Category Archives: government fraud spending collusion

Formal Court-Martial for Bergdahl in Question

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The matter of the Taliban, Qatar and Bowe Bergdahl is on a collision course in coming weeks. The Taliban 5 released in secret but after years of collusion by the White House are set to go free on June 1. The United States has been in talks with Qatar regarding any further measures to contain or monitor the former Gitmo detainees and any of those details are not forthcoming.

The Bergdahl swap for Gitmo detainees was part of a larger White House plot.

Meanwhile, many within the military declare we are at war with the Taliban, while Obama administration officials say otherwise. Then there is the pending case of the deserter, Bowe Bergdahl where he has been officially charged but plea deals are under way to forego the court martial process.

This case has become the issue of epic proportions within certain ranks of the military as several died looking for Bergdahl and others were wounded. Honestly it boils down to Admiral Mullen, at the time was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and General Milley who handled the Bergdahl case and was just himself promoted to Army Chief of Staff. The official charges against Bergdahl is found here.

The actual Federal register text on Barack Obama’s remarks at the White House regarding Sgt. Bergdahl that included his parents are found here.

The collision course is being launched by members of Congress.

Congress Expanding Inquiries Into Bergdahl Swap

by: Josh Rogin

The court-martial proceeding for accused Army deserter Bowe Berghdal won’t begin until July, but the Republican Congress plans to put him back in the headlines much sooner by expanding investigations into the deal to swap him for five Taliban commanders imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The chairmen of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, Representative Mac Thornberry and Senator John McCain, have been top critics the Obama administration’s ransoming Bergdahl last May without notifying Congress in advance. Now, following the Army’s decision to indict him for desertion and misbehavior in the face of the enemy — and weeks before the five Taliban leaders are to be released from their one year of house arrest in Qatar — they tell me they will ramp up and broaden their investigations of the swap.

Their effort received an unexpected boost Wednesday when Obama decided to nominate General Mark Milley as the next Army Chief of Staff. Milley, the officer who decided to charge Bergdahl, will face a hearing and confirmation vote in McCain’s committee, where the prisoner swap will doubtless become a focus.

The Milley hearings will be only one part of the Republican offensive. “I plan on doing a full Bergdahl investigation,” McCain told me in an interview. “We need to look at that whole thing. I understand that next month the Taliban commanders will be released.”

McCain said that while his committee had already been looking into the issue, the staff will now expand the investigation to include several more aspects of the administration’s handling of the case, including why National Security Adviser Susan Rice went on the Sunday shows after Bergdahl’s release and said he served “with honor and distinction.”

The committee will also look into reports that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, Admiral Mike Mullen, had long known the circumstances of Bergdahl walking off his base in Afghanistan in 2009. There’s no firm timeline on when the Senate committee’s investigation might be complete, McCain said.

The House, for its part, on Wednesday passed its version of a comprehensive defense policy bill for next year that would restrict the Office of the Secretary of Defense from spending $500 million — 25 percent of its budget — until it hands over every piece of correspondence it has related to the Bergdahl-Taliban swap.

A Thornberry spokesman, Claude Chafin, told me Wednesday that Thornberry has not been satisfied with the Pentagon’s cooperation so far, especially that the documents the committee has received were heavily redacted with no explanation.

At a hearing with then-Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel last June, Thornberry criticized the administration for failing to notify Congress of the trade 30 days in advance, which is required by law for the release of prisoners from Guantanamo Bay. He also scored points when he took issue with Hagel’s contention that they had “not been implicated in any attacks against the United States.”

“Your point was, they didn’t pull the trigger, but they were senior commanders of the Taliban military who directed operations against the U.S. and its coalition partners?” Thornberry asked Hagel.

“That’s right,” Hagel responded. “As I said in my statement, they were combatants, and we were at war with the Taliban.”

In addition to withholding the funds, the new House bill also includes nine separate restrictions or reporting requirements designed to stifle the administration’s ability to release more prisoners from Guantanamo, restrictions that would last until the end of Obama’s presidency and effectively squash his campaign promise to close the facility.

McCain’s Senate committee is marking up its version of the defense policy bill this week behind closed doors. He told me it would probably not include Thornberry’s provision withholding a portion of the defense secretary’s budget. But he said that restrictions on moving more prisoners from Guantanamo are needed, citing reports that one of the released Taliban commanders has already made contact with his former militant associates.

“We want to do everything we can to make sure people are not released that will pose a threat for further attacks,” he said.

The case against Bergdahl may never go to trial — desertions usually end in a plea bargain. But the controversy over the administration’s handling of it is not going away. The White House really has no choice but to be more forthcoming about what it did last year if it wants all of the Defense Department’s funding back and its man confirmed as the next head of the Army.

Bergdahl’s service abbreviated GPO record and swap details are:

Afghanistan : Former regime
Afghanistan : Reconciliation efforts
Afghanistan : Sgt. Bowe R. Bergdahl, USA, release from captivity by Taliban forces
Afghanistan : U.S. military forces :: Deployment
Armed Forces, U.S : Servicemembers :: POW/MIA remains, recovery efforts
Cuba : Guantanamo Bay, U.S. Naval Base :: Detention of alleged terrorists
Qatar : Amir
Qatar : U.S. Guantanamo Bay Naval Station detainees, transfer to Qatari custody
Terrorism : Transfer of detainees at Guantanamo Bay
Names
Albrecht, Sky; Bergdahl, Bowe R.; Bergdahl, Jani; Bergdahl, Robert; Fazi, Mohammed; Khairkhwa, Khirullah Said Wali; Noori, Norullah; Omari, Mohammed Nabi; Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani; Wasiq, Abdul Haq
Locations
Washington, DC
Notes
The President spoke at 6:16 p.m. in the Rose Garden at the White House. In his remarks, he referred to Sky Albrecht, sister of Sgt. Bergdahl; Amir Hamad bin Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani of Qatar; and Khirullah Said Wali Khairkhwa, Mohammed Fazi, Norullah Noori, Abdul Haq Wasiq, and Mohammed Nabi Omari, members of the Afghan Taliban released from the Guantanamo Bay Naval Station detention center in Cuba to Qatari custody in Doha in exchange for the release of Sgt. Bergdahl. Mr. Bergdahl referred to Prime Minister Abdallah bin Nasir bin Khalifa Al Thani of Qatar.

 

 

MIT, Boston Financial Support for al Qaeda

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The Holyland Foundation trial in 2007, was a case proving domestic financial support for terror operations. Only selective documents from the trial have been released and the Justice Department refuses to declassify others. Why?

Some people were prosecuted, others were given a pass by Eric Holder. One would think this would have stopped all domestic terror operatives in the United States from supporting factions such as al Qaeda, Boko Haram or Islamic States. Well, not so much. In fact funding is quite robust today and out of locations and institutions that are well known and in cooperation with radical imams leading mosques across the country. Hello…..FBI where are you and why no investigation into mosque operations? That question has been asked and answered but where is the IRS?

Case in point as the light is shined on Massachusetts Institute of Technology..

MIT’s Muslim chaplain raised money for al-Qaeda groups

Everyone at MIT no doubt assumed that Laher was a “moderate.” To question that assumption would have been “Islamophobic.”

“Al Qaeda’s Base at MIT,” by Ilya Feoktistov and Charles Jacobs, Breitbart, May 11, 2015 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

At the end of April, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology unveiled a permanent memorial to MIT Police Officer Sean Collier. Officer Collier was gunned down by the Boston Marathon bombers, Chechen refugees Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, three days after they blew up the Marathon.

It is painful to learn that in the late 1990s, there were students at MIT who helped recruit for the Chechen jihad and raised funds for Al Qaeda-affiliated groups operating in the Tsarnaevs’ homeland. It is even more painful that the man who led this fundraising effort was still on MIT’s staff when Officer Collier was gunned down.

Suheil Laher had been MIT’s Muslim chaplain for almost 20 years. Today he continues to preach at the Islamic Society of Boston, the extremist mosque founded by MIT students near campus, where the Tsarnaevs worshipped during their radicalization.

Americans for Peace and Tolerance have just released a mini-documentary, “Al Qaeda’s Base at MIT,” showing how MIT Muslim chaplain Suheil Laher used his leadership of the MIT Muslim Students Association as a vehicle for raising money for Al Qaeda causes around the world. We especially focus on the Al Qaeda affiliate in Chechnya, which Laher and his associates lionized, even as MIT trusted him to be its Muslim students’ spiritual guide.

Suheil Laher came to MIT as a student in 1990 and by 1998, he became the MIT Muslim chaplain. By the year 2000, he also became president of a Muslim charity based in Boston called Care International, which was founded by Osama Bin Laden’s mentor Abdullah Azzam and was originally called “Al Kifah Refugee Center.” Care International was, in essence, a fundraising vehicle for mujahideen. After the leader of Al Kifah in Brooklyn, “the Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel-Rehman, was convicted for his role in the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, Boston’s Care International took over as Al Qaeda’s main base in the United States. Laher, then, was quite an important figure in Al Qaeda’s leadership here. His perch at MIT meant that he had easy access to the best American Muslim minds – and their world-class technical skills.

As a religious scholar and an engineer, Laher was both the spiritual and technological leader of Care International. He pioneered the Jihadist use of the new Internet medium to fundraise and recruit for Al Qaeda causes online. Laher’s personal website prominently featured Abdullah Azzam’s notorious call to Jihad, a tract called “Join the Caravan:”

Beloved brother! Draw your sword, climb onto the back of your horse, and wipe the blemish off your ummah. If you do not take the responsibility, who then will?

That same Jihadist tract was found on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s computer.

Laher’s website contained a large collection of his writings and of sermons he gave in the Boston area. These sermons are replete with calls for Jihad, such as this passage:

When the Muslim lands are being attacked, and the Muslims are being raped and killed, the only solution prescribed by Allah is jihad. Jihad is for all times. […] Jihad does not stop. Those of us who have not yet managed to go and physically help our brothers and sisters should support […] our mujahidin brethren with prayer, with money, with clothes, by taking care of their families, and at some point in person. Otherwise, we must face the wrath of Allah.

One of the MIT students who answered Laher’s call to join the Jihad in person was a bright young biologist named Aafia Siddiqui. She started out as a passionate and prolific fundraiser for Care International, but by the time she was arrested by the FBI in Afghanistan in 2008, she was known as “Lady Al Qaeda” and had become the most wanted woman in the world. She is now serving an 86-year prison sentence for attempting to kill the FBI agents arresting her. Her belongings upon arrest included two pounds of cyanide and plans for mass casualty attacks on New York using chemical and biological weapons, as well as literature about the Ebola virus.

While Laher’s sermons preached the general Islamic obligation to do Jihad, Care International’s website along with its newsletter “Al Hussam” (“The Sword”) promoted what Laher and his fellow Care leaders saw as the concrete performance of that responsibility. In the late 1990s, Care International focused its fundraising activity on the Russian breakaway republic of Chechnya. Specifically, Care International backed the Al Qaeda-affiliated terrorists under the leadership of Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev.

Basayev can arguably be described as one of the cruelest Islamic terrorists in modern Jihadist history. Our documentary recounts one of his cruelest acts: the Beslan School Massacre. On September 1, 2004, during a ceremony marking the first day of school, Basayev’s men surrounded the school in the town of Beslan in southern Russia and took over 1,100 people hostage, nearly eight hundred of them children. They murdered several people on the spot in front of the children and herded everyone into a sweltering gymnasium, where the hostages were kept without food or water for three days as bombs were hung up from the rafters and basketball hoops above them. On the third day, the terrorists started setting off the bombs and Russian security forces stormed the school as shell-shocked children ran the other way and were shot in the back by the terrorists. Three hundred and eighty five people were murdered, among them one hundred and eighty six children. Subsequently, Shamil Basayev bragged about his “success” at Beslan and the fact that the attack only cost him 8,000 Euros to launch. He was killed by Russian security forces in 2006.

Care International raised huge amounts of money for jihad around Boston, $1.7 million according to Federal authorities. A large portion of this money came through checks that were specifically earmarked for “Chechen Muslim fighters.” Throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, Care International hosted dispatches and communiques from Basayev and his forces in the field. A Care International “Al Hussam” newsletter praised a previous Basayev hostage operation against a Russian hospital’s maternity ward:

Minute by minute the whole world watched with agony, as some of the Mujahideen (not exceeding 80), under the leadership of Mujahid Shamil Basyev took 1500 Russians […] We cannot depend on anybody’s help; we have to fight evil with evil. The operation of the Mujahid Shamil Basayev is perfect proof.

How could MIT’s Muslim chaplain have led a group that applauded and funded such a savage?

In 2003, the FBI began investigating Care International for terrorism financing. At the same time, Basayev and his organization were designated as foreign terrorists. The flow of money from Boston to Chechnya stopped. After the Beslan Massacre, Basayev complained that the lack of funding prevented him from seizing more schools in Moscow and Leningrad. Because Basayev was not officially considered a terrorist before 2003, there was little the FBI could do to prosecute Laher and his fellow activists. Three Care leaders, including the group’s treasurer, received minor sentences for tax evasion. After being questioned by the FBI, Laher walked free and continued to influence students at MIT for more than another decade. His successor as MIT’s Muslim Chaplain, Hoda Elsharkawy, is herself closely linked through her husband to Laher and to Islamic extremism in Boston, which will be the focus of our future reporting.

While Laher officially stepped down from his post as MIT chaplain in 2014, he continues to preach at mosques in the Boston area, including the Tsarnaev’s own mosque, the Islamic Society of Boston – giving a sermon there as recently as May 1, 2015….

 

Billion$ Leave the U.S. by Immigrants

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Ah, but all those immigrants in our country today are here with families right? Not so much. Further, wide debates circle around re-patrioting U.S. currency stashed in foreign countries, but can that really happen or keep pace with what foreign nationals are sending out of the country? We are talking billions here. They are pointing to Mexicans, but there should be a real challenge, are they all really Mexicans? How much is terror money or narco-dollars?

Imagine if the Mexicans are doing this, then are the militant Islamic factions that support Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad doing the same thing? Combine these dollars with those that are own federal government is doing at the behest of the White House, the State Department, USAID and secret grants. The Palestinians are hostile to Israel and the United States but the Federal government sends them billions. The Obama administration supported militants in Gaza, not to mention Hezbollah.

If Mexico was not a failed state, then why the billions in just the cooperative agreement called the Merida Initiative?

Mexicans in U.S. sent home $5.7 billion in remittances in first 3 months of 2015

Mexican living in the United States sent $5.7 billion in remittances back home in the first three months of 2015 alone, the highest amount of money sent to the country by expats since 2008, Banco de Mexico reported.

The amount of money that Mexicans living abroad sent to their family and friends back home between January and March of 2015 is 5 percent higher than it was in the same period last year, with remittances in March increasing 7.6 percent to $2.26 billion.

This averages out to each Mexican family living in the U.S. sending around $312 back to Mexico in March – or around $9 more than in March of 2014. The only time this number was higher was in July 2012, when Mexican families sent home an average of $314 that month.

“We hope that the slight increase in remittances in 2015 gives a brighter indication for growth and employment in the U.S. perspective,” said Alberto Ramos, an economist at Goldman Sachs report, according to Univision.

Ramos added that “a weaker Mexican peso and low domestic inflation increase the real purchasing power in local currency remittance flows.”

Banco de Mexico reported that 97 percent of remittances to the country came from the United States, with the other 3 percent coming from Canada, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Spain. The U.S. states where the majority of remittances came from were California, Texas, Illinois, Florida, Georgia and New York.

Some 11 million Mexicans live in the United States and many of them work in the construction sector. In this economic context, remittances are the main source of foreign exchange in Mexico, after oil and foreign direct investment, and also represent a vital income for millions of people.

 

Kerry Ignores ALL Iran Violations

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Iran is a known and verified state sponsor of terror, of this there is no dispute. Iran has violated sanctions, agreements, hidden nuclear operations from inspectors and worse the United States has fought against Iran militia factions in Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan at least since the 80’s.

Exactly how much slack is Barack Obama, John Kerry and even the other members of the P5+1 going to give Iran at the expense of the continue threat and nuclear operations of this rogue nation? Is there no red-line anywhere? Oh wait…every other country appears to have a red-line but that of the Obama administration either moves, changes color or is simply rhetoric. When foreign nations are leading the charge on stopping Iran, the West needs to take notice.

John Kerry was in Moscow this week meeting with the Russian leadership over Syria, Iraq and most of all Iran. Russia is not going to cooperate with the United Nations resolutions or with any sanctions against Iran. Kerry failed to gain Putin’s agreement.

A Russian official on Wednesday bluntly rejected claims that sanctions on Iran would be restored immediately should the Islamic Republic violate the terms of an agreement to curb its nuclear program, poking a hole in a central White House plank meant to soothe critics of the deal. The Obama administration has stated that Russia agreed “in principle” on the need to reimpose sanctions if Iran fails to comply with the agreement, but the Russian government has never confirmed that it agrees with such a stance.

Exclusive: Czechs stopped potential nuclear tech purchase by Iran – sources

The Czech Republic blocked an attempted purchase by Iran this year of a large shipment of sensitive technology useable for nuclear enrichment after false documentation raised suspicions, U.N. experts and Western sources said.

The incident could add to Western concerns about whether Tehran can be trusted to adhere to a nuclear deal being negotiated with world powers under which it would curb sensitive nuclear work in exchange for sanctions relief.

The negotiators are trying to reach a deal by the end of June after hammering out a preliminary agreement on April 2, with Iran committing to reduce the number of centrifuges it operates and agreeing to other long-term nuclear limitations.

Some details of the attempted purchase were described in the latest annual report of an expert panel for the United Nations Security Council’s Iran sanctions committee, which has been seen by Reuters.

The panel said that in January Iran attempted to buy compressors – which have nuclear and non-nuclear applications – made by the U.S.-owned company Howden CKD Compressors.

A Czech state official and a Western diplomat familiar with the case confirmed to Reuters that Iran had attempted to buy the shipment from Howden CKD in the Czech Republic, and that Czech authorities had acted to block the deal.

It was not clear if any intermediaries were involved in the attempt to acquire the machinery.

There was no suggestion that Howden CKD itself was involved in any wrongdoing. Officials at Prague-based Howden declined to comment on the attempted purchase.

The U.N. panel, which monitors compliance with the U.N. sanctions regime, said there had been a “false end user” stated for the order.

“The procurer and transport company involved in the deal had provided false documentation in order to hide the origins, movement and destination of the consignment with the intention of bypassing export controls and sanctions,” it added.

The report offered no further details about the attempted transaction. Iran’s U.N. mission did not respond to a query about the report.

CONTRACT WORTH $61 million

The Czech state official said the party seeking the compressors had claimed the machinery was needed for a compressor station, such as the kind used to transport natural gas from one relay station to another.

The official declined to say exactly how the transaction was stopped, provide specifications of the compressors or confirm the intended purchaser. However, he made clear it was the Czech authorities who halted the deal

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the total value of the contract would have been about 1.5 billion Czech koruna ($61 million).

This was a huge amount for the company concerned, the previously named CKD Kompresory, a leading supplier of multi-stage centrifugal compressors to the oil and gas, petrochemical and other industries.

The firm was acquired by Colfax Corp. of the United States in 2013 for $69.4 million. A spokesman for Colfax declined to comment.

The United States and its Western allies say Iran continues to try to skirt international sanctions on its atomic and missile programs even while negotiating the nuclear deal.

The U.N. panel of experts also noted in its report that Britain informed it of an active Iranian nuclear procurement network linked to blacklisted firms.

While compressors have non-nuclear applications in the oil and gas industry, they also have nuclear uses, including in centrifuge cascades. Centrifuges purify uranium gas fed into them for use as fuel in nuclear reactors or weapons, if purified to levels of around 90 percent of the fissile isotope uranium-235.

“Such compressors can be used to extract enriched uranium directly from the cascades,” Olli Heinonen, former deputy director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency and a nuclear expert currently at Harvard University, told Reuters.

“In particular, they are useful when working with higher enrichment such as 20 percent enriched uranium,” he said, adding that precise specifications of the compressors in question would be necessary to make a definitive assessment.

Iran has frozen production of 20 percent enriched uranium, a move that Western officials cite as one of the most important curbs on Iranian nuclear activities under an interim agreement in 2013.

Tehran rejects allegations by Western powers and their allies that it is seeking the capability to produce atomic weapons and says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.

The IAEA and the United States have said repeatedly that Tehran has adhered to the terms of the 2013 interim deal.

 

 

 

Lying to a Judge? Just Strip Their Law License

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The Department of Justice has employs more than 10,000 lawyers and they have the money, personnel, resources and technology to ‘get-it-right’. But under Eric Holder, now replaced by Loretta Lynch, lawyers before the court in the immigration case obfuscated the truth and chose NOT to ‘get-it-right’. Simply states, it is malpractice with purpose. Strip their license..PERIOD.

No one will be disciplined, terminated or sanctioned..it just does not happen in the Federal government. So what happened before the judge? It should also be noted, obscure work at Justice goes on past midnight….hummm

Obama Administration Admits It Violated Judge’s Order to Halt Implementation of Immigration Plan

by: Hans von Spakovsky

In another midnight filing last week in the immigration lawsuit filed by 26 states against the Obama administration in the Southern District of Texas, the U.S. Justice Department admitted that the Department of Homeland Security had violated federal Judge Andrew Hanen’s Feb. 16 injunction against President Obama’s immigration amnesty plan.

This was not the first such admission by the government. It had previously filed an “Advisory” on March 3 informing Judge Hanen that between Nov. 20, 2014, when the president announced his immigration plan, and Feb. 16 when the injunction was issued, the Department of Homeland Security had begun implementing part of the president’s plan by issuing three-year deferrals to over 100,000 illegal aliens.

In other words, despite having told Judge Hanen both in court and in written pleadings that no part of the president’s plan was being implemented until late February at the earliest, government officials were doing exactly the opposite.

On April 7, Judge Hanen issued an order with a scathing analysis of the Justice Department’s misbehavior, finding that “attorneys for the government misrepresented the facts” to the court. He told the Justice Department that he expected all of the parties in the case, including the government, “to act in a forthright manner and not hide behind deceptive representations and half-truths.”

Hanen also gave the Justice Department lawyers a hard time over not having informed him immediately upon their discovery of this misrepresentation, saying that their claim that they took prompt, remedial action was “belied by the facts”—namely, that they waited over two weeks to tell the judge.

In the latest Advisory filed on May 7, the Justice Department informed Hanen that the Department of Homeland Security “sent three-year work authorizations after the Court had issued its injunction” to approximately 2,000 individuals. This time, the Justice Department lawyers assert they only found out about the violation of the injunction order the day before the filing.

They also say that Department of Homeland Security is in the process of converting “these three-year terms into two-year terms” and that Secretary Jeh Johnson has asked the “DHS Inspector General to investigate the issuance of these three-year [Employment Authorization Documents].”

In a separate, supplemental three-page order issued on May 8, Judge Hanen cites additional evidence to support his finding that the states have standing to challenge Obama’s immigration plan. In his Feb. 16 injunction order, Hanen referenced statements by Obama that there would be consequences for any Homeland Security employee who did not follow the requirements of the Nov. 20 amnesty plan. The Justice Department had tried to downplay the president’s statements.

However, Judge Hanen notes that while testifying on April 14—after the injunction was issued—before the House Judiciary Committee, Sarah Saldana, the director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, “reiterated that any officer or agent who did not follow the dictates of the 2014 DHS Directive would face the entire gamut of possible employee sanctions, including termination.”

Hanen said that “the president’s statements have now been reaffirmed under oath by the very person in charge of immigration enforcement.”

Thus, according to Hanen, the government “has announced, and has now confirmed under oath, that it is pursuing a policy of mandatory non-compliance (with the [Immigration and Nationality Act]), and that any agent who seeks to enforce the duly-enacted immigration laws will face sanctions—which could include the loss of his or her job.”

It is this “clear abdication of the law by the government—a law that is only enforceable by the government and outside the province of the states” that gives the states standing to bring suit.

The latest actions by the government may make it even harder for Justice Department lawyers to convince the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn Judge Hanen’s injunction.