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BostonGlobe: New Balance is renewing its opposition to the far-reaching Pacific Rim trade deal, saying the Obama administration reneged on a promise to give the sneaker maker a fair shot at military business if it stopped bad-mouthing the agreement.
John Tlumacki/Globe Staff/File
New Balance has several Northeast factories, including in Lawrence.
After several years of resistance to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a pact aimed at making it easier to conduct trade among the United States and 11 other countries, the Boston company had gone quiet last year. New Balance officials say one big reason is that they were told the Department of Defense would give them serious consideration for a contract to outfit recruits with athletic shoes.
But no order has been placed, and New Balance officials say the Pentagon is intentionally delaying any purchase.
New Balance is reviving its fight against the trade deal, which would, in part, gradually phase out tariffs on shoes made in Vietnam. A loss of those tariffs, the company says, would make imports cheaper and jeopardize its factory jobs in New England.
The administration has made the pact a priority. It could be voted on by Congress later this year, though possibly not until after the November elections.
“We swallowed the poison pill that is TPP so we could have a chance to bid on these contracts,” said Matt LeBretton, New Balance’s vice president of public affairs. “We were assured this would be a top-down approach at the Department of Defense if we agreed to either support or remain neutral on TPP. [But] the chances of the Department of Defense buying shoes that are made in the USA are slim to none while Obama is president.”
The administration says the issues of foreign tariffs and of whether the Pentagon should be required to buy shoes made domestically are entirely separate.
New Balance disagrees. Though most of the company’s shoes are made overseas, domestic manufacturing is a big priority for owner Jim Davis, a longtime Republican donor.
At issue here is why stop with declassifying these 28 pages, why no declassify the complicity of Iran and a few of the 9/11 attackers? One thing leads to another.
Kroft/CBS: In 10 days, President Obama will visit Saudi Arabia at a time of deep mistrust between the two allies, and lingering doubts about the Saudi commitment to fighting violent Islamic extremism.
It also comes at a time when the White House and intelligence officials are reviewing whether to declassify one of the country’s most sensitive documents — known as the “28 pages.” They have to do with 9/11 and the possible existence of a Saudi support network for the hijackers while they were in the U.S.
For 13 years, the 28 pages have been locked away in a secret vault. Only a small group of people have ever seen them. Tonight, you will hear from some of the people who have read them and believe, along with the families of 9/11 victims that they should be declassified.
Bob Graham: I think it is implausible to believe that 19 people, most of whom didn’t speak English, most of whom had never been in the United States before, many of whom didn’t have a high school education– could’ve carried out such a complicated task without some support from within the United States.
Steve Kroft: And you believe that the 28 pages are crucial to this? Understand…
Bob Graham: I think they are a key part.
Former U.S. Senator Bob Graham has been trying to get the 28 pages released since the day they were classified back in 2003, when he played a major role in the first government investigation into 9/11.
Bob Graham: I remain deeply disturbed by the amount of material that has been censored from this report.
At the time, Graham was chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and co-chair of the bipartisan joint congressional inquiry into intelligence failures surrounding the attacks. The Joint Inquiry reviewed a half a million documents, interviewed hundreds of witnesses and produced an 838 page report — minus the final chapter which was blanked out — excised by the Bush administration for reasons of national security.
“I remain deeply disturbed by the amount of material that has been censored from this report.”
Bob Graham won’t discuss the classified information in the 28 pages, he will say only that they outline a network of people that he believes supported the hijackers while they were in the U.S.
Steve Kroft: You believe that support came from Saudi Arabia?
Bob Graham: Substantially.
Steve Kroft: And when we say, “The Saudis,” you mean the government, the–
Bob Graham: I mean–
Steve Kroft: –rich people in the country? Charities–
Bob Graham: All of the above.
Graham and others believe the Saudi role has been soft-pedaled to protect a delicate relationship with a complicated kingdom where the rulers, royalty, riches and religion are all deeply intertwined in its institutions.
Bob Graham
CBS News
Porter Goss, who was Graham’s Republican co-chairman on the House side of the Joint Inquiry, and later director of the CIA, also felt strongly that an uncensored version of the 28 pages should be included in the final report. The two men made their case to the FBI and its then–director Robert Mueller in a face-to-face meeting.
Porter Goss: And they pushed back very hard on the 28 pages and they said, “No, that cannot be unclassified at this time.”
Steve Kroft: Did you happen to ask the FBI director why it was classified?
Porter Goss: We did, in a general way, and the answer was because, “We said so and it needs to be classified.”
Goss says he knew of no reason then and knows of no reason now why the pages need to be classified. They are locked away under the capital in guarded vaults called Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities, or SCIFs in government jargon. This is as close as we could get with our cameras — a highly restricted area where members of Congress with the proper clearances can read the documents under close supervision. No note-taking allowed.
Tim Roemer: It’s all gotta go up here, Steve.
Tim Roemer, a former Democratic congressman and U.S. ambassador to India, has read the 28 pages multiple times. First as a member of the Joint Inquiry and later as a member of the blue-ribbon 9/11 Commission which picked up where Congress’ investigation left off.
Steve Kroft: How hard is it to actually read these 28 pages?
Tim Roemer: Very hard. These are tough documents to get your eyes on.
Roemer and others who have actually read the 28 pages, describe them as a working draft similar to a grand jury or police report that includes provocative evidence — some verified, and some not. They lay out the possibility of official Saudi assistance for two of the hijackers who settled in Southern California. That information from the 28-pages was turned over to the 9/11 Commission for further investigation. Some of the questions raised were answered in the commission’s final report. Others were not.
Steve Kroft: Is there information in the 28 pages that, if they were declassified, would surprise people?
Tim Roemer: Sure, you’re gonna be surprised by it. And, you’re going to be surprised by some of the answers that are sitting there today in the 9/11 Commission report about what happened in San Diego, and what happened in Los Angeles. And what was the Saudi involvement.
Much of that surprising information is buried in footnotes and appendices of the 9/11 report — part of the official public record, but most of it unknown to the general public. These are some, but not all of the facts:
In January of 2000, the first of the hijackers landed in Los Angeles after attending an al Qaeda summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The two Saudi nationals, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, arrived with extremely limited language skills and no experience with Western culture. Yet, through an incredible series of circumstances, they managed to get everything they needed, from housing to flight lessons.
Tim Roemer: L.A., San Diego, that’s really you know, the hornet’s nest. That’s really the one that I continue to think about almost on a daily basis.
During their first days in L.A., witnesses place the two future hijackers at the King Fahd mosque in the company of Fahad al-Thumairy, a diplomat at the Saudi consulate known to hold extremist views. Later, 9/11 investigators would find him deceptive and suspicious and in 2003, he would be denied reentry to the United States for having suspected ties to terrorist activity.
Tim Roemer: This is a very interesting person in the whole 9/11 episode of who might’ve helped whom– in Los Angeles and San Diego, with two terrorists who didn’t know their way around.
Phone records show that Thumairy was also in regular contact with this man: Omar al-Bayoumi, a mysterious Saudi who became the hijackers biggest benefactor. He was a ghost employee with a no-show job at a Saudi aviation contractor outside Los Angeles while drawing a paycheck from the Saudi government.
Steve Kroft: You believe Bayoumi was a Saudi agent?
Bob Graham: Yes, and–
Steve Kroft: What makes you believe that?
Bob Graham: –well, for one thing, he’d been listed even before 9/11 in FBI files as being a Saudi agent.
On the morning of February 1, 2000, Bayoumi went to the office of the Saudi consulate where Thumairy worked. He then proceeded to have lunch at a Middle Eastern restaurant on Venice Boulevard where he later claimed he just happened to make the acquaintance of the two future hijackers.
Tim Roemer: Hazmi and Mihdhar magically run into Bayoumi in a restaurant that Bayoumi claims is a coincidence and in one of the biggest cities in the United States.
Steve Kroft: And he decides to befriend them.
Tim Roemer: He decides to not only befriend them but then to help them move to San Diego and get residence.
In San Diego, Bayoumi found them a place to live in his own apartment complex, advanced them the security deposit and cosigned the lease. He even threw them a party and introduced them to other Muslims who would help the hijackers obtain government IDs and enroll in English classes and flight schools. There’s no evidence that Bayoumi or Thumairy knew what the future hijackers were up to, and it is possible that they were just trying to help fellow Muslims.
The very day Bayoumi welcomed the hijackers to San Diego, there were four calls between his cell phone and the imam at a San Diego mosque, Anwar al-Awlaki, a name that should sound familiar.
The American-born Awlaki would be infamous a decade later as al Qaeda’s chief propagandist and top operative in Yemen until he was taken out by a CIA drone. But in January 2001, a year after becoming the hijackers’ spiritual adviser, he left San Diego for Falls Church, Virginia. Months later Hazmi, Mihdhar and three more hijackers would join him there.
Tim Roemer: Those are a lot of coincidences, and that’s a lot of smoke. Is that enough to make you squirm and uncomfortable, and dig harder– and declassify these 28 pages? Absolutely.
Perhaps, no one is more interested in reading the 28 pages than attorneys Jim Kreindler and Sean Carter who represent family members of the 9/11 victims in their lawsuit against the kingdom. Alleging that its’ institutions provided money to al Qaeda knowing that it was waging war against the United States.
Jim Kreindler: What we’re doing in court is developing the story that has to come out. But it’s been difficult for us because for many years, we weren’t getting the kind of openness and cooperation that we think our government owes to the American people, particularly the families of people who were murdered.
The U.S. government has even backed the Saudi position in court–that it can’t be sued because it enjoys sovereign immunity. The 9/11 Commission report says that Saudi Arabia has long been considered the primary source of al Qaeda funding through its’ wealthy citizens and charities with significant government sponsorship. But the sentence that got the most attention when the report came out is this:
“We have found no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded the organization.”
Attorney Sean carter says it’s the most carefully crafted line in the 9/11 Commission report and the most misunderstood.
Sean Carter: When they say they found no evidence that senior Saudi officials individually funded al Qaeda, they conspicuously leave open the potential that they found evidence that people who were officials that they did not regard as senior officials had done so. That is the essence of the families’ lawsuit. That elements of the government and lower level officials sympathetic to bin Laden’s cause helped al Qaeda carry out the attacks and help sustain the al Qaeda network.
Yet, for more than a decade, the kingdom has maintained that that one sentence exonerated it of any responsibility for 9/11 regardless of what might be in the 28 pages.
Bob Kerrey: It’s not an exoneration. What we said–we did not, with this report, exonerate the Saudis.
Former U.S. Senator Bob Kerrey is another of the 10-member 9/11 Commission who has read the 28 pages and believes they should be declassified. He filed an affidavit in support of the 9/11 families’ lawsuit.
Bob Kerrey: You can’t provide the money for terrorists and then say, “I don’t have anything to do with what they’re doing.”
Steve Kroft: Do you believe that all of the leads that were developed in the 28 pages were answered in the 9/11 report? All the questions?
Bob Kerrey: No. No. In general, the 9/11 Commission did not get every single detail of the conspiracy. We didn’t. We didn’t have the time, we didn’t have the resources. We certainly didn’t pursue the entire line of inquiry in regard to Saudi Arabia.
Steve Kroft: Do you think all of these things in San Diego can be explained as coincidence?
John Lehman: I don’t believe in coincidences.
John Lehman, who was secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration, says that he and the others make up a solid majority of former 9/11 commissioners who think the 28 pages should be made public.
John Lehman: We’re not a bunch of rubes that rode into Washington for this commission. I mean, we, you know, we’ve seen fire and we’ve seen rain and the politics of national security. We all have dealt for our careers in highly classified and compartmentalized in every aspect of security. We know when something shouldn’t be declassified. An the, this, those 28 pages in no way fall into that category.
Lehman has no doubt that some high Saudi officials knew that assistance was being provided to al Qaeda, but he doesn’t think it was ever official policy. He also doesn’t think that it absolves the Saudis of responsibility.
John Lehman: It was no accident that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis. They all went to Saudi schools. They learned from the time they were first able to go to school of this intolerant brand of Islam.
Lehman is talking about Wahhabism, the ultra conservative, puritanical form of Islam that is rooted here and permeates every facet of society. There is no separation of church and state. After, oil, Wahhabism is one of the kingdom’s biggest exports. Saudi clerics, entrusted with Islam’s holiest shrines have immense power and billions of dollars to spread the faith. Building mosques and religious schools all over the world that have become recruiting grounds for violent extremists. 9/11 Commissioner John Lehman says all of this comes across in the 28 pages.
John Lehman: This is not going to be a smoking gun that is going to cause a huge furor. But it does give a very compact illustration of the kinds of things that went on that would really help the American people to understand why, what, how, how is it that these people are springing up all over the world to go to jihad?
Tim Roemer: Look, the Saudis have even said they’re for declassifying it. We should declassify it. Is it sensitive, Steve? Might it involve opening– a bit, a can of worms, or some snakes crawling out of there? Yes. But I think we need a relationship with the Saudis where both countries are working together to fight against terrorism. And that’s not always been the case.
A phone call or a strongly worded letter yet from the White House? nah
WASHINGTON, April 13 (Reuters) – The White House is aware of Russian planes flying dangerously close to a U.S. guided missile destroyer in the Baltic Sea on Tuesday and continues to be concerned about such behavior, a spokesman said on Wednesday.
“The White House is aware of the incident,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters at a daily briefing. “This incident … is entirely inconsistent with the professional norms of militaries operating in proximity to each other in international water and international airspace.”
MilitaryTimes: In one of the most aggressive actions in recent memory, Russian warplanes conducted “simulated attacks” on the a U.S. Navy vessel in the Baltic Sea on Tuesday, repeatedly flying within 30 feet of the ship, according to a defense official.
Sailors aboard the destroyer Donald Cook said the aircraft flew low enough to create wake in the sea waters surrounding the ship, and the ship’s commanding officer said the incident was “unsafe and unprofessional,” the defense official said.
“This was more aggressive than anything we’ve seen in some time,” according to the defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because U.S. officials have not officially disclosed the incidents.
Sailors aboard the ship described the Sukhoi Russian Su-24 as “wings clean,” meaning there were no visible bombs or armaments on the aircraft, the defense official said.
The nature of the overflight as a “simulated attack” may violate a 1973 treaty between the U.S. and Russia that specifically prohibits this type of maneuver, the defense official said.
The maneuver was one of several aggressive moves by Russian aircraft on Monday and Tuesday.
Shortly after leaving the Polish port of Gdynia, near Gdansk, on Monday, the Donald Cook at was sea in international waters conducting flight operations with a Polish helicopter, part of routine joint training exercises with the NATO ally.
During those flight operations, a Russian Sukhoi Su-24 combat aircraft appeared and conducted about 20 overflights, coming within 1,000 yards of the ship at an altitude of about 100 feet, the defense official said. In response, the commander of the Donald Cook suspended flight operations.
On Tuesday, the Donald Cook was underway in the Baltic Sea when a Russian helicopter —a Ka-27 Helix —made seven overflights and appeared to be taking photographs of the U.S. Navy ship, the defense official said.
Shortly after the helicopter left the area, an Su-24 began making “very low” overflights with a “simulated attack profile,” the defense official said. The aircraft made a total of 11 passes.
The ship’s commander repeatedly tried to make radio contact with the Russian aircraft but received no response, the defense official said.
After a formal investigation, the incident may prompt the U.S. government to formally lodge a complaint — or “demarche” — with Moscow, the defense official said.
While Russian aircraft during the past couple of years have conducted numerous aggressive overflights that Navy officials deemed “unprofessional,” the incident on Tuesday was the first to be deemed “unsafe,” the defense official said.
In 1973, the United States and the Soviet Union signed a treaty aimed at preventing incidents at sea. That treaty specifically prohibits “simulating attacks,” according to the U.S. State Department’s website.
The aircraft likely came from a Russian military installations in Kalingrad, an enclave of Russian territory on the Baltic Coast nestled between Poland and Lithuania.
Permit me to tell you what you would have seen and heard had you had been with me on Thursday. It will not be pleasant listening. If you are at lunch, or if you have no appetite to hear what Germans have done, now is a good time to switch off the radio for I propose to tell you of Buchenwald. It is on a small hill about four miles outside Weimar, and it was one of the largest concentration camps in Germany, and it was built to last.
As we approached it, we saw about a hundred men in civilian clothes with rifles advancing in open-order across the field. There were a few shots. We stopped to inquire. We’re told that some of the prisoners have a couple of SS men cornered in there. We drove on, reached the main gate. The prisoners crowed up behind the wire. We entered. And now, let me tell this in the first-person, for I was the least important person there, as you can hear.
There surged around me an evil-smelling stink. Men and boys reached out to touch me. They were in rags and the remnants of uniforms. Death had already had marked many of them, but they were smiling with their eyes. I looked out over that mass of men to the green fields beyond, where well-fed Germans were ploughing. A German, Fritz Kersheimer, came up and said, “May I show you around the camp? I’ve been here for ten years.” An Englishman stood to attention saying, “May I introduce myself? Delighted to see you. And can you tell me when some of our folks will be along?” I told him, “soon,” and asked to see one of the barracks. It happened to be occupied by Czechoslovakians. When I entered, men crowded around, tried to lift me to their shoulders. They were too weak. Many of them could not get out of bed. I was told that this building had once stabled 80 horses. There were 1200 men in it, five to a bunk. The stink was beyond all description. When I reached the center of the barracks, a man came up and said, “You remember me, I am Patr Zenkl, one time mayor of Prague.” I remembered him, but did not recognize him. He asked about Benes and Jan Masaryk. I asked how many men had died in that building during the last month. They called the doctor; we inspected his records. There were only names in the little black book, nothing more — nothing of who had been where, what they had done or hoped. Behind the names of those who had died there was a cross. I counted them. They totaled 242, two hundred and forty-two out of 1200 in one month.
As I walked down to the end of the barracks, there was applause from the men too weak to get out of bed. It sounded like the hand-clapping of babies, they were so weak. The doctors name was Paul Heller. He had been there since ’38. As we walked out into the courtyard, a man fell dead. Two others–they must have been over 60–were crawling toward the latrine. I saw it, but will not describe it.
In another part of the camp they showed me the children, hundreds of them. Some were only six. One rolled up his sleeve, showed me his number. It was tattooed on his arm. B-6030, it was. The others showed me their numbers. They will carry them till they die. An elderly man standing beside me said, “The children–enemies of the state!” I could see their ribs through their thin shirts. The old man said, “I am Professor Charles Richer of the Sorbonne.” The children clung to my hands and stared. We crossed to the courtyard. Men kept coming up to me to speak to me and touch me, professors from Poland, doctors from Vienna, men from all of Europe. Men from the countries that made America.
We went to the hospital; it was full. The doctor told me that two hundred had died the day before. I asked the cause of death. He shrugged and said: “Tuberculosis, starvation, fatigue, and there are many who have no desire to live. It is very difficult.” Dr. Heller pulled back the blanket from a man’s feet to show me how swollen they were. The man was dead. Most of the patients could not move.
As we left the hospital, I drew out a leather billfold, hoping that I had some money which would help those who lived to get home. Professor Richer from the Sorbonne said, “I should be careful of my wallet if I were you. You know there are criminals in this camp, too.” A small man tottered up, say, “May I feel the leather, please? You see, I used to make good things of leather in Vienna.” Another man said, “My name is Walter Roeder. For many years I lived in Joliet. Came back to Germany for a visit and Hitler grabbed me.
I asked to see the kitchen; it was clean. The German in charge had been a Communist, had been at Buchenwald for nine years, had a picture of his daughter in Hamburg. He hadn’t seen her in twelve years, and if I got to Hamburg, would I look her up? He showed me the daily ration: one piece of brown bread about as thick as your thumb, on top of it a piece of margarine as big as three sticks of chewing gum. That, and a little stew, was what they received every twenty-four hours. He had a chart on the wall; very complicated it was. There were little red tabs scattered through it. He said that was to indicate each ten men who died. He had to account for the rations, and he added, “We’re very efficient here.”
We went again into the courtyard, and as we walked, we talked. The two doctors, the Frenchman and the Czech, agreed that about six thousand had died during March. Kershenheimer, the German, added that back in the winter of 1939, when the Poles began to arrive without winter clothing, they died at the rate of approximately nine hundred a day. Five different men asserted that Buchenwald was the best concentration camp in Germany; they had had some experience of the others.
Dr. Heller, the Czech, asked if I would care to see the crematorium. He said it wouldn’t be very interesting because the Germans had run out of coke some days ago, and had taken to dumping the bodies into a great hole nearby. Professor Richer said perhaps I would care to see the small courtyard. I said yes. He turned and told the children to stay behind. As we walked across the square, I noticed that the professor had a hole in his left shoe and a toe sticking out of the right one. He followed my eyes and said, “I regret that I am so little presentable, but what can one do?” At that point, another Frenchman came up to announce that three of his fellow countrymen outside had killed three SS men and taken one prisoner.
We proceeded to the small courtyard. The wall was about eight feet high. It adjoined what had been a stable or garage. We entered. It was floored with concrete. There were two rows of bodies stacked up like cordwood. They were thin and very white. Some of the bodies were terribly bruised, though there seemed to be little flesh to bruise. Some had been shot through the head, but they bled but little. All except two were naked. I tried to count them as best I could, and arrived at the conclusion that all that was mortal of more than five hundred men and boys lay there in two neat piles.
There was a German trailer, which must have contained another fifty, but it wasn’t possible to count them. The clothing was piled in a heap against the wall. It appeared that most of the men and boys had died of starvation; they had not been executed. But the manner of death seemed unimportant. Murder had been done at Buchenwald. God alone knows how many men and boys have died there during the last twelve years. Thursday, I was told that there were more than twenty thousand in the camp. There had been as many as sixty thousand. Where are they now? As I left the camp, a Frenchman who used to work for Havas in Paris came up to me and said, “You will write something about this, perhaps?” And he added, “To write about this, you must have been here at least two years, and after that–you don’t want to write any more.”
I pray you to believe what I have said about Buchenwald. I have reported what I saw and heard, but only part of it. For most of it, I have no words. Dead men are plentiful in war, but the living dead, more than twenty thousand of them in one camp. And the country round about was pleasing to the eye. And the German were well-fed and well-dressed. American trucks were rolling toward the rear filled with prisoners. Soon they would be eating American rations, as much for a meal as the men at Buchenwald received in four days.
If I have offended you by this rather mild account of Buchenwald, I’m not in the least sorry. I was there on Thursday, and many men in many tongues blessed the name of Roosevelt. For long years his name has meant the full measure of their hope. These men who had kept close company with death for many years did not know that Mr. Roosevelt would, within hours, join their comrades who had laid their lives on the scales of freedom.
Back in 1941, Mr. Churchill said to me with tears in his eyes, “One day the world and history will recognize and acknowledge what it owes your President.” I saw and heard the first of that installment at Buchenwald on Thursday. It came from men from all over Europe. Their faces, with more flesh on them, might have been found anywhere at home. To them, the name Roosevelt was a symbol, a code word for a lot of guys named Joe who are somewhere out in the blue, with the armor, heading east. At Buchenwald they spoke of the President just before he died. If there be a better epitaph, history does not record it.
Navy Officer Accused of Spying for Foreign Power Held Secretly for 8 Months
The amphibious assault ship USS Boxer transits the East Sea during Exercise Ssang Yong 2016 on March 8. It’s been revealed that a U.S. Navy officer accused of spying was held in secret for eight months.
By Jeff Stein/Newsweek: A U.S. Navy officer accused of spying for an unidentified foreign power was secretly arrested last summer in an espionage investigation that is ongoing, authorities said Saturday.
The heavily redacted charge sheets say the unidentified officer gave secret information “relating to the national defense to representatives of a foreign government.” But the four-page document does not say exactly what information was provided, or for how long a period it was provided, how the information was transmitted or which nation it was provided to.
The multiple charges of espionage and attempted espionage, made public only on Friday, suggest the accused officer was under surveillance by Navy counterespionage agents for an extended period of time. The officer was arrested “about eight months ago,” according to a U.S. official who asked for anonymity in exchange for discussing some details of the case.
The name of the officer, a lieutenant commander who was assigned to a sensitive maritime patrol and reconnaissance group, is being withheld from the public “out of respect for the ongoing investigation” and the privacy rights of the accused, said the official.
The official did not rule out the possibility of further arrests in the case, which is being jointly pursued by both the FBI and Naval Criminal Investigative Service, or NCIS. The officer is being held in the Naval Consolidated Brig in Chesapeake, Va.
The officer’s unit “provides airborne anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface warfare and maritime intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance operations from planes such as the P-8A Poseidon, P-3C Orion and unmanned MQ-4C Triton,” according to the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot newspaper. The command of the Maritime Patrol and Reconnaissance Force is headquartered at Hampton Roads Naval Support Activity in Norfolk, “although it’s not clear whether he was stationed there,” the paper said. The unit has wings at Jacksonville Naval Air Station in Florida, Whidbey Island Naval Air Station in Washington state and Marine Corps Base Hawaii.
The Navy’s charge sheet said the officer is accused of three counts of attempted espionage, three counts of making false official statements and five counts of communicating defense information “to a person not entitled to receive said information.” It also said the officer provided a false address when he was on leave “rather than the actual foreign destination,” and failed to report contacts with foreign nationals.
The Navy also accused the officer, “a married man,” of procuring prostitutes ”on divers occasions” and having sex with “a woman not his wife,” a violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, or UCMJ.
The dates of the alleged espionage, the identity of the foreign spy service—if any—and the foreign nationals involved will not likely be disclosed until and if the Navy prefers court martial charges against the accused.
Adm. Philip S. Davidson, commander of Fleet Forces Command, will weigh the results of an Article 32 investigation, the military’s version of a grand jury, to determine whether a court martial is warranted.
The accused officer could face the death penalty if found guilty of the most serious espionage charges.
Under the UCMJ, a service member is eligible for the death penalty for espionage if found “guilty of an offense that directly concerns nuclear weaponry, military spacecraft or satellites, early warning systems, or other means of defense or retaliation against large scale attack, war plans, communications intelligence or cryptographic information, or any other major weapons system or major element of defense strategy.”
****
InquisitR: A U.S. Navy officer was charged with giving secrets to China and prostitution at the Norfolk Air Station in Virginia. It is believed that Lieutenant Commander Edward Lin gave secrets about vital communications systems, although the Navy has yet to determine how much and for how long.
CBS News reported that the Navy officer charged worked as a flight officer on an EP-3E Reconnaissance, a sensitive intelligence gathering aircraft. Lin is alleged to have given information on the aircraft’s communications system. The information he gave could be used to counter U.S. eavesdropping capabilities. Additional details here.
The heavily redacted documents released accused Lieutenant Commander Edward Lin of five counts of espionage and attempted espionage, three counts of making false official statements, and five counts of communicating information to a person not authorized to receive it.
John Tlumacki/Globe Staff/File
