Category Archives: government fraud spending collusion

Valerie Jarrett has Stepped up Islamic Protection

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The Muslim organizations around the country have become a de-facto protected class and what is worse, the Obama administration is in full lock step to reciprocate the protections. The next huge question is exactly how does the White House know the names of all of them and the top leadership individual names and phone numbers to have a full call to action? (rhetorical)

A full court press, but not so much for the victims of militant jihad in America. Anymore questions about where the White House lays it true loyalty?

WashingtonExaminer: The White House on Monday began “staff-level” meetings and calls with religious leaders to discuss how they could help combat growing anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States.

Valerie Jarrett, senior adviser to President Obama, and Melissa Rogers, who leads the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, held a conference call with leaders of all religions from across the country.

“Spoke with 890+ religious leaders to thank them for speaking up for every American’s right to be free from religious discrimination,” Jarrett tweeted on Monday.

Administration officials “routinely” interact with religious leaders, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said on Monday, stressing that the latest round of talks is being led by staff members, not the president.

The call Jarrett led was a “conversation to discuss efforts to combat discrimination and highlight the need for welcoming all faiths and beliefs,” Earnest said. “It certainly seems a timely topic for a conversation like that,” he said, noting the uptick in anti-Muslim rhetoric since the radical Islamic terrorist group, the so-called Islamic State, launched deadly attacks in Paris and inspired a shooting spree in San Bernardino, Calif.

The “hateful, divisive” comments of a “handful of Republicans running for president is hurtful and dangerous” to the nation’s national security, Earnest said, presumably referring to candidates such as Donald Trump, who has proposed banning all Muslims from the U.S.

Also on Monday, Jarrett, Director of the White House’s Domestic Policy Council Cecilia Munoz, and Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes are hosting a group of Muslim-American leaders at the White House, Earnest said.

And finally, Munoz is meeting with representatives of America’s Sikh community, Earnest said.

In addition to a massacre at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin in 2012, hate crimes against Sikhs have spiked since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, often because attackers mistook Sikhism adherents for Muslims.

The White House is hosting similar meetings all week, including one on Thursday, Earnest said.

“Again these are all slated to be staff-level meetings but yet, are representative of the kind of ongoing dialogue that the White House maintains with religious leaders of all faiths all across the country,” Earnest said.

 

 

 

Islam by the Numbers, Video

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By the Numbers is an honest and open discussion about Muslim opinions and demographics. Narrated by Raheel Raza, president of Muslims Facing Tomorrow, this short film is about the acceptance that radical Islam is a bigger problem than most politically correct governments and individuals are ready to admit. Is ISIS, the Islamic State, trying to penetrate the U.S. with the refugee influx? Are Muslims radicalized on U.S. soil? Are organizations such as CAIR, who purport to represent American Muslims accepting and liberal or radicalized with links to terror organizations?

It’s time to have your say, go to http://go.clarionproject.org/numbers-…

Facts on Militant Islam Infiltration in America

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Early on in the jihad career of Usama bin Ladin, he was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Table set, read on.

The Investigative Project is a stellar non-profit organization that researches and investigates all militant influence, groups and people in the United States.

IPT Exclusive: Witnesses Say CAIR’s Hamas/MB Links Cemented From Start

Like a good politician, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) repeatedly proves adept at inserting itself into national debates.

When presidential candidate Ben Carson said he could not support a Muslim president, CAIR gathered reporters to express outrage and call on Carson to drop out of the race. When a 14-year-old Texas boy was detained for bringing what he said was a homemade clock to school that a teacher feared might be a bomb, a CAIR official expressed outrage and sat by the boy’s side during news conferences and interviews.

And in the immediate aftermath of the Dec. 2 mass killings in San Bernardino by a radicalized Muslim man and his wife, CAIR called a news conference where its top Los Angeles official “unequivocally” condemned the killings.

CAIR’s aggressive approach, and a combination of media ignorance or laziness, generates uncritical television and newspaper stories throughout the country. This helps the organization reinforce its self-anointed and incorrect reputation as the voice for America’s roughly 2 million Muslims. CAIR is presented as a responsible, moderate organization.

But when cracks appear in that façade, journalists rarely rise to the occasion. Less than two days later, the same CAIR official who unequivocally condemned the San Bernardino killings appeared on CNN to blame “our foreign policy” for fueling radicalization that leads to such violence.

In blaming the United States for an attack by radical Islamists, CAIR- Los Angeles director Hussam Ayloush picked up talking points CAIR officials pushed in the wake of last month’s ISIS massacres in Paris. The aim is to keep the killers’ religious motivations out of any conversation.

“We are partly responsible,” Ayloush said about the United States. “Terrorism is a global problem, not a Muslim problem. And the solution has to be global. Everyone has a role in it.”

Anchor Chris Cuomo did not challenge this statement.

Such uncritical news coverage comes despite a well-documented record establishing CAIR’s own ties to terrorists. Internal Muslim Brotherhood records obtained by the FBI place CAIR and its founders at the core of a Brotherhood-created Hamas support network in the United States. It is a history so checkered that formal FBI policy since 2008 bars interaction with its officials except in criminal investigations.

On Thursday, CAIR legislative director Corey Saylor told the Wall Street Journal that the alleged Hamas ties were “put to rest by the Department of Justice in 2011 and now exists as an Internet story.”

This is a lie. Saylor knows that the FBI policy toward CAIR remains in effect, and it was publicly reaffirmed in 2013. And there simply is no way to “put to rest” the internal records admitted into evidence in 2008.

FBI records recently obtained by the Investigative Project on Terrorism further illustrate why CAIR merits closer scrutiny, rather than free air time, from the mainstream media. The records cement CAIR’s connections to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas from its very foundation, including disclosures about the only executive director CAIR has ever had – Nihad Awad.

Before he helped create CAIR 21 years ago, Awad moved from Dallas to Washington, D.C. “in order to represent Hamas,” an acquaintance said.

Awad’s co-founder Omar Ahmad sought the blessing of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt to proceed with the new political start-up. That approval went as far as getting the global Islamist movement’s blessing over CAIR’s bylaws.

These accounts came from separate sources, each of whom ran in the same Islamist circles as Awad and Ahmad, during interviews with the FBI in 2005 and in 2009-10. They were among more than 1,000 pages of FBI records released to the IPT, via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. The IPT sought records from the 2010 deportation of another CAIR official, former national board member Nabil Sadoun.

Sadoun’s deportation resulted at least in part from his “connections to HAMAS, HAMAS leader Mousa Abu Marzook, and HAMAS front organizations,” papers filed in Immigration Court show. Sadoun was a longtime CAIR national board member and served as president of the Muslim Arab Youth Association (MAYA), the 1,013-page FOIA response shows.

“MAYA served as a conduit for money to HAMAS, through the HLF [Holy Land Foundation], and served as a forum where HAMAS could promote its ideology and recruit new members,” a February 2010 declaration filed in Sadoun’s deportation case said. He also made anti-Semitic statements and advocated for violent jihad during an interview in a MAYA publication. (For more on Sadoun, click here)

CAIR was uncharacteristically reticent when asked about Sadoun’s case in 2010. The group promotes itself as “arguably the most visible and public representative of the American Muslim community.” But questions about its connections to Hamas have dogged the organization for years. Those questions led the FBI to break off outreach contact with the group in 2008, with an associate director explaining, “until we can resolve whether there continues to be a connection between CAIR or its executives and HAMAS, the FBI does not view CAIR as an appropriate liaison partner.”

CAIR’s Hamas connection is established by evidence FBI agents uncovered while investigating a Muslim Brotherhood controlled Hamas-support network in the United States. One document, coinciding with the group’s 1994 creation, places CAIR among the Brotherhood’s “Palestine Committee” branches. A 1992 internal memo, “Islamic Action for Palestine,” explains that the Brotherhood’s guidance office and international Shura Council (governing board) created Palestine Committees throughout the world “whose job it is to make the Palestinian cause victorious and to support it with what it needs of media, money, men and all of that.”

Lest there be any confusion over who benefits from the committees’ efforts, the next paragraph is devoted to Hamas. “This Movement – which was bred in the bosom of the mother movement, ‘The Muslim Brotherhood’ – restored hope and life to the Muslim nation and the notion that the flare of Jihad has not died out and that the banner of Islamic Jihad is still raised.”

CAIR officials have tried to ignore or minimize attention given to the evidence establishing the Hamas connections, or to dismiss critics who call attention to them – including the IPT – as anti-Muslim smear merchants.

Disclosures in the FOIA records the IPT obtained should be more difficult for CAIR to brush aside. They come from two former activists, both of whom were deeply involved in the same Muslim Brotherhood/Hamas-support network.

Omar Ahmad and the Muslim Brotherhood

Omar Ahmad’s CAIR bio

The FOIA records include prosecution evidence accepted by the Immigration Court and used to find Sadoun deportable on a 21-count charging document. Among the records, an FBI agent’s sworn statement from February 2010 – just days before Sadoun’s scheduled deportation hearing – which described CAIR co-founder Omar Ahmad (also known as Omar Yehia) as “one of the leaders of HAMAS.”

An FBI report from January 2005 summarizes an interview with a man who said he was “part of the Brotherhood for many years” in the United States. The FBI describes him in immigration court papers as “a former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood.”

He provided a history of the Brotherhood in America, including a power struggle pitting members who wanted more autonomy from the International Muslim Brotherhood against those who favored “a direct and official relationship.”

During the mid-1980s, the FBI source became a member of the U.S. Brotherhood’s Majlis al Shura, or governing board, and he described its structure and operation during the 2005 interview. “The Palestine Committee was the largest and most powerful nationalistic committee within the Brotherhood at that time,” the FBI summary of the interview said.

The U.S. Palestine Committee, like all national chapters throughout the world, “report directly to the IMB [international Brotherhood]’s leadership,” an FBI declaration in the Sadoun case said. A chart included in the file shows Sadoun’s connections within the network, including CAIR.

According to the witness, the U.S. Brotherhood’s estimated 1,500 to 2,000 members unanimously supported the Palestinian intifada and saw Hamas as its leader. The group then created the Holy Land Foundation to be “the Brotherhood’s primary organization to support the Intifadah,” the FBI report of the 2005 interview said.

Other branches included a think tank called the United Association for Studies and Research (UASR) and a propaganda outfit called the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP). UASR was created by Mousa Abu Marzook, a longtime Hamas political leader, along with Ahmed Yousef – later a Hamas spokesman in Gaza – and Nabil Sadoun, the longtime CAIR national board member.

UASR “published papers and books about Hamas,” the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals wrote in denying the Holy Land Foundation’s appeal.

The IAP served as the Palestine Committee’s media outlet, promoting Hamas attacks and even publishing the terrorist group’s anti-Semitic charter which calls for Israel’s annihilation. The IAP worked with the Holy Land Foundation and other groups on fundraising events with the money being routed to charities controlled by Hamas. In addition, Marzook routed more than $750,000 to the IAP between 1985 and 1992.

IAP published a booklet, “America’s Greatest Enemy: The Jew! and an Unholy Alliance!”

CAIR founders Omar Ahmad and Nihad Awad worked for the IAP immediately before launching CAIR.

Ahmad became Palestine Committee president after Marzook was deported from the United States, the FBI source said. He knew this because Ahmad “approached [name redacted] and asked the Brotherhood’s permission to start the CAIR organization.” Ahmad “requested the Brotherhood’s approval for CAIR’s by-laws, etc. YEHIA [Ahmad] wanted CAIR to work for all Muslim causes in the United States. The Brotherhood authorized the opening of CAIR because, unlike the HLF, it was not an organization that was concerned only about activities taking place in the Eastern part of the world.”

In 2010, reports surfaced that, after the successful prosecution of five former Holy Land Foundation officials for Hamas support, investigators proposed indicting Ahmad, the CAIR co-founder. That request was rejected by the Justice Department.

Information in the FOIA records, including the witness statements, offers new insight into why the investigators pushed for more.

During the Holy Land trial, evidence showed that Ahmad played a key role in organizing and leading a secret 1994 meeting of Hamas supporters in Philadelphia. It was called in response to the 1993 Oslo Accords, which offered the potential for a peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians.

The FBI recorded the weekend-long meeting. Transcripts entered into evidence show that the group opposed the deal for two reasons: They, like Hamas, opposed any peaceful settlement to the conflict. And, the agreement empowered the secular Palestine Liberation Organization to lead the newly created Palestinian Authority, diminishing the influence and power of the Islamist Hamas movement.

Ahmad helped determine who should attend the meeting and called it to order. At one point, he acknowledged that the group cannot afford to be honest with the public about their true ideology.

“We’ve always demanded the 1948 territories,” he said, referring to all of Israel and not just the West Bank and Gaza.

“Yes, but we don’t say that publicly,” an unidentified speaker said. “You cannot say it publicly, in front of the Americans.”

“No,” Ahmad replied. “We didn’t say that to the Americans.”

Nihad Awad and Hamas

Awad participated in that 1994 meeting, too, and joined the others in following instructions to refer to Hamas only in code. Those in the meeting were admonished not to say “Hamas,” but refer instead to “sister Samah” – or Hamas spelled backward.

“If there is a political issue, a Samah’s input, for instance, about this or that, we inform people to contact their representatives,” Awad said during the Philadelphia meeting.

Awad’s true mission was spelled out during a 2010 interview FBI officials had with Mohamed Shorbagi, a former Rome, Ga. imam who pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide material support to Hamas through donations and service to the Holy Land Foundation, and agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors, testifying twice for the government in Hamas-support cases.

Shorbagi remembered attending the 1994 Muslim Arab Youth Association (MAYA) conference in Chicago where the Palestine Committee organized break-out sessions. Shorbagi attended a political group discussion with Nihad Awad. Awad, he was told, had been sent by the IAP to Washington “in order to educate and inform U.S. political leaders about the Palestinian cause. His job was to influence the leaders of the U.S. government in favor of the Palestinian cause,” an FBI memo summarizing the interview said.

Shorbagi had a different take: “The IAP’s only purpose was to support Hamas through media work. [Name redacted]’s job within the IAP was to work for and support Hamas and nothing else,” an FBI report from his 2009 interview said.

The head of the IAP in Dallas told Shorbagi that Awad “went to Washington, D.C. for the IAP in order to represent Hamas.” But then the idea to start CAIR came to fruition and Awad was tasked with running the new organization. “It was known in the community that CAIR was under or influenced by the IAP because its (CAIR) leadership had come from the IAP.”

The timing and the claim that Ahmad sent Awad to Washington fits with other information already in the public domain.

Awad’s own account of his move to Washington, in an article he wrote in 2000, offers a more benign motivation, but matches Shorbagi in saying it was Ahmad who “proposed that I move to Washington, D.C., where any effective national effort would have to be based.”

During a 2003 deposition in a civil lawsuit, Awad said he served as public relations chief for the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP) in 1993, then moved to Washington “to work for CAIR.” As mentioned, the IAP was the Palestine Committee’s media arm, publishing the Hamas charter and reproducing Hamas communiques. Awad denied knowledge of this fact and claimed he had never read the Hamas charter.

In the deposition, Awad described IAP merely as a “cultural association” and denied ever seeing or reading the Hamas charter. But Shorbagi told federal investigators that “IAP ‘festivals’ championed the cause of Hamas exclusively” after the intifada. This point is clearly established by video exhibits entered into evidence during the Holy Land Foundation trial.

In March 1994, Awad was part of a panel discussion at Miami’s Barry University. He said he used to support the PLO, but “after I researched the situation inside Palestine and outside, I am in support of the Hamas movement more than the PLO.” In the 2003 deposition, he claimed this was due to Hamas social services and not because of its violent attacks against Israel.

But in a November 1994 interview with “60 Minutes,” Mike Wallace asked Awad for his views of the “military undertakings of Hamas.”

“Well, I think that’s for people to judge there,” Awad said.

Wallace asked again.

“The United Nations Charter grants people who are under occupation to defend themselves against illegal occupation,” Awad said.

In addition to being the only executive director CAIR has had, Awad also serves as a national board member.

On social media posts a year ago, Awad argued that “Israel is the biggest threat to world peace and security,” making the statement between unrelated posts about acts of brutality committed by ISIS terrorists. Since then, other senior CAIR officials have issued their own Twitter posts arguing Israel is on par with ISIS.

Hamas officials in Gaza have taken notice of Shorbagi’s cooperation with the government. They were holding his passport, his father told him, “because the Holy Land Foundation received stiff prison sentences because of [Shorbagi]’s testimony on behalf of the U.S. Government. [Shorbagi]’s family warned him not to return to Gaza even for a few minutes.”

*** Ah, but there is more and if you can stand to know more truths on Muslim Organizations in America, click here. FOIA Exposes Deported CAIR Official’s Support for Jihad

POTUS Green Climate Fund, Expands EPA

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The most harmful and unharnessed agency in the Federal government hurting the American people and business is the EPA. The recent Climate Change Agreement that Barack Obama announced with hundreds of other countries will cost the U.S. government $100 billion per year, paid to countries that cannot fund it themselves. It is called the Green Climate Fund, essentially a happy name for redistribution of wealth.

CBS: The path to good green intentions is strewn with obstacles that could waylay a $100 billion plan to help poorer countries fight climate change. These range from the adequacy of the fund’s size to its secrecy-minded operations. And it’s all part of a worldwide effort mandated by the Paris climate deal, whose overall cost could reach $16.5 trillion.

Part of the climate accord struck over the weekend in Paris, the Green Climate Fund will subsidize the developing nations in adopting such steps as carbon-free power generation and protections against global warming-linked catastrophes like hurricanes and rising seas.
Climate cleanup work is an expensive proposition. The total tab, focused on developed economies curbing their voluminous carbon emissions, is around $16.5 trillion, the International Energy Agency estimates. A switch from fossil fuels would entail a massive reordering of global energy production and delivery, moving toward renewable sources and greater energy efficiency, the agency said.

A deeper look at the EPA, including the fraud, collusion and propaganda.

E.P.A. Broke the Law by Using Social Media to Push Water Rule, Auditor Finds
 NYT’s WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency engaged in “covert propaganda” in violation of federal law when it blitzed social media to urge the general public to support President Obama’s controversial rule intended to better protect the nation’s streams and surface waters, congressional auditors have concluded.
The ruling by the Government Accountability Office, which opened its investigation after a report in The New York Times on the agency’s practices, served as a cautionary tale to federal agencies about the perils of getting too active in using social media to push a cause. Federal laws prohibit agencies from engaging in lobbying and propaganda.

It also emerged as Republican leaders moved to block the so-called Waters of the United States clean-water rule through an amendment to the enormous spending bill expected to pass in Congress this week.

“GAO’s finding confirms what I have long suspected, that EPA will go to extreme lengths and even violate the law to promote its activist environmental agenda,” Senator Jim Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma and chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee who is pressing to block the rule, said in a statement Monday. “EPA’s illegal attempts to manufacture public support for its Waters of the United States rule and sway Congressional opinion regarding legislation to address that rule have undermined the integrity of the rule-making process and demonstrated how baseless this unprecedented expansion of EPA regulatory authority really is.”
The E.P.A. rolled out a social media campaign on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and even on more innovative tools such as Thunderclap to counter opposition to its water rule, which imposes new restrictions on how land near certain surface waters can be used. The agency. said the rule would prevent pollution in drinking water sources. Farmers, business groups and Republicans have called the rule flagrant government overreach.

But in the E.P.A.’s counterattack, the G.A.O. says agency officials engaged in “covert propaganda” on behalf of Mr. Obama’s water policy by concealing the fact that its social messages were coming from the E.P.A. The agency essentially became lobbyists for its cause by including links that directed people to advocacy organizations.

Federal agencies are allowed to promote their own policies, but they are not allowed to engage in propaganda, which means covert activity intended to influence the American public. They also are not allowed to use federal resources to conduct so-called grass-roots lobbying — urging the American public to contact Congress to take a certain kind of action on pending legislation.

As it promoted the Waters of the United States rule, also known as the Clean Water Rule, the E.P.A. violated both of these laws, a 26-page report signed by Susan A. Poling, the general counsel to the G.A.O., concluded, in an investigation requested by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

“EPA appealed to the public to contact Congress in opposition to pending legislation in violation of the grass-roots lobbying prohibition,” the report says. In a letter to the G.A.O. as the review was underway, Avi S. Garbow, the E.P.A.’s general counsel, said the agency had looked back at its social media campaign and concluded that it had complied with all federal laws, calling it “an appropriately far-reaching effort to educate the American public about an important part of EPA’s mission: protecting clean water.”
The rule in question has been adopted by the agency, but its implementation was suspended nationally in October by a federal appeals court, after opponents of the plan, who argue that it vastly increases the control of the federal government over land near surface waters, filed a lawsuit challenging it.

The G.A.O. report details two specific violations that took place as the E.P.A. was preparing to issue the final rule. The first violation involved the Thunderclap campaign in September 2014, in which the E.P.A. used a new type of social media tool to quickly reach out to 1.8 million people to urge them to support the clean-water proposal. Thunderclap, described as an online flash mob, allows large groups of people to share a single message together at the same time.

“Clean water is important to me,” the Thunderclap message said. “I support EPA’s efforts to protect it for my health, my family, and my community.”

The effort violated federal law, the G.A.O. said, because as it ricocheted through the Internet, many people who received it would not have known that it was written by the E.P.A., making it covert propaganda.

The agency separately violated the anti-lobbying law when one of its public affairs officers wrote a blog post saying he was a surfer and did not “want to get sick from pollution,” and included a link button to an advocacy group urging the public to “tell Congress to stop interfering with your right to clean water.”

The G.A.O. has instructed the E.P.A. to find out how much money was spent by staff involved in these violations and to report back.

Such findings by the G.A.O. are infrequent but not unprecedented. The G.A.O. concluded similarly that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid violated the anti-propaganda act in 2004 when it covertly paid for news videos distributed to television stations without disclosing that it had funded the work. The Department of Education, in 2005, was also found to have violated the same law when it hired a public relations firm to covertly promote the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.

Thomas Reynolds, who as communications director at the E.P.A. moved to add political campaign-style tactics to the agency’s public relations operation, has recently moved to the White House. Liz Purchia, an E.P.A. spokeswoman, said the agency had not yet seen the report, which was issued Monday morning, and could not comment on it yet.

 

Bowe Bergdahl Full Court Martial Case Referred

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While Bowe Bergdahl’s defense team requested a lower level referral for his desertion case, such is not the outcome. He is formally being charged with in his court martial for desertion and abandoning his post as well as mis-behavior before the enemy.

The Republicans issued a 98 page report out of the House Armed Services Committee that concluded the Obama administration violated law by not giving Congress the mandatory 30 day notice of transfer of Guantanamo detainees to Qatar of which 5 were transferred in exchange for Bergdahls’s release.

Then there is the hypocrisy of the Obama administration with regard as to paying ransom for hostages.

But there is plenty more about the Bergdahl case and it includes the FBI, failed information and money.

Inside the Botched Rescue of Bowe Bergdahl

Shane Harris/DailyBeast: The U.S. government paid a ransom in the hopes of freeing the captive American soldier, a congressman alleges. But when the FBI went to get Bowe Bergdahl, he wasn’t there.
In late February of 2014, a representative of the Federal Bureau of Investigation traveled to the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan, ready to bring home Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who had been held for nearly five years by an ally of the Taliban.The operation wasn’t announced publicly. But within U.S. national security agencies, word spread that the most well-known American hostage, who had disappeared from his remote post in Afghanistan in 2009, was about to be released. It was a particularly anxious moment because the Taliban had recently broken off talks over a potential prisoner swap for Bergdahl.But the FBI wasn’t anticipating a prisoner exchange. Instead, according to a member of Congress and another individual who is knowledgeable about the operation, the U.S. government had sent money to Bergdahl’s captors in the hopes of freeing him.

The FBI’s representative waited. But Bergdahl never came. Any hopes for his homecoming were soon eclipsed by concerns that the information that prompted the rescue effort was false or misleading. Had the FBI been duped? Had the U.S. paid a ransom for Bergdahl and been cheated?
Bergdahl was eventually freed at the end of May 2014, in exchange for five Taliban prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay. But the botched rescue operation three months earlier raised questions about whether the FBI, which is in charge of efforts to repatriate all Americans held hostage overseas, had received shoddy intelligence about where Bergdahl was being held and his condition, and if other efforts to recover Americans might also be the victim of bad intelligence.
“What we know is that non-DOD [Department of Defense] organizations, led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), undertook the recovery mission,” Rep. Duncan Hunter, who has investigated the Bergdahl case and is a critic of the Obama administration’s hostage rescue efforts, wrote in a letter Friday to the Justice Department Inspector General.

“In fact, in February 2014, it was the FBI that disclosed to military officials that Bergdahl’s release was imminent; however, after several days, nothing happened,” Hunter said.
A copy of the letter describing the FBI’s lead role, which hasn’t been previously reported, was obtained by The Daily Beast.
What had prompted the FBI to send an emissary to a dangerous border region, all while efforts were under way, albeit in fits and starts, to conduct a prisoner swap?

Hunter wrote to the the Justice Department that a senior official has claimed that the U.S. government “paid [the] Haqqani Network for Bergdahl’s release and received nothing in return.” The Haqqani are a Taliban ally that operates along the border region, and have a history of negotiating for prisoners.

Based on his own sources and information he has seen, Hunter said, the person sent by the FBI to the border “awaited Bergdahl’s arrival following some form of discussion about facilitating a payment.”

President Obama and his top aides have said many times that the U.S. will not pay ransoms for hostages, despite the willingness of the Haqqani and other groups, including al Qaeda, to barter for the lives of their captives.

But that policy is at best a half-truth. In fact, the government has paid money to hostage takers and helped hostages’ families do the same, and that practice is likely to continue, according to kidnapping ransom experts and current and former U.S. officials.

But the administration has never said it paid a ransom for Bergdahl. Instead, officials have argued that the prisoner swap was the only viable option. The administration faced opposition to the swap in Congress, after senior intelligence officials told lawmakers that the five Taliban were likely to return to hostilities against the U.S. if they were freed. And the families of some civilian hostages questioned why the president was willing to exchange prisoners for a solider but not their loved ones.

Hunter has previously raised allegations that the U.S. government paid a ransom for Bergdahl and questioned whether any intermediaries absconded with the money. But the release of a scathing report on the prisoner swap last week by the House Armed Services Committee has fueled a new effort to learn if the U.S. tried to pay for Bergdahl’s return.

Bergdahl himself is also back in the public spotlight, as the subject of Season 2 of the acclaimed podcast Serial, which premiered last week.

Some of Bergdahl’s fellow soldiers have said the Army risked lives trying to rescue him, and have accused Bergdahl of desertion. And the soldier has become a lightning rod in the 2016 presidential election. The leading Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump, has repeatedly called Bergdahl a traitor who abandoned his post and endangered other troops who tried to rescue him.

Allegations of failed rescue missions and secret ransoms would only deepen the controversy surrounding Bergdahl’s release.

The Defense Department’s inspector general looked into the allegations of a ransom payment and determined that none was paid. But the watchdog agency has no jurisdiction over the FBI and apparently only looked at whether Pentagon funds were used. Now, Hunter wants the Justice Department to investigate the FBI’s role and whether money came from there or other sources, and if such payments violated any laws.

Two sources familiar with the FBI-led operation in 2014 said it involved no exchange of prisoners, but that there was no reason to believe Bergdahl’s captors would let him go without getting something in return. Indeed, they had already been negotiating for a prisoner swap.

By late February, word of the plan was spreading throughout the corridors of government. On Feb. 27, the committee found, an email was sent around to personnel in the National Security Council, the Defense Department, and the State Department, about a report that “[i]n approximately 7-10 days, there is the possibility that the USG may be able to recover Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.”

The committee doesn’t identify the author of the email, but two knowledgeable sources said it refers to the FBI operation. There’s no indication from the committee’s report that anyone who received the message realized the operation was going nowhere, and that Bergdahl wasn’t about to be freed.

Some important details of the FBI-led operation remain unclear, including whether the person sent over the border was an FBI agent or a proxy.

A spokesperson for the FBI didn’t comment for this story.

But what is clear is that the Pentagon knew that the FBI was getting involved. How much military officials vetted the intelligence that prompted the bureau to go to the border, however, is an open question. Committee investigators claimed that senior military officials tried to obscure what they knew about the FBI plan, and to portray the five-for-one prisoner swap, which was backed by the administration, as the only real option being pursued.

The Defense Department “was aware of this operation and maintained situational awareness of it, but did not directly participate in it,” the Pentagon’s inspector general told the committee, referring to what sources told The Daily Beast was the FBI operation.

How closely the military and law enforcement worked together to recover Bergdahl is important for understanding whether more could have been done to secure his release without trading the five Taliban prisoners. There are also at least three Americans still being held by the Haqqani network, and understanding what has worked in the past—or hasn’t—could help speed their safe return.

The military was also pursuing a plan to rescue Bergdahl by force, the committee found, another option that apparently involved no prisoner swaps.

An email sent on Feb. 28, 2014, refers to a briefing and “slidedeck” that had been “evidently worked up by JSOC [the military’s Joint Special Operations Command], replete with a code name and an exfiltration plan,” according to the email’s anonymous author.

The email was sent to Michael Dumont, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Central Asia. After receiving it, he wrote to two senior colleagues with concerns that the plan might be exposed.

“For something that was to be very, very close hold and extremely sensitive, this is starting to get out. We need to somehow shut this down and get the info back under control,” Dumont told Rear Adm. Craig Faller, who was then director of operations at U.S. Central Command, and Army Brig. Gen. Robert White, then the director of the Pakistan Afghanistan Coordination Cell for the Joint Staff.

The rescue plan was apparently never launched, and it’s not clear why. But Dumont’s email shows that the prisoner swap was not the only rescue operation on the Pentagon’s drawing board.

When the Armed Services Committee asked Dumont and other officials about alternate plans, they said they had no knowledge of them, a fact that “deeply concerned” the investigators considering there was an email trail and active discussion within several branches of government about multiple efforts, including the allegedly imminent release of Bergdahl to the FBI.

The committee asked Dumont how close any options besides the prisoner swap came to fruition. “Were you on the verge at some point [of recovering Sgt. Bergdahl]?”

Dumont responded, “During my tenure, I would say, no, we were not on the verge. Proposals that people were coming to talk to me about I thought were half-baked and ill-conceived and risky… I didn’t find anything that was viable.”

After Bergdahl was released, senior administration officials also said the trade was the only option to free him. Testifying before the Armed Services Committee in June 2014, then-Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel was asked if the prisoner swap was the only non-military alternative to get Bergdahl.

“Yes…this was the one option that we had,” Hagel said, adding that there were no other “non-kinetic” alternatives that were “serious,” that is, options for freeing Bergdahl that didn’t involve the use of force.

The congressional investigators accused the Pentagon of misrepresenting those plans and how advanced they really were.

“The fact that the Committee did not learn about any prospective alternative recovery planning efforts until related information was produced in the course of this investigation additionally illustrates the fraught oversight relationship which exists between the Committee and the Department.”

The committee said it would continue investigating Bergdahl’s release.