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Secretary of State John Kerry signaled today that he plans to decide soon whether to formally accuse the Islamic State of genocide amid what sources describe as an intense debate within the Obama administration about how such a declaration should be worded and what it might mean for U.S. strategy against the terrorist group.
“None of us have ever seen anything like it in our lifetimes,” Kerry said during a House subcommittee hearing Wednesday about beheadings and atrocities committed by the Islamic State.
But in response to questioning by Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, a Nebraska Republican who has been spearheading a resolution in Congress demanding the administration invoke an international treaty against genocide, Kerry was careful not to tip his hand on what has turned into a thorny internal legal debate with political and potentially military consequences.
Saying the department was reviewing “very carefully the legal standards and precedents” for a declaration of genocide against the Islamic State, Kerry added that he had received “initial recommendations” on the issue but had then asked for “further evaluations.”
In his first public comments on the issue, Kerry said he “will make a decision on this” as soon as he receives those evaluations. He didn’t elaborate on when that might occur.
The administration’s plans to invoke the powerfully evocative genocide label — an extremely rare move — was first reported by Yahoo News last November. But at the time, the State Department was focused on restricting the designation to the Islamic State’s mass killings, beheadings and enslavement of the Yazidis — a relatively small minority group of about 500,000 in northern Iraq that the terrorist group has vowed to wipe out on the grounds they are “devil worshipers.”
The disclosure set off a strong backlash among members of Congress and Christian groups who argued that Islamic State atrocities against Iraqi and Syrian Christians and other smaller minority groups also deserved the genocide label. Some conservatives even chastised the administration for displaying a “politically correct bias that views Christians … never as victims but always as Inquisition-style oppressors.”
The issue has since made its way into the presidential campaign; Sen. Marco Rubio has signed a Senate version of a House resolution, co-sponsored by Fortenberry and Rep. Anna Eshoo, for a broader genocide designation that incorporates Christians, Turkmen, Kurds and other groups. Hillary Clinton has also endorsed such as move. In response to a question from a voter at a New Hampshire town hall last December about whether she believes Christians as well as Yazidis should be declared victims of genocide, she said, “I will, because we now have enough evidence.”
A Iraqi Yazidi woman and her children took refuge at the Bajid Kandala camp in Dohuk, Iraq, after fleeing Islamic State jihadists. (Photo: Ahmad Al-Rubaye/AFP)
But administration sources and others intimately familiar with the internal debate say the issue has proven more complicated. While ISIS has openly declared its intention of destroying the Yazidis, they argue, the terrorist group’s leaders have not made equally explicit statements about Christians even while committing killings, kidnappings, forced removals and the confiscation and destruction of churches aimed at Christian groups. As a result, administration officials and State Department lawyers have weighed labeling those acts “crimes against humanity” — a step that critics have said doesn’t go far enough. “We’ve been trying to tell them, crimes against humanity are not a bronze medal,” said one administration official, contending that it should not be viewed as a less serious designation.
Kerry seemed to hint as much in his responses to Fortenberry at Wednesday’s hearing, noting that Christians in Syria “and other places” have been forcibly removed from their homes. “There have been increased, forced evacuations,” he said. “No, its not — they are killing them in that case — but it’s a removal and a cleansing, ethnically and religiously, that is equally disturbing.”
At the same time, two sources familiar with the debate said, Pentagon officials have expressed concerns that a genocide designation would morally obligate the U.S. military to take steps — such as protecting endangered populations or using drones to identify enslaved women — that could divert resources from the campaign to defeat the Islamic State. (An administration official told Yahoo News Wednesday that any such concerns have not been raised in “interagency” discussions over the genocide issue. “There is no resource issue,” the official said.)
In fact, many legal scholars say, there is considerable debate about just what practical impact a genocide designation would have. It would be made under a loosely worded 1948 international treaty that compels signatory nations, including the United States, “to prevent and to punish” the “odious scourge” of genocide defined as acts “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical (sic), racial or religious group.” As documented by Samantha Power, now the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, in her 2002 book, “A Problem from Hell,” President Clinton’s Secretary of State Warren Christopher, resisted labeling the mass murder of the Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994 as genocide for fear, as one State Department memo put it at the time, “it could commit [the U.S. government] to actually do something.”
But 10 years later, Secretary of State Colin Powell declared the killings of non-Arab people in Darfur to be genocide — the first time the U.S. invoked such a declaration during an ongoing conflict. But he did so only after receiving a secret State Department memo concluding the designation “has no immediate legal — as opposed to moral, political or policy consequences for the United States.”
Administration officials have argued they are already taking extraordinary steps to protect threatened minorities in Iraq, pointing to, for example, the 2014 evacuation of Yazidis from Mount Sinjar — and that a genocide designation wouldn’t change that. White House press secretary Josh Earnest said as much when he was pressed on the issue during a recent White House briefing during which he said a genocide designation is “an open question that continues to be considered by administration lawyers.”
“The decision to apply this term to this situation is an important one,” Earnest said during a Feb. 4 briefing. “It has significant consequences, and it matters for a whole variety of reasons, both legal and moral. But it doesn’t change our response. And the fact is that this administration has been aggressive, even though that term has not been applied, in trying to protect religious minorities who are victims or potential victims of violence.”
Authorities in the Kurdistan said on Friday, according to Reuters, that they are investigating another suspected gas attack by Islamic State (ISIS) against the Kurdish Peshmerga.
Civilians and Peshmerga alike in the Sinjar area are being treated for nausea and vomiting after ISIS rockets containing a chemical substance were fired at them on Thursday the Kurdistan Region Security Council (KRSC) said on its Twitter page.
“If confirmed this will be the eight ISIL weaponized chemical attack against Peshmerga. ISIL tactics continue to become more sophisticated,” warned the council.
The KRSC said the American-led anti-ISIS coalition is helping them with the investigation.
This attack comes the same week that a source within the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said that mustard gas was used against the Peshmerga in August of last year, making 35 of them ill.
This latest attack however appears to have used chlorine gas, a type of gas that is often used in the Syrian conflict. Chlorine gas is a choking agent and nausea and vomiting are telltale signs one has been exposed to it.
Rogan/NR: Chemical agents, by disrupting a military adversary and sowing terror among its civilian population, make for powerful psychological weapons. And, as attested by Bashar al-Assad’s ongoing suffocation of innocent Syrians, chemical weapons are also tools of torture. The National Institutes of Health describes how concentrated chlorine gas affects a human body: “respiratory failure, pulmonary edema, likely acute pulmonary hypertension, cardiomegaly, pulmonary vascular congestion, acute burns of the upper and especially the proximal lower airways, and death.”
For ISIS, weaponized chlorine is a perfect instrument. And ISIS is using it. Reports suggest that ISIS has employed mustard- and chlorine-gas–based weapons in Iraq and Syria. Unfortunately, far worse is likely to come. After all, it’s increasingly obvious that ISIS regards its chemical-weapons programs as a key strategic priority. Last October, for example, the Associated Press described how European organized-crime groups are offering radioactive material to ISIS. And just last week, the Independent reported on the disruption of a ten-person ISIS cell in Morocco — a cell masterminded by ISIS leaders in Libya. The connecting threads are clear: Morocco, a favored destination of Western tourists, offered ISIS an opportunity to follow up in 2016 on its 2015 massacre of 38 people — including 30 Britons — in Sousse, Tunisia. ISIS wants to scare Western tourist investment away from moderate-Muslim nations and implode those nations into chaos. ISIS chemical weapons also threaten U.S. personnel. As ISIS confronts higher stakes — as it does in the battle for its Iraqi capital, Mosul — U.S. personnel will face a growing threat of chemical attack.
This threat demands the strengthening of the U.S. deterrent posture against chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear threats. At present, that posture stands eviscerated because of the failure to punish Assad’s breach of President Obama’s “red line” on chemical weapons. But that’s only half the story. Consider, too, that an AP report from October highlighted how senior figures in WMD conspiracies are escaping consequences for their actions. That must end. In future, those who enable ISIS WMD programs should face one of two simple repercussions: detention by Jordan’s GID intelligence service, or death. The special urgency of this threat is unique. From Morocco and France to Turkey and Indonesia, ISIS has proven its ability to launch attacks from separate bases in Iraq, Syria, and Libya — and to do so while evading detection by Western intelligence. ISIS chemical-weapons plots must not be underestimated. Of course, as Wilfred Owen reminds us, the use of chemical weapons in pursuit of human misery is nothing new. My British great-grandfather — a veteran of World War I– described German chemical attacks this way: “We could smell the gas coming. Every horse that we had was blind due to gas.” President Obama must recognize this new, old reality. In February 2016, “acute burns of the upper and especially the proximal lower airways, and death” are no longer peripheral concerns suffered by forgotten Syrians at the hands of Assad. Today, ISIS has the means and intent to drown Western civilians — and American credibility — in a green and yellow sea.
WASHINGTON (AP)— Personnel at U.S. Central Command have deleted files and emails amid allegations that intelligence assessments were altered to exaggerate progress against Islamic State militants, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee said Thursday.
“We have been made aware that both files and emails have been deleted by personnel at CENTCOM and we expect that the Department of Defense will provide these and all other relevant documents to the committee,” Rep. Devin Nunes said at a hearing on worldwide threats facing the United States. Central Command oversees U.S. military activities in the Middle East.
A whistleblower whose position was not disclosed told the committee that material was deleted, according to a committee staff member who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to publicly disclose the information.
Navy Cmdr. Kyle Raines, a spokesman for CENTCOM, said the combatant command was fully cooperating with the Defense Department inspector general’s probe into the allegations.
“While it would be inappropriate to discuss the details of that investigation, I can tell you that as a matter of CENTCOM policy, all senior leader emails are kept in storage for record-keeping purposes, so such records cannot be deleted,” Raines said. It’s unclear if emails written by lower-level staff were also maintained.
Nunes, R-Calif., also said the Office of the Director of National Intelligence briefed the committee on a survey indicating that more than 40 percent of Central Command analysts believe there are problems with the integrity of the intelligence analyses and process.
“To me, it seems like 40 percent of analysts who are concerned at CENTCOM — that’s just something that can’t be ignored,” Nunes said.
A senior intelligence official said that each year the DNI conducts a survey at all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies to gain feedback on the integrity, standards and objectivity of the process used to analyze intelligence. In the most recent survey, conducted between August and October of last year, approximately 120 employees from CENTCOM responded to the survey. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to disclose details of the internal survey.
A report on the survey issued in December 2015 indicated that 40 percent of those who responded at CENTCOM answered “yes” to the question: “During the past year, do you believe that anyone attempted to distort or suppress analysis on which you were working in the face of persuasive evidence?”
Asked whether he considered 40 percent an unusually high number, Lt. Gen. Vincent Stewart, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told the committee that he did.
Stewart said that while it would be favorable for all to “get closure on exactly the extent of this allegation,” he cannot control the pace of the watchdog’s investigation. He said that while the investigation proceeds, intelligence officials continue to look into ways to improve the process of producing the assessments, and he noted that the DIA’s ombudsman had looked into a particular incident.
The New York Times, which first disclosed the investigation, reported that the probe began after at least one civilian DIA analyst told authorities he had evidence that officials at Central Command were improperly reworking conclusions of assessments prepared for President Barack Obama and other top policymakers.
*** So this begs the question, what is the truth today on Islamic State, on Russia, Syria, North Korea, China, Iran or the thousands of terror groups? What is the final product including today with briefings? What does the media receive other than filtered reports? Who really DID order this suppression of intelligence data? Who is going to be the fall person? What was shared with foreign intelligence through normal daily collaboration?
MotherBoard: In late November 2014, a mysterious group of hackers calling itself “God’sApstls” sent an ominous and jumbled email to a few high-level Sony Pictures executives.
“The compensation for it, monetary compensation we want,” the hackers wrote. “Pay the damage, or Sony Pictures will be bombarded as a whole.”
The executives at the Hollywood studio, which was about to release the controversial James Franco and Seth Rogen’s comedy The Interview, ignored the email. Just three days later, the hackers’ followed through with their threat and breached the studio’s systems, displaying a message on the computer screen of every employee: “Hacked by #GOP [Guardians of Peace].”
The hackers not only defaced employee’s computers, they then wiped their hard disks, crippling Sony Pictures for weeks, and costing the company $35 million in IT damages, according to its own estimate.
On Wednesday, a group of companies led by Novetta released a report detailing the Sony hackers’ long history of operations, as well as its large stock of malware. It’s perhaps the most detailed and extensive look at the group behind what might be the most infamous cyberattack ever.
Andre Ludwig, the senior technical director at Novetta Research and Interdiction Group, said that the investigation started from four hashes (values that uniquely identify a file) that the Department of Homeland security published after the attack. With those few identifying strings, and after months of sleuthing, the researchers found 2,000 malware samples, both from online malware portal VirusTotal, as well as from antivirus companies. Of those, they manually reviewed and catalogued 1,000, and were able to identify 45 unique malware strains, revealing that the Sony hackers had an arsenal more sophisticated and varied than previously thought.
The researchers hope that by shedding light on the hackers’ toolkit, the group, which the researchers called “Lazarus Group,” will be forced to adapt, spending resources and time, and perhaps even lose capabilities after antivirus companies and potential targets put up new defenses.
“There is no more shadows to hide in for these tools.”
“If all of a sudden you have antivirus signatures that detect and delete all the group’s arsenal, boom!” Jaime Blasco, the chief scientist at AlienVault Labs and one of the researchers who investigated the Sony hackers, told Motherboard. “They lose access to all the victims’ they got before.”
As Ludwig put it, “there is no more shadows to hide in for these tools.”
As it turns out, the hackers’ arsenal contains not only malware capable of wiping and destroying files on a hard disk like the Sony hack, but also Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) tools, tools that allow for remotely eavesdropping on a victim’s computer, and more, according to the report. The researchers tracked some of this tools in cyberattacks and espionage operations that go as far as back as 2009, perhaps even 2007, showing the hackers that hit Sony have a long history.
While others suspected this before, Blasco said that nobody demonstrated it as conclusively until now.
Novetta researchers and their partners, which include AlienVault and Kaspersky Lab, don’t get into saying who the hackers really are, but they also don’t question the FBI’s controversial claim that North Korea was behind the attack.
The main reason, LaMontagne explained, is that the new data they found discredits the alternative theories that the hackers were actually a disgruntled former employee or just an independent hacktivist group.
A former Sony system administrator is unlikely to have built more than 45 malware tools in the span of more than seven years, LaMontagne told me. And the same time, he added, it’s also unlikely that a previously unheard of hacktivist group would pop up, claim responsibility for such a high-profile attack, and then disappear.
“They’re extremely motivated, regimented, organized, and they can definitely execute.”
“We have no reason to dispute what the US government and other governments have asserted as the threat being North Korean,” Peter LaMontagne, the CEO of Novetta, told me.
And as it turns out, those hackers have been around for longer than anyone thought—wielding sophisticated weapons. This, according to the researchers, shows the group was much more seasoned than anyone believed.
“Their motivation and operational execution, it’s impressive,” Ludwig said. “They’re extremely motivated, regimented, organized, and they can definitely execute.”
Now that their methods and tools are exposed, however, the researchers hope that they won’t be as effective.
The head-scratcher is sanctions are only for the missile test?
United Nations (United States) (AFP) – The United States will on Thursday present a draft UN resolution toughening sanctions on North Korea after reaching agreement with China on a joint response to Pyongyang’s fourth nuclear test and a rocket launch.
The UN Security Council will meet at 2:00 pm (1900 GMT) to discuss the draft text detailing a new package of measures to punish North Korea, but there will be no immediate vote.
US Ambassador Samantha Power “intends to submit for consideration by the Security Council a draft sanctions resolution in response to the DPRK’s recent nuclear test and subsequent proscribed ballistic missile launch,” US spokesman Kurtis Cooper said, using the abbreviation for North Korea’s formal name.
“We look forward to working with the Council on a strong and comprehensive response to the DPRK’s latest series of tests aimed at advancing their nuclear weapons program.”
UN diplomats said a vote was expected as early as Friday.
EU has 10 days to see progress on migrant crisis or Schengen unravels: EU commissioner
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – European Union has 10 more days to see significantly lower inflows of migrants and refugees from Turkey “or else there is risk the whole system will completely break down”, EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos said on Thursday.
Avramopoulos was speaking after the bloc’s justice and home affairs ministers met in Brussels on Thursday in an effort to put a European solution to the crisis in place. A growing number of EU states are resorting to unilateral border tightening, unraveling the continent’s free-travel Schengen zone.
The study estimated that under a worst case scenario, in which the reintroduction of controls at EU borders pushed import prices up three percent, the costs to the bloc’s largest economy Germany could be as much as 235 billion euros between 2016 and 2025, and those to France up to 244 billion.
At a minimum, with import prices rising one percent, the study showed that a breakdown of Schengen would cost the EU roughly 470 billion euros over the next decade.
The cost would climb to 1.4 trillion euros, or roughly 10 percent of annual gross domestic product (GDP) in the 28-member EU bloc, under the more dire scenario.
“If border controls are reinstated within Europe, already weak growth will come under additional pressure,” said Aart De Geus, president of Bertelsmann.
Schengen was established over 30 years ago and now counts 26 members, 22 of which are EU members. But the system of passport-free travel has come under severe pressure over the past half year due to a flood of migrants entering Europe, mainly from the Middle East and Africa.
To stem the tide and to ensure they have an overview of who is entering their territory, many countries within Schengen have reintroduced border controls in recent months, leading to fears the whole system could collapse.
Underscoring the urgency of the issue, Germany’s Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere told public broadcaster ARD on Sunday that EU member states, which have been squabbling for months over how to tackle the migrant crisis, must agree a common approach within two weeks if they wanted to avoid such a fate.
In addition to being a devastating symbolic setback for Europe, a collapse of Schengen would increase the amount of time it takes for goods to be transported across European borders, raising costs for companies and consumers.
The Bertelsmann study, conducted by Prognos AG, estimated that the minimum costs to Germany and France would be 77 billion euros and 80.5 billion euros, respectively, over the period to 2025.
A collapse of Schengen would also increase costs for countries outside the zone, with the combined burden on the United States and China over the next decade estimated at between 91 billion and 280 billion euros, according to the study.
“In the next ten days, we need tangible and clear results on the ground, otherwise there is a danger, there is a risk that the whole system will completely break down. There is no time for uncoordinated actions,” he told reporters in Brussels.
A number of EU countries have introduced border checks amid disagreements over how to best handle the huge influx of refugees and migrants into Europe.
Austria irked some EU officials by calling a mini summit with Western Balkan nations – without inviting Greece or Germany
The Austrian government has also set a daily cap on how migrants per day are allowed to enter the country, ignoring a warning from European Commission lawyers
“We have to recover our ability to act – and that will only be possible when the European external border is protected,” said Johanna Mikl-Leitner, the Austrian interior minister.
“If Greece stresses over and over again that it is not possible to protect the Greek border…we have to ask the question if it’s possible that the external border of the Schengen area stays in Greece.”
The Schengen area is a passport-free travel zone including 26 countries, of which 22 are EU member states.
But the migration crisis, which saw more than a million people reach Europe last year, has left some observers to question whether the whole system may be at risk.
The influx of migrants has exposed divisions between EU governments, which are trading accusations of blame and resulting beggar-thy-neighbour policies to tighten border controls.
Belgium became the seventh Schengen member on Wednesday to introduce border checks as it became clear that a court in Lille would order the partial demolition of the infamous Calais ‘Jungle’ refugee camp.
