Category Archives: Russia

Never Before in History Now the Doomsday Supply

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It boils down to Syria, the failed policy to control Bashir al Assad or remove him when the 5 year civil war has caused a global crisis. A country that once had a population of more than 20 million, today, an estimated 11 million Syrians are no longer in their home country. The crisis? The United Nations and member countries are out of money and resources to aid and provide humanitarian support for refugees any where they are located.

The United States as the historic world’s equalizer, failed to act in Syria for up to now 5 years….shameful as the consequences are worldwide and deaths are reported to be approaching 300,000 if not more.

The decision was made last month with no fanfare to break into the Doomsday inventory.

Arctic ‘Doomsday Vault’ opens to retrieve vital seeds for Syria

Svalbard, Norway (CNN)Humanity has had to cash in on its insurance policy earlier than expected.

Deep in the side of a mountain in the Arctic archipelago is the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.

 

Known as the “Doomsday Vault,” this seed bank — operated by the Norwegian government and containing a seed of just about every known crop in the world — is meant to be humanity’s backup in the event of a catastrophe that devastates crops.

But it was not a natural disaster that has caused scientists to have to dip in and make the first significant withdrawal from the vault. Rather, it was the most preventable of man-made disasters — war.

The bloody conflict in Syria has left scientists at an important gene bank in Aleppo — where new strains of drought- and heat-resistant wheat have been developed over time — unable to continue their work in recent years.

Now, with no sign of conditions in Syria improving, scientists have begun recovering their critical inventory of seeds, sourced from around the Fertile Crescent and beyond, that have been in safekeeping beneath the Arctic ice.

The seeds are being planted at new facilities in Lebanon and Morocco, allowing scientists to resume the important research they’ve been doing for decades, away from the barrel bombs of Aleppo.

READ: Syrian war forces first ‘Doomsday Vault’ withdrawal

An important storehouse in the Fertile Crescent

The gene bank in Aleppo, run by the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas, is one of the most important in the world and includes more than 135,000 varieties of wheat, fava bean, lentil and chickpea crops, as well as the world’s most valuable barley collection.

“These are land races that were inherited from our grand-grandparents, most of them are unfortunately extinct now,” ICARDA Director General Mahmoud El-Solh said. “And this is where the cradle of agriculture (was)10,000 years ago. In this part of the world, many of the important crops were domesticated from the wild to cultivation.”

ICARDA representative Thanos Tsivelikas, who is overseeing the withdrawal from the vault, describes the operation as “a rescue mission; these seeds cannot be replaced.”

The ICARDA Aleppo center had sent nearly 80% of the seeds and samples to the Global Seed Vault as a backup by 2012, with its last deposit being in 2014.

And now, Solh and his ICARDA team have the challenge of keeping and reproducing one of humanity’s most important collections of food crop genetic lines.

Moved to neighboring Lebanon

Relocated to Lebanon, Solh opens the door to a vault on the Agricultural Research and Educational Center of the American University of Beirut campus in the Bekaa Valley. This is where the seeds ICARDA received back from Svalbard are housed.

Solh carefully shakes out a few wisps of what looks like wheat from a brown envelope. It is the plant from which the wheat we eat today originated 10 millennia ago.

“This is a source of desirable traits including drought tolerance, including heat tolerance, including resistance to disease and so forth. So this had lived through natural selection for over hundreds of years,” he said.

A 10-minute drive away and just across the mountain range from Syria, a new vault is being built by ICARDA.

To begin replenishing the stock, there are greenhouses nearby where the seeds will be planted, grown and reproduced. Once restocked, the seeds will once again become available for researchers and other seed vaults.

A parallel project is being set up in Morocco to ensure that humanity always has access to this irreplaceable cache of genetic material.

“Two-thirds of material is coming from dry areas which … are adapted to very harsh environments and have desirable traits” for drought, heat, cold, salinity and pests, Solh said.

Researchers are looking at ways to improve food crops with existing and extinct-in-nature genetic lines that are more adapted to the challenges that may lie ahead with global warming.

The answers could very well be in these specific seeds harvested from a specific moment in time. “This variety could help us adapt to climate change,” Solh said, holding up a small fava bean.

“You know that climate change is a reality and climate change is changing the whole environment in terms of more drought, hotter environments and even new diseases.”

ICARDA and others know that the past could very well contain the key to our future, though no one thought they would see such a mass withdrawal in their lifetime.

Server-Gate or Deep Throat Part 2?

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Hillary says often that the State Department gave her permission to use a private server and email. Think about that, who at State did that? She was HEAD of the State Dept, so did she give herself permission? C’mon….

Then there is the excuse that everyone does it so it must be okay right?

State Department’s Cybersecurity Weakened Under Hillary Clinton

From 2011 to 2014, the State Department’s poor cybersecurity was identified by the inspector general as a “significant deficiency.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — The State Department was among the worst agencies in the federal government at protecting its computer networks while Hillary Rodham Clinton was secretary from 2009 to 2013, a situation that continued to deteriorate as John Kerry took office and Russian hackers breached the department’s email system, according to independent audits and interviews.

The State Department’s compliance with federal cybersecurity standards was below average when Clinton took over but grew worse in each year of her tenure, according to an annual report card compiled by the White House based on audits by agency watchdogs. Network security continued to slip after Kerry replaced Clinton in February 2013, and remains substandard, according to the State Department inspector general.

In each year from 2011 to 2014, the State Department’s poor cybersecurity was identified by the inspector general as a “significant deficiency” that put the department’s information at risk. The latest assessment is due to be published in a few weeks.

Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, has been criticized for her use of a private email server for official business while she was secretary of state. Her private email address also was the recipient of malware linked to Russia, and her server was hit with malware from China, South Korea and Germany. The FBI is investigating whether her home server was breached.

State Department officials don’t dispute the compliance shortcomings identified in years of internal audits, but argue that the audits paint a distorted picture of their cybersecurity, which they depict as solid and improving. They strongly disagree with the White House ranking that puts them behind most other government agencies. Senior department officials in charge of cybersecurity would speak only on condition of anonymity. More here.

With Jake Tapper, Hillary laughed at this scandal…a weird moment in that interview.

Observer: Hillary Clinton emerged from Tuesday night’s inaugural Democratic debate in Las Vegas the clear leader in her party’s field. As Democrats attempt to hold onto the White House in 2016, polling demonstrated a revitalized Hillary campaign, which had been in the doldrums for months due to the ongoing scandal about her misuse of email as Secretary of State.

Mounting talk of Vice President Joe Biden entering the race–to take the place of an ailing Hillary–has dissipated in the wake of the debate, where Ms. Clinton dismissed the email issues as Republican-driven political theater. That Senator Bernie Sanders vigorously backed Ms. Clinton on the point helped her cause, as did her brusque dismissal of Lincoln Chafee’s efforts to raise the issue again, which got raucous applause from the crowd.

It’s evident the Democratic base agrees with Ms. Clinton that her emails are just GOP theatrics. President Obama reflected the sentiment in an interview with 60 Minutes airing two days before the debate, during which he allowed that Secretary Clinton had “made a mistake” with her email but it “is not a situation in which America’s national security was endangered.”

Though the White House soon walked back on some of the president’s statements, which seemed to many to be inappropriate West Wing commentary regarding an ongoing FBI investigation, it’s apparent that the Clinton campaign and the Obama team have united around a message: this issue is fundamentally contrived by Republicans, and is certainly not a threat of any kind to national security.

Democrats unsurprisingly find this take congenial, but it’s less clear if other Americans consider it persuasive. Naturally, Republicans view Ms. Clinton’s email activities with a great deal of suspicion, but recent polls show even independents have concerns regarding EmailGate and Ms. Clinton’s honesty. While the Clinton camp is now confident the email problems will likely not bar her party’s nomination next summer, the issue may loom larger in the race for the White House next fall.

There’s also the matter of exactly what the FBI is investigating. Recent revelations hint that the compromising of classified information on Ms. Clinton’s “private” email and server was more serious than originally believed. While earlier reports indicated only a small percentage of the sensitive information that “spilled over” onto Ms. Clinton’s personal email was highly classified at the Top Secret level, that may be only a small portion of what was potentially compromised.

Particularly disturbing is the report that one of the “personal” emails Ms. Clinton forwarded included the name of a top CIA asset in Libya, who was identified as such. The source of this information was Tyler Drumheller, a retired senior CIA operations officer, who served as a sort of one-man private spy agency for Sid Blumenthal, the Clintons’ close family friend and factotum whose sometimes long-winded emails, particularly regarding Libya, have generated much of the controversy behind EmailGate.

Mr. Drumheller became a fleeting hero to liberals with his resistance to George W. Bush’s White House over skewed intelligence behind the 2003 invasion of Iraq, but he was never particularly popular at CIA and he left Langley under something of a cloud. His emails to Mr. Blumenthal, which were forwarded to Ms. Clinton, were filled with espionage-flavored information about events in Libya. In many cases, Mr. Drumheller’s reports were formatted to look exactly like actual CIA reports, including attribution to named foreign intelligence agencies. How much of this was factual versus Mr. Drumheller embellishing his connections is unclear.

What is abundantly clear is that the true name of an identified CIA asset is a highly classified fact and intentionally revealing it is a Federal crime, which Mr. Drumheller, a career spy, had to know. Why he compromised this person who was secretly helping the United States – possibly endangering his life in the process — may never be known because Mr. Drumheller conveniently died of cancer in early August.

Libya may have a great deal to worry about since new information continues to show just how slipshod Ms. Clinton’s security measures were for her “private” server. That Ms. Clinton’s server experienced multiple cyber-attacks from abroad, including by Russians, does not inspire confidence that any classified information stored in her emails remained in American hands.

To make matters worse, a recent investigation by the Associated Press demonstrates that even relatively low-skill hackers could have hacked Hillary’s unencrypted server, which was left vulnerable to exposure on the open Internet to a degree that cyber-warriors find difficult to believe. “Were they drunk?” a senior NSA official asked me after reading the AP report. “Anybody could have been inside that server – anybody,” he added.

Since the communications of any Secretary of State are highly sought after by dozens of intelligence agencies worldwide – a reality expressed by Secretary John Kerry recently when he said it’s “very likely” the Russians and Chinese are reading his email, a view that any veteran spy would endorse – Ms. Clinton putting her emails at such risk means they have to be assumed to be compromised. If the more skilled state-connected hackers in Russia can fool even NSA these days, they could have gotten into Hillary’s unprotected server without breaking a sweat.

This makes Mr. Obama’s quip that EmailGate represents no threat to American national security all the more puzzling in its dishonesty. Unsurprisingly, some at the FBI are not pleased the president made this pronouncement before the Bureau completed its investigation. “We got the message,” an FBI agent at the Washington Field Office, which is spearheading the EmailGate case, explained: “Obama’s not subtle sometimes.”

In 2012, while the FBI was investigating CIA director David Petraeus for mishandling classified information, Mr. Obama similarly dismissed the national security implications of the case at a press conference. Although FBI director James Comey pressed for serious charges against Mr. Petraeus, the White House demurred and the Department of Justice allowed him to plead guilty to a misdemeanor, sentenced to probation with no jail time.

Some at the FBI were displeased by this leniency and felt Mr. Obama showed his hand to the public early, compromising the Bureau’s investigation. Is the same happening with Ms. Clinton? It’s too soon to say, though the anger of some at the FBI has seeped into the media already. Comments to tabloids reflect the widespread frustration and fear among federal law enforcement and intelligence circles that Mr. Obama will let Ms. Clinton skate free from EmailGate.

For now, the FBI is pursuing its investigation with diligence, bringing other intelligence agencies into the case, and recent reports indicate that specific provisions of the Espionage Act are being re-read carefully, particularly regarding “gross negligence” – which may be the most appropriate charge that Ms. Clinton or members of her inner circle could face.

It will be weeks, even months, before the FBI’s investigation concludes and the Department of Justice has to decide whether any of the events surrounding EmailGate reach the threshold of prosecution. Many in the FBI and the Intelligence Community suspect the fix is already inside the West Wing to prevent that from happening, but it’s still early in this investigation.

It can be expected that if the White House blocks Hillary’s prosecution during the election campaign, leaks will commence with a vengeance. “Is there another Mark Felt out there, waiting?” asked a retired senior FBI official. “There usually is,” he added with a wry smile, citing the top Bureau official who, frustrated by the antics of the Nixon White House, became the notorious “Deep Throat”who leaked the dirty backstory to Watergate to the Washington, DC, media.

Mr. Obama and the Clinton camp should be advised to be careful about who they throw under the bus in this town.

U.S. Defense-Less During Iran Missile Testing

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Navy won’t have aircraft carrier in Persian Gulf as Iran deal takes effect

TheHill: The Navy does not have an aircraft carrier in the Middle East region as the Iran deal takes effect and just days after Tehran conducted a controversial ballistic missile test, raising concerns.

The USS Theodore Roosevelt pulled out of the Middle East region on Tuesday, and the next carrier, the USS Harry Truman, won’t arrive to the Persian Gulf area until winter, leaving a months-long gap without a carrier. The Navy’s moves were planned well in advance, but Iran’s recent missile test, which the Obama administration said violated international sanctions, is sparking worries about Tehran’s actions without a visible symbol of American deterrence in the region. The missile test came just one day after the Roosevelt pulled out of the Persian Gulf. It leaves the Gulf area without a continuous U.S. aircraft carrier presence for the first time since 2008.

The test also comes just before the Iran nuclear deal’s “adoption day” on Sunday — when it is Iran’s turn to take actions to implement its side of the deal.

On adoption day, sanctions waivers will be issued but won’t be effective until the deal is implemented in the spring.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power said on Friday that the test violated United Nations Security Council resolutions to curb Iran’s ballistic missile activities, and the U.S. would file a report with the UNSC on the matter.

“The Security Council prohibition on Iran’s ballistic missile activities, as well as the arms embargo, remain in place and we will continue to press the Security Council for an appropriate response to Iran’s disregard for its international obligations,” she said.

Administration officials have insisted the launch does not violate the terms of the nuclear deal, which places limits on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for relief from crippling economic sanctions.

And the administration has sought to assure allies in the region that it would keep a close watch on Iran after the deal was signed and counter its support for terrorism throughout the region.

President Obama just last week cited having an aircraft carrier as a projection of strength in the Middle East, in response to a question about whether U.S. adversaries and allies perceive the U.S. as retreating from the region.

“We have enormous presence in the Middle East. We have bases and we have aircraft carriers, and our pilots are flying through those skies,” Obama said during his interview on CBS “60 Minutes” last Sunday.

While officials say there are plenty of other assets in the region, some argue that an aircraft carrier is critical and its absence is being noticed.

“The most important thing you need a carrier for is for what you don’t know is going to happen next,” Peter Daly, a retired Navy vice admiral and CEO of the U.S. Naval Institute told NBC News.

“The biggest value to those carriers is that they are huge, and you have the capability to go from one stop to another, and we don’t need a permission slip from another nation when we want to fly planes,” he said.

Earlier this year, the Navy’s top officer said he was concerned about the lack of an aircraft carrier’s presence in the Middle East at a time the U.S. is conducting an airstrike campaign in Iraq and Syria.

“Without that carrier, there will be a detriment to our capability there,” the Navy’s Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson told the Senate Armed Services Committee during his July 30 confirmation hearing.

From 2010 through 2013, the U.S. maintained two aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf, known as a “2.0 carrier presence,” although it sometimes temporarily dipped below that level.

The heightened presence was to support U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and also to deter Iran from bad behavior in the region and keep the Strait of Hormuz open.

However, the U.S. stepped away from that in 2013, after steep budget cuts hit the Pentagon, forcing the Defense Department to curtail deployments, defer maintenance, and delay major purchases.

A U.S. official told The Hill in August that the Navy could have an even more reduced presence in the Persian Gulf in coming years, due to budget cuts, but also a prioritization of the Asia-Pacific.

“All I can say is that in the short-term, we need a continuous presence. The demand is out there, the [combatant commander] is asking for it, and the [Pacific Command] commander is asking for it. They’re asking for it. There’s just not enough peanut butter to spread around,” the official said.

“So what are you going to do? You’re going to give what you can. You’re going to prioritize based on what the president wants us to do, what the [Defense] secretary wants us to do and allocate those forces to meet those needs,” the official said.

“Iran last Sunday successfully test-fired the country’s new precision-guided long-range ballistic missile that can be controlled until the moment of impact. Emad carries a conventional warhead.”

Let’s be clear about this: does anyone really think that a long-range ballistic missile carrying a warhead of a few hundred kilograms with an accuracy of half a kilometer is being built for the purposes of carrying conventional explosives? Aim it at a target – an airport, a port, a chemical plant, Israel’s IDF headquarters in Tel Aviv – you name it – and what are the odds that a conventional explosion is actually going to damage the target? ]

Top Security Official Dismisses US Ballyhoos over Iran’s Missile Test as Irrelevant Sun Oct 18, 2015 3:9

http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13940726000483

TEHRAN (FNA)- Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Ali Shamkhani rejected the US officials’ hues and cries over Tehran’s recent missile test as pointless, stressing that no threat can ever stop the country’s military progress.

“We have never accepted (UN Security Council) Resolution 1929 and I should say that Iran’s missile test was not a violation of Resolution 2231 either,”

Shamkhani told reporters on the sidelines of the preliminary meeting of the Munich Security Conference in Tehran on Saturday.

“Such remarks are a propaganda hype and Iran doesn’t stop (enhancement of) its defensive and deterrent capability under any threat,” he added.

Shamkhani also underscored that Iran’s missile tests shouldn’t affect the implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreed by Iran and the world powers on July 14.

In relevant remarks on Saturday, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif underscored that Tehran has not violated the UN Security Council resolution 2231 by testing missiles, reiterating that Tehran would never accept to let the nuclear agreement leave an impact on its defensive measures.

“No reference has been made to the missile issue in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and I seriously believe that our missile tests are no way related to Resolution 2231,” Zarif said in a joint press conference with his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier in Tehran.

“Resolution 2231 speaks of missiles which have been designed for nuclear capabilities while none of our missiles have been designed for nuclear capabilities and our missile program is aimed at defending our territorial integrity,” he added.

Noting that all involved parties, including the Americans, have admitted that Iran’s missile tests haven’t violated the nuclear agreement between Tehran and the world powers, Zarif said, “The Islamic Republic of Iran has proved and shows again that the nuclear weapons didn’t and don’t have any place in its defensive doctrine and our missiles have not been designed for carrying nuclear warheads since we didn’t and don’t have any plan to have nuclear warheads.”

Some western media outlets have cast doubt about Iran’s recent missile test, saying that it could have violated the nuclear agreement between Tehran and the world powers.

Iran last Sunday successfully test-fired the country’s new precision-guided long-range ballistic missile that can be controlled until the moment of impact. Emad carries a conventional warhead.

“This missile (Emad) which has been fully designed and made by Iranian Defense Ministry’s scientists and experts is the country’ first long-range missile with navigation and strike controlling capability; it is capable of hitting and destroying the targets with high-precision,” Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan told reporters after the successful test of Emad missile.

The Iranian Defense Minister reiterated that the manufacture and successful testing of Emad missile is a technological and operational jump in a strategic field, and said, “We don’t ask for anyone’s permission for boosting our defense and missile power; we resolutely continue our defense programs, specially in the missile field, and Emad missile is a conspicuous example.”

General Dehqan felicitated Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, Iranian Armed Forces and the Iranian nation on the successful testing, and appreciated the scientists and experts of the Aerospace Industries Organization of the Defense Ministry.

The Iranian Defense Minister reiterated that the mass production and delivery of Emad missile to the country’s Armed Forces will considerably increase their power and tactical capabilities.

The Iranian Armed Forces have recently test-fired different types of newly-developed missiles and torpedoes and tested a large number of home-made weapons, tools and equipment, including submarines, military ships, artillery, choppers, aircrafts, UAVs and air defense and electronic systems, during massive military drills.

Defense analysts and military observers say that Iran’s wargames and its advancements in weapons production have proved as a deterrent factor.

The Iranian officials have always underscored that the country’s defense program cannot be affected by the nuclear deal clinched between Iran and the world powers on July 14.

Obama Teams with Silicon on Syrian Refugees

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In part from HuffPo:

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has responded to a petition calling on the U.S. to resettle tens of thousands of Syrian refugees within its borders, inviting the man who started the petition to the White House for a meeting.

George Batah, 23, came from Syria in 2013 and now lives in Chicago. He said he started the petition in late August because he felt the United States has a moral obligation to continue being “the leader in refugee resettlement.”

His petition asked the White House to accept at least 65,000 Syrian refugees by 2016. The administration did not commit to that number in its response Thursday, instead reiterating that it intends to bring at least 10,000.

“Under President Obama, the U.S. is the world’s largest donor of humanitarian aid, having contributed $4 billion in aid to date to help meet urgent needs in the most effective way,” the administration wrote. “The President has also directed his Administration to scale up the number of Syrian refugees we will bring to the U.S. next year to at least 10,000.”

How the White House Got Silicon Valley to Take On the Refugee Crisis
After the president’s request, Silicon Valley code writers went to work at record pace.
White House and Silicon Valley Take On Syria Crisis

Bloomberg: Even Jason Goldman, a former senior technology executive at

companies including Twitter, Medium, and Google, was surprised by how quickly some of his former Silicon Valley colleagues were able to answer the call.
Goldman, now sitting in Washington as the first-ever White House chief digital officer, and his colleague Joshua Miller, a former Facebook employee overseeing the Obama administration’s digital products, had gone to work lining up allies for a push to aid the waves of Syrian refugees flooding out of the country a little over a week prior. Now they were staring at donation platforms, crafted from scratch, that were ready to roll out.
“That’s a pretty fast turnaround time to actually build and ship code out into the wild,” Goldman says.
“That’s a pretty fast turnaround time to actually build and ship code out into the wild.”
Jason Goldman, White House chief digital officer
The response—and the equivalent of millions of dollars in donations that resulted—from Kickstarter, Twitter, Airbnb, and Instacart marked a new approach to address what many in the U.S. government view as an intractable crisis. Nearly 12 million Syrians have been displaced by the civil war raging in their country, according to the UN Refugee Agency. Thousands per day are flooding into European nations unequipped to handle the surge.
The White House has directed more than $4.5 billion to aid refugees, and pledged last month to allow and additional 10,000 into the U.S. next year. Still, the metastasizing crisis has up to this point far outweighed the global response. The U.N. Refugee Agency estimates the awareness level in the U.S. sits at 4 percent.


“We don’t have refugees in our backyard, we don’t have camps, we don’t have refugee camps on our soil so a lot of the American public doesn’t have a full understanding of what is going on,” says Jennifer Patterson, USA for UNHCR, the UN non-profit arm tasked with raising money and awareness for refugees. “The scope is really enormous right now.”
That was part of the calculation behind a few lines in President Barack Obama’s September speech to the United Nations General Assembly—a call not just to world leaders to address the crisis, but also private industry. Goldman and his team were looped into the call by National Security Council staff in the lead up to the remarks and went to work.
Within a week of Obama’s speech, Kickstarter had partnered with UNHCR to launch a first-of-its-kind non-profit campaign on the platform. Obama and Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, kicked in videos to help. More than $1 million was raised in less than 24 hours. Instacart linked up with UNHCR to create an option for its online shoppers to also purchase meals for refugee families. Airbnb pledged housing credits to aid workers in the region and matched any donations from its online community. Twitter launched its donation product early to ease the fundraising process on the platform for non-governmental organizations.
White House officials acknowledge that the start-up driven campaigns are far from the, or even a major piece of the, solution to the crisis. But along with driving donations and awareness, there are plans to make the idea a permanent model going forward. Other companies are preparing to launch similar initiatives, Patterson says.
“Really what we were doing here was just using the White House convening power to say, look, this is a real problem out in the world,” Goldman says. “Here’s how to think about it, here’s organizations you can work with, find the right fit for your product and you and your users and really step up and be involved.”

New Sources and Newest Release, U.S. Drone Operations

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Being a whistleblower is not enough, but stealing documents and releasing them is over the top. Raise your hand if you think Snowden and those working in cooperation with him are covert Russian operatives and is aiding the enemy.

Perhaps it is time to question those who are aiding Snowden as well when it comes to violating the Espionage Act and a handful of other Federal laws.

A Second Snowden has Leaked a Mother Lode of Drone Documents

by Andy Greenberg:

It’s been just over two years since Edward Snowden leaked a massive trove of NSA documents, and more than five since Chelsea Manning gave WikiLeaks a megacache of military and diplomatic secrets. Now there appears to be a new source on that scale of classified leaks—this time with a focus on drones.

On Thursday the Intercept published a groundbreaking new collection of documents related to America’s use of unmanned aerial vehicles to kill foreign targets in countries ranging from Afghanistan to Yemen. The revelations about the CIA and Joint Special Operations Command actions include primary source evidence that as many as 90 percent of US drone killings in one five month period weren’t the intended target, that a former British citizen was killed in a drone strike despite repeated opportunities to capture him instead, and details of the grisly process by which the American government chooses who will die, down to the “baseball cards” of profile information created for individual targets, and the chain of authorization that goes up directly to the president.1

All of this new information, according to the Intercept, appears to have come from a single anonymous whistleblower. A spokesperson for the investigative news site declined to comment on that source. But unlike the leaks of Snowden or Manning, the spilled classified materials are accompanied by statements about the whistleblower’s motivation in his or her own words.

“This outrageous explosion of watchlisting—of monitoring people and racking and stacking them on lists, assigning them numbers, assigning them ‘baseball cards,’ assigning them death sentences without notice, on a worldwide battlefield—it was, from the very first instance, wrong,” the source tells the Intercept. “We’re allowing this to happen. And by ‘we,’ I mean every American citizen who has access to this information now, but continues to do nothing about it.”

Reports first surfaced in the fall of last year that the Intercept, a news site created in part to analyze and publish the remaining cache of Snowden NSA documents, had found a second source of highly classified information. The final scene of the film “Citizenfour,” directed by Intercept co-founder Laura Poitras, shows fellow Intercept co-founder Glenn Greenwald meeting with Snowden in Moscow to tell him about a new source with information about the U.S. drone program, whom he says has been communicating with the Intercept‘s Jeremy Scahill. At one point, Greenwald draws Snowden a diagram of the authorization chain for drone strikes that ends with the president, one that looks very similar to the one included in Thursday’s publication.

“It’s really risky,” Snowden tells Greenwald in the scene. “That person is incredibly bold.”

“The boldness of it is shocking,” Greenwald responds, “But it was obviously motivated by what you did.”

In the scene, Greenwald also tells Snowden the security tools the Intercept is using to communicate with the source, writing the names of the software on a piece of paper in what may have been an attempt to avoid eavesdroppers. Those security tools, along with the Intercept‘s reputation for combative, unapologetic investigation of the U.S. government, may help explain how the site seems to have found another Snowden-like source of national security secrets. The Intercept and its parent company First Look Media employ world-class security staff like former Googler Morgan Marquis-Boire, Tor developer Erinn Clark, and former EFF technologist Micah Lee. Far more than most news sites, its reporters use tools like the encryption software PGP and the anonymous upload system SecureDrop to protect the identities of its sources.

Whether those measures can actually protect this particular source—or whether the source Greenwald told Snowden about is even the same one who leaked the Intercept‘s Drone Papers—remains to be seen. Yahoo News reported last year that the FBI had identified a “second leaker” to the Intercept and searched his or her home as part of a criminal investigation.

If that reported search of the leaker’s home did happen, however, it doesn’t seem to have slowed down the Intercept or its whistleblower. A year later, no arrests or charges have been made public, and the site has now published what appear to be the biggest revelations yet from its new source.

In the Citizenfour scene, Snowden tells Greenwald he hopes that the new leaks could help change the perception of whistleblowers in general. “This could raise the political situation with whistleblowing to a whole new level, he says.

“Exactly,” Greenwald responds. “People are going to see what’s being hidden by a totally different part of the government.”

Read the Intercept‘s full Drone Papers release here.

1 Correction 10/15/2015 12:45pm: An earlier version of this story stated that a former US citizen, Bilal el-Berjawi, was killed by a drone. In fact, el-Berjawi was a former British citizen.

2 Updated 10/15/2015 2:15pm to include Erinn Clark in the list of First Look Media security engineers.