Category Archives: The Denise Simon Experience

In 2015: 84 million

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Just imagine, the cyber espionage….industrial espionage….the hacking…..

Do you really want to continue to tell the world about everything you do and who you are connected with on Facebook?

Cybercriminals Making Computer Malware at a Record Rate: Researchers

NBC: Last year was a particularly bad year for hacks and computer intrusions, and it looks like 2016 will only get worse, Panda Security says.

The Spain-based Internet security company said its lab researchers detected and disabled more than 84 million new samples of malware in 2015 — 9 million more than the previous year. The figure means cybercriminals were churning out new malware samples at a rate of more than 230,000 a day throughout 2015.

In fact, more than a quarter (27 percent) of all malware samples ever recorded were produced in 2015, Panda Security said in a news release.

“We predict that the amount of malware created by cybercriminals will continue to grow,” said Luis Corrons, technical director of PandaLabs. “We also can’t forget that the creation of millions of Trojans and other threats corresponds to the cybercriminals’ needs to infect as many users as possible in order to get more money.”

Malware is any type of software that is designed to gain access to and damage or disable a computer.

Trojans, a type of malware disguised as legitimate software, accounted for more than half the malware detected in 2015, according to Panda Security.

China topped the list of countries with the highest rate of infected computers, followed by Taiwan and Turkey. At the other end of the spectrum, nine of the top 10 countries with the lowest rates of infection were in Europe, led by Finland, Norway and Sweden.

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Barack Obama has been a big user of BIG DATA but he experienced a huge firestorm after the exposure of the NSA programs by Edward Snowden. Barack Obama enlisted John Podesta, at the time his chief of staff and now Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign architect to commission a study. Sheesh…but nonetheless, here is what you should read in the findings.

From the White House: Over the past several days, severe storms have battered Arkansas, Oklahoma, Mississippi and other states. Dozens of people have been killed and entire neighborhoods turned to rubble and debris as tornadoes have touched down across the region. Natural disasters like these present a host of challenges for first responders. How many people are affected, injured, or dead? Where can they find food, shelter, and medical attention? What critical infrastructure might have been damaged?

Drawing on open government data sources, including Census demographics and NOAA weather data, along with their own demographic databases, Esri, a geospatial technology company, has created a real-time map showing where the twisters have been spotted and how the storm systems are moving. They have also used these data to show how many people live in the affected area, and summarize potential impacts from the storms. It’s a powerful tool for emergency services and communities. And it’s driven by big data technology.

In January, President Obama asked me to lead a wide-ranging review of “big data” and privacy—to explore how these technologies are changing our economy, our government, and our society, and to consider their implications for our personal privacy. Together with Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker, Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz, the President’s Science Advisor John Holdren, the President’s Economic Advisor Jeff Zients, and other senior officials, our review sought to understand what is genuinely new and different about big data and to consider how best to encourage the potential of these technologies while minimizing risks to privacy and core American values.

Over the course of 90 days, we met with academic researchers and privacy advocates, with regulators and the technology industry, with advertisers and civil rights groups. The President’s Council of Advisors for Science and Technology conducted a parallel study of the technological trends underpinning big data. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy jointly organized three university conferences at MIT, NYU, and U.C. Berkeley. We issued a formal Request for Information seeking public comment, and hosted a survey to generate even more public input.

Today, we presented our findings to the President. We knew better than to try to answer every question about big data in three months. But we are able to draw important conclusions and make concrete recommendations for Administration attention and policy development in a few key areas.

There are a few technological trends that bear drawing out. The declining cost of collection, storage, and processing of data, combined with new sources of data like sensors, cameras, and geospatial technologies, mean that we live in a world of near-ubiquitous data collection. All this data is being crunched at a speed that is increasingly approaching real-time, meaning that big data algorithms could soon have immediate effects on decisions being made about our lives.

The big data revolution presents incredible opportunities in virtually every sector of the economy and every corner of society.

Big data is saving lives. Infections are dangerous—even deadly—for many babies born prematurely. By collecting and analyzing millions of data points from a NICU, one study was able to identify factors, like slight increases in body temperature and heart rate, that serve as early warning signs an infection may be taking root—subtle changes that even the most experienced doctors wouldn’t have noticed on their own.

Big data is making the economy work better. Jet engines and delivery trucks now come outfitted with sensors that continuously monitor hundreds of data points and send automatic alerts when maintenance is needed. Utility companies are starting to use big data to predict periods of peak electric demand, adjusting the grid to be more efficient and potentially averting brown-outs.

Big data is making government work better and saving taxpayer dollars. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have begun using predictive analytics—a big data technique—to flag likely instances of reimbursement fraud before claims are paid. The Fraud Prevention System helps identify the highest-risk health care providers for waste, fraud, and abuse in real time and has already stopped, prevented, or identified $115 million in fraudulent payments.

But big data raises serious questions, too, about how we protect our privacy and other values in a world where data collection is increasingly ubiquitous and where analysis is conducted at speeds approaching real time. In particular, our review raised the question of whether the “notice and consent” framework, in which a user grants permission for a service to collect and use information about them, still allows us to meaningfully control our privacy as data about us is increasingly used and reused in ways that could not have been anticipated when it was collected.

Big data raises other concerns, as well. One significant finding of our review was the potential for big data analytics to lead to discriminatory outcomes and to circumvent longstanding civil rights protections in housing, employment, credit, and the consumer marketplace.

No matter how quickly technology advances, it remains within our power to ensure that we both encourage innovation and protect our values through law, policy, and the practices we encourage in the public and private sector. To that end, we make six actionable policy recommendations in our report to the President:

Advance the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights. Consumers deserve clear, understandable, reasonable standards for how their personal information is used in the big data era. We recommend the Department of Commerce take appropriate consultative steps to seek stakeholder and public comment on what changes, if any, are needed to the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights, first proposed by the President in 2012, and to prepare draft legislative text for consideration by stakeholders and submission by the President to Congress.

Pass National Data Breach Legislation. Big data technologies make it possible to store significantly more data, and further derive intimate insights into a person’s character, habits, preferences, and activities. That makes the potential impacts of data breaches at businesses or other organizations even more serious. A patchwork of state laws currently governs requirements for reporting data breaches. Congress should pass legislation that provides for a single national data breach standard, along the lines of the Administration’s 2011 Cybersecurity legislative proposal.

Extend Privacy Protections to non-U.S. Persons. Privacy is a worldwide value that should be reflected in how the federal government handles personally identifiable information about non-U.S. citizens. The Office of Management and Budget should work with departments and agencies to apply the Privacy Act of 1974 to non-U.S. persons where practicable, or to establish alternative privacy policies that apply appropriate and meaningful protections to personal information regardless of a person’s nationality.

Ensure Data Collected on Students in School is used for Educational Purposes. Big data and other technological innovations, including new online course platforms that provide students real time feedback, promise to transform education by personalizing learning. At the same time, the federal government must ensure educational data linked to individual students gathered in school is used for educational purposes, and protect students against their data being shared or used inappropriately.

Expand Technical Expertise to Stop Discrimination. The detailed personal profiles held about many consumers, combined with automated, algorithm-driven decision-making, could lead—intentionally or inadvertently—to discriminatory outcomes, or what some are already calling “digital redlining.” The federal government’s lead civil rights and consumer protection agencies should expand their technical expertise to be able to identify practices and outcomes facilitated by big data analytics that have a discriminatory impact on protected classes, and develop a plan for investigating and resolving violations of law.

Amend the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. The laws that govern protections afforded to our communications were written before email, the internet, and cloud computing came into wide use. Congress should amend ECPA to ensure the standard of protection for online, digital content is consistent with that afforded in the physical world—including by removing archaic distinctions between email left unread or over a certain age.

We also identify several broader areas ripe for further study, debate, and public engagement that, collectively, we hope will spark a national conversation about how to harness big data for the public good. We conclude that we must find a way to preserve our privacy values in both the domestic and international marketplace. We urgently need to build capacity in the federal government to identify and prevent new modes of discrimination that could be enabled by big data. We must ensure that law enforcement agencies using big data technologies do so responsibly, and that our fundamental privacy rights remain protected. Finally, we recognize that data is a valuable public resource, and call for continuing the Administration’s efforts to open more government data sources and make investments in research and technology.

While big data presents new challenges, it also presents immense opportunities to improve lives, the United States is perhaps better suited to lead this conversation than any other nation on earth. Our innovative spirit, technological know-how, and deep commitment to values of privacy, fairness, non-discrimination, and self-determination will help us harness the benefits of the big data revolution and encourage the free flow of information while working with our international partners to protect personal privacy. This review is but one piece of that effort, and we hope it spurs a conversation about big data across the country and around the world.

Read the Big Data Report.

See the fact sheet from today’s announcement.

‘Putin is corrupt’ says US Treasury

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But like Iran, John Kerry and the White House are protecting Russia and never want to upset the Kremlin.

Syria’s leading opposition coalition is to decide Tuesday whether to attend peace talks in Geneva, following a tense meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, a member told AFP on Monday.

The member of the so-called High Negotiations Committee said Kerry applied “pressure” during a weekend meeting in Saudi Arabia, warning the opposition risked “losing friends” if they failed to attend the talks.

Fuad Aliko said the Committee would meet Tuesday to make a final decision on whether to attend the Geneva talks.

The Saturday meeting with Kerry was “neither comfortable, nor positive”, said Aliko, a member of the Committee’s designated delegation for the talks.

Kerry told the Committee’s chief Riad Hijab that they risked “losing friends”, Aliko said.

“This talk means a halt to political and military support to the opposition,” he added.

Syria’s warring parties were scheduled to begin the latest round of talks aimed at ending the country’s conflict on Monday in Geneva.

But they have been delayed at least in part by a dispute over who will represent the opposition.

The High Negotiations Committee, a coalition of opposition bodies formed last year in Riyadh, insists it should send a sole opposition delegation to the talks.

But the Committee excludes Syria’s main Kurdish force and other opposition figures, and Russia has branded some of its components as “terrorist” organizations.

Moscow reportedly wants to see excluded members allowed to participate in the talks either as part of the Committee’s delegation or in a second opposition delegation.

But the Committee has roundly rejected either option and threatened to boycott the talks altogether if other opposition figures are included.

Aliko said Kerry applied “pressure” during the Saturday talks, though he stopped short of saying the U.S. diplomat had used threats.

“He tried with all his efforts to insist on the necessity of us attending, saying we’d be able to do whatever we want there, but he was not able to reassure us that we are going into negotiations, rather than nothing more than a dialogue,” he said.

“We want negotiations that revolve around a political transition,” Aliko said.

The Geneva talks have also been held up by a dispute about some of the members of the negotiating team chosen by the Committee.

The Committee has selected Mohammed Alloush of the Islamist rebel group Army of Islam as its chief negotiator, drawing the ire of some of its other members.

Russia said last week it continues to consider the Army of Islam a “terrorist” organization.

U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura is expected to hold a press conference in Geneva later on Monday to discuss preparations for the talks.

‘Putin is corrupt’ says US Treasury

BBC: The US Treasury has told a BBC investigation that it considers Russian President Vladimir Putin to be corrupt.

The US government has already imposed sanctions on Mr Putin’s aides, but it is thought to be the first time it has directly accused him of corruption.

His spokesman told the BBC that “none of these questions or issues needs to be answered, as they are pure fiction”.

Last week a UK public inquiry said Mr Putin had “probably” approved the murder of ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko.

The broadcast is available here.

Secret wealth

Litvinenko, a former Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) agent and fierce critic of Mr Putin, was poisoned in London with radioactive polonium in 2006.

Adam Szubin, who oversees US Treasury sanctions, has told BBC Panorama that the Russian president is corrupt and that the US government has known this for “many, many years”.

He said: “We’ve seen him enriching his friends, his close allies, and marginalising those who he doesn’t view as friends using state assets. Whether that’s Russia’s energy wealth, whether it’s other state contracts, he directs those to whom he believes will serve him and excludes those who don’t. To me, that is a picture of corruption.”

The US government imposed sanctions against a number of Kremlin insiders in 2014 and stated that Vladimir Putin had secret investments in the energy sector. However, the Americans did not directly accuse him of corruption at the time.

The sanctions – later expanded to include more individuals and organisations – coincided with similar EU measures against Russia. The trigger for them was Russia’s annexation of Crimea, during political turmoil in Ukraine.

Adam Szubin, who oversees US Treasury sanctions
Image caption The US Treasury’s Adam Szubin speaks of a “picture of corruption”

US government officials have been reluctant to be interviewed about President Putin’s wealth, but Mr Szubin agreed to take part in a BBC Panorama programme investigating the issue.

Mr Szubin would not comment on a secret CIA report from 2007 that put Mr Putin’s wealth at around $40bn (£28bn). But he said the Russian president had been amassing secret wealth.

“He supposedly draws a state salary of something like $110,000 a year. That is not an accurate statement of the man’s wealth, and he has long time training and practices in terms of how to mask his actual wealth.”

The Kremlin denies such allegations. In 2008, President Putin personally addressed claims that he was the richest man in Europe, saying: “It’s simply rubbish. They just picked all of it out of someone’s nose and smeared it across their little papers.”

Offshore company

But Panorama has spoken to former Russian insiders who say they have first-hand knowledge of Vladimir Putin’s secret riches.

Dmitry Skarga, who used to run the state shipping company Sovcomflot, says he oversaw the transfer of a $35m yacht to Mr Putin. Mr Skarga says the 57m-long Olympia was a gift from Britain’s most famous Russian – the Chelsea football club owner Roman Abramovich.

The Kremlin, Moscow
Image caption The Kremlin says the allegations against President Putin are “pure fiction”

“It’s a fact that Mr Abramovich, through his employee, transferred a yacht to Mr Putin,” he said. “I was on board of this yacht at the end of March 2002, in Amsterdam. And there was a representative of Mr Abramovich… He said that Roman is the owner of this yacht.”

Mr Skarga says the Olympia was then given to the Russian president via an offshore company. He then oversaw the management of the yacht for Vladimir Putin and prepared reports on the boat’s running costs.

He said: “This yacht was maintained and paid for running costs from the state budget.”

Mr Skarga says the yacht was kept secret because it belonged personally to Vladimir Putin, rather than the state.

Panorama asked Mr Abramovich about the yacht. His lawyers dismissed claims about him as speculation and rumour.

President Putin declined to be interviewed for Panorama.

#13 Hours, the Stand Down of American Power

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Having been so close to the mater of the Benghazi attack since it happened and deeply researching all the facts pre and post attack, seeing the movie was a personal quest to complete the circle of known circumstances and facts.

There were clearly political objectives by not only the U.S. State Department in cadence with other foreign diplomatic agencies with regard to Libya. This played out on the screen at the beginning of the movie. It is the common conclusion by the majority with interest in the matter of Libya, that the United States was running weapons from Libya to Syrian rebels. I still to this day somewhat dispute that notion, however, the bigger takeaway from the movie is the White House and State Department resolve to wean the U.S. military power from the global landscape and to install misguided diplomatic efforts in its place not only in Libya but several dozen countries across the globe.

For decades, the United States has been the leader in the world, and rightly so to maintain as much equilibrium as possible, often deploying in order, diplomatic efforts, CIA efforts and finally military efforts. Once Barack Obama made the case in the April 2009 famous Cairo speech, the forecast was clear that he was going to even out the power and positions of nations in the world with particular emphasis on securing Muslim based nations as protected and promoted states.

The last real offensive military operation with any kind of ‘win’ was Libya to remove Muammar Gaddafi from power. Since, we have seen the rise of al Qaeda, Khorasan, Islamic State and the Taliban, where rules of engagement have been so feeble the death tolls rise and the refugee numbers are staggering. This demonstrates that when there is a mission, strategy and resolve to an objective, it can be achieved.

13 Hours proved Libya was in complete chaos for quite some time prior to the attack on September 11, 2012. There had been countless terror attempts, growing militant factions and assassination attempts leading up to that fateful day. Was going back in to Libya to complete the task of establishing a real and functional government beyond the scope of attention and resolve by the State Department and the White House?

I would argue, the unspoken objective of Barack Obama is to no longer demonstrate the power of the United States including military might, but rather to have diplomatic achievements that are only gained by allowing the other side to completely prevail as is the case with Iran.

One of the jobs of the Global Response Staff is to protect people and interests by deploying all assets near and far, calculating responses, time, personnel and approvals. Such was not the case in Libya and in countless other countries during that entire week in September. Many locations had protests and attacks on U.S. posts.

The movie demonstrated that movement of U.S. personnel in Libya was by all foreign contractors or borrowed assets. This places the safety and security of people at risk from the start. No lessons were learned or heeded or laws followed from previous historical attacks.

In March of 2015, there was a growing terror condition in Yemen by the Iranian back Houthis. Yemen was a very large CIA operation there to address AQAP, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Moving into April, the United States under John Kerry at the State Department once again failed to respond and upwards of 5000 were at risk, their fate unknown had to fend for themselves. Global Response Staff teams or the military exfil FEST teams or the QRF, Quick Reaction Force were not deployed at the behest of the State Department. Thankfully, India provided the larger portion of the rescue operations.

The military does not leave anyone behind and neither does  any human being with a shred of benevolence. The exceptions are Barack, Hillary and John. America and Americans fate is damned by this trio. Of this, there is no dispute.

By the way, leaving Benghazi, a borrowed oil company aircraft was used for the first flight out and a Libyan transport plane was use for the last flight out, carrying 4 dead Americans. Still no Americans as the lights went out in Benghazi.

 

 

The 10th Amendment, Trump Doesn’t Get It

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Perhaps he has not read the paper or listened to the news when it comes to the Bundy matter in Nevada or the standoff in Burns, Oregon. Perhaps he is not familiar with the EPA failures or the Fish, Game and Wild Life Commission. Check out this interview that has received no press.

It is important to note, Ducks Unlimited is the best private organization in the nation that takes extreme care of water, foul and the land.

Q&A: Donald Trump on Guns, Hunting, and Conservation

January 21, 2016, Las Vegas, Nevada

FieldandStream On the third evening of the Shooting, Hunting, and Outdoor Trade Show, editorial director of Field & Stream and Outdoor Life, Anthony Licata, interviewed Donald Trump on issues important to sportsmen and women. Trump came to the interview, on the 36th floor of the Venetian hotel in Las Vegas, with his son Donald Trump Jr., who is an avid hunter and shooter.

Here’s the Republican presidential candidate’s take on President Obama’s recent executive orders on firearms, the privatization of federal lands, Hillary Clinton, and hunting with his sons.

Anthony Licata: Thank you very much for agreeing to meet with Field & Stream and Outdoor Life to talk about…

Donald Trump: Great magazine.

AL: Thank you very much. I guess the first thing I’d like to ask is, are you a gun owner, a hunter? The two of you?

DT: I do have a gun, and I have a concealed-carry permit, actually, which is a very hard thing to get in New York. And, of course, the problem is once you get to the border line of New Jersey or anyplace else, you can’t do it, which is ridiculous, because I’m a very big Second Amendment person. But I do have a gun, and my sons are major hunters, and I’m a member of the NRA.

AL: Do you hunt with your sons? How did they get into the sports?

DT: Well, they got in and just loved it. And their grandfather was a hunter, and he would take them hunting as young boys, and they just loved it. They have a tremendous passion for it. And I don’t devote very much time to it because I’m so busy with everything, but Eric and Don absolutely love it, and they’re expert at it. They’re expert shots, and they’re expert at it.

AL: I’d like to talk about public land. Seventy percent of hunters in the West hunt on public lands managed by the federal government. Right now, there’s a lot of discussion about the federal government transferring those lands to states and the divesting of that land. Is that something you would support as President?

DT: I don’t like the idea because I want to keep the lands great, and you don’t know what the state is going to do. I mean, are they going to sell if they get into a little bit of trouble? And I don’t think it’s something that should be sold. We have to be great stewards of this land. This is magnificent land. And we have to be great stewards of this land. And the hunters do such a great job—I mean, the hunters and the fishermen and all of the different people that use that land. So I’ve been hearing more and more about that. And it’s just like the erosion of the Second Amendment. I mean, every day you hear Hillary Clinton wants to essentially wipe out the Second Amendment. We have to protect the Second Amendment, and we have to protect our lands.

AL: If you were elected President, would you reverse the executive orders that President Obama announced on guns recently?

DT: Yes, I would do it. I think it’s ridiculous. I think, number one, if you are going to do anything—and I don’t think you should do anything, because we have enough rules and balances and checks—you have to go through Congress. You can’t just write an executive order and sign it. You’re supposed to talk to the congressmen who represent a lot of your readers, and, you know, they have to sort of say “Let’s do this” or “Let’s do that.” You don’t do an executive order. But I’m for doing nothing. You know, it’s a mental-health problem, right? And the guns aren’t pulling the triggers, okay. It’s the people that are pulling the triggers. We have a big mental-health problem. And they’re closing up all of the hospitals, all of the institutions, and that’s our problem. And so I would absolutely reverse many of his executive orders beyond this, many of his executive orders.

AL: Let me ask you this—back to conservation and access for hunters’ rights to get on public land. One of the things that we’ve found is so much of this campaign—not your campaign, but this election cycle—has talked about cutting budgets and reducing the federal government. And what the budget is for managing public lands right now is at one percent. In 1970, it was two percent. Would you continue to push that number down for wildlife conservation or would you look to invest more?

DT: I don’t think there’s any reason to. And I will say—and I’ve heard this from many of my friends who are really avid hunters and I’ve heard it from my sons who are avid hunters—that the lands are not maintained the way they were by any stretch of the imagination. And we’re going to get that changed; we’re going to reverse that. And the good thing is, I’m in a family where I have—I mean, I’m a member of the NRA, but I have two longtime members of the NRA. They’ve been hunting from the time they were five years old and probably maybe even less than that. And they really understand it. And I like the fact that, you know, I can sort of use them in terms of—they know so much about every single element about every question that you’re asking. And one of the things they’ve complained about for years is how badly the federal lands are maintained, so we’ll get that changed.

Donald Trump Jr.: It’s really all about access. I mean, I feel like the side that’s the anti-hunting crowd, they’re trying to eliminate that access—make it that much more difficult for people to get the next generation in. For me, hunting and fishing kept me out of so much other trouble I would’ve gotten into throughout my life. It’s just so important to be able to maintain that, so that next generation gets into it. And it’s the typical liberal death by a thousand cuts: “We’ll make it a little harder here. Make it a little harder here. We won’t spend the money there.” And it’s not just about hunting—it’s about fishing; it’s about hiking; it’s about access; it’s about being able to get in there and enjoy the outdoors and enjoy those great traditions that are so, you know, so much the foundation of America. And we’d be against anything like that. And frankly, it’d be about refunding those—making sure those lands are maintained properly; making sure they’re not going into private hands to be effectively walled off to the general public. And that’s something really important to us.

AL: Absolutely. How would you balance energy exploration and extraction on public lands? How would you balance that with the need for recreation and multiple use? Right now, gas prices are low, but they might not stay that way.

DT: Well, I’m very much into energy, and I’m very much into fracking and drilling, and we never want to be hostage again to OPEC and go back to where we were. And right now, we’re at a very interesting point because right now there’s so much energy. And I’ve always said it—there’s so much energy. And new technology has found that. And maybe that’s an advantage and maybe—actually, it’s more of an advantage in terms of your question, because we don’t have to do the kind of drilling that we did. But I am for energy exploration, as long as we don’t do anything to damage the land. And right now we don’t need too much; there’s a lot of energy.

AL: Time for one more?

DT: Yeah, go ahead.

AL: If you’re elected, will you go hunting as President with your son?

DT: I would do that. With my both sons, I would do that. And I feel very good with them. And, you know, I’m in New York City, so I have a concealed-carry permit, and I meant to tell you—I just wanted to point that out because it’s so hard to get, and it’s one of the hardest things you can get. And very hard. And as far as going hunting with my boys, that would be something that I’d love to do. I’ve done it before, but I’d love to do it.

AL [to Donald Trump Jr.]: Where would you take him?

DTJ: I would come up with something good. I mean, I think we’d keep it to the upland-type birds. You know, that’s how I’ve introduced anyone that I’ve ever introduced to hunting. And I’ve taken some of these people that are city people, and just take them on a walk-up—go shoot some clays, and then take them on a walk-up. And not one of those people has ever turned to me and [not] said, “You know, that was one the greatest weekends I’ve ever had in my life.” You just need to get people into it. You need to be a mentor. And that’s what we need more of in this industry: mentors. To get rid of, you know, some of the difficulties, the barriers of entry, which are a little bit intimidating at times. So being able to create that, open up those doors, create some new hunters, and bring the next generation of hunters into the game.

AL: Excellent.

DT: You see what I mean.

AL: Yeah, I do see what you mean.

DT: Thank you very much.

AL: Thank you very much.

The Biggest Silent Lie Yet?

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Hillary’s fingerprints are all over this and it is likely the biggest betrayal to the families and the U.S. taxpayers yet. The shame never ends.

EXCLUSIVE: U.S. TAXPAYERS, NOT TEHRAN, COMPENSATED VICTIMS OF IRANIAN ATTACKS AGAINST AMERICANS
BY JONATHAN BRODER

Newsweek: A little-noticed side agreement to the Iran nuclear deal has unexpectedly reopened painful wounds for the families of more than a dozen Americans attacked or held hostage by Iranian proxies in recent decades. U.S. officials, the families say, insisted that Tehran would pay for financing or directing the attacks, but American taxpayers wound up paying instead.


The agreement, which resolved a long-running financial dispute with Iran, involved the return of $400 million in Iranian funds that the U.S. seized after the 1979 Islamic revolution, plus another $1.3 billion in interest. Announced on January 17—the same day the two countries implemented the nuclear deal and carried out a prisoner swap—President Barack Obama presented the side agreement as a bargain for the United States, noting that a claims tribunal in the Hague could have awarded Iran a much larger judgment. “For the United States, this settlement saved us billions of dollars that could have been pursued by Iran,” Obama said.


But for the victims, the side deal is a betrayal, not a bargain. In 2000, the Clinton administration agreed to pay the $400 million to more than a dozen Americans who had won judgments against Iran in U.S. courts. At the time, American officials assured the victims that the Treasury would be reimbursed from the seized Iranian funds. That same year, Congress passed a law empowering the president to get the money from Iran. “We all believed that Iran would pay our damages, not U.S. taxpayers,” says Stephen Flatow, a New Jersey real estate lawyer who received $24 million for the death of his 19-year-old daughter in a 1995 bus bombing in the Gaza Strip. “And now, 15 years later, we find out that they never deducted the money from the account. It makes me nauseous. The Iranians aren’t paying a cent.”
Flatow’s cohorts agree. They include the families and survivors of some of the most high-profile foreign attacks against Americans in recent decades. Among them: five former Beirut hostages whom the Iran-backed Islamist group Hezbollah held for years during the 1980s; the wife of U.S. Marine Colonel William Higgins, whom Hezbollah kidnapped in 1988, before torturing and hanging him; the family of Navy diver Robert Stethem, whom an Iranian-backed group murdered in Beirut during the 1985 hijacking of a TWA airliner; and a family whose daughter was killed in a Hamas bus bombing in Jerusalem in 1996.
Stuart Eizenstat, a deputy Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration who helped negotiate the settlement, admits he never told the victims and their families the truth about the money. Unbeknownst to the victims and their lawyers, he says, Tehran had filed a claim with the U.S.-Iran tribunal in the Hague over the funds. “We didn’t have the full freedom to say we’re just going to take the $400 million because that money was now part of a formal claim,” Eizenstat says.
What’s further angered the victims and their families: A senior Iranian military official now claims the $1.7 billion is effectively a ransom for the five American hostages Tehran released in January. “This money was returned for the freedom of the U.S. spies, and it was not related to the nuclear negotiations,” Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naqdi said Wednesday, according to the state-run Fars News Agency. The Obama administration denies any link between the prisoners and the $1.7 billion. But Republicans, already fuming over the nuclear deal, are now calling for an inquiry. “It’s bad enough the administration is giving Iran over $100 billion in direct sanctions relief, resumed oil sales and new international trade,” says Republican Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois. “But now it’s using U.S. taxpayer money to pay the world’s biggest state sponsor of terrorism a $1.7 billion ‘settlement.’”
Administration officials are trying to play down the deal, noting it follows a 2000 law that created the compensation mechanism for the victims and their families. One official, speaking on the condition of anonymity in accordance with State Department protocol, says the law only required the U.S. government, acting in place of the victims, to deal with their damage claims “to the satisfaction of the United States, which was the case with this settlement.” A major reason the U.S. was satisfied: The U.S. and Iran disagreed over whether the $400 million should have been placed in an interest-bearing account in 1979. “We reached this settlement on interest,” the official says, “to avoid significant potential exposure we faced at the tribunal on that question.”
But the revelation that Iran never paid the money has hit some of the families hard. They’ve lost the feeling that some measure of justice was served. “I feel like a schnorrer,” says Flatow, using the Yiddish term for a mooch, because U.S. taxpayers, not Iran, paid his damages. Other victims say they’re bothered by the administration’s reluctance to discuss the details of the side deal. It’s brought back memories from 20 years ago, when the victims won their judgments against Iran in U.S. courts, only to find themselves blocked at every turn by the Clinton administration. “There are limited ways to react to your child getting murdered,” says Leonard Eisenfeld, a Connecticut doctor whose son was killed in the 1996 bus bombing in Jerusalem. “Creating a financial deterrent to prevent Iran from more terrorism was one way, but we had to struggle very hard to do that.”
In a series of legal challenges, Clinton administration officials identified $20 million in Iranian assets in America. Among them: Tehran’s Washington embassy and several consulates around the country. But in arguments that sometimes echoed Tehran’s concerns, the officials maintained that attaching those assets to pay even a small portion the victims’ damages would violate U.S. obligations to respect the sovereign immunity of other countries’ diplomatic property.
Though their arguments succeeded in court, the optics were bad. The case caught the attention of the media and Congress, where many lawmakers openly supported the victims. The contours of a settlement began to emerge when lawyers for some of the victims, acting on a tip from a sympathizer inside the administration, located the $400 million in Iranian funds languishing in a foreign military sales (FMS) account at the Treasury. The money came from payments made by the shah for U.S. military equipment that was never delivered after the Iranian leader was overthrown in 1979. After several more clashes with the administration over the funds, first lady Hillary Clinton stepped in at a time when the bitter battles could have hurt her with Jewish voters in her 2000 bid for a New York Senate seat. She persuaded her husband to appoint Jacob Lew, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, to negotiate a settlement that would utilize the frozen Iranian funds.
That same year, Congress passed the legislation that paved the way for an agreement. The legislation required the Treasury to pay the $400 million in damages and empowered the president to seek reimbursement from Iran. Flatow, who had insisted the payments come directly from the Iranian account, recalls his negotiations with Lew. “I said, ‘Jack, where’s the money coming from? Is it coming from the foreign military sales account?’ And he said, ‘No, Steve. All checks that the United States of America writes come from the United States Treasury. But the statute says that we have the right to offset any payments we make against that FMS money.’ So I said, ‘OK, it’s not what I was hoping for, but it’s a settlement.’ We got paid in 2001. And we all believed that the government would reimburse itself from Iran’s foreign military sales account.”
Lew, now Obama’s Treasury secretary, declined to comment, as did former officials from the George W. Bush administration, which also never reimbursed the Treasury from the Iran weapons account.

In retrospect, Eizenstat, the former deputy Treasury secretary, says it was a mistake to pay the judgments against Iran using U.S. funds with no financial consequences for Tehran. The payments have made Flatow, Eisenfeld and the others the only victims of Iranian attacks to receive compensation. That is expected to change this year now that Congress has established a $1 billion fund to begin paying other notable victims of Iranian attacks, including the Tehran embassy hostages and survivors of the 1983 bombings of the U.S. Embassy and the Marine barracks in Beirut. This time, however, the money for their damage judgments will come not from U.S. taxpayers but from fines collected from a French bank that laundered billions for Iran.
For Flatow and others like him, that’s little consolation. In the agreement, he notes, “there wasn’t a single sentence, not a single word that would ameliorate the pain of people who lost their loved ones. That’s very hurtful.”