Obama’s New Policy on Intelligence Gathering and National Security

Posted on October 5, 2016October 5, 2016 by Denise Simon

Next it will be some climate change mandate….

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release

October 05, 2016

FACT SHEET: Presidential Memorandum on Promoting Diversity and Inclusion in the National Security Workforce

Since the beginning of his Administration, President Obama has deepened the commitment of the United States Government to draw upon the talents and skills of all parts of our society. Diversity has always been one of the Nation’s greatest strengths, and it is no different for the Federal workforce, which has a responsibility as the country’s largest employer to lead by example and to reflect the population that we serve. Inclusion has been key to ensuring that the investments we make to develop our workforce result in a more effective and skilled government for the American people.

The imperative to promote diversity and inclusion is also critical for our national security workforce. In a complex and interconnected world, the nature of our national security challenges and opportunities is more global than ever. As a society that can trace its roots to every region around the world, the American people are our greatest asset when it comes to the United States’ ability to build bridges to communities at home and abroad, address foreign threats and aggression, and lead coalitions to promote global peace and prosperity. Promoting diversity and inclusion ensures that national security departments and agencies can recruit their employees from the broadest possible pool of talent and bring a wide range of perspectives, skills, and backgrounds to bear to tackle our toughest problems.

Today, the President is issuing a new Presidential Memorandum that provides guidance on the implementation of policies to promote diversity and inclusion in the national security workforce. Currently, more than three million military and civilian personnel in the U.S. Government are engaged in protecting the country and advancing our interests abroad, through diplomacy, development, defense, intelligence, law enforcement, and homeland security. In broad comparison with the wider Federal Government, the federal workforce dedicated to our national security and foreign policy is – on average – less diverse, including at the highest levels.

While this data does not necessarily indicate the existence of barriers to equal employment opportunity, the Presidential Memorandum outlines a number of actions that will allow departments and agencies to better leverage the diversity and inclusion of the federal workforce, consistent with the existing merit system and applicable law, including:

Collection, analysis, and dissemination of workforce data: Data is an essential tool to help departments and agencies identify workforce talent gaps, assess the efficiency and effectiveness of their diversity and inclusion efforts, and promote transparency and accountability. The memorandum provides guidance for departments and agencies to make key workforce data available to the general public, provide an annual report to their leadership and workforce on the status of diversity and inclusion efforts, expand the use of applicant flow data to assess the fairness and inclusiveness of their recruitment efforts, and identify any additional demographic categories they recommend for voluntary data collection.
Provision of professional development opportunities and tools consistent with merit system principles: Providing access to professional development opportunities consistent with merit system principles is a key element to retaining and developing a diverse and inclusive workforce. The memorandum directs departments and agencies to engage their workforce through regular interviews to understand their views on workplace policies and why they choose to stay or leave, prioritize the expansion of professional development opportunities including programs specifically designed to develop the next generation of career senior executives, and implement a review process for decisions related to certain assignment or geographic restrictions.
Strengthening of leadership engagement and accountability: The memorandum recognizes the critical role that senior leadership and supervisors play in fostering a diverse and inclusive workforce and cultivating talent consistent with merit system principles. It encourages departments and agencies to reward and recognize efforts by senior leaders and supervisors to participate in mentorship, sponsorship, and recruitment; to disseminate voluntary demographic data for external committee and boards that advise the leadership of an agency; and to expand the provision of training on implicit or unconscious bias, inclusion, and flexible work policies.

The guidance in this Presidential Memorandum furthers the initiative that President Obama announced in 2011 in Executive Order 13583, “Establishing a Coordinated Government-wide Initiative to Promote Diversity and Inclusion in the Federal Workforce,” for departments and agencies to develop and implement a more comprehensive, integrated, and strategic focus on diversity and inclusion. It also complements the remarkable progress that the national security workforce has made over the past several years in recognizing the importance of diversity and inclusion to the success of their mission, including but not limited to:

The Department of Defense’s decisions to eliminate all remaining institutional barriers to service by opening all military occupations to women and transgender individuals;
The Central Intelligence Agency’s commissioning and public release of two studies on women and diversity in their leadership and its active implementation of the studies’ recommendations;
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence release of its annual Intelligence Community demographics report, the first time it has ever been publicly released; and
The Department of Justice announced that all law enforcement agents and prosecutors will receive training to recognize and address implicit bias.

The Presidential Memorandum also aligns with a number of congressional efforts to promote the diversity of the national security workforce. Over the past several decades, Congress has passed legislation mandating reforms to ensure that institutions including the Foreign Service, Intelligence Community, and U.S. military provide equal employment opportunity to all those who have the desire and qualifications to serve their country. Under this Administration, the Congress and President Obama have collaborated on important legislation on this issue, most notably on the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Repeal Act of 2010.

1999: Clinton Admin Knew/Facilitated China Military Theft

Posted on October 4, 2016October 4, 2016 by Denise Simon

Wen Ho Lee

And the biggest changes are occurring far away from Washington’s orbit.

US President Barack Obama (L-R), China’s President Xi Jinping, and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin during a photo shoot at the International Convention Center at Yanqi Lake in Beijing, November 11, 2014. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon

Although the Sino-Russo relationship predates the Ukraine conflict, there’s no question that the crisis has shifted Moscow even more toward Beijing.

Over the last year, we saw the two countries sign highly publicized energy deals, conduct joint military exercises, and even generally support each others’ foreign policy adventures. More here from BusinessInsider.

Here are a few questions for investigators in both houses of Congress to pose:

NYT’s: To Samuel Berger, the Hogan & Hartson trade lobbyist turned national security adviser: Why can’t Congress see your memo to President Clinton summarizing the devastating Cox report on espionage when it was submitted for security clearance in January? With the report now public, no claim of secrecy can properly be made.

Clinton pretended two months ago to have been uninformed of wholesale espionage. Did Berger’s January cover memo truly reflect the Cox report’s revelations, or did it lull the President into a false sense of national security?

To Bill Richardson, Energy Secretary since September 1998: You were briefed on espionage suspicions in November, and received the Cox report in January. Did you never have occasion to mention its serious implications on China policy to the President? You knew Secretary of State Albright was going to China in February; why did you withhold it from her? Did the White House suggest she be kept ignorant, or was it your own idea?

To F.B.I. Director Louis Freeh: Attorney General Janet Reno says ”I was not apprised of the details of the case at the time the decision was made” to reject wiretap surveillance of Wen Ho Lee at Los Alamos. Didn’t you think this was important enough to take to the top? She also says your 1997 request ”did not contain a request to search any computer.” If that is true, why not?

To the Senate Democratic leader, Tom Daschle: The bipartisan Cox report charges the White House with failing to inform Congress, but you say ”Republican chairs of the Congress were warned about this as early as 1996 and also chose to do nothing.” Did you read those ”warnings” before accusing Senator Arlen Specter and Representative Porter Goss of failing in their intelligence oversight duties? Can the public now see if those staff briefings were complete?

To Dan Burton, chairman of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee: With Reno Justice allowing all Clinton’s illegal Asian fund-raisers to cop a plea and walk, you’ve subpoenaed Charlie Trie for June 10 and John Huang for June 17. Will you allow the ranking Democrat, Henry Waxman, to turn hearings into a partisan circus, or will you depose Trie and Huang extensively beforehand to discover links to Bruce Lindsey, the D.N.C.’s Don Fowler and Hillary’s Harold Ickes?

To George Tenet, Director of Central Intelligence: You reported to Cox that information on China’s theft of our W-88 nuclear warhead design came from a ”walk-in” planted by Chinese intelligence. That’s counterintuitive counterintelligence; does nobody in C.I.A. dispute the ”dangle” theory? Where is he now, and is he (or she) singing?

To Richard Shelby and Bob Kerrey of Senate Intelligence: The Cox report ran 900 pages, but nearly 400 pages were cut out by the Clinton sanitizers. Was all of this really for security reasons, or do many redactions cover C.I.A., F.B.I. and White House embarrassments?

To Senator Robert Torricelli, Democrat of New Jersey: You told CBS’s Bob Schieffer that Clinton should talk to Reno about ”her ability to perform her duties.” Are you worrying about her judgment under a physical affliction, or making a nonpartisan judgment on sustained misfeasance at Justice — or helping the White House toss her off the sled to save Sandy Berger?

The biggest question is this: Will we fall for the usual ”it’s old news” and ”everybody did it” defenses? Or will we connect the dots from the (a) corrupt Asian and satellite-producer contributions to the (b) refusal to stop the theft of nuclear codes lest it offend Beijing to the (c) change of policy to sell China powerful computers capable of using those codes to simulate tests?

The House is being serious. What about the Senate?

****What is this all about you ask?

*The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has stolen design information on the United States’ most advanced

thermonuclear weapons.

* The Select Committee judges that the PRC’s next generation of thermonuclear weapons, currently under development, will exploit elements of stolen U.S. design information.

* PRC penetration of our national weapons laboratories spans at least the past several decades and almost

certainly continues today.

****

• The stolen information includes classified information on seven U.S. thermonuclear warheads, including every currently deployed thermonuclear warhead in the U.S. ballistic missile arsenal.

• The stolen information also includes classified design information for an enhanced radiation weapon (commonly known as the “neutron bomb”), which neither the United States, nor any other nation, has yet deployed.

• The PRC has obtained classified information on the following U.S. thermonuclear warheads, as well as a number of associated reentry vehicles (the hardened shell that protects the thermonuclear warhead during reentry).

****

In addition, in the mid-1990s the PRC stole, possibly from a U.S. national

weapons laboratory, classified thermonuclear weapons information that cannot be

identified in this unclassified Report. Because this recent espionage case is currently

under investigation and involves sensitive intelligence sources and methods, the

Clinton administration has determined that further information cannot be made public

without affecting national security or ongoing criminal investigations.

The W-88, a miniaturized, tapered warhead, is the most sophisticated nuclear

weapon the United States has ever built. In the U.S. arsenal, it is mated to the D-5 submarine-

launched ballistic missile carried aboard the Trident nuclear submarine. The

United States learned about the theft of the W-88 Trident D-5 warhead information, as

well as about the theft of information regarding several other nuclear weapons, in 1995.

The PRC has stolen U.S. design information and other classified information

for neutron bomb warheads. The PRC stole classified U.S. information about

the neutron bomb from a U.S. national weapons laboratory. The U.S. learned of the

theft of this classified information on the neutron bomb in 1996.

In the late 1970s, the PRC stole design information on the U.S. W-70 warhead

from the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. The U.S. government first learned of this

theft several months after it took place. The W-70 warhead contains elements that

may be used either as a strategic thermonuclear weapon, or as an enhanced radiation

weapon (“neutron bomb”). The PRC tested the neutron bomb in 1988.

The Select Committee is aware of other PRC thefts of U.S. thermonuclear

weapons-related secrets. The Clinton administration has determined that further

information about PRC thefts of U.S. thermonuclear weapons-related secrets cannot

be publicly disclosed without affecting national security.

The PRC acquired this and other classified U.S. nuclear weapons information as

the result of a 20-year intelligence collection program to develop modern thermonuclear

weapons, continuing to this very day, that includes espionage, review of unclassified

publications, and extensive interactions with scientists from the Department of

Energy’s national weapons laboratories.

**** The full Cox Report is 700 pages but this link is the summary. So, those questions the New York Times asked in 1999 need to be asked again today of both Hillary and Bill. What say you?

European Union Approved Deportation of Afghanis

Posted on October 3, 2016October 3, 2016 by Denise Simon

Primer: FORT BENNING, Ga. (AP) — Seven Afghan military students in four states have been absent without leave since earlier this month, military officials said.

U.S. Navy Defense Press Operations Cmdr. Patrick L. Evans said in an email Thursday that four students left their posts without leave over the Labor Day weekend, the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer reported (http://bit.ly/2dcWkt2 ). Two of the students were at Fort Benning in Georgia, while one was at Fort Lee in Virginia and the other in Little Rock, Arkansas. More here from CNS.

The European Union and Afghanistan reach an arrangement to tackle migration issues

Yesterday, the European Union and Afghanistan reached an important political arrangement, “The EU-Afghanistan Joint Way Forward on Migration issues”, to effectively tackle the challenges in both the European Union and Afghanistan linked to irregular migration. This is the result of a constructive dialogue based on partnership and a willingness to enhance dialogue and bilateral cooperation in this area. A dialogue at the level of senior officials is foreseen to take place on 4 October to begin the implementation process. (For more information: Maja Kocijancic – Tel.: + 32 229 86570; Natasha Bertaud – Tel.: +32 229 67456; Tove Ernst – Tel.: +32 229 86764)

Guardian: The EU has signed an agreement with the Afghan government allowing its member states to deport an unlimited number of the country’s asylum seekers, and obliging the Afghan government to receive them.

The deal has been in the pipeline for months, leading up to a large EU-hosted donor conference in Brussels this week. According to a previously leaked memo, the EU suggested stripping Afghanistan of aid if its government did not cooperate.

The deal, signed on Sunday, has not been made public but a copy seen by the Guardian states that Afghanistan commits to readmitting any Afghan citizen who has not been granted asylum in Europe, and who refuses to return to Afghanistan voluntarily.

It is the latest EU measure to alleviate the weight of the many asylum seekers who have arrived since early 2015. Afghans constituted the second-largest group of asylum seekers in Europe, with 196,170 applying last year.

While the text stipulates a maximum of 50 non-voluntary deportees per chartered flight in the first six months after the agreement, there is no limit to the number of daily deportation flights European governments can charter to Kabul.

With tens of thousands set to be deported, both sides will also consider building a terminal dedicated to deportation flights at Kabul international airport.

The agreement, Joint Way Forward, also opens up the deportation of women and children, which at the moment almost exclusively happens from Norway: “Special measures will ensure that such vulnerable groups receive adequate protection, assistance and care throughout the whole process.”

If family members in Afghanistan cannot be located, unaccompanied children can be returned only with “adequate reception and care-taking arrangement having been put in place in Afghanistan”, the text says.

The EU has negotiated the agreement with the Afghan government as part of the run-up to this week’s Brussels donor conference, where international donors will pledge aid for Afghanistan for the coming four years. Some Afghan officials seem to have felt strong-armed. The Afghan minister for refugees and repatriation, Sayed Hussain Alemi Balkhi, refused to sign the document, leaving the duty to a deputy.

Still, Afghanistan, whose domestic revenue only constitutes 10.4% of GDP, is so dependent on foreign aid that the government may have had little choice.

Liza Schuster, a Kabul-based migration expert, said the deal was an example of “how developed countries are able to push through their agenda in countries where there simply isn’t the capacity in the ministries to push back”. She added that there had been little transparency in the negotiation process.

“There has been no oversight, no consultation, and hardly any mention of it to any of the migrant organisations or rights organisations [in Europe]. There was no chance to mount resistance against it,” Schuster said.

The large exodus of Afghans last year seemed partly triggered by Angela Merkel opening Germany’s doors to almost a million migrants, but it also coincided with a deteriorating security situation, which has not improved since.

On Sunday, the Taliban mounted a strong assault on the northern city of Kunduz, while attacks have also increased in many other parts of the country.

To prevent a migrant flow of the size experienced last year, the deal commits the EU to help fund public awareness campaigns in Afghanistan warning against the dangers of migrating.

However, not all Afghan asylum seekers arrive to Europe from Afghanistan. An unknown number were born or grew up in Iran or Pakistan. If sent to Afghanistan, many are likely to struggle without the social networks that are often a prerequisite to getting work, even for the well-educated. According to Schuster, who has authored a paper on post-deportation experience, destitute people, who do not choose to leave Afghanistan again immediately after deportation, could be ripe targets for recruitment not only by the Taliban but local strongmen commanding militias. In that sense, deportations could add to instability.

“There is not sufficient protection, the level of generalised violence is too high and Kabul is already bursting at the seams,” Schuster said.

“This particular agreement allows European governments to ride straight through all the argumentation that’s been made over the past 15 years that it’s not safe to return people at the moment.”

Supreme Court Rejects Obama’s Appeal for Re-Hearing

Posted on October 3, 2016October 3, 2016 by Denise Simon

Primer: Donald Verrilli, the Department of Justice Solicitor General who argued these cases before the Supreme Court resigned in June. Verrilli successfully defended President Obama’s healthcare plan before the Supreme Court, is joining the Los Angeles law firm of Munger, Tolles & Olson.

Supreme Court declines to hear immigration and Redskins cases

WaPo: The Supreme Court will not reconsider President Obama’s plan to shield undocumented immigrants from deportation and denied the Washington Redskins’ bid to get its trademark case on this term’s docket.

With oral arguments postponed for a day because of the Rosh Hashana Jewish holiday, the first Monday in October that marks the beginning of the new Supreme Court term became a day of rejection. The court issued a thick stack of cases that had accumulated over the summer that the justices decided not to hear.

Among the other losers: the NCAA, which had asked the court to review an appeals court ruling about its policies involving the amateur status of college football and basketball players. The issue remains alive in other court proceedings.

[Deadlocked Supreme Court won’t revive Obama immigration plan]

The administration’s request was a longshot bid to salvage what had been the biggest legal defeat of Obama’s presidency. In June, a deadlocked court failed to revive his stalled plan to shield millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation and give them the right to work legally in the United States.

The justices’ votes at the time were not announced, but the court’s liberals and conservatives were split at oral argument last spring. The tie meant that a lower court’s decision that Obama probably exceeded his powers in issuing the executive action kept the plan from being implemented.

The court’s action affected about 4 million illegal immigrants estimated to be covered by Obama’s plan, which would have deferred deportation for those who have been in the country since 2010, have not committed any serious crimes and have family ties to U.S. citizens or others lawfully in the country.

The Supreme Court rarely grants motions for rehearing. But the administration’s lawyers made the request in hopes that by now the vacancy created by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia would be filled.

Instead, Senate Republicans have blocked consideration of Obama’s nominee to the court, appeals court judge Merrick Garland. They say the next president should fill the election-year opening.

This immigration case is the matter where the Judge ordered Department of Justice lawyers to attend an ethics class.

JonathanTurley: United States District Judge Andrew Hanen issued a remarkable opinion yesterday that found that Justice Department lawyers not only lied to him and opposing counsel but “it is hard to imagine a more serious, more calculated plan of unethical conduct.” What is even more remarkable however is that, after finding such calculated and unethical conduct, Hanen ordered the lawyers to simply take ethics classes rather than refer them to the bar for suspension or disbarment. Many attorneys object that government lawyers routinely escape serious punishment for false or misleading statements. In this case, the judge found that the Justice Department misled him and opposing counsel in a case by Texas and 25 other states that sought to block President Barack Obama’s controversial immigration programs. Hansen blocked the program. Notably, the Justice Department is even opposing ethical classes as a sanction.

The government misled the court on when the government would begin implementing one of the programs. The Justice Department team assured the court the government would not start implementing an expansion of a program called the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals until February 18, 2015. The court and opposing counsel relied on that date even though the government implemented a part of the program before February and granted over 100,000 applications. Hansen found that the “Justice Department lawyers knew the true facts and misrepresented those facts.”

Apparently, lawyers, somewhere in the halls of the Justice Department whose identities are unknown to this Court, decided unilaterally that the conduct of the DHS in granting three-year DACA renewals . . . was immaterial and irrelevant to this lawsuit and that the DOJ could therefore just ignore it. Then, for whatever reason, the Justice Department trial lawyers appearing in this Court chose not to tell the truth about this DHS activity. The first decision was certainly unsupportable, but the subsequent decision to hide it from the Court was unethical.

In an effort to convey how unethical the Justice Department acted in the case, Hanen even excerpted a portion of the film “Miracle on 34th Street” when a young Tommy Mara Jr. says “Gosh, everybody knows you shouldn’t tell a lie, especially in court.” Judge Hanen noted “There are certain attorneys in the Justice Department who apparently have not received that message.”

Here is the opinion: Immigration Decision.

Obamacare Proven Fraud and Single Payer

Posted on September 30, 2016September 30, 2016 by Denise Simon

(Washington, D.C.) – Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) expressed exasperation after the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released the final results of its 2015 undercover tests on the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) fraud prevention capabilities. Amid naïve proclamations by President Obama that the ACA is “working exactly as it’s supposed to,” the GAO report reveals the sad reality that this law is uniquely prone to fraud and taxpayers have good reasons to worry.

GAO began “secret shopper” investigations in 2014 to test whether or not the federal healthcare exchange (marketplace) and select state marketplaces were able to detect and prevent falsified applications for subsidized health coverage from being accepted. Those tests found that 11 of 12 fictitious identities received coverage and after a call to the marketplace in 2015, 10 of those 11 were re-enrolled for the following coverage year.

On September 12, 2016, GAO released the final results of its 2015 testing, which covered the federal marketplace and state exchanges in California, Kentucky, and North Dakota. The results were similarly jarring.

All 10 fictitious identities that applied for taxpayer subsidies were approved, even after eight of the 10 failed the preliminary identity check. Investigators were able to obtain subsidies after they provided false proof of income, documentation of citizenship, and Social Security numbers that began with zeroes. The federal exchange made no effort to validate that information. GAO also created fake applicants for Medicaid coverage, and the results were not much better: seven of the eight fictitious applicants were approved for subsidized coverage.

Perhaps the most distressing revelation in this report is the following admission from federal and state marketplace officials: “The marketplace or Medicaid offices only inspect for supporting documentation that has obviously been altered. Thus, if the documentation submitted does not show such signs, it would not be questioned for authenticity.”

CAGW President Tom Schatz said, “The Congressional Budget Office estimates that subsidized health coverage through Obamacare will cost taxpayers $866 billion over the next ten years. The fact that there is still no reliable system in place to prevent rampant fraud is a bad omen for taxpayers. This damning report provides further justification for this flawed law to be completely overhauled and replaced.”

Citizens Against Government Waste is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.

**** Heading to Single Payer:

In part from The Hill:

The McKinsey Center for U.S. Health System Reform, which studies the ACA and its implications, showed in an Aug. 18 analysis that the percentage of counties in the U.S. with five or more participating insurance carriers remaining in the exchanges will likely shrink from 51 percent in 2016 to 31 percent in 2017, and the number of counties having only one carrier participating will likely grow from 2 percent in 2016 to 17 percent in 2017. Pinal County in Arizona found out in August that it will have no insurance carriers participating in ObamaCare exchanges in 2017.

This massive insurer exodus from Obamacare markets not only creates a shrinking pool of competition and narrower networks, but could also be setting the stage for something far more devastating: the inevitable push for a single-payer or public option to either be added to, or replace, ObamaCare.

In an Aug. 2 Journal of the American Medical Association article, President Obama, despite the overwhelming evidence that heavy-handed government control has not worked to make quality healthcare more affordable, called for adding a public option; more tax dollars to prop up the exchanges; more government bureaucrats and politicians making decisions on how healthcare is delivered to our nation’s citizens; and pharmaceutical price controls, which would destroy research and development and deny patients access to promising new therapies.

One need only to look at the Veterans Administration to understand what a government-run, single-payer healthcare system looks like. Horror stories of long waits for treatment, bureaucratic inertia, fraud, incompetence, cover-ups and politics abound.

Others in favor of a complete government takeover demand “Medicare for all,” also a single-payer system, ignoring the fact that on its current trajectory, the Medicare trust fund will be depleted in 2028, two years earlier than projected in 2015. Only massive tax hikes, budget cuts to other government programs, or more borrowing will save it.

These pro-single payer zealots want to emulate the disastrous single-payer systems adopted in other countries, where program costs exceeded expectations and rose faster than predicted, price controls were enacted, rationing became necessary and higher taxes were imposed to cover ballooning costs. Indeed, they are pushing hard for the United States to replicate these failed policies on an even grander scale.

They are ignoring the results so far of ObamaCare: numerous co-op failures costing billions of dollars, skyrocketing premiums and crippling deductibles across the country. With a slew of insurers exiting the ObamaCare exchanges, the nation’s healthcare system is now even more perplexing and costly.

With about two months left until the presidential election, it is time to start thinking critically about healthcare and why moving toward a propped-up ObamaCare or adopting a single-payer approach are not the answers to fixing the country’s broken healthcare system.

Creating an environment where a true market-based system can flourish and in which the purchasing power and healthcare decision-making stands with consumers, not with Washington politicians and bureaucrats, is the way to go.

Schatz is president of Citizens Against Government Waste.