Category Archives: Military

Details Emerge on Paris Attacker

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ABC: Suspected Paris attacker terrorist Salah Abdeslam allegedly told interrogators he was planning new operations and “was ready to restart something from Brussels,” Belgium’s foreign minister Didier Reynders said today.

At a security conference in Brussels Reynders said Abdeslam’s apparent claim “may be the reality.”

Reynders added that investigators have “found a lot of weapons” and “have seen a new network of people around him [Abdeslam] in Brussels.”

“We have found more than 30 people involved in the terrorist attacks in Paris, but we are sure that there are others,” Reynders said. He is being held in the maximum-security area of the Bruges prison.

NYT: Investigators found crates’ worth of disposable cellphones, meticulously scoured of email data. All around Paris, they found traces of improved bomb-making materials. And they began piecing together a multilayered terrorist attack that evaded detection until much too late.
In the immediate aftermath of the Paris terror attacks on Nov. 13, French investigators came face to face with the reality that they had missed earlier signs that the Islamic State was building the machinery to mount sustained terrorist strikes in Europe.
Now, the arrest in Belgium on Friday of Salah Abdeslam, who officials say was the logistics chief for the Paris attacks, offers a crucial opportunity to address the many unanswered questions surrounding how they were planned. Mr. Abdeslam, who was transferred to the penitentiary complex in Bruges on Saturday, is believed to be the only direct participant in the attacks who is still alive.
Much of what the authorities already know is in a 55-page report compiled in the weeks after the attack by the French antiterrorism police, presented privately to France’s Interior Ministry; a copy was recently obtained by The New York Times. While much about the Paris attacks has been learned from witnesses and others, the report has offered new perspectives about the plot that had not yet been publicized.
The attackers, sent by the Islamic State’s external operations wing, were well versed in a range of terrorism tactics – including making suicide vests and staging coordinated bombings while others led shooting sprees – to hamper the police response, the report shows. They exploited weaknesses in Europe’s border controls to slip in and out undetected, and worked with a high-quality forger in Belgium to acquire false documents.
The scale of the network that supported the attacks, which killed 130 people, has also surprised officials, as President François Hollande of France acknowledged on Friday. As of Saturday, there are 18 people in detention in six countries on suspicion of assisting the attackers.
French officials have repeatedly warned that more strikes are possible, saying security and intelligence officials cannot track all the Europeans traveling to and from Islamic State strongholds in Syria and Iraq. And Western intelligence officials say their working assumption is that additional Islamic State terrorism networks are already in Europe.
The French police report, together with hundreds of pages of interrogation and court records also obtained by The Times, suggest that there are lingering questions about how many others were involved in the terrorist group’s network, how many bomb makers were trained and sent from Syria, and the precise encryption and security procedures that allowed the attackers to evade detection during the three months before they struck.
Taken as a whole, the documents, combined with interviews with officials and witnesses, show the arc of the Islamic State’s growth from a group that was widely viewed as incapable of carrying out large-scale terror assaults. And they suggest that nearly two years of previous, failed attacks overseen by the leader of the Paris assault, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, served as both test runs and initial shots in a new wave of violence the Islamic State leaders have called for in Western Europe and Britain.
Focus on Explosives
Diners first saw the young man pacing back and forth in front of the bistro’s awning on Rue Voltaire. What drew their attention, they told investigators in accounts summarized in the police report, were the bulky layers of clothing he was wearing: an anorak on top of a coat with fur trim, over a vest that could be spotted through gaps in the clothing – excessive even for a chilly November evening.
Just after 9 p.m., he turned and walked into the bistro, past the covered terrace built around a curved bar.
“He turned and looked at the people with a smile,” the French police report said, offering previously unreleased details. “He apologized for any disturbance he had caused. And then he blew himself up.”
He turned out to be Ibrahim Abdeslam, a brother of the man arrested on Friday in Brussels, and his suicide bombing came near the start of a night of carnage that played out at cafes and restaurants, the national soccer stadium and a concert venue.
When the Anti-Criminal Brigade of France’s National Police arrived at the bistro, the Comptoir Voltaire, it found electrical wires in the bomber’s flesh. The wires were still attached to a white object, which in turn was next to a single alkaline 9-volt battery, elements of a detonation mechanism. Officials involved in the investigation say that the residue from the explosive used in the bistro tested positive for a peroxide-based explosive, triacetone triperoxide, or TATP. It has become the signature explosive for Islamic State operations in Europe, and it can be made with common products – hair bleach and nail polish remover – easily found over the counter across Europe.
The French police found traces of the same explosive formulation at each of the places in Paris where the attackers detonated their vests, including three times outside the Stade de France soccer stadium; once at the Comptoir Voltaire bistro; twice in the Bataclan concert hall; and once in an apartment in a Paris suburb. Traces were also found in a rented apartment in Belgium occupied by the terrorists in the weeks before the assault, according to forensic evidence revealed by the country’s prosecutor.
A French police officer looking for gunmen after a restaurant was targeted in the attacks, which killed 130 people and injured hundreds.
Etienne Laurent / European Pressphoto Agency
The reason the terrorist group uses this particular explosive, experts say, is the availability of the ingredients. But creating an effective bomb can be tricky, and its success in setting off bomb after bomb is indicative of the group’s training and skill.
“Their ingredients, when combined, are highly unstable and can explode easily if mishandled,” Peter Bergen, the director of the National Securities Studies Program at the New America Foundation, said during recent congressional testimony. “To make an effective TATP bomb requires real training, which suggests a relatively skilled bomb-maker was involved in the Paris plot, since the terrorists detonated several bombs. It also suggests that there was some kind of bomb factory that, as yet, appears to be undiscovered, because putting together such bombs requires some kind of dedicated space.”
Since late 2013, records show, Islamic State fighters have been training to make and use TATP in Europe. The first aborted attempt was in February 2014, when Ibrahim Boudina, a French citizen who had trained in Syria with the group that was about to become the Islamic State, was arrested in the resort city of Cannes, according to his sealed court file that was obtained by The Times. In a utility closet on the landing of his family’s apartment block, the police found three Red Bull energy drink cans filled with white TATP powder.
Still, at the time of his arrest he appeared to be struggling with how to set off the charge. In his court file, among several obtained by The New York Times, investigators said he had been conducting Internet searches for phrases like “how to make a detonator.”
Nearly two years later, the police report and officials briefed on the investigation noted the uniformity of the parts in the bombs used by the ISIS attackers, suggesting a consistent protocol for preparing them.
At the scene of one suicide bombing, at a McDonald’s restaurant about 250 yards from the French national soccer stadium, the police bagged the bomber’s severed arm. The autopsy showed that a piece of string with a flap of adhesive tape at one end, believed to be the detonation cord, was wrapped around the limb. Along with TATP residue, they found electrical wires, a 9-volt battery to drive the detonation, and pieces of metal, including bolts, that had been mounted on the suicide belt as projectiles.Seeking to blend in with the soccer fans, another bomber had been wearing a tracksuit with the logo of the German soccer team Bayern Munich. His severed leg was found still in the tracksuit and, next to him, again, a piece of white string.
A Focus on Carnage
The attacks represented a shift in the Islamic State’s external operations branch that was first publicized in the group’s French-language online magazine, Dar al-Islam, last March.
In the previous small-scale attacks, the Islamic State, much like Al Qaeda before it, had taken aim at symbolic targets, including security installations and establishments with clear links to Israel or Jewish interests, like the Jewish Museum in Brussels. But in an interview published in the online magazine, a senior ISIS operative identified as Boubaker al-Hakim, described as the godfather of French jihadists, advised his followers to abandon the symbolism: “My advice is to stop looking for specific targets. Hit everyone and everything.”
The attackers in Paris appear to have moved easily between Belgium and France, and in some cases between the Middle East and Europe. At least three were wanted on international arrest warrants before the attacks but were able to travel freely. And security services are constrained by the inability or unwillingness of countries to share intelligence about potential terrorists, for legal, practical and territorial reasons.
“We don’t share information,” said Alain Chouet, a former head of French intelligence. “We even didn’t agree on the translations of people’s names that are in Arabic or Cyrillic, so if someone comes into Europe through Estonia or Denmark, maybe that’s not how we register them in France or Spain.”
All the previous attacks by Islamic State fighters dispatched from Syria had relied on a single mode of operation: a shooting, an explosion or an attempted hostage-taking. In Paris, the attackers set off to do all three, realizing that this way they could overwhelm the country’s emergency response.
That night, the French police were already spread thin by the explosions at the stadium and the beginning of the cafe shootings by the time the terrorists attacked the Bataclan concert hall and took hundreds of people hostage. The police report and new interviews offered extensive details about the siege by survivors.
The headlining band had just started playing to a full house at the Bataclan when witnesses described first noticing a Volkswagen Polo with a Belgian license plate approaching the hall, around 9:40 p.m., the report said.
The lone security guard posted at the concert hall’s main entrance told the police that he had seen people falling around him. He began herding people inside, off the street and directing the panicked concertgoers toward the emergency exits. Before they could get that far, two of the gunmen pushed their way into the main hall, opening fire on the crowd as people hit the ground, lying flat on their stomachs. Those who managed to make it to the emergency exit threw it open, only to come face to face with the third gunman, who was waiting outside. One of the cellphones used by the attackers contained archived images of the Bataclan’s layout, suggesting they had planned their trap carefully, the police report said.
Through the emergency exit, the third and final gunman shot his way in. By then, the report said, people were shoving themselves into every space they could find. One group found refuge in a room used to store sound equipment. Others made it onto the roof. A few sprinted behind the attackers’ backs, managing to slip out.
Spectators were brought on the field at the Stade de France after terrorists detonated explosive vests outside.
Michel Euler / Associated Press
One hostage identified in the police report, David Fritz Goeppinger, who confirmed the account in a telephone interview, described how the gunmen had instructed the captives to sit in front of the closed doors as human shields. “We were their protection in case someone tried to shoot from outside,” he said in the interview.
The attackers seized cellphones from the hostages and tried to use them to get onto the Internet, but data reception was not functioning, Mr. Goeppinger told the police. Their use of hostages’ phones is one of the many details, revealed in the police investigation, pointing to how the Islamic State had refined its tradecraft. Court records and public accounts have detailed how earlier operatives sent to Europe in 2014 and early 2015 made phone calls or sent unencrypted messages that were intercepted, allowing the police to track and disrupt their plots. But the three teams in Paris were comparatively disciplined. They used only new phones that they would then discard, including several activated minutes before the attacks, or phones seized from their victims.
According to the police report and interviews with officials, none of the attackers’ emails or other electronic communications have been found, prompting the authorities to conclude that the group used encryption. What kind of encryption remains unknown, and is among the details that Mr. Abdeslam’s capture could help reveal.
Using their hostages’ phones, the attackers attempted to reach the police, but were initially frustrated by the “Press 1” or “Press 2” menu of options, said a 40-year-old woman whose phone was used by the gunmen, and who was interviewed on Saturday. She spoke on the condition of anonymity because she did not want to draw attention to her ordeal.
After numerous delays, one of the attackers began using a hostage’s cellphone to send text messages to a contact outside. At one point, one of the gunmen turned to a second and said in fluent French, “I haven’t gotten any news yet,” suggesting they were waiting for an update from an accomplice. Then they switched and continued the discussion in Arabic, according to the police report.
At nearly midnight, two hours after they took over the Bataclan, the gunmen began negotiating in earnest with the police.
“We want to talk to someone!” one gunman demanded, then turned to his demands for France to stop military strikes in Syria: “I want you to leave the country. I want you to remove your military. I want a piece of paper signed that proves it!” If not, he threatened, “I’m killing a hostage and throwing him out the window!”
One of the terrorists pulled out a laptop, propping it open against the wall, said the 40-year-old woman. When the laptop powered on, she saw a line of gibberish across the screen: “It was bizarre – he was looking at a bunch of lines, like lines of code. There was no image, no Internet,” she said. Her description matches the look of certain encryption software, which ISIS claims to have used during the Paris attacks.
The tallest of the three attackers was 6 feet 2 inches tall. He had an explosive belt strapped to his body and held a detonator in his hand. At one point, he stepped into the orchestra pit and started playing the xylophone, the whole time “laughing sadistically,” according to witnesses quoted in the report.
They would identity him later from his mug shot: He was Samy Amimour, a former bus driver.
France’s Anti-Criminal Brigade was the first law enforcement team to break through the Bataclan’s doors. The division commander, Guillaume Cardy, and a colleague got in through the main doors and managed to shoot one of the attackers, who was on the stage. Wounded, he detonated his vest, the report said.
The two remaining gunmen returned fire, forcing Commander Cardy to take cover. Members of another Paris police division tried to reach the wounded hostages, but were also forced to take cover, the report said.
Together the police charged the two surviving gunmen, and after a heavy barrage of fire, they killed the second before he could detonate his vest. The third gunman then blew himself up. In the end, it took four elite brigades to stop three gunmen, the report said.
Disposable Phones
As the bodies of the dead were being bagged, the police found a white Samsung phone in a trash can outside the Bataclan.
It had Belgian SIM card that had been in use only since the day before the attack. The phone had called just one other number – belonging to an unidentified user in Belgium. Another new detail from the report showed that the phone’s photo album police found images of the concert hall’s layout, as well as Internet searches for “fnacspectacles.com,” a website that sells concert tickets; “bataclan.fr“; and the phrase “Eagles of Death at the Bataclan.”
The phone’s GPS data led investigators eight miles south of the concert hall to the Paris suburb of Alfortville. The address was that of a hotel known as Appart’City. Two studios were reserved in the name of Salah Abdeslam, the suspect who was arrested on Friday. Along with his brother Ibrahim Abdeslam, investigators say, he appears to have been in charge of logistics for the group.
A still image from a video of the Belgian police arresting Salah Abdeslam, believed to be the logistics chief of the Paris attacks, in Brussels on Friday.
Vtm, via Reuters Tv / Reuters
Everywhere they went, the attackers left behind their throwaway phones, including in Bobigny, at a villa rented in the name of Ibrahim Abdeslam. When the brigade charged with sweeping the location arrived, it found two unused cellphones still inside their boxes.
New phones linked to the assailants at the stadium and the restaurant also showed calls to Belgium in the hours and minutes before the attacks, suggesting a rear base manned by a web of still unidentified accomplices.
Security camera footage showed Bilal Hadfi, the youngest of the assailants, as he paced outside the stadium, talking on a cellphone. The phone was activated less than an hour before he detonated his vest. From 8:41 p.m. until just before he died at 9:28 p.m., the phone was in constant touch with a phone inside the rental car being driven by Mr. Abaaoud. It also repeatedly called a cellphone in Belgium.
Most striking is what was not found on the phones: Not a single email or online chat from the attackers has surfaced so far.
Even though one of the disposable phones was found to have had a Gmail account with the username “yjeanyves1,” the police discovered it was empty, with no messages in the sent or draft folders. It had been created on the afternoon of the attacks from inside the Appart’City budget hotel.
DNA swabs taken at the villa, including on a crouton left behind, helped the authorities determine that at least one of the soccer stadium bombers had stayed there, as had Salah Abdeslam. The other objects the report describes being found there suggest it may have been one of the places where bombs were assembled, including a piece of cloth identical to one found on the remains of one of the bombers, a roll of the same kind of adhesive tape used on the devices, and two pyrotechnic detonators.
Attacker’s Last Stand
As France was plunged into a state of emergency on the night of the attack, the Islamic State’s external operations branch could claim that it had achieved all its goals. Mr. Abaaoud and Salah Abdeslam were still alive. But perhaps that was not part of the plan, because it was then that mistakes appeared, the police report shows.
Mr. Abaaoud’s rental car was last spotted leaving Paris for an industrial area in an eastern suburb. The car was abandoned near the Croix de Chavaux station about 10 p.m. Ten minutes later, a security camera captured footage of two men walking nearby, including one in orange sneakers. During the attacks, the report showed, witnesses and video cameras again and again described orange shoes on an attacker who was identifiable as Mr. Abbaaoud. Starting around that time, police records show that a 26-year-old woman, Hasna Aitboulahcen, began receiving phone calls on her Paris number from callers in Belgium. She was Mr. Abaaoud’s first cousin, according to a close friend who was later questioned by the police and who later talked to French news outlets. Ms. Aitboulahcen was described as being smitten with him for years.
On Nov. 15, she and a friend drove out to a remote spot along the freeway, where Mr. Abaaoud came out of the bushes and joined them, the report said, quoting the account of the friend.
According to the friend’s account to the police, Mr. Abaaoud regaled them with stories about how he had made it to Europe by inserting himself in the stream of migrants fleeing across the Mediterranean. He explained that he was among 90 terrorists who had made it back and who had gone to ground in the French countryside. the friend told the police.
“Abaaoud clearly presented himself as the commander of these 90 kamikazes-in-waiting, and that he had come directly to France in order to avoid the failures they had experienced in the past,” the police said the friend had told them.
Mr. Abaaoud would spend four days and three nights camped in the bushes, while his cousin returned with cake and water. By the friend’s account, Mr. Abaaoud told Ms. Aitboulahcen that he and an associate would carry out further attacks. Ms. Aitboulahcen was sent to buy the men new suits and dress shoes, the report said, bought with the nearly 5,000 euros the Islamic State’s network had sent via Western Union and an informal money exchange network known as a hawala.
On the night of Nov. 17, Ms. Aitboulahcen secured an apartment in the Saint-Denis suburb of Paris, chosen because the landlord did not require receipts.
The police raided it early the next morning, with Mr. Abaadoud and his cousin inside. The thundering boom of an explosive vest was recorded by television news crews outside.
Inside, the police again found the components used to make the TATP bombs. In addition to other weapons, they found a Herstal pistol with an empty clip, smeared with Mr. Abaaoud’s DNA, suggesting that he had fought to the end.
His body was found on the building’s third floor, and mixed in with his flesh were ball bearings and fragments of plastic. His feet were still in the orange sneakers.
Inside the ruins, the police found several dozen boxes of unused cellphones still in their wrappers. The phones were found throughout the rubble, including in the rooms and stairwell. Others had been ejected during the blast and fell onto the street below.

Cuba: Where is Barack and the Pope on This?

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Members of dissident group "Ladies in White", wives of former political prisoners, are detained during their protest on March 20, 2016 in Havana. President Barack Obama flew out of the United States on Sunday bound for a historic three-day visit to the communist-ruled island of Cuba. It is the first visit to Cuba by a sitting US president since Fidel Castro's guerrillas overthrew the US-backed government of Fulgencio Batista in 1959 and the first since President Calvin Coolidge's trip to the island 88 years ago. / AFP / ADALBERTO ROQUE (Photo credit should read ADALBERTO ROQUE/AFP/Getty Images)

Traveling with a delegation of about 80, Barack Obama has arrived in Cuba, something no sitting president has done since Calvin Coolidge. It is not clear who Obama will have meetings with, but his first stop was the recently fully opened U.S. embassy.

Meanwhile, there are real things going on in Havana that many are ignoring especially media and the entire diplomatic delegation. Obama calls this a new day in relations but it is hardly so when it comes to human rights.

The Pope played a large role in re-starting talks but it all began in earnest at the Nelson Mandela funeral.

The average salary for Cubans is $20.00 USD per month. All monies that flow into the island have two destinations, the Castro regime and the military.

Facts about Cuba: Venezuela ships 100,000 barrels of oil to Cuba a day. Only a few years ago, Putin forgave $32 billion in Cuban debt. Cuba has a long history of human rights violations such that John Kerry’s advance trip, ahead of Obama’s was cancelled due to major disputes with diplomatic personnel. Cuba’s military is known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces and all people between the ages of 17-28 have mandatory service.

Russia has an intelligence and spy base in Lourdes, Cuba as does China which is located in Bejucal, Cuba. Both of these bases spy on telecom transmissions, phone, satellite ad internet.

Chinese telecommunications spybase in Bejucal, Cuba  Bejucal   Lourdes

Meanwhile……

Violent Arrests of Pro-Democracy Activists Precede Obama Landing in Cuba

Hours before President Barack Obama landed in Havana to meet with high-ranking members of the island’s repressive communist regime, more than 50 pro-democracy dissidents were beaten and arrested, shoved into buses to be shipped into the nation’s jails to prevent them from disturbing official activities.

Breitbart: At least 50 of those arrested are members of the Ladies in White, a mostly-Catholic dissident group comprised of the wives, daughters, mothers, and sisters of prisoners of conscience. The Ladies in White members joined a larger group of anti-communist dissidents in Havana following their weekly attendance at Mass. Service this Sunday is especially important to Catholics as they celebrate Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week.

“It was brutal, there are people with fractures and contusions,” Antonio Rodiles, leader of the dissident group Estado de SATS, told the Spain-based Diario de Cuba. “They hit us with everything.” The newspaper notes that Rodiles spoke to them via telephone, and the chaos of mass arrests happening around him threatened to drown out his own voice on the phone. Rodiles was subsequently arrested.

In addition to the 50 members of the Ladies in White and Antonio Rodiles, Danilo Maldonado, an artist known as “El Sexto,” was arrested in the fray.

***

Maldonado was recently released from prison after serving a ten-month sentence for painting the names “Fidel” and “Raúl” on the backs of two pigs for an Animal Farm-themed art project.

The protesters all carried signs and chanted slogans directed at President Obama, calling for him to reconsider his friendly stance towards dictator Raúl Castro. The Ladies in White marched holding a sign reading “Obama, Nothing Has Changed Here.” Another group of dissidents held a sign reading “Obama, traveling to Cuba is not fun. No more violations of human rights.”

While Sunday’s arrests yielded much more dramatic images due to the unusually high number of media representatives on the island for President Obama’s visit, there is evidence that the communist government has been working all week to keep the nation’s most vocal opponents of communism silent. On Saturday, a man named Ciro Alexis Casanova Pérez was arrested for placing a sign on his window reading “Neither Obama nor Castro, Freedom for Cuba.” He was taken to the hospital after his arrest for severe body aches, a sign he was beaten by police during his arrest.

Pérez was among more than 200 arrested yesterday, according to Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU) leader José Daniel Ferrer, who attested to the arrest of 209 members of his group in Oriente, the eastern end of Cuba. In contrast, the Cuban government arrested about 250 dissidents throughout the entirety of Pope Francis’ visit in September.

In addition to those taken to jail, at least one is being held under house arrest without charge. The man: Zaqueo Báez, who made international headlines in September for daring to approach Pope Francis’ vehicle in Havana and say the word “freedom” within earshot of the pontiff. Báez was beaten severely in front of the pope and taken to prison, facing criminal charges for disturbing the peace. Pope Francis later denied any knowledge of the incident despite his proximity to it.

The Cuban dissident community has loudly opposed President Obama’s visit, arguing that his presence on the island would embolden the Cuban government to act more violently against pro-democracy activists. “These sorts of visits bring a lot of collateral damage,” dissident Marta Beatriz Roque said in February.

Studies of Castro regime behavior following President Obama’s announcement in December 2017 that he would be establishing diplomatic ties with the Castro dictatorship show that Havana has become more oppressive and violent against those who demand to live in a democratic society. “There has been no substantial improvement in regard to human rights and individual freedoms on the island… [The Cuban government] has adapted its repressive methods in order to make them invisible to the scrutinizing, judgmental eyes of the international community, but it has not reduced the level of pressure or control over the opposition,” a report by the Czech NGO People in Need concluded in December.

Benghazi: The Attackers Used the Consulate Phones

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Validates the movie #13 Hours

Bravo Alert Status, this is a reminder of Benghazi 9-11

US spy agencies heard Benghazi attackers using State Dept. cell phones to call terrorist leaders  

By James Rosen, Bret Baier  

 

The terrorists who attacked the U.S. consulate and CIA annex in Benghazi on September 11, 2012 used cell phones, seized from State Department personnel during the attacks, and U.S. spy agencies overheard them contacting more senior terrorist leaders to report on the success of the operation, multiple sources confirmed to Fox News.

 

The disclosure is important because it adds to the body of evidence establishing that senior U.S. officials in the Obama administration knew early on that Benghazi was a terrorist attack, and not a spontaneous protest over an anti-Islam video that had gone awry, as the administration claimed for several weeks after the attacks.

 

Eric Stahl, who recently retired as a major in the U.S. Air Force, served as commander and pilot of the C-17 aircraft that was used to transport the corpses of the four casualties from the Benghazi attacks – then-U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens, information officer Sean Smith, and former Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods – as well as the assault’s survivors from Tripoli to the safety of an American military base in Ramstein, Germany.

 

In an exclusive interview on Fox News’ “Special Report,” Stahl said members of a CIA-trained Global Response Staff who raced to the scene of the attacks were “confused” by the administration’s repeated implication of the video as a trigger for the attacks, because “they knew during the attack…who was doing the attacking.” Asked how, Stahl told anchor Bret Baier: “Right after they left the consulate in Benghazi and went to the [CIA] safehouse, they were getting reports that cell phones, consulate cell phones, were being used to make calls to the attackers’ higher ups.”

 

A separate U.S. official, one with intimate details of the bloody events of that night, confirmed the major’s assertion. The second source, who requested anonymity to discuss classified data, told Fox News he had personally read the intelligence reports at the time that contained references to calls by terrorists – using State Department cell phones captured at the consulate during the battle – to their terrorist leaders. The second source also confirmed that the security teams on the ground received this intelligence in real time.

 

Major Stahl was never interviewed by the Accountability Review Board, the investigative panel convened, pursuant to statute, by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as the official body reviewing all the circumstances surrounding the attacks and their aftermath. Many lawmakers and independent experts have criticized the thoroughness of the ARB, which also never interviewed Clinton.

 

In his interview on “Special Report,” Stahl made still other disclosures that add to the vast body of literature on Benghazi – sure to grow in the months ahead, as a select House committee prepares for a comprehensive probe of the affair, complete with subpoena power. Stahl said that when he deposited the traumatized passengers at Ramstein, the first individual to question the CIA security officers was not an FBI officer but the senior State Department diplomat on the ground.

 

“They were taken away from the airplane,” Stahl said. “The U.S. ambassador to Germany [Philip D. Murphy] met us when we landed and he took them away because he wanted to debrief them that night.” Murphy stepped down as ambassador last year. A message left with Sky Blue FC, a private company in New Jersey with which Murphy is listed online as an executive officer, was not immediately returned.

 

Stahl also contended that given his crew’s alert status and location, they could have reached Benghazi in time to have played a role in rescuing the victims of the assault, and ferrying them to safety in Germany, had they been asked to do so. “We were on a 45-day deployment to Ramstein air base,” he told Fox News. “And we were there basically to pick up priority missions, last-minute missions that needed to be accomplished.”

 

“You would’ve thought that we would have had a little bit more of an alert posture on 9/11,” Stahl added. “A hurried-up timeline probably would take us [an] hour-and-a-half to get off the ground and three hours and fifteen minutes to get down there. So we could’ve gone down there and gotten them easily.”

Declaring Genocide: Does it Mean Anything?

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John Kerry and Barack Obama finally declared ‘genocide’ with regard to Islamic State but why stop with ISIS? What about Bashir al Assad but mostly what about Mahmoud Abbas? For the Obama White House, Iran certainly does not matter either.

Obama did finally declare genocide after the lawyers reviewed and advised him. But does it matter?

The Genocide Convention says it does matter.

 

In 2009, Barack Obama in Oslo accepting the Nobel Peace Prize award.

THE PRESIDENT:  Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, distinguished members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, citizens of America, and citizens of the world:

I receive this honor with deep gratitude and great humility.  It is an award that speaks to our highest aspirations — that for all the cruelty and hardship of our world, we are not mere prisoners of fate.  Our actions matter, and can bend history in the direction of justice.

And yet I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the considerable controversy that your generous decision has generated.  (Laughter.)  In part, this is because I am at the beginning, and not the end, of my labors on the world stage.  Compared to some of the giants of history who’ve received this prize — Schweitzer and King; Marshall and Mandela — my accomplishments are slight.  And then there are the men and women around the world who have been jailed and beaten in the pursuit of justice; those who toil in humanitarian organizations to relieve suffering; the unrecognized millions whose quiet acts of courage and compassion inspire even the most hardened cynics.  I cannot argue with those who find these men and women — some known, some obscure to all but those they help — to be far more deserving of this honor than I.

But perhaps the most profound issue surrounding my receipt of this prize is the fact that I am the Commander-in-Chief of the military of a nation in the midst of two wars.  One of these wars is winding down.  The other is a conflict that America did not seek; one in which we are joined by 42 other countries — including Norway — in an effort to defend ourselves and all nations from further attacks.

Still, we are at war, and I’m responsible for the deployment of thousands of young Americans to battle in a distant land.  Some will kill, and some will be killed.  And so I come here with an acute sense of the costs of armed conflict — filled with difficult questions about the relationship between war and peace, and our effort to replace one with the other. Full speech here.

What is worse a war, nuclear weapon or genocide? Dead is dead.

May: In the Yemeni port city of Aden earlier this month, Islamists attacked a Catholic home for the indigent elderly. The militants, believed to be soldiers of the Islamic State, shot the security guard, then entered the facility where they gunned down the old people and their care-givers, including four nuns. At least 16 people were murdered. Such atrocities are no longer seen as major news events. Most diplomats regard them – or dismiss them — as “violent extremism,” a phrase that describes without explaining. On America’s campuses, “activists” are deeply concerned about “trigger warnings” and “microaggressions.” Massacres of Christians in Muslim lands, by contrast, seem to trouble them not at all. More here.

Sure they do get it right on Islamic State, when Germany is forecasted as a future target as a matter of sampling.

GateStoneInstitute:

  • Hans-Georg Maaßen, the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency (BfV), warned that the Islamic State was deliberately planting jihadists among the refugees flowing into Europe, and reported that the number of Salafists in Germany has now risen to 7,900. This is up from 7,000 in 2014 and 5,500 in 2013.
  • “Salafists want to establish an Islamic state in Germany.” — Hans-Georg Maaßen, director, BfV, German intelligence.
  • More than 800 German residents — 60% of whom are German passport holders — have joined the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. Of these, roughly one-third have returned to Germany. — Federal Criminal Police Office.
  • Up to 5,000 European jihadists have returned to the continent after obtaining combat experience on the battlefields of the Middle East. — Rob Wainwright, head of Europol.

Going back to 2013: BBC: UN implicates Bashar al-Assad in Syria war crimes, “The UN’s human rights chief has said an inquiry has produced evidence that war crimes were authorised in Syria at the “highest level”, including by President Bashar al-Assad. It is the first time the UN’s human rights office has so directly implicated Mr Assad. Commissioner Navi Pillay said her office held a list of others implicated by the inquiry. The UN estimates more than 100,000 people have died in the conflict.”

 

 

Documents: The Long Methodical Game of AQ

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No so much contained or decimated as Barack Obama claims regarding al Qaeda. So much recent attention has been applied to Islamic State, few give any deliberation to al Qaeda and associated terror groups globally.

Osama bin Laden’s ‘Bookshelf’ Reveals al Qaeda’s Long Game Captured documents released by the U.S. reveal the extent of al Qaeda’s strategy, which may include negotiated ‘truces’ in Syria

Gartenstein-Ross: When 113 new documents recovered in 2011 during the fatal raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, became publicly available earlier this month, perhaps the most noteworthy insight they offered was the extent of the strategic patience, to borrow a phrase from the Obama administration, possessed by al Qaeda.

Along with other captured documents, what the U.S. Director of National Intelligence calls “Bin Laden’s Bookshelf” reveals the cunning long-term planning that characterized the group’s approach at the time of bin Laden’s death, and that continues to guide it today, affecting not least the actions of its affiliate the al Nusra Front in Syria.

The record shows that the United States often has overlooked the extent of al Qaeda’s patient approach, sometimes mistaking its relative quiet for inactivity or collapse, and our failure to understand the group has helped it to gain critical operating space, and even worse, has sometimes caused us to blunder into its traps.

The broad outlines of al Qaeda’s strategy of attrition against the West are, at this point, generally well understood. Al Qaeda’s strategy, as initially formulated by bin Laden, was to wear down the United States militarily, politically, and economically.

This long-term approach contrasts with that of al Qaeda’s louder jihadist spin-off and competitor, the so-called Islamic State (ISIS), which already claims to have reestablished the caliphate. Al Qaeda, on the other hand, sees the United States as the “trunk of the tree,” as bin Laden put it in a letter addressed to the late al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) emir Nasir al-Wuhayshi. Al Qaeda wanted to wait to sever that tree trunk before moving on to the next stages in its campaign, including building an Islamic state, according to that captured document which was declassified in 2012.

The newly released Abbottabad documents show how strategic patience has shaped al Qaeda’s military operations and political activities. The jihadist group has proven willing to make compromises, sacrifice short-term victories, and even develop tactical alliances with adversaries in order to outlast its various foes. At the same time, the group looked for rear bases of support and safe havens where members could train, plan attacks, and prepare for future battles in the region.

Al Qaeda’s approach to the Mauritanian government illustrates this restraint and flexibility. In several newly declassified documents dating from about 2010, al Qaeda officials discussed the possibility of making a truce with Mauritania, in which al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb would refrain from military operations in the country.

What was in it for al Qaeda? The group discussed some demands that it had for Mauritania: the government would allow militants to operate freely in the country, release incarcerated al Qaeda members, and provide al Qaeda 10 to 20 million euros a year, protection money to ensure that al Qaeda didn’t kidnap tourists.

From al Qaeda’s perspective, the rationale for the deal was that it would allow militants to “focus on Algeria,” while placing its “cadres in safe rear bases available in Mauritania,” as now-deceased Ahmed Abdi Godane, emir of the Qaeda affiliated Somali al Shabaab, noted in a letter written in March 2010. It is not clear from the documents whether this offer was actually extended to Mauritania, nor what response al Qaeda received if the offer was made, but al Qaeda’s consideration of this approach attests to the group’s patience, and willingness to grant foes a temporary reprieve if there was an advantage to doing so.

The logic that influenced al Qaeda’s thinking on Mauritania could also be seen in Yemen. An al Qaeda strategy paper noted that the jihadist movement was thriving under the country’s then-president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, whose corruption had created “fertile ground” for jihadism. The author of the paper concluded that the best immediate option for al Qaeda was to allow Saleh to remain in power, rather than working to topple him.

Why was the author so suspicious of “ousting the apostate government and keeping the country in a state of chaos”? After all, chaos typically plays to the advantage of jihadists. The author reasoned that Saleh’s replacement likely would be more aggressive in targeting jihadists. Moreover, even if chaos prevailed, he noted that “we cannot spread our Dawah while there is chaos.” Dawah refers to proselytism: In other words, the author was concerned that the preparatory work for an eventual jihadist takeover in Yemen was not complete at that point.

The author even proposed a truce with Saleh, noting that even a unilateral agreement would allow al Qaeda to focus on the United States. This sentiment was echoed in a letter from bin Laden to Wuhayshi, declassified in 2012, in which al Qaeda’s emir explained that the jihadist movement was in a preparatory stage in Yemen, meaning that “it is not in our interest to rush in bringing down the regime.” (Bin Laden eventually changed his mind on this point, as events on the ground seemed to dictate a more aggressive posture.)

Al Qaeda’s thinking about Mauritania and Yemen is characteristic of the newly released documents. Throughout, the group’s leadership urges caution and occasional tactical cooperation with enemies. In a letter to Abu Ayyub al-Masri, al Qaeda in Iraq’s emir, a senior al Qaeda official warned against carrying out operations in Iran. Iran, he explained, had become al Qaeda’s “main artery for funds, personnel, and communication.” The official similarly advised al-Masri to refrain from striking Turkey and Lebanon, urging him to instead “devote your total resource to the fortification of the nation, and the fight against the crusaders and the apostates.”

These directives show that al Qaeda was preparing for the long haul. The group anticipated and prepared for setbacks, even catastrophic ones. In a letter to Ansar al-Islam, an Iraq-based militant group, a senior al Qaeda official (possibly bin Laden himself) explained that “Iraq is not the end of the road.” He stated that if al Qaeda were defeated in that theater, it would be a “catastrophe,” but nonetheless “we must always prepare ourselves for anything that might happen.”

The official noted that “jihad will continue with us or without us,” revealing an organizational belief that the struggle to reestablish the caliphate would persist long after al Qaeda’s founders had died.

This prediction has proven all too true. Al Qaeda has continued to adapt and thrive since bin Laden’s death, while adhering to its late emir’s methodical approach. The group’s strategy has survived several seismic developments that were widely viewed as the organization’s death knell.

The so-called “Arab Spring” was widely perceived as a mortal blow to al Qaeda, a repudiation of the group’s claim that only violent jihad could sweep away the Middle East’s authoritarian regimes. Instead, al Qaeda celebrated the revolutions. In a newly-released letter to one of bin Laden’s assistants, an al Qaeda official expressed his hope that the uprisings would “spread all over the Muslim homelands, which will accelerate the triumph and unity of all Muslims.”

Al Qaeda prepared itself to succeed in the post-revolution turmoil, using bin Laden’s model of preparation and strategic restraint. Al Qaeda covertly expanded its presence in countries like Libya and Tunisia, using front groups such as Ansar al-Sharia to conduct Da’wah and recruitment activities. Indeed, a previous batch of Abbottabad documents released for a criminal trial show that al Qaeda had established itself in Derna, Benghazi, and elsewhere in Libya even before bin Laden’s death.

In multiple theaters today, including Syria/Iraq and Yemen, al Qaeda has embedded itself in local communities, developing relationships.

After seizing control of the Yemeni port city of al-Mukalla, AQAP set up a group known as the “Sons of Hadramawt,” intended to appear as an indigenous force, and appointed a local council, the Hadhrami Domestic Council, to govern the city.
It has likewise sought to build coalitions in Syria, as evidenced by a secret directive issued in early 2015 by the group’s current emir Ayman al-Zawahiri. Zawahiri’s missive instructed Jabhat al Nusra, al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, to work more closely with other rebel groups, strengthen ties with local communities, build sustainable safe havens, and cease planning for attacks against the West.

Al Qaeda’s strategic flexibility has also been on display in its response to the challenge posed by ISIS, whose emergence was another challenge that many analysts thought would cripple al Qaeda. While ISIS has challenged al Qaeda’s position within the jihadist community, it has also given al Qaeda a long-awaited opportunity to remake its image, which had been tarnished by failed governance experiments in Iraq and Mali, among other places. ISIS has become a convenient foil for al Qaeda in its efforts to gain greater operating space.

Time and again, al Qaeda has been able to mitigate setbacks, or even turn them to its advantage. The group’s vision of a multi-generational jihadist struggle has enabled it to think and act strategically, pursuing long-term objectives while passing up ephemeral or unsustainable victories.

Al Qaeda’s ability to think and plan for the long term stands in contrast with both ISIS and also the U.S. government. Election cycles, budgetary uncertainty, and inter-agency squabbles impede strategic thinking in the fight against al Qaeda. As we continue to overlook al Qaeda’s forward-looking approach, we underestimate the group and fall into its traps. At a time when al Qaeda is quietly gaining ground across the Middle East, North Africa, and the Horn of Africa, and benefiting from the international community’s myopic focus on the Islamic State, it is more important than ever that we fully appreciate al Qaeda’s long-term planning.