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Obama’s comments come as Sudanese militant Ibrahim al-Qosi — who was released in 2012 — seemingly appeared in a recent video by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
“The judgment that we’re continually making is, are there individuals who are significantly more dangerous than the people who are already out there who are fighting?” Obama said.
“What do they add? Do they have special skills? Do they have special knowledge that ends up making a significant threat to the United States?”
“And so the bottom line is that the strategic gains we make by closing Guantanamo will outweigh, you know, those low-level individuals who, you know, have been released so far.”
The Republican-controlled Congress has thwarted Obama’s repeated efforts to close Guantanamo.
Obama came to office in 2009 vowing to shutter the facility, which opened under his predecessor George W. Bush to hold terror suspects after the September 11, 2001 attacks and became known for harsh interrogation techniques that some have said were tantamount to torture.
Obama is soon expected to put forward a new plan that would speed the release of inmates and transfer the most dangerous ones to US soil.
The plan is likely to accelerate the release of low-level detainees to foreign countries and move the most dangerous prisoners to a specialized facility in the United States.
Because of a congressional ban on funding US transfers, Obama has suggested he may have to resort to an executive order to close the prison. This would ignite a political and legal firestorm.
Obama also told Yahoo News that he “very much” hopes to travel to Cuba before leaving office a little over a year from now.
The United States and Cuba restored diplomatic ties this summer, ending a half-century of enmity stemming from the Cold War era.
Obama reiterated previous White House comments that some progress would need to be seen on human rights before any presidential trip.
Obama said he would go when aides could determine “now would be a good time to shine a light on progress that’s been made, but also maybe (go) there to nudge the Cuban government in a new direction.”
NYT’s: WASHINGTON — The Obama administration appears to be on the cusp of the largest round of transfers of Guantánamo Bay detainees in a single month since 2007, a move that could reduce the detainee population there to as low as 90 by mid- to late January, according to officials familiar with internal deliberations.
Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter has notified Congress in recent days that he has approved 17 proposed transfers of lower-level detainees, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss matters that have not yet been made public. Congress has required Mr. Carter to certify that security standards have been met at least 30 days before any transfers.
President Obama wants to close the Guantánamo prison in Cuba before he leaves office in a little over a year. His administration has stepped up efforts to find countries to take 48 detainees on a transfer list and moved to speed up the work of a parole-like board that might approve the release of others who are currently recommended for indefinite detention.
The Republican-led Congress, however, has shown little interest in lifting a ban on bringing any detainees to a prison inside the United States, which is Mr. Obama’s plan for those who are either facing trial or are deemed too dangerous to release.
But even as the administration seems to be trying to speed up its fitful effort to winnow down the Guantánamo population, the military is taking steps that will curtail journalists’ access to the wartime prison.
The commander who oversees the military base, Gen. John F. Kelly, has created new rules that will limit reporters to four “media day” trips a year in which large groups will come and depart the same day. Reporters will generally no longer be permitted to go inside the prison camp’s walls.
In a telephone interview, General Kelly connected his decision “to tighten things up a little bit, particularly on the scheduling” for news media visits, in part to what he described as a sharp rise in visits by delegations from foreign governments that are considering resettling detainees.
The operational strains of handling such visitors, he said, formed the backdrop to an episode in October that focused his attention on rules for visits. He said that a journalist, whom he would not identify, was “extremely impolite” during an interaction with a service member who worked at a detainee library.
All that, he said, prompted him to fix what he saw as a problem before his designated successor, Vice Adm. Kurt Tidd, who is awaiting a Senate confirmation vote, takes over.
Until now, the military has generally permitted small numbers of reporters to visit the prison throughout the year if no military commission hearing is going on. The reporters have flown to the base on a Monday and flown out the following Thursday.
Reporters have spent that time on a tour that included walking through the two camps that hold lower-level detainees. While reporters have never been permitted to speak to the detainees, they have seen them from afar, talked to the officers in charge of each camp, interviewed the senior medical officer in the detainee clinic and interviewed lower-ranking guards.
General Kelly said he decided it would be easier for everyone if groups of reporters came to the base only during quarterly “media days,” in which they could talk to a handful of officials like the joint task force commander and the military’s cultural adviser, and then leave that same day.
The general said he no longer wanted reporters to talk to lower-level guards because it was not their role to opine about detention operations, or to go inside the prison because that could cause disruptions. However, he said, depending on what else is going on, exceptions might be made to let first-time visitors inside.
Several news media outlets, including The Times, have asked the military to reconsider. Dave Wilson, a senior editor at The Miami Herald who oversees its coverage of Guantánamo, said he had told the military that it was important for experienced beat reporters to keep going inside the prison.
“A first-timer doesn’t know what they are seeing because they are seeing it for the first time,” Mr. Wilson said. “They don’t know if something has changed. They don’t know if it’s better or worse.”
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AirandSpaceMagazine: A few minutes past 2 a.m. on August 6, 2011, at a dusty forward operating base 40 miles south of Kabul, Afghanistan, the rotors of two U.S. Army CH-47D Chinooks began to turn. Operating with no lights save for the faint green glow of night vision goggles and cockpit instrument panels, the two helicopters, call signs Extortion 17 (“one-seven”) and Extortion 16, lifted into the darkness and accelerated toward a destination less than 20 miles west.
Extortion 17 and its 38 occupants would not return. A Taliban fighter shot the helicopter out of the sky with a rocket-propelled grenade and all aboard were killed—the single greatest loss of American life in the Afghan war. Those killed ranked among the world’s most highly trained and experienced commandos, including 15 men from Gold Squadron of the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, popularly called SEAL Team 6. Just three months earlier, members of a counterpart SEAL Team 6 squadron successfully raided a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and killed Osama bin Laden. In light of that raid’s success, the shootdown of Extortion 17 incited a flurry of conspiracy theories: The Taliban were tipped off; it was a trap; it was retribution for the killing. No evidence has emerged to support any of these claims. Instead, two rigorous U. S. military investigations followed every moment of the mission to determine what went wrong on Extortion 17’s final flight.
The mission had begun about four hours prior to the shootdown, when the two helicopters touched down side by side in Juy Zarin, a village in the bare rock-walled Tangi Valley of Wardak Province. As two U.S. Army AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, an Air Force AC-130 gunship, and a small fleet of unmanned surveillance aircraft orbited overhead, a platoon of the 75th Ranger Regiment and members of an Afghan special operations unit stormed down the rear ramps of the Chinooks and into the night. Their target: an Afghan named Qari Tahir and his group of fighters. Intelligence had revealed Tahir to be the senior Taliban chief of the Tangi Valley region, with probable ties to upper-echelon Taliban leadership in Pakistan. As the ground assault force rushed toward Tahir’s compound, Extortion 17 and 16 sped back to base, where they were refueled, and awaited word to extract the team, evacuate wounded, or race reinforcing troops to Juy Zarin.
When the two Chinooks had first touched down in the village, a group of eight fighters armed with AK-47 rifles and RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenade launchers bolted from the compound. One AH-64 crew, after identifying the men as enemy combatants, fired on them with their gunship’s 30mm cannon, killing six. The remaining two fighters ducked into a stand of trees and disappeared from the Apaches’ infrared scanners. Three hours after disembarking from the Chinooks, the assault force had secured the compound and detained a number of Tahir’s men, but they hadn’t found Tahir himself. Through sensors on manned and unmanned aircraft, U.S. forces observing the mud walls and terraces of the village saw new groups of fighters gathering and maneuvering. Mission commanders, believing that Tahir was likely among one of the groups, deployed an Immediate Reaction Force (IRF) to interdict them while the Rangers held the compound. Planners then chose a new landing zone for the IRF, but it was large enough to accommodate only one Chinook.
Faced with the possibility of confronting nine or 10 Taliban fighters, planners increased the reinforcement team from 17 to 32 men, formed around the 15-man SEAL group. The IRF also included two SEALs from another team, five Navy special operations support personnel, three Air Force special tactics airmen, seven Afghan National Army commandos, a translator, and a combat assault dog. The IRF commander then made a critical decision: In order to get everyone on the ground as quickly as possible and deny the Taliban time to react, he ordered the entire force to fly in Extortion 17. Extortion 16 flew empty.
Commanders frequently request CH-47 Chinooks to insert troops. The helicopters are capacious and fast, and they can perform well in Afghanistan’s performance-degrading high altitudes and heat. U.S. Special Operations Command possesses its own specialized Chinooks—MH-47s—flown by the ultra-secretive 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, the “Night Stalkers.” The MH-47s’ modifications include inflight refueling probes, additional and upgraded sensors, more powerful engines, and more powerful defensive weapons than their conventional counterparts. Night Stalker pilots and crew rigorously train for nighttime raids, like the one in Juy Zarin.
image: http://thumbs.media.smithsonianmag.com//filer/77/c7/77c79562-4261-45db-b818-71bfc7255547/04z_dj2105_map_inset.jpg__800x450_q85_crop_upscale.jpg The crash took place about 40 miles from Kabul, in the Taliban-thick Tangi Valley.
Extortion 17 and 16 weren’t MH-47s and their crews were not Night Stalkers. The mission was flown by conventional pilots flying unmodified CH-47Ds. “It’s a math problem. There are more operations than can be supported by the 160th at any given time,” says Major Matthew Brady, a former 160th pilot and company commander.
The pilots and crew of Extortion 17, however, had ideal experience and abilities for the mission that night. At the flight controls were David R. Carter of the Colorado Army National Guard and copilot Bryan J. Nichols, a Kansas-based Army reservist. Nichols had deployed three times to combat zones, and Carter, with more than 4,000 hours of flight time, was one of the most experienced helicopter pilots in the U.S. military. He was also an instructor at the High Altitude Army National Guard Aviation Training Site (see “Triple Threat: High, Hot, and Heavy,” Aug. 2014), where many U.S. and foreign helicopter pilots train for mountainous and high-altitude flying, often before deployment to Afghanistan.
During a previous deployment to Iraq, Carter’s unit flew dozens of similar raids, which he often planned and led, and gained a reputation for working well with special operations troops. “Our area of operation was the entire country of Iraq, and every mission was at night,” says David “Pat” Gates, a pilot with Carter’s unit , the 2nd Battalion, 135th Aviation Regiment (2-135th), a Colorado Army National Guard unit based in Aurora, Colorado. “We were on goggles the whole time. We were supporting special operations, but not to the degree of the 160th. We didn’t do fast-rope inserts, building insertions, or anything like that.” Subsequent to their Iraq deployment, the unit flew the SEALs of Team 6 on practice raids around Fort Carson, Colorado, and during nighttime urban training in Denver, further cementing the 2-135th’s reputation with special operations units. At the time of the Juy Zarin raid, the battalion had been flying in Afghanistan for about two weeks.
Flying to the Tangi Valley for the second time, Extortion 17 and 16 took a different route, approaching from the northwest instead of the south. Six minutes from their estimated landing time, Extortion 16 broke away from the lead Chinook and orbited at a location close enough to help if needed. Extortion 17 sped alone toward the landing zone.
For helicopter crews in Afghanistan, the most dangerous times are landing and taking off. Approaching to land or having just taken off, the craft is flying slow and low, so it presents a tempting target. But even a precisely aimed shot fired from an unguided weapon by a seasoned fighter is subject to the ballistics-altering whims of atmospheric variation, subtle and undetected flaws in launcher or projectile, and uncontrollable environmental factors such as wind gusts, large temperature variations, or even particulates in the air.
“There are a lot of bullets out there that say ‘To whom it may concern,’ ”says Major Doug Glover, a U.S. Marine F/A-18D weapons and sensors operator who was a senior watch officer for the Marine air operations center in southern Afghanistan. “The RPG is not a laser. It does not fly in a straight line, and there is no way to know what exact path it will take—just a fairly good idea of its trajectory.”
Sometimes the enemy succeeds in delivering one of these “To whom it may concern” projectiles. In July 2010, an RPG-wielding fighter put a round into the tail boom of a Marine AH-1W Super Cobra, downing it and killing both pilots. In June 2005, a rocket-propelled grenade connected with the rear transmission of a 160th MH-47E Chinook as it attempted to come to a hover, downing it; all 16 on board were killed. In March 2002, two MH-47s were downed by machine gun and rocket-propelled grenade fire while close to ground level. “What we saw is that if the enemy knew where you were going to attack, they would back some guys with RPGs off 500 meters or so, to shoot during an ingress,” Glover explains.
***
Now deep in the Tangi Valley, their night vision goggles showing the world around them in greenish hues, the IRF team members readied to hit the ground running as the pilots slowed Extortion 17 and descended toward the village. At 2:36 a.m., Extortion 17 requested an infrared spotlight, visible only through night vision goggles, to illuminate the landing zone. The crew of Slasher 02, the AC-130 circling above, flipped the switch on their powerful light. “Burn is on,” they radioed. Through the goggles, the landing zone shone brilliantly. Carter and Nichols continued the descent. “LZ is ice,” transmitted one of the Rangers on the ground, indicating the landing zone was free of enemy activity.
Seconds later, with the Chinook just over 100 feet off the ground and traveling at 58 mph, two or three previously unseen fighters emerged from the tower of a two-story building roughly 220 yards south of the helicopter, shouldering RPG launchers. They may have seen Extortion 17 and its landing zone through their own night vision goggles or simply aimed by sound alone. Two fired at roughly the same time. The first round sailed past the helicopter. The second slammed into one of the Chinook’s rear rotor blades and exploded, severing 10 feet of it. The torque of the spinning rotor assembly, now catastrophically imbalanced, ripped the rear pylon off the Chinook’s fuselage. The forward rotor system then tore off, stressed by the imbalance and the strain of carrying what would normally be a shared load. Less than five seconds after the RPG round hit, the helicopter spun uncontrollably, plummeting into a dry creek bed and erupting in a ball of fire that killed all on board.
The United States military continually works to improve protection for transport helicopters and their occupants, according to Glover and Brady. One of the most significant tactical evolutions of the Afghanistan conflict is the ever-heavier use of unmanned aerial systems and other airborne intelligence-gathering systems. Capable of loitering overhead for hours undetected, small fleets of unmanned craft passed imagery to mission planners before and during the raid at Juy Zarin, allowing them to recognize individual fighters, learn their habits, pinpoint where they slept, and identify the types of weapons they carried.
But U.S. forces didn’t know about every fighter during the raid, and they lost track of at least two—one of whom fired the deadly shot. Since the shootdown of Extortion 17, the military has continued to gain vital experience and equipment to enable an ever greater understanding of an enemy force, aiming to know every combatant and potential combatant and his weapon system before a raid. According to Glover, improved systems in place enable U.S. forces to monitor a target for days or even weeks prior to an operation, so they theoretically will know of even well-hidden potential RPG shooters throughout a village before transport helicopters first touch down.
The military has worked diligently to more tightly integrate gunship escorts with transport craft, according to Brady. While classification veils the specifics of these tactics, particularly for special operations raids, manned gunships can detect potential threats through a range of sensors and immediately attack if needed. Another tactic sometimes employed by gunships, according to Glover, is a show of force, in which pilots and crew fire into an empty field or stand of trees just before a transport helicopter prepares to land, using the sound of a gun alone to keep enemy heads down and fingers off triggers.
The two military investigations, one conducted by United States Central Command and one by the multi-service Joint Combat Assessment Team, pored over the details of the crash with excruciating focus and concluded that no planners or participants bore any fault regarding the circumstances leading to the shootdown of Extortion 17. Though both noted that airborne sensor coverage and closer AH-64 gunship escort should be considered in future operations, nothing could have kept the shooters from firing their RPGs that night. The Joint Combat Assessment Team report further noted that despite a robust deck of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets, none identified the location from which the shooters fired prior to the helicopter downing.
The shooters’ origin remains a mystery. The two may have been those who escaped Apache cannon fire, or they may have split away from either of the groups that formed after the start of the raid. The duo may also have had no ties to Tahir or any of his suspected fighters, and attacked the helicopter on their own. Should the Apache pilots have fired into the stand of trees after the two fighters ducked out of sight? Should the Apaches, or the AC-130 overhead, have fired upon the groups of suspected Taliban that gathered in the village after the raid began?
Restrained by strict rules of engagement in force at the time, the helicopter crews could not have fired without a strong indication of hostile intent. Afghanistan has long been a counter-insurgency campaign: The United States’ strategy has been to win Afghan trust through cooperation and aid. Having studied and directly observed the counter-insurgency campaign in Afghanistan, I’ve watched commanders and individual American troops consistently lean far to the side of restraint to encourage Afghans to side with American interests long after U.S. forces have left. Because unarmed villagers, unaffiliated with the Taliban, could also have been in those trees and among the groups milling about the village, the gunships could not have fired. Following a “scorched earth” tactic may have killed the two shooters—and possibly a greater number of innocents—prior to Extortion 17’s return that night, but counterinsurgency doctrine dictates that such tactics lead to potentially far worse long-term consequences.
With a keen understanding of the propaganda value of downing Coalition helicopters, the Taliban single them out as targets. Classified reports, published by Wikileaks, teem with notes from pilots and crew of all types of military helicopters who saw RPG attacks throughout the war. According to one Army report, in the three months prior to the Juy Zarin raid, as many as 17 RPGs were fired at helicopters over Wardak and Logar provinces, a relatively small part of the country. And while all military helicopters carry countermeasures for guided missiles, nothing can interdict the dumb luck of an unguided RPG round sailing through the air. The vast majority miss. “Chance is still part of the battlefield,” says Brady. “For every one that gets lucky, there are hundreds, even thousands, that zip by you.”
“As we’ve seen a number of times, there’s a point that a lucky shot is going to get you and there is only so much you can do to mitigate it,” says Glover, the Marine aviator. “To remove the risk of rocket-propelled grenades downing helicopters in Afghanistan 100 percent, you’d have to remove the opposable thumbs of every fighting-age male in the objective area, and that’s not how we win a counter-insurgency.”
FNC: The Obama administration cannot be sure of the whereabouts of thousands of foreigners in the U.S. who had their visas revoked over terror concerns and other reasons, a State Department official acknowledged Thursday.
The admission, made at a House oversight hearing examining immigrant vetting in the wake of major terror attacks, drew a sharp rebuke from the committee chairman.
“You don’t have a clue do you?” Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, told Michele Thoren Bond, assistant secretary for the Bureau of Consular Affairs.
Bond initially said the U.S. has revoked more than 122,000 visas since 2001, including 9,500 because of the threat of terrorism.
But Chaffetz quickly pried at that stat, pressing the witness about the present location of those individuals.
“I don’t know,” she said.
The startling admission came as members of the committee pressed administration officials on what safeguards are in place to reduce the risk from would-be extremists.
At issue is how closely the U.S. government examines the background of people seeking entry to the country, including reviews of their social media postings.
Leon Rodriguez, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, told committee members that such checks aren’t being done in an abundant manner, and he was not specific about when or how it would occur.
Lawmakers are trying to ascertain which safeguards are in place to ensure that extremists are not exploiting a variety of legal paths to travel to the United States.
One of the San Bernardino, Calif., shooters came to the U.S. on a K-1 fiancee visa last year despite the fact that the FBI believed she was already radicalized.
Tashfeen Malik came to the U.S. on a K-1 fiance visa in July 2014 and passed multiple background checks and at least two in-person interviews, one in Pakistan and another after she married Syed Farook. FBI Director James Comey has said Malik and Farook communicated privately online about jihad and martyrdom before they married.
Lawmakers at times angrily pressed officials on why even public social media wouldn’t routinely be looked at for vetting those trying to enter the country.
“If half the employers are doing it in the United States of America, if colleges are doing it for students, why wouldn’t Homeland Security do it?” said Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass. “We don’t even look at their public stuff, that’s what kills me.”
DHS did launch three pilot programs specifically aimed at reviewing social media postings as part of the immigration vetting process.
“There is less there that is actually of screening value than you would expect, at least in small early samples, some things seem more ambiguous than clear,” Rodriguez told lawmakers Thursday. He said foreign alphabets frequently used in social media posts were a challenge to translate.
“We all continue to believe there’s a potential for there to be information of screening value … particularly in high risk environments,” he added.
Both DHS and the State Department are reviewing the process for vetting visa applications, including the K-1 program, and have been directed by the White House to create specific recommendations for improvements.
DHS is specifically reviewing policies on when authorities at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services can look at social media posts as part of the process for evaluating applications for certain visas.
“There are some legal limits to what we can do,” Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said Wednesday. He added that he thinks reviews of social media should be done more often, but did not provide specifics.
During his opening remarks Chaffetz, said: “It is unclear how someone who so openly discussed her hatred of our country and way of life could easily pass three background checks. We need to understand how the breakdown happened with Malik and what we are doing to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Lawmakers have also pressed for changes to the Visa Waiver Program, which allows many citizens from 38 countries to travel to the United States without being subjected to the in-person interview required to receive a visa. Many fear that foreign fighters who carry western passports will be able to exploit that system to travel freely to the United States.
Earlier this month the House voted overwhelmingly to tighten controls on that program and require visas for anyone who has been to Iraq or Syria in the last five years. Security changes to the program were also included in the Senate version of a massive spending bill expected to be approved later this week.
• To review the screening process for foreign nationals entering the United States, including the ability to review social media as part of the vetting process.
• To assess the likelihood of foreign nationals exploiting the U.S. immigration system and examine vulnerabilities within that system.
• This hearing is a follow-up to an Oversight Subcommittee hearing last week, where a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official was unable to answer basic questions on the Agency’s ability to vet, track, and screen individuals who arrive in the United States.
BACKGROUND:
• Foreign nationals seeking to enter the U.S. must ordinarily obtain either an immigrant visa or a nonimmigrant visa. A third category of foreign nationals seeking entry into the U.S. are refugees, who enter under refugee status.
• An exception to the rule is the Visa Waiver Program (VWP), where an individual who seeks entry to the U.S. must apply for, and receive, a visa before entering the country. Currently, nationals of 38 countries can enter the U.S. without first obtaining a visa under the VWP.
• Under current law, two departments—the Department of State and DHS—play roles in administering the law and policies on immigration visas.
• In light of the attacks in San Bernardino, CA, Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) and Subcommittee Chairman Ron DeSantis (R-FL) sent a letter to DHS seeking information relating Tashfeen Malik’s entry into the U.S. on a fiancée visa.
Witnesses and testimonies
Name
Title
Organization
Panel
Document
The Honorable Anne C. Richards
Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration
In Annenberg Hall and at least some House dining halls, students are being treated to a healthy helping of social justice reeducation, courtesy of Harvard College’s Office for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion.
College administrators distributed a “Holiday Placemat for Social Justice” instructing students on how to answer questions they might face from family and friends. The handout presents poorly written, straw man questions followed by seemingly official and definitive “responses” on topics as varied as the Syrian refugee question, the Black Lives Matter movement, the misguided decision to change the House master title, and the ongoing, overheated activism at Yale University.
Before addressing the poorly contextualized framing of the questions, the impropriety of forcing College-endorsed political positions on students, and the groupthink this creates, let us examine the source.
More than half of the College’s poster is taken word-for-word from a similar, credited poster created by the group Showing Up for Racial Justice, a rather fitting reflection of the thoughtlessness it seeks to impose on students. That organization’s professed aim is to move “white people to act as part of a multi-racial majority for justice with passion and accountability.” To gain some perspective on their viewpoint, examine a recent article on their site that claimed, “we know that racist vigilantes and the police force have a long, collaborative history with one another.”
There was one area where the handout did not lazily lift from its predecessor: on the recent renaming of House masters to something supposedly less offensive—at least for now. There, the questioner correctly points out “Why did they change the name? What does a housemaster have to do with slavery? It’s not related to that at all.”
That doesn’t matter, the handout replies. Even though the word is “no longer actively associated with its historical antecedents”—and notice here the incorrect suggestion that the two were related, which is presented as fact—it is still offensive “for some.” Therefore, “it doesn’t seem onerous to change it.” Read the whole Harvard version here.
After getting caught and hitting cable networks attention, here comes the apology.
FreeBeacon: Harvard officials were forced to apologize Wednesday after a university office distributed placemats that promoted political opinions about race and justice.
The placemats, which recently turned up in an undergraduate dining hall, appeared to brand Americans worried about the U.S. accepting tens of thousands of refugees from Syria Islamophobic. They also encouraged political opinions about allegations of racism at Yale University, the deaths of African Americans at the hands of police officers, and the school’s decision to change the title of “House Master” because some argue that it relates to slavery.
Two Harvard deans penned an apology note to community members after students expressed outrage at the placemats and claimed they promoted political stances.
“We write to acknowledge that the placemat distributed in some of your dining halls this week failed to account for the many viewpoints that exist on our campus on some of the most complex issues we confront as a community and society today,” Stephen Lassoed, dean of student life, and Thomas Dingman, dean of freshmen, wrote in the message Wednesday.
“Our goal was to provide a framework for you to engage in conversations with peers and family members as you return home for the winter break, however, it was not effectively presented and it ultimately caused confusion in our community.”
The deans offered their “sincere apologies” for the placemats, which were distributed by Harvard’s Office for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion.
“Academic freedom is central to all that Harvard College stands for. To suggest that there is only one point of view on each of these issues runs counter to our educational goals. We appreciate the feedback that we have received about this initiative. Moving forward we will, with your continued input, support the growth and the development of independent minds,” the deans further wrote.
Idrees Kahloon, a Harvard senior who criticized the “holiday placemats for social justice” in an op-ed published in the Harvard Crimson, told the Free Beacon Wednesday that the placemats were met with criticism across campus.
The Harvard Republican Club took issue with the placemats, creating its own parody placemat and distributing copies at a school dining hall Wednesday.
The placemats were the result of a collaboration between the Office for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion and the Freshman Dean’s Office.
Addressing the NYPD Shield conference in New York City on Wednesday, Comey compared the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) to a hydra, a mythic monster that grew two new heads for every one that was cut off.
.@FBI Director Comey at the NYPD Shield Conference now thanking the NYPD for being good partners.pic.twitter.com/Jkpo2MpTkD
— NYPD NEWS (@NYPDnews)
Unlike Al-Qaeda, which was more centralized and focused on major acts of terrorism, IS has “has become the leader in global jihad by this crowdsourcing of terrorism” through social media platforms, the FBI chief said.
Comey also used the speech as an opportunity to push his anti-encryption agenda, telling the audience that encrypted messaging makes terrorist “go dark” to law enforcement.
Encryption is “at the center of terrorist tradecraft,” he said, urging for more surveillance capability in the name of fighting terrorism.
Echoing his remarks in the wake of the San Bernardino attack, Comey said that Americans should not live in a “disabling state of fear” but should channel their anxiety into a “healthy awareness” of their surroundings.
Asked about the San Bernardino attackers, Comey said the FBI was still trying to understand where they were in the four hours between the holiday party shooting and the shootout with police, if there was anything else they were planning to do, and if anyone else was helping them.
“We still have not seen evidence… that they were part of an organized cell of some sort, or that there were other parts to this plan,” the FBI chief said.
FNC: A proposal to admit 10,000 Syrian refugees to the United States has ignited a bitter debate in Washington, but more than 10 times that number of people from the embattled country have quietly come to America since 2012, according to figures obtained by FoxNews.com.
Some 102,313 Syrians were granted admission to the U.S. as legal permanent residents or through programs including work, study and tourist visas from 2012 through August of this year, a period which roughly coincides with the devastating civil war that still engulfs the Middle Eastern country. Experts say any fears that terrorists might infiltrate the proposed wave of refugees from United Nations-run camps should be dwarfed by the potential danger already here.
“The sheer number of people arriving on all kinds of visas and with green cards, and possibly U.S. citizenship, makes it impossible for our counterterrorism authorities to keep track of them all, much less prevent them from carrying out attacks or belatedly try to deport them,” said Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies.
“I think it’s reasonable to assume that the U.S. Government ran the minimum intelligence traces required at the time of entry.”
– Fred Burton, Stratfor
Numbers obtained from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection show 60,010 Syrian visa holders have entered the U.S. since 2012, including 16,245 this year through August. Additional numbers provided by a Congressional source showed another 42,303 Syrians were granted citizenship or green cards during the same period.
“It is highly unlikely that the 102,313 Syrians who were admitted over the past three years were effectively vetted,” said spokesman Ira Mehlman, of the Federation for American Immigration Reform. “Even in countries where we have a strong diplomatic presence, the sheer volume of background checks being carried out precludes the kind of thorough vetting that is necessary.”
The Syrians being admitted are coming directly from their homeland, usually through the U.S. visa program, as opposed to the refugees President Obama is seeking to take in through U.N.-run refugee camps. Most have secured legal entry before they arrive.
“Refugees are part of the admitted category,” said Jaime Ruiz, spokesman for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. “Their cases are approved prior to arriving into the U.S.”
Those who escaped Syria’s grinding civil war, which has killed an estimated 300,000, and made it to the U.S. are more likely to be those with the money and means to access the U.S. immigration bureaucracy, say experts. But even that system is susceptible to fraud.
President Obama’s proposal raised immediate concerns that ISIS, which vowed to infiltrate refugee camps, could use forged documents to enter the U.S. White House assurances that refugees would be carefully screened met with renewed skepticism after it was revealed that terrorist Tashfeen Malik obtained a fiancée visa despite notable red flags. Malik, who together with her husband killed 14 and wounded 21 in a terror attack in San Bernardino, Calif., Dec. 2, listed a phony Pakistani address and reportedly had a history of posting jihadist messages on social media platforms.
Malik’s entry into the U.S., combined with so many Syrians already here, is even more concerning than the proposed refugees, according to Fred Burton, of the global intelligence firm Stratfor.
“I’m more fearful of those currently inside the U.S. predisposed to strike locally as with the San Bernardino model,” Burton said. “I think it’s reasonable to assume that the U.S. government ran the minimum intelligence traces required at the time of entry.”
Mehlman said the same concerns raised in regard to the refugees – mainly that no reliable documents can be issued in a country in complete meltdown – apply to the Syrians already here.
“All civil order has collapsed, and meaningful background checks are impossible,” Mehlman said. “Instead, we rely on cross-checking databases. However, many people with ties to terrorist groups are not in any databases, which means there is no way we can identify them before they arrive here.”
A government official who expressed astonishment at such large immigration numbers from a relatively small country, said approximately half are legal permanent residents and the remainder came here on visas, the latter of which remains a point of contentious concern.
Screening of all immigrants and refugees must be tightened, said Rep. Mike McCaul, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.
“This administration has forbid our front line security professionals from more broadly incorporating social media information into the visa application process, something that might have kept this attacker out of our country,” said McCaul, R-Texas. “We need more robust vetting and screening of all visa applicants.”
Additional data obtained from CBP found that while five Syrians have been apprehended in 2014 and another five in 2015 attempting to cross over the southern border from Mexico, the northern border escapes public and political scrutiny. In 2014 eight Syrians were apprehended by Border Patrol attempting to cross into the U.S. from Canada. Given the visa waiver agreement with Canada, there is no reason to sneak across the border. Since 2011, 1,229 Syrians have been granted entry from Canada.
