Category Archives: Military

Great News on the Feres Doctrine

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The Supreme Court again on Monday opted not to hear a challenge to the legal precedent barring individuals from suing the military for medical malpractice, a decision blasted by Justice Clarence Thomas as short-sighted and unfair.

“Unfortunate repercussions — denial of relief to military personnel and distortions of other areas of law to compensate — will continue to ripple through our jurisprudence as long as the Court refuses to reconsider (this issue),” Thomas wrote in his dissent to the court’s decision not to take up the challenge.

The move once again shifts from the courts to Congress debate on how to fix problems surrounding the Feres Doctrine, a 1950 Supreme Court decision that blocks troops from claiming medical malpractice damages for actions related to their military service. At the time, the court found that military personnel injured by the negligence of another federal employee cannot sue under the Federal Tort Claims Act.

Image result for Sgt. 1st Class Richard Stayskal

Tuesday is a historic day in Washington D.C. It’s a day that a Fort Bragg soldier fought for as he battled terminal cancer, a diagnosis he says military doctors missed.

Stayskal along with his wife, Megan witnessed the Senate approve the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The NDAA is the defense spending bill that includes a provision Stayskal fought for which will, for the first time, give active duty service members the right to be compensated for malpractice in military facilities in cases that are unrelated to combat.

So, what is the good news? The Senate.

In full disclosure, several months ago, I interviewed for radio Sgt. 1st Class Richard Stayskal and his lawyer. One of the hardest interviews I have ever hosted with a dedicated soldier dying of cancer.

Image result for Sgt. 1st Class Richard Stayskal

Fourteen months after the North Carolina Purple Heart Green Beret first shared his story with FOX 46 – how doctors at Womack Army Medical Center misdiagnosed his lung cancer as pneumonia in 2017, delaying treatment that could have prolonged his life – his story is getting results and now changing federal law.

“It’s just an amazing feeling overall right now. I don’t have the words to describe it,” said Stayskal, who has stage 4 lung cancer, and came back to Washington to watch the historic vote inside the Senate chamber. “It’s a victory for everybody. For all the service members across the board.”

On social media, Stayskal and his attorney, Natalie Khawam, wrote: “We did the impossible!”

Back to the Senate and the NDAA:

The Senate overwhelmingly passed the National Defense Authorization Act by a vote of 86-8 on Tuesday. Tucked inside is a provision, sparked by Stayskal, that will allow service members who have been victims of negligent medical care to finally be allowed to hold the government accountable. The measure allocates $400 million to the Dept. of Defense to investigate and pay out military medical malpractice claims internally. It will provide a measure of justice to service members and their families that has previously been denied.

“Everyone involved in this conference, including the Department of Defense,” said Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), “recognized the importance of fixing the medical malpractice issue in a common sense fashion.” The NDAA now goes to President Donald Trump to sign into law, which is expected to happen in the coming days. More here.

That Russian Spy Ship is Back to Lurking off our Coast

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The speculation for this ship is:

There are new indications that the spying target this time also included SpaceX’s space launch capability.

On Monday, the private space launch company founded by tech entrepreneur Elon Musk conducted the 13th successful launch of its Falcon 9 booster from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The launcher placed a communications satellite into orbit and then returned to Earth by landing on a barge in the Atlantic eight minutes later.

Analysts speculate that the ship may have been observing the launch to gather data that could benefit reusable Russian space launchers.

U.S. Northern Command and the Coast Guard have been tracking a Russian spy ship equipped with electronic surveillance gear that has been lurking off the East Coast of the United States.

On Monday, the Coast Guard sent out a Maritime Safety Information Bulletin warning boaters of reports of the Viktor Leonov operating in an “unsafe manner” off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia.

On Tuesday, the Coast Guard said the Russian ship was operating in USCG’s Jacksonville, Florida, area of responsibility, which encompasses roughly 40,000 square miles of ocean and stretches nearly 190 miles of coast from Kings Bay, Georgia, to Port Malabar, Florida.

“This unsafe operation includes not energizing running lights while in reduced visibility conditions, not responding to hails by commercial vessels attempting to coordinate safe passage and other erratic movements,” the Coast Guard posted on its bulletin.

“Vessels transiting these waters should maintain a sharp lookout and use extreme caution when navigating in proximity to this vessel. Mariners should make reports of any unsafe situations to the United States Coast Guard,” the Coast Guard said in its safety message.

Adm. James Foggo III, the commander of U.S. Naval Forces Europe and U.S. Naval Forces Africa, told reporters Dec. 18 that the Russian spy ship was operating a “couple hundred” miles off the East Coast.

North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command told Military Times that they were tracking the Russian ship.

“We are aware of Russia’s naval activities, including the deployment of these intelligence collection ships in the region,” Maj. Mark R. Lazane, a spokesman with NORTHCOM, told Military Times in an emailed statement.

Image result for Russian warship Viktor Leonov

It’s not the first time the Viktor Leonov has conducted intelligence operations off the East Coast off the U.S.

In 2017, the Pentagon announced the Leonov was being trailed by a Coast Guard vessel but was operating in international waters.

“They routinely deploy intelligence vessels worldwide to monitor the activities and particularly naval activities of other nations, but then again conducted lawfully in international waters and not unlike operations we conduct ourselves,” Davis said in 2017 about the Leonov operating near the East Coast of the U.S.

Foggo said that the Coast Guard reported that the Russian ship was not responding to signals or “bridge to bridge” radio communications and was running without lights on at sea.

Those actions, Foggo said Wednesday, are risky. More here.

This ship is part of Project 864. The Project 864, also known as the Vishnya and Meridian, is an electronic surveillance and intelligence gathering ship built by Stocznia Polnocna shipyard in Gdansk (Poland) for the Soviet Union’s Navy in the 1980s. The ship’s capabilities are built around the Communication Intelligence (COMINT) and Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) concepts. The Project 864 are equipped with two satellite communications antennas inside a radome. The propulsion system consists of two diesel engines developing 4,400-bhp and a top speed of 16 knots. The Project 864 weapon system is intended to counter airborne threats using two AK-630 30mm guns and two SA-N-8 surface-to-air missile systems. The Russian Navy operates seven Meridian-class vessels to be replaced by the Project 18280 intelligence ship by 2020.

HPSCI Minority Report, No Evidence of Impeachment Grounds

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In part:

House Republicans delivered a point-by-point rebuttal Monday to Democrats’ impeachment efforts, claiming in their own report that the evidence collected in the inquiry to date does not support the accusations leveled against President Trump — or rise to the level of removal from office.

“The evidence presented does not prove any of these Democrat allegations, and none of the Democrats’ witnesses testified to having evidence of bribery, extortion, or any high crime or misdemeanor,” Republicans said in a 123-page report, timed to be made public ahead of the majority Democrats’ impeachment report.

The dueling narratives are emerging following two weeks of House Intelligence Committee hearings, where witnesses detailed their own knowledge of efforts to pressure Ukraine to launch political probes as U.S. aid was withheld over the summer. The committee is set to vote on Democrats’ final report Tuesday – likely to be another party-line moment – before transmitting that document to the Judiciary Committee, which holds its first public hearing Wednesday.

House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Devin Nunes, R-Calif.; Oversight Committee Ranking Member Jim Jordan, R-Ohio; and Foreign Affairs Committee Ranking Member Michael McCaul, R-Texas, penned the minority report, which has been reviewed by Fox News. In it, they broadly defend the president’s actions in the face of accusations he withheld military aid and a White House meeting as leverage to pressure Ukraine to launch a probe involving the Bidens. More here.

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Each year, the National Defense Authorization Act must pass both Houses of Congress and then have the President’s signature. For the last few years, military aid for Ukraine has been included as Ukraine has been fighting a hot war with Russia. Most recently, President Obama did fulfill the aid to Ukraine but it was all non-lethal aid as his reasons were to not further inflame tensions between the United States and Russia. The 2018 NDAA for Ukraine amounted to $350 million of lethal and non-lethal aid including training, technical assistance among other requests.

It should be noted that Ukraine maintains a military attache at the Pentagon that coordinates planning, war-gaming, training, aid and cyber with our own military experts assigned to Ukraine.

EXPLAINED: How Ukraine Uses U.S. Military Aid (Think ... photo

The 2019 NDAA has $250 million for Ukraine under what is titled the USAI ( Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative). Two other key details of this aid include the assignment of an executive agent responsible for overseeing the aid process. Additionally, the Department of Defense must sign off on the fact that the a small segment of corruption passes a standard set by the Unites States of which those details are is unclear before aid can be released. The DoD and the State Department certified twice that Ukraine had made sufficient reforms to decrease corruption and increase accountability.

Sufficient reforms?

By the way, the 2020 NDAA has $300 million in security assistance for Ukraine.

Yet….that does not settle any other parts of corruption in Ukraine. This is where the major disputes come from between the Democrats and Republicans. Corruption includes sham elections, money-laundering, banking financial fraud and theft and most recently the concerns of the Ukraine naval ships seized by Russia in the Kerch Strait. (Sidebar: Russia did return those 3 naval ships after almost a year and they were stripped of all weapons, equipment and even toilets.They were in such bad shape they had to be towed)

President Trump has long been demanding other nations step up to fulfill their NATO obligations and further he has had major concerns that other countries are not making any substantial contributions to Ukraine. This was the reason for the hold by the Office of Management and Budget to hold for a few weeks the full release of military aid to Ukraine as told in testimony by Mark Sandy who is the national security associate deputy at the OMB. Sandy included in the closed door testimony that there were several requests for additional information on what other countries were contributing to Ukraine and that information was provided to the Trump White House in early September. Trump officially released the aid on September 11. Aid had to be fully released by September 30 according to the law.

With a new president taking office in Ukraine it does stand to reason that the United States take a second look at conditions and the relationship between the United States and Ukraine given that the new president Zelensky was elected on combating corruption in Ukraine.

With all the new conditions and the slow moving parts of our own government, the Minority report of the HPSCI on the impeachment inquiries having no basis does have legitimate points.

Fix Bayonets Secretary Spencer, Remember?

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In an interview with CBS news after being fired Monday evening, Spencer said Trump’s insistence on maintaining Gallagher’s rank as a Navy SEAL tells troops that they “can get away with it,” if they commit a crime. “We have to have good order and discipline, it’s the backbone of what we do,” he said. Spencer added be believes Trump doesn’t fully understand the definition of a war fighter. “A war fighter is a profession of arms,” Spencer told CBS’s David Martin outside the Pentagon. “And a profession of arms has standards.”

Did any of the Pentagon military brass or bureaucracy (profession of arms) speak out at all when President Obama interfered/intervened of the scandal of Bowe Berghdal and the trade of 5 Taliban commanders? What about when President Obama commuted the 35 year sentence of Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning for stealing thousands of pages of classified material? Secretary Spencer where is your commentary on those cases? What about General Cartwright when he admitted to lying to federal investigators on the 2012 leak of classified material to the press regarding the covert cyber attack against Iran’s nuclear program, a cyber operation known at Stuxnet?

As the daughter of a Marine that fought in World War ll and Korea, it is striking to me the unique differences of war then as to military conflict today. Anyone out there care to comment on the number of bureaucrats and lawyers today as compared to those battles in the last several decades? Anyone? To be sure, the ethos of the military for decades has been core values, ethics, loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity and personal courage. But hold on. To currently serving military and to veterans, please comment, has the brass bureaucracy and lawyers impeded the ethos of the military over political correctness and rules of engagement?

Secretary Spencer has earnestly defended the handling of the Gallagher case. Do you sir defend the Navy prosecutors for spying on Gallagher’s defense team among other tactics such that the prosecution team was fired? So, the latest review on Gallagher was to review the case for keeping his rank and trident over a photo with a corpse. Others ‘posing’ with the corpse were not punished, why not? Oh yeah they got immunity in exchange for testimony. You mean no penalty or drop in rank or removal of an award?

I hold the collection of slides and film my father took at war in Korea. Among those photos. he stands beside a corpse with a cigarette in the mouth. Should my father’s Navy Cross be posthumously be revoked? And when it comes to Rules of Engagement, would the bureaucracy and lawyers forbid fixed bayonets?

From the Arlington National Cemetery website in part:

First Lieutenant Lucian L. Vestal of “Fox” Company, 2d Battalion, Fifth Marine Regiment was a man with an easy smile who liked to joke with his platoon. The smile left his face when he received his mission on May 28 to make a frontal assault across open ground near Hangye and take a hill.

He ordered his men to fix bayonets and led them out. There is something inherently eerie about the command to fix bayonets in combat. The sound of cold metal sliding from the scabbard, the metallic click of the knife locking to the rifle lug and bonding with its man chills the soul more than chambering a round. Men can chamber a round when hunting game or on the rifle range. Marines seldom fix naked steel unless against other men when death is imminent; one-on-one, muno u mum. The site of Marines advancing with fixed bayonets also has a disturbing psychological effect on the enemy. The Communists opened up with everything they had; machine guns, small-arms fire and grenades.

Marines around Vestal were dropping and only a few feet from the enemy position, Vestal himself was painfully wounded in the stomach. They closed with the Communists, driving them in fear from their  positions while Vestal calmly redeployed his platoon, directed the evacuation of his wounded and set up a screen of protective fire. They evacuated Vestal with the last of the wounded. He used his smile to hide his pain and again joked with his fellow Marines, who promptly recommended Vestal for the Navy Cross.

War is for sure ugly. It could be argued today it is uglier by an additional means and that is bureaucracy. In 2018, the Senate Armed Services Committee approved the first ‘chief management officer’ for the Pentagon to ‘shake up the bureaucracy. Congress has written the law may times and that bureaucracy seeps down to the commands and battlefield. The warfighters see it, feel it, experience it while ‘wining hearts and minds of the enemy’ but not so much for our own warfighters.

Image result for marines with dead viet cong December 1967, dead Viet Cong 

 

Image result for marines with dead viet cong A dead Viet Cong soldier who broke into the air base at An Khe in the Highlands of the Republic of South Vietnam. Take a look at the Army soldiers and what they are wearing. This is 1968 and in the Highlands some of them have not been issued jungle fatigues, boots and M16’s. However, back in Saigon all the brass were wearing starched jungle fatigues and M16’s were everywhere. No wonder we called them REMF’s. Tom Bigelow photo.

Today frontal assaults on the enemy or fixed bayonets are but a forgotten memory. Bureaucracy and lawyers make it so. Law and order is well understand among the ranks as is the military ethos, a photo with a corpse is hardly crime for court martial or is it? And the long war goes on.

 

 

 

Thousand Talents = J Visa = Espionage = Stupid

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It was just this morning that I sent a text to a former CIA operative asking if he was comfortable with the FBI being the lone government agency tracking foreign spies operating in the United States. His reply was NO. Sigh…My gut was telling me that espionage in the United States is out of control and while performing some research for about an hour, it IS out of control. Understand foreign operatives come from several countries into the United States using several visa methods and for the sake of this article, the concentration will be on China. It is a sure bet however, the same techniques are used by other rogue countries that just are for sure either best described as adversaries or enemies of our homeland.

So, back to the question of the FBI being the lone tracking government agency. One of the first Reuters articles had this headline: FBI wishes it had acted quicker as China stole intellectual property

The admission by John Brown, assistant director of the Counterintelligence Division at the FBI, backed up a Senate subcommittee report that found federal agencies had responded too slowly as China recruited the researchers, leaving U.S. taxpayers unwittingly funding the rise of China’s economy and military. Despite China’s announcement in 2008 of the Thousand Talents Plan – for which China had originally hoped to recruit 2,000 people but ended up recruiting more than 7,000 by 2017 – the FBI did not respond strongly until last year, the report released on Monday by the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations found. 

Just a few days before that Reuters’ article there was this headline: U.S. charges Chinese national with stealing trade secrets

Haitao Xiang, 42, an employee of Monsanto and its Climate Corp subsidiary from 2008 to 2017, was stopped by federal officials at a U.S. airport before he could board a flight to China carrying proprietary farming software, the department said in a statement.

“The indictment alleges another example of the Chinese government using Talent Plans to encourage employees to steal intellectual property from their U.S. employers,” Assistant Attorney General John Demers said.

Notice 9 years of employment above. Sigh. Read on, there is more.

US prosecutors have accused a tour guide of picking up US security secrets and delivering them cloak-and-dagger-style to Beijing. From October 2015 to July 2018, an FBI double agent conducted “dead drops,” in which, authorities say, Peng fetched information in the San Francisco Bay Area and Columbus, Georgia. Authorities say the double agent, identified only as “the Source,” went to the FBI in 2015, after the State Security Ministry tried to recruit him as a spy by telling him that he could rely on “Ed,” who had family and business dealings in China. As officials grapple with the threat of infiltrators trying to steal information from US companies, prosecutors have opened multiple cases against people suspected of spying for China. Last October, prosecutors charged a spy with attempting to steal trade secrets from several US aviation and aerospace companies.

Just last week in the Senate, the Homeland Security Committee Chairman, Portman held a hearing. Finding a summary from the hearing on the FBI website was the following:

Time and time again, the Communist government of China has proven that it will use any means necessary to advance its interests at the expense of others, including the United States, and pursue its long-term goal of being the world’s superpower by 2049. Among its many ways of collecting information, prioritized in national strategies such as the Five-Year Plan, the Chinese government oversees expert recruitment programs known as talent plans. Through these programs, the Chinese government offers lucrative financial and research benefits to recruit individuals working and studying outside of China who possess access to, or expertise in, high-priority research fields. These talent recruitment programs include not only the well-known Thousand Talents Plan but also more than 200 similar programs, all of which are overseen by the Chinese government and designed to support its goals, sometimes at U.S. taxpayers’ expense. Read on here.

Senate report accuses China of technology theft | NHK ...

200 similar programs? WHAT?

The Thousand Talents program is nothing more than a espionage recruiting operation. This past September, the FBI arrested Zhongsan Liu who was operating a front operation in New Jersey called the China Association for International Exchange of Personnel. According to the criminal complaint, Liu beginning in 2017 used the company to fraudulently procure U.S. visas for for many Chinese officials under J-1 research. Liu has actually led this front group however for 26 years. The program among others were created and directed by the Chinese government’s State Administration of Foreign Expert Affairs. Liu is a senior official of that agency. He also worked at the Chinese embassy in Washington and at the consulate in New York while this recruiting operation was going on.

“Chinese government sources claim over 44,000 highly skilled Chinese personnel have returned to China since 2009 through talent plans,” the report said. “As noted by China Daily, which is owned by the Chinese Communist Party: ‘China has more than 300 entrepreneurial parks for students returned from overseas. More than 24,500 enterprises have been set up in the parks by over 67,000 overseas returnees.'”

According to the Pentagon’s latest annual report on the Chinese military, the Thousand Talents Plan is used to bolster the People’s Liberation Army military buildup.

“China uses various incentive strategies to attract foreign personnel to work on and manage strategic programs and fill technical knowledge gaps, including the ‘Thousand Talents Program,’ which prioritizes recruiting people of Chinese descent or recent Chinese emigrants whose recruitment the Chinese government views as necessary to Chinese scientific and technical modernization, especially with regard to defense technology,” the report said.

The program of China’s Thousand Talents is really an unadvertised method to facilitate the legal and illicit transfer of U.S. technology, intellectual property and know-how as summarized by the National Intelligence Council.The NIC is a midterm and long term strategic thinking center formed in 1979. That report is found here. It is dated 2018 and titled: How China’s Economic Aggression Threatens the Technologies and Intellectual Property of the United States and the World

Do we really want a trade deal after all this with China? It can be argued that the trade has already taken place by China’s theft. This all complicates the bi-lateral signing of a trade deal between the United States and China or does it in the end?

Basic qualifications for the Thousand Talents program include the following:

1. Basic Qualifications for Candidates

The Recruitment Program for Innovative Talents (Long Term) targets people under 55 years of age who are willing to work in China on a full-time basis, with full professorships or the equivalent in prestigious foreign universities and R&D institutes, or with senior titles from well-known international companies or financial institutions.

2. Preferential Policies and Treatments

Awardees will be conferred the title of “National Distinguished Experts” and be provided with enabling working and living conditions.

(1) Enabling working conditions

Awardees are entitled to assume some leadership, professional or technical positions in universities, R&D institutes, central SOEs as well as state-owned commercial and financial institutions; to serve as project principals of the National Key Scientific and Technological Projects, “863 Program”(or the National High-tech R&D Program), “973 Program”(or the National Program on Key Basic Research Project), the National Nature Science Fund Projects; to apply for S&T funds and industrial development funds from government to support scientific research as well as production and operating activities in China; to participate in the consultation and demonstration of China’s major projects, the formulation of key scientific research plans and national standards, the construction of major projects, etc; to determine the expenditure and employment within the prescribed scope of responsibilities as project principals; to be engaged in various domestic academic organizations and the election of academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering(foreign academicians) and become the candidates of a wide range of government rewards.

(2) Special living benefits

Awardees as well as their spouses and minor children with alien nationality may apply for “Permanent Residence for Aliens” and/or multiple entry visas, the validity of which lasts 2-5 years. Awardees with Chinese citizenship will be free to settle down in any city of their choice and will not be restricted by his or her original residence registry. Each awardee shall receive a one-off, start-up package of RMB 1 million yuan from the nation’s central budget; be entitled to medical care, social insurance including pensions, medical insurance and work-related injury insurance; and may purchase one residential apartment for personal use. The housing and meal allowance, removing indemnity, home-leave-subsidy, and children-education-allowance in the wage income in Chinese territory within 5 years shall be deducted before taxes in accordance with relevant laws and regulations. Employers have to offer job opportunities to spouses, and children will have guaranteed admission to schools. The income level should be decided on their previous jobs overseas through negotiation with due living allowances.

(3) Key points of the Recruitment Program of Global Experts in the Field of Liberal Arts and Social Science

By the end of 2010, overseas high-level scholars in fields of liberal arts and social sciences, particularly urgently needed professionals specialized in Intellectual Property Law, Environment and Resources Protection Law, International Law, Diplomacy, Psychology etc. are eligible to apply for the Key National Innovative Projects. People who are introduced by this program shall support the Communist Party of China and the socialist system, maintaining compliance with the Constitution, laws, regulations and policies of the People’s Republic of China, with full professorships or the equivalent in prestigious foreign universities, R&D institutes and other institutions of art and culture, enjoying a high global reputation and being influential in their academic fields which are urgently needed in China; they shall be within 60 years of age, andd willing to work in China on a full-time basis.

With regard to application procedures, the “Liberal Arts and Social Sciences” plan is a subdivision of “The Recruitment Program for Key Disciplines”. Overseas talents are required to sign an employment contract or a letter of intention for talent recruitment with employers before applying for the Program. Please refer to the application procedures of “The Recruitment Program for Innovative Talents (Long Term)”.