Category Archives: Terror

Shin Bet’s Latest Hamas Captive Reveals the Plan

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Jerusalem Post: A Hamas fighter and tunnel digger has given his interrogators in Israel a bevy of intelligence about the group’s recent tunnel construction, planned attacks on Israel, battlefield strategy, and military cooperation with Iran, the Shin Bet General Security Service said Tuesday, after news of the operative’s arrest was made public.

The fighter, Ibrahim Adal Shahada Sha’ar, a 21-year-old native of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, was arrested by the Shin Bet and the Israel Police last month at Erez Crossing on the Israel border, after he arrived at the installation to submit an application to enter Israel. An official with the Shin Bet said that Sha’ar’s application to enter was for “personal or humanitarian reasons” and that officers at the crossing knew who he was and arrested him on the spot.

The Shin Bet on Tuesday said Sha’ar gave up to his interrogators a trove of intelligence relating to Hamas operations in Gaza and in Rafah in particular, including about their plans to use tunnels along the border to carry out attacks on Israel, like they did with brutal effectiveness during last summer’s Operation Protective Edge.

The Shin Bet said Sha’ar also gave details about Hamas battlefield strategy, the make-up and capabilities of their “elite” infantry unit, as well as the anti-aircraft and surveillance capabilities of the Hamas armed wing.

Sha’ar himself took part in a series of battlefield tasks during last summer’s war, the Shin Bet said, including field logistics, and transporting fighters and firearms on the battlefield. He also admitted to laying an anti-tank IED on one occasion.

The Rafah native had allegedly been spending recent months working on tunnel construction, during which he learned of tunnels heading for the Kerem Shalom crossing on the Israel border, potentially for use in an infiltration attack. Under questioning he also gave up the location of digging sites, tunnel openings, and the routes of tunnels currently under construction in the Gaza Strip. He also reportedly told his interrogators that a road recently built by Hamas along the Gaza border with Israel is meant in part to be used for attacks on Israel, during which vehicles will use the road to charge across the border.

He also reportedly gave details on his observations about the military cooperation between Hamas and Iran. The Shin Bet said he described how they transfer money to the organization and supply firearms and electronics, including devices meant for jamming radio frequencies, meant to be used to take down Israeli drones flying over Gaza. He also observed how they attempted to train Hamas fighters in the use of hang gliders for attacks on Israel.

On July 31st, Sha’ar was indicted at the Beersheba District Court on charges of membership in an illegal organization, attempted murder, and contact with a foreign agent, and taking part in illegal military training.

***  Then we need to go back to John Kerry’s testimony before Congress, where his answers turn out to be thin on substance and essentially false and uninformed.

Iran Funding Hamas Preparations for War

 

When asked repeatedly by Republicans about Iran’s repeated threats to destroy Israel during Congressional testimony about the Iran nuclear deal, Secretary of State John Kerry sighed and looked at his questioners the way an exasperated teacher regards dumb students. Yes, he admitted, they say that but he explained patiently, he’s seen no evidence of them planning anything to put that into effect. Kerry repeated that answer, though no doubt without the look of disdain on his face, to The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg saying “I haven’t seen anything that says to me” that their “ideological confrontation with Israel at this moment” [my emphasis] will “translate into active steps.” For all intents and purposes, President Obama says the same thing when he dismisses threats to Israel from Iran’s Supreme Leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei even if he just published a book outlining his plans.

But, as Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence agency made public today, Iran is taking active steps toward war with Israel. The Israelis revealed that information obtained from a prisoner as well as from other sources showed that Iran is taking an active role in allowing Hamas to rebuild its military infrastructure as well as terror tunnels aimed at facilitating murder and kidnapping. Though the administration pretends that its negotiations with Iran are proof that the Islamist regime is moderating, evidence on the ground shows that its role as the world’s leading state sponsor of terror is unchanged. So, too, is its role in aiding the ongoing war on Israel’s existence.

As Haaretz reports:

During his interrogation, [Hamas operative Ibrahim] Sha’er also told of the links between Iran and Hamas, under which Iran has transferred military support into the Gaza Strip to strengthen the organization. The Iranians provide funds, advanced weaponry and electronic equipment such as equipment for disrupting radio communications to bring down Israeli unmanned aerial vehicles over Gaza, Sha’er told the Shin Bet. Iran has also trained Gaza fighters in the use of hang gliders for the purpose of penetrating into Israel, he said.

Perhaps to Obama and Kerry, these efforts should be considered minor annoyances to Israel. After all, what possible impact can terror attacks or giving Hamas the ability to wage and sustain a new war against Israel have to do with Israel’s existence? The Israeli military is strong and presumably is capable of dealing with anything that Hamas can come up with. Perhaps, the same is true of Hezbollah, which even Kerry admitted to Goldberg, had 80,000 rockets pointed at Israel.

The point is that Iran using its wealth and military know-how to build up Hezbollah (which operates as an Iranian surrogate, even sending its fighters into Syria to bolster Iran’s ally Bashar Assad) and now Hamas isn’t a mere detail to be swept under the rug. Nor is it tangential to the main thrust of Iranian foreign policy, as Khamenei’s new book makes plain.

Moreover, despite the administration’s blind faith in a shift in Iran’s policies once the nuclear deal is put into effect, there’s no evidence that the flood of cash into Tehran’s coffers will do anything but encourage it to continue its efforts to have its terrorist auxiliaries wage war on Israel.

To the contrary, once the deal sneaks through Congress and Obama begins the process of suspending sanctions by executive order and the Europeans begin a Tehran gold rush, the incentive to regard violations of any of the understandings as too minor to provoke a break will be too great. Kerry may speak of snapping back sanctions, but it’s clear the will to do so on the part of the West will be lacking.

That means that not only will Iran spend the next decade preparing for building its own bomb. It will also spend that time employing its wealth in its struggle for regional hegemony, a key part of which is its surrogate war on Israel. Once the deal expires, Hamas and Hezbollah won’t just be increasingly annoying Israel with deadly terror funded by Iran. They’ll then have a nuclear umbrella. At best, Israel — and moderate Arab states — will live under a terrible threat. The worst-case scenario is too awful to contemplate.

That means that contrary to Kerry’s belief about Iran having no plans in place to eliminate Israel, the entire process that will unfold from the deal is part and parcel of just such a plan. The only difference is that unlike past efforts, what will follow will happen while it has become America’s diplomatic and business partner. That is more than enough reason for anyone who cares about U.S. security, its interests in the Middle East and Israel’s survival, to rethink the deal.

 

Advances and Secret Information on Hacking of Classified Systems

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Hacking never has the sizzle when it comes to terror or scandals, yet it is the cheapest and most effective means of destruction.

So, below are some items you cannot overlook.

A few weeks ago, the unclassified email and information system at the Pentagon, mostly used by the Joint Chiefs of Staff was taken offline due to suspicious malware activity. That system is back online as of this week after all clues pointed to the hack by Russians which led to up to 4000 Pentagon employees losing access to email.

***

Then it has been determined the Chinese have accessed top government officials private emails since 2010.

Chinese hackers have been accessing the private mails of some top United States officials since April of 2010, which coincides with Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state and her decision to use a private email server, Morning Joe’s Willie Geist reported Tuesday.

“The email grab, first code-named Dancing Panda, targeted top national security and trade officials,” Geist said. “It continued as late as 2014. The timing does overlap with Hillary Clinton’s time as secretary of state and her use of a private email server.”

“Many” top officials have been hacked, according to a high-level intelligence source and a top-secret document obtained by NBC News.

***

Now comes a global network of hacking and their successful and criminal activities.

Exposing a new front in cybercrime, U.S. authorities broke up an alleged insider trading ring that relied on computer hackers to pilfer corporate press announcements and then profited by trading on the sensitive information before it became public.

In morning raids in Georgia and Pennsylvania, federal agents arrested five men in the plot, while four others indicted on hacking and securities fraud charges remain at large.

The hackers, who are thought to be in Ukraine and possibly Russia, allegedly infiltrated the computer servers of PRNewswire Association LLC, Marketwired and Business Wire, a unit of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., over a five-year period.

They siphoned more than 100,000 press releases including corporate data on earnings that could be used to anticipate stock market moves and make profitable trades. The hackers passed the information to associates in the U.S., who allegedly used it to buy and sell shares of dozens of companies, including Panera Bread Co., Boeing Co., Hewlett-Packard Co., Caterpillar Inc. and Oracle Corp., through retail brokerage accounts. A must read for the rest of the details is here.

***

Most chilling of all is the forward leaning and creative uses of drones.

LAS VEGAS, Nev. – Forget Facebook drones that broadcast Wifi. The future is drones that hack from above. A company called Aerial Assault has turned a quadcopter into a flying hacker that scans the world below for insecure devices and vulnerable Wifi ports. Its makers say they built the tool for penetration testing — to help “good guys” diagnose their own weaknesses — but they concede that with a bit of modification, it could be used to exploit those vulnerabilities and install malware from the air. This is why it’s paramount to get your I.T. network looked at by a penetration testing company, you may think this is a scary thing for your company to undergo however, it will actually prevent people (hackers) from stealing your companies information as all of the weak spots would of been identified and then rectified.

The unnamed drone, which may be the first unmanned aerial penetration tool for sale to the public, was on display at the DEF CON hacker conference here last week. It uses a small Raspberry Pi computer running the Kali Linux penetration tester software with the broadcast range extended by alpha radio antennas. It will retail for $2,500 when the Web site goes up in a few days, its makers say.

“We’ve set it up so it does some basic [penetration] testing stuff and coordinates all that data with GPS coordinates from the flight controller. From that, you can extend it with every type of capability that you want Kali Linux to do,” said David Jordan, a representative from Aerial Assault who was selling it on the floor at the DEF CON conference in Las Vegas, Nevada on Sunday.

While the drone isn’t specifically designed to distribute malware, Jordan acknowledged it could be modified to do so. “It is up to the user to decide what they do with it. If the user, they have Raspberry Pi with Kali on it, they can reprogram custom scripts. That’s good for doing more extensive [penetration] testing. But, you know, scripts can be whatever they are,” he said. “Our intended use is for pentesters to be able to diagnose vulnerabilities and help people understand what their Wifi accessibility is, even up in the air.”

 

Plea Deal for 7th Indictment in Brian Terry’s Murder

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In August of 2014, per the Justice Department, Rosario Rafael Burboa-Alvarez became the 7th man charged in the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. Burboa was part of the rip-crew and recruited others for continued operations.

The rip crew did not have weapons on them when their backpacks were searched, but the weapons they used were instead in a hidden cached location and retrieved by the rip crew only hours later.

He and others were monitored by several U.S. agencies that included ATF, FBI and DEA. Yet he is a happier man, due to a plea deal. He pled guilty to the death of Brian Terry.

N4T Investigators: Plea deal given to man indicted in murder of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry

One of the men charged in the murder of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry pleaded guilty to one count of murder, Monday morning. Once a potential candidate for the death penalty after the murder of the agent, the drawn up plea deal now states that the U.S. and the defendant will ask for 360 months imprisonment, with credit for time served since his arrest in October 2012.

The Justice Department indicted Rosario Rafael Burboa Alvarez last summer in connection with the killing. Alvarez was identified as the recruiter for the rip-off crew that ran into Terry’s elite BORTAC unit in the desert in December 2010. Terry was killed in the ensuing gunfight with the rip-off crew and later two AK-47 variants found at the crime scene were identified as part of the notorious Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives gunwalking operation, Operation Fast and Furious. The scandalous operation was supposed to link guns bought at a Phoenix-area gunstore to cartel gunmen trafficking the weapons to Mexico. Instead, ATF lost more than 2,000 of those weapons. Resulting congressional investigations found that the men linked to the gun purchases were being monitored by different U.S. federal agencies like DEA, the FBI and ATF, but agents weren’t sharing the information with the other agencies.

Burboa was often identified in federal search warrants and charging papers as the recruiter of the group. Burboa, the U.S. said, recruited rip-off crews to rob drug smugglers of their marijuana loads, then paid them after they performed the robbery and returned to Sinaloa. In early December, the rip-off crew entered the U.S. from Mexico, retrieved a stash of weapons and food and went to work, hunting smugglers. Instead, they encountered Terry’s tactical unit that had taken position at the top of a wash.

As part of the plea agreement, the United States agreed not to execute Burboa and to dismiss all other charges against him, including charges of interfering with federal officers and killing Terry with “malice aforethought” the second charge in the superseding indictment.

The plea deal also notes that Burboa had already been ordered expelled from the U.S., though it is not clear if the expulsion order derives from Terry’s murder or from a previous crime.

Burboa’s 30 year sentence is in line with the sentence handed to Manuel Osorio-Arellanes, the man wounded during the firefight. Osorio-Arellanes faced life but was ultimately sentenced to 30 years in 2012. Jaime Avila, Jr., the Operation Fast and Furious gunbuyer who purchased the two AK-47s found at the murder scene was also sentenced in 2012. He received a 57 month sentence.

White House Continues to Ignore Russian Aggressions and Violations

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First, Russia has laid claim to territory in the Artic and the White House waved off any concern.

Then the White House left the matter of seizing the chemical weapons being used by Bashir al Assad in Syria to Russia while chlorine and napalm is being used to kill people in Syria today.

Then Russia and several other countries within BRICS have established a large fund and alternative currency system bypassing all Western monetary funds and the White House along with the U.S. Treasury looks the other way.

Russia has hacked into classified and protected government computer networks with no consequence even while Russia bombers have flown within airspace challenging NORAD with provocative aggressions.

Wait, there is more.

In part from the FreeBeacon:

The White House is blocking the release of a Pentagon risk assessment of Russia’s violation of the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty, according to a senior House leader.

Rep. Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee, disclosed the existence of the Pentagon assessment last month and said the report is needed for Congress’ efforts to address the problem in legislation.

“As we look to the near-term future, we need to consider how we’re going to respond to Russia’s INF violations,” Rogers said in an Air Force Association breakfast July 8. “Congress will not continue to tolerate the administration dithering on this issue.”

Rogers said the assessment was conducted by chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey, and noted that it outlines potential responses to the treaty breach.

However, Rogers noted that the assessment “seems to stay tied up in the White House.”

At the Pentagon, spokesman Capt. Greg Hicks said: “The Chairman’s assessment of Russia’s Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty violation is classified and not releasable to the public.”

Also from FNC in part:

Two Russian warships have docked in northern Iran for a series of naval training exercises with the Islamic Republic, according to Persian-language reports translated by the CIA’s Open Source Center.

The two Russian ships docked in Iran’s Anzali port on Sunday and will hold “joint naval exercises during the three-day stay of the warships in Iran,” according to a Persian-language report in Iran’s state-controlled Fars News Agency.

“The [Russian] warships, Volgodonsk and Makhachkala docked in Anzali Port [near the Caspian Sea], in the fourth naval zone, on the afternoon of 9 August,” the report says.

The war exercises come just weeks after Iran and global powers inked a nuclear accord that will provide Iran with billions of dollars in sanctions relief in return for slight restrictions on the country’s nuclear program.

Russian and Iran have grown close in recent years, with delegations from each country regularly visiting one another to ink arms deals and other agreements aimed at strengthening Iran’s nuclear program.

One last item but certainly not last, the Saudis have attempted several times to work with Russia on Syria with no viable solution.

Reuters:

Russia and Saudi Arabia failed in talks on Tuesday to overcome their differences on the fate of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a central dispute in Syria’s civil war that shows no sign of abating despite renewed diplomacy.

Russia is pushing for a coalition to fight Islamic State insurgents — who have seized swathes of northern and eastern Syria — that would involve Assad, a longtime ally of Moscow. But, speaking after talks in Moscow, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir reiterated Riyadh’s stance that Assad must go.

“A key reason behind the emergence of Islamic State was the actions of Assad who directed his arms at his nation, not Islamic State,” Jubeir told a news conference after talks with Russia’s Sergei Lavrov.

So, with these recent events, is the White House intimidated by Russia, cooperating with Russia or just ignoring Russia or perhaps a combination of all three and then exactly why. Your comments are invited.

 

Notice the VA is Running Silent on Failures?

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Leaked Document: 35,000 Combat Vets Denied VA Health Care Enrollment Due To Computer Error

Nearly all are Iraq or Afghanistan War vets.

White House and congressional reporter, The Huffington Post

WASHINGTON — More than 35,000 combat veterans are being denied health care enrollment by the Department of Veterans Affairs because of a computer system error, according to an internal document obtained by The Huffington Post.

M

Page 2 and 3 here.

Scott Davis, a program specialist at the VA’s Health Eligibility Center in Atlanta and a past whistleblower on VA mismanagement, provided HuffPost with a recent VA analysis of the number of combat vets, by city, who are listed as “pending” for health care enrollment because they didn’t complete a so-called means test, which assesses their household income. Many vets have to submit a means test to be enrolled, but it’s not required for combat vets, who are automatically eligible for five years of free care. The policy is spelled out on the VA’s website.

The document shows that 35,093 combat vets who applied for health care aren’t getting it because the VA system has erroneously flagged them as needing to submit a means test. However, there are places that try their best to help combat vets who require help with healthcare as well as finances through va debt management, despite their problems.

“The VA has created an illegal, artificial barrier for people to access care,” Davis said. “We’re not talking about people who didn’t get care because they didn’t want it. We’re talking about people who turned in applications and VA said, ‘No, go into a backlog because you didn’t give us financial information.'”

Combat Change Request document is here.

VA spokeswoman Walinda West confirmed that combat vets aren’t required to provide financial information to be enrolled in health care.

“VA is actively taking action to enroll and further reach out to these Veterans (by telephone and letters) due to the length of time some of these applications have been pending,” West said.

The vast majority of these combat vets served in Iraq or Afghanistan. About 16,000 of them have been pending for more than five years, while about 19,000 have been pending from between one month and five years. Combat vets lose their eligibility for free health care after five years.

The document comes on the heels of another leaked VA document from April showing that nearly one-third of 847,000 vets with pending applications for health care had already died.

Davis contacted the House and Senate veterans affairs committees about the glitch. The House committee reached out to VA officials on Aug. 3 asking for details, but hasn’t heard back yet. A spokeswoman for the Senate committee said committee staff are scheduled to meet with VA officials at the Health Eligibility Center this week and plan to press for information on this issue.

VA management has known about the problem since at least April. Last month, they issued a “change request” directing their systems management staff to create a computer script to “automatically complete a means test” for all pending combat vets.

VA staffers also started working overtime last month to call all 35,000 combat vets to let them know of their pending health care status.

The problem, though, is that nothing has happened since the change request was issued. On top of that, VA staffers are telling combat vets they have to fill out another form agreeing to co-pays before they can be enrolled — even though they already agreed to co-pays in their original application. That’s creating another barrier to enrollment for a group of vets who should never have been listed as pending in the first place.

Here’s the phone script staffers have been using at the Health Eligibility Center:

Davis said there’s a simple solution: go into the computer system, gather the Social Security numbers of combat vets listed as pending, and tell the system they are enrolled immediately. He said VA Secretary Bob McDonald has the authority to direct that change, and arguably a duty to do so since combat vets have been legally entitled to special health care eligibility status since January 2008.

Asked why McDonald hasn’t taken this action, West said the secretary “does not have the legal authority” to automatically enroll vets in health care. But she didn’t clarify whether, specifically, he has the authority to override the VA computer system error that says combat vets need to fill out a means test, which is keeping them from being enrolled.

“We are taking steps to contact and/or enroll these applicants as quickly as possible to ensure all appropriate action is taken and resolved to the satisfaction of those Veterans for whom we are honored to serve,” West said. “We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience that this issue may have caused our Veterans. We are working to get this right.”

HuffPost asked McDonald himself about the problem on Thursday, via a tweet read aloud at a Politico event, but he didn’t address it. Instead, he announced his phone number and said to call him directly.

“I’d be happy to check out their particular instance,” McDonald said to Politico’s Mike Allen, in response to the tweet. “I like to deal with specifics and not generalities. Customer service is about one-on-one care. … You have my phone number.”

HuffPost called and left a message. He didn’t return the call.

This story has been updated with comments from a Senate Veterans Affairs Committee spokeswoman.