Category Archives: Terror

Operating Military Drone Flights over U.S.

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Pentagon admits operating military drone flights over U.S.

WashingtonTimes: The Pentagon has deployed spy drones to fly over U.S. territory for non-military missions over the past decade, but the flights were few and lawful, according to a new report.

The domestic drone flights have occurred less than 20 times between 2006 and 2015 and were always conducted in compliance with existing laws, according to the report by the Pentagon Inspector General which was made public under a Freedom of Information Act request, according to USA today.

The Pentagon did not provide details of the domestic spy missions, but said it takes the issue of military drone flights over America soil “very seriously.”

The list of domestic drone operations was not made public in the report, but some examples were cited.

In one case, an unnamed mayor asked the Marine Corps to use a drone to identify potholes in the mayor’s city. The Marines denied the request because obtaining the required approval from the defense secretary to “conduct a UAS mission of this type did not make operational sense.”

The issue of unmanned aerial surveillance drone flights over the U.S. first arose in 2013 when then-FBI director Robery Mueller told a Congressional committee that the bureau employed spy drones to aid in investigations, but in a “very, very minimal way, very seldom.”

According to the report, which was completed in March 2015, the Pentagon established guidance in 2006 governing when and whether drones could be used domestically.

The interim policy allowed spy drones to be used for homeland defense purposes and to assists civil authorities.

However, the policy said that any use of military spy drones for civilian authorities must be cleared by the Secretary of Defense or someone delegated by the secretary. The report found that the defense secretaries never delegated that responsibility, according to USA Today.

 Truthseeker/UK

But the desire for domestic drone operations is growing, according to the report. Military units that operate the drones told inspectors that they would like more opportunities to fly them on domestic missions, even just to give pilots more experience.

Shortly before the report was completed a year ago, the Pentagon issued a new policy on the use of spy drones requiring the defense secretary to approve all domestic drone operations.

Unless permitted by law and approved by the secretary, drones “may not conduct surveillance on U.S. persons,” under the new policy.

**** Is it is nefarious? Very doubtful:

Plotted out all the information we’ve (Electronic Frontier Foundation) received about applications to fly domestic drones on our Map of Domestic Drone Authorizations. (Clicking this link will serve content from Google.)

US Federal Agencies:

Pages

 

Hat Tip Delta Force, Capture of Islamic State CW Expert

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Update: He was captured last month: Sleiman Daoud al-Afari, Iraqi dictator’s chemical and biological arms specialist, captured by Delta Forces. He worked directly for Saddam Hussein.

(CNN) The U.S. military has conducted airstrikes against targets it believes are crucial to ISIS’ chemical weapons program based on information provided by a senior ISIS operative involved in chemical weapons, several U.S. officials told CNN.

The information he provided to interrogators has given the U.S. enough information to begin striking ISIS areas in Iraq associated with the group’s chemical weapons program. One U.S. official said the goal is to locate, target and carry out strikes that will result in the destruction of ISIS’s entire chemical weapons enterprise — mainly mustard agent ISIS produces itself.

It was not immediately clear if the U.S. was able to strike all of the necessary targets. Intelligence and surveillance of the targets had indicated in some Iraqi locations that civilians were present at prospective sites, officials told CNN.

While the goal is to end ISIS’ capability to manufacture and use mustard agent, the actual targets being struck include people, facilities and vehicles. The agent itself is made in relatively small quantities and has a fairly short shelf life, the U.S. government believes. Since the weekend, the U.S. has struck what it is calling “improvised weapons facilities” and other targets near Mosul, Iraq, but officials would not say if these were chemical weapons sites.

The operative was captured in one of the first missions of the so-called Expeditionary Targeting Forces. It is a group of some 200 Special Operations troops assembled in northern Iraq to gather intelligence and pursue ISIS operatives on the ground by either capturing or killing them in Iraq, and eventually in Syria. Carter recently acknowledged the ETF is “having an effect and operating.

U.S. Captures, Interrogates Top Islamic State Chemical Weapons Expert

Capture is among recent U.S. advances in ongoing effort to counter terror network

WSJ: WASHINGTON—The U.S. military captured one of Islamic State’s top chemical weapons experts in a recent raid—and has spent several weeks interrogating him about the terror network’s capabilities and planning, U.S. officials said Wednesday.

The detainee, who wasn’t named by U.S. officials, is expected to be released to the Iraqi government at the end of this week, the officials said.

Iraqi military spokesmen declined to comment on his capture. A spokesman for Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The capture was among recent U.S. advances in an ongoing, though uneven, effort to counter Islamic State, which has maintained a foothold in Iraq and Syria while also recently expanding into parts of Libya as well.

In one airstrike last week in Syria, Pentagon officials believe they killed Abu Umar al-Shishani, a top Islamic State commander known fairly widely by the nickname “Omar the Chechen.”

The chemical weapons expert was captured in recent raid the Pentagon acknowledged last week. However, officials at the time said they had captured a high-ranking operative, without providing further detail. His actual role in the organization was disclosed on Wednesday.

The move came as U.S. and Western officials have grown increasingly concerned about the terror network’s plans to use chemical weapons against enemies and in the U.S.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told Congress last month that Islamic State already has used chemical weapons “numerous times” in Iraq and Syria, adding that “aspirationally, they would like to do more.”

It was at least the second time that the U.S. military was able to capture and interrogate a person with valuable intelligence about Islamic State’s operations. In May, U.S. special-operations forces conducted a raid in Syria that killed Abu Sayyaf, considered to be one of the group’s financial chiefs. His wife, Umm Sayyaf, was detained and interrogated by the U.S. military. The intelligence from that raid helped U.S. officials run numerous operations and crack down on the group’s access to money, officials have said.

*****

In part from ToI: The two Iraqi officials identified the man as Sleiman Daoud al-Afari, who worked for Saddam Hussein’s now-dissolved Military Industrialization Authority where he specialized in chemical and biological weapons. They said al-Afari, who is about 50 years old, heads the Islamic State group’s recently established branch for the research and development of chemical weapons.

He was captured in a raid near the northern Iraqi town of Tal Afar, the officials said. They would not give further details.

The officials, who both have first-hand knowledge of the individual and of the IS chemical program, spoke on condition of anonymity as they are not authorized to talk to the media. No confirmation was available from US officials.

Airstrikes are targeting laboratories and equipment, and further special forces raids targeting chemical weapons experts are planned, the intelligence officials said. They and the Western official also spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

IS has been making a determined effort to develop chemical weapons, Iraqi and American officials have said. The militant group, which emerged out of al-Qaeda in Iraq, is believed to have set up a special unit for chemical weapons research, made up of Iraqi scientists from the Saddam-era weapons program as well as foreign experts.

Iraqi officials expressed particular worry over the effort because IS militants gained so much room to operate and hide chemical laboratories after overrunning around a third of the country in the summer of 2014, territory which they then joined with territory they controlled in neighboring Syria. Full article here.

To Move the Gitmo Detainees Stateside, Change the Law

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Cuba setting the early stage for Barack Obama’s visit to Cuba?

Reuters: Cuba said, in an editorial published Wednesday, it would welcome President Barack Obama to Havana later this month, but the Communist government had no intention of changing its policies in exchange for normal relations with the U.S. Nathan Frandino reports.

   Video including in this link.

They may be preparing to host U.S. President Obama in a new era of detente, but Cuba has a bristling message for its former Cold War foe. (SOUNDBITE) (Spanish) NEWS PRESENTER, RAUL ISIDRON, SAYING: “Working together does not mean that we have to renounce the ideas we believe in and which have brought us this far – our socialism, our history, our culture.” The editorial was issued by Cuba’s state-controlled media and comes 15 months after Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro agreed to end more than five decades of hostilities and try to normalize relations. But the editorial made clear, strong differences remain… chief among them the U.S. trade embargo, which congressional Republicans have refused to end, and U.S. support for dissidents on the island. Despite the tough words, ordinary Cubans say they’re hopeful that positive changes are on the way. (SOUNDBITE) (Spanish) ACCOUNTANT, GUILLERMO RAMIREZ, SAYING: “This is the beginning, the beginning of a long deal, it is not all done now with a magic wand. We have a long road. We have to be conscious of that.” Obama’s visit on March 20 will be the first by a U.S. president since the 1959 revolution.

Lynch: No Gitmo transfers to US without change in law

TheHill: The Obama administration will not try to transfer detainees from Guantánamo Bay to the United States without a change in law, Attorney General Loretta Lynch said on Wednesday.

“The law currently prohibits a transfer to U.S. soil, and the president would have to work with Congress,” Lynch testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“Congress would have to consider any relevant changes that could be made to the law before any transfers could be taken.”

The comments are perhaps the most explicit acknowledgment that the president’s goal of closing the detention facility will not be met while he is in office, given the overwhelming opposition in Congress.

The administration has repeatedly claimed it believes current prohibitions in defense policy law bar the Pentagon from bringing any of the 91 detainees at the camp to the U.S. But Wednesday’s comments, which follow the president’s unveiling of a general strategy for closing the facility last month, make clear that those restrictions will obstruct Obama from fulfilling his long-held promise to close the detention facility.

“The president’s policy indicates a desire to work with Congress to implement any necessary changes that would have to be taken before this could be taken,” Lynch said before the Senate panel on Wednesday. “I believe that is his plan.”

The White House proposal last month, which was demanded by Congress, would send 35 of the remaining Guantánamo Bay detainees who have been cleared for release to foreign countries.

Given this statement by U.S. Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, it is no surprise this report came out this week.

More former Gitmo detainees suspected of returning to battlefield

FNC: A dozen former detainees at Guantanamo Bay are suspected of returning to the battlefield on behalf of various militant groups, according to a report released by the Obama administration Monday.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) said that seven of the 144 detainees who have been freed since President Barack Obama took office in 2009 have been confirmed to have returned to fighting as of Jan. 15. The ODNI’s previous report, from this past July, said six detainees had gone back to battle.

The number of suspected recidivist detainees was double the number in this past July’s report. The increase is likely to spark new protests by Republicans opposed to President Obama’s plan to shut down the facility and transfer dozens of detainees to prisons in the U.S.

Under Obama’s plan, roughly 35 of the 91 current prisoners will be transferred to other countries in the coming months, leaving up to 60 detainees who are either facing trial by military commission or have been determined to be too dangerous to release but are not facing charges. Those detainees would be relocated to a U.S. facility.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said last month that Republicans are taking legal steps to stop Obama from closing the prison. Ryan told reporters that lawmakers have the votes to block Obama’s plan in Congress and enough votes to override any veto.

“These detainees cannot come to American soil,” Ryan said at the time.

The ODNI report does not specify where or for which groups the former detainees are confirmed or suspected to be fighting.

The report also found that 111 of 532 prisoners released by the George W. Bush administration had returned to the battlefield, while another 74 were suspected of doing so.

Should we be suspect of Barack Obama’s trip to Cuba this month?

The plane is full already:

NYT:  It wasn’t so long ago that a small congressional delegation’s trip to Cuba was a less-than-popular outing. But at least 20 lawmakers will accompany President Obama on his trip to Cuba this month, and many more asked for a seat aboard Air Force One. The group is bipartisan, demonstrating that some Republicans are coming around to the idea of ending a decades-old trade embargo, a policy Mr. Obama and President Raúl Castro of Cuba have pursued.

“We’re getting there,” said Senator Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, who has been an early and strong ally of Mr. Obama on the issue and is a sponsor of legislation that would end prohibitions on travel to Cuba. “If we put that bill on the floor tomorrow,” he said, “we’d have north of 60 votes.” Mr. Flake will travel with the White House contingent, as will Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont.

The thaw between the United States and Cuba has divided Republicans and become an issue in the race for the White House. Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida, both Republicans, have been sharply critical of the trip as well as Mr. Obama’s use of executive authority to end some economic restrictions on Cuba.

 

 

American fatally stabbed in Israel

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TERROR – TEL AVIV: 4 Israelis wounded in an Arab terrorist stabbing attack near Jaffa port, terrorist neutralised.

TRAGIC LOSS: Latest terror victim stabbed to death in Tel Aviv, US Vet Taylor Force who served in Afghanistan & Iraq

1 Israeli died of his wounds, additional 9 wounded in Arab terrorist stabbing attack in Tel Aviv.

American fatally stabbed in Israel terror attack that wounds 10 others
(CNN) A former U.S. Army officer who was part of a Vanderbilt University tour group was stabbed to death in a terror attack that left 10 others wounded in an old section of Tel Aviv, officials said Tuesday.

Taylor Force, a first-year student in the graduate school of management, was killed, Vanderbilt chancellor Nicholas S. Zeppos announced.

“This horrific act of violence has robbed our Vanderbilt family of a young hopeful life and all of the bright promise that he held for bettering our greater world,” Zeppos said.

The school said in a separate statement that Force was among 29 students and four staff members who had gone to Israel to study global entrepreneurship. They were in Jaffa by the Mediterranean Sea when they were attacked.

All the other trip participants from Vanderbilt are safe, the Nashville, Tennessee, school said.

 According to Force’s LinkedIn page, he graduated from West Point in 2009 and was a field artillery officer in the U.S. Army until 2014.

Force, 28, started an MBA study in 2015. At the time, he told the website Poets and Quants that he went to Vanderbilt because of the support for veterans, the diversity of students and the quality of education.

Taylor Force

Taylor Force

“In addition to learning the skills needed to be successful in business, I want to establish life-long connections and friendships with my fellow students from the U.S. and around the globe,” he said.

The U.S. State Department confirmed Force’s death and condemned the attack.

“We offer our heartfelt condolences to the family and friends of Taylor and all those affected by these senseless attacks, and we wish a speedy recovery for the injured,” spokesman John Kirby said. “As we have said many times, there is absolutely no justification for terrorism.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent his condolences to Force’s family.

“May his memory be a blessing,” Netanyahu said.

Attack was near Biden visit

The stabbing attack occurred along a popular oceanfront boardwalk in southern Tel Aviv not far from where U.S. Vice President Joe Biden was visiting.

“In these moments, terror attacks are taking place in streets adjacent to us,” said former Israeli President and Prime Minister Shimon Peres during a meeting with Biden at the Peres Center for Peace.

Biden “condemned in the strongest possible terms the brutal attack” that took the life of one of his countrymen at the same time, and around the same area, that he was meeting with Peres.

“There is no justification for such acts of terror,” the vice president’s office said in a statement. “(Biden) expressed sorrow at the tragic loss of American life.”

Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld tweeted that the attacker, a Palestinian from the West Bank, was fatally shot by police.

 

Whistleblowers, Watch Your Back

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This tells me it is official cover for Hillary. What are your thoughts?

U.S. Government Seeking New Top Secret Classification Czar

FreeBeacon: The Obama administration is seeking to hire a new information security director who will be responsible for overseeing the classification and declassification on all sensitive U.S. government information, according to a posting on the government’s jobs website.

The administration wants to fill the post of director in the National Archive’s Information Security Oversight Office. The previous director, John Fitzpatrick, left the job in January.

The director holds one of the most powerful and sensitive national security jobs in the U.S. government. The official has authority over many classification and declassification matters, meaning that he or she could potentially remove classification if it is deemed in violation of policies.

The post is not subject to confirmation by Congress.

The new director can make up to $185,000 a year.

***** Implications already realized?

 

Intel Whistle-Blowers Fear Government Won’t Protect Them

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Bloomberg: Nearly three years after Edward Snowden bypassed the intelligence community’s own process for reporting wrongdoing and leaked troves of classified documents to Glenn Greenwald, the system for protecting whistle-blowers inside the national security state remains broken.

This is the view of current and former intelligence officials, national security lawyers and the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Their message is simple: Whistle-blowers are often too intimidated to take their case to the inspectors general and Congress.

“There is a systemic problem with the whistle-blower process,” Representative Devin Nunes told me. “There is no easy way for them to come forward that doesn’t jeopardize their careers, across the whole defense and intelligence community enterprise.”

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has in the past two years tried to address this problem, with mixed results at best. Dan Meyer, the executive director of the Intelligence Community’s Whistle-Blowing & Source Protection program, said in a statement that more whistle-blowers were coming forward in the last two years since the intelligence community began implementing a 2012 executive order from President Barack Obama that gave them additional protections. He said his office was also doing more, for example, to educate agencies on the new law and regulation.

Meyer conceded, however, there were holes in the process. “Protections are imperfect given their differences, the most notable being the lack of equivalent laws protecting intelligence community contractors from reprisal actions by the private companies employing them,” he said. He also acknowledged: “There will likely be some reluctance on the part of whistle-blowers to come forward. In our experience, this is understandably a very emotional event in someone’s career given what’s at stake.”

Mark Zaid, a national security lawyer who has represented dozens of whistle-blowers over the last two decades, went further. “I have not seen any noticeable improvement in the ability of a national security whistle-blower to come forward and be confident they will be protected,” he told me.

Snowden himself has said that he went to the press because of the experience of whistle-blowers before him. Specifically, he has talked about Thomas Drake, a former official at the National Security Agency. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Drake tried to warn his superiors and other oversight bodies of what he saw as a wasteful and illegal NSA program, known as “Trailblazer,” to collect personal data from digital networks.

For Drake, the system didn’t work. Out of frustration, he eventually leaked what he has says was unclassified information about the program to the Baltimore Sun. The Justice Department prosecuted him in 2010, but dropped his case the following year. His career was ruined.

A staff member on the House Intelligence Committee who took Drake seriously, Diane Rourke, soon found she too was under investigation. She told me that because of her interest in Drake’s complaints, and lobbying within the system on his behalf, the Justice Department and eventually her own committee put her under the microscope.

“They wanted to ruin our lives and make an example out of us to anyone else in the intelligence community,” she told me, even though she said she never took Drake’s complaints to the press.

Speaking anonymously, other U.S. intelligence officials told me analysts often face milder forms of intimidation if they are suspected of talking to Congress. This includes threats to suspend one’s security clearance, or being deliberately kept out of loop on important programs.

At issue is anonymity. The inspector general for the intelligence community is required by law to tell the Office of the Director of National Intelligence the identities of whistle-blowers that seek to speak with Congress. The DNI office has also bolstered its monitoring of intelligence professionals and their browsing habits on classified computer systems since the first mass disclosures by WikiLeaks in 2010.

Congress and others have adjusted. Nunes told me he has found creative ways for intelligence professionals to get him information. One was through an annual survey provided to intelligence analysts on the integrity of their product.

At a hearing last month Nunes disclosed that 40 percent of analysts at U.S. Central Command, or CentCom, who responded to the survey complained their reports on the Islamic State were skewed by higher-ups to make the U.S.-led campaign seem more effective than it really was. (The Pentagon’s acting inspector general, Glenn Fine, is also looking into these claims).

Nunes said analysts filled out extensive comments in response to the survey describing how their work was politicized, with the intention of getting them to the committee. Yet Nunes is still trying to get those in-depth comments from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

While some analysts at Central Command have gone directly to the inspector general at the Pentagon (who declined to comment for this column), Nunes said there were many more at CentCom who did not want to risk potential retribution and file a formal complaint.

Nunes also said intelligence officials who have helped his investigation into cost-padding for the construction of a new Joint Intelligence Analysis Center in Europe have been too intimidated to go through the formal whistle-blower process.

It’s understandable that lawmakers like Nunes would raise concerns about weak protections for whistle-blowers. His committee is supposed to perform oversight, even though his predecessors have not made this an issue.

But fixing the system is also in the interest of the national security state itself. In the last five years, the intelligence community has invested great resources to protect its secrets from the next mega-leaker. But if whistle-blowers inside the system see no recourse to address legitimate grievances, then the intelligence community should brace itself for more Snowdens.