1999: Clinton Admin Knew/Facilitated China Military Theft

Posted on October 4, 2016October 4, 2016 by Denise Simon

Wen Ho Lee

And the biggest changes are occurring far away from Washington’s orbit.

US President Barack Obama (L-R), China’s President Xi Jinping, and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin during a photo shoot at the International Convention Center at Yanqi Lake in Beijing, November 11, 2014. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon

Although the Sino-Russo relationship predates the Ukraine conflict, there’s no question that the crisis has shifted Moscow even more toward Beijing.

Over the last year, we saw the two countries sign highly publicized energy deals, conduct joint military exercises, and even generally support each others’ foreign policy adventures. More here from BusinessInsider.

Here are a few questions for investigators in both houses of Congress to pose:

NYT’s: To Samuel Berger, the Hogan & Hartson trade lobbyist turned national security adviser: Why can’t Congress see your memo to President Clinton summarizing the devastating Cox report on espionage when it was submitted for security clearance in January? With the report now public, no claim of secrecy can properly be made.

Clinton pretended two months ago to have been uninformed of wholesale espionage. Did Berger’s January cover memo truly reflect the Cox report’s revelations, or did it lull the President into a false sense of national security?

To Bill Richardson, Energy Secretary since September 1998: You were briefed on espionage suspicions in November, and received the Cox report in January. Did you never have occasion to mention its serious implications on China policy to the President? You knew Secretary of State Albright was going to China in February; why did you withhold it from her? Did the White House suggest she be kept ignorant, or was it your own idea?

To F.B.I. Director Louis Freeh: Attorney General Janet Reno says ”I was not apprised of the details of the case at the time the decision was made” to reject wiretap surveillance of Wen Ho Lee at Los Alamos. Didn’t you think this was important enough to take to the top? She also says your 1997 request ”did not contain a request to search any computer.” If that is true, why not?

To the Senate Democratic leader, Tom Daschle: The bipartisan Cox report charges the White House with failing to inform Congress, but you say ”Republican chairs of the Congress were warned about this as early as 1996 and also chose to do nothing.” Did you read those ”warnings” before accusing Senator Arlen Specter and Representative Porter Goss of failing in their intelligence oversight duties? Can the public now see if those staff briefings were complete?

To Dan Burton, chairman of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee: With Reno Justice allowing all Clinton’s illegal Asian fund-raisers to cop a plea and walk, you’ve subpoenaed Charlie Trie for June 10 and John Huang for June 17. Will you allow the ranking Democrat, Henry Waxman, to turn hearings into a partisan circus, or will you depose Trie and Huang extensively beforehand to discover links to Bruce Lindsey, the D.N.C.’s Don Fowler and Hillary’s Harold Ickes?

To George Tenet, Director of Central Intelligence: You reported to Cox that information on China’s theft of our W-88 nuclear warhead design came from a ”walk-in” planted by Chinese intelligence. That’s counterintuitive counterintelligence; does nobody in C.I.A. dispute the ”dangle” theory? Where is he now, and is he (or she) singing?

To Richard Shelby and Bob Kerrey of Senate Intelligence: The Cox report ran 900 pages, but nearly 400 pages were cut out by the Clinton sanitizers. Was all of this really for security reasons, or do many redactions cover C.I.A., F.B.I. and White House embarrassments?

To Senator Robert Torricelli, Democrat of New Jersey: You told CBS’s Bob Schieffer that Clinton should talk to Reno about ”her ability to perform her duties.” Are you worrying about her judgment under a physical affliction, or making a nonpartisan judgment on sustained misfeasance at Justice — or helping the White House toss her off the sled to save Sandy Berger?

The biggest question is this: Will we fall for the usual ”it’s old news” and ”everybody did it” defenses? Or will we connect the dots from the (a) corrupt Asian and satellite-producer contributions to the (b) refusal to stop the theft of nuclear codes lest it offend Beijing to the (c) change of policy to sell China powerful computers capable of using those codes to simulate tests?

The House is being serious. What about the Senate?

****What is this all about you ask?

*The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has stolen design information on the United States’ most advanced

thermonuclear weapons.

* The Select Committee judges that the PRC’s next generation of thermonuclear weapons, currently under development, will exploit elements of stolen U.S. design information.

* PRC penetration of our national weapons laboratories spans at least the past several decades and almost

certainly continues today.

****

• The stolen information includes classified information on seven U.S. thermonuclear warheads, including every currently deployed thermonuclear warhead in the U.S. ballistic missile arsenal.

• The stolen information also includes classified design information for an enhanced radiation weapon (commonly known as the “neutron bomb”), which neither the United States, nor any other nation, has yet deployed.

• The PRC has obtained classified information on the following U.S. thermonuclear warheads, as well as a number of associated reentry vehicles (the hardened shell that protects the thermonuclear warhead during reentry).

****

In addition, in the mid-1990s the PRC stole, possibly from a U.S. national

weapons laboratory, classified thermonuclear weapons information that cannot be

identified in this unclassified Report. Because this recent espionage case is currently

under investigation and involves sensitive intelligence sources and methods, the

Clinton administration has determined that further information cannot be made public

without affecting national security or ongoing criminal investigations.

The W-88, a miniaturized, tapered warhead, is the most sophisticated nuclear

weapon the United States has ever built. In the U.S. arsenal, it is mated to the D-5 submarine-

launched ballistic missile carried aboard the Trident nuclear submarine. The

United States learned about the theft of the W-88 Trident D-5 warhead information, as

well as about the theft of information regarding several other nuclear weapons, in 1995.

The PRC has stolen U.S. design information and other classified information

for neutron bomb warheads. The PRC stole classified U.S. information about

the neutron bomb from a U.S. national weapons laboratory. The U.S. learned of the

theft of this classified information on the neutron bomb in 1996.

In the late 1970s, the PRC stole design information on the U.S. W-70 warhead

from the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. The U.S. government first learned of this

theft several months after it took place. The W-70 warhead contains elements that

may be used either as a strategic thermonuclear weapon, or as an enhanced radiation

weapon (“neutron bomb”). The PRC tested the neutron bomb in 1988.

The Select Committee is aware of other PRC thefts of U.S. thermonuclear

weapons-related secrets. The Clinton administration has determined that further

information about PRC thefts of U.S. thermonuclear weapons-related secrets cannot

be publicly disclosed without affecting national security.

The PRC acquired this and other classified U.S. nuclear weapons information as

the result of a 20-year intelligence collection program to develop modern thermonuclear

weapons, continuing to this very day, that includes espionage, review of unclassified

publications, and extensive interactions with scientists from the Department of

Energy’s national weapons laboratories.

**** The full Cox Report is 700 pages but this link is the summary. So, those questions the New York Times asked in 1999 need to be asked again today of both Hillary and Bill. What say you?

Iran Sanctions and Real Estate Investments in the U.S.

Posted on October 4, 2016October 4, 2016 by Denise Simon

Primer: While the United States under the Obama administration paid out $1.7 billion to Iran, still held and blocked is an estimated $1.97 billion in bonds that were or are held by Citigroup. There is additionally real estate property held not only as an embassy in Washington DC, but there is a 36 story office building in New York City owned by an Iranian Foundation known as Alavi. Other properties are located in Texas, California, Virginia, Maryland and other locations in New York City. For the most part these have been frozen by the United States and remain so.

There are 2 key Executive Orders #’s 13438 and 13572 that refer to Islamic State and Iranian Shiite militia operating in Iraq and the IRGC Qods Force and Commander Qasem Soleimani that remain in effect.

Trump’s organization did business with Iranian bank later linked to terrorism

GOP nominee has slammed Clinton for cutting ‘deals with our foreign adversaries’

CPI: Donald Trump’s real estate organization rented New York office space from 1998 to 2003 to an Iranian bank that U.S. authorities have linked to terrorist groups and Iran’s nuclear program.

Trump inherited Bank Melli, one of Iran’s largest state-controlled banks, as a tenant when he purchased the General Motors Building on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, according to public records reviewed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and the Center for Public Integrity. The Trump Organization kept the bank on as a tenant for four more years after the U.S. Treasury Department designated Bank Melli in 1999 as being controlled by the Iranian government.

U.S. officials later alleged that Bank Melli had been used to obtain sensitive materials for Iran’s nuclear program. U.S. authorities also alleged that the bank had been used between 2002 and 2006 to funnel money to a unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard that has sponsored terrorist attacks — a period that overlapped with the time the bank rented office space from Trump.

The Trump Organization’s dealings with the Iranian bank shed more light on Trump’s wide-ranging business interests, which sometimes stand at odds with his blunt declarations on the campaign trail. Trump has denounced Iran as a “big enemy,” blasted Hillary Clinton for not taking a harder line against the Iranian regime and charged that donations from foreign governments to the Clinton Foundation amounted to evidence of corruption. His five-year stint as Bank Melli’s landlord provides an example of the Trump Organization itself doing business with a government hostile to the United States.

“It’s a pretty hypocritical position to take,” said Richard Nephew, who served from 2013 to 2015 as principal deputy coordinator of sanctions policy at the U.S. State Department and spent nearly a decade working on Iran sanctions in the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. “It suggests that his principles are pretty flexible when it comes to him getting paid.”

A court document obtained by ICIJ indicates that Bank Melli’s rent on more than 8,000 square feet on the GM Building’s 44th floor may have topped half a million dollars a year.

The legal ramifications of the Trump Organization taking rent payments from Bank Melli are unclear.

At the time, the U.S. had a sweeping embargo in place which prohibited Americans from doing business with Iran, including receiving rent payments. However, some Iranian organizations were granted licenses exempting specific transactions from sanctions. If the payments were licensed, it may have been legally difficult for the Trump Organization to evict the bank.

The Treasury Department does not publicly disclose individual licenses granting companies exemptions from sanctions rules. The Treasury Department, the Trump campaign and Bank Melli all declined to answer whether the agency had issued a license to the Trump Organization or the bank permitting rent payments during Trump’s ownership of the building.

The Trump campaign declined to answer any questions about Bank Melli for this story, but said Trump would take steps to avoid any conflicts of interest with his business dealings if he is elected president.

“Mr. Trump’s sole focus is and will be on making our country great again,” campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks said in an email. “He has already committed to putting his assets in a blind trust and will have no involvement whatsoever in the Trump Organization.”

Bank Melli did not respond to repeated telephone and email inquiries by ICIJ to its offices in Tehran, London and Paris.

Bank Melli’s office in the GM Building was listed by the Treasury Department among financial institutions “owned or controlled” by the Iranian government and subject to U.S. economic sanctions, according to the Code of Federal Regulations from the years 1999 through 2003. Trump owned the GM Building from July 1998 until September 2003, New York City property records show.

Under U.S. sanctions rules, Bank Melli was forbidden from conducting banking transactions within the U.S., but the bank may have maintained its New York offices in the hope that the U.S. government would someday ease sanctions against Iranian businesses.

The bank moved out of the GM Building sometime after 2003. A spokesperson for Boston Properties, Inc., which is currently the building’s majority owner, said Bank Melli was not a tenant when Boston Properties and other partners bought the building in 2008.

Bank’s ties to terror

U.S. sanctions against Iran date back to the Iranian Revolution in 1979, when Islamic fundamentalists seized power and held more than 50 Americans hostage for more than a year. After briefly lifting restrictions when the hostages were released, President Ronald Reagan designated Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism and imposed new sanctions in 1984 and 1987.

At the time, Donald Trump called for the U.S. take a tougher line against the Iranian regime.

In 1987, he suggested in a speech in New Hampshire that the U.S. should attack Iran and seize some of its oil fields to hit back for what he described as Iran’s bullying of America.

“I’d be harsh on Iran. They’ve been beating us psychologically, making us look a bunch of fools,” Trump told The Guardian in 1988. “It’d be good for the world to take them on.”

In the years that followed, Iran stepped up its support for international terrorist attacks, according to authorities in the U.S. and other Western nations.

In 1994, a suicide bomber killed 85 people at a Jewish center in Buenos Aires, an attack that Argentine prosecutors later charged was coordinated by the Iranian government.

In 1996, a truck bomb killed 19 American servicemen at the Khobar Towers apartment complex in Saudi Arabia. A U.S. court later held that the bombing had been “planned, funded, and sponsored by senior leadership in the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

As Iran supported terror attacks abroad, the U.S. moved to punish the regime economically. President Bill Clinton approved a sweeping embargo in 1995 that banned Americans from conducting trade with Iranian businesses.

Bank Melli, one of Iran’s largest state-owned banks, had long had an office in the GM Building in midtown Manhattan. In 1998, Trump’s real estate organization bought the building and inherited Bank Melli as a tenant.

It is not clear if Trump knew personally that Bank Melli was renting an office from his company, but he was the Trump Organization’s chairman and president, and has described himself as a hands-on manager who pays attention to details.

Nephew, who worked on sanctions and nuclear nonproliferation issues for the U.S. government from 2003 to 2015, said there was less awareness in the 1990s about Iran’s nuclear program and the role of banks in financing terrorism. But he said that accepting payments from Bank Melli should have raised a red flag, even in 1998.

“Should someone in America have known better than to do business with Iran? Yeah,” Nephew said.

George Ross, the longtime executive vice-president of the Trump Organization, said he was not aware that Bank Melli had been a Trump tenant.

“We had any number of tenants in the GM Building,” Ross said in a brief telephone interview. “They might have been in there, but I have no knowledge of them.”

Emanuele Ottolenghi, an expert on Iran at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, said that it was “remarkable” that the Trump Organization had kept Bank Melli as a tenant for four years after the Treasury Department had listed the bank as an Iran-controlled entity.

“I just don’t think that a company of that size and means should be able to hide behind a ‘we didn’t know’ kind of argument,” Ottolenghi said.

In 2007, U.S. authorities charged that Bank Melli had facilitated purchases for Iran’s nuclear program, and that it had been used to send at least $100 million to the Quds Force, the feared special operations unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

The Quds Force was designated as a supporter of terrorism by President George W. Bush weeks after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, for providing support to the Taliban, Hamas and Hezbollah, groups that the U.S. has labeled as terrorist organizations.

Bank Melli played an important role in Iran’s nuclear program and support for international terrorism in the years before it was singled out by Treasury in 2007, experts told ICIJ.

“It was allowing the entities that were shopping for the regime to make payments,” said Ottolenghi, who described Bank Melli as “critical” to Iran’s past nuclear and terrorist activities.

A representative for Glodow Nead Communications, a public relations firm representing the Trump Organization, told an ICIJ reporter that the Trump Organization would only comment if the story was positive. She declined as a matter of policy to provide contact information for any of its employees.

The Trump Organization continued renting office space to Bank Melli until the insurance company Conseco, which had provided financing for the 1998 purchase, took control of the GM Building in 2003 and sold it to the Macklowe Organization, a New York City real estate developer.

Trump talks Iran

As a presidential candidate, Trump has been a fierce critic of Iran, denouncing its government as “the world’s top state sponsor of terrorism.” He has vowed to take a more warlike posture against the regime, threatening on Sept. 9 to shoot Iranian ships out the water if their sailors made rude gestures toward U.S. Navy ships.

Last week, during the first of three face-to-face debates with Clinton, Trump panned the United States’ 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, calling it “one of the worst deals ever made by any country in history.”

In June, a statement by the Trump campaign blasted Clinton for her work in support of the Iran nuclear deal after the airline Iran Air struck an agreement to purchase aircraft from Boeing, a company that has contributed to the Clinton Foundation.

“This is another example of Clinton’s pay-to-play governing style,” the Trump campaign said. “She will cut deals with our foreign adversaries as long as they are willing to line her pockets.”

At the same time, news reports published in the course of the presidential campaign have shown that the Trump Organization has been entangled with a number of foreign governments that are hostile to the United States.

Trump tried to raise money for the Trump Organization from the regime of Muammar Qaddafi, the Libyan dictator who provided support for the 1988 Pan Am flight bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 189 Americans, Buzzfeed News reported in June.

A company owned by Trump violated the embargo against Cuba with a business trip to the island in 1998, shortly before he gave a speech in Miami expressing his support for the embargo, Newsweek reported in September. In addition, Bloomberg News has reported that Trump Organization executives may have also violated the Cuban embargo by scouting out a possible investment in a golf course near Havana in late 2012 or early 2013. The deal ultimately fell through, according to the report.

The Trump Organization has also made millions selling apartments to the government of Saudi Arabia, the New York Daily News reported in September. The Saudi government is formally a U.S. ally but is suspected of supporting militant Islamic groups, and Trump has called on the Clinton Foundation to return Saudi donations because of the government’s poor human rights record.

Other Trump Organization entanglements in India, Russia and Dubai create conflicts of interest that could threaten American national security if Trump becomes president, Newsweek reported in September.

Information on all of these ventures is limited because Trump has not released his tax returns. He is poised to become the first major party candidate not to do so by Election Day since Richard Nixon in 1972.

Trump pledged on Sept. 15 that he would “absolutely sever” his connections with the Trump Organization if he is elected president. “I will sever connections, and I’ll have my children and my executives run the company and I won’t discuss it with them,” he said on the television program “Fox and Friends.”

Sasha Chavkin is a staff writer and Michael Hudson is a senior editor at the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Dave Levinthal is senior political reporter at the Center for Public Integrity.

European Union Approved Deportation of Afghanis

Posted on October 3, 2016October 3, 2016 by Denise Simon

Primer: FORT BENNING, Ga. (AP) — Seven Afghan military students in four states have been absent without leave since earlier this month, military officials said.

U.S. Navy Defense Press Operations Cmdr. Patrick L. Evans said in an email Thursday that four students left their posts without leave over the Labor Day weekend, the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer reported (http://bit.ly/2dcWkt2 ). Two of the students were at Fort Benning in Georgia, while one was at Fort Lee in Virginia and the other in Little Rock, Arkansas. More here from CNS.

The European Union and Afghanistan reach an arrangement to tackle migration issues

Yesterday, the European Union and Afghanistan reached an important political arrangement, “The EU-Afghanistan Joint Way Forward on Migration issues”, to effectively tackle the challenges in both the European Union and Afghanistan linked to irregular migration. This is the result of a constructive dialogue based on partnership and a willingness to enhance dialogue and bilateral cooperation in this area. A dialogue at the level of senior officials is foreseen to take place on 4 October to begin the implementation process. (For more information: Maja Kocijancic – Tel.: + 32 229 86570; Natasha Bertaud – Tel.: +32 229 67456; Tove Ernst – Tel.: +32 229 86764)

Guardian: The EU has signed an agreement with the Afghan government allowing its member states to deport an unlimited number of the country’s asylum seekers, and obliging the Afghan government to receive them.

The deal has been in the pipeline for months, leading up to a large EU-hosted donor conference in Brussels this week. According to a previously leaked memo, the EU suggested stripping Afghanistan of aid if its government did not cooperate.

The deal, signed on Sunday, has not been made public but a copy seen by the Guardian states that Afghanistan commits to readmitting any Afghan citizen who has not been granted asylum in Europe, and who refuses to return to Afghanistan voluntarily.

It is the latest EU measure to alleviate the weight of the many asylum seekers who have arrived since early 2015. Afghans constituted the second-largest group of asylum seekers in Europe, with 196,170 applying last year.

While the text stipulates a maximum of 50 non-voluntary deportees per chartered flight in the first six months after the agreement, there is no limit to the number of daily deportation flights European governments can charter to Kabul.

With tens of thousands set to be deported, both sides will also consider building a terminal dedicated to deportation flights at Kabul international airport.

The agreement, Joint Way Forward, also opens up the deportation of women and children, which at the moment almost exclusively happens from Norway: “Special measures will ensure that such vulnerable groups receive adequate protection, assistance and care throughout the whole process.”

If family members in Afghanistan cannot be located, unaccompanied children can be returned only with “adequate reception and care-taking arrangement having been put in place in Afghanistan”, the text says.

The EU has negotiated the agreement with the Afghan government as part of the run-up to this week’s Brussels donor conference, where international donors will pledge aid for Afghanistan for the coming four years. Some Afghan officials seem to have felt strong-armed. The Afghan minister for refugees and repatriation, Sayed Hussain Alemi Balkhi, refused to sign the document, leaving the duty to a deputy.

Still, Afghanistan, whose domestic revenue only constitutes 10.4% of GDP, is so dependent on foreign aid that the government may have had little choice.

Liza Schuster, a Kabul-based migration expert, said the deal was an example of “how developed countries are able to push through their agenda in countries where there simply isn’t the capacity in the ministries to push back”. She added that there had been little transparency in the negotiation process.

“There has been no oversight, no consultation, and hardly any mention of it to any of the migrant organisations or rights organisations [in Europe]. There was no chance to mount resistance against it,” Schuster said.

The large exodus of Afghans last year seemed partly triggered by Angela Merkel opening Germany’s doors to almost a million migrants, but it also coincided with a deteriorating security situation, which has not improved since.

On Sunday, the Taliban mounted a strong assault on the northern city of Kunduz, while attacks have also increased in many other parts of the country.

To prevent a migrant flow of the size experienced last year, the deal commits the EU to help fund public awareness campaigns in Afghanistan warning against the dangers of migrating.

However, not all Afghan asylum seekers arrive to Europe from Afghanistan. An unknown number were born or grew up in Iran or Pakistan. If sent to Afghanistan, many are likely to struggle without the social networks that are often a prerequisite to getting work, even for the well-educated. According to Schuster, who has authored a paper on post-deportation experience, destitute people, who do not choose to leave Afghanistan again immediately after deportation, could be ripe targets for recruitment not only by the Taliban but local strongmen commanding militias. In that sense, deportations could add to instability.

“There is not sufficient protection, the level of generalised violence is too high and Kabul is already bursting at the seams,” Schuster said.

“This particular agreement allows European governments to ride straight through all the argumentation that’s been made over the past 15 years that it’s not safe to return people at the moment.”

Obama Broke the Law Scouting Locations for Gitmo Detainees

Posted on October 3, 2016October 3, 2016 by Denise Simon

For the group of detainees who remain designated for continued detention and who are not candidates for U.S. prosecution or detention or transfer to a foreign country, the administration will work with Congress to relocate them from the Guantanamo Bay detention facility to a secure detention facility in the United States, while continuing to identify other non-U.S. dispositions. These individuals would be detained under the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), P.L. 107-40, as informed by the law of war, and consistent with applicable domestic and international law for such detentions. More here.

Obama Admin Secretly Scouted U.S. Cities to Move Gitmo Terrorists

Administration effort violated U.S. law, lawmakers charge

The Obama administration secretly used taxpayer money to fund an official inspection of several U.S. cities as possible locations to move terrorist inmates held at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in violation of federal law, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.

The Obama administration ordered the Pentagon to spend U.S. taxpayer funds for a domestic search of “possible Guantanamo detainee relocation” sites, according to documents obtained by the Free Beacon. United States law bars the administration from spending taxpayer money on its effort to move Gitmo inmates onto American soil.

Related reading: Fact sheet on Guantanamo

The disclosure has prompted a congressional inquiry to determine who in the Obama administration ordered the relocation search and how taxpayer funds were authorized for that purpose, according to a formal letter sent by lawmakers to the Defense Department on Monday and obtained by the Free Beacon.

The disclosure of this activity by the Obama administration has renewed concerns on Capitol Hill that the White House will make a last-minute effort to shutter the Gitmo prison and ship the remaining inmates to the United States, despite laws prohibiting the transfers.

Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt informed lawmakers in a letter late last month that he had discovered documentation showing the Obama administration spent more than $25,000 to scout potential relocation sites in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, Charleston, South Carolina, and Florence, Colorado.

Schmidt obtained this information from the Pentagon only after threatening to sue the administration for its refusal to produce documentation on the matter.

“While the amount of money is relatively small—a total of$25,909.53, of which $7,687.20 was spent on the site survey for Fort Leavenworth—the admission raises the concern that the Department of Defense violated the law by knowingly expending these funds while federal law enacted by Congress expressly prohibited the agency from doing so,” Schmidt informed lawmakers in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by the Free Beacon.

The administration’s behavior has raised concerns in Congress that it is secretly planning to relocate detainees to United States cities without informing local officials and residents.

Rep. Mike Pompeo (R., Kansas) told the Free Beacon that Americans should not have the most “hardened terrorists” secretly transferred to their towns by the Obama administration.

“Americans, and particularly Kansans, understand that President Obama’s desire to bring hardened terrorists from Guantanamo Bay to the U.S. would make our country less safe,” Pompeo said. “In completing these site surveys, the Department of Defense followed neither the letter, nor the spirit of American law. I am proud to stand with my colleagues in condemning this illegal action and encouraging all states to pursue appropriate legal action.”

Pompeo, along with fellow Kansas Republican Reps. Lynn Jenkins and Kevin Yoder, are demanding the Pentagon explain its intentions and why it violated U.S. law in its effort to bring Gitmo inmates to America, according to the Monday letter obtained by the Free Beacon.

“Rather than spending zero dollars on site surveys, as mandated by U.S. law, the Department of Defense has spent over $25,000,” the lawmakers wrote. “This is following neither the letter, nor the spirit of the law.”

The lawmakers seek to determine who in the Pentagon authorized the site surveys, when they took place, and how the taxpayer funds were spent, according to the inquiry. The letter also demanded the names of Obama administration officials and outside contractors who participated in the Gitmo relocation sites surveys.

“We stand with our Senate colleagues in condemning this illegal action and encouraging all states to pursue the appropriate legal action in response,” the lawmakers concluded.

Guantanamo Bay inmates who have been released continue to reengage in terrorism. At least two former inmates have participated in terror operations against U.S. forces since January.

The Obama administration continues to pursue an aggressive effort to free as many inmates as possible before leaving office.

****

The Departments of State and Defense, through the offices of the Special Envoys for

Guantanamo Closure, are implementing an engagement strategy for the 35 detainees currently

approved for transfer, focused on engaging with countries that can accept detainees under

conditions that satisfy both our national security requirements (to substantially mitigate the risk

the detainees pose to the United States or U.S. persons or interests) and our humane treatment

standards. In Fiscal Year 2015, the United States transferred 35 detainees from Guantanamo to

ten countries: Afghanistan (4), Estonia (1), Georgia (3), Kazakhstan (5), Morocco (1), Oman

(10), Saudi Arabia (2), Kuwait (1), Slovakia (2), and Uruguay (6). Thus far in Fiscal Year 2016,

the United States has transferred 23 detainees from Guantanamo to nine countries: Mauritania

(1), the United Kingdom (1), the United Arab Emirates (5), Ghana (2), Kuwait (1), Saudi Arabia

(1), Oman (10), Montenegro (1), and Bosnia-Herzegovina (1). The Administration has

commitments from, or is pursuing commitments from, foreign governments that account for the

remaining 35 detainees approved for transfer. Read the closure plan here which was submitted to key members of Congress.

JASTA Sees its First Lawsuit, this one Against Iran

Posted on October 3, 2016October 3, 2016 by Denise Simon

Post reporter Jason Rezaian and his family file federal lawsuit against Iranian government

Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian and his family filed a federal lawsuit Monday against the Iranian government, claiming he was taken hostage and psychologically tortured during his 18 months in prison in an effort by Tehran to influence negotiations for a nuclear agreement with Iran.

Related reading: JASTA, Saudi Arabia

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, says Rezaian was targeted for arrest to gain advantage in a prisoner exchange and to “extort” concessions from the U.S. government in the multinational talks over lifting sanctions if Iran agreed to limits on its nuclear program.

[Read the full lawsuit filed by the Rezaian family]

Iranian officials repeatedly told Rezaian and his wife, Yeganeh Salehi, who also was detained for more than two months, that Rezaian had “value” as a bargaining chip for a prisoner swap, the suit says. The filing also links key moments in the nuclear negotiations to Rezaian’s treatment in the judicial system, from arrest to conviction to sentencing, and ultimately his release on the day the deal was implemented. “For nearly eighteen months, Iran held and terrorized Jason for the purpose of gaining negotiating leverage and ultimately exchanging him with the United States for something of value to Iran,” the suit states.

Rezaian, his brother, Ali Rezaian, and their mother, Mary Rezaian, are asking for an unspecified sum for damages under the “terrorism exception” to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. That law generally bars U.S. citizens from suing foreign governments in domestic courts, but exceptions are made for terrorist acts, torture or hostage-taking by countries — including Iran — that the State Department has designated as state sponsors of terrorism. The suit accuses Iran of all three.

[Plane leaves Iran with Post reporter, other Americans, in prisoner swap]

Rezaian and Salehi, who was born in Iran and married Rezaian there, were arrested on July 22, 2014, by Iranian agents wearing surgical masks who forced their way into their apartment and took them for questioning at Evin Prison, a notorious site for political prisoners. Salehi was freed 71 days later on a $32,000 bail provided by her brother-in-law, Ali.

Rezaian was eventually tried and convicted of espionage and related charges, according to Iranian state media accounts. But the Iranian government has never officially disclosed the specifics of his conviction in a closed-door trial, or the sentence imposed by a judge known for meting out harsh punishments.

The lawsuit provides details of Rezaian’s incarceration that have never been publicly revealed before.

Both Rezaian and Salehi were repeatedly subjected to psychological and physical abuse during lengthy interrogations, the suit says. Their captors at turns threatened to dismember or execute them. Interrogated in isolation and often deprived of sleep, each also was warned that the other might be maimed or executed, and the same fate could befall other family members in Iran, according to the filing.

[Detention takes ‘devastating toll’ on Post reporter locked up in Iran]

The ordeal was so intense that Rezaian, Salehi and Rezaian’s brother, Ali, all contemplated suicide, the suit says. Now — almost nine months after Rezaian and four other U.S. citizens were released on the day the nuclear deal was implemented—Salehi, the Rezaian brothers and their mother are still afflicted with trauma and guilt, according to the suit.

“For 544 days, Jason suffered such physical mistreatment and severe psychological abuse in Evin Prison that he will never be the same,” the suit states. “He will require specialized medical and other treatment for the rest of his life.”

Salehi is not a plaintiff in the suit. Nor is The Washington Post. Rezaian is currently on leave from The Post for a year as a Nieman fellow at Harvard University.

“Iran’s unconscionable actions have inflicted deep and lasting wounds on The Washington Post’s Jason Rezaian and his family,” said Executive Editor Martin Baron, who during the reporter’s imprisonment often criticized what he called Iran’s “system of injustice.”

“This legal filing is a stark telling of Iran’s brutal and heartless treatment of an innocent journalist and his wife, and the impact on those who love him. While this legal action is being taken solely by Jason and his family, The Post continues to support the Rezaians through their long and painful recovery.’’

The Rezaian lawsuit is the latest attempt by Americans to have the U.S. justice system provide compensation for harms inflicted by the Iranian government — in particular, by the powerful and hard-line Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that fiercely opposed the nuclear deal and has tried to thwart many initiatives of President Hassan Rouhani, a relative pragmatist. The IRGC is named as a co-defendant in the suit.

“This was really one of the few ways they felt they could try to hold Iran publicly accountable,” said David Bowker, Rezaian’s attorney. “Ideally, it will deter this kind of behavior toward other innocent people.”

Rezaian and his family declined to discuss the case, deferring questions to their lawyer.

In a number of suits brought against it over the years, Iran has not responded, resulting in default judgments.

Congress and U.S. courts have provided a legal framework for Americans to sue Iran and be compensated. The State Department has labeled Iran the top state sponsor of terrorism in the world. Also on the list are Sudan and Syria.

In April, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a law allowing American victims of terrorism and their families to collect almost $2 billion in seized Iranian assets. The case involved relatives of people killed or injured in the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut. Iran labeled the decision “confiscation” and “theft.”

The closest precedent to Rezaian’s case involves Nik Moradi, an Iranian American who was seized during a family visit in 2007 and accused of spying for the United States. More than six months before his release on bail, he said he was subjected to physical and mental torture during interrogations. In 2013, Moradi and his wife sued Iran in U.S. federal court under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. The couple was awarded $20 million in a default judgment after Iran failed to respond.

One possible venue for securing payment on a judgment is the Victims of State Sponsors of Terrorism Fund, created last year by Congress to compensate the Americans held hostage in Iran during the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran after the 1979 revolution. It also set aside money for victims with court judgments against state sponsors of terrorism, funded by money from a civil penalty paid by BNP Paribas bank for violating sanctions against Iran, Cuba and Sudan.

The lawsuit provides dark glimpses of Rezaian’s 50 days in solitary in a small, dank, cockroach-infested cell. Anxiety and depression made him hallucinate, as he perceived the walls moving and talking. The cell was constantly lit, and a noisy fan prevented sleep. He slept on the floor, and prison officials eventually gave him tranquilizers to induce sleep. His food sometimes had concrete, rocks, dirt and other inedible objects mixed in.

“During his time in solitary confinement, Jason believed he was losing his mind,” the suit says.

In the initial months of his imprisonment, Rezaian was taken blindfolded several times a day to an underground room for interrogations that lasted hours. He was forced to write down his answers, which prison officials translated into Farsi before trying to coerce him to sign without explaining the translations.

In an effort to get him to confess to espionage, the suit says, one interrogator threatened him with beheading. Another held out the carrot of a video confession as his only chance for freedom.

“They threatened Jason with physical mutilation, such as cutting off his limbs, and repeatedly told Jason that he would never see Yeganeh alive again,” the suit says.

Though Salehi is not a plaintiff, her agony is clear in the dry legalese.

During her detention, Salehi was blindfolded while interrogators hit the table, broke glass and kicked her chair, startling her. One interrogator threatened to cut off her left leg and right hand or arm. They told her they would throw her husband off a cliff if she did not incriminate him.

By the time she was released, her legs would go numb and she sometimes fainted when sitting down. She had to shear off her hair because it was so matted. She had skin lesions. On her infrequent prison visits to see her husband, she sometimes was made to don a prison uniform and told she might be detained again, the suit says. Convinced her husband would die in Evin Prison, she considered killing herself to draw attention to his plight.

Ali Rezaian, who quit his job to work full-time campaigning for his brother’s release, also grew despondent, according to the suit. Iranian agents tailed him when he went to Geneva to appeal for help from the U.N. Human Rights Council and his mother was held against her will in Iran.

[Jason Rezaian works to reclaim his life after return to the U.S.]

“He contemplated suicide in the fall of 2015, having lost faith that his brother would ever be released,” the suit states. “At the time, Ali believed that only by ending his own life could he prompt action by defendants or others, to free Jason.”

Jason Rezaian now experiences depression, sleeplessness, short-term memory loss and other symptoms associated with post-traumatic stress disorder, the suit says. He grows anxious in large crowds, fears for his family’s safety and has grown more “detached” from them. He sees a psychologist.

“Plaintiffs live in constant fear that Iranian agents are spying on them, plotting additional acts of terrorism and planning ways to hurt them and their family members again,” the suit says.

Ann E. Marimow contributed to this report.

Read more:

Rezaian’s wife and mother recall tortuous final hours in Iran

A triumphant return for Jason Rezaian