CIA Haspel Confirmation: Sen. Warner and Harris can GTH

The open session in the Senate for the confirmation of Gina Haspel to be the new Director of CIA quickly became a contest between Democrats in the committee on who maintained the higher moral authority all at the expense of Gina Haspel. Countless questions were asked in various forms on the enhanced interrogation techniques, torture and the destruction by Jose Rodriguez of the video tapes on an interrogation session with one al Qaeda detainee.

Remember, it is the Democrat party that is good with abortion, late term abortion that is when a fetus can live and thrive outside the womb. Death versus waterboarding…humm and by the way, not one Democrat mentioned that the Army Field Manual included waterboarding and that during SERE training, our military personnel are waterboarded.

The CIA does not do interrogations, it is contracted out to professionals. Document below as explained by an interrogator.

 

An Interrogator Breaks His Silence by J. Swift (TWS) on Scribd

At the end of the open confirmation session, Senator Burr asked Gina Haspel to explain who Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abd al Rahim al Nashiri were. She responded in detail.

Un tribunal militar de EEUU ultima el juicio al cerebro ... photo

On the matter of al Nashiri, below is a fact that should tell you the reader just how twisted things get regarding the war on terror. Enter Navy Lt. Alaric Piette and al Nashiri. Everyone deserves a lawyer, but c’mon.

The bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen was concocted by al Nashiri along with Fahd al Quso and Jamal al Badawi.

*** Attorney Navy Lt. Alaric Piette, with his SEAL trident topping his uniform, at the U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, on Nov. 3, 2017.Attorney Navy Lt. Alaric Piette, with his SEAL trident topping his uniform, at the U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, on Nov. 3, 2017. Carol Rosenberg

2017:

After suicide bombers attacked the USS Cole 17 years ago, this young Navy SEAL from Wisconsin would have gladly risked his life on a mission to snatch someone suspected of plotting the attack that killed 17 U.S. sailors.

Now, the former SEAL sits in the war court with the man accused of orchestrating the bombing that killed his shipmates. And Navy Lt. Alaric Piette, 39, is navigating a different kind of treacherous assignment.

Piette, a lawyer for just five years, is the lone attorney in court representing Saudi captive Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, whose long-serving death-penalty defender and two other civilian lawyers quit the case over a clandestine ethical conflict. So across two weeks of court hearings, Piette has answered the trial judge’s instruction to litigate by arguing that until a new capital defender is found, the case cannot go on.

“When military attorneys are assigned to these cases, people just expect us to go along and roll over. And I’m not going to,” Piette said in an interview at the end of a week in which the judge sentenced the Marine general overseeing the defense teams to 21 days confinement for letting Nashiri’s civilian lawyers quit.

Piette was one of the last military attorneys hired on the team led by Rick Kammen, the 71-year-old capital defense attorney from Indiana who for years led a constantly changing cast of military lawyers with a kangaroo pin on his lapel to express his contempt for the war court system.

Their courtroom style is a study in contrasts.

Where Kammen wore a kangaroo pin, Piette wears the coveted trident of a SEAL, the elite Navy unit whose slogan is “the only easy day was yesterday.”

Where Kammen was confrontational in both words and attire, Piette has been nothing but courteous, even as he has explained again and again that he must sit mute alongside Nashiri, litigate no motions and question no witnesses until a qualified death-penalty defense attorney arrives in court.

Nashiri, 52, is accused of orchestrating al-Qaida’s Oct. 12, 2000, bombing of the Cole while it was on a resupply mission off Aden, Yemen. Two men pulled alongside in an explosives-laden skiff, ostensibly to collect the ship’s garbage, then blew themselves up.

Nashiri was captured in Dubai in 2002 and held for four years in the CIA’s Black Sites, where he was waterboarded, rectally abused and subjected to other torture techniques. He was first charged at Guantánamo in 2011, five years after his arrival. All those circumstances have caused delays in getting him to trial.

After a clearly frustrated lead prosecutor Mark Miller fired off an invective against defense lawyers — accusing the Marine general in charge of “obstruction” and the civilian attorneys of adopting a “scorched-earth strategy,” and calling Piette “a potted plant defense” — the soft-spoken Navy lieutenant responded with this:

“What I am asking — the only reason I’m up here now — is to ask the courts, when they’re looking at this on the record, to look deeply and without the hats of cynicism and understand that everybody here cares about justice and getting to the truth.”

Kammen spent years overtly salting the record with asides for a post-conviction appeal in civilian courts. With that remark, Piette did the same.

The contrast doesn’t end there. Kammen started practicing law seven years before Piette was born in Wisconsin to a family of Belgian ancestry. Kammen says he has defended about 40 capital cases, none ending in a death sentence, and has never voluntarily left one before. Kammen handled his first capital case before Piette was in first grade.

Piette has worked on none.

But on one issue they are in agreement: Something secret has gone on at the prison to make it impossible for any defense attorney to trust in the confidentiality of privileged attorney-client conversations. And because it’s classified, neither Nashiri nor the public can know precisely what it is.

Piette says he has the same ethical conflict as the three lawyers who quit: He can’t carry on confidential conversations with Nashiri, and can’t provide the Saudi with a classified explanation. But he has stayed on the case in part because, as a military attorney, it took him longer to get an ethics opinion through Navy channels. By then, Kammen and fellow civilian defenders Rosa Eliades and Mary Spears had all resigned.

“The only reason I think I can stay on right now is because I view my scope of representation as limited solely to getting him a learned counsel, and making sure that his rights aren’t violated while he doesn’t have learned counsel,” Piette said. “I am not representing him on substantive matters for the trial.”

Now, he said, he has a duty to represent Nashiri — not by arguing motions or filing new pleadings but by helping him find capital counsel.

Only after that person is found, gets top secret clearances, reads the record, and finds out about the classified confidentiality problem, might that attorney decide whether he or she is ethically bound to quit the case as well.

The trial judge, Air Force Col. Vance Spath, meantime has been hearing from witnesses on potential trial evidence — basic litigation, as the judge sees it, that any lawyer with court-martial experience can handle.

“Death is different,” says Piette. Last week he responded to every opportunity to argue or cross-examine witnesses by saying the defense has no position because no learned counsel is in court. Spath, who at one point considered holding Piette in contempt, replied on Friday: “There is a position and a strategic decision from the defense and the defense community.”

Three more military defense attorneys are waiting in the wings — two from the Air Force, the other a Marine. None is death-penalty qualified. But, to Spath’s annoyance, Piette sits there alone.

“I think Colonel Spath, whom I have a lot of respect for, is in a bad position,” Piette said, explaining that the Manual for Military Commissions gives the chief defense counsel authority to hire and fire. That authority exists in “no other court in the United States,” he said.

In other U.S. courts an attorney of record must go before a judge to be released from a case. Spath argues his power is the same.

So much so that, after Marine Brig. Gen. John Baker, the chief defense counsel for military commissions, refused to return Kammen and the other civilian attorneys to the case, the judge found the general in contempt of the war court and ordered him confined to his quarters in a trailer park behind the court for 21 days. A senior Pentagon official suspended that sentence after 48 hours.

Piette got to the case in April and only got a clearance to begin seeing classified material in June.

But he said that even while he was a junior lawyer representing sailors accused of housing allowance fraud, he followed Guantánamo’s USS Cole case. Navy colleagues and mentors had served as defense attorneys at the military commissions.

Tom Clancy novels, Michael Bay movies and a shadowy terrorist named Osama bin Laden drew him to the SEALs from high school, Piette said. By his account, he didn’t really know anything about al-Qaida but from the news, but he was well aware of the “audacious” Feb. 26, 1993, first World Trade Center bombing and enlisted four years later.

After six months of indoctrination and Basic Underwater Demolition SEALS training, he was assigned to SEAL Team Two.

“I had joined the Navy because I thought there was this covert war on terror going on,” he said. “I thought it was clear, if they’re willing to do that, they’re not going to stop. So we must be fighting this war out there, that’s a secret nobody knows about. And I wanted to be part of that; thought that would be cool.”

He felt that even more so after the bombing of the USS Cole. “I thought after the Cole happened that we were going to go to war and start doing the things I came in to do. We didn’t. Not until after September 11th.”

Piette says that he never saw combat as a SEAL and never fired a shot outside training, and his missions were mostly “recons” and the occasional “snatch and grab” in Kosovo, a hot area of commando activity at the time. He didn’t know much about who the targets were, but says he believes they were mostly weapons smugglers who were ultimately let go.

Had his team been ordered to snatch someone suspected of being the USS Cole bomber, Piette “would’ve been happy to do it,” he said. “Whoever did this killed my fellow sailors. I would’ve been eager to do it.

“I actually had to have a friend talk me down about my anger about the issue. He said, ‘Look, it’s upsetting but at the same time that’s why we’re here, that’s why we wear the uniform. So we’re the targets.’ ”

Truth be told, he said, had a target ever been identified for a snatch-and grab, that assignment would have no doubt gone to SEAL Team Six, the best of the best. But none was.

It was only after he left the Navy, got a bachelor’s degree at Old Dominion University and went on to study law at Georgetown that he began to think hard about defendants and due process.

He said he studied law “intending to become rich,” and pay for his degree. But at a Georgetown legal clinic he found his calling in criminal defense. If the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia had accepted his application, he said, he never would have turned to the Navy Judge Advocate General’s Corps.

In his five years as a naval officer, he has tried 15 cases to court martial verdict. Probably the most serious crime he handled was a sailor accused of attempted murder. Piette, who got it reduced to battery, called it classic prosecution overcharging.

But he says he’s learned a lot from his clients — about human struggle and consequences — and to distrust career prosecutors, whom he describes as “often arrogant and smug.”

“Prosecutors tend to be so judgmental and dismissive of these human beings and think that people make out these well thought-out deliberate choices. It’s just people, living.”

Now the lone defense lawyer in court, he said his time as a SEAL is serving him well. “Sometimes I miss parts of it but I’ve found my calling as a criminal defense lawyer.” Being in the teams taught him “the paramount importance of disciplined and thorough preparation.”

It sounds nerdy, perhaps dull — not exactly fodder for an action thriller. But this is a man who points to his favorite part of the SEAL code as this: “Excel as warriors through discipline and innovation.”

 

 

 

China is Buying America with and without CFIUS

Statistics found here.

When China is not buying America, they are busy in other parts of the globe buying places like Europe. That is how China is expanding, including stealing intelligence, espionage and hacking. The parts of Britain not owned by Russia are being gobbled up by China. Russia has a long plan and China has a long plan, not too sure about the United States, Britain or other allies.

There has been many discussions in Congress to reform CFIUS, Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. The most widely noticed scandal with CFIUS was the Uranium One deal.

U.S. watchdog expands scrutiny to more Chinese deals ... photo

Anyway, John Carlin recently spoke with the National Law Journal about bipartisan legislation introduced in November in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives by U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and U.S. Rep. Robert Pittenger, R-North Carolina, respectively, to overhaul the CFIUS review process. CFIUS reviews, which are voluntary, are meant to protect the nation from business transactions that pose a national security or strategic risk to the United States. The panel has the authority to require the transaction’s parties to undertake risk mitigation, such as carving out a specific location or element of the deal.

The panel can also recommend that the president block a deal entirely. President Donald Trump, for example, in September blocked the sale of Oregon-based Lattice Semiconductor Corp. to a Chinese company. A deal by Anthony Scaramucci, briefly a White House communications director, to sell his stake in SkyBridge Capital to Chinese company HNA Group Co., which is partly government-owned, appears to be in jeopardy after not yet clearing its nearly yearlong CFIUS review, according to reports in financial media including Bloomberg News in mid-December.Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who chairs the panel, has urged toughening CFIUS reviews.

While leading the DOJ’s National Security Division, Carlin oversaw the indictment in 2014 of five Chinese military members for economic espionage for hacks against several big U.S. companies, among them United States Steel, Westinghouse, Alcoa Inc. and SolarWorld from 2006 through 2014. The division also investigated the cyberattack on Sony Pictures Entertainment in late 2014 that the U.S. government determined originated in North Korea; and brought charges with the FBI against seven Iranians working for computer companies under contract to the Iranian government and military that conducted cyberattacks between 2011 and 2013 against 46 financial institutions including Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase & Co. More here.

The CFIUS review process also appears to be affecting efforts by China Oceanwide Holdings Group Co. Ltd. to acquire Genworth Financial Inc.

BusinessInsider: In 2016, General Electric sold its appliances business to Qingdao-based Haier. China’s Zoomlion made an unsolicited bid for heavy-lifting-equipment maker Terex Corporation, and property and investment firm Dalian Wanda announced a deal to buy a majority stake in Hollywood’s Legendary Entertainment.

On Friday, a Chinese-led investor group announced it would buy the Chicago Stock Exchange. And then there’s ChemChina’s record-breaking deal for the Swiss seeds and pesticides group Syngenta, valued at $48 billion according to Dealogic.

There have already been 82 Chinese outbound mergers-and-acquisitions deals announced this year, amounting to $73 billion in value, according to Dealogic. That’s up from 55 deals worth $6.2 billion in the same period last year.

Last year was a record-breaker for Chinese outbound deals, with 607 deals valued at $112.5 billion in total. Just over one month into 2016, and China is more than halfway to breaking that record.

So what’s going on?

One interpretation is that Chinese companies are simply hungry for growth as that country’s economy slows, and they’re feeding themselves by buying other companies.

“With the slowdown of the economy, Chinese corporates are increasingly looking to inorganic avenues to supplement their growth,” Vikas Seth, head of emerging markets in the investment-banking and capital-markets department at Credit Suisse, told Business Insider.

Last year, investment bankers earned $558 million in revenue from Chinese outbound M&A deals, according to Dealogic. This year, that number is at $121 million to date.

But there are, of course, a number of challenge these deals will face — especially in the US.

M&A deals in the US are subject to scrutiny by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS. It recently prevented the $3.3 billion sale of Philips’ lighting business to a group of buyers in Asia.

feb 5 total china m&a deal value
The 82 Chinese outbound deals announced so far in 2016 are worth more than half of 2015’s total Chinese outbound-deal value.
Andy Kiersz/Business Insider

“I would be very surprised if CFIUS did not have an interest in taking a look at this deal,” said Anne Salladin of law firm Stroock & Stroock, referring to the Chicago Stock Exchange deal.

Putin Denies Military Operations Against Ukraine, Proof Emerges

Map of Mariupol in Ukraine - ABC News (Australian ...

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The Ambassador predicted liberation of Mariupol in 2014, the plan was in place, was anyone listening? Liberation? That is how Moscow packaged it? And the Active Measures/propaganda continues.

Related reading: Ukraine Fortifies Its Airwaves Against Russian TV Broadcasts

Russian troops attacking Mariupol, Ukrainian militia ... photo

Breaking: Russian Officers and Militants Identified as Perpetrators of the January 2015 Mariupol Artillery Strike

The investigation can be viewed here

На русском языке

The Bellingcat Investigation Team has determined conclusively that the artillery attack on targets in the Ukrainian town of Mariupol on 24 January 2015, which resulted at least 30 civilian deaths and over 100 injuries, came from Russia-controlled territory. Bellingcat has also determined that the shelling operation was instructed, directed and supervised by Russian military commanders in active service with the Russian Ministry of Defense. Bellingcat has identified nine Russian officers, including one general, two colonels, and three lieutenant colonels, involved directly with the military operation.

Furthermore, Bellingcat has determined that two artillery batteries of Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS) were transported from Russia into Ukraine the day before the Mariupol operation. In the early morning of 24 January 2015, these batteries were deployed near the village of Bezimenne exclusively for the shelling of targets in and around Mariupol, after which they were repatriated back into Russia.

In the course of analyzing the events in the eve of and on 24 January 2015, Bellingcat has also identified two Russian generals involved with the selection and assignment of Russian artillery specialists to commanding roles in eastern Ukraine.

This investigation was made possible due to access to raw video and audio data that is being submitted by the Ukrainian government to the International Court of Justice as part of an ongoing legal case. This data was made available to a small group of international investigative media for the purposes of independent assessment. Bellingcat and its media partners analyzed a large volume of intercepted calls from and to participants in the armed conflict located in the area of Bezimenne at the time of shelling. Bellingcat conducted detailed cross-referencing of events, names and locations, as well as metadata from the calls, to open source data, including satellite photography data, social media posts, and voice samples from public statements of some of the identified persons. A detailed analysis permitted the identification of persons and military units, and the reconstruction of events leading up to the shelling of residential areas in Mariupol.

While previous reports, including the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) to Ukraine report from 24 January 2015, have identified that shelling of Mariupol’s residential areas came from separatist-controlled territory, Bellingcat’s investigation is the first to fully detail and identify the role of active Russian military units, as well as the direct commanding role of active Russian army officers in this military operation.

Our full report identifying the nine Russian officers involved with the military operation that led to the deaths of 30 Ukrainian civilians in Mariupol will be published later this week. Today, we are revealing the names of these individuals, along with a sampling of the telephone conversations that led to their identification.

The Russian officers who were in charge on high and lower levels of the MLRS batteries on the day of the shelling at Mariupol, or provided target instructions from another location in Eastern Ukraine, have been identified by Bellingcat as:

  • Major General Stepan Stepanovich Yaroshchuk
  • Alexander Iozhefovich Tsapliuk, call sign ‘Gorets’
  • Alexander Anatolevich Muratov
  • Maksim Vladimirovich Vlasov, call sign ‘Yugra’
  • Sergey Sergeyevich Yurchenko, call sign ‘Voronezh’
  • Alexander Valeryevich Grunchev, call sign ‘Terek’

The Russian officers who were in charge of selecting and sending artillery commanders and artillery equipment to Eastern Ukraine have been identified by Bellingcat as:

  • Colonel Oleg Leargievich Kuvshinov
  • Major General Dmitry Nikolaevich Klimenko
  • Colonel Sergey Ivanovich Lisai

The two Russian and Ukrainian militants in direct charge of the artillery units that shelled Mariupol have been identified by Bellingcat as:

  • Alexander Mikhailovich Evtody, call sign ‘Pepel’
  • Grayr Manukovich Egiazaryan, call sign ‘Shram’

Our full investigation, with biographical details on each of these men, our research process, and our analysis of the shelling attack itself, will be published later this week.

The investigation can be viewed here

Secretly John Kerry Traveling to Save the Iran Deal

Secret Diplomacy - Obama: The Price of Hope Video ... photo

DIPLOMACY WORKS is John Kerry’s operation. In February he spoke at the Munich Security Conference. While declaring he is a great friend of Israel and that Iran does present threats, Kerry declares we did not concede anything with regard to the missile components inside the agreement known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

Who are some of the ‘experts’ that collaborate on policy at Diplomacy Works?

Ernest Moniz, Siegfried Hecker, Federica Mogherini, Richard Lugar, and even Theresa May. We can add in Ephrai Halevy, Colin Powell and Mike Breen. On the ADVISORY COUNCIL at Diplomacy Works beyond John Kerry is Antony Blinken, Wendy Sherman, Nicholas Burns, Michele Flournoy, Puneet Talwar, Colin Kahl, Robert Malley, David Wade, Jon Finer, Jen Psaki and Jeff Prescott.

John Kerry and his team are working the channels hard to preserve the Iran nuclear deal and that includes having the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres on his side.

It is curious there is no mention of Global Zero or Ploughshares on the Diplomacy Works website, nor is Ben Rhodes or others from the Obama administration mentioned such as Susan Rice or John Brennan.

Iran sanctions lifted after Tehran complies with nuclear deal.

So, what about John’s travels? Given what the Boston Globe provided, it appears John is a commissioned paid sales representative to Iran….

WASHINGTON — John Kerry’s bid to save one of his most significant accomplishments as secretary of state took him to New York on a Sunday afternoon two weeks ago, where, more than a year after he left office, he engaged in some unusual shadow diplomacy with a top-ranking Iranian official.

He sat down at the United Nations with Foreign Minister Javad Zarif to discuss ways of preserving the pact limiting Iran’s nuclear weapons program. It was the second time in about two months that the two had met to strategize over salvaging a deal they spent years negotiating during the Obama administration, according to a person briefed on the meetings.

With the Iran deal facing its gravest threat since it was signed in 2015, Kerry has been on an aggressive yet stealthy mission to preserve it, using his deep lists of contacts gleaned during his time as the top US diplomat to try to apply pressure on the Trump administration from the outside. President Trump, who has consistently criticized the pact and campaigned in 2016 on scuttling it, faces a May 12 deadline to decide whether to continue abiding by its terms.

Kerry also met last month with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, and he’s been on the phone with top European Union official Federica Mogherini, according to the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal the private meetings. Kerry has also met with French President Emmanuel Macron in both Paris and New York, conversing over the details of sanctions and regional nuclear threats in both French and English.

The rare moves by a former secretary of state highlight the stakes for Kerry personally, as well as for other Obama-era diplomats who are dismayed by what they see as Trump’s disruptive approach to diplomacy, and who view the Iran nuclear deal as a factor for stability in the Middle East and for global nuclear nonproliferation. The pact, which came after a marathon negotiating session in Vienna that involved Iran and six world powers, lifted sanctions in return for Iran stopping its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

“It is unusual for a former secretary of state to engage in foreign policy like this, as an actual diplomat and quasi-negotiator,” said Michael O’Hanlon, a foreign policy expert at the Brookings Institution. “Of course, former secretaries of state often remain quite engaged with foreign leaders, as they should, but it’s rarely so issue-specific, especially when they have just left office.”

Kerry declined to be interviewed for this story. The quiet lobbying campaign — by him and others — is being conducted below the radar because he and his allies believe a high-profile defense of the deal by prominent Democrats would only backfire and provoke Trump, making it more likely the president would pull the United States out of the deal.

“Part of the equation is if Ernie [Ernest Moniz, the former US energy secretary] or John made a bold statement, [Trump] is . . . crazy, and he might do the opposite just to spite them,” said one source who has worked with Kerry. “You’re liable to spur this guy in a direction you don’t want him to go in, just to be spiteful.”

Moniz was a key part of the negotiating team, meeting with his Iranian counterpart as they determined some of the technical scientific details.

A former Obama White House official said there is little to be gained by aiming the effort directly at Trump.

“At least from our network, you’re not going to find messages aimed at him directly,” said the official. “It would be counterproductive. Anything with our brand attached to it, he’ll run in the opposite direction.”

Democratic lawmakers in Congress also have been relatively quiet, and not all share Kerry’s belief that the deal is essential for preventing a nuclear arms race in the volatile region. Kerry has quietly tried to bolster support in Congress. In recent weeks he’s placed dozens of phone calls and, often with Moniz by his side, has lobbied members of Congress, including House Speaker Paul Ryan. While he is not negotiating as he did as secretary of state, he is attempting through quiet advocacy to preserve what he accomplished.

Kerry supporters see in this campaign some of his trademark traits, especially his unflagging energy even in the face of potential failure. Critics see something else, a former office holder working with foreign officials to potentially undermine the policy aims of a current administration.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Under terms of the deal, the United States is supposed to waive sanctions, which come up for review every three or four months, as long as Iran remains in compliance. Trump is threatening to reimpose sanctions on Iran when the next deadline comes on May 12, which would essentially mean the United States is pulling out of the deal. Trump has ridiculed Kerry for a deal that he says is not harsh enough on Iran, saying that inspectors should have broader access, portions of the deal should never expire, and that Iran’s ballistic missile program should also be curtailed.

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu provided further ammunition for critics of the deal, unveiling documents that showed Iranian efforts to build its nuclear program before the 2015 deal was reached.

Kerry and others said the documents were nothing new, and illustrated the need for an inspections regime to make sure Iran is complying with the current agreement.

“Every detail PM Netanyahu presented yesterday was every reason the world came together to apply years of sanctions and negotiate the Iran nuclear agreement — because the threat was real and had to be stopped,” Kerry wrote on Twitter Tuesday. “It’s working!”

Kerry is coordinating his push with a group of officials who were his top advisers at the State Department, and who helped craft and negotiate the Iran deal in the first place. The group, called Diplomacy Works, has an advisory council that includes lead Iran-deal negotiator Wendy Sherman, former State Department chief of staff Jon Finer, and former spokeswoman Jen Psaki.

The group claims to be responsible for 100 news articles, 34 television and radio hits, and 37 opinion pieces on the Iran question. They do fact checks of criticisms of the agreement and blast them out to an e-mail list of nearly 4,000 policy makers and foreign policy experts.

But the group determined that the most influential voices would not be Democrats, and instead would focus on Europeans, Israelis, and nonpartisan experts to try and salvage the deal, according to a person involved in the effort. As a sign of the their success, Kerry has pointed to an April 25 letter signed by 26 former top-ranking Israeli military and security officials urging the United States to stay in the agreement.

“Our effort is self-aware,” said David Wade, a longtime Kerry adviser who was chief of staff at the State Department and is helping advise Diplomacy Works. “We are in uncharted waters. The bipartisan, traditional foreign policy community remains on the president’s enemies list from 2016. The president delights in dismissing anything accomplished under his predecessor, so we know traditional validators wouldn’t be compelling to him.”

“This isn’t President Obama’s agreement. It’s the world’s agreement,” he added. “Maybe Macron, Merkel, and Great Britain can persuade the administration, but if they can’t they’ll be even more essential to protecting the deal absent the United States. We know these voices are powerful. They have an audience with the president and our allies are popular at home.”

They are not ignoring the domestic audience.

Kerry and Moniz met in February with Ryan, who has been outspoken in his opposition to the Iran deal. Kerry also held a breakfast briefing last week with members of the House and Senate, which was designed to answer questions as well as underscore how, if Trump pulls out, Europe could hold the deal together.

Kerry’s activities could raise questions if they are perceived as a direct effort to counter current administration foreign policy.

The Trump administration got entangled with controversy when Michael Flynn, the incoming national security adviser, tried to undermine Obama policies in the administration’s last few weeks. His actions appeared to some legal experts to violate the Logan Act, an obscure 18th century law meant to crack down on private citizens acting on behalf of the United States during a dispute with foreign governments.

The Logan Act prohibits US citizens from having private correspondence with a foreign government “with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government . . . in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States.”

Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas, said the law is a red herring — since it’s never been used to prosecute anyone — and almost certainly would not apply to anything Kerry is doing.

“The act only applies to conduct that is designed to ‘defeat the measures of the United States’ or influence the conduct of foreign governments,” Vladeck said. “If all Kerry is doing is working to keep in place something that’s still technically a ‘measure of the United States,’ I don’t see how the statute would apply even if someone was crazy enough to try it.”

Most Democrats have remained fairly quiet about the Iran deal. Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer opposed the deal from the start, even though he’s not in favor of ripping it up now. Senator Robert Menendez, the top Democrat on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, has been consumed with his own troubles, having spent last year in a federal corruption trial that ended without a conviction. He was admonished last month by the Senate Ethics Committee for bringing “discredit upon the Senate.”

“No one has really led the charge. You could argue that’s what needs to be done by Obama, Kerry, Susan Rice, and the others who were involved,” said Daniel Kurtzer, who served as Bill Clinton’s ambassador to Egypt and George W. Bush’s ambassador to Israel. “But nobody knows how to deal with [Trump].”

The president doesn’t listen much to the voices of the foreign policy establishment. And they don’t really know how to reach him through conservative media.

“It’s a legitimate question to ask why is Obama not out front with the cognoscenti. But those aren’t the ones Trump cares about anyway,” Kurtzer said. “My guess is the phone has been ringing off the hook between European leaders and Obama. The Europeans are trying. They’re giving it their best shot.”

A spokeswoman for Obama declined to comment on whether the former president is doing anything to preserve the Iran deal.

Kurtzer said the most articulate public advocate for the pact right now is Moniz, although he said that the former energy secretary may not have the name recognition required to drive a national debate (Kurtzer himself initially could not correctly recall his name).

“He really knows his stuff,” he said. “He’s very calm . . . . The problem is, who knows who he is?”

Moniz declined several requests for an interview this week about his efforts.

Public support for the deal was initially low, with nearly 60 percent of those surveyed in August 2015 saying they were opposed, according to a survey from Morning Consult. Those numbers are now reversed, with 56 percent supporting it; the number opposed, 26 percent, is the lowest level since the group began polling on the Iran deal.

Democrats are strongly in favor, while Republicans are evenly split, according to the survey conducted from April 26 to May 1. Some on the left believe Trump has kept it alive for political reasons, to provide a convenient foil.

“It’s something that has been in Trump’s cross-hairs even before he was inaugurated,” said the former Obama administration official. “That we’re in May 2018 and still in ‘will-they-or-won’t-they’ speaks to the utility the administration has found in the Iran deal. Otherwise they would have been out of it on day one.

“A lot of us are somewhat skeptical,” the official added. “But we’ve been skeptical for the past 18 or 19 months now.”

Adding Another 25 Cents to the Price of Gas at the Pump

Sigh….would that revenue be applied to pay off U.S. debt? Nah…

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who called raising gas taxes a ‘horrible idea,’ says Trump is considering a hike

  • Raising the federal gas tax is one of several options President Donald Trump is considering to pay for infrastructure spending, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said.
  • The president proposed an increase of 25 cents per gallon last week, according to several sources.
  • Ross, who once called raising the federal fuel levy a “horrible idea,” on Thursday said it’s logical to charge drivers for road improvements.

States With the Highest and Lowest Gas Taxes - 24/7 Wall St. photo

Enter the U.S Chamber of Commerce:

The U.S. Chamber has long believed that implementing a modest increase in the motor vehicle fuel user fee (also known as the gas tax) is the simplest, fairest, and most effective way to raise the money that America needs to fund critical upgrades to our roads, bridges, and transit systems.

Earlier this year, and for the first time, we threw out a number: 25 cents. By raising the federal gas tax by 25 cents—five cents per year over five years—we could raise $394 billion over the next decade, and it would only cost the average motorist about $9 a month.

That’s the kind of money we need to be investing in our nation’s infrastructure system. It’s that important, and we won’t be able to build what we need to build if we do it on the cheap.

So far, we’ve seen strong support for our proposal from across the U.S. business community, and a few weeks ago, President Trump indicated his openness to backing a 25-cent increase as part of his administration’s infrastructure modernization efforts.

Despite the momentum that exists to come up with a long-term and sustainable funding solution for America’s infrastructure woes, our concrete and common-sense proposal has met resistance from some corners of Washington, most of it based on incomplete information about the gas tax and the impact of an increase.

To help fill that gap, we’ve compiled five assertions we’ve heard about the gas tax over the last few weeks, and we’ve filled in parts of the story that have so far been missing from the debate.

1. Assertion: An increase in the gas tax is regressive.

Reality: Any user fee, toll, fare, or sales tax is by definition regressive. The fixed fee or tax is larger as a share of income the less the payer makes. A bus fare, for example, costs a larger share of income for someone who makes $30,000 a year than it does for someone who makes $300,000 a year.

The only way to avoid a regressive system of financing our highways and transit systems is to abandon the user fee model altogether and instead fund infrastructure out of general income taxes. Do opponents of adjusting the gas tax really believe a better alternative is raising income taxes and making the current code more progressive?

It is worth remembering that the costs associated with crumbling and substandard infrastructure are also regressive; inaction is expensive.

Forty-four percent of America’s major roads are in poor or mediocre condition. Driving on those bad roads costs U.S. motorists $120 billion a year in extra vehicle repairs and operating costs—$553 per motorist, in fact. Those bills are a bigger burden for low-income drivers than high-income drivers.

Congestion is also stealing time from American families. The average commute time to work has increased by 35 minutes a week between 1990 and 2015. Higher congestion means longer commutes and higher costs.

2. Assertion:  An increase in the gas tax would wipe out the benefits of tax reform.

Reality: The Ways and Means Committee has estimated that the typical family of four earning the median family income of $73,000 will receive a tax cut of $2,059. Based on average household consumption of gasoline, if a 25-cent increase in the motor fuel tax was implemented all at once (and it is more likely to be phased in) the additional fee would only be $285, a very small portion of the average family’s total tax relief.

Let’s not forget that thanks to common-sense energy policies and increased fuel efficiency, families today are paying less for gasoline. In 2008, the average household expenditure for gasoline was $2,715.  In 2017, it is estimated to have been $1,197, a difference of $738. That savings is more than two times greater than the cost of increasing the motor fuel user fee.

3. Assertion: We don’t need to raise the gas tax. Congress should instead cut spending on bike paths and other wasteful items.

Reality: There is no question that Congress should repurpose any wasteful or low-priority infrastructure spending, but funding for so-called “transportation alternatives” is less than 2% of overall federal highway spending. And of that less than 2%, states are already authorized to transfer half of the funds from alternative projects to more traditional projects.

If you eliminated all funding for transportation alternatives, you would reduce the current $138 billion shortfall in the highway and transit trust fund by only approximately 6%. Furthermore, during the last two federal highway authorization laws (MAP-21 and FAST Act), Congress has substantially reduced the number of federally required programs from 112 to 12, therefore focusing limited dollars on programs with the greatest economic return.

Occasionally, critics will claim that “wasteful,” non-highway funding is much higher—say 20% or more of total spending. However, these critics only get to this larger number by lumping in funding for transit programs. The most recent highway bill provided approximately $10 billion a year in funding for transit programs. Since 1983, when President Reagan signed legislation dedicating a portion of the motor vehicle fuel user fee to transit programs, there has been no serious consideration of divorcing transit funding from highway funding. If Congress, were to do so, it would likely only mean that general fund spending would need to be increased to cover transit program spending, meaning no additional money for highways.

4. Assertion: States have already raised their own gas taxes, so there is no need for Congress to do so.

Reality: Support for our highway infrastructure has historically been a partnership between the federal government and state governments, with state government devoting more dollars to building and maintaining our highway system than the federal government. Adjusted for inflation, spending at all levels of government has been on the decline since 2000. State governments are raising their user fees in many cases in order to just maintain their level of support for highway modernization.  If the federal government fails to do likewise, the historic partnership will break down along with our infrastructure.

5. Assertion: Raising the gas tax is politically impossible.

Reality: Thirty-nine states have raised gas taxes since 1993, and some have done it several times.

We haven’t found a single lawmaker who has lost his or her seat solely because of a vote in favor of raising the gas tax. It may be a tougher vote in some regions of the country or for some elected leaders than others, but it’s a vote worth taking. Each and every day, American voters interact with our nation’s roads, bridges, airports, and more, and we believe voters will reward leaders who acknowledge that infrastructure investments can mean more economic growth and more prosperity.