Amb. Samantha Power on Refugees, She’s NUTS

There is SO much wrong in what she wrote here. If there was ANY foreign policy with regard to fighting wars and hostilities to swift victory, none of this would come to be. The U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power is delivering history, guilt and culpability of failure. Furthermore, she is demanding more money and wait for it…..Obama has his moment scheduled at the UN….this is not going to end well and will be yet another hit to our sovereignty.

 

This is an outrage, what say you?

Related reading: John Kerry Sells a Borderless World in a Graduation Address

What is especially interesting is as noted by Ambassador Power, these people want to go home.

 

Remarks on “The Global Refugee Crisis: Overcoming Fears and Spurring Action,” at the U.S. Institute of Peace

Ambassador Samantha Power
U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations
U.S. Mission to the United Nations
Washington, DC
June 29, 2016
****

AS DELIVERED

Thank you, Nancy, for that generous introduction, and more importantly, for your leadership on this and other critical issues, both when you were inside the government and now in this incredibly important role you’re in at the U.S. Institute of Peace.

Let me begin with a fact with which you are all familiar: We are in the midst of the greatest refugee crisis since the Second World War. Just like the people at the heart of it, this crisis crosses borders, oceans, and continents. And because it is global in scale, anything less than a global response will fall short of addressing it. Yet rather than spur a united front, a united effort, the challenge of mass displacement has divided the international community – and even individual nations – leaving the lion’s share of the response to a small number of countries, stretching our humanitarian system to its breaking point, and putting millions of people in dire situations at even greater risk.

Today I will make the case for why we must do better. I will first describe the gap between the unprecedented scale of the crisis and the growing shortfalls in the international response. I will then take on some of the most common concerns one hears when it comes to admitting refugees, showing that, while there are, of course, genuine risks, these are often distorted; the actual threats can be mitigated. Our current approach of leaving a small number of nations to bear most of the costs, by contrast, carries hidden dangers, risking the lives of countless refugees, while also weakening our partners and strengthening violent extremists and organized crime. A global response is urgently needed, and the United States must help lead it.

At the end of 2015, more than 65 million people were displaced worldwide, over half of them children. That is the highest number on record since the UN’s Refugee Agency started collecting statistics. To help put that number in perspective, that’s the equivalent of one in every five Americans being displaced. Some 34,000 people will be displaced today alone. Think about that. Thirty-four thousand.

Many rightly point to the role that the turmoil in Syria has played in this crisis. Roughly half of Syria’s pre-war population of 23 million has been uprooted since the conflict began in 2011 – some six-and-half million within Syria’s borders, and five million to other countries. But the conflict in Syria is far from the only driver of this problem. The wars forcing people from their homes are multiplying – with at least 15 conflicts erupting or reigniting since 2010. And conflicts are lasting longer, meaning people have to wait longer before it is safe to return home. Roughly one in three refugees today is caught in what is called a “protracted refugee situation.” In 1993, the typical protracted refugee situation lasted nine years; today, the median duration is 26 years and counting.

People do not become refugees by choice, obviously; they flee because their lives are at risk – just as we would do if we found ourselves in such a situation. And most want to go home. So we recognize that the most effective way to curb the mass displacement of people is by addressing the conflicts, violence, and repression that they have fled in the first place, and that continues to make it unsafe for them to return home. Consider a survey of Syrian refugees carried out early this year in Gaziantep, along Turkey’s southern border. It found that 95 percent of the Syrians polled said that they would return home if the fighting stopped. In May, a study of Nigerian refugees in Cameroon – most of whom had fled Boko Haram – found that more than three in four wanted to return home. I met with refugees in both of these places, and when I posed the question of who wanted to go home to groups of refugees, all hands shot up in the air. Many of you have had similar experiences.

Even as we recognize the need to work toward the solutions that will reduce the drivers of mass displacement, we also have to meet the vital needs of refugees in real time. And on that front we in the international community are coming up far short. For one, we are seeing record shortfalls in providing essential humanitarian assistance. In 2015, the UN requested approximately $20 billion to provide life-saving aid, only $11 billion of which was funded. This year, the $21 billion that the UN is seeking is less than one-quarter funded.

Often we find ourselves using bureaucratese – the language of “shortfalls,” and “masses” of refugee “caseloads” – sterile language that makes it easy to lose sight of the human consequences of our collective action challenge. So we must constantly remind ourselves that these gaps mean more people are left without a roof or tarp to sleep under; more families are unable to afford gas to keep warm in sub-zero temperatures; more kids are forced to drink water that makes them sick – poor parents have to watch that happen. Last year, the World Food Program had to cut back significantly rations to some 1.6 million Syrian refugees, and half a million refugees from Somalia and South Sudan in Kenya. In Jordan, in July 2015, approximately 250,000 Syrian refugees received news – often on their phone – that the UN aid they were receiving would be halved to the equivalent of 50 cents’ worth of aid a day. In Iraq, the shortfall forced the World Health Organization to shutter 184 health clinics in areas with high levels of displacement, resulting in three million people losing access to basic health care. The WHO’s director for emergency assistance described the impact as follows: “There will be no access for trauma like shrapnel wounds, no access for children’s health or reproductive health…A generation of children will be unvaccinated,” he said. Imagine, for just one minute, being the official forced to decide whose rudimentary health care to cut off. Imagine being the patient or the parent who receives the news that the aid you’ve been receiving – which is already insufficient to feed your kids or to deal with health ailments – will be cut in half.

Not only are countries giving far too little support to meet refugees’ critical needs, few countries – and in particular, few wealthy countries – are stepping up to resettle more refugees. As a result, a hugely disproportionate share of refugees are being housed by a small group of developing countries. At the end of 2015, 10 countries – with an average GDP per capita of around $3,700 – were hosting some 45 percent of the world’s refugees. The United States’ GDP per capita, by comparison, is approximately $54,600. Add in the dramatic cuts in humanitarian assistance, and you start to get a sense of the direness of the situation.

To be fair, it can take time for governments to lay the groundwork for admitting more refugees. We are dealing with this challenge right now in the United States, as we make the adjustments necessary to take in 10,000 Syrian refugees this year, out of a total of 85,000 refugees, a goal we, of course, intend to meet. Yet even as a country with experience admitting and resettling more than three million refugees in the last four decades, it has not been easy.

But the work required to scale up admissions is not what is preventing many countries from taking in more refugees. Instead, even as the crisis continues to grow, many countries are making no effort at all to do their fair share. Worse, some countries are actually cutting back on the number of admitted refugees, or they’ve said that they won’t take any refugees at all. Other governments have taken measures that cut against the core principles of the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol, such as offering financial rewards for asylum seekers who withdraw their applications and return home, or confiscating the cash and valuables of those seeking refuge to offset the costs of hosting them. Meanwhile, with multiple countries – including our own – certain states, cities, and even towns have said that they don’t want to take refugees admitted by their respective national governments.

Now, why are so many countries resisting taking in more refugees? Let me speak to the two concerns that we hear the most often.

The first is, of course, security. Now, it is reasonable to have concern that violent extremist groups might take advantage of the massive movement of migrants and refugees to try to sneak terrorists into countries that they want to attack. In Germany, for example, suspected terrorists have been arrested in recent months who entered the country traveling amidst groups of refugees. We must constantly evaluate whether the procedures that we and our partners have put in place can effectively identify terrorists posing as refugees, as our nation’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies are doing.

At the same time, as with any threat, it is important that our policy response be commensurate with the risk. The comprehensive, rigorous review process implemented by the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program both protects our security and lives up to our long-standing commitment to give sanctuary to people whose lives are at risk. The program screens refugee applicants against multiple U.S. government databases – including the National Counterterrorism Center, the FBI, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Homeland Security – which incorporate information provided by partners all around the world. Refugees are interviewed, often several times, before ever being allowed to travel to the United States; and refugees from Syria are subjected to a thorough, additional layer of review. We do not rush; in all, the process usually takes more than a year. If your aim is to attack the United States, it is hard to imagine a more difficult way of trying to get here than by posing as a refugee.

While no system is foolproof, our record to date speaks to the system’s efficacy. Of the approximately 800,000 refugees who have been admitted to the United States since September 11, not one has carried out an act of domestic terrorism. Zero. But that has not made us complacent; we are constantly assessing new threats, and we spare no effort to make the program stronger.

Being able to measure accurately the relative gravity of threats and where they come from is critical to making smart policy and is critical to keeping the American people safe. That is why the efforts to halt our refugee program in the aftermath of the horrific attacks in Paris, and more recently in Orlando, were so misguided.

It is appropriate, and indeed, essential, in the aftermath of terrorist attacks to ask whether and how our policies should be changed to keep our citizens safe. What is not appropriate – what is, in fact, counterproductive – is using inaccurate characterizations of threats to justify shifts in policy, such as failing to see the difference between a homegrown terrorist and a refugee; or drawing misguided and discriminatory conclusions about entire groups of people based on the countries from which their families immigrated or the faith that they observe. Ignorance and prejudice make for bad advisors.

Yet that is what is driving the ill-informed and biased reactions we have seen to these and other attacks from some in our country. After the Paris attack, 31 U.S. governors and their states did not want to host any Syrian refugees, and several officials filed lawsuits aimed at blocking the federal government from resettling Syrians in their states. In the aftermath of Orlando, House Republicans announced that they will put forward legislation to ban all refugees from our country. That is not all. As you know, some are calling for even broader bans, such as banning immigrants based on their religion, or suspending immigration from parts of the world with a history of terrorism.

Now, I take this personally. I’m an immigrant to this country. My mother brought me and my brother to the United States from Dublin in 1979. It was a time when Ireland was still being roiled by violence related to The Troubles. And that violence included attacks that killed civilians – some of which were carried out in the city where I lived. So it’s not lost on me that were such a prejudiced and indiscriminate policy to have been applied when I was growing up – a policy that judges people collectively on the circumstances of their birth, rather than individually on the quality of their character – my family and millions of other Irish immigrants would never have been allowed to come to this country. That I, an Irish immigrant, now get to sit every day in front of a placard that says the United States of America, and to serve in the President’s Cabinet, is just a reflection of what makes this country so exceptional. And it sends the world a powerful message about the inclusive society that we believe in. Why on Earth would we want to give that up?

If the first concern one hears around admitting refugees is the security risk, the second is economic. People fear that refugees will place an additional burden on states at a time of shrinking budgets and a contracting global economy. The concerns tend to coalesce around two arguments in some tension with one another: either refugees will deplete government resources through a costly resettlement process, and through requiring public support for years; or they will find work quickly, taking jobs away from native-born citizens and driving down wages.

It is true that resettling refugees requires a substantial investment up front. Sufficient resources must be dedicated to ensuring that asylum seekers are properly vetted. And people who are admitted need support as they settle into a new, unfamiliar country and become self-sufficient – from finding places to live and work, to learning a new language. If we want to keep our citizens safe and give the refugees we take in a shot at becoming self-reliant, these up-front costs are unavoidable.

You might be surprised, though, to learn how little refugees actually receive from the U.S. government. Resettlement agencies are given a one-time amount to cover initial housing, food, and other essential expenses of $2,025 for each refugee. And while refugees can apply for additional federal assistance, such as funding for job training or special medical assistance – no supplementary support is guaranteed – and most lasts a maximum of eight months. Now imagine trying to survive on that amount in a new and unfamiliar place, with no job, no support system, and often without the ability to speak English. Refugees are also responsible for repaying the cost of their plane tickets to the U.S. within three and a half years.

Even in the short term, much of the assistance that goes toward supporting refugees ends up going back into our local economies, from the supermarkets where they buy groceries, to the apartments they rent. And a number of studies have found that refugees’ short-term impact on their host countries’ labor markets tends to be small, and is often positive, raising the wages of people in communities where they settle. And it is important to see these initial costs of taking in refugees for what they are: an investment in our shared future. You hear often about individual refugees who have made profound contributions to our nation – people like George Soros, Sergei Brin, and one of my predecessors as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, the great Madeleine Albright. There is no question that America would be a lesser country today without these individuals. Yet it is not only extraordinary individuals like these, but entire refugee communities who have made a lasting contribution to American prosperity.

Take the example of Vietnamese-Americans. After the fall of Saigon in 1975, America resettled more than 175,000 Vietnamese refugees in just two years. In 1979, a second wave of hundreds of thousands more Vietnamese refugees began arriving. Initially, politicians from both parties warned of the dire economic impact that the Vietnamese refugees would have on the communities where they were settled, and they asked that they be sent elsewhere. The Democratic governor of California at the time proposed adding a provision to legislation on assisting refugees that would guarantee jobs for Americans first, saying, “We can’t be looking 5,000 miles away and at the same time neglecting people who live here.” Seattle’s city council voted seven to one against a resolution welcoming them. Small towns where Vietnamese refugees were to be resettled, such as Niceville, Florida – [laughter] yes, Niceville – circulated petitions demanding they be sent elsewhere. A barber in Niceville told a reporter, “I don’t see why I ought to work and pay taxes for those folks who wouldn’t work over there.” The fears and reservations expressed in Niceville were hardly isolated; a 1979 poll found that 57 percent of Americans opposed taking in Vietnamese refugees.

And yet look at the 1.9 million Vietnamese-Americans living in our country today, many of whom either came to this country as refugees, or whose parents were refugees. They have a higher median household income than the national average, higher participation in the labor force, and lower unemployment. More, on average, attend college. Now this is not a success that has come at the expense of other Americans in a zero-sum economy; rather, the growth spurred by their success has benefitted both native born citizens and refugees, and repaid the costs of resettlement many, many times over.

Oftentimes, domestic debates about whether to do more for refugees are focused entirely on the question of what we risk by taking more people in. Is it safe? Will it help or hurt economically? These are important concerns to address, and I have tried to do so.

But there’s another question – often overlooked – which is particularly relevant today: What do we risk by not doing more to help refugees? That’s the question I would like to turn to now. And the answer is that, in the current crisis, not doing more puts global stability and our nation’s security at heightened risk. While we often overstate the security threats and economic costs of resettling more refugees, we routinely understate the likely consequences of failing to muster the global response that is needed.

For one, failing to mobilize a more robust and equitable global response will increase the pressure on the small group of countries already shouldering a disproportionate share of the crisis’ costs, possibly leading to greater instability. The influx of refugees to these countries has overwhelmed public services and institutions that were often stretched to begin with. Look at Lebanon, which has taken in a million Syrian refugees, and where one in five people is now a Syrian refugee. To give you a sense of scale, that would be the equivalent, in our country – which of course is much wealthier and has a much more developed infrastructure – of taking in 64 million refugees. There are more Syrian refugee children of school age in Lebanon – approximately 360,000 in all – than there are Lebanese children in public school. Roughly half of the Syrian refugee kids in Lebanon are out of school.

In the face of such demands, and absent greater help from the international community, it is not hard to see how the mounting pressure on these frontline countries could stoke sectarian tensions, fuel popular resentment of refugees, and even lead to the collapse of governments. It’s also not hard to imagine how, in such circumstances, some of these countries might decide they cannot take in any more refugees and seal off their borders altogether.

Failing to mount a more effective international response will also strengthen the hand of organized crime and terrorist groups that pose a threat to our security and prosperity. If people fleeing wars, mass atrocities, and repression cannot find a safe, legal, and orderly way to get to places where they and their loved ones will be safe, and where they can fulfill their basic needs, they will seek another way to get to places of refuge. We’ve seen it. They will always find smugglers who promise to take them – for a price. INTERPOL estimates that, in 2015, organized crime networks made between five and six billion dollars smuggling people to the European Union alone. These criminal networks have little concern for the lives of the people they transport – as they have demonstrated by abandoning their boats at sea, sometimes with hundreds of passengers locked in holds that they cannot escape – and whose members routinely rape, beat, and sell into slavery the people that they are paid to transport.

Of course, it is not only refugees who are threatened by these criminal networks. The same routes and transports used to smuggle people across oceans and borders are also used to move illicit arms, drugs, and victims of human trafficking. And the corruption that these groups fuel harms governments and citizens worldwide. The more refugees that are driven into the hands of these criminal networks, the stronger we make them.

Violent extremist groups like ISIL, al-Qa’ida, and Boko Haram also stand to benefit if we fail to respond adequately to the refugee crisis. A central part of the narrative of these groups is that the West is at war with Islam. So when we turn away the very people who are fleeing the atrocities and repression of these groups; and when we cast all displaced Muslims – regardless of whether they were uprooted by violent extremists, repressive governments, or natural disasters – as suspected terrorists; we play into that narrative. To violent extremists, simply belonging to a group is proof of guilt, and can be punishable by death – whether that group is defined by religion or ethnicity, by profession or sexual orientation. When we blame all Muslims, all Syrians, or all members of any other group because of the actions of individuals, when we fall into the trap of asserting collective guilt, we empower the narrow-minded ideology that we are trying to defeat.

On the contrary, when we and the parts of the Muslim world where people are suffering or have sought refuge, when we open our communities and our hearts to the people displaced by the atrocities committed by groups like ISIL, and repressive regimes like Assad’s, we puncture the myth that the extremists paint of us. We show that our conflict is not with Islam, but with those who kill and enslave people simply for what they believe, where they are born, or who they love.

Now, I have spoken to how many of the concerns that people have about admitting more refugees are overblown, driven more by fear than by fact. And I’ve highlighted the risk we run if countries continue to shirk doing their fair share in addressing this crisis. So what can we do to try to fix this problem? For starters, countries must dramatically increase their humanitarian aid to close the growing gap between what governments and agencies are providing and what refugees need to survive. And we need countries to increase the number of refugees they are resettling so that the burden does not fall so heavily on a small number of frontline states.

Now, some have argued that, because it’s more cost effective for wealthy countries like ours to provide humanitarian support for refugees in countries of first asylum, we should channel all the resources we allocate to this crisis into helping frontline states. Why take an additional 10,000 Syrian refugees in the U.S., some argue, when the resources that we would spend vetting and resettling these individuals could support 10 or even a hundred times as many refugees in places like Lebanon or Kenya?

Of course, we cannot resettle all 21 million refugees in the world, or even a majority of them. Nor do we need to. Many refugees are able to find sufficient opportunities to live with independence and dignity in the countries where they are given first refuge. And most prefer to stay close to the places to which they hope to return.

But there are some individuals and families who cannot stay in the countries where they have arrived first – because they are not safe there, because they have special vulnerabilities, or because their basic needs just are not being met. The UN estimates that around 1.2 million people fall into this category worldwide, and need to be resettled to other countries. The problem is the international community only resettled around 107,000 individuals last year – less than one-tenth of those who UNHCR judges need to be moved to a new host country. We need to bridge that gap.

By providing more opportunities for resettlement, we give experts the chance to review applicants through orderly, deliberate processes, rather than the large-scale, irregular flows that Europe faced last year, which brought more than a million people to Germany alone. These unstructured marches make it more difficult for countries to subject those who arrive to thorough and rigorous screening. And by practicing what we preach through resettling refugees, we stand a better chance of persuading others to do the same. How can we ask governments and citizens in other countries to take in refugees if we are not prepared to do the same in our own communities? How can we convince others that fear can be overcome and risk can be mitigated if we ourselves are ruled by fear?

In recognition of the urgent need for all countries to do more, President Obama is convening a refugee summit in September at the UN General Assembly. The purpose of this summit is to rally countries around three major lines of effort. First, we’re asking governments to make a deeper commitment to funding UN and humanitarian organizations and appeals, increasing overall contributions by at least 30 percent. Second, we’re asking governments to commit to welcoming more refugees into their countries, with the goal of doubling the number of refugee admission slots worldwide. Third, we are asking frontline countries – who already are hosting considerable numbers of refugees with awe-inspiring generosity – to do even more, allowing the refugees they host greater opportunities to become more self-reliant. Our aim is to put at least a million more refugee children in school, and grant a million more refugees access to legal work.

We recognize that the United States can and must do more as well. We are the leading donor of humanitarian aid, contributing more than $5.1 billion for the Syrian conflict alone, and we will continue to provide robust support. And not only are we scaling up our resettlement efforts to admit 15,000 additional refugees this year, but we will scale up by 15,000 more next year, to admit 100,000 refugees overall. That’s a 40 percent increase in just two years – while maintaining our extremely rigorous security standards.

The summit is by no means a panacea; even if we hit every target, our response will still not match the scale of the crisis. But it would represent a step – an important step toward broadening the pool of countries that are part of the solution. We also recognize that governments cannot solve this problem alone. We need businesses, big and small, to do much more too; which is why tomorrow, the White House is launching a private sector call to action, which will rally companies to do their part, from providing jobs to donating services to refugees. We need a humanitarian system that is more efficient and better at anticipating and preventing the crises that force people from their homes – which many countries committed to build at the recent World Humanitarian Summit. We need more civic institutions to help empower refugees, such as the growing number of American universities that are providing scholarships to refugees who were forced to abandon their studies – a cause that I urge the college students and faculty in the audience to take up. We need faith-based and civic institutions to adopt this cause as their own, as Pope Francis has done by constantly showing people the human face of this crisis, even welcoming refugees into his own home; and as the Southern Baptist Leadership Convention recently did, by adopting a resolution urging its members to “welcome and adopt refugees into their churches and homes.” Only when all these efforts come together will we have a chance of rising to the challenge that we face.

Let me conclude. In a letter dated May 16, 1939, a British citizen named Nicholas Winton wrote to then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt. “Esteemed Sir,” the letter began, “Perhaps people in America do not realize how little is being and has been done for refugee children in Czechoslovakia.” Winton went on to describe how a small organization that he had started had identified more than 5,000 refugee children in Czechoslovakia, most of them Jews who had fled Nazi Germany who desperately needed to be evacuated. He wrote, “There are thousands of children, some homeless and starving, mostly without nationality, but they all have one thing in common: there is no future if they are forced to remain where they are. Their parents are forbidden to work and the children are forbidden schooling, and part from the physical discomforts, the moral degradation is immeasurable.” Winton closed his letter with a direct request: “Is it possible for anything to be done to help us with this problem in America? It is hard to state our case forcibly in a letter, but we trust to your imagination to realize how desperately urgent the situation is.”

Winton’s letter reached the White House, which promptly referred the matter to the State Department. And the State Department, in turn, sent the letter to the U.S. Ambassador in London, with instructions to inform Winton that “the United States government is unable, in the absence of specific legislation, to permit immigration in excess of that provided by existing immigration laws.”

Now Winton was undaunted, because he was undauntable. In the coming months, he bribed officials, forged documents, arranged secret transport through hostile territory, and persuaded families in the United Kingdom to take in foster children – anything to get those children out. Ultimately, he helped 669 children escape in less than a year. Almost all 669 kids were orphaned by the end of the war, their parents killed in the concentration camps.

“Perhaps people in America do not realize how little is being and has been done for refugee children.” That was how Winton had opened his letter. Yet the unfortunate reality is that even those who were aware of the refugees’ plight were reluctant to take them in. In January 1939, a few months after Kristallnacht, “the night of the broken glass,” unleashed a savage wave of violence targeting Jewish homes, synagogues, and businesses, a Gallup poll asked Americans whether 10,000 Jewish refugee children from Germany should be taken into the United States. Sixty-one percent of Americans said no.

And this isn’t an isolated case. Unfortunately, it was not only refugees fleeing the Nazis and Vietnam who the majority of Americans opposed admitting. In 1958, as Hungarians faced a vicious crackdown from the Soviet Union, Americans were asked whether they supported a plan to admit 65,000 refugees. Fifty-five percent said no. In 1980, as tens of thousands of Cubans – Cuban refugees – took to boats to flee repression, 71 percent of Americans opposed admitting them. The list goes on. In nearly every instance, the majority of Americans have opposed taking in large numbers of refugees when asked in the abstract.

Listening to the rhetoric that is out there today, it can feel at times as though the same is true today. But look around the country – look deeply – and you will find so many people who not only support admitting more refugees, but who themselves are making tremendous efforts to welcome them. People like the owners of Wankel’s Hardware Store in New York, where I live, which for decades has been employing recently resettled refugees, including 15 of their 20 current employees. Wankel’s keeps a map on the wall of the store with pins marking the 36 countries from which their refugee employees have come. Many Americans are doing their part and wish to find a way to do more. When visiting the International Rescue Committee resettlement office – just a 10-minute walk from the UN – recently, I noticed that many of their individual offices seemed to be overflowing with boxes. When I asked whether the folks who worked at IRC were moving in or moving out of the space, I was told that after some U.S. politicians threatened to curb the flow of refugees, the IRC had received a huge, unprecedented surge in donations. And they simply had no other space to store all the clothes, toys, and home furnishings that had come flooding in, just from ordinary people. A similar outpouring occurred inside the U.S. government. When we announced our goal to admit an additional 15,000 refugees this year, many U.S. national security professionals volunteered to take extra trainings and work extra hours in their already long days to help us meet that goal.

These examples abound. The small Vermont town of Rutland has committed to taking in 100 Syrian refugees. The mayor, whose grandfather came to the U.S. after fleeing war in his native Greece, said of the decision, “As much as I want to say it’s for compassionate reasons, I realize that there is not a vibrant, growing, successful community in the country right now that is not embracing new Americans.” Local schools are preparing to support kids who cannot support English, and local businesses in Rutland have said that they will look to hire refugees. One of them is a regional medical center, whose director is the grandson of refugees from Nazi Germany. “I know there is a good-heartedness to this city,” he said. “If you come here and want to make the community better, Rutlanders will welcome you with open arms.” A poll some of you have seen that was released this month by the Brookings Institution suggests that most Americans feel the same way. Asked if they would support the U.S. taking in refugees from the Middle East after they were screened for security risks, 59 percent of Americans said yes. Yes.

Nicholas Winton passed away last June, at the age of 106. At the time, the 669 children he saved had some 6,000 descendants. Six thousand people who otherwise would not have enriched our world, but mostly for the efforts of one single individual. Imagine, for just a moment, what would have happened if the United States, or any other country, had shared his sense of urgency in that instance, or in so many others. Imagine what we could do if we were to bring a similar urgency, a similar stubbornness, a similar resilience to the crisis today.

If we are proudest of the Wintons in our history – as I think we all are – we know what must be done. So that when his question comes to us – “Is it possible for anything to be done to help us with this problem?” – our answer must be yes, there is so much we can do. So much more we can do.

Thank you.

So, That Cyber Caliphate is Not ISIS, it is Russian!

Cyber Caliphate or Kremlin False-Flag?

The so-called Cyber Caliphate, the supposed cyber army of jihadist organization ISIS, has featured prominently in the news in recent years with a string of high profile attacks on significant targets. The Cyber Caliphate defaced US government websites, hacked into Department of Defence databases and released personal information of 1,400 US military affiliates, hijacked several feeds belonging to French TV channel TV5Monde and defacing its websites with the tagline “Je suis ISIS,” and more, much more.

As the Cyber Caliphate threat grew, western intelligence agencies took note and devoted significant resources to exposing and fighting the organisation. These efforts increased with the recent announcement that the various ISIS hackers were merging under a new umbrella organisation, the United Cyber Caliphate, which could constitute a major threat online.

In late February, the Pentagon announced the beginning of a full-scale cyber-war against ISIS, including activity by the US Cyber Command and a drone strike which killed Junaid Hussain, British jihadist of Pakistani origin who was the Caliphate’s best-known hacker.

However, not all is at it seems in the land of jihadi cyber warfare. Following the TV5Monde attack, French intelligence services scrutinised the group’s activity and concluded that the hackers involved had, in fact, no ties to ISIS, but a rather better established organisation famous for its deceptive spying practices. French investigators traced the attacks back to Moscow, and in particular APT 28, a group well-known as the Kremlin’s secret cyber-arm.

 

Similar conclusions were reached following analysis in other countries, too. The US State Department said in a mid-2015 report that although the “Cyber Caliphate declares to support [ISIS], there are no indications—technical or otherwise—that the groups are tied.” According to Der Spiegel, German intelligence also believes the Cyber Caliphate to be a Russian false-flag operation, part of Moscow’s 4,000-strong hacking staff.

To those versed in the practices of the clandestine world of spies, none of this should come as a surprise. The Kremlin has had over 100 years to perfect its false-flag practices, with the only innovation being that these sort of operations now take place in the cyber-world. For Moscow, this is just another tool in their arsenal, but it does indicate that ISIS is not nearly as formidable as it once seemed.

Yes, there is more bad news. If you are going to the Olympics, beware:

Officials warn that U.S. travelers to Rio Olympics face hack risk

USAToday: WASHINGTON — If Zika, political instability and contaminated water weren’t enough, U.S. intelligence officials are warning Americans traveling to the August Olympic Games in Rio and other destinations abroad that proprietary information stored on electronic devices is at high risk for theft by spies and cyber criminals who are increasingly targeting global events as troughs rich in valuable intelligence.

Bill Evanina, the nation’s chief counter-intelligence executive, is urging travelers to carry “clean’’ devices, free of potentially valuable archives that could be tapped for economic advantage, personal data or security information.

Just as the Olympics draw the world’s most talented athletes, Evanina said the games and other international events represent a “great playground’’ for government intelligence services and criminals, if only because of the “sheer number of devices.’’

A little more than a month before the Rio games and in the midst of the summer travel season, the U.S. government is launching a multimedia campaign Wednesday to advise travelers of the increasing threat. The program, “Know the Risk; Raise Your Shield,” warns in part that foreign security services and criminals are tracking visitors’ movements through their mobile phones and are able to control such things as internal microphones remotely, often without the users’ knowledge.

“When you travel abroad, assume that your personal information will be breached,’’ Evanina said.

Though the campaign is aimed at all U.S. travelers abroad, the approaching Olympics, which traditionally draws thousands of U.S. visitors, offer a specific focus of concern for authorities.

As part of the U.S. government’s awareness campaign, Evanina, through the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, is advising Americans traveling abroad, regardless of their destination and purpose, to take a variety of precautions.

Among them:

• Leave unnecessary devices at home.
• Back up data on devices in use and leave those copies in secure locations at home.
• Change passwords at regular intervals during travel and on return.
• Avoid prolonged sessions on local Wi-Fi networks.
• Submit company devices for examination on return for presence of malware.

National security agencies raised similar concerns in advance of the 2008 games in China and the 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia, as both countries represent the U.S.’s most aggressive cyber adversaries. Prior to the 2014 Sochi games, for example, the Department of Homeland Security warned that “all communications and files” stored on personal electronic devices were vulnerable to interception.

Brazil, while not considered such an adversary, nevertheless will likely draw intelligence units from other countries and outside criminal elements all seeking to mine the global event that attracts top government leaders and a constellation of Wall Street and corporate executives, Evanina said.

Ray Mey, a former FBI official who has managed security operations at Olympics in Salt Lake City and Torino, Italy, said that businesses may be more inclined to bolster their cyber defenses in places like China and Russia, even though Rio is expected to be used as an information collection and recruitment opportunity. More from USAToday

 

Day After Benghazi PDB, Obama Did not Take

  

Barack Obama skipped his daily intelligence briefing one day after the Benghazi attacks on September 11, 2012. The president’s briefer handed a written copy of the presidential daily briefing to a White House usher and then briefed Jack Lew, who was then serving as White House chief of staff. But Obama, who sometimes avails himself of the oral briefing that is offered along the written intelligence product, did not ask for such a briefing the day after the attacks on U.S. facilities in Libya. TWS

Below is the testimony, including citations and redactions:

THE SEPTEMBER 12 SITUATION REPORT AND THE PRESIDENT’S DAILY BRIEF

The very first written piece produced by CIA analysts regarding the Benghazi attacks was an overnight Situation Report written very early in the morning on September 12, 2012. This piece included the line “the presence of armed assailants from the outset suggests this was an intentional assault and not the escalation of a peaceful protest.” While that line was correct—the attacks were an intentional assault and not the escalation of a peaceful protest—Michael Morell, Deputy Director, Central Intelligence Agency, noted it was a “crucial error that [came] back to haunt [the CIA].”1 This was an error, according to Morell, because that line was not written by analysts but rather a “senior editor” who “believed there needed to be some sort of bottom line” in the piece.2 Morell labeled it a “bureaucratic screw-up” and claims that since similar language did not appear in the CIA assessment the following day, September 13, it was evidence to critics that “the intelligence community was politicizing the analysis.”3

1 MICHAEL MORELL, THE GREAT WAR OF OUR TIME: THE CIA’S FIGHT AGAINST TERRORISM—FROM AL-QAIDA TO ISIS 217 (2015) [hereinafterMORELL].

2 Testimony of Michael Morell, Deputy Dir., Central Intelligence Agency, Tr. at 25 (Sept. 28, 2015) [hereinafter Morell Testimony].

3 MORELL, supra note 1, at 218.

4 Morell Testimony at 28.

Though Morell learned this information second-hand4 and put it in his book, the Select Committee spoke directly to individuals with first-hand accounting of the events. In reality, the “senior editor” was the Executive Coordinator of the Presidential Daily Brief; she included the language about the intentional assault and not the escalation of a peaceful protest; and this “bureaucratic screw-up” resulted in this individual taking the piece to the White House, presenting it to Jacob Lew, Chief of Staff to the President, and delivering it to an usher to give to the President.

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Insertion of the Language

The Executive Coordinator described to the Committee when she first saw the September 12 update:

A: So the analysts came in to brief me—I don’t remember what time that was, but my guess is probably somewhere between 3 and 4. And the piece that he gave to me was much longer than this.

And we had a difference of opinion on one piece of the intelligence. He believed that this was a spontaneous event and was not open to the idea that it wasn’t a spontaneous event. And I disagreed because, you know, I had 20 years of Army experience. You know, this is the military person in me. And I said, I just can’t buy that something that’s, you know, this coordinated, this organized, and this sophisticated was something that they just, you know, did on, you know, the spur of the moment. I said, we have to consider the fact that that might not be the case.

He had a lot of good arguments. You know, it was the anniversary of 9/11, there was the video in Cairo, there were a number of other things happening that, you know, would seem to suggest that it was spontaneous. But just being military and seeing, you know, what we were seeing in the traffic, I was like, I don’t think that this is—I don’t think we can discount the possibility that this was a, you know, coordinated, organized, preplanned attack.

Q: When you say when you were seeing what you were seeing in the traffic, what does that mean?

A: So the things they were talking about, how organized that it was, in the press reporting. There was a lot of press that was coming back and talking about, you know, like, how they were breaching and, you know, like, how it was sort of phased, right? It was coming across to me, reading, you know, the open press at the time, that this was a phased attack. And I would be very surprised if a phased attack was something that was just, all of a sudden, you know, “Hey, guess what? Let’s go have an attack today because these other things are happening.” I don’t think

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According to the manager of the analysts, none of her analysts believed the sentence regarding an intentional assault should have been included. The manager testified:

A: And so the POTUS coordinator inserted this sentence because she felt strongly that it was an intentional assault against our consulate.

Q: And—

A: But there was no—nothing to base that on, no reporting.

Q: And that view is the view of that single editor. Is that right?

A: Yes.

Q: Was there anyone—any of the analysts on your team that thought that sentence should have been included?

A: No.

Q: And the reason your team and your analysts felt so strongly was because there was no reporting to support that. Is that correct?

A: Correct. We just—you can’t make a call without an evidentiary base to support it.8

8 Id. at 100-101.

However, without solid evidence pointing in either direction—spontaneous or not—the Executive Coordinator was sure to be careful with her language. She merely wanted to leave open the possibility that it was an intentional assault and the language she chose reflected that possibility—not a conclusion. She told the Committee:

Q: —your choice of the word “suggests,” is that to couch it—

A: Yes.

Q: —to say that this may have happened, as opposed to it definitively happened?

A: Correct.

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Q: Okay. And was that a deliberate —

A: It was leaving the door open that this is what it suggests, but that doesn’t mean this is what it is.9

9 PDB Testimony at 37.

10 Id. at 29.

11 Id. at 26.

The analysts and the Executive Coordinator were not able to reach a consensus on the language in the piece. The analysts, who had went up to the 7th Floor of the CIA headquarters to brief the Executive Coordinator on the piece, returned to their desks. The Executive Coordinator testified:

Q: Okay. And was there a resolution between you and him—

A: Not really.

Q: —on how to proceed?

A: No.

Q: No. Okay. So how did your conversation or interactions with him end?

A: I told him I would think about, you know, what he had said. And I said, you know, I will to talk to somebody.10

The Executive Coordinator, however, did not make the decision to include the language of an intentional assault on her own, and she did not do it in a vacuum based solely on her experience. Members of her staff, which numbered roughly 15, talked with individuals outside CIA headquarters about what was going on. She told the Committee:

Q: In terms of picking up the phone and calling anybody outside of the building, is that something you did to acquire information?

A: We did. Yes.11

She also discussed the matter with another analyst who had expertise in regional issues. The Executive Coordinator testified:

We had—I was very lucky because we had another—we had a MENA analyst that was a PDB briefer. She was the, I want to

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say, the SecDef briefer. And so I went over and I talked to her and I said, “Hey, this is what the analyst says. Here’s my opinion. You know, what are your thoughts, having covered this area, you know, pretty extensively in your career?” And she agreed with me.

We discussed it, we had a conversation about it and—you know. And so I made the decision to change the wording to make sure that we at least addressed the possibility that this was a planned attack.12

12 Id. at 29.

13 Testimony of Dir. of the Office of Terrorism Analysis, Central Intelligence Agency, Tr. at 23 {Nov. 13, 2015) [hereinafter OTA Director Testimony].

She also testified:

A: There was a lot of discourse about this at the PDB. I mean, the other PDB briefers and I, that’s the only resource I have at the time. And I never would make an assessment all on my own and just be like, this is it. I mean, we would do—

Q: I understand.

A: We talk about it, we’re sounding boards for each other. So there was a lot of discussion. And, yes, I’m sure that the supervisor of the young man who wrote this, we had that conversation. Like, are you sure that this is what you want to say. And yes, when I wrote this, I didn’t feel like I was saying you’re wrong and I’m right. All I was trying to do was say, look, we need to leave the door open in case this is not a spontaneous attack. We want to be able to wait until there’s more information, and so that’s why I use the word “suggests.” I didn’t say this is an intentional assault. It suggests that it is.

The manager of the analysts who disagreed with the Executive Coordinator, however, concedes that the Executive Coordinator was right with her analysis. She testified:

Q: And she was right?

A: In the event, yes, she was right.13

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Similarly, Michael Morell concedes the sentence was accurate. He testified:

Q: So the sentence ended up being accurate?

A: Yeah. Absolutely.14

14 Morell Testimony at 25.

15 PDB Testimony at 41.

16 Id. at 6.

17 Id. at 41.

The President’s Daily Brief

When the Executive Coordinator finished inserting the accurate sentence regarding the “intentional assault and not the escalation of a peaceful protest” into the September 12 piece, she put it into the “book” she prepared each day for the President and his Chief of Staff.15 This “book” is otherwise known as the President’s Daily Brief, or the PDB.

Normally, upon completion of the PDB, the Executive Coordinator would travel to the White House, brief the Chief of Staff, and if the President required a briefing, she would brief the President. She testified:

So during the weeks that I produced the PDB, I would produce it, and then they would drive me to the White House, and I would produce—or I would brief Jack Lew first, who was the Chief of Staff. And if the President required a brief during that day or chose to take a brief, then I would give him a brief, and if not, then his briefer—then the DNI would brief him.

When we were on travel, I always briefed the President. That was my responsibility whenever we would fly.16

On September 12, 2012, the morning after the Benghazi attacks, the Executive Coordinator—the individual presenting the President with his Presidential Daily Brief—traveled to the White House. That day, however, she did not present the PDB to the President.17 Instead, she gave it to an usher. She testified she presented the PDB—with the accurate sentence regarding the “intentional assault and not the escalation of a peaceful protest”—to Lew:

A: So it depends. If we’re traveling, then I present it to the President personally. And if he has questions—usually the only questions he usually asks—

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Lawyer. We’re not going to talk about what the President said or your conversations with him.

A: Okay. So if we’re in town and we’re not traveling then I bring it to the White House, and I personally brief Jack Lew. And I hand the President’s book to the usher, and the usher presents it to the President.

Q: So normally in Washington, when you’re here in town, you’re not sitting across from the President, him looking at the book, and he may be asking you questions?

A: No.

Q: How did it happen on the 12th that day?

A: I was here. So we were not traveling yet. We were in D.C. So I would have—I had a driver, and the driver drives me to the White House. I drop off the book first with the usher and then I go down and I brief Jack Lew.

Q: Okay. And what time was that on the 12th?

A: So we always arrive by 7:00, and so it would’ve been around 7:00. I mean, I’m assuming around 7:00.

Q: So that day at 7:00, the booklet that has been put together, you take it to the White House, you visit with Jack Lew and then someone walked it into—

A: No. First we give the brief to the usher. So my driver drops me off at the front gate. I go through—

Q: You actually physically hand the document—or the material.

A: Yeah, I physically hand the material to the usher and then I walk back down with my briefcase and go see Jack Lew and wait for him and then I brief him.

Q: Okay. And with Mr. Lew, did you talk about this SITREP?

Lawyer: We’re not going to discuss what specific information was provided to any White House staff in any PDB.

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Q: But you did talk with Mr. Lew that day?

A: I did.18

18 Id. at 66-67.

19 Morell Testimony at 25.

20 Team Chief Testimony at 30-31.

Fallout

Morell labeled the insertion of the language by the Executive Coordinator a “bureaucratic screw-up.” This language made it into a piece that was put in the President’s Daily Brief, which was briefed to Lew, and possibly shared with the President. Such a “bureaucratic screw-up,” therefore, has far reaching implications if it occurs with any regularity.

Michael Morell told the Committee that what occurred was a “big no-no.” He testified:

She was, I’m told, a long-time military analyst with some expertise in military matters, no expertise in North Africa and no expertise in this particular incident. She added that, right? That’s a no-no, that’s a no-no in the review process business.19

The manager of the analysts who disagreed with the Executive Coordinator called what occurred an analytic “cardinal sin.” She testified:

What she did was, frankly, in the analytic world, kind of a cardinal sin. I mean, the job of the POTUS coordinator—so we had the two analysts stay overnight. Their job is to copy edit these things and make sure that if there is some analysis in there, that the evidentiary techs sort of hang together; that it actually makes sense because it does go to the—it’s a big deal. I mean, it goes to very senior policymakers. So–20

The OTA Director also said that what occurred was a problem:

Q: Okay. Is that a problem that the senior DNI editor had the final sign-off on this as opposed to the analysts, and that person is inserting something in there that the analysts adamantly disagree with?

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A: In my personal view, yes.21

21 OTA Director Testimony at 43.

22 Morell Testimony at 25-26.

23 Team Chief Testimony at 30-31.

Despite this “bureaucratic screw-up”—which occurred in relation to the Benghazi attacks, one of the few, if only, times in history outside scrutiny has ever been applied to the PDB process—Morell and others at the CIA told the Committee this occurs infrequently. Morell testified:

Q: So from my perspective, I’m very new to this arena, it seems like it’s a problem that you have these rigorous processes in place, and on this particular occasion a piece is going before the President and somebody inserts a sentence that substantively changes the meaning of a bullet point without any additional review by the analysts who wrote the piece.

A: Yes. You’re absolutely right.

Q: That’s a problem in your eyes as well?

A: Yes.

Q: And how often does something like that occur?

A: Not very. You know, in my experience, one or twice a year.22

The manager of the analysts who disagreed with the Executive Coordinator testified:

Q: Is that something that in your 8 years prior you had ever seen or heard of happening?

A: No.23

She also testified:

A: Oh, I’m sure I did, yeah. I mean, it was unheard of and it hasn’t happened since.

Q: Okay.

A: It’s a big deal.24

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24 Team Chief Testimony at 35-36.

25 Morell Testimony at 26.

26 Id. at 27.

Morell, himself once the head of the PDB staff, told the Committee how he would have responded if a senior editor had made such a substantive edit over the objections of the analysts:

A: And this—you know, I ran—I’ve ran the PDB staff, right, as part of the jobs I had. I would have reprimanded, orally reprimanded, not in a formal sense, right—

Q: Sure.

A: —called this person in my office and said, you know, what happened? And if it turned out to be exactly what I just explained to you, I would have said, don’t ever do that again.25

Morell also suggested how to ensure such a “bureaucratic screw-up” doesn’t happen in the future. He told the Committee:

Q: Is there any way to prevent these types of insertions by senior reviewers in the future?

A: Well, I said, it doesn’t happen very often, right.

Q: But it happened in this case, though.

A: So it’s not a huge problem, right, it doesn’t happen very often. The way you prevent it is twofold, right? You make it very clear when somebody shows up to the PDB staff what their responsibilities are and what their responsibilities are not, you’re not the analyst. And, two, when something—when something does happen, even something very minor, right, you make it very clear then that they overstepped their bounds. That’s how you prevent it.26

The Executive Coordinator, however, has a different point of view than Morell, the OTA Director, and the manager of the analysts. She did not view this as a “bureaucratic screw-up” at all, but rather exactly the job she was supposed to be doing. She acknowledged the disagreement with the analysts the night of the Benghazi attacks, testifying:

Q: Okay. And I know we talked about it, but how unusual, I

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guess, was this disagreement, this type of disagreement?

A: It was pretty unusual. Most of the time, we were able to, you know, just sort of agree on language, and they’ll gave you a face like, “Okay,” they’ll roll their eyes, they’ll be like, “All right, you know, that’s not as strong of language as I would like.” But, you know, a lot of times, you know, we soften the language because we just don’t know for sure. So, you know, we’ll change from, you know, “believe with high confidence” to—I’m like, do you really believe with high confidence, or do you really think that’s maybe medium confidence?

And I sort of saw my role as, you know, like, a mentor because I’d been in intelligence for 20 years. So a lot of times, you know, I would tell the analysts, you know, this is good tradecraft, but it will be better analysis if you take into consideration these things which you may or may not have considered.27

27 PDB Testimony at 38.

28 Id. at 31.

However, the fact that she inserted language into the piece was not a “no-no” or a “cardinal sin,” but rather something that was ultimately her decision, not the analysts’. This directly contradicts what Morell said about the Executive Coordinator overstepping her bounds. She testified:

But I do know that, you know, when I talked to [senior CIA official], you know, in the interview process and also, you know, subsequent to that, he basically said that you’re the PDB briefer, you are the last, you know, line of defense and, you know, it’s your call. So if there’s something in there that, you know, bothers you, you know, coordinate it out, and then if you can’t come to an agreement, it’s your, you know, responsibility. So I did not take that lightly.28

Since it was a responsibility she did not take lightly, she only modified such language when there was ample evidence to support it. She told the Committee:

But yes. I mean, we don’t—I rarely ever—in fact, I can’t remember any time that I’ve ever made, you know, a call just based on press reporting, so I’m sure there was other

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A: Yeah.

Q: There was discussion. It seemed to be—the consensus was that it was the right call.

A: Yes.

Q: Okay. The consensus by those at the roundtable.

A: At the roundtable, yes.31

31 Id. at 43-44.

32 Id. at 42.

33 OTA Director Testimony at 43.

One of the briefers at the roundtable was an analyst who came from the Middle East and North African desk at the CIA, and was a colleague of the analysts who disagreed with the Executive Coordinator the night of the attack.32

The testimony received by the Committee on this topic presents a dichotomy between two parties. On the one hand, CIA personnel present a picture that what occurred was a major error and breach of protocol. On the other hand, the Executive Coordinator, who works for ODNI, testified she was told when she took the job that she had the final call on language in analytic pieces, though changing substantive language was something exercised judiciously. Since the Benghazi attacks, the analysts have been instructed to stay with the PDB editors until the final piece is with the ODNI official.33 Given how the situation unfolded early in the morning of September 12, 2012, it is unclear how this new guidance would have altered that particular outcome.

Two of the first pieces produced by the CIA analysts in the wake of the Benghazi attacks contained errors either in process or substance. Both of these pieces became part of the President’s Daily Brief. While the Committee only examined intelligence pieces regarding the Benghazi attacks, discovering errors in two pieces—on successive days, on one single topic—that became part of the President’s Daily Brief is extremely problematic for what should be an airtight process. Whether these errors are simply a coincidence or part of a larger systemic issue is unknown. The September 12 piece, along with the egregious editing and sourcing errors surrounding the September 13 WIRe, discussed in detail above,

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raise major analytic tradecraft issues that require serious examination but are beyond the purview of this Committee.

 

Cruz Led Senate Hearing on Militant Islam, Who Refused to Show?

Willful Blindness

Code Pink Confronts Cruz at Senate Hearing on Islamic Terror, Says He Has a ‘Serious Case’ of Islamophobia

Washington, D.C. – Code Pink was in attendance for Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) hearing to address to White House’s downplaying of Islamic terror on Tuesday – and they immediately made their presence known. Standing in their infamous bright pink shirts with signs that read “Islamophobia is un-American,” they began by asking the room if anyone was “suffering from Islamophobia.”

When Cruz walked in, they asked him the same thing. 

The senator kept his cool, slammed down the gavel and began the hearing. He opened his remarks by referencing the terror attack at Fort Hood in 2009 waged by Nidal Hasan. Cruz noted the innocent people Hasan had slaughtered and how he chanted “allahu akbar” during his rampage. When Cruz accidentally mispronounced “allahu Akbar,” Code Pink and other attendees laughed out loud. More from TownHall

Obama Admin Refuses to Inform Congress of ‘Islamic Terrorism’ in U.S.

Officials ignore congressional call to testify about radicalism

FreeBeacon: Senior Obama administration officials refused to appear before Congress on Tuesday to explain the recent decision to purge all references to “Islamic terrorism” and radicalism from public documents, according to disclosures made Tuesday on Capitol Hill.

Top officials from the Justice Department and FBI declined to appear on Capitol Hill to answer questions from lawmakers about domestic terror attacks and an administration policy of scrubbing references to Islamic terrorism and similar terms from government materials, lawmakers said.

The policy has thwarted attempts by federal authorities to stop an increasing series of terror attacks from taking place on United States soil, according to Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas), chair of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on oversight.

In the past year the Obama administration has twice ordered that mentions of the terror group ISIS and “Islamic terrorism” be purged “from highly significant public records,” Cruz said.

One such effort took place in the aftermath of the recent terrorist shooting in Orlando in which the administration censored 911 transcripts of calls made by the shooter.

These efforts came amid other campaigns by the Department of Homeland Security to force its personnel to remove references to “jihad,” “sharia,” and other similar terms from material focused on methods to counter violent extremism, Cruz said.

“I would like nothing more than to speak with a government official about these bizarre decisions and omissions, especially in light of the most recent terrorist attack in Orlando by a radicalized man who had been interviewed three times by the FBI,” Cruz said.

“Indeed, this subcommittee invited two such witnesses: John P. Carlin, an assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice’s National Security Division, and Michael B. Steinbach, the executive assistant director for the FBI’s National Security Branch,” he said. “Both have refused to appear.”

Cruz blamed the administration’s policy for contributing to recent terror attacks in Orlando, San Bernardino, and Boston.

There has been a “consistent effort by this administration to scrub any reference to radical Islamic terrorism, to pretend the threat does not exist, and tragically as a consequence of that, over and over again, we have instances where the administration has ample evidence of radical Islamic terrorists,” Cruz said.

“The consequence of a willful blindness, of a policy that is a matter of administration policy, refusal to acknowledge the threat, means over and over again this administration has allowed the threats to go forward,” he added.

The administration “had declined to appear and explain” this policy and rationale behind it despite multiple requests from Congress.

“Are government officials prohibited from debating anything about Islam?” Cruz asked. “We would like to hear an explanation for that.”

The efforts to avoid using these terms have been longstanding in the Obama administration.

Muslim advocacy groups forced the FBI to purge some 876 documents from its training materials because they were deemed “offensive” in March 2012, Cruz explained.

“One article was purged because it was ‘highly inflammatory’ and ‘inaccurately argues the Muslim Brotherhood is a terrorist organization,’” he added.

In lieu of the Obama administration officials, the subcommittee heard from a range of outside terrorism experts and the government whistleblower who disclosed attempts by the Obama administration to purge many names from the U.S. terror watch list.

The Obama administration has come under further criticism for failing to properly combat ISIS abroad, a strategy that some lawmakers say could enable the terror group to carry out attacks inside the United States.

“I fear that in spite of continued attacks on our homeland, our military response to ISIS does not adequately reflect the direct nature of this threat to the United States,” Sen. Bob Corker (R., Tenn.), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said during a separate Tuesday hearing on the U.S. strategy to combat ISIS.

“I think many of us grow frustrated when the administration’s optimistic rhetoric often does not match the results,” Corker said.

ISIS Kill List Targets American Civilians, But do They Know?

Is anyone telling the civilians they are targets of Islamic State? Nope…Anyone explain why? The military? the FBI? The police? Is anyone collaborating, coordinating and protecting citizens?

 

ISIS ‘Kill Lists’ Increasingly Target U.S. Civilians

Report: Calls for random attacks by hacking groups illuminate ‘evolving terror threat’

FreeBeacon: Pro-ISIS hacking groups have started including American civilians along with military, government, and law enforcement personnel on “kill lists,” consistent with the terror group’s effort to expand attacks to random targets and instill fear in the public, according to a new report.

The SITE Intelligence Group, an organization that monitors jihadist propaganda, examined eight lists recently circulated online by pro-ISIS hacking groups, including some that name random civilian targets.

“These lists, with targets spanning drone operators to random civilians, appear to have achieved at least part of their presumed intentions: heightened alert by government workers, FBI visits to startled civilians, and significant media attention,” SITE wrote in its report.

Eight lists released over the course of two months this year have targeted federal government employees, military personnel, state and local government officials, and random residents of New York and Texas. While most of the kill lists have not been pushed through official ISIS channels, fighters and supporters of the terror group have promoted the targets through social media.

“This embrace of random targets, though new within the context of hackers’ kill lists, is nonetheless consistent with IS’ methodology, and demonstrates application of attack instructions from IS’ leadership and affiliates,” the report explained, using another name for the Islamic State, or ISIS.

ISIS has inspired self-radicalized terrorists who have launched attacks inside the United States. Omar Mateen, a U.S. citizen, pledged allegiance to the terror group during conversations with 911 operators during a gun attack that killed 49 victims at an Orlando gay club earlier this month. The couple who opened fire on a San Bernardino, California, holiday party last December are also believed to have pledged support to ISIS.

The FBI declined to comment specifically on investigative matters related to the kill lists but said that the agency routinely notifies people and organizations of information collected during investigations that could be “perceived as potentially threatening in nature.”

“Potential threats may relate to individuals, institutions, or organizations, and are shared in order to sensitize potential victims to the observed threat, and to assist them in taking proper steps to ensure their safety,” Matthew Bertron, a representative for the FBI’s National Press Office, told the Washington Free Beacon.

Kill lists from pro-ISIS hacking groups have become increasingly abundant since the so-called Islamic State Hacking Division called for attacks on 100 military personnel in March of last year, and later released lists targeting 10 Italian Army officers and over 1,000 military and government personnel. While this particular hacking group—once headed by ISIS fighter Junaid Hussain before he was killed in an airstrike—has focused on military and government personnel, others have emerged to target civilians and local officials.

A pro-ISIS group called the United Cyber Caliphate, for example, released five different target lists between March and May of this year. The lists publicized personal information about 11 Tennessee state county board members; 3,600 New York citizens; and 1,543 Texas residents, according to SITE’s report. Two lists each separately included information about 50 federal government employees, including workers from the Departments of State, Defense, and Navy.

While the list of New York residents was removed from the hosting site where it was posted, the lists with information on individuals in Tennessee and Texas remained online.

Another group named the Caliphate Cyber Army also released two lists, one of which called for attacks on 56 New Jersey state police staff and another that targeted 36 Minnesota state police officers.

While inactive between September 2015 and May of this year, the Islamic State Hacking Division also recently released names and personal information of 76 U.S. military personnel who work with drones.

“In just over a year, kill lists from pro-IS hacking groups have not only become more abundant, but have also expanded in terms of target selection,” the SITE report stated. “Between March and May of this year, kill lists by these groups have expanded beyond conventional criteria to random civilian targets, instructing to ‘shoot them down.’”

The lists are consistent with ISIS ideology supporting attacks on all non-Muslims living in countries at war with the terror group, according to SITE.

“This shift in target selection shows a new method in serving a long-standing function of IS and other jihadi groups: instill widespread fear into governments and the public,” the report stated. “As IS spokesman Abu Muhammad al-‘Adnani stated in a September 2014 speech, Muslims should kill any non-Muslim living in countries warring with the group, with no distinction of ‘whether he is a civilian or military.’”

The promotion of the lists also highlights ISIS militants’ exploitation of social media to recruit and inspire attacks, regardless of the fact that the pro-ISIS hacking groups do not appear to be publicly coordinating with one another.

“Given the power and ease of social media, along with the increasing ubiquity of Internet access and smart phones, every IS supporter can act as their own online media group, recruitment office, or fundraising organization. Likewise, every IS-supporting hacker can use their skills to serve the group’s goals, whether they be a fighter or a supporter in non-combat zones,” the report stated.

The SITE Intelligence Group could not confirm that the groups obtained the information by hacking into government or other private systems but said that it was both possible and plausible. The report noted that some of the information on the lists is available through public channels though they “appear to be compiled via non-public sources, especially when factoring what would be immense labor and difficulty required to manually compile the information via those public sources.”

The Islamic State Hacking Division is believed to have obtained data for its list targeting over 1,000 U.S. military personnel from Ardit Ferizi, a Kosovo citizen who hacked into a U.S.-based company’s servers to harvest the information. The Justice Department charged Ferizi with computer hacking, identity theft, and providing material support to ISIS last October.