Prosecutors said Aws Mohammed Younis Al-Jayab, a Palestinian born in Iraq who came to the U.S. as a refugee in October 2012, traveled to Syria to train with terrorists, then lied to immigration officials about it later.
Investigators also charged Omar Faraj Saeed Al Hardan with three counts of attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State.

The revelations are a major blow to Mr. Obama, who had insisted the Iraqi refugee program was a success and it proved the U.S. could properly screen out would-be bad actors from the Syrian refugee population as well.

Mr. Al Hardan came to the U.S. as a refugee in 2009, and was granted a green card, signifying permanent status and a path to citizenship, in 2011. Authorities say he lied on his citizenship application in saying he had no associations with terrorists, when in fact he had received machine gun training from the Islamic State.

Meanwhile Mr. Al-Jayab, while living in Arizona and Wisconsin, came to the U.S. in 2012, and communicated with terrorists until late 2013, when he traveled to Syria, prosecutors said. While there, he posted on social media that he was fighting with Ansar al-Islam, a designated terrorist organization, before returning to the U.S. in January 2014 to live in Sacramento.
He has been charged with making a false involving terrorism.

“While he represented a potential safety threat, there is no indication that he planned any acts of terrorism in this country,” U.S. Attorney Benjamin B. Wagner, in the eastern district of California, said in a statement announcing the arrest.

Obama administration officials had said the Iraqi refugee program, which has vetted thousands of refugees over the last decade, had helped them learn how to screen out potential bad actors. Officials pointed to their experience with Iraq as proof they could also screen out Syrians.

But opponents have said Syria is a tougher country than Iraq. In Iraq, U.S. forces are on the ground and have access to Iraqi government databases. In Syria, not such cooperation is possible with a regime the U.S. has deemed an enemy.

***

Breitbart: Texas Governor Greg Abbott said, in a statement obtained by Breitbart Texas, “This is precisely why I called for a halt to refugees entering the U.S. from countries substantially controlled by terrorists.”

“I once again urge the President to halt the resettlement of these refugees in the United States until there is an effective vetting process that will ensure refugees do not compromise the safety of Americans and Texans,” the governor added.

Likewise, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick expressed the same concern that state officials have previously voiced with regard to the vetting of refugees from the Middle East.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Houston confirmed the arrest but said more information would be forthcoming after the suspect makes his first court appearance, according to the Houston Chronicle. The spokeswoman for the Houston office said, “I can confirm that there was a national security related arrest. There is no current threat to public safety associated with this arrest.”

Texas Governor Abbott wrote President Obama a letter in mid-November saying, “Given the tragic attacks in Paris and the threats we have already seen, Texas cannot participate in any program that will result in Syrian refugees – any one of whom could be connected to terrorism – being resettled in Texas. Effective today, I am directing the Texas Health & Human Services Commission’s Refugee Resettlement Program to not participate in the resettlement of any Syrian refugees in the State of Texas. And I urge you, as President, to halt your plans to allow Syrians to be resettled anywhere in the United States.”

Student Visas Equal Terror and Spies?

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US student visa program’s ‘many vulnerabilities’ raise spying, terror fears

FNC: From potential terrorists who enroll at phony schools only to melt into the U.S. population, to foreign scientists who come to study weapons technology at America’s top schools, the student visa program is allowing dangerous enemies into the country, a former top federal official told FoxNews.com.

Recent attention has been focused on refugee programs and illegal border crossings, but the Achilles heel in America’s immigration system may be the program that invites 1.2 million foreigners into the U.S. each year, according to Claude Arnold, retired special agent in charge for Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Los Angeles bureau of Homeland Security Investigations. Once here on student visas, immigrants are barely monitored and tens of thousands don’t show up for classes and fall off the government radar.

“Our legal immigration system has many vulnerabilities and the student visa program is no different,” Arnold said. “It is only a matter of time before there is either some horrible criminal act, or some act of terrorism, and there is absolutely no information available that would have caused [authorities] to go out and pick that person up.”

“It is only a matter of time before there is either some horrible criminal act, or some act of terrorism, and there is absolutely no information available that would have caused [authorities] to go out and pick that person up.”

– Claude Arnold, retired ICE special agent in charge

Most of student visa recipients do exactly what they said they would do when they applied – take advantage of America’s vaunted system of higher education and leave when the terms expire. But every year, approximately 58,000 overstay their visas and drop out of contact with authorities. While the vast majority of those are not terrorists or spies, some are, said Arnold.

ICE’s 7,000 agents simply don’t have the ability to monitor all of them, Arnold said. By the time a red flag goes up, it may be too late.

“You have to conduct a threat assessment and go after those who are a threat to national security,” Arnold said. “But within that universe of people who are visa overstays, there could be people who are radicalized, and we just don’t know it because there is no intelligence on them,” he added.

Foreign enemies know how to exploit the student visa program, Arnold said. Iran, in particular, has sent scientists to the U.S., ostensibly to study other subjects, but really to gain knowledge to benefit Iran’s weapons program.

“My concern was we had Iranian students who studied at Iran’s big physics school and were essentially nuclear physicists working on their bomb project,” Arnold said. “We had cases where they would register for a mechanical engineering class in the U.S., but really all they were trying to do is get access to an aeronautical engineering program, so they could work on the delivery system for Iran’s nuclear program.”

The State Department and the Department of Homeland Security share responsibility for screening applicants and monitoring them once they arrive.

ICE officials told FoxNews.com each school that takes in visa recipients has a designated official who serves as a point of contact between students, the school and the government’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program to ensure the federal computer tracking system is updated. In addition, 58 field representatives visit approved schools twice a year to ensure compliance.

The State Department, which oversees part of the student visa program, told FoxNews.com in an emailed statement it is committed to a “transparent and efficient visa application process,” and maintains extensive programs to vigorously combat and investigate visa fraud.

Fraud prevention managers engage in public outreach, training, detailed review of cases, statistical analysis and other activities, including communicating with host government officials and U.S. law enforcement authorities, the statement said.

Applicants are screened by a host of federal agency databases and personnel against databases of fingerprints of known and suspected terrorists, wanted persons, immigration law violators, and more than 75.5 million criminal history records.

ICE statistics show countries sending their students include several considered by the U.S. as State Sponsors of Terrorism, including Syria and Iran, as well as Saudi Arabia, China and Pakistan. More than 700 Syrians came to the U.S. via the student visa program in 2014, and another 3,700 came from Iran the same year.

“We don’t really know if State’s efforts are effective or if they are helping reduce fraud and abuse of visa programs, because Department of Homeland Security refuses to release a report detailing the number of overstays in each visa category and from each country, even though Congress has mandated this report since at least 2004,” said Jessica Vaughan, a former State Department consular officer who now is the director of Policy Studies for the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, DC-based research institute.

“What I am worried about is students who are allowed to get a student visa to attend some nondescript school and then they disappear,” said Vaughan, who noted that Hani Hanjour, the 9/11 hijacker who flew Flight 77 into the Pentagon, had obtained a student visa but never showed up for class.

Too often, schools play along. ICE has cracked down in recent years on “visa mills,” or facilities that help foreigners get a student visa for a fee, but never hold classes or ensure students attend class. Three California residents pleaded guilty last March in a “pay-to-stay” scheme involving three sham schools in Los Angeles.

The schools had legitimate-sounding names, like Walter Jay M.D. Institute and the American College of Forensic Studies, and took in millions of dollars in tuition fees. But investigators found classes that were supposed to hold 30 students had just few, if any students. According to Arnold, who oversaw the investigation, the schools existed only to facilitate foreign students’ purchase of visas under the guise of studying.

“This is an example where the system worked,” said Arnold.

In addition to better screening and monitoring, Arnold believes overstaying a visa should be a misdemeanor. That might make visa holders less likely to violate the terms, and would also trigger alarms if they were stopped for a traffic violation or arrested for another reason.

Arnold and Vaughan also want tighter controls on the kinds of schools that can accept foreign students. Some trade school programs that teach subjects like massage, baking and horseshoeing could invite fraud. And courses that teach material with military applications invite something even more sinister, Arnold said.

“Why do we want people who are our enemies, whether it is potentially ISIS or Iran, here learning technical skills they are going to use against us?” he said. “It is insane.”

State Dept Covered up Hillary’s Email Server for Years

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State Department covered up Hillary’s private email server for years even though ‘dozens of senior officials’ knew about it, says scathing inspector general report

  • Critical report from State Department’s own internal watchdog details abuse of Freedom of Information Act while Clinton ran the agency
  • 177 of the 240 FOIA requests lodged for information about Hillary while she was secretary of state are still pending three years after she left office
  • State told a liberal group it had no information about Hillary’s emails in 2013 even though many senior officials were emailing her on her private server 
  • The U.S. State Department told a watchdog group in 2013 that it didn’t have any information about former secretary Hillary Clinton’s emails, even though ‘dozens of senior officials’ knew she was using a private server for all her electronic communications.
  • A report released Thursday by the agency’s inspector general – a powerful and impartial internal investigator – described a cavalier culture about transparency inside Clinton’s agency, saying that 177 requests for documents about Clinton are still ‘pending’ nearly three years after she left office.
  • The Freedom of Information Act requires federal agencies to respond to requests for information within 20 business days.
  • The botched FOIA request, filed in December 2012 just before Clinton left office, specifically asked whether or not Clinton used an email account other than one hosted at state.gov.
  • Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a liberal group, was reacting to news that former Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson had used an alias – ‘Richard Windsor’ – to send and receive emails in a way that couldn’t be tied to her when FOIA requests came in.
  • In May 2013 the State Department responded to CREW’s request, saying it had ‘no records’ related to what the group asked for.
  • By then, Clinton had spent four years emailing department employees from her private home-brew account, but had never turned the messages over to the State Department.
  • That CREW request was filed in December 2012, just before Mrs. Clinton left office, and specifically asked whether Mrs. Clinton used anon-State.gov email account for government business.
  • ‘At the time the request was received, dozens of senior officials throughout the Department, including members of Secretary Clinton’s immediate staff, exchanged emails with the Secretary using the personal accounts she used to conduct official business,’ the Office of Inspector General concluded.
  • ‘OIG found evidence that the Secretary’s then-Chief of Staff was informed of the request at the time it was received and subsequently tasked staff to follow up. However, OIG found no evidence to indicate that any of these senior officials reviewed the search results or approved the response to CREW.’
  • The employees responsible for searching the State Department’s records, the report says, never ‘searched any email records, even though the request clearly encompassed emails.’
  • State has received an unprecedented crush of requests for Clinton-related documents – 240 in all, a number bigger than those related to secretaries Madeline Albright, Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice and John Kerry combined.
  • But the inspector general found that the agency cut the number of people processing those FOIA requests as they poured in.
  • Clinton’s emails sat on her private server for years until the State Department asked her in 2014 to turn them over. She deleted more than half of the messages, calling them ‘personal’ in nature, before complying.
  • In the meantime, however, her emails were out of reach when federal employees searched for records that might satisfy FOIA requests.

 

 

Sen. Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican, said Thursday in a statement that ‘the FOIA process at the State Department is broken, and has been for several years.’

The agency’s breakdowns in performance, he said, ‘are particularly troubling in light of the report’s revelation that former Secretary Clinton’s exclusive use of a non-government email server was known to senior staff at the department, but unknown to the FOIA office, thus causing the FOIA office to provide false information about the Secretary’s use of email.’

The FOIA law, first enacted in 1966 before the advent of personal computers, ‘neither authorizes nor requires agencies to search for Federal records in personal email accounts maintained on private servers or through commercial providers,’ the inspector general report explained.

State Department employees have ‘no way to independently locate Federal records from such accounts unless employees take steps to preserve official emails in Department recordkeeping systems.’

Current law requires State Department employees to forward work-related personal emails to their official accounts within 20 days of sending or receiving them, so the agency has a record of them.

But Clinton never had a ‘state.gov’ account where her emails could be sent.

A federal judge ultimately ordered the State Department to collect her emails, vet them for classified material, and release them on a monthly schedule.

So far intelligence officials have had to block the release of portions of more than 1,200 emails because they contained classified information.

Who’s Calling the Shots in State Politics?

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Exactly what else do voters need to be aware of? Who is winning the liberal-progressive agendas at the state level? Do you pay attention to the language on ballot initiatives? Do you know the background and the money and players behind them?

Read on….

National liberal groups to push ‘record’ number of 2016 ballot measures

Efforts to circumvent legislative logjam counter grassroots origins

PublicIntegrity: Paul Spencer, a teacher and part-time pecan farmer in Arkansas, drafted a ballot measure for 2016 to reform the state’s campaign finance laws so his fellow voters could know who paid for election ads on TV.

But he and fellow activists there knew they couldn’t do it alone. They sought the help of national election-reform groups because in Arkansas, as in many other states, initiatives can cost millions of dollars to pass.

Liberal groups working at the national level are using state ballot initiatives as their weapon of choice for 2016, but given the costs, they’re carefully planning exactly where to push these measures. And Spencer’s Arkansas proposal didn’t make the cut for 2016.

That top-down approach seems ironic. The initiative process was put in place at the beginning of the 20th century as a way for local citizens such as Spencer to band together to pass laws. And voters on the ground may not be aware that national groups are helping fuel the ballot fights in their backyards.

Still, national liberal leaders see state ballot measures as their best option for winning on some issues. Dismayed at their prospects in Congress and in Republican-dominated state legislatures, national liberal groups plan to use ballot initiatives to push raising the minimum wage in Maine, legalizing marijuana in Massachusetts, closing gun sale loopholes in Nevada, guarding endangered species in Oregon — and other campaigns in at least eight additional states.

National conservative groups, meanwhile, seem poised to play defense, setting up a battle of outsiders on state playing fields. In March, Republican-linked politicos launched the Center for Conservative Initiatives in Washington, D.C., to counter the liberal ballot measures they anticipate will arrive in record numbers nationwide in 2016.

“Liberal groups have been forced to spend heavily on ballot initiatives in an effort to circumvent elected representatives because in states around the country the public has overwhelmingly rejected their out-of-touch candidates and messages,” said the Center’s leader, Matt Walter, in an email.

The push from outsiders to pass pet policies via the ballot has occurred before, on everything from land conservation in North Dakota to how to cage chickens in California, sometimes leading to big-money fights between corporations, advocacy groups and others.

“There’s this perception out there that the initiative process is all about the little guy,” said Jennie Bowser, a consultant who for many years studied ballot measures for the bipartisan National Conference of State Legislatures. “But the truth of the matter is that it’s a big business. It’s really well organized, and it’s really well funded. And it is very, very rarely a group of local citizens who get together and try to make a difference.”

Passing popular ideas

In 2014, when a Republican wave gave conservatives more U.S. Senate seats and governors’ mansions, left-leaning activists still managed to notch victories for the minimum wage, gun control and marijuana legalization through ballot measures in Nebraska, South Dakota, Illinois, Arkansas, Washington, Oregon, Alaska and the District of Columbia.

In 2015, they followed with wins for campaign-finance reform in Seattle and Maine.

Those successes, as well as the chance to draw more left-leaning voters to the polls, are encouraging liberal activists to push hard on the 2016 ballot.