Category Archives: The Denise Simon Experience

198 Million US Voters Exposed, Vulnerable/Hearing Scheduled

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Deep Root Analytics behind data breach on 198 million US voters: security firm

Anyone with an internet connection was able to access a huge database of personal information on US voters ahead of 2016 elections, a security firm says. The database helped the Republican Party’s presidential campaign.

A data analytics firm that helped US President Donald Trump’s election campaign exposed personal information on 198 million Americans, a security firm revealed on Monday.

Chris Vickery, a researcher at the consultancy Upguard, discovered a misconfigured database containing information on almost every registered US voter compiled by data analytics company Deep Root Analytics.

The information was used by the Republican National Committee to help win the 2016 presidential race.

The database contained “names, dates of birth, home addresses, phone numbers, and voter registration details,” as well as data described as predicted data about voter behavior on policy preferences and likelihood of choosing a particular candidate.

Upguard said the database “lacked any protection against access” and was available to “anyone with an internet connection.”

It described it as “a treasure trove of political data and modeled preferences used by the Trump campaign.” It said the information was used to help influence potential voters and accurately predict their behavior.

Deep Root takes responsibility

Deep Root released statements confirming that files were accessed without its knowledge. “The data that was accessed was, to the best of our knowledge, this proprietary information as well as voter data that is publicly available and readily provided by state government offices,” the statement said.

“Since this event has come to our attention, we have updated the access settings and put protocols in place to prevent further access.  We take full responsibility for this situation.”

“We do not believe that our systems have been hacked. To date, the only entity that we are aware of that had access to the data was Chris Vickery,” it added.

Data breach hunter

Analyst Chris Vickery, a self-described “data-breach hunter,” last year discovered a breach of 191 million voter records in Mexico. Upguard said the latest leak was the largest known breach of voter data in history, with the equivalent of 10 billion pages of text.

It said the database modeled voters’ position on almost 50 different issues with the files offering insights into the algorithmic strategy used by Trump’s campaign to target voters.

The exposure “raises significant questions about the privacy and security Americans can expect for their most privileged information,” the researchers said.

“It also comes at a time when the integrity of the US electoral process has been tested by a series of cyberassaults against state voter databases, sparking concern that cyber risk could increasingly pose a threat to our most important democratic and governmental institutions.”

Meanwhile:  Image result for electronic voting

A research group in New Jersey has taken a fresh look at postelection polling data and concluded that the number of noncitizens voting illegally in U.S. elections is likely far greater than previous estimates.

As many as 5.7 million noncitizens may have voted in the 2008 election, which put Barack Obama in the White House.

The research organization Just Facts, a widely cited, independent think tank led by self-described conservatives and libertarians, revealed its number-crunching in a report on national immigration.

Just Facts President James D. Agresti and his team looked at data from an extensive Harvard/YouGov study that every two years questions a sample size of tens of thousands of voters. Some acknowledge they are noncitizens and are thus ineligible to vote.

Just Facts’ conclusions confront both sides in the illegal voting debate: those who say it happens a lot and those who say the problem nonexistent.

In one camp, there are groundbreaking studies by professors at Old Dominion University in Virginia who attempted to compile scientifically derived illegal voting numbers using the Harvard data, called the Cooperative Congressional Election Study.

On the other side are the professors who conducted the study and contended that “zero” noncitizens of about 18 million adults in the U.S. voted. The liberal mainstream media adopted this position and proclaimed the Old Dominion work was “debunked.”

The ODU professors, who stand by their work in the face of attacks from the left, concluded that in 2008 as few as 38,000 and as many as 2.8 million noncitizens voted.

Mr. Agresti’s analysis of the same polling data settled on much higher numbers. He estimated that as many as 7.9 million noncitizens were illegally registered that year and 594,000 to 5.7 million voted.

These numbers are more in line with the unverified estimates given by President Trump, who said the number of ballots cast by noncitizens was the reason he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton.

Last month, the president signed an executive order setting up a commission to try to find on-the-ground truth in illegal voting. Headed by Vice President Mike Pence, the panel also will look at outdated voter lists across the nation with names of dead people and multiple registrants.

For 2012, Just Facts said, 3.2 million to 5.6 million noncitizens were registered to vote and 1.2 million to 3.6 million of them voted.

Mr. Agresti lays out his reasoning in a series of complicated calculations, which he compares to U.S. Census Bureau figures for noncitizen residents. Polls show noncitizens vote overwhelmingly Democratic.

“The details are technical, but the figure I calculated is based on a more conservative margin of sampling error and a methodology that I consider to be more accurate,” Mr. Agresti told The Washington Times.

He believes the Harvard/YouGov researchers based their “zero” claim on two flawed assumptions. First, they assumed that people who said they voted and identified a candidate did not vote unless their names showed up in a database.

“This is illogical, because such databases are unlikely to verify voters who use fraudulent identities, and millions of noncitizens use them,” Mr. Agresti said.

He cites government audits that show large numbers of noncitizens use false IDs and Social Security numbers in order to function in the U.S., which could include voting.

Second, Harvard assumed that respondent citizens sometimes misidentified themselves as noncitizens but also concluded that noncitizens never misidentified themselves as citizens, Mr. Agresti said.

“This is irrational, because illegal immigrants often claim they are citizens in order to conceal the fact that they are in the U.S. illegally,” he said.

Some of the polled noncitizens denied they were registered to vote when publicly available databases show that they were, he said.

This conclusion, he said, is backed by the Harvard/YouGov study’s findings of consumer and vote data matches for 90 percent of participants but only 41 percent of noncitizen respondents.

As to why his numbers are higher than the besieged ODU professors’ study, Mr. Agresti said: “I calculated the margin of sampling error in a more cautious way to ensure greater confidence in the results, and I used a slightly different methodology that I think is more accurate.”

There is hard evidence outside of polling that noncitizens do vote. Conservative activists have conducted limited investigations in Maryland and Virginia that found thousands of aliens were registered.

These inquiries, such as comparing noncitizen jury pool rejections to voter rolls, captured just a snapshot. But conservatives say they show there is a much broader problem that a comprehensive probe by the Pence commission could uncover.

The Public Interest Legal Foundation, which fights voter fraud, released one of its most comprehensive reports last month.

Its investigation found that Virginia removed more than 5,500 noncitizens from voter lists, including 1,852 people who had cast more than 7,000 ballots. The people volunteered their status, most likely when acquiring driver’s licenses. The Public Interest Legal Foundation said there are likely many more illegal voters on Virginia’s rolls who have never admitted to being noncitizens.

Here comes the Congressional hearing: Image result for electronic voting NYTimes

The Senate Intelligence Committee will hold a hearing on U.S. election security Wednesday.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), who is a part of that probe into alleged Russian meddling, will be playing a leading role. Warner says there are states that have not publicly come forward to share that the Russians tried to hack their elections in 2016.

“I’m not trying to embarrass any state. I just want to make sure that Americans realize how serious this threat is,” Warner said.

Warner is working with Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) this week to learn more about the nation’s election systems.

Hearings this week on Capitol Hill will cover Russia’s cyber efforts during the 2016 race, America’s response efforts, and potential threats to future elections.

“We have elections obviously this year in Virginia. I want to make sure that the integrity of our election system is safe from hacking and I’m not sure we’re fully prepared,” Warner said.

While Warner says Russia was not able to change any vote totals, more steps must be taken.

“If you can get into the overall statewide voter file, you could do some mischief. So I just want to make sure that we’re on guard,” Warner said.

One issue Warner raises is that if states faced hacking attempts in 2016, the federal government views them as a victim, and it’s up to the state to come forward.

“It’s up to the state to be willing to volunteer that. I don’t think that’s smart, is it in our country’s security to keep secret the fact that it was literally many many more states?” Warner said.

Virginia just held primaries last week, and now it’s time for the commonwealth to prepare for the general election in the fall.

“We’ve got to redouble our efforts to make sure that our most critical democratic process of free and fair elections continue to be free, fair and non-disputable,” Warner said.

Wednesday’s hearing is set to begin at 9:30 a.m. in Washington, D.C.

 

 

The Slow Death of Britain and Europe

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There have been a number of terror attacks in recent weeks in Britain and across Europe. No one is willing to discuss the causes for fear of retribution by migrant groups, religious organizations and government leaders.

The most recent attack occurred when Darren Osbourne, originally from Whales rented a van and ran into several people outside the Finsbury Park mosque killing one and injuring several others. He is being charged with terror activities. Islamists have been waiting for this reckoning and the powder keg continues to smolder.

The Finsbury Park mosque has a nasty history.

*** Moving on to yet another secret in Britain…

Why Did British Police Ignore Pakistani Gangs Abusing 1,400 Rotherham Children? Political Correctness

A story of rampant child abuse—ignored and abetted by the police—is emerging out of the British town of Rotherham. Until now, its scale and scope would have been inconceivable in a civilized country.  Its origins, however, lie in something quite ordinary: what one Labour MP called “not wanting to rock the multicultural community boat.”

Imagine the following case. A fourteen-year old girl is taken into care by the social services unit of the town where she lives, because her parents are drug-addicted, and she has been neglected and is not turning up in school. She is one of many, for that is the way in Britain today. And local government entities—Councils—can be ordered by the courts to stand in for parents of neglected children. The Council places the girl in a home, where she is kept with others under supervision from the social services department. The home is regularly visited by young men who try to entice the girls into their cars, so as to give them drugs and alcohol, and then coerce them into sex.

***

The girl, who is lonely and uncared for, meets a man outside the home, who promises a trip to the cinema and a party with children of her age. She falls into the trap. After she has been raped by a group of five men she is told that, if she says a word to anyone, she will be taken from the home and beaten. When, after the episode is repeated, she threatens to go to the police, she is taken into the countryside, doused in petrol, and told that she is going to be set alight, unless she promises to tell no one of the ordeal.

Social workers tell girls they cannot help them

Meanwhile she must accept weekly abuse, in return for drugs and alcohol. Soon she finds herself being taken to other towns in the area, and hired out for sexual purposes to other men. She is distraught and depressed, and at the point when she can stand it no longer, she goes to the police. She can only stutter a few words, and cannot bring herself to accuse anyone in particular. Her complaint is dismissed on the grounds that any sex involved must have been consensual. The social worker in charge of her case listens to her complaint, but tells her that she cannot act unless the girl identifies her abusers. But when the girl describes them the social worker switches off with a shrug and says that she can do nothing. Her father, his drug habit notwithstanding, has tried to keep contact with his daughter and suspects what is happening. But when he goes to the police, he is arrested for obstruction and charged with wasting police time.

Over the two years of her ordeal the girl makes several attempts on her own life, and eventually ends up abandoned and homeless, without an education and with no prospect of a normal life.

Impossible, you will say, that such a thing could happen in Britain. In fact it is only one of over 1,400 cases, all arising during the course of the last fifteen years in the South Yorkshire town of Rotherham, all involving vulnerable girls either in Council care or inadequately protected by their families from gangs of sexual predators. Almost no arrests have been made, no social workers or police officers have been reprimanded, and until recently the matter was dismissed by all those responsible as a matter of no real significance. Increasing public awareness of the problem, however, led to complaints, triggering a series of official reports. The latest report, from Professor Alexis Jay, former chief inspector of social work in Scotland, gives the truth for the first time, in 153 disturbing pages. One fact stands out above all the horrors detailed in the document, which is that the girl victims were white, and their abusers Pakistani.

 ***
Sociologists convinced government that the police are racist

Fifteen years ago, when these crimes were just beginning, the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry into the conduct of the British police was made by Sir William Macpherson a High Court judge. The immediate occasion had been a murder in which the victim was black, the perpetrators white, and the behaviour of the investigating police lax and possibly prejudiced. The report accused the police – not just those involved in the case, but the entire police force of the country – of ‘institutionalised racism’. This piece of sociological newspeak was, at the time, very popular with leftist sociologists. For it made an accusation which could not be refuted by anyone who had the misfortune to be accused of it.

However well you behaved, however scrupulously you treated people of different races and without regard to their ethnic identity or the colour of their skin, you would be guilty of ‘institutionalised racism’, simply on account of the institution to which you belonged and on behalf of which you were acting. Not surprisingly, sociologists and social workers, the vast majority of whom are professionally disposed to believe that middle class society is incurably racist, latched on to the expression. MacPherson too climbed onto the bandwagon since, at the time, it was the easiest and safest way to wash your hands in public, to say that I, at least, am not guilty of the only crime that is universally recognised and everywhere in evidence.

Police more concerned with political correctness than crime

The result of this has been that police forces lean over backwards to avoid the accusation of racism, while social workers will hesitate to intervene in any case in which they could be accused of discriminating against ethnic minorities. Matters are made worse by the rise of militant Islam, which has added to the old crime of racism the new crime of ‘Islamophobia’. No social worker today will risk being accused of this crime. In Rotherham a social worker would be mad, and a police officer barely less so, to set out to investigate cases of suspected sexual abuse, when the perpetrators are Asian Muslims and the victims ethnically English. Best to sweep it under the carpet, find ways of accusing the victims or their parents or the surrounding culture of institutionalised racism, and attending to more urgent matters such as the housing needs of recent immigrants, or the traffic offences committed by those racist middle classes.

Americans too are familiar with this syndrome. Political correctness among sociologists comes from socialist convictions and the tired old theories that produce them. But among ordinary people it comes from fear. The people of Rotherham know that it is unsafe for a girl to take a taxi-ride from someone with Asian features; they know that Pakistani Muslims often do not treat white girls with the respect that they treat girls from their own community. They know, and have known over fifteen years, that there are gangs of predators on the look-out for vulnerable girls, and that the gangs are for the most part Asian young men who see English society not as the community to which they belong, but as a sexual hunting ground. But they dare not express this knowledge, in either words or deed. Still less do they dare to do so if their job is that of social worker or police officer. Let slip the mere hint that Pakistani Muslims are more likely than indigenous Englishmen to commit sexual crimes and you will be branded as a racist and an Islamophobe, to be ostracised in the workplace and put henceforth under observation.

Rotherham Town Hall. (Wikipedia) Rotherham Town Hall, Wikipedia

No One Will Be Fired

This would matter less if fear had no consequences. Unfortunately political correctness causes people not merely to disguise their beliefs but to refuse to act on them, to accuse others who confess to them, and in general to go along with policies that have been forced on the British people by minority groups of activists. The intention of the activists is to disrupt and dismantle the old forms of social order. They believe that our society is not just racist, but far too comfortable, far too unequal, far too bound up with fuddy-duddy old ways that are experienced by people at the bottom of society – the working classes, the immigrants, the homeless, the illegals – as oppressive and demeaning. They enthusiastically propagate the doctrines of political correctness as a way of taking revenge on a social order from which they feel alienated.

Ordinary people are so intimidated by this that they repeat the doctrines, like religious mantras which they hope will keep them safe in hostile territory. Hence people in Britain have accepted without resistance the huge transformations that have been inflicted on them over the last thirty years, largely by activists working through the Labour Party. They have accepted immigration policies that have filled our cities with disaffected Muslims, many of whom have now gone to fight against us in Syria and Iraq. They have accepted the growth of Islamic schools in which children are taught to prepare themselves for jihad against the surrounding social order. They have accepted the constant denigration of their country, its institutions and its inherited religion, for the simple reason that these things are theirs and therefore tainted with forbidden loyalties.

And when the truth is expressed at last, nobody is fired, no arrests are made, and the elected Police and Communities Commissioner for Rotherham, although forced to resign from the Labour Party, refuses to resign from his job. After a few weeks all will have been swept under the carpet, and the work of destruction can resume.

 

 

 

Media of The Strange Death of Europe

The Strange Death of Europe is a highly personal account of a continent and culture caught in the act of suicide. Declining birth-rates, mass immigration and cultivated self-distrust and self-hatred have come together to make Europeans unable to argue for themselves and incapable of resisting their own comprehensive change as a society. This book is not only an analysis of demographic and political realities, but also an eyewitness account of a continent in self-destruct mode. It includes reporting from across the entire continent, from the places where migrants land to the places they end up, from the people who appear to welcome them in to the places which cannot accept them. Told from this first-hand perspective, and backed with impressive research and evidence, the book addresses the disappointing failure of multiculturalism, Angela Merkel’s U-turn on migration, the lack of repatriation and the Western fixation on guilt. Murray travels to Berlin, Paris, Scandinavia, Lampedusa and Greece to uncover the malaise at the very heart of the European culture, and to hear the stories of those who have arrived in Europe from far away. In each chapter he also takes a step back to look at the bigger issues which lie behind a continent’s death-wish, answering the question of why anyone, let alone an entire civilisation, would do this to themselves? He ends with two visions of Europe – one hopeful, one pessimistic – which paint a picture of Europe in crisis and offer a choice as to what, if anything, we can do next. – See more at: http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-strange-death-of-europe-9781472942241/#sthash.LFXH2Clt.dpuf

Per Obama: ‘You Cant Have the Documents for 5 Years’

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Sheesh, was there a grand opening in Chicago of the Obama Presidential Library that went unreported or something? Is there some extraordinary authority that select government documents became Obama’s exclusive property by some weird executive order perhaps? Was there some tractor-trailer that pulled up to the White House in the last days of the Obama administration that boxes of government property were stolen and smuggled to parts unknown?
As of a month ago, ground was not yet broken:

Judicial Watch: Obama NSC Advisor Susan Rice’s Unmasking Material is at Obama Library

Records Sought by Judicial Watch May Remain Closed to the Public for Five Years

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today announced that the National Security Council (NSC) on May 23, 2017, informed it by letter that the materials regarding the unmasking by Obama National Security Advisor Susan Rice of “the identities of any U.S. citizens associated with the Trump presidential campaign or transition team” have been removed to the Obama Library.

The NSC will not fulfill an April 4 Judicial Watch request for records regarding information relating to people “who were identified pursuant to intelligence collection activities.”

The agency also informed Judicial Watch that it would not turn over communications with any Intelligence Community member or agency concerning the alleged Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential election; the hacking of DNC computers; or the suspected communications between Russia and Trump campaign/transition officials. Specifically, the NSC told Judicial Watch:

Documents from the Obama administration have been transferred to the Barack Obama Presidential Library.  You may send your request to the Obama Library.  However, you should be aware that under the Presidential Records Act, Presidential records remain closed to the public for five years after an administration has left office.

Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) April 4 request sought:

1.) Any and all requests for information, analyses, summaries, assessments, transcripts, or similar records submitted to any Intelligence Community member agency or any official, employee, or representative thereof by former National Security Advisor Susan Rice regarding, concerning, or related to the following:

  • Any actual or suspected effort by the Russian government or any individual acting on behalf of the Russian government to influence or otherwise interfere with the 2016 presidential election.
  • The alleged hacking of computer systems utilized by the Democratic National Committee and/or the Clinton presidential campaign.
  • Any actual or suspected communication between any member of the Trump presidential campaign or transition team and any official or employee of the Russian government or any individual acting on behalf of the Russian government.
  • The identities of U.S. citizens associated with the Trump presidential campaign or transition team who were identified pursuant to intelligence collection activities.

2.) Any and all records or responses received by former National Security Advisor Susan Rice and/or any member, employee, staff member, or representative of the National Security Council in response to any request described in part 1 of this request.

3.) Any and all records of communication between any official, employee, or representative of the Department of any Intelligence Community member agency and former National Security Advisor Susan Rice and/or any member, employee, staff member, or representative of the National Security Council regarding, concerning, or related to any request described in Part 1 of this request.

The time frame for this request was January 1, 2016, to the April 4, 2017.

While acknowledging  in its FOIA request that “we are cognizant of the finding by the Court of Appeals … that [the NSC] “does not exercise sufficiently independent authority to be an ‘agency’ for purposes of the Freedom of Information Act,” Judicial Watch argued:

The records sought in this request pertain to actions by the former National Security Advisor that demonstrate a much higher degree of independent authority than was contemplated by the court; specifically, the issuance of directives to the Intelligence Community related to the handling of classified national security information…

The recent revelations of the role of Susan Rice in the unmasking the names of U.S. citizens identified in the course of intelligence collection activities and the potential that her actions contributed to the unauthorized disclosure of classified national security information are matters of great public interest.

Judicial Watch has filed six FOIA lawsuits related to the surveillance, unmasking, and illegal leaking targeting President Trump and his associates (see here, here, here, here, here and here).

“Prosecutors, Congress, and the public will want to know when the National Security Council shipped off the records about potential intelligence abuses by the Susan Rice and others in the Obama White House to the memory hole of the Obama Presidential Library,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.  “We are considering our legal options but we hope that the Special Counsel and Congress also consider their options and get these records.”

 

Are we Forgetting about bin Laden’s Son, Hamza?

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Primer: Hamza bin Ladin was added to the U.S. terror list with Barack Obama amending a George W. Bush Executive Order # 13224.

In this image made from video broadcast by the Qatari-based satellite television station Al-Jazeera Wednesday, Nov. 7, 2001, a young boy, left, identified as Hamza bin Laden holds what the Taliban says is a piece of U.S. helicopter wreckage in Ghazni, Afghanistan on Monday, Nov. 5, 2001.

Newsweek: The foothills of the Spin Ghar mountain range, two dozen miles south of Jalalabad in the borderland between Afghanistan and Pakistan, were once home to hundreds of olive plantations. For tens of thousands of acres, there used to be farms clustered along the banks of the Nangarhar Canal, a monumental hydroelectric irrigation project completed in the 1960s, when Afghanistan was safe and liberal enough to form a regular stop on the hippie trail from Europe to India and the Far East. By the turn of the new millennium, however, more than 20 years of continuous warfare had almost destroyed the canal’s capacity to pump water to the groves, all but killing what had once been a flourishing business.

One day in the fall of 2001, with yet another foreign invasion brewing, a father sat with three of his young sons in the shade of one of the few remaining olive trees. Together, they performed a simple farewell ceremony. To each of the three boys, the father gave a misbaha—a set of prayer beads symbolizing the 99 names of God in classical Arabic. Then the father took his leave and disappeared into the mountains, heading for a familiar redoubt known as the Black Cave—or, in the local Pashto language, Tora Bora. “It was as if we pulled out our livers and left them there,” one of the sons recalled in a letter in 2009.

The boy who wrote that letter was Hamza bin Laden, a son of Osama bin Laden, who was then the leader of Al-Qaeda. Hamza was to spend most of the next decade in captivity. He grew up behind bars, missing his father deeply. “How many times, from the depths of my heart, I wished to be beside you,” Hamza wrote to him in the letter. “I remember every smile that you smiled at me, every word that you spoke to me and every look that you gave me.”

Hamza grew up with a fervor for jihad and a determination to follow in the footsteps of his notorious father. And toward the end of his life, the older bin Laden began grooming Hamza for a leadership role. He even made plans for Hamza to join him in his secret compound in Abbottabad—the place where Navy SEALs ultimately shot him dead. But 16 years after their farewell under that olive tree, Hamza’s emergence as a jihadi leader, along with several of his father’s most trusted and competent lieutenants, portends an Al-Qaeda resurgence.

Today, it might seem like the Islamic State group is strong, as its followers attack and kill innocents in London and Manchester. But its power is dwindling, as it loses men and territory in Iraq and Syria thanks to an assault by Iraqi, Kurdish and American forces. Meanwhile, Hamza’s story—based on books, court documents, open-source intelligence, Al-Qaeda videos and records seized from his father’s compound after his death in 2011, among other things—shows how ISIS’s parent organization, Al-Qaeda, is making a comeback—one with potentially deadly consequences for the West and the rest of the world.

Three Jihadi Muskateers

In the months after 9/11 and the fall of the Taliban, as the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, bin Laden family members and high-ranking Al-Qaeda figures escaped to the Shiite stronghold of Iran. That may seem like a surprising destination for some of the world’s most fervent Sunni extremists—men who pepper their public utterances with slurs about their Shiite rivals. But in the wake of the attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., Iran was the one place in the Muslim world where America’s military and law enforcement apparatus could not apprehend them. The Iranian authorities deported most of the Al-Qaeda members they captured, but they held on to a few high-value detainees to use as bargaining chips in hostage negotiations and other sticky situations. Among these valuable hostages were Hamza and his mother, Khayria, as well as three key figures: Abu Khayr al-Masri, the head of the Al-Qaeda’s political committee, Abu Mohammed al-Masri, the head of its training camps, and Saif al-Adel, its chief of security and tactician.

Immediately following their arrest in Shiraz in April 2003, those three men were hauled off to Tehran and jailed for around 20 months in the dungeons of a building belonging to Iran’s feared intelligence apparatus. The top tier of Al-Qaeda and their families were held incommunicado and without charge. Around the beginning of 2005, they were moved to a spacious military compound with an apartment complex, a soccer field and a mosque, adjacent to a training camp for one of the many Shiite militant groups on Tehran’s payroll. Their families were allowed to join them, though at least one of the detainees suspected this was a ruse to allow the Iranians to keep tabs on potentially troublesome family members.

But the prisoners were restive. For these hardy mujahedeen, suburban comforts only heightened their humiliation. One of them told his captors he would sooner be extradited to Israel than spend any more time in Iran’s gilded cage. In March 2010, the prisoners staged what one detainee later described as “a huge act of disturbance.” Masked, black-clad Iranian troops were ordered to storm the compound. The soldiers beat the men and some of the children and hauled off the senior detainees to solitary confinement, where they stewed for 101 days.

The detainees’ ability to communicate with the outside world seems to have varied over time. At first, they were held, as one U.S. official puts it, “under virtual house arrest, not able to do much of anything.” Phone calls to family members were strictly limited. But the strictures gradually loosened, just as the detainees’ living conditions slowly improved. The Iranian authorities eventually set up a system permitting prisoners to send emails and browse the web, albeit with limited access.

There were other ways of communicating with the outside too. Adel’s father-in-law, Mustafa Hamid, who was held in Iran under looser conditions, visited the main group of detainees every few months. With his greater liberty, Hamid was in a position to serve as courier, and this may be how Adel was able to publish a column on security and intelligence in the house magazine of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Muaskar al-Battar (Camp of the Sword). Other detainees escaped and brought manuscripts with them, written by the detainees; bin Laden’s daughter Iman smuggled out a text called Twenty Guidelines on the Path of Jihad—a book highly critical of ISIS founder Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s violence against civilians in Iraq—and eventually had it published. (The book presaged the conflict that split ISIS from Al-Qaeda years later.)

Despite their restlessness, the detainees managed to create elements of their previous lives behind bars. The men came together five times a day for prayers and conversation at the mosque. The prisoners asked that their children be allowed to attend school—and the authorities said no— but Hamza’s mother, who is well-educated, urged him to pursue learning as best he could, and a group of senior detainees took it upon themselves to educate him in Koranic study, Islamic jurisprudence and the Hadith, a collection of sayings attributed to the Prophet Muhammad. While in custody, Hamza married a daughter of Abu Mohammed al-Masri and had children.

He would never see his father again, but soon he would become just like him—an advocate of violent, radical jihad.

A ‘Lion’ Emerges From His Den

By 2014, Al-Qaeda and ISIS had officially split. ISIS had not only conquered territory in Iraq and Syria but shocked the world, beheading Americans on tape and broadcasting its brutality. In the eyes of the West, Al-Qaeda was no longer the most dangerous extremist group, and ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had become a new bin Laden. To some jihadis, however, Baghdadi was much more: He was the leader prophesized to bring about a worldwide Islamic caliphate.

Baghdadi’s rise came at the expense of Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al-Qaeda’s leader. The Egyptian may have inherited bin Laden’s portfolio and job title, but from his grave under the Indian Ocean, the sheikh could not pass on his aura. In July 2014, as the feud between ISIS and Al-Qaeda grew, Zawahiri renewed his group’s bayat , or loyalty oath, to Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader. At the time, it seemed a smart symbolic move to underline the illegitimacy of Baghdadi’s claim to supremacy. A year later, however, it emerged that Omar had succumbed to tuberculosis in April 2013; Zawahiri and Al-Qaeda had pledged allegiance to a man who had been dead for 15 months. This looked bad for Zawahiri; either he had known Omar was dead and sworn fealty to a cadaver—a grave transgression in Al-Qaeda’s Salafi-jihadi version of Islam—or he had not known and was therefore too far out of the loop to call himself a true emir. The gaffe provoked ridicule from some jihadis, dismay from others. At a time when Zawahiri was already struggling to show his relevance in the age of ISIS, it seemed to confirm the worst fears about his leadership.

But Zawahiri does not stand alone at the prow of Al-Qaeda, and his crew has recently grown stronger—at a time when war with the West and its allies has weakened ISIS. In an audio message recorded in May or June 2015, Zawahiri triumphantly introduced a man he called “a lion from the den of Al-Qaeda.” After four years of silence following his father’s death, Hamza bin Laden’s voice was heard once again, and his words remained faithful to Al-Qaeda’s message. He praised the leaders of Al-Qaeda’s various spinoffs, insulted President Barack Obama as “the black chief of [a] criminal gang,” lauded the attacks on Fort Hood and the Boston Marathon, and called for jihadis to “take the battlefield from Kabul, Baghdad and Gaza to Washington, London, Paris and Tel Aviv.”

In his 2015 statement, Hamza called for the release of imprisoned Al-Qaeda members, singling out the “sheikhs” whom he credits with his education while in captivity, including the Shura big three—Abu Khayr al-Masri, Saif al-Adel and Abu Mohammed al-Masri. “May God release them all,” Hamza entreated.

His prayers were soon answered. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, in the middle of its ascendancy in Yemen, had bombed the Iranian ambassador’s residence in Sanaa in December 2014. Later, it had shot dead an Iranian diplomat who was resisting a kidnapping attempt. The group had also successfully taken two Iranian diplomats alive. Sometime in 2015, it swapped them for Al-Qaeda’s three top leaders in Iran, who got a hero’s welcome in Waziristan.

The returning trio brought with them a combined century of experience in jihad. Abu Mohammed al-Masri had worked with Adel to train Somali militants in the early 1990s and plan the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in East Africa. American intelligence officials have called him Al-Qaeda’s “most experienced and capable operational planner not in U.S. or allied custody.” And then there is Adel, whose long career has included serving in the Egyptian armed forces, helping found Al-Qaeda, precipitating the Black Hawk Down incident in Somalia, acting as a mentor to Zarqawi and serving as Al-Qaeda’s head of security, with intimate involvement in virtually all the organization’s attacks up to and including 9/11. All three men were closely involved in Al-Qaeda’s first major blow against the United States, the embassy bombings of 1998. And after a long absence, all three were now involved in global jihad. (Abu Khayr was killed in a U.S. airstrike in Idlib, Syria, earlier this year.)

Their return came at a time when Al-Qaeda’s main global affiliates had gained in strength, bolstered by the ongoing turmoil in Syria, Yemen and Libya. They have pushed back against ISIS, and in response to ISIS’s recruitment around the world, Zawahiri even announced the formation of a new affiliate. Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, led by a former commander in the Pakistani Taliban, aims to unify Sunni extremist jihadis across the region and “rescue” Muslims living in Bangladesh, Myanmar, Assam, Gujarat and Kashmir. Meanwhile, Al-Qaeda’s Waziristani nerve center, Khorasan, continues to enjoy the protection of the Pakistani Taliban and the powerful Haqqani Network, which has ties to the Pakistani security services.

On May 9, 2016, one day after Zawahiri issued his latest call for unity among the jihadi groups fighting in Syria, Al-Qaeda posted a second audio message from Hamza. Entitled “Jerusalem Is but a Bride Whose Dowry Is Our Blood,” the statement reiterated Zawahiri’s plea for unity and urged jihadis to think of the Syrian conflict as a springboard to the “liberation” of the Palestinian territories. “The road to liberating Palestine,” he said, “is today much shorter compared to before the blessed Syrian revolution.” And as in his previous message, he encouraged “lone wolf” attacks on Jews and Jewish interests around the world.

The implication was clear: Zawahiri was preparing Hamza, the sheikh’s son, to lead. And if ever Al-Qaeda wants to reunite with its own wayward progeny, Hamza embodies that chance.

The B-Movie Vampire

For 20 years, the world has been infected with a virulent disease. The name of this malady is bin Ladenism, and ISIS is merely its most recent symptom. As its impetuous behavior makes clear, the group thinks and acts exclusively in the short term. It succeeded in conquering large swathes of Iraq and Syria because, at first, nobody tried hard to stop it. Within weeks of the advent of American airstrikes, it became clear that ISIS had already reached its high-water mark. As presently conceived, it lacks a long-term future, although some of its members can no doubt look forward to long careers in terrorism.

By contrast, many powerful interests have been trying for a long time to destroy Al-Qaeda, and the group has outflanked them all. Since 9/11, it has increased its membership and its geographic reach. This stateless new Al-Qaeda possesses distinct advantages over ISIS. Its decentralized structure makes it almost impossible to pin down; like a B-movie vampire, try to drive a stake through its heart, and it transforms into a thousand bats and flies somewhere else. Contrast this with ISIS, now forced to defend its self-styled caliphate at high cost. When the world eventually summons the will to rid itself of this criminal movement, it knows where to find it. Not so with Al-Qaeda, whose subgroups stretch out in a loose band across the breadth of two continents, and whose sympathizers pepper the globe. The organization’s fanatic patience, its insistence on playing the long game, has made it far more resilient than anyone expected.

For today’s Al-Qaeda, there is little profit in antagonizing the West with spectacular terrorist attacks. Instead, its strategy for the present involves building up resources and territory in places like Syria, Yemen and North Africa while the world is distracted by the Syria conflict. When ISIS finally crumbles, however, the spotlight will return to Al-Qaeda. At that point, they will strike, and strike hard. With bin Laden’s filial heir and ideological successors firmly back in the fold, and the group’s affiliates making territorial gains in Yemen and elsewhere, Al-Qaeda once again has the means and the opportunity to attack.

Hamza is just waiting for the right time.

Ali Soufan was an FBI supervisory special agent from 1997 to 2005. He now runs the Soufan Group, a private intelligence firm. This story has been adapted from his new book, Anatomy of Terror.

***

Hamza was held under house arrest in Iran, which means, he was being protected until a recent release. Another brother, of an estimated 20-26 children, was Saad, He too was being protected by Iran until 2009 when he left for Pakistan and was killed in a drone strike. It seems the other children/siblings have not taken up the baton of al Qaeda, in fact Omar, the fourth son rejected his father completely. Omar wrote a book about his family and father. Married to a British wife, Zaina, she and Omar live in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia after escaping Iran during a plotted shopping trip. It is alleged that six other siblings remain in Iran. More details here.

Image result for hamza bin laden photos

Not too sure any of this is comforting at all regarding any part of the bin Ladin family and where they currently live….you?

Russia Denied CW Report in Syria, Not so Fast

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When U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson met with Lavrov and Putin a few weeks ago, evidence was presented of chemical weapons use by the Assad regime. As was expected, the Kremlin denied the evidence, they always deny. Further, the Russians demanded their own investigation, which of course wont happen. What is interesting, the report Tillerson presented was not performed by American officials.

But let us go deeper. It is important to introduce the Cyprus branch of Tanzania’s FBME Bank Ltd. and Balec Ventures Limited.

The Cyprus branch of Tanzania’s FBME Bank Ltd may have assisted the Syrian regime in financing and developing its chemical weapons programme by facilitating transactions between a number of shell companies worth hundreds of million dollars which should have raised red flags, a report suggests.

Balec Ventures Limited, a company registered in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) and its owner Issa al-Zeydi, a Syrian national, appear to have played a central role in by-passing US sanctions against Syria, according to a report produced by the London-based accounting firm Ernst & Young (EY) and obtained by the Cyprus Business Mail. EY identified Balec’s link to the Syrian Scientific Studies Research Centre (SSRC), responsible for the development of chemical weapons for Bashar al-Assad’s regime, after the US placed al-Zeydi on its sanctions list.

Balec, registered at P.O. Box 3321, Drake Chambers, Road Town, Tortola, shared the same BVI address with five other companies with mainly Russian or Belorussian ultimate beneficial owners (UBO), and Tredwell Marketing Ltd, the EY report said. The Central Bank of Cyprus (CBC) appears to have suspected Tredwell -which was transacting with Balec and the other five companies- of being linked to SSRC, according to the EY report.

EY did not immediately respond to a request to confirm the authenticity of the report. The Central Bank of Cyprus was not immediately available for comment. The anti-money laundering squad Mokas said that it was unaware of the existence of the report.

The other companies, EY identified for sharing the same address with Balec and Tredwell, were Maribo Group Ltd, Paramia Ltd, GloBalance Group, Osborn Holdings Inc (all operating from Russia with Russian UBOs) and Sunhouse Consulting (operating from Belarus with a Byelorussian UBO).

According to the US Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council directives, uniform standards for federal examinations of financial institutions in the US, “transacting businesses (that) share the same address, or have other address inconsistencies,” are reason for raising a “red flag” for compliance officers in banking.

“Issa Al-Zeydi is the sole ultimate beneficiary of the account, holds a Russian passport, was born in Syria and maintains a Russian address,” EY said in their report. A review revealed that Al-Zeydi’s passport listed Moscow, as his address. Balec’s operating address was Office 31, House 14, Gubkina Street, Moscow, Russia, according to the EY report.

Law firm Hogan Lovells US LLP commissioned the EY report on behalf of FBME. EY looked into 11 notices of finding by the Finance Crime Enforcement Network (FinCEN), a branch of the US Treasury which in July 2014 described FBME as a financial institution of primary laundering concern. FinCEN barred US banks from opening and maintaining correspondent accounts with FBME. The “confidential” EY report is dated December 5, 2014.

FBME challenged at US courts FinCEN’s findings and decision by imposing the fifth measure under the US Patriot Act, to shut it out from the US financial system.

In October 2014, the US included al-Zeydi, together with Ioannis Ioannou, a Cypriot national, and two Cyprus-based companies, Piruseti Enterprises Ltd and Frumineti Investments Ltd, in the list of specially designated nationals of the US Department of Treasury, citing support, including “financial, material, or technological” to the Assad regime on behalf of which they acted. Piruseti and Frumineti were not FBME customers.

“FBME facilitates U.S. sanctions evasion through its extensive customer base of shell companies,” said FinCEN in July 2014 in its notice of finding in relation to the Syrian regime’s SSRC. “For example, at least one FBME customer is a front company for a U.S.-sanctioned Syrian entity, the SSRC, which has been designated as a proliferator of weapons of mass destruction. The SSRC front company used its FBME account to process transactions through the U.S. financial system”.

The FinCEN report prompted the Central Bank of Cyprus to place the FBME Cyprus branch under administration and subsequently resolution. In 2015, the CBC fined FBME €1.2m for failing to adhere to the provisions of anti-money laundering legislation and revoked its licence.

According to FinCEN, the SSRC front company -which in July 2014 it did not name-, “also shared a Tortola, British Virgin Islands address with at least 111 other shell companies, including at least one other additional FBME customer that is subject to international sanctions”.

The EY report was shared with FinCEN, the US Department of Justice, the Bank of Tanzania, which supervised FBME Bank Ltd, the Central Bank of Cyprus, supervisor of FBME Bank (Cyprus) Ltd, the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Commission. The last three bodies were overseeing Cyprus’s bailout programme at the time, which included provisions for tougher measures against money laundering.

As a result of the stricter anti-money laundering rules put in place, Cyprus scored best among a list of 12 analysed countries -including the US, UK, Germany and Australia- in a February 2017 report prepared by the anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International.

“The Bank (FBME) identified Tredwell from a list of 9 FBME customers for which the CBC requested past files from FBME on 08/07/2014 (August 7, 2014),” EY said in their report. “FBME noted that on the list received from the CBC, the comment “SSRC?” was written next to Tredwell”.

On March 19, 2014, five months before the central bank inquired about Tredwell at FBME, Tredwell closed its account and transferred its funds to Armas Marketing Ltd. The UBO of Armas was Ruben Nadra, a Syrian with a Russian Passport, who happened to be Tredwell’s former UBO, while its address was in Seychelles.

On April 10, 2014, the FBME compliance department closed Maribo’s account. It also froze Balec’s account on October 17, and did the same with that of Osborn on May 29, 2014. GloBalance closed its account on May 10, 2011, while by the time of the completion of the report, the Paramia and Sunhouse accounts were open when the report was completed.

The US and other western countries blamed Assad, an ally of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, for the August 2013 attacks with chemical weapons in Ghouta, an area east of Damascus, in which hundreds of civilians lost their lives. The Russian government disputed that Assad, involved for more than six years in a civil war that killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions, was responsible for the attack.

“The business operates in the dealings of securities and shares and has reflected an expected turnover on the account of approximately $10m annually since account inception,” EY said in reference to Balec which included in its business profile other activities such as the wholesale sale of textiles, steel, construction equipment supplies and other goods.

After Balec opened an account at FBME on December 4, 2006, it carried out from that date until July 18, 2014 transactions with other 50 FBME customers, entities and individuals, worth $255.4m (€232.5m), the report said. The firm also carried out additional transactions with other 342 non-FBME customers in the same period totalling $252.6m. The sum of all transactions carried out through FBME totalled $508m.

*** Now enter Michael Weiss with his summary published by CNN.

Money stolen by Russian mob linked to man sanctioned for supporting Syria’s chemical weapons program

An investment group that U.S. authorities say is run by Russian mobsters and linked to the Russian government sent at least $900,000 to a company owned by a businessman tied to Syria’s chemical weapons program, according to financial documents obtained by CNN.

According to a contract and bank records from late 2007 and early 2008, a company tied to a state-backed Russian mafia group, according to U.S. officials, agreed to pay more than $3 million to a company called Balec Trading Ventures, Ltd — supposedly for high-end “furniture.”
Wire transaction records seen by CNN confirm that at least $900,000 was transferred.
Both businesses are registered in the British Virgin Islands.
The company allegedly tied to Russian mafia was called Quartell Trading Ltd., and the U.S. Department of Justice claims it is one of the many vehicles into which millions of dollars of stolen Russian taxpayer money was laundered a decade ago in connection with the so-called “Magnitsky affair,” perhaps the most notorious corruption case in Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
Balec Ventures is owned by Issa al-Zeydi, a Russian whom the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned in 2014 for his connection to the Scientific Studies and Research Center, the hub of Syria’s nonconventional weapons program, including its manufacture of Sarin and VX nerve agents and mustard gas.

The $230 million tax fraud

According to U.S. Congress and the U.S. Department of Justice, a band of Russian mafia called the Klyuev Group consists of past and present officials in the Russian Interior Ministry, two Moscow tax bureaus and the Federal Security Service, or FSB, the domestic intelligence service and successor body to the Soviet KGB.
In 2007, authorities say, the Klyuev Group, colluded to fraudulently seize the ownership of three subsidiary companies connected to a Moscow-based Hermitage Capital Management, then the largest hedge fund in Russia.
The Klyuev Group then fabricated hundreds of millions of dollars in losses for these companies that they had taken over. That enabled them to apply for a tax refund of $230 million.
The entire amount was processed in a single day, Christmas Eve 2007, by Russian tax officials on the Klyuev payroll.
Sergei Magnitsky, the lawyer hired by Hermitage Capital to investigate the theft, uncovered this vast criminal conspiracy and the players behind it. He was arrested in 2008, denied urgent medical care for over a year in pretrial detention and physically tortured before his death in Moscow prison in 2009 at age 37.
In 2012, Congress passed the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, under which some three dozen Russian officials have been sanctioned.
The Kremlin rejects the U.S. version of events. Moscow insists that the lawyer died of “heart failure” and that he was the real tax cheat. A Russian court even put him on trial posthumously and found him guilty in 2013. It marked the first time in Russian history that a corpse was successfully prosecuted.

Follow the money — and dead bodies

Much of the $230 million from the Klyuev Group heist has since been located and frozen in jurisdictions all over the world. “Magnitsky stumbled into more than he realized, and more than we realized even after the passage of the Magnitsky Act,” Daniel Fried, the former U.S. Coordinator for Sanctions Policy, told CNN.
The U.S. Attorney in New York charged Prevezon Holdings, a Cyprus-registered company owned by the son of an influential Russian official, with having purchased Manhattan real estate and opened U.S. bank accounts using some of the pilfered funds. That case was settled in May. In the settlement, Prevezon did not acknowledge any wrongdoing and the U.S. government agreed not to pursue the company in any further litigation tied to this case.
Another related asset forfeiture case is still ongoing in Switzerland where authorities have relied on evidence turned over by Alexander Perepilichny, a Russian expatriate who confessed to having been the principal money launderer for the Klyuev Group before he broke ties with it.

The evidence showed Credit Suisse bank accounts in Switzerland where some of the stolen money had been deposited. One of those Swiss accounts belonged to Quartell Trading, which is Perepilichny’s company — or was before he dropped dead suddenly while jogging near his home in Surrey in November 2012.
At only 44 years-old and not known to have been in ill health, Perepilichny’s death was initially declared “unexplained” by British police until traces of gelsemium, a poisonous flower, were discovered in his stomach.
A state coroner’s inquest into the case began in Britain on June 5 and was upended when BuzzFeed reported a week later that the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the body that oversees all U.S. spy agencies, concluded with “high confidence” that Perepilichnyy was killed on orders by Vladimir Putin.
Citing more than a dozen past and present intelligence officials in the U.S., UK and France, BuzzFeed alleged that the British government was suppressing crucial evidence. BuzzFeed said that the British government refused to comment on the report.
More recently, in late March 2016, a lawyer for Magnitsky’s family nearly died when he fell from the fourth floor of his apartment building, a day before he was due to submit new evidence to a Moscow court.

A dubious transaction

A signed contract dated December 18, 2007 — just days before the Klyuev Group’s fraudulent $230 million refund was processed — show that Perepilichny’s Quartell Trading agreed to buy $3,172,000 worth of high-end “furniture” from Balec Ventures, Issa al-Zeydi’s company.
A copy of a SWIFT transaction also obtained by CNN show that $900,000 of that amount was wired from Quartell Trading to Balec a few weeks later, on January 25, 2008.
It is unclear whether any of the vaguely described items was ever delivered to the listed address, a warehouse in Kharkiv, Ukraine.
Balec’s bank, the Federal Bank of the Middle East (FBME), approved the transaction for filing five days later, on January 30, 2008. Notably, the bank also stamped the document “checked for money laundering purposes.”
Less than a month later, according to the U.S. Justice Department, Quartell received nearly 2 million euro from a Latvian bank account that had received some of the stolen $230 million.
FBME, which was based in Tanzania, could not be reached for comment for this story. In May, the institution was shut down by Tanzania’s central bank because of U.S. accusations that it was “used by its customers to facilitate money laundering, terrorist financing, transnational organized crime, fraud, sanctions evasions and other illicit activity internationally and through the US financial system,” according to the US Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.
There are oddities to Quartell-Balec transaction, according to financial analysts consulted by CNN who have examined the contract and supporting documents.
For one thing, Balec is described by FBME as being commercially engaged in the “buying/selling [of] promissory notes” and the import and export of building materials such as ceramic and marble tiles, timber, steel coils and “furnitures” [sic].
But it has no public profile or corporate website on which to showcase its inventory.

Ties to Assad’s WMD?

The Syria-born Issa al-Zeydi does not have a conspicuous public profile in Russia, apart from a largely inactive social media page on VKontake, the Russian version of Facebook, which CNN has confirmed belongs to the man who owns Balec Ventures.
He graduated in 1964 from Bauman Moscow State Technical University, where he studied engineering.
According to corporate registration records in Russia, al-Zeydi is also the owner and/or CEO of several small companies with next to no capital.
One of these, Aldzhamal Interneshal, claims to work in “non-specialized wholesale trade,” “the production of petroleum products” and the “manufacture of industrial gases.”
He was also the director of Enterprises Ltd. and Fruminenti Investments Ltd., two companies that the U.S. sanctioned in 2014 for their connection to the Scientific Studies and Research Center, Syria’s government agency responsible for developing and producing non-conventional weapons and ballistic missiles,” according to the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).
It is unclear if any of the $900,000 that Quartell wired to Balec went to support the Center.
Following the sarin attack in Syria in April, which prompted President Donald Trump to authorize US airstrikes against a Syrian airbase, the Treasury Department further sanctioned 271 employees of the Scientific Studies and Research Center, describing it as “one of the largest sanctions actions in its history.”
Repeated attempts to contact Issa al-Zeydi in Moscow for this story, using the registered addresses of his Russian-based companies and phone numbers, proved unsuccessful.