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Former New York congressman Anthony Weiner Photo: Illustration Emil Lendof/New York Post
NYP: First he was Carlos Danger. Now — in yet another sexting scandal — he’s a randy “mongoose.”
Sext fiend Anthony Weiner boasted of his animal prowess — claiming he was “deceptively strong . . . like a mongoose” — and gave his cellphone number to a college student during a flirty, private online chat on a recent trip to Los Angeles, The Post has learned.
But the joke was on the horndog pol, whose wife, Huma Abedin, is a top aide and close confidante of Hillary Clinton.
The target of his online affection was really a dude. More here. **** But back to Huma…
Hillary Clinton’s top campaign aide, and the woman who might be the future White House chief of staff to the first female US president, for a decade edited a radical Muslim publication that opposed women’s rights and blamed the US for 9/11.
One of Clinton’s biggest accomplishments listed on her campaign Web site is her support for the UN women’s conference in Bejing in 1995, when she famously declared, “Women’s rights are human rights.” Her speech has emerged as a focal point of her campaign, featured prominently in last month’s Morgan Freeman-narrated convention video introducing her as the Democratic nominee.
Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin arrive for a NATO Foreign Minister family photo in front of the Brandenburg Gate in 2011. Photo: Getty Images
Hillary Clinton talks with aide Huma Abedin. Photo: Getty Images
Clinton and Abedin in Queens. Photo: Getty Images
Hillary Clinton greets people. Huma Abedin is seen at center. Photo: Getty Images
However, soon after that “historic and transformational” 1995 event, as Clinton recently described it, her top aide Huma Abedin published articles in a Saudi journal taking Clinton’s feminist platform apart, piece by piece. At the time, Abedin was assistant editor of the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs working under her mother, who remains editor-in-chief. She was also working in the White House as an intern for then-First Lady Clinton.
Headlined “Women’s Rights are Islamic Rights,” a 1996 article argues that single moms, working moms and gay couples with children should not be recognized as families. It also states that more revealing dress ushered in by women’s liberation “directly translates into unwanted results of sexual promiscuity and irresponsibility and indirectly promote violence against women.” In other words, sexually liberated women are just asking to be raped
“A conjugal family established through a marriage contract between a man and a woman, and extended through procreation is the only definition of family a Muslim can accept,” the author, a Saudi official with the Muslim World League, asserted, while warning of “the dangers of alternative lifestyles.” (Abedin’s journal was founded and funded by the former head of the Muslim World League.)
“Pushing [mothers] out into the open labor market is a clear demonstration of a lack of respect of womanhood and motherhood,” it added.
In a separate January 1996 article, Abedin’s mother — who was the Muslim World League’s delegate to the UN conference — wrote that Clinton and other speakers were advancing a “very aggressive and radically feminist” agenda that was un-Islamic and wrong because it focused on empowering women.
“‘Empowerment’ of women does more harm than benefit the cause of women or their relations with men,” Saleha Mahmood Abedin maintained, while forcefully arguing in favor of Islamic laws that have been roundly criticized for oppressing women.
“By placing women in the ‘care and protection’ of men and by making women responsible for those under her charge,” she argued, “Islamic values generate a sense of compassion in human and family relations.”
“Among all systems of belief, Islam goes the farthest in restoring equality across gender,” she claimed. “Acknowledging the very central role women play in procreation, child-raising and homemaking, Islam places the economic responsibility of supporting the family primarily on the male members.”
She seemed to rationalize domestic abuse as a result of “the stress and frustrations that men encounter in their daily lives.” While denouncing such violence, she didn’t think it did much good to punish men for it.
She added in her 31-page treatise: “More men are victims of domestic violence than women . . . If we see the world through ‘men’s eyes’ we will find them suffering from many hardships and injustices.”
She opposed the UN conference widening the scope of the definition of the family to include “gay and lesbian ‘families.’ ”
Huma Abedin does not apologize for her mother’s views. “My mother was traveling around the world to these international women’s conferences talking about women’s empowerment, and it was normal,” she said in a recent profile in Vogue.
Huma continued to work for her mother’s journal through 2008. She is listed as “assistant editor” on the masthead of the 2002 issue in which her mother suggested the US was doomed to be attacked on 9/11 because of “sanctions” it leveled against Iraq and other “injustices” allegedly heaped on the Muslim world. Here is an excerpt:
“The spiral of violence having continued unabated worldwide, and widely seen to be allowed to continue, was building up intense anger and hostility within the pressure cooker that was kept on a vigorous flame while the lid was weighted down with various kinds of injustices and sanctions . . . It was a time bomb that had to explode and explode it did on September 11, changing in its wake the life and times of the very community and the people it aimed to serve.”
Huma Abedin is Clinton’s longest-serving and, by all accounts, most loyal aide. The devout, Saudi-raised Muslim started working for her in the White House, then followed her to the Senate and later the State Department. She’s now helping run Clinton’s presidential campaign as vice chair and may end up back in the White House.
The contradictions are hard to reconcile. The campaign is not talking, despite repeated requests for interviews.
Until now, these articles which Abedin helped edit and publish have remained under wraps. Perhaps Clinton was unaware she and her mother took such opposing views.
But that’s hard to believe. Her closest adviser served as an editor for that same Saudi propaganda organ for a dozen years. The same one that in 1999 published a book, edited by her mother, that justifies the barbaric practice of female genital mutilation under Islamic law, while claiming “man-made laws have in fact enslaved women.”
And in 2010, Huma Abedin arranged for then-Secretary of State Clinton to speak alongside Abedin’s hijab-wearing mother at an all-girls college in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. According to a transcript of the speech, Clinton said Americans have to do a better job of getting past “the stereotypes and the mischaracterizations” of the oppressed Saudi woman. She also assured the audience of burqa-clad girls that not all American girls go “around in a bikini bathing suit.”
At no point in her long visit there, which included a question-and-answer session, did this so-called champion of women’s rights protest the human-rights violations Saudi women suffer under the Shariah laws that Abedin’s mother actively promotes. Nothing about the laws barring women from driving or traveling anywhere without male “guardians.”
If fighting for women’s rights is one of Clinton’s greatest achievements, why has she retained as her closest adviser a woman who gave voice to harsh Islamist critiques of her Beijing platform?
Abu Nassim was arrested in Libya just days after the State Department claimed that very few Gitmo detainees ever return to terror.
Nassim, whose full name is Moez Ben Abdulgader Ben Ahmed Al Fezzani, was reportedly trying to travel to Tunisia, where he is an ISIS commander and most-wanted terrorist.
He was arrested along with approximately 20 other ISIS supporters between the Libyan towns of Rigdaleen and Al-Jmail.
Nassim is considered a top jihadist recruiter in Italy.
*****
ForeignNewsDesk: Zintani forces loyal to the internationally-recognized Libyan National Army arrested Moez Ben Abdulgader Ben Ahmed Fezzani 47, known by his nom de guerre Abu Nassim, last week as he was trying to flee Sirte, Libya for Tunisia.
A commander of ISIS militants in Libya since 2014, Fezzani had been sought by Tunisian authorities in connection with the March 2015 Bardo Museum attack in Tunis.
Twenty-two people including 17 foreigners were killed in the attack later claimed by the Islamic State.
Fezzani, along with 20 Islamic State operatives, was arrested by a police patrol while travelling between the towns of Rigdaleen and Al-Jmail.
News of his purported arrest comes just days after Libyan authorities warned their Italian counterparts about the possibility of an Islamic State cell in Milan with connections to the wanted militant.
Following the capture of ISIS’ headquarters in Sirte last week, officials discovered a cache of documents linking the Italian cell to Fezzani.
Fezzani, who arrived in Italy in the late 80’s, disappeared in 1997 after authorities suspected him of involvement in jihadi activities, later resurfacing in Pakistan before joining Osama Bin Laden’s war in Afghanistan.
Arrested by the U.S. in 2001, Fezzani was held at Bagram’s detention facility before the Obama administration approved his transfer to Italy in 2009.
Fezzani stood trial in Italy for his earlier terror offenses, cooperating in terror activities in Bosnia in 1995, but was acquitted.
Upon appeal, he was sentenced to six years in jail, but by this time had already fled; first to Tunisia where he joined Al Qaeda’s Ansar Al Sharia and then to Syria joining the terror group’s Al Nusra affiliate.
In 2014, he transferred allegiances to ISIS’ Caliph Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, before moving to Libya where he was reportedly appointed a leader of Katibat al-Battar, described as ISIS’ special operations unit in the volatile country.
“If the information on Fezzani proves to be true, it is very disturbing. Just like the head of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, this was a man we had in our detention facility and let go,” terrorism analyst Dr. Sebastian Gorka told The Investigative Project on Terror in March about Fezzani’s ISIS appointment.
There has been no confirmation of his arrest from Tunisian authorities, but Fezzani’s capture comes just days after the Obama administration announced its biggest release of Guantanamo Bay detainees as the President attempts to fulfil his pledge to close the detention camp.
The Tunisian Ministry of Interior issued a search warrant on Monday February 8, 2016 for Moez Ben Abdelkader Ben Ahmed Fezzani also known as ‘Abu Nassim’ born 23/03/1969, son of Fatma Chihaoui, from Ezzahrouni, Tunis. The Ministry of Interior classified Moez Fezzani as a dangerous terrorist in its statement:
في إطار تعاون المواطنين مع الوحدات الأمنية بوزارة الداخلية وتوقيا من الأعمال الإرهابيّة، تطلب وزارة الدّاخلية الإبلاغ ال…
Location of the Ezzahrouni neighborhood in Tunis
An older picture of Fezzani
Photo provided by the Ministry of Interior of Tunisia in the search warrant for Fezzani
Moez Fezzani’s has a long history within the sphere of global terrorism that stretches back to both the Bosnian war and the war in Afghanistan. Afghanistan, jailed for 7 years at the ‘Baghram Prison’. Fezzani’s journey brings him to Italy where he’s is tried together with another Tunisian and former Guantanamo prisoner Riadh Nasri for providing logistical support in 2007 to a terrorist cell in Italy linked to the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), which evolved into Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. He was acquitted from charges of terrorism in 2011, but Tunisian authorities demanded his deportation, although Italian autorities already considered him a security threat. The first time his deportation was supposed to be carried out he managed to escape and went into hiding in Varese, Lombardy, to be cought once again and deported to Tunisia.
Fezzani joined Ansar al-Sharia Tunisia (AST) in 2012 and was reportedly active in various confrontations, in 2013 Fezzani left for Syria where he joined Jabhat al-Nusra and later ISIS. He reportedly moved to Libya in 2014 as a leader for Katibat al-Battar and according to sources he now holds a key role in Sirte. Fezzani is suspected for being the mastermind and supervisor of the planning processes behind the high-profile attacks against the Bardo Museum and Sousse.
The search warrant for Fezzani by the Ministry of Interior comes at a critical time when Libya facing the threat of foreign intervention, an intervention which will have significant consequences for Tunisia. We can not exclude that the MOI tacticly issued this warrant to raise public awareness facing both the terrorist threat and additional consequences linked to an eventual Libya intervention, we can also assume that MOI on purpose issued this warrant knowing Fezzani is in Libya, thus framing him as a high-profile target for the international coalition.
Most outside experts who examined the posts, by a group calling itself the “Shadow Brokers,” said they contained what appeared to be genuine samples of the code — though somewhat outdated — used in the production of the NSA’s custom-built malware. Most of the code was designed to break through network firewalls and get inside the computer systems of competitors like Russia, China and Iran. That, in turn, allows the NSA to place “implants” in the system, which can lurk unseen for years and be used to monitor network traffic or enable a debilitating computer attack. More here.
NSA and the No Good, Very Bad Monday
LawFare: Monday was a tough day for those in the business of computer espionage. Russia, still using the alias Guccifer2.0, dumped even more DNC documents. And on Twitter, Mikko Hypponen noted an announcement on Github that had gone overlooked for two days, a group is hosting an auction for code from the “Equation Group,” which is more commonly known as the NSA. The auctioneer’s pitch is simple, brutal, and to the point:
How much you pay for enemies cyber weapons? Not malware you find in networks. Both sides, RAT + LP, full state sponsor tool set? We find cyber weapons made by creators of stuxnet, duqu, flame. Kaspersky calls Equation Group. We follow Equation Group traffic. We find Equation Group source range. We hack Equation Group. We find many many Equation Group cyber weapons. You see pictures. We give you some Equation Group files free, you see. This is good proof no? You enjoy!!! You break many things. You find many intrusions. You write many words. But not all, we are auction the best files.
This release included two encrypted files, and the password to one was provided as proof while the other remains encrypted. The attackers claim that they will provide the password to the second file to the winner of a Bitcoin auction.
The public auction part is nonsense. Despite prevailing misconceptions on cryptocurrency, Bitcoin’s innate traceability means that no one could really expect to launder even $1M out of a high profile Bitcoin wallet like this one without risking detection, let alone the $500M being requested for a full public release. The auction is the equivalent of a criminal asking to be paid in new, marked, sequential bills. Because the actors here are certainly not amateurs, the auction is presumably a bit of “Doctor Evil” theater—the only bids will be $20 investments from Twitter jokesters.
But the proof itself appears to be very real. The proof file is 134 MB of data compressed, expanding out to a 301 MB archive. This archive appears to contain a large fraction of the NSA’s implant framework for firewalls, including what appears to be several versions of different implants, server side utility scripts, and eight apparent exploits for a variety of targets.
The exploits themselves appear to target Fortinet, Cisco, Shaanxi Networkcloud Information Technology (sxnc.com.cn) Firewalls, and similar network security systems. I will leave it to others to analyze the reliability, versions supported, and other details. But nothing I’ve found in either the exploits or elsewhere is newer than 2013.
Because of the sheer volume and quality, it is overwhelmingly likely that this data is authentic. And it does not appear to be information taken from compromised targets. Instead, the exploits, binaries with help strings, server configuration scripts, 5 separate versions of one implant framework, and all sort of other features indicate that this is analyst-side code—the kind that probably never leaves the NSA.
It is also unlikely that this data is from the Snowden cache. Those documents focused on PowerPoint slides and shared data, not detailed exploits. Besides NSA, the only plausible candidate for ownership is GCHQ—and the implications of stealing Top Secret data from GCHQ and modifying it to frame the NSA would themselves be startling.
All this is to say that there is relatively high confidence that these files contain genuine NSA material.
From an operational standpoint, this is not a catastrophic leak. Nothing here reveals some special “NSA magic.” Instead, this is evidence of good craftsmanship in a widely modular framework designed for ease of use. The immediate consequence is probably a lot of hours of work down the drain.
But the big picture is a far scarier one. Somebody managed to steal 301 MB of data from a TS//SCI system at some point between 2013 and today. Possibly, even probably, it occurred in 2013. But the theft also could have occurred yesterday with a simple utility run to scrub all newer documents. Relying on the file timestamps—which are easy to modify—the most likely date of acquisition was June 11, 2013 (see Update, however). That is two weeks after Snowden fled to Hong Kong and six days after the first Guardian publication. That would make sense, since in the immediate response to the leaks, as the NSA furiously ran down possible sources, it may have accidentally or deliberately eliminated this adversary’s access.
As with other recent cyber conflicts, the espionage aspect is troubling but not entirely new. It’s very, very bad that someone was able to go rummaging through a TS//SCI system—or even an unclassified Internet staging system where the NSA operator unwisely uploaded all this data—and to steal 300 MB of data. But whoever stole this data now wants the world to know—and that has much graver implications. The list of suspects is short: Russia or China. And in the context of the recent conflict between the US and Russia over election interference, safe money is on the former.
Right now, I’d imagine that the folks at NSA are having rather unpleasant conversations about what the other encrypted file might contain, and what other secrets this attacker may have gained access to. Even if they were aware of the attack that resulted in this leak, there’s no way of knowing what is in the other archive. Is there evidence of another non-Snowden insider who went silent three years ago? Was a TS//SCI system remotely compromised? Was there some kind of massive screw-up at an agency which prides itself on world class OPSEC? Some combination of the three?
And—most chillingly—what else might be released before this war of leaks is over?
Update: Thanks to @botherder for pointing out that a couple files have a newer date: One file has a date of June 17th, 2013; another has a date of July 5th, 2013; three setup strips are dated September 4th, 2013; and two have dates of October 18th 2013. One of those files (which I’m currently investigating) is the database of allocated Ethernet MAC addresses, which may be able to identify a later minimum date of compromise. If the latter date of October 18th, 2013 is correct, this is even more worrysome, as this suggests that the compromise happened four months after the initial Snowden revelations—a period of time when the NSA’s systems should have been the most secure.
Update 2: Looking at the dates again, it now does seem somewhat likely that this was data copied on June 11th, 2013 with a few updates with a compromise after October 18th. This does make it more likely that this was taken from a set of files deliberately moved onto a system on the Internet used for attacking others. To my mind, this is actually an even scarier possibility than the NSA internal system compromise: This scenario would have the NSA, after the Snowden revelations, practicing some incredibly awful operational security. Why should the NSA include five different versions of the same implant on a system used to attack other systems on the Internet? Let alone implants which still have all the debugging strings, internal function names, and absolutely no obfuscation?
Update 3: Kaspersky confirms that the particular use of RC6 matches the unique design present in other Equation Group malcode. XORcat apparently confirmed that the Cisco exploit works and, due to the versions it can attack, was a zero day at the time. This exploit would generally work to take over a firewall from the inside of a target network since it did require limited access that is almost always blocked from the outside.
A cache of hacking tools with code names such as Epicbanana, Buzzdirection and Egregiousblunder appeared mysteriously online over the weekend, setting the security world abuzz with speculation over whether the material was legitimate.
The file appeared to be real, according to former NSA personnel who worked in the agency’s hacking division, known as Tailored Access Operations (TAO).
“Without a doubt, they’re the keys to the kingdom,” said one former TAO employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal operations. “The stuff you’re talking about would undermine the security of a lot of major government and corporate networks both here and abroad.”
Said a second former TAO hacker who saw the file: “From what I saw, there was no doubt in my mind that it was legitimate.”
“Faking this information would be monumentally difficult, there is just such a sheer volume of meaningful stuff,” Nicholas Weaver, a computer security researcher at the University of California at Berkeley, said in an interview. “Much of this code should never leave the NSA.”
The tools were posted by a group calling itself the Shadow Brokers using file-sharing sites such as BitTorrent and DropBox.
At the same time, other spy services, like Russia’s, are doing the same thing to the United States.
It is not unprecedented for a TAO operator to accidentally upload a large file of tools to a redirector, one of the former employees said. “What’s unprecedented is to not realize you made a mistake,” he said. “You would recognize, ‘Oops, I uploaded that set’ and delete it.”
Critics of the NSA have suspected that the agency, when it discovers a software vulnerability, frequently does not disclose it, thereby putting at risk the cybersecurity of anyone using that product. The file disclosure shows why it’s important to tell software-makers when flaws are detected, rather than keeping them secret, one of the former agency employees said, because now the information is public, available for anyone to employ to hack widely used Internet infrastructure. Read the full article here.
The next Benghazi? State Department leaves contractors in Afghanistan without escape plan
Circa: The concerns are heightened by the fact that many of those civilians doing the security and nation-building work of the U.S. government hold sensitive security clearances, making them an attractive target for the enemy.
And the situation could become even more precarious after the U.S. military in Afghanistan draws down to just 8,400 troops by year’s end.
“It’s not just a political nightmare for somebody, it’s people’s lives at stake,” said Kevin Ofchus, head of Georgia-based firm Host Nations Perspectives Southwest Asia (HNPSWA) that has security contracts in Afghanistan.
The current situation
“The State Department says there’s a lack of infrastructure to support an emergency response after we’ve spent 15 years and billions of dollars on infrastructure,” he added.
Ofchus’s company is a member of the State Department’s Overseas Security Advisory Committee, and it chairs the Crisis Management Advisory Subcommittee in Kabul, which advises companies about security working in hot-zones.
And his sentiments are widely shared by a dozen other federal contractors in theater interviewed by Circa, some of whom would only talk on condition of anonymity because they feared reprisal from Washington.
“I was told ‘don’t bother going to Kabul, grab your weapon and fight your way through until you can reach an aircraft’ or whatever,” said one contractor working in Afghanistan, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
“I don’t think any of us count on State Department to have their shit together. I’ve never seen, heard or prepared for any evacuation plan.”
— -Anonymous contractor
So is there a plan?
State Department officials told Circa that there is an evacuation plan, but they could not release any details about it because it was classified.
Mike Warren, a security director for the USAID-backed Mining Investment and Development for Afghanistan Sustainability Project, known as MIDAS, says he believes State has a very remedial plan but it fails on almost every security protocol.
“The Department of State, in close coordination with the Department of Defense, has a crisis response plan for Afghanistan that encompasses civilians and contractors. U.S. Forces-Afghanistan, in close coordination with the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, maintains a classified Non-Combatant Evacuation Operations plan to support the chief of mission,” the department wrote in an email.
“I know the U.S. Embassy was working on a plan, but it’s a shell of what they need,” Warren said in a phone interview from Kabul. “There appears to be a lack of coordinated effort between the U.S. Embassy and the American companies and personnel here in Afghanistan.”
“I know the U.S. Embassy was working on a plan, but it’s a shell of what they need.”
— Mike Warren, security director for MIDAS
Circa obtained a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the State Department and Department of Defense governing the protection and evacuation of U.S. citizens and nationals from threatened areas overseas. The document specifically outlines the duties and requirements of the various agencies.
The Secretary of State “will prepare the plans for the protection and evacuation of all U.S. citizens and nationals and designated other persons abroad, including the Department of Defense (non-combatants).” More terrifying details here from Circa.
*****
In part: Now, as President Obama prepares to hand off combat operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and elsewhere, to his successor, he’s also bequeathing a way of war that relies on large numbers of guns-for-hire while, at least formally, restricting the number of American “troops” sent overseas. Since 2009, the ratio of contractors to troops in war zones has increased from 1 to 1 to about 3 to 1.
Private military contractors perform tasks once thought to be inherently governmental, such as raising foreign armies, conducting intelligence analysis and trigger-pulling. During the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, they constituted about 15 percent of all contractors. But don’t let the numbers fool you. Their failures have an outsized impact on U.S. strategy. When a squad of Blackwater contractors killed 17 civilians at a Bagdad traffic circle in 2007, it provoked a firestorm in Iraq and at home, marking one of the nadirs of that war.
Contractors also encourage mission creep, because contractors don’t count as “boots on the ground.” Congress does not consider them to be troops, and therefore contractors do not count again troop-level caps in places like Iraq. The U.S. government does not track contractor numbers in war zones. As a result, the government can put more people on the ground than it reports to the American people, encouraging mission creep and rendering contractors virtually invisible.
For decades now, the centrality of contracting in American warfare—both on the battlefield and in support of those on the battlefield—has been growing. During World War II, about 10 percent of America’s armed forces were contracted. During the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, that proportion leapt to 50 percent. This big number signals a disturbing trend: the United States has developed a dependency on the private sector to wage war, a strategic vulnerability. Today, America can no longer go to war without the private sector. More here from DefenseOne.
How was it delivered? Classified. How do you put $1.3 billion on pallets and shrink wrap it and get it to Iran? Classified. We thought the $400 million was for ransom but now it appears it was ALL of it, $1.7 billion and Iran along with Russia coupled with the Iranian militia and Hezbollah will enjoy it all.
NYP: WASHINGTON — The Obama administration’s $400 million payoff to Iran was followed by a second transfer of $1.3 billion, it was reported Tuesday.
President Obama took considerable flak for the first payment, which coincided with the release in January of four Americans being held by Tehran.
Critics charged that the move smacked of ransom, which the US has pledged never to pay.
The $400 million was the first installment of a $1.7 billion settlement with Iran to resolve a dispute over a failed arms deal signed before the 1979 fall of the shah.
But there was no word about what happened to the rest of the debt — $1.3 billion.
Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs Julia Frifield sent a letter to Congress on March 17, 2016, stating, “Iran received the balance of $400 million in the Trust Fund as well as roughly $1.3 billion representing a compromise on the interest,” according to the magazine.
This payment was likely made in cash, since the US has no banking relationship with Tehran.
Wooden pallets stacked with euros, Swiss francs and other currencies were flown into Iran in an unmarked cargo plane to cover the first $400 million.
“The reason that we had to give them cash is precisely because we are so strict in maintaining sanctions — and we don’t have a banking relationship with Iran — that we couldn’t send them a check,” Obama said in an Aug. 4 press conference.
Although he insisted there was no connection to the hostages, one of them described waiting for “another plane” to land before being freed from Iran.
“I just remember the night at the airport sitting for hours and hours there, and I asked police, ‘Why are you not letting us go?’” former hostage Pastor Saeed Abedini told Fox Business.
“He said, ‘We are waiting for another plane, so if that plane doesn’t come, we never let [you] go.’”
The White House announced on Jan. 17, a day after the prisoner exchange, it was releasing $400 million in funds frozen since 1981, plus $1.3 billion in interest owed to Iran. The remaining interest has since been fully paid from the U.S. Treasury-administered Judgment Fund, according to a U.S. official.
The funds were part of a trust fund Iran used before its 1979 Islamic Revolution to buy U.S. military equipment that was tied up for decades in litigation at the tribunal.
The Judgment Fund was established to pay court judgments and Justice Department compromise settlements of actual or imminent lawsuits against the government.
It is administered by the Judgment Fund Branch, which is a part of the United States Department of the Treasury, Bureau of the Fiscal Service. The Judgment Fund Internet Claims System (JFICS) is the application used to process all Judgment Fund claims.
The Judgment Fund is a permanent, indefinite appropriation available to pay judicially and administratively ordered monetary awards against the United States. The Judgment Fund is also available to pay amounts owed under compromise agreements negotiated by the U.S. Department of Justice in settlement of claims arising under actual or imminent litigation, if a judgment on the merits would be payable from the Judgment Fund. The statutory authority for the Judgment Fund is 31 U.S.C. 1304.
If funds for paying an award are otherwise provided for in the appropriations of the defendant agency, the Judgment Fund may not pay an award. A federal agency may request that payment of an award be made on its behalf from the Judgment Fund only in those instances where funds are not legally available to pay the award from the agency’s own appropriations.
Amounts paid vary significantly from year-to-year. Federal agencies are not required to reimburse the Judgment Fund except when cases are filed under the Contract Disputes Act (CDA) or the No FEAR Act (Notification and Federal Employee Antidiscrimination and Retaliation Act).
Former New York congressman Anthony Weiner Photo: Illustration Emil Lendof/New York Post
