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Putin Goes Beyond Ukraine to Artic..

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While the world is fretting with good cause over Islamic State, then al Qaeda and Ukraine, how come no one is fretting over Russia in the Artic? Where is Greenpeace or Tom Steyer? Heck where is Barack Obama?

In part from the Strategic Studies Institute , part of the U.S. Army War College:

The Arctic has reemerged as a strategic area where vital U.S. interests are at stake. The geopolitical and geo-economic importance of the Arctic region is immense, as its mineral wealth is likely to turn the region into a booming economic frontier in the 21st century. The Arctic coasts and continental shelf are estimated to hold large deposits of oil, natural gas, methane hydrate (natural gas) clusters, and large quantities of valuable minerals.
With the shrinking of the polar ice cap, navigation through the Northwest Passage along the northern coast of North America may become increasingly possible with the help of icebreakers. Similarly, Russia is seeking to make the Northern Sea Route along the northern coast of Eurasia navigable for considerably longer periods during the year and is listing it as part of its national boundaries in the Kremlin’s new Arc- tic strategy. Passage through these shorter routes will significantly cut the time and costs of shipping. (See Map 1-1.) In recent years, Russia has been particularly active in the Arctic, aggressively advancing its interests and claims by using international law and also establishing a comprehensive presence in the Arctic, including the projection of military might into the region.

Thanks to Jeff at Newsweek:

What Is Russia Up To in the Arctic?

The Mågerø air defense monitoring base is inside a mountain at the end of an unmarked country road two hours south of Oslo, Norway. With only a rudimentary sentry box, a simple draw gate and a lone soldier guarding its entrance, the installation looks more like the set for a movie about the Nazi occupation of the country than a key link in the country’s state-of-the-art defenses.

At the end of a long, narrow tunnel into the mountain, in a cavernous room filled with computers and radar monitor screens, intelligence specialists stare at blinking icons marking the movement of aircraft around Norwegian airspace. On an all-too-typical afternoon recently, they watched as two nuclear-capable Tu-95 Russian Bear Bombers floated like fireflies across the top right of their monitors. A few desks away, an airman picked up phone and called Bodø, a military base on Norway’s northern coast. Moments later, two F-16s rose to eyeball the intruders.

It turned out the Russian bombers were just practicing some kind of circling maneuver outside of Norway’s Arctic air space. But on January 28 two more Tu-95 bombers, escorted by tankers and Russia’s most advanced MiG-31 fighter jets, showed up off the coast. One of them was carrying “a nuclear payload,” according to the London Sunday Express, which cited intercepted radio traffic. And last fall, a Russian Tu-22 supersonic bomber skirting Norway’s northern airspace was photographed carrying a cruise missile in launching position, according to the Barents Observer blog. Similar examples abound.

Adding to the potential for an unintended catastrophe, Russian warplanes typically lift off without filing a flight plan and cruise the busy commercial flight lanes with their transponders off, riling airline and NATO pilots alike. In recent months Russian warplanes have been engaging in Top Gun–style stunts far from home, popping up unannounced aside an SAS airliner on a flight between Copenhagen, Denmark, and Oslo and buzzing a Norwegian F-16 pilot. (A widely watched cockpit video of the incident, released by the defense ministry, shows the pilot yelping “Holy shit!” as a MiG-31 darts past his wingtip.)

“We haven’t seen this kind of activity for many years,” Colonel Arvid Halvorsen, Mågerø’s base commander, says as he watches the blinking icons for the Russian Tu-95s on a radar screen. “The missions are also more complex lately,” he says, with larger and larger groups of bombers escorted by MiGs, tankers and surveillance aircraft.

Although Moscow isn’t threatening the West with anything near the number of warplanes deployed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War, its air sorties around Norway have increased dramatically each year since 2007, when Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his strategic bombers to resume flights in international airspace.

But late last year, with the world’s attention riveted on Ukraine, Putin put a little-noticed exclamation mark on his Arctic strategy. For the first time, the Kremlin’s announced military doctrine included instructions to prepare to defend Russia’s interests in the Arctic. Plans for two new Arctic army brigades were drawn up. An abandoned military base at Alakurtti, Russia, less than 30 miles from the Finnish border, was reopened. And military construction crews began refurbishing a string of Cold War–era bases on islands in the Arctic. “Our main objective is research and evaluation of conditions in the Arctic and the suitability of our weapons and equipment this far north,” Vladimir Kondratov, commander of the surface ships group of the Northern Fleet, told Russia Today.

New Red Dawn?

No one knows what Putin’s endgame is. And while the Norwegians would rather prepare quietly than stoke fears of a Crimean-style Russian grab in the Arctic, the country’s memory of the Nazi invasion 75 years ago remains fresh. At Mågerø and two dozen other bases scattered from Norway’s southern tip to its northern frontier with Russia, Oslo’s armed forces are preparing for the worst.

But “the worst” is a mystery. “I’d agree that the Russians have been very active,” says Keith Stinebaugh, a longtime Defense Department civilian intelligence specialist who is now a senior fellow in Arctic Security Policy at the Institute of the North in Anchorage. But “aggressive” may be overstating it, he adds. “You’d have to define what is meant by aggressive and compare it to what they did during the Cold War.… They are certainly more active around the world, not just in the Arctic.”

A Russian-speaking former CIA officer, who spent more than a dozen years operating undercover in the former Soviet Union, agrees. Today’s activities are “nothing like the Soviet air incursions that occurred on a weekly basis at the height of the Cold War,” the former officer says. And while Moscow’s armed forces, are “much improved over the past few years, [they] are still a shadow of their former Soviet selves.… Putin is very aware of this,” the officer adds, “but his beefed-up forces enhance national prestige and have allowed Russia to command more respect on the international scene.”

Which is a waste of money for Moscow, argues Ernie Regehr, a senior fellow in Arctic security at the Vancouver, British Columbia–based Simons Foundation. “Does it ever make sense to threaten to do what you know will never be in your interests to do?” Regehr recently argued in a paper for the foundation. “Symbolic flights of fighter aircraft and bombers are intended to remind the adversary that these weapons are available for use. But in any rational world, they are clearly not available for use by Russia against NATO or by NATO against Russia. There is no circumstance under which this would make sense or serve the interests of either side. Neither side wants them to be used.”

Stinebaugh, who spent 38 years in the Defense Department, suggests there may be a more prosaic reason for Russia’s Arctic buildup: money. “It may be that one way to get a project funded in the Russian military system today is to attach the word ‘Arctic’ to it, just like U.S. projects got funded by invoking [the global war on terror] and now get funded with ‘cyber’ even if the connection is tenuous,” he says.

Yet few Norwegians can completely banish the specter of the Russian bear on their doorstep, says Reidun Samuelsen, the editor at Aftenposten, Norway’s leading newspaper. “It’s never far from our minds,” she tells Newsweek.

Norwegian Nightmares

As was the case in the U.S. during the Cold War, when fears of nuclear conflict found outlets in films such as Dr. Strangelove Norwegians’ anxieties over Russian intentions will soon burst forth in Occupied, a political thriller conceived by Jo Nesbø, Norway’s internationally best-selling crime writer.

Scheduled to debut on Norwegian TV next year, the weekly drama “follows events in the close future” when Russia has carried out a “silk glove invasion” of Norway “in order to take control of its oil resources,” according to a news release.

“My idea was this,” Nesbø told Newsweek by email. “The Norwegian Green/left-wing government has decided it will stop producing fossil energy.” Russia moves in, seizing its oil facilities. When the U.S. and E.U. issue only paper protests, he says, Norwegian leaders “don’t see the point in military action, they try to negotiate while the Russians quietly take over the few things they [need] to take over to control the oil. And it’s a gentle occupation. Most Norwegians can’t really tell the difference. There are few Russians present, most of them are in suits, and there’s seemingly no censorship and Norwegians can travel freely and keep on living their lives as one of the richest populations in the world.”

News of the series emerged at about the same time Norway’s security service uncovered evidence of real-life subversion in the capital. Some foreign intelligence service—the main suspects were Russia and China, which also covets the Arctic’s future shipping routes—had planted so-called IMSI catchers, devices that can secretly capture the signals of cellphones, around Oslo’s government buildings. Officially, the perpetrator remains a mystery, but Norwegian sources tell Newsweek the government knows who did it but has shied from fingering the guilty party out of fear of triggering a full-scale international scandal.

Nesbø, whose 20 novels have sold 23 million copies in 40 countries, says the plausibility of Occupied’’s plot is beside the point. The real drama revolves around “a situation where it’s hard to pinpoint what you’ve lost in your everyday material world,” he says. “What would people be willing to sacrifice for phrases like freedom, independence and democracy? And who would be the first ones to resist? And would the nation follow?”

Guerrillas in the Arctic

Such questions are likely to rekindle unsavory memories of Norway’s capitulation to Germany in 1940 with the help of local Nazis led by the infamous Vidkun Quisling. The Norwegian king and tens of thousands of patriots escaped to England, where they set up a government in exile and formed a resistance movement eager to go back and fight. Trained by Britain’s secret services, the guerrillas of Norwegian Independent Company 1 eventually snuck back into the country and wreaked havoc on the Nazis.

Norwegians can’t get enough of this version of themselves. Every Sunday night for six weeks in January and February, more than one of every five Norwegians sat down to watch the latest episode of The Heavy Water War, a dramatization of the heroic guerrillas’ sabotage of Norway’s stocks of deuterium oxide, which the Germans seized to produce a nuclear weapon.

The guerrilla mentality remains an important strain in Norway’s military forces. Last year, Nils Johan Holte, the rangy, 57-year-old rear admiral who heads Norway’s Special Operations Command, took 10 of his officers back to the training camp in Scotland, where the first guerrillas learned hand-to-hand fighting and explosives. “It was about connecting with our origins.… ” Holte said as heavy snow fell outside his office in Oslo, “and for [the men] to understand that there’s a seriousness today about this.” It seems no accident that the headquarters of today’s Norwegian guerrillas is on the grounds of the hulking, medieval Akershus Fortress, built to defend the city from sea raiders 700 years ago. In 1940, it was occupied by the Nazis.

In 1988 the Norwegian government nearly disbanded its special operations force, which was initially set up as a small, discreet anti-terrorist unit inside the armed forces, as a money-saving move. Protests, including from the oil industry, which feared attacks on its North Sea drilling platforms—saved it. Since then, its commandos have seen action from the Balkans to Afghanistan and many secret places in between. And last year, the unit became independent, reporting directly to the chief of defense.

Like other Norwegian commanders and politicians, Holte is discreet when it comes to characterizing the recent Russian moves as sinister. Asked directly about the threat, he leans back in his chair, folds his hands behind his head, and smiles. His lone message for any potential adversary: “Do not attack Norway. We can defend ourselves.”

Obama White House Navigates with Muslim Brotherhood

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The Betrayal Papers – Part II of V: In Plain Sight: A National Security “Smoking Gun”

Primer:

The first article of the Betrayal Papers asserted that the Muslim Brotherhood was not only influential in the United States government, but in fact dominated the administration of President Barack Hussein Obama. This article will name several key people who were or are in the Obama administration and who have various, documented associations with organizations who are directly tied to and/or funded by the Muslim Brotherhood and the State of Qatar (home to their Spiritual Leader, Yusuf al-Qaradawi). These individuals have helped dictate national security policies that have crippled counterterrorism efforts at home and abroad.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s Network of Civic Organizations: Apologists for Terror

In 1963, the first Muslim Brotherhood front group established itself in the United States and Canada: the Muslim Students Association of the U.S. and Canada (MSA), a group based on college campuses in North America. Through this organizational foothold, the Brotherhood has recruited and indoctrinated generations of American and Canadian Muslims into an Islamic belief system that pits Islam against the world. In more than a few cases, Muslims who join MSA chapters at their colleges have taken this ideology to its logical extreme: terrorism.

For example, it was recently reported by the Canadian Military Association that eleven (11) of Canada’s highest profile terrorists were tied to the MSA.

Since the early 1960s, the Muslim Brotherhood’s MSA has birthed a large number of purported “civic organizations,” which are anything but civil. We shall now name some of the groups, and establish the facts that link them to their parent organization, the Muslim Brotherhood.

Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR): CAIR was founded by two individuals with close ties to a Hamas operative. Hamas, according to its own charter, is the branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine. In 2007, founder Omar Ahwad was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorist financing trial. In November 2014, CAIR was designated a terrorist organization by the United Arab Emirates.

Muslim American Society (MAS): MAS was founded in 1992 by members of the Muslim Brotherhood, according to MAS secretary-general Shaker Elsayed. MAS, and the Muslim Brotherhood, advocate for Sharia law in the United States. MAS identifies the Islamic Society of North American (ISNA) and Muslim Students Association (MSA) as organizations with the same goal: the “Islamic revival movement.” In November 2014, MAS was designated a terrorist organization by the United Arab Emirates.

Islamic Society of North America (ISNA): ISNA was created out of four Islamic organizations, including the Muslim Students Association. Its former president Mohamed Magid was appointed an advisor to DHS and the National Security Council by Barack Obama in 2011, and was a recent guest at the White House.

Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC): MPAC was founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood, specifically Hassan and Maher Hathout, both whom were acolytes of Muslim Brotherhood founder, Hassan al-Banna. MPAC supports the Tunisian Ennahda (Muslim Brotherhood) Party leader, Rachid Ghannouchi, whom they termed “one of the most important figures in modern Islamic political thought and theory.” Its current President is Salam Al-Marayati, who represented the US to the United Nations and UNESCO in 2010.

Muslim Students Association (MSA): The MSA, the first Muslim Brotherhood organization to gain a foothold in the United States, was founded in 1963. Many founding members were Muslim Brothers or had connections to the Muslim Brotherhood. The three most significant founders of MSA were Hisham al Talib, Jamal Barzinji, and Ahmed Totanji, and all of whom were MB leaders of Iraqi descent. While a student at George Washington University, Hillary Clinton’s personal aide Huma Abedin was on the Executive Board of her MSA.

Additionally, a 1991 internal memorandum of the Muslim Brotherhood identifies, specifically, CAIR, ISNA, and the MSA in “A list of our organizations and organizations of our friends.” (Note: CAIR’s organizational predecessor, the Islamic Association of Palestine, is named.)

Finally, CAIR and ISNA were named un-indicted co-conspirators which materially supported terrorism by a federal court, in connection with the infamous Holy Land Foundation trial, an alleged humanitarian charity for Palestine. An incorporating member of MAS, Dr. Jamal Badawi, was named an unindicted co-conspirator. MPAC and MSA members are on the record supporting the Holy Land Foundation against government terrorism charges.

This evidence begs some questions from the honest reader:

  • If these are all independent organizations, why is it that each of them is so neatly tied to the same parent organization, the Muslim Brotherhood?
  • Why are most of them named by the Muslim Brotherhood in their own memorandum?
  • Why were all involved, directly as unindicted co-conspirators or indirectly as defenders, with the Holy Land Foundation trial?

It doesn’t take a super sleuth to realize that these organizations are in fact assets of one organization, the Muslim Brotherhood. All one has to do is glance at the published information on their backgrounds, and the fact reveals itself.

The Anschluss of Georgetown and the Brookings Institution

You know the sayings. Money makes the world go ’round, and Follow the money, and Money is the root of all evil. These are important to keep in mind when considering the influence that Qatari money has had on two institutions as American as apple pie: Georgetown University and the Brookings Institution.

In 2005, Georgetown University established a new campus for their prestigious School of Foreign Service in Doha, Qatar. (It bears stating here that the State of Qatar was the driving Arab force behind the Arab Spring, which resulted in the Muslim Brotherhood coming to power in Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt.) Today they have a faculty of more than 35 academics.

As part of Qatar’s Education City, Georgetown has had all SFS-Q campus development costs covered by the Qatar Foundation, a charity with noted links to terrorism. May this, perchance, have some influence over the education that Georgetown is giving to future American diplomats in Qatar? At the very least, it may explain some of the blatant anti-Semitic comments in Georgetown’s student newspaper.

Likewise, the Brookings Institution is also heavily funded by Qatar. In 2013, they received $14.8 million; in 2012, $100,000; and in 2011 $2.9 million. This explains why Obama had Brookings Vice President (and purported diplomat) Martin Indyk, negotiating the ‘peace terms’ between Israel and Hamas. Today, Indyk is busy negotiating with an aggressive and nuclear-aspiring Iran.

Is it any wonder why Israel doesn’t trust this administration? By all reasonable logic, they are on the side of Qatar and Hamas, which is officially the Palestinian franchise of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Obama Administration’s Agents

Given that these organizations function in a coordinated ideological manner, indeed they derive from the same root, it follows naturally that an individual associated with one organization would likely be associated with many, if not most of the others – not to mention the proxies of Georgetown and Brookings.

An experiment: Let’s choose seven Obama administration appointees with suspected ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Where to pluck these seven from? In December 2013, the Egyptian political magazine Rose El-Youssef, in an article entitled Not Huma Abedin Alone, named six (plus one Huma Abedin) Obama appointees it claimed were operatives of the Muslim Brotherhood. You can read an English translation here. Let’s see if their claims stack up, based on the information above.

Here are the seven named and their titles in the Obama administration:

Arif Alikhan – Assistant Secretary for Homeland Security for Policy Development. 2009-2010. Eboo Patel – Member of the President’s Advisory Council to the Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. 2009-Present. Huma Abedin – Personal Aide/Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. 2009-2013. Mohamed Magid – DHS Countering Violence and Extremism Working Group. 2011-Present. Mohammed Elibiary – Senior Member of DHS’s Homeland Security Advisory Council. 2010-2014. Rashad Hussain – U.S. Special Envoy to the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). 2010-Present. Deputy Associate Counsel to Barack Obama. 2009-2010. Salam Al-Marayati – Administration representative to UNESCO and United Nations. 2010.

(Dates in administration are best efforts based on publicly available information.)

Now let’s compare their affiliations and associations, officially and less formally, across the above named organizations. We’ll also include the Department of Homeland Security, which earlier this week was praised by CAIR for identifying “right-wing sovereign citizen extremist groups,” not Islamic terrorism, the prime terrorist threat facing the United States.

MB graph 1

 

Color Key

Green: Has worked or works in an official capacity for organization; is a named member of the organization. Yellow: Has been associated with org., e.g., authored paper on their behalf; spoke on their behalf and/or at their events; proven personal relationship between the individual and organization’s leadership, etc. Grey: No known/documented association.

No Coincidences

Notice the heavy concentration of green and yellow boxes, including for Georgetown and Brookings, in the table above. Notice the relatively few grey boxes. Individually these associations mean little; likewise, had this been just one random appointee in the entire administration, this story wouldn’t warrant the attention of the American public.

The complex of individuals and organizations, of Muslim Brotherhood money and policy recommendations, round out a picture of a carefully constructed conspiracy operating in plain sight.   It has hijacked the American government and military and used it as a tool to build a global Islamic Caliphate. The conspirators are changing the culture at home to accommodate sharia law and using law enforcement to demonize ordinary American citizens as national security threats.

These are Barack Hussein Obama’s appointees. This is Barack Hussein Obama’s administration and these are people chosen to advise him on national security and Islam.

From expunging from DHS considerations the threat posed by Islamic terrorism, to corrupting American foreign policy, the policy implications of these and similar appointments will be explored in the next articles.

* This analysis was completed after a careful survey of available press releases, news reports, and credible published information. They will be published in an upcoming report. Source material available upon request.

The Betrayal Papers is a collaborative effort by the Coalition of Concerned Citizens, which includes: Andrea Shea King, Dr. Ashraf Ramelah, Benjamin Smith, Brent Parrish, Charles Ortel, Chris Nethery, Denise Simon, Dick Manasseri, Gary Kubiak, Gates of Vienna, Hannah Szenes, IQ al Rassooli, Jeff Bayard, Leslie Burt, Marcus Kohan, Mary Fanning, General Paul E. Vallely, Regina Thomson, Scott Smith, Terresa Monroe-Hamilton, Colonel Thomas Snodgrass, Trever Loudon, Wallace Bruschweiler, and William Palumbo.

 

 

 

 

Obama Regime Ignores Iran’s Secret Nuke Facility

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Mark Levin admitted something today he has held close for years. The United States should have attacked Iran.

There are leaks coming to the surface where John Kerry and the White House are in agreement that Iran can keep 6500 centrifuges spinning for uranium enrichment and ten years from now, well there will no more limitations imposed. Iran is a rogue state and a worldwide sponsor of terror.

One may ask where all this coziness is coming from that the United States has warmed to Iran during the Obama regime. Among many that are pushing this Iranian agenda includes missions for insider investmenst and the Center for American Progress.

Joseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund—which has funneled millions over the years to organizations pushing a soft line on Iran—appears to have changed his tune on the restrictions necessary to prevent a nuclear Iran since beginning work for the group in 2008.

Cirincione, a former top official at the liberal Center for American Progress (CAP), has pushed diplomacy with Iran in the press and has been a key ally in the White House’s battle to sell a hotly contested nuclear deal with Tehran.

John Kerry gave testimony today before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, completely defending his talks with Iran on the nuclear program all while the revelations were broadcasted that a secret Iranian nuclear research and development facility was discovered by Mujahedin e Khalq (MEK).

Introduction

The following information is the result of a decade-long, detailed, risky and complex effort by the network of the NCRI’s main component, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) inside Iran.

The MEK has obtained this intelligence from highly placed sources within the Iranian regime as well as those involved in the nuclear weapons projects. The process of vetting and corroborating this information involved multiple sources, acting independent of one another over a span of many years. The vetting and verification process has just been completed enabling us to reveal this information now.

Executive Summary

1. Despite the Iranian regime’s claims that all of its enrichment activities are transparent and under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency, it has in fact been engaged in research and development with advanced centrifuges at a secret nuclear site called Lavizan-3, in a military base in northeast Tehran suburbs.

2. Since 2008, the Iranian regime has secretly engaged in research and uranium enrichment with advanced IR-2m, IR-3 and IR-4 centrifuge machines at this site.

3. The Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) is directly responsible for the protection and security of this complex; disguising it as a secret MOIS center, unrelated to nuclear activities, to prevent it from being identified as a secret nuclear site.

4. This site is located in an area of about 500 by 500 meters, (250,000 m2; roughly 62 acres). The primary nuclear site is buried deep underground in tunnels and underground facilities spanning about 2000 m2 (0.5 acres).

5. To go to the underground site, an elevator descends several stories, deep underground and opens into a 200-meter tunnel, which leads to four parallel halls. Because the ground is inclined, the halls are deeper underground, as deep as approximately 50 meters.

6. Each of the halls is 40 by 10 meter (400 m2). The four halls are 50 meters apart from one another.

7. The halls have 3 by 3 meter and 40 centimeter-thick, radiation proof doors. There is shielding material, including lead, inside the doors to prevent radiation leak. (Enclosed is a picture of one of the shielding doors of the underground facility in Lavizan-3)

8. The underground facilities are dual layered to prevent radiation and sound leaks.

9. The Defense Ministry has built these tunnels and underground facilities under the direction of IRGC Brig. Gen. Seyyed Ali Hosseini-Tash, the then Deputy Defense Minister.

10. Kalaye Electric Company, affiliated with the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, and responsible for enrichment has overseen the construction of this site. Morteza Behzad, an engineer and key nuclear official, who played a major role in starting up the Fordo underground uranium enrichment site, was in charge of managing Lavizan-3.

Details of the Revelation

1. Lavizan-3 site is used for research and development as well as uranium enrichment with advanced centrifuges.

2. Since 2008, the Iranian regime has secretly engaged in research and uranium enrichment with advanced IR-2m, IR-3 and IR-4 centrifuge machines at this site.

3. Kalaye Electric Company, affiliated with the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran has overseen the construction of this site. Kalaye Electric has been involved in uranium enrichment for the Iranian regime and pursued different parts of the construction, including the manufacturing and installation of centrifuges as well as enrichment activities[1].

4. Morteza Behzad, an engineer, who played a key part in starting up the underground uranium enrichment site, Fordo, near the city of Qom, and the liaison between the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran and the Defense Ministry, was among the managers of Lavizan-3 site[2].

5. This site is among a collection of complexes built on the orders of IRGC Brig. Gen. Seyyed Ali Hosseini-Tash[3], the then Deputy Defense Minister, whose job has been to pursue the building of nuclear weapons. At the time, the entity responsible for building nuclear weapons, Center for Defensive Preparedness and Technology, was headed by Mohsen Fakhrizadeh Mahabadi, and operated under the direction of Hosseini-Tash. In recent years, the entity in charge of manufacturing nuclear weapons is called Defensive Innovation and Research Organization, known by its Farsi acronym, SPND. Hosseini-Tash is currently the deputy to the Supreme National Security Council.

6. Experts in Center for Defensive Preparedness and Technology (Fakhar Moghaddam Group), which is part of SPND, have joined senior experts of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran to carry out enrichment research. Fakhar Moghaddam Group is tasked with nuclear physics research and production of enriched uranium.

Ownership of the site

1. The garrison housing this site is located within a military zone, which belonged to the Iranian Army under the Shah. It is considered a restricted military zone.

2. The land was handed over to the Prime Ministry’s Office in 1972.

3. Following the 1979 revolution, the land was transferred to the Ministry of Intelligence and Security. But local residents have been told it belongs to the President’s Office.

Location of the site

1. This site is located in km 3 of Army Boulevard (formerly Lashkarak highway), in the northeastern suburbs of Tehran. (See the satellite imagery).

2. It is situated in a piece of land, approximately 500 by 500 m (an area of 250,000 m2, approximately 62 acres).

3. Army Boulevard (three kilometers from Araj Square) is on the north side of the site. Shahmoradi Street is to the east. Ghamar Bani-Hashem Street is to the west and residential apartments of Lavizan-3 (Khoshrou Township) are to the south of this site. Lavizan-3 Township is the residential quarters for Army commanders and entry requires special permission.

4. There are two distinct sections at this site, separated by a wall. The northern gate of this complex at the Army Boulevard and the northeastern gate on Shahmoradi Street are always closed and only opened with prior notice and permission. But the southern gate at Shahmoradi Street, where the Matiran Company is located, is controlled by sentry guards.

5. A separate complex, 170 by 170 m is located in the southeastern part of this site. A two-story building 70 by 70 m is built in the middle of this area. According to our intelligence, one of the doors of the tunnel is underneath this building.

6. The building inside the area is white and the walls around it are built with red bricks and are about three meters tall.

7. After 2010, a six-story building was reconstructed or built from scratch in the northern section of this site. This building and several other buildings are within the larger area of this complex.

Front Entity to Cover Up the Site:

1. Following the exposure of Natanz and Arak sites in August 2002, Kalaye Electric site in February 2003 and Lavizan-Shian site in May 2003 by the NCRI, based on the information from the network inside Iran of its main component organization, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), the MOIS conducted a security assessment. Accordingly, the regime decided to task the MOIS with the protection of its nuclear projects and facilities. One of the most important sites was the Lavizan-3 research facility. The MOIS took responsibility and specified the type of protective cover and security arrangement for it.

2. The Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) is directly responsible for the protection and security of this complex; disguising it as a secret MOIS center, unrelated to nuclear activities, to prevent it from being identified as a secret nuclear site.

3. The entire site is under the supervision of the Intelligence Ministry’s Technical Directorate and consists of two sections: Jamal Complex and Matiran Company.

4. Jamal Complex is comprised of several large buildings and complexes. The main building in this complex is a six-story building northeast of the area. An Intelligence Ministry director, Sabeti is in charge of this complex. The head of security is an official named Mo’azam.

5. The second part of this complex is Matiran Company, which is located in the southern section of the garrison and is separated from the other areas by a wall.

6. Matiran Company is part of the Intelligence Ministry’s Technical Directorate, and produces digital identification cards, birth certificates and other security-related cards. The advanced laser printers of the company are located in the upper floors of this square-shaped building at the site.

7. Hamid Shoaibi is the head of the Matiran Company and is also the head of “Organization of the Country’s Security Documents,” a part of the Intelligence Ministry.[4]
1. The main nuclear activities site is underground, inside the tunnels and underground facilities, spanning more than 2000 m2 (0.5 acres).

2. The workshops are built underground. To get there, an elevator descends several stories deep underground and opens into a 200-meter long tunnel, which leads to four parallel halls. Because the ground is inclined, the halls are deeper in the ground, as deep as 50 meters.

3. Each of the halls is about 400 m2; 10 by 40 meters. And the parallel halls are built 50 meters apart from one another.

4. The halls have 3 by 3 m radiation proof doors that are 40 centimeters thick and weigh about 8 tons. There is shielding material inside the doors, including lead to prevent radiation leak.

5. The walls of the tunnels are dual-layered in order to prevent radiation and sound leak.

6. The underground facilities have special ventilation and air conditioning systems, which prevent the underground activities from emitting radiation and other fumes, which would expose the nature of these activities.

7. Forklifts are used to move around the equipment and material inside the tunnels.

The Construction Entity

1. The Hara Company, which is a part of the Khatam al-Anbia Garrison of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, has built these tunnels. Hara has constructed other secret defense projects.[5] IRGC Brig. Gen. Mehdi Etessam was in charge of Hara when these tunnels were built. Ali Alizadeh was in charge of the secret defense projects of Hara and Mohsen Karimi was the Director of its Technical Directorate. Since November 2014, Karim Ganjeh has been in charge of Hara Company.

2. Intelligence indicates that excavating the tunnels began in early 2004. The underground facilities were completed around 2008. The construction took longer because Hara Company tried to be least visible and minimize the noise generated by the excavating equipment underground.

3. The underground site was built by the Defense Ministry for Brig. Gen. Seyyed Ali Hosseini-Tash, the then-Deputy Defense Minister.

The Site’s Security Arrangements

1. Because this site was built in a piece of land owned and controlled by the Intelligence Ministry, the MOIS maximized security measures. Since the start of construction, the Ministry made some changes to keep the nuclear activities secret.

2. There are sentry guards at the entrance of the site and the entire complex has closed circuit monitors. There are seven sentry posts around the site, which points to maximum security.

3. During the construction of the site, several code names were used. Some agencies were told the site was “Ozgol Headquarters” of the Iranian regime’s Air Force. Local residents were told this was part of the Presidential Complex. This is very similar to the disguise used to keep the Fordo site secret. The regime had described it as an IRGC missile site, called Nour al-Mehdi Garrison.

4. Because of the sensitivity of Shahmoradi Street, the end of the street is closed with a large gate, making it a dead-end street. Only the personnel of the military centers and those residing in the same street. (In addition to Lavizan-3 site, a military residential complex, called 64-unit, an Army Garrison called Baharvar, and an electronic industry spare parts factory [among the Electronic Group factories affiliated with the Defense Ministry] are located on Shahmoradi Street.)

Conclusion:

Despite the Iranian regime’s claims of transparency in its nuclear activities today’s intelligence makes it clear that it has been continuing to lie for more than a decade. Research and Development with advanced centrifuges in secret sites are only intended to advance the nuclear weapons project. While the regime deceived the world into believing that it had halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003, it had been in fact heavily involved in preparing this nuclear site from 2004 to 2008.

If the United States is serious about preventing the Iranian regime from obtaining nuclear weapons, it must make the continuation of the talks conditional on IAEA’s immediately inspecting the Lavizan-3 site. Any delay in doing so will enable the regime to destroy the evidence as it has done in the past.

On October 30, 2014, Secretary Kerry said that one of the “four present pathways to a bomb for Iran” is through “covert activities,” and that “our goal is to shut off each pathway.” Our intelligence today demonstrates that the covert advancement of the nuclear program is the most serious pathway the Iranian regime is pursuing.

Therefore, if the US and its partners in P5+1 seek to block Tehran’s pathway to the bomb, they must demanding the following:

1. Complete implementation of all Security Council Resolutions.

2. Immediate halt to any enrichment and the closure of related facilities, including Natanz, Fordo and Arak.

3. Signing the Additional Protocol and the start of IAEA’s snap and unconditional inspection of all sites and unhindered access to documents and experts suspected of being involved in the nuclear project.

The notion that the Iranian regime will abandon their nuclear weapons program thru nuclear talks is misguided and the byproduct of the mullahs’ duplicity and western economic and political expediency. Those who hope to secure the regime’s cooperation in the campaign against extremism by offering concessions to the mullahs are both increasing the chances of a nuclear-armed Iran and contributing to the spread of Islamic extremism.

The ultimate solution to prevent the nightmare of extremists becoming nuclear is though firmness, comprehensive sanctions and support for the Iranian people and their Resistance as they strive to change the theocratic regime in Iran.

[1] Kalaye Electric site, located on the Damavand Highway, northeast of Tehran, was exposed by the NCRI in February 2003 and was immediately requested to be inspected by the IAEA; which was granted several months later. The IAEA discovered that the site had been a uranium enrichment testing facility after finding traces of highly enriched uranium there. Up to 50 centrifuges had been cascaded to carry out research. The research conducted at Lavizan-3 is similar to the research at Kalaye Electric before it was exposed by the NCRI.

[2] Morteza Behzad is a key official in the Iranian regime’s nuclear program involved in starting up Fordo enrichment site near the city of Qom. He was the liaison between Atomic Energy Organization of Iran and the Defense Ministry and was included in the UN Security Council’s sanctions list, (see 3 March 2008 Annex I of resolution 1803) and “designated for involvement in making centrifuge components.”

[3] According to Hassan Rouhani’s book, “National Security and Nuclear Diplomacy,” Hossieni-Tash was a key member of the Nuclear Committee in the Supreme National Security Council. The NCRI exposed him in 2004 as the official responsible for nuclear weapons manufacturing in Iran.

[4] Experts working at the Matiran Company, which is located in the square building at Lavizan-3 site include Majid Shafiee, Production Manager, Massoud Taghipour, Design Section and Abbas Khodaverdi, Chief Technical Officer.

[5] Listed in an annex to U.N. Security Council Resolution 1929 of June 9, 2010, as an IRGC entity with a role “in Iran’s proliferation-sensitive nuclear activities and the development of nuclear weapon delivery systems.”

Read much more here with citations, photos and video.

Why Obama Chose Qatar Over Congress

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Today, al Thani is visiting the White House again. Question is why?

Qatari officials have positioned themselves as mediators and interlocutors in a number of regional conflicts in recent years. Qatar’s deployment of military aircraft to support NATO-led operations in Libya and U.S.-led operations against the Islamic State in Syria signaled a new assertiveness, as has reported Qatari support for armed elements of the Syrian opposition. Some of Qatar’s positions have drawn U.S. scrutiny and raised the ire of its Gulf Arab neighbors, including its leaders’ willingness to engage Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Taliban and allegations of Qatari support for extremists in Syria. It remains unclear whether Qatar’s active and—for the United States—at times vexing policies may change under Emir Tamim. To date, the Obama Administration has remained committed to military and counterterrorism cooperation with the ambitious leaders of this wealthy, strategically located country.
The United States opened its embassy in Doha in 1973, but U.S. relations with Qatar did not blossom until after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. In the late 1980s, the United States and Qatar engaged in a prolonged diplomatic dispute regarding Qatar’s black market procurement of U.S.- made Stinger anti-aircraft missiles.7 The dispute froze planned economic and military cooperation, and Congress approved a ban on arms sales to Qatar (§566(d), P.L. 100-461) until the months leading up to the 1991 Gulf War, when Qatar allowed coalition forces to operate from Qatari territory and agreed to destroy the missiles in question.8 In January 1991, Qatari armored forces helped coalition troops repel an Iraqi attack on the Saudi Arabian town of Kafji, on the coastal road leading south from Kuwait into Saudi Arabia’s oil-rich Eastern Province.9 In June 1992, Qatar signed a defense cooperation agreement with the United States, opening a period of close coordination in military affairs that has continued to the present. The United States promptly recognized the assumption of power by Shaykh Hamad in June 1995 and welcomed Qatar’s defense cooperation, as well as Shaykh Hamad’s modest political, economic, and educational reform efforts. President Obama congratulated Emir Tamim upon his accession to the throne in June 2013, and Qatari-U.S. relations remain close, amid some differences over regional security questions. Qatari-U.S. defense relations have expanded to include cooperative defense exercises, equipment pre-positioning, and base access agreements. U.S. concerns regarding alleged material support for terrorist groups by some Qataris, including reported past support by a prominent member of the royal family, have been balanced over time by Qatar’s counterterrorism efforts and its broader, long-term commitment to host and support U.S. military forces active in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the rest of the CENTCOM area of responsibility. In December 2013, U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel visited Doha, met with Emir Tamim, and signed a new 10-year defense cooperation agreement, followed in July 2014 by agreements for $11 billion in advanced arms sales.

The United States has provided limited counterterrorism assistance to Qatar to support the development of its domestic security forces, and the Export-Import Bank has provided over $2 billion in loan guarantees to support various natural gas development projects in Qatar since 1996. The Obama Administration has phased out U.S. foreign assistance and has not requested military construction funds for facilities in Qatar since FY2012. Qatar donated $100 million to victims of Hurricane Katrina in the U.S. Gulf states, and Qatari state entities and private individuals continue to make large investments in the United States. Several prominent U.S. universities have established satellite campuses in Doha at Qatar’s Education City, where Qatari, American, and other students pursue undergraduate and graduate coursework across a broad range of subjects.
In Congress, legislative action related to Qatar remains relatively limited with the exception of appropriations and authorization legislation that affects U.S. defense programs and congressional review of proposed foreign military sales to the Qatari military. Qatar’s foreign and domestic policies are monitored by congressional foreign affairs, defense, and intelligence committees, while Qatar’s resource wealth and associated economic clout fuels congressional interest in U.S.- Qatari trade and investment ties. (1)
*** The collusion continues:
Qatar’s Ties to Militants Strain Alliance

DOHA, Qatar—During President Barack Obama ’s first term, some members of his National Security Council lobbied to pull a U.S. fighter squadron out of an air base in Qatar to protest the emirate’s support of militant groups in the Mideast.

The Pentagon pushed back, according to former U.S. officials involved in the discussion, saying a regional military command the U.S. maintains at the base was vital to American operations in the region. The issue was decided in late 2013 when the U.S. extended its lease on the base and didn’t pull out any planes.

The episode, not previously reported, reflects long-standing divisions within the Obama administration over America’s widening alliance with Qatar. The problem is that the very traits making the Persian Gulf emirate a valuable ally are also a source of worry: Qatar’s relationships with Islamist groups.

Secretary of State John Kerry has formed a tight partnership with Qatari diplomats, using them as conduits for messages to Hamas in the Palestinian territories, to Afghanistan’s Taliban and to jihadist rebel groups in Syria and Libya, according to State Department officials. Mr. Kerry has lauded Qatar’s role in seeking to negotiate an end to Israeli-Hamas fighting last summer.

U.S. officials also have praised Qatar for using its channels to broker the release of Westerners held hostage, including U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was swapped last year for five captured Taliban commanders.

Champions of the U.S.-Qatar alliance, especially in the Defense and State departments, say Qatar is indispensable to the struggle against Islamic State, the group also called ISIS or ISIL. U.S. airstrikes against Islamic State often launch from the air base in Qatar, al-Udeid, said American officials, who added that Qatar’s air force has provided surveillance and logistical support.

But Qatar also has given financial or diplomatic support to Mideast rebel groups, including some that seek to establish Islamic law or have ties to al Qaeda, according to U.S. and Arab officials as well as Western diplomats in the region. The support includes providing sanctuary to leaders of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, which Qatar acknowledges.

For years, Islamist rebel fighters from Libya and Syria traveled to Qatar and returned with suitcases full of money, according to rebels who were interviewed and to Persian Gulf government officials. American officials said the U.S. has uncovered Qatari connections—such as involvement by members of the emirate’s elite business, religious and academic circles—in financing for Hamas, al Qaeda and Islamic State.

In September, the U.S. Treasury Department said publicly that an Islamic State commander had received $2 million in cash from an unnamed Qatari businessman. The following month, a Treasury official publicly criticized Qatar for failing to act against what he called terrorist financiers living in the emirate.

Last week, Qatar protested when Egypt bombed Islamic State forces in Libya who had beheaded 21 Egyptian Christians. An Egyptian diplomat responded by publicly accusing Qatar of supporting terrorism, which Qatar denied.

Visit from the emir

A chance to air these issues comes Tuesday as Qatar’s emir, Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, meets with President Obama at the White House.

In interviews, senior Qatari officials denied their government funds or has funded terrorist organizations. They said Qatar has a right to have diplomatic ties with Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist movements that they said have broad support in the Arab public. (The U.S. lists Hamas as a terrorist organization but not the Brotherhood.)

“We are not a bloc-mentality-belonging country. We create platforms for dialogue,” said Qatar’s foreign minister, Khalid bin Mohammad al-Attiyah. “If this approach allows us to bring long-lasting peace and security in our region, we will not be affected by any criticism.”

Washington’s ambassador to Qatar, Dana Shell Smith, said the U.S. relationship with the emirate “is a fundamentally good one, and we share a number of important interests. We don’t agree on everything, but we are always frank with each other about‎ where we disagree and why.”

U.S. and Arab officials say there are signs Qatar has begun paring back support for the most extreme militant groups following repeated warnings from Washington and certain Arab states. Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates pulled their ambassadors from Doha in March 2014 to protest Qatar’s foreign policy, but have since returned the diplomats to their posts.

Washington and the American oil industry played leading roles in Qatar’s emergence on the global stage. Qatar was among the less wealthy Gulf states in the 1980s, before the export of its plentiful natural gas was made possible by technologies developed by U.S. oil companies that later became Exxon Mobil Corp. and ConocoPhillips .

“The American companies were really the ones who took a big bet on Qatar when others wouldn’t,” said Mr. Attiyah. “That’s part of the core of our special relationship.”

Qatar now has the world’s highest per capita income, says the International Monetary Fund. Several U.S. universities, including Georgetown, Northwestern and Cornell, have opened campuses in Doha.

In 2003, the Pentagon moved the regional headquarters of the U.S. Central Command to Qatar’s al-Udeid air base, a move that gave the emirate a sense of security from potentially hostile neighbors.

Qatar also invests in the U.S. Last month, Qatar’s finance minister said his government would invest $35 billion in the U.S. over five years, in areas such as technology and infrastructure.

The “Arab Spring” protests of late 2010 and 2011 deepened Washington’s alliance with Qatar but also exposed divisions in the two countries’ visions for the Mideast. Qatar began promoting a brand of pro-Islamist foreign policy that confused Washington and alienated some Arab allies.

One Gulf-region government official described a Sheraton hotel in Doha as a hangout for Islamists from Libya, Syria, Egypt and the Palestinian territories. A spokesman for Sheraton owner Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. noted that the hotel hosts hundreds of international travelers daily and said, “We do not do business with terrorists nor condone or facilitate any activity that is antithetical to our company values.” He said the firm works with law enforcement, including retaining passport information for all guests.

Nusra Front

According to U.S. and regional Arab government officials, commanders of the Nusra Front, al Qaeda’s arm in Syria, began visiting Doha in 2012 for meetings with senior Qatari military officials and financiers. Nusra is fighting to overthrow Syria’s Bashar al-Assad regime, a regional rival of Qatar.

Syrian rebels and Persian Gulf government officials said Qatar cultivates a relationship with Nusra in part to maintain the emirate’s role in negotiations to free hostages held by militants in Syria and Lebanon. Over the past year, Qatar has gained the release of hostages including United Nationspeacekeepers, Greek Orthodox nuns and a U.S. freelance journalist. Arab and U.N. officials have said the releases involve ransoms, which Qatar denies.

Some Qatari officials view Nusra as a crucial fighting force against the Syrian regime and don’t consider it terrorist.

The U.S. in 2012 tipped off Lebanese officials that a Qatari sheik, Abd al-Aziz bin Khalifa al-Attiyah, was visiting Beirut to pass funds to Nusra, according to Lebanese and U.S. officials. A Lebanese official said that on one trip, Sheik Attiyah, who is a cousin of Qatar’s current foreign minister, was driven to the Lebanon-Syria border town of Aarsal and there distributed money for Syrian rebel fighters.

Lebanese security forces arrested Sheik Attiyah on terrorism charges in 2012, but he was freed after a Qatari protest, Lebanese and Qatari officials said. This past June, a Beirut military court sentenced him in absentia to seven years in prison on the charges.

A London attorney for Sheik Attiyah, Cameron Doley, called the charges “completely and utterly untrue.” Qatari government officials also said Mr. Attiyah wasn’t involved in terrorism and described his arrest as political. Officials of the Lebanese government and the security directorate that carried out the arrest declined to comment.

U.S. officials have been pressing Qatar to arrest a former Qatari central-bank official who was sanctioned by the U.S. and the U.N. for an alleged role as a terrorism financier and as a lieutenant of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Qatar detained the official, Khalifa Muhammad Turki al-Subaiy, in 2008 for six months after a Bahrain court convicted him on terrorism charges. He was released later that year, drawing a string of inquiries from the U.S. ambassador, according to State Department cables released by WikiLeaks.

Mr. Subaiy couldn’t be reached for comment. In September, the Treasury alleged that two Jordanians with Qatari IDs had worked with Mr. Subaiy to transfer cash to al Qaeda leadership in Pakistan. The Jordanians couldn’t be reached for comment.

In October, the Treasury’s top counterterrorism official publicly criticized Qatar for inaction on Mr. Subaiy and a second alleged al Qaeda financier, Abd al-Rahman al-Nuaymi. “There are U.S.- and U.N.-designated terrorist financiers in Qatar that have not been acted against under Qatari law,” said David Cohen , then a Treasury undersecretary.

Mr. Nuaymi, who also couldn’t be reached for comment, has in the past denied funding terrorism and called charges against him politically motivated.

Living in Doha

Qatari officials confirmed that Messrs. Subaiy and Nuaymi remain free in Doha but said they are under surveillance and their bank accounts are frozen. “We know that there is a problem, and we are building a case to take those involved to court,” said Qatar’s ambassador to Washington, Mohammad al-Kuwari. “We’re committed to working with the U.S. on these cases.”

The idea of pulling some U.S. fighter planes out of Qatar’s al-Udeid to signal displeasure with Qatar’s foreign policy—a proposal made several years ago by some National Security Council members—prompted a wrenching internal debate pitting U.S. ideals against pragmatism. One senior defense official at the time opposed the idea, saying it threatened to undermine a key Mideast relationship while having little effect on Qatar’s policy.

A senior administration official said, “Whether or not that was a view expressed or considered by an individual in the past, it was never a serious policy consideration in a broader context.”

In recent months, U.S. and Qatari officials said there has been an uptick in Qatari moves against alleged terrorist financiers. They said the emirate has expelled a Jordanian associate of Mr. Nuaymi and shut a social-media website the U.S. believed was used in raising money for al-Qaeda-linked militants in Syria.

Qatar has moved to mend its ties with Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E. and other Gulf countries. In November, Qatar’s emir met in Jidda with Saudi Arabia’s late King Abdullah and other regional monarchs, agreeing to end their feud and work to stabilize the region, said Arab officials.

But Qatar has resisted pressure from the U.S. and Saudi Arabia to evict Hamas’s top leadership, according to U.S. and Arab diplomats. U.S. officials believe that many of the Qatari nationals involved in fundraising for Syrian rebels remain active. Mr. Kerry regularly raises his concerns about Qatar’s ties to extremist groups in his meeting with Doha’s diplomats, a U.S. official said.

“The Qataris need to know they can’t have it both ways,” said Dennis Ross, who was Mr. Obama’s top Mideast adviser in his first term. “But so far, they see that they can.”

—Julian E. Barnes contributed to this article.

(1) http://fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL31718.pdf

Redacted White House Emails on Net Neutrality

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The internet is not broken, what is there to fix?

In part from Vice.com: Congressman Jason Chaffetz, the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, will chair a hearing Wednesday about whether the White House improperly influenced the independent agency and pressured its chairman, Tom Wheeler, to develop a net neutrality plan that mirrored recommendations President Barack Obama made last November. Obama had called on the FCC to classify broadband as a public utility and adopt open internet rules that would ensure that “neither the cable company nor the phone company will be able to act as a gatekeeper, restricting what you can do or see online.”

The congressional hearing was initiated after Chaffetz reviewed heavily redacted emails and other documents VICE News obtained from the FCC two weeks ago in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request; the emails show White House officials and Wheeler communicating about net neutrality. VICE News sought comment from Chaffetz’s office about the email exchanges and shared the documents with him.

In a letter dated February 9 included with the batch of White House emails, Kirk Burgee, the chief of staff for the Wireline Competition Bureau, one of seven FCC bureaus that advises the commission on policy related to wireline telecommunications, said the emails were redacted at the behest of the White House.

Although we have not completed the consultation process with the Department of State, we have completed the consultation process with NTIA [National Telecommunications and Information Administration] and the White House. As a result of that consultation, we are releasing an email exchange among Larry Strickling (Associate Administrator of NTIA), Tom Power (Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), White House), Ross David Edelman (OSTP), and Chairman Wheeler. These records have been redacted pursuant to FOIA exemptions 5 and 6 which are consistent with those recommended by NTIA and the White House. We are also releasing an email exchange between Tom Power and Chairman Wheeler (which includes an email exchange among FCC staff and Chairman Wheeler) and an email exchange between John Podesta and Chairman Wheeler (which includes an email exchange among Jeffrey Zients (Executive Office of the President (EOP), White House), Jason Furman (EOP, White House), and Tom Power). These documents also include redactions under Exemptions 5 and 6 consistent with those recommended by the White House.

Burgee’s letter footnoted two documents to justify the redactions: a January 29 email sent by associate White House counsel Nicholas McQuaid to Joanne Wall at the FCC’s office of general counsel; and a December 31, 2014 letter from Kathy D. Smith, chief counsel, NTIA, US Department of Commerce, to Elizabeth Lyle, the FCC’s assistant general counsel.

*** Going deeper and more that the Congressman is stressing:

In a letter to Wheeler Monday (Feb. 23), who last week declined to testify at a Feb. 25 hearing in the committee on the relationship between the White House and the FCC’s Title II based draft order, chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) asked him to reconsider the invitation to testify. Chaffetz also said he was still looking for copies of e-mails the committee had asked for by Feb. 6 as part of its investigation into that relationship.

An FCC spokesperson confirmed it had received the letter and was reviewing it, but a source speaking on background said that the document request was a very large one and that the FCC had asked for more time to produce the documents and was in the process of negotiating wiht the committee for that extra time.

Chaffetz echoed calls earlier in the day by FCC Republicans Ajit Pai and Michael O’Rielly for the chairman to delay the planned Feb. 26 vote on the new rules and publish the language of the draft to give the public more time to weigh in (Wheeler had countered that call by the minority commissioners in a tweet, saying that with 4 million-plus comments on new network neutrality rules, it was time to act).

Chaffetz pointed out that back in 2007, Senator Obama had asked Republican FCC chairman Kevin Martin to hold off on a vote on proposed media ownership rule changes until he had put out any changes in a public notice. Chaffetz noted that in a letter to Martin, Sen. Obama had said that “the commission has the responsibility to defend any new proposal in public discourse and debate.” Chaffetz also pointed out that the senator co-sponsored a bill to block a commission vote on the rulemaking “pursuant to a 90-day comment period.”

Martin responded by releasing the changes and opened a four-week comment period, the congressman pointed out, but only after it had conducted many public hearings and published the changes and provided for comment, he said.

What is sauce for the senator is sauce for the President, Chaffetz suggested. “The current drafting and scheduled vote on net neutrality rules has afforded none of these opportunities for public airing and only raised concerns regarding the process,” Chaffetz said