Cheryl Mills and her Lawyer, Walked Out

Posted on May 10, 2016May 10, 2016 by Denise Simon

Off limits….

Isn’t it interesting that Cheryl Mills and her attorney Beth Wilkinson set the ground rules of what questions could be posed to them during the interrogatories? It seems too that the plan set forth was to declare attorney/client privilege on certain questions. So there is the game…legal warfare.

from National Law Journal

Clinton aide leaves interview briefly when the FBI broaches an off-limits topic

WaPo: Near the beginning of a recent interview, an FBI investigator broached a topic with longtime Hillary Clinton aide Cheryl Mills that her lawyer and the Justice Department had agreed would be off limits, according to several people familiar with the matter.

Mills and her lawyer left the room — though both returned a short time later — and prosecutors were somewhat taken aback that their FBI colleague had ventured beyond what was anticipated, the people said.

Investigators consider Mills — who served as chief of staff while Clinton was secretary of state — to be a cooperative witness. But the episode demonstrates some of the tension surrounding the criminal probe into possible mishandling of classified information involving the leading Democratic presidential candidate. In the coming weeks, prosecutors and FBI agents hope to be able to interview Clinton herself as they work to bring the case to a close.

The incident was described to The Washington Post by several people, including U.S. law enforcement officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing and those involved could face professional consequences for discussing it publicly.

It is not completely uncommon for FBI agents and prosecutors to diverge on interview tactics and approach, and the people familiar with the matter said Mills answered investigators’ questions. Mills and her lawyer, Beth Wilkinson, also asked for breaks more than once to confer, the people said.

The questions that were considered off limits had to do with the procedure used to produce emails to the State Department so they could possibly be released publicly, the people said. Mills, an attorney herself, was not supposed to be asked questions about that — and ultimately never was in the recent interview — because it was considered confidential as an example of attorney-client privilege, the people said.

So far, investigators have found scant evidence tying Clinton to criminal wrongdoing, though they are still probing the case aggressively. Charges have not been ruled out. In recent weeks, they have been interviewing Mills and other aides. One former State Department staffer who worked on Hillary Clinton’s private email server, Bryan Pagliano, was granted immunity so he would cooperate as part of the probe.

There is no indication a grand jury has been convened in the case.

In response to this story, Wilkinson said, “Ms. Mills has cooperated with the government.” The Clinton campaign also did not provide a response, but spokesman Brian Fallon has said repeatedly that Clinton is willing to answer investigators questions, and he added in a recent statement that “we hope and expect that anyone else who is asked would do the same.”

Clinton herself said on CBS’s “Face The Nation” Sunday that she has “made it clear I’m more than ready to talk to anybody, anytime” and that she looked forward to the inquiry being “wrapped up.”

In an interview with The Washington Post last year, Mills agreed of Clinton’s email “if you could do it again, you’d just do it again differently,” but Mills said she did not recall the topic “being a major area of conversation or engagement.”

“I wish there had been a lot more thought and deliberation around it, but I can’t tell you that I can offer you that insight that there was,” she said. “I think it was just a continuation of a process that she had been engaged in, in terms of using her own account, and it was consistent with what the Department had seen in the past.”

Mills said in the interview that she did not recall having conversations about security vulnerabilities. She would not say then whether she had spoken to the FBI but offered the general assurance that “we’ve obviously sought to be, to cooperate with the FBI and to provide them whatever information they’ve needed to be able to conduct the inquiry that they’re doing.”

Her attorney, Wilkinson, is a seasoned lawyer who handled many high-profile cases when she worked at the Justice Department as an assistant U.S. Attorney. She received the department’s highest award for the prosecution of the Oklahoma City bombers.

Spokesmen for the FBI, the Justice Department and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia declined to comment.

**** More on Cheryl Mills from Politico:

Here are some words often associated with Cheryl Mills: Clintons, gatekeeper, loyal, Benghazi.

Here are words you most likely haven’t heard as frequently: military brat, mother of twins, unmarried in solidarity with the gay community, point person at the State Department on rebuilding Haiti.

Her middle name? No one knows what the “D” in Cheryl D. Mills stands for. Her partner, David, is the son of former Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.).

Having worked for the Clintons in some capacity for more than two decades, including her recent stint as chief of staff to the former secretary of state, Mills is a member of the family’s small inner circle. She has remained a key part of Hillary Clinton’s transition team and is likely to factor strongly in a presidential campaign, should there be one, in 2016.

Her dedication and reputation for providing unvarnished advice have earned praise from Obama administration top brass who worked with her.

“I have known Cheryl for nearly two decades. There is no one who cares more about the people she works with and who is more dedicated to public service,” said Treasury Secretary and former Obama White House chief of staff Jack Lew.

Bill Burns, deputy secretary of state, was effusive about the role she played at Foggy Bottom during the Clinton era.

“Cheryl was one of the smartest, most dedicated, and most decent colleagues I’ve had in over 30 years in government service,” Burns said in a statement to POLITICO. “She was just as effective and caring an advocate for the people she served with — the men and women of the Department of State — as she was for the foreign policy goals we pursued. That’s a really admirable combination.”

Mills, 48, spent her childhood living on bases throughout Europe because of her father’s career in the Army. She developed an appreciation for government service work.

The Stanford Law School graduate first came into the Clinton orbit as part of Bill Clinton’s transition team after his 1992 campaign. Seven years later, she was a deputy White House counsel during the House impeachment trial against Clinton.

Mills’s pushback against the House managers’ case gained her trust within Clintonworld — particularly Hillary Clinton, who was impressed with her loyalty. It was around this time, according to a 1999 profile in The Washington Post, that Mills befriended Domenici, while both were involved in a mentoring and tutoring project called D.C. Works, which helped underprivileged kids.

Hillary Clinton made Mills general counsel of her 2008 presidential campaign and then her chief of staff at State.

In between various roles for the Clintons, she has worked at Oprah Winfrey’s Oxygen Media and at New York University as a senior vice president.

At State, she had a major role in expanding benefits for the agency’s LGBT personnel, officials said, and was actively involved in helping Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng. And she ran the agency’s policy on Haiti, work that current Secretary of State John Kerry has asked Mills to continue to play a part in.

Mills, who has twin 8-year-olds (a boy and a girl), was known for working grueling hours — from a 3:50 a.m. wake-up until her departure from Foggy Bottom at 6:15 p.m., then back at work at 8:30 p.m. after the kids were in bed.

In a thank-you note from Barack Obama to Mills, which Lew read aloud before a gathering of State Department officials at the end of Clinton’s tenure, the president wrote: “Hillary and I have enjoyed watching you and Denis [McDonough] grow from a team of rivals to an unrivaled team.”

Missile Shield in Europe Against Russia

Posted on May 10, 2016May 10, 2016 by Denise Simon

European missile shield marks milestone as new threats emerge

Stripes: NAPLES, Italy— The United States on Thursday will move a step closer to establishing a missile shield over Europe at a time when new threats are emerging that could curb its utility.

U.S. military officials will gather in Romania to inaugurate a first-of-its-kind ground-based missile interceptor site, part of a larger shield that American officials say is necessary to stop Iranian ballistic missiles from targeting Europe.

Moscow has criticized the shield as upsetting the regional strategic balance and could respond to Thursday’s ceremony with deployments or exercises along Russia’s western border.

Russia and China are both equipping their forces with modern cruise missiles, while the U.S. is developing an advanced supersonic model, developments that challenge the idea of missile defense as relating to ballistic missiles alone.

“Missile defense is moving from infancy to adolescence,” said Tom Karako, a missile defense expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “There’s still a long way to go in terms of capability and capacity.”

The Romania interceptor site is located in the southern town of Deveselu, a farming community once home to a communist-era air base. A U.S. Navy base now hosts 24 SM-3 missiles and the same Aegis radar and tracking technology employed by modern Navy ships.

The site is part of the European Phased Adaptive Approach, a shield system that includes a radar facility in Turkey, four U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyers in Spain, a command node at the Air Force base in Ramstein, Germany, and a second ground-based interceptor site to be built in Poland and operational by 2018.

Thursday’s ceremony will certify the Romania site as operational, making it ready to be handed over to NATO for use.

President George W. Bush announced the original plans for a shield in 2002 as a guard against intercontinental ballistic missiles targeting European cities and American bases in Europe. The Obama administration changed it to the EPAA in 2009 to focus on short- and intermediate-range missiles, a shift made partly to ease Russian concerns and improve relations with Moscow.

Although the 2009 announcement ruffled governments in Poland and the Czech Republic, the two countries originally slated to host the long-range sites, the mere presence of American bases has been welcomed more recently in a region anxious about Russia, Following its annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninusla two years ago.

“There weren’t a whole lot of people in Romania or Poland staying up at night worrying about an Iranian missile,” said Steven Pifer, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine who is now with the Brookings Institute in Washington. “What this means to them is having American people and hardware on their ground. And I think especially with recent Russian actions.”

The missile defense plan has been a major irritant in relations with Russia ever since it was first considered at the Prague summit in 2002. Moscow has continued to criticize the system despite the Obama administration changes, arguing it lays the foundation for more sophisticated interceptors that can be used against its own missiles. A Russian proposal to run the missile sites jointly was a nonstarter for NATO members.

As it has in recent years, Russia may respond to Thursday’s ceremony with exercises or deployments, experts say. Another possibility, they say, is pulling out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty, which prohibits ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,000 kilometers. The U.S. has already accused Russia of violating the treaty by testing a ground-launched cruise missile.

“There is a developing action-reaction cycle,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Washington-based Arms Control Association. “The deployment of ballistic missile interceptors in Romania, Poland, it may become a sort of excuse for Russia to take some kind of counter-measure.”

Kimball questioned the rationale behind the missile site deployments, arguing that the recent U.S. deal with Iran removed the nuclear threat “for a generation.” Although the agreement doesn’t stop Iran from advancing its ballistic missile program, Kimball argues that it makes little sense for Iran to strike with conventional weapons against European targets.

Others, like Karako, say the threat remains so long as Iran continues to develop missiles and show interest in a future nuclear program.

Cruise missile proliferation poses a new threat, experts say. Russia demonstrated the capabilities of its Kalibr cruise missiles by striking targets in Syria last year from a submarine in the eastern Mediterranean and a surface ship in the Caspian Sea. China has deployed the missiles across its coast and even into disputed waters of the South China Sea.

The U.S. takes the threat of Russian anti-ship cruise missiles seriously enough that it is equipping its warships in Spain with a new missile-defense weapon. Congress has offered funding for the Navy to install air defenses on the Romania missile site, money the Navy has instead asked NATO to provide.

Yet neither is a guarantee against missiles that are becoming stealthier, faster and more advanced in defeating existing defenses.

“The air defense problem is becoming more complex and difficult to defend in some ways,” Karako said.

The U.S. may be fueling the development drive by working on an advanced cruise missile with a supersonic capability, a technology that competitors like Russia and China would look to offset.

“If you have an airtight defense against ballistic missiles but can’t stop cruise missiles, you have a problem,” said Pifer. “And we don’t even have an airtight ballistic missile defense.”

***** In English, the translation is essentially the ‘son of satan’.

Russia testing unstoppable new nuclear missile which can breach Nato’s shield system and blow up an area the size of FRANCE

The RS-28 Sarmat missile, dubbed Satan 2, will replace the SS-18
It is capable of flying at a speed of seven kilometres (4.3 miles) per second
Sarmat has a range of 10,000 kilometres (6,213 miles)
The weapons are perceived as part of an increasingly aggressive Russia

DefenseTalk: Testing of Russia’s new Sarmat strategic intercontinental missile will begin within two years, the secretary to the commander of the Russian Strategic Missiles Forces said Tuesday, July 21, 2015. The RS-28 Sarmat, or Sarmatian is a future Russian liquid-fueled, MIRV-equipped, super-heavy thermonuclear intercontinental ballistic missile in development by the Makeyev Rocket Design Bureau from 2009, intended to replace the previous SS-18 Satan.

The third phase of experimental construction work is being completed today and just as the Missile Forces’ commander said not long ago, within the next one and a half or two years, we will move on to the definitive stage of testing this class of missile,” Igor Denisov told journalists.

The experimental constructive work on the new liquid-fueled Sarmat ICBM, which is to replace the Satan, began in 2011.

Earlier, a source in the defense industry told RIA Novosti that the Sarmat should enter into service between 2018 and 2020.

Sarmat’s characteristics are unknown, it is only known that the missile is to replace the world’s largest strategic missile Voyevoda (NATO reporting name – Satan). According to Borisov, the new rocker’s destructive payload will reach 10 tons.

In February 2014, a Russian military official announced the Sarmat was expected to be ready for deployment around 2020. In May that year another official source suggested that the program was being accelerated and that it would, in his opinion, constitute up to 100 percent of Russia’s land-based nuclear arsenal by 2021.

A Yemeni Gitmo ‘Forever Prisoner’, Approved for Release

Posted on May 9, 2016May 9, 2016 by Denise Simon

So much for the ‘forever prisoner’ as this will likely apply to the rest of the forever prisoners.

Parole board OKs Yemeni’s release from Guantánamo on fifth review

MiamiHerald: The Guantánamo parole board has approved the release of a Yemeni “forever prisoner” on his fifth review, the latest sign that showing up at a Periodic Review Board hearing actually helps a captive win release from the downsizing war-on-terror prison in Cuba.

The decision, released by the Pentagon Monday, means 27 of the 80 captives currently held at the U.S. detention center in Cuba can leave to a transfer deal that satisfies Secretary of Defense Ash Carter.

Salem bin Kanad, about 40, got to Camp X-Ray in the second week of its existence and was profiled as a veteran jihadist who left his homeland for Afghanistan a year ahead of the 9/11 attacks.

He was initially captured by the Northern Alliance in late 2001 and held at a prison fortress near Mazar-i-Sharif where captives staged an uprising in which CIA agent Johnny Spann was killed, according to a leaked 2008 prison profile. Fellow revolt survivor John Walker Lindh at one point cast Kanad as a commander of their Taliban-linked force, the profile said.

But subsequent U.S. intelligence assessments recast him as having a “low-level leadership role” in a Taliban front-line unit. It cast him alternately as “mostly compliant” with his guards and having “an extremist mindset” that “has continued to praise terrorist groups and activities.”

The Periodic Review Board first considered Kanad’s case in January 2014 and concluded that his release could present a “significant threat to the security of the Untied States.” He didn’t go to his hearing and neither did he offer information about his family or a plan for employment after Guantánamo. The board reviewed his file three times in 2015 and upheld that opinion.

Then he went before the board April 5 but it is not known what he told them. At Kanad’s request, according to the Pentagon, the transcript of his hearing was withheld from the public.

But, according to his file, a military officer assigned to his case provided the board with information about his family, their commitment to help him reintegrate into an Arabic-speaking society and his agreement to participate in a rehabilitation program — an argument that apparently won the favor of the board. He has a father and siblings in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and would like to join them, study English and computer science and launch a career in sales to support them there.

“The board encourages the detainee to continue regularly attending classes” at Guantánamo, it wrote in its May 5 decision to approve his transfer, “and continue engaging with family members to prepare himself for transfer.”

The decision comes at a busy time — as the board is hearing from an unprecedented nine captives in a single month, May. It follows the Pentagon’s April 16 transfer of nine Yemenis with similar close family in the Saudi Kingdom to a rehabilitation program there.

****

JTF-GTMO Assessment:

(S) Recommendation: JTF-GTMO recommends this detainee for Continued Detention

Under DoD Control (CD). JTF-GTMO previously recommended detainee for Continued

Detention Under DoD Control (CD) on 1 January 2007.

(S//NF) Executive Summary: Detainee is a member of al-Qaida. Detainee served as a

sub-commander in Usama Bin Laden’s (UBL) 55th Arab Brigade during hostilities against

US and coalition forces.1 Detainee is assessed to have commanded the Tameem Center on

the Khwaja Ghar front lines and received basic and advanced training, including tactics and

artillery, at probably the al-Qaida al-Faruq Training Camp in Afghanistan. Detainee

acknowledged traveling to Afghanistan expressly for jihad in 2000, and his name was found

on al-Qaida affiliated documents. Detainee’s passport was used to attempt entry into Iraq by

suspected al-Qaida operatives and his true identity is in question. JTF-GTMO determined

this detainee to be:

A HIGH risk, as he is likely to pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies.Prior History: Detainee belongs to the Bin Kinad tribe. Detainee finished high
school and then worked on a small farm for approximately six months before leaving for

Afghanistan. Detainee was issued a passport on 31 July 2000 in Aden, YM and departed

Yemen for Afghanistan in approximately October 2000. For his full summary file, go here.

China, Unfettered Espionage Against U.S.

Posted on May 9, 2016May 9, 2016 by Denise Simon

Did China Just Steal $360 Billion From America?

Gordon G. Chang/Forbes:

“The FBI has obtained information regarding multiple malicious cyber actor groups that have compromised sensitive business information from U.S. commercial and government networks through cyber espionage,” warned the law enforcement agency on the 2nd of this month. At about the same time, the Department of Homeland Security and the Defense Security Service of the Department of Defense issued similar alerts.

The principal group in question is believed to be the one codenamed APT6. The three letters stand for Advanced Persistent Threat, and this group appears to be among the first tagged as an “APT.”

Kurt Baumgartner of Russian firm Kaspersky Lab suggests APT6 is state-sponsored.That sounds correct because as Craig Williams WMB -4.47% at Talos, a part of Cisco, notes, it is “an advanced, well-funded actor.”

Baumgartner declined to identify APT6’s nationality, but others have. Vice Media’s Motherboard reports that experts think the group is Chinese. As the FireEye security firm notes, APT6 is “likely a nation-state sponsored group based in China.”

In any event, APT6 has caught the attention of the FBI. The group also appears to be the subject of the Bureau’s February 12 alert.

Related reading from the FBI

The February 12 alert says the group in question was attacking U.S. networks “since at least 2011,” but Baumgartner thinks it was active as early as 2008.

In September of last year during Xi Jinping’s state visit, President Obama said the U.S. and China had reached “a common understanding on the way forward” on cybertheft. Washington and Beijing, he said, had affirmed the principle that neither government would use cyber means for commercial purposes.

China indeed affirmed that principle, and the agreement was, as Adam Segal and Tang Lan write, “a significant symbolic step forward.” The pair correctly note that “trust will be built and sustained through implementation.”

As might be expected, there was little implementation on the Chinese side at first. CrowdStrike , the cyber security firm, for instance, in October reported no letup in China’s cyber intrusions into the networks of American corporates.

Related: Economic Terrorism

Beijing, according to the Financial Times, has since reduced its cyber spying against American companies. As Justin Harvey of Fidelis Cybersecurity told the paper, “What we are seeing can only be characterized as a material downtick in what can be considered cyber espionage.”

And FireEye noted that all 22 Chinese hacking units identified by the firm as attacking American networks discontinued operations.

Nonetheless, the Obama administration is not declaring victory quite yet, and for good reason. “The days of widespread Chinese smash-and-grab activity, get in, get out, don’t care if you’re caught, seem to be over,”says Rob Knake, who once directed cyber security policy at the National Security Council and is now at the Council on Foreign Relations. “There’s a consensus that activity is still ongoing, but narrower in scope and with better tradecraft.”

Whether espionage is overt or not, the damage to American business is still large. According to the May 2013 report of the Blair-Huntsman Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property, “The scale of international theft of American intellectual property is unprecedented—hundreds of billions of dollars per year, on the order of the size of U.S. exports to Asia.”

William Evanina, America’s chief counterintelligence official, told reporters in November that hacking espionage costs U.S. companies $400 billion each year and that China is responsible for about 90% of the attacks. Beijing’s haul, therefore, looks like something on the order of $360 billion.

And how do we know the Chinese are culprits? For one thing, bold Chinese cyber thieves like to show their victims the information they have stolen.

Moreover, the U.S. government has gotten better at attribution, going from being able to attribute one-third of the attacks to more than two-thirds. The improvement is largely due to the government’s partnership with the private sector. Microsoft, Google, and Twitter, for example, will share information if they detect attacks on their customers.

And their customers are still getting attacked. “We continue to see them engage in activity directed against U.S. companies,” said Admiral Mike Rogers, the head of U.S. Cyber Command, in early April in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee. “The questions I think that we still need to ask is, is that activity then, in turn, shared with the Chinese private industry?”

It’s right for Rogers to be cautious, but it would be strange for Chinese hackers not to share as they have done in the past. At the moment, there is little reason for Beijing to stop hacking, because Washington is not willing to impose costs on China for its “21st century burglary.”

There was the May 2014 indictment of five officers of the People’s Liberation Army for cyberattacking American businesses, like Alcoa and U.S. Steel, and the United Steelworkers union. That move, while welcome, was overdue and only symbolic. The Blair-Huntsman Commission suggested an across-the-board tariff on Chinese goods, but the imposition of a penalty of that sort is unlikely without a radical change of thinking in Washington.

Therefore, the FBI, even after all these years, is just playing catch up. The February alert is a tacit admission that the U.S. government is not in control of its own networks said Michael Adams, who served in U.S. Special Operations Command. “It’s just flabbergasting,” Adams told Motherboard. “How many times can this keep happening before we finally realize we’re screwed?”

The People’s Republic of China is still committing monumental thefts in large part because successive American governments cannot get beyond half-measures.

Beijing may be an intruder, but Washington somehow finds it unseemly to lock the door and punish the thief.

Questions and Anger on Transfer of El Chapo

Posted on May 9, 2016May 9, 2016 by Denise Simon

The Transfer of Mexican Drug Boss ‘El Chapo’ to a Less-Secure Prison Raises Concerns
“It just doesn’t make any sense,” says the former head of the DEA

Time: (MEXICO CITY) — Questions arose on both sides of the border about the decision to relocate convicted drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman to a region that is one of his cartel’s strongholds, and a Mexican security official acknowledged Sunday that the sudden transfer was to a less-secure prison.

The official said that in general the Cefereso No. 9 prison on the outskirts of Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas, is not as impregnable as the maximum-security Altiplano facility near Mexico City where he had been held. The official wasn’t authorized to discuss Guzman’s case publicly and agreed to do so only if not quoted by name.

The official said, however, that Guzman is being held in a maximum-security wing where the same protocols are being enforced as in Altiplano, including 24-hour monitoring via a camera in his cell.

Multiple analysts told The Associated Press that there was no sign of a link between the prison switch and extradition.
There will be no escape, ” Duarte told local media. “If he was brought here from Altiplano it’s because the security conditions are way above those of Altiplano, that’s what the federal government settled on.”