Category Archives: The Denise Simon Experience

Meet the Jew That Built 5300 Black Schools

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Someone did some great work on history and held a session on this new find. Further, while the anti-Semitic operation known as BDS floats through our domestic universities, this is a great weapon to deploy against those that promote the anti-Israel movement known formally as Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions.

In fact, it would be prudent to ensure the White House with Barack Obama leading the pack, sits on the front row for a full presentation.

Meet the Jew who built 5,300 schools for black children in the 1900s Deep South

New film, ‘Rosenwald,’ tells story of philanthropist Julius Rosenwald who transformed black lives, including those of writer Langston Hughes and opera singer Marion Anderson

Times of Israel:

PHILADELPHIA (JTA) — Alex Bethea, the son of cotton and tobacco farm workers, was in sixth grade in 1965 when his family moved from Dillon, South Carolina, to the tiny town of Fairmont, North Carolina, where he attended a school called Rosenwald.

But it wasn’t until this week, 50 years later, that Bethea learned that his school was named for Julius Rosenwald, the Jewish philanthropist who is the subject of a new documentary by Aviva Kempner. The film tells the little-known story of Rosenwald’s contribution to African-American culture and education.
The revelation came at a July 14 session at the national convention of the NAACP, which drew several thousand delegates to Philadelphia. Bethea was one of some 70 people who attended a screening of the film, “Rosenwald.”

“Julius Rosenwald had a great impact on my life, and I didn’t even know it,” said Bethea, now a vice principal at an elementary school in New Jersey. “This helps me put the pieces of the puzzle of my life together.”


The philanthropy Rosenwald invested in African-American causes in the early 1900s changed the course of education for thousands of children in the rural South and helped foster the careers of prominent artists, including writer Langston Hughes, opera singer Marion Anderson and painter Jacob Lawrence.

Rosenwald, who made his fortune at the helm of Sears, Roebuck and Co., also provided seed money to build YMCAs for blacks in cities around the country. In addition, he developed a huge apartment complex in Chicago to help improve the living conditions for the masses who had migrated from the Jim Crow South.

“It’s a wonderful story of cooperation between this philanthropist who did not have to care about black people, but who did, and who expended his considerable wealth in ensuring that they got their fair shake in America,” Julian Bond, the renowned civil rights leader, says in the documentary.
Kempner told JTA that her new film on Rosenwald “celebrates the affinity between African-Americans and Jews” that started long before the civil rights movement and speaks to the powerful Jewish tradition of tikkun olam, or repairing the world.

Kempner joined Bond and Rabbi David Saperstein, the former head of the Reform movement’s Religious Action Center who now serves as U.S. ambassador at large for International Religious Freedom, for a discussion after the screening at the NAACP conference. It was while attending a public program 12 years ago on Martha’s Vineyard at which Bond and Saperstein discussed black-Jewish relations that Kempner first learned of Rosenwald’s work with African-Americans.

She calls this film the last of a trilogy documenting the lives of “under-known Jewish heroes.” The first two were about baseball legend Hank Greenberg and radio and TV personality Gertrude Berg.
Interspersing archival footage with interviews with prominent African-Americans like Maya Angelou and U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), both of whom attended Rosenwald schools, the documentary tracks the ascent of Rosenwald, the son of German immigrants who rose to become one of the most powerful businessmen and philanthropists in early 20th-century America.

His father, Sam, who came to America in 1851, began, like so many Jewish immigrants of his time, as a peddler. He eventually settled in Springfield, Illinois, where Julius grew up across the street from Abraham Lincoln’s home.

In 1878, his parents sent the 16-year-old Julius to New York to apprentice with his uncles in the men’s clothing manufacturing business. He returned to Illinois to start his own manufacturing company, and through some business and family connections ultimately partnered with Richard Sears, one of the founders of Sears, Roebuck and Co. After Rosenwald took over the company in 1908, it became the largest retailer in the country.

Outside his business life, Rosenwald was heavily influenced by his rabbi, Emil Hirsch, the spiritual leader of the Chicago Sinai Congregation, and he became a major benefactor of Jewish causes.
The film’s historians document the parallels Rosenwald drew at the time between the pogroms against European Jews and violent attacks on blacks in America. He was particularly moved by the race riots in 1908 in Springfield, which are said to have sparked the founding of the NAACP. Hirsch was one of the original leaders of the NAACP, and Rosenwald sponsored its first meetings at his temple.

He was also influenced by the writings of Booker T. Washington, a prominent black leader at the time, and became a funder of Washington’s Tuskegee University in Alabama.

When Rosenwald gave a $25,000 gift to Tuskegee, Washington suggested taking a few thousand dollars to build six schools for young children. Until then, most black children didn’t attend school, but instead spent their time working in the fields alongside their parents. The few schools that did exist were primitive shacks staffed mostly by untrained teachers.

Rather than donating all the money for the schools, Rosenwald gave one-third of the funds needed and challenged the local black community to raise another third and the local white community to contribute the rest. In the end, some 5,300 schools were built with seed money from the Rosenwald Fund.
The fund soon switched focus and began supporting promising black artists, helping catapult dozens onto the national stage.

The Rosenwald Fund “was the single-most important funding agency for African- American culture in the 20th century,” poet Rita Dove says in the film.

Kempner calls Rosenwald one of the greatest examplars of American Jewish philanthropy and says she hopes her film – whose official opening in theaters is scheduled for mid-August — will motivate others to continue that tradition.

“Not all of us can be Julius Rosenwald,” she said, noting that he gave away a total of $62 million in his lifetime, but “we can all do something.”

 

 

 

Sanctuary City Legislation, and More deaths

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There were assigned to be deported, but that did not happen and a grandmother was killed in her bed while sleeping by a bullet from the apartment from upstairs. Ask Barack Obama and Jeh Johnson to explain the reason why this happened.

FNC: A Massachusetts woman killed as she slept in her bed by a bullet fired through her ceiling would be alive today, if the men accused of shooting her had been deported, according to anti-illegal immigration activists.

Mirta Rivera, 41, a nurse and grandmother from Lawrence, was shot July 4 from an upstairs apartment where two illegal immigrants lived despite being under federal deportation orders, according to the Boston Herald. Dominican Republic nationals Wilton Lara-Calmona and Jose M. Lara-Mejia both had long histories of sneaking into the U.S.  More on the story here.

Washington Times: The House will vote this week on legislation to punish sanctuary cities such as San Francisco, moving quickly to force the Obama administration to take action as victims of crime linked to illegal immigrants come forward to tell their stories.

Cities and counties that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration authorities would lose federal funding from several Justice Department grant programs, including one that pays to hire police officers and another that pays local jails for housing illegal immigrants.

“There’s one way and one way only to get sanctuary cities to comply with federal law, and that’s to withhold some of the federal funds they actually want,” said Rep. Duncan Hunter, the California Republican who wrote the bill. “Plain and simple, if they want the federal money, then they need to comply with federal law.” More on this here.

Senator Chuck Grassley is being quite assertive when it comes to illegals and immigration.   The Senator is working diligently to stop ‘sanctuary cities’. Senator Sessions is doing the same thing and he refers to 121 illegal immigrants working on avoiding deportation there were charged with murder.

Click the links below to see Senator’s Grassley’s work on H-1B visa reform

 

Click here to view Senator Grassley’s June 21, 2010 letter to President Obama.

The Patch: Family members of a woman shot to death on San Francisco’s waterfront earlier this month allegedly at the hands of a Mexican national with multiple deportations will speak at a U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday.

The hearing, requested by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, was scheduled to identify potential public safety issues stemming from the county’s immigration policies and comes three weeks after the death of 32-year-old Pleasanton native Kathryn “Kate” Steinle, who was fatally shot on July 1 while walking on Pier 14 with family members in broad daylight.

Grassley has invited the head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to testify Tuesday after members of the Steinle family have had a chance to address the senators.

Within an hour of the shooting, police arrested Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, an undocumented immigrant who had been deported five times and has seven prior felony convictions, including four involving narcotics. Lopez-Sanchez was released from San Francisco County Jail in April despite a request from ICE personnel asking the sheriff’s department to detain him so that ICE field agents could take him into custody and carry out Lopez-Sanchez’ sixth deportation.

 

 

 

 

Iran PMD (Possible/Probable Military Dimensions)

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In 2014:

Iran Fact File

Fact Sheet

The Possible Military Dimensions of Iran’s

Nuclear Program

The United States and a number of other countries have provided evidence to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that Iran secretly sought to develop the materials and technology to produce nuclear weapons over the past several decades. There is substantial evidence that Iran acquired expertise, information and technology from the nuclear black market run out of Pakistan by nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan. The IAEA is trying to determine whether this evidence is accurate and how far Iran has progressed in developing nuclear weapons. There is no evidence that Iran has or has ever built a nuclear weapon or that it has enough nuclear material to do so now. The IAEA’s investigation is based on information provided by other countries and its own work. This information suggests that Iran has previously pursued development of a nuclear implosion device, a design similar to that used in the arsenals of most nuclear weapon states. (See figure one below.)

An implosion device – in simplistic terms – involves compressing a sphere of uranium or plutonium into a smaller but symmetrical sphere through the use of shaped explosive lenses.

The concept is similar to trying to compress a soccer ball into a baseball with dynamite. Each step in designing, testing, producing and delivering this kind of device requires highly specialized materials, equipment and expertise. Over the past decade, the IAEA has investigated the extent to which Tehran has pursued, developed and perfected many of the steps associated with the production of such a device.

Figure 1. Implosion Weapon Design Concept

Source: 2011 Nuclear Weapons Handbook, DOD

The bulk of what the IAEA has learned is referred to by the Agency as the “possible military dimension” of Iran’s nuclear program. A detailed summary of the issues being assessed by the IAEA was reported by IAEA Director General Yukia Amano to the IAEA Board of Governors in November 20111 and is summarized below.

The Joint Plan of Action and the IAEA

The political negotiations taking place between Iran on the one hand and the United States, Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom, Germany (known as the P-5+1) and the European Union on the other seek to negotiate a comprehensive agreement that will limit Iran’s nuclear program while enabling it to enjoy the peaceful benefits of nuclear technology. To do so, Iran must enable full and effective safeguards as implemented by the IAEA. To date, the Agency has reported that Iran is in full compliance with its obligations for special monitoring under the terms of the Joint Plan of Action (JPOA).

Iran has, however, been found in non-compliance with its safeguard agreement obligations2 required under the terms of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. For over a decade, the IAEA has been seeking to clarify a number of outstanding issues related to Iran’s past nuclear activities, catalogued below. It remains unclear whether a comprehensive settlement of the remaining issues with Iran can be achieved without Iran also satisfying all of the IAEA’s outstanding concerns about its nuclear past. At the very least, states will continue to have 1 IAEA Report, “Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement and relevant provisions of Security Council resolutions in the Islamic Republic of Iran,” November 8, 2011 doubts about Iran’s peaceful intentions as long as the IAEA is not satisfied that its investigations are complete.

http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Board/2011/gov2011-65.pdf

2 September 24, 2005 IAEA Board of Governors Resolution GOV/2005/77

http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Board/2005/gov2005-77.pdf

The JPOA agreed to by Iran and the P-5+1 on November 24, 2013 states that a “Joint Commission of E3/EU+3 and Iran will be established to monitor the implementation of the nearterm measures [under the JPOA] and address issues that may arise, with the IAEA responsible for verification of nuclear-related measures. The Joint Commission will work with the IAEA to facilitate resolution of past and present issues of concern.” However, the State Department has recently clarified that the issue of past weapon-related activities is a matter for the IAEA to investigate and is not a matter for the special commission3.

IAEA and Iranian officials have continued to meet since the JPOA was completed and implemented. As yet, these discussions have not resolve the issues listed below. At some point the IAEA will likely be asked to judge whether its concerns have been addressed, and how any remaining unresolved issues might affect the IAEA’s ability to carry out its inspection mandate to verify that Iran’s nuclear activities are of an exclusively peaceful nature.

Possible Military Dimensions of Iran’s Nuclear Program

Much of the evidence that Iran pursued a secret nuclear weapons development program comes from the United States and other IAEA member states. IAEA reports indicate that at least ten member states have provided evidence to the IAEA related to Iran’s past nuclear activities. In addition, IAEA documents suggest that some of the evidence about Iran’s past activities come from interviews with Pakistani sources, including possibly A.Q. Khan. None of the publicly available evidence in and of itself proves that Iran had a nuclear weapon program. It is also not clear that Iran has continued any of these activities, and it is not publicly known how far this alleged work progressed before it was reportedly stopped in 20034.

Procurement Activities

The IAEA has evidence that from the 1980s until the early 2000s, Iran acquired nuclear  expertise and related materials outside of normal procurement channels, including through a black market network run by A. Q. Khan. Iranian officials claim they were forced to seek nuclear items on the black market because it was blocked from pursuing “legitimate” nuclear efforts by the United States and other western powers. However, the fact that much of the procurement efforts were run by military organizations, including the Ministry of Defense, has suggests that the nuclear efforts being pursued by Iran were military in nature. Moreover, the links between procurement and other military application programs, including ballistic missile programs, undermines but does not disprove Iran’s argument that its program is entirely 3 February 17, 2014 Background Briefing, Senior Administration Official, Vienna, Austria peaceful. The IAEA continues to try to understand the full nature of Iran’s procurement activities.

http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/texttrans/2014/02/20140218293187.html#axzz2tmkRefbb

4 “Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities”, National Intelligence Estimate, National Intelligence Council,

November 2007,

http://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Newsroom/Reports%20and%20Pubs/20071203_release.pdf

Nuclear Material Acquisition Activities

The IAEA has evidence that during the 1990s and early 2000s, Iran pursued the development of clandestine nuclear facilities for the processing and enrichment of uranium. The Natanz and Fordow uranium enrichment sites were only declared after they were uncovered by western intelligence or outside sources. Iran also had an active program to acquire uranium outside of IAEA safeguards, for possible use in these previously clandestine facilities. The IAEA has evidence that Iran planned to secretly acquire and enrich uranium at non-declared nuclear facilities and this evidence remains under investigation by the IAEA.

Detonator Development

The IAEA has evidence that Iran pursued studies and received documentation for the development of fast-functioning devices known as “exploding bridgewire detonators.” These devices have limited uses outside of detonating explosive charges associated with nuclear weapons. Iran acknowledges that it has developed EBW for civilian and conventional military applications, but has not explained to the IAEA what these applications are. As such, the IAEA continues to consider this effort a “matter of concern.” Moreover, as noted below, the IAEA has information that Iran has considered the reliability of EBW in the possible testing of nuclear weapons.

Nuclear Components for an Explosive Device

Key to the IAEA’s investigation is a document reportedly provided to Iran by the Pakistani black marketers related to the conversion of uranium into metallic form and the shaping of uranium metal into hemispheres. It also appears likely that Iran acquired designs for nuclear weapons, as did other customers of the Pakistani network, including Libya. The IAEA also has evidence that Iran did work preparing to produce components for such a device. This matter remains of high interest to the IAEA.

Initiation of High Explosives

IAEA member states have provided information that Iran had access to information about multipoint initiation systems. Such systems are necessary for the operation of an implosion device, such as the one Iran may have pursued. Iran has acknowledged access to the information, but claims the document was “not understandable” to their experts and has not conducted activities referred to in the information. This stance is contradicted by information provide to the IAEA by member states and appears to be related to a possible experiment carried out by Iran in 20035.

5 Joby Warrick, “Russian scientist Vyacheslav Danilenko’s aid to Iran offers peek at nuclear program” The

Washington Post November 13, 2011 http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/russianHydrodynamic

Experiments

Hydrodynamic experiments are full-scale model tests of nuclear implosion devices that substitute non-fissile materials to uranium or plutonium. Member states have provided information to the IAEA indicating Iran has manufactured “simulated nuclear explosive components using high density materials” – presumably to simulate uranium metal. This, together with Iran’s activities related to the use of high-speed diagnostic equipment, including flash x-ray technology, raise concerns about nuclear weapons-related work.

This area of investigation has spawned one of the most contentious6 areas of the IAEA’s work – that related to the facility at Parchin. The IAEA has received information from member states that Iran acquired information about, and may have built, a large explosives containment vessel in which to conduct hydrodynamic experiments. There is some evidence that Iran built and installed such a device at Parchin. Two visits to Parchin by the IAEA in 2005 failed to identify this site, but not all facilities were visited by the Agency at the time. Iran has since made large scale changes to the site, a move that could be related to concealment efforts of its past activities.

Aside from site access, Iran has yet to fully explain or effectively refute the evidence that has been made available to the IAEA on this matter and it remains of concern to the IAEA. The Agency states that it has had direct access to the source of some of this expertise for Iran, believed to be a former Soviet weapons-scientist7.

Neutron Initiation

Iran may, according to evidence provided to the IAEA, have undertaken work to build neutron initiators for use in nuclear weapons. In an implosion device, a small source of additional neutrons can be inserted inside the sphere to be compressed, releasing a boost of neutrons at the exact moment of implosion. This can help ensure that fission takes place and also increase the yield of a nuclear device.

Modeling and Calculations

The design of nuclear weapons can be achieved by using advanced calculations and computerbased modeling. Iran has reportedly sought access to calculation and nuclear modeling training.

The IAEA has evidence that representatives from Iran “met with officials from an institute in a nuclear-weapon state to request training courses in the fields of neutron cross section calculations using computer codes.” Such models can be used in civil as well military nuclear applications. Iran has denied these allegations in writing to the IAEA.

scientist-vyacheslav-danilenkos-aid-to-iran-offers-peek-at-nuclearprogram/

2011/11/12/gIQAeuiCJN_story.html

6 http://www.sipri.org/media/expert-comments/the-iaea-and-parchin-do-the-claims-add-up

7 Ibid

Nuclear Test Planning

Iran may have made plans to test a nuclear device. There is evidence that Iran may have “conducted a number of practical tests to see whether its EBW firing equipment could function” over long distances between a firing point and a deep test shaft – commonly used in underground nuclear tests. The IAEA has also received documents from member states in Farsi discussing possible logistics associated with such a test.

Work to Modify a Missile Payload Area

The IAEA has information that Iran conducted engineering studies on how to integrate a “new spherical payload into the existing payload chamber which would be mounted in the re-entry vehicle of the Shahab-3 missile.” The Shahab-3 missile is an Iranian version of the North Korean No-Dong system with a reported range of almost 1,300 kilometers or 800 miles. The work allegedly includes the production of component prototypes as well as modeling work on at least 14 different progressive design iterations. Iran has told the IAEA it believes the information it has received are forgeries, but the IAEA has stated the “quantity of the documentation, and the scope and contents of the work covered in the documentation, are sufficiently comprehensive and complex that in the Agency’s view, it is not likely to have been the result of forgery or fabrication.”

Fusing, Arming and Firing

The alleged studies and documents noted above also indicate that Iran pursued design work on developing a prototype firing system to enable both air and ground detonation of the payload.

Iran dismissed the information as an “animation game.” The Agency has worked with member state experts to determine that the most likely application of the designed air burst system would be for a nuclear system and that the alternative possible use (for chemical weapons-use) could be ruled out.

Taken together, this information and analysis does not prove that Iran had a nuclear weapon program. However, US and other foreign officials are convinced of Iran’s past illegal activities.

Regardless, if a final comprehensive settlement is to be reached, Iran and the IAEA will have to find a politically acceptable way to resolve the outstanding matters under investigation.

Iran Fact File is a project of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies.

© 2014 Iran Fact File

All rights reserved.

***

IAEA Director General to Punt the Iran PMD Issue to the Board of Governors

 

Have you seen this new Bloomberg article by Jonathan Tirone? I’m almost dumbstruck by it.  In it he reports:

Investigators probing Iran will let national officials from places including the U.S., China and Russia decide if the Persian Gulf country hid a nuclear weapons program, according to two officials familiar with their work.

The International Atomic Energy Agency’s inspection team will likely have to make an assessment based on incomplete information and let its board of nationally-appointed governors draw definitive conclusion about the country’s past nuclear work, said the two senior international officials, who asked not to be named because the information isn’t public. . .

It isn’t realistic to expect the IAEA to provide a black-and-white assessment showing that Iran either did or did not have a nuclear-weapons program, the officials said. The IAEA will set a time to end the investigation and submit its findings to the 35-member board of governors to make a ruling, they said.

I almost don’t know where to begin on this. As readers will know, I’ve long been critical of the IAEA’s decision to investigate allegations, mostly originating from third party states, of past possible military dimensions (PMD) to Iran’s nuclear program, and the November 2011 IAEA DG report that most comprehensively laid out these allegations.  I published this commentary on the report the day after it was sent to the BOG.  Since then I’ve written on the issue several times, including here, and have tried to explain that the IAEA has absolutely no mandate or authority to investigate and assess whether safeguarded states have done research and development work on nuclear weaponization not involving fissile materials.

Notwithstanding this lack of legal authority and, as Bob Kelley and Tariq Rauf point out in their new article in Arms Control Today, a lack of technical expertise to assess nuclear weaponization R&D as well, the IAEA has proceeded over the past three years to gather what information they could about the PMD claims, and has tried to engage Iran on this issue, with little success.

It’s never been clear to me what DG Amano’s game plan was on the PMD issue – i.e. how he thought the investigation would realistically play out, and what he thought would be achieved through it.  Again, there is no legal source that lays out the IAEA’s authority and tools for investigating nuclear weaponization, so there are no standards for the agency to follow.

It now appears that the final chapter of the IAEA’s PMD inquiry in Iran will consist of the IAEA DG’s office handing over whatever technical information they have, however incomplete, to the national political representatives who constitute the 35 member Board of Governors of the IAEA, and asking them to determine whether Iran worked on nuclear weaponization in the past.

If that sounds kind of crazy to you, then you’re not alone.

Again, I don’t think the IAEA should have ever started down the path of investigation and assessment on this issue, but given that they have, surely it must be recognized that this is essentially a technical matter – i.e. whether there is sufficient evidence of a nuclear weaponization program in Iran in the past. It is not a political matter. How, then, are the political representative of 35 countries on the IAEA BOG qualified in any way to make this determination?

This seems to me to be a complete cop-out – a surrender by the IAEA DG’s office. Whether it’s a surrender to facts (i.e. the DG’s office doesn’t have, and knows it never will have, enough information to really make the call technically, and is afraid to admit it) or a surrender to politics (i.e. the US and others are pressuring Amano to get the PMD issue resolved, and this is the only way to face-savingly do it) or more likely a combination of both, this can’t be the way Amano hoped this PMD inquiry would be resolved. Although, again, I don’t know what his plan was to begin with.

This is a punt – a buck passing, plain and simple. And even though the IAEA should never have gotten involved in this issue in the first place, this sets a very bad precedent for the agency going forward. The IAEA DG’s office is basically admitting that they cannot do their job of making a technical determination here, and they are instead punting the issue over to the BOG for a politicized vote. What does that say to IAEA member states about the IAEA’s ability to objectively apply technical safeguards to their nuclear programs, and about the independence and apolitical nature of the agency?

If this vote does indeed go ahead in the IAEA BOG, no matter what the outcome I think it will be one of the darkest days in the agency’s history. And I think that DG Amano is solely responsible for the black eye the agency’s reputation will take from this ill conceived, and badly executed foray into weaponization investigation.

Impeach Jeh Johnson and Then Dis-Bar the Man

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And the 20 others including the lawyers !!!

There is even a Federal employee handbook, this matter begins on page 74. Let the Freedom of Information requests begin and call Judicial Watch, as the Inspector General refuses to comment.

Homeland Security Leaders Bent Rules on Private E-Mail

By

Jeh Johnson, the secretary of homeland security, and 28 of his senior staffers have been using private Web-based e-mail from their work computers for over a year, a practice criticized by cyber security experts and advocates of government transparency.

The department banned such private e-mail on DHS computers in April 2014. Top DHS officials were granted informal waivers, according to a top DHS official who said that he saw the practice as a national security risk. The official said the exempt staffers included Deputy Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, chief of staff Christian Marrone and general counsel Stevan Bunnell.

Asked about the exceptions on Monday, the DHS press secretary, Marsha Catron, confirmed that some officials had been exempted. “Going forward,” she said, “all access to personal webmail accounts has been suspended.”

Future exceptions are to be granted only by the chief of staff. Catron said that a “recent internal review” had found the chief of staff and some others were unaware that they had had access to webmail.

The DHS rule, articulated last year after hackers first breached the Office of Personnel Management, states: “The use of Internet Webmail (Gmail, Yahoo, AOL) or other personal email accounts is not authorized over DHS furnished equipment or network connections.” Johnson and the 28 other senior officials sought and received informal waivers at different times over the past year, the official said. Catron said exceptions were decided on a case-by-case basis by the chief information officer, Luke McCormack. DHS employees are permitted to use their government e-mail accounts for limited personal use.

Erica Paulson, a spokeswoman for the DHS Office of the Inspector General, said that the office does not confirm or deny the existence of any open investigations.

It remains unclear whether Johnson and the other officials conducted DHS business on their private webmail accounts. (The DHS spokeswoman said “the use of personal email for official purposes is strictly prohibited.”) If even one work-related e-mail was sent or received, they could be in violation of regulations and laws governing the preservation of federal records, said Jason R. Baron, a former director of litigation at the National Archives and Records Administration.

“I suppose it is remotely conceivable that in seeking a waiver, 20 or more government officials could all be wishing to talk to each other through a Web-based e-mail service about such matters as baseball games or retirement luncheons they might be attending,” he said. “But it is simply not reasonable to assume that in seeking a waiver that the officials involved were only contemplating using a commercial network for personal (that is, non-official) communications.”

In March, the New York Times reported that as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton had used a private e-mail server exclusively to conduct her State Department business. Clinton said she had not violated any transparency laws because the Federal Records Act states that officials are permitted to use private e-mail, so long as they forward on any government-related communications to their government accounts so they can be archived and used to respond to requests under the Freedom of Information Act.

In November 2014, the Federal Records Act was amended to impose a 20-day limit on the time an official has to transfer records from private e-mail to government systems. Clinton transferred over 30,000 e-mails from her private server to the State Department in early 2015. She deleted another 30,000 e-mails on her private server, claiming they were all strictly personal.

It is unclear how Johnson and the other officials used their webmail accounts, and whether they forwarded any messages about government business to their official accounts.

Johnson has used his personal Gmail for government business at least once, before he was head of DHS; that was disclosed during the scandal that led to David Petraeus’s resignation as CIA director. The Justice Department is fighting to keep Johnson from having to give a video deposition in that case.

Anne Weismann, executive director of the Campaign for Accountability and a former Justice Department official dealing with FOIA litigation, said that even by seeking the waivers at DHS, Johnson and the other officials created at least an appearance and opportunity for impropriety.

“How could they possibly justify exempting the secretary and the most senior people from the policy? You are allowing the people who are most likely to create e-mails that are most worthy of preservation to bypass the system that would ensure their preservation,” she said.

The issue of top government officials using private e-mail is widespread and the rules barring such practices are rarely enforced, said Weismann. “What they really want is to have the ability to have off-the-record discussions,” she said. “It creates problems for record keeping and it puts it out of the reach of FOIA.”

Cyber security experts said that allowing the use of commercial webmail on otherwise secure computers increases the risk that those computers could be penetrated by hackers, foreign intelligence services or malware. Webmail messages are often stored without encryption, leaving them vulnerable to theft by anyone who gains access to the webmail server.

“The fundamental issue is that these commercial webmail systems were not designed with the threat in mind that is present when government officials are using consumer tools,” said Johannes B. Ullrich, dean of research for the SANS Technology Institute.

The threat is not just theoretical. In 2008, Sarah Palin’s Yahoo e-mail account was hacked by someone who used a password reset function to gain access, he said.

There’s also a moral hazard.

“If there are just certain individuals being exempted here, it’s setting a bad precedent for the rest of the department. If you say, ‘Hey, it doesn’t apply to everybody over a certain pay grade,’ the idea of these controls gets diminished and people look for workarounds,” said Ullrich.

Aside from the legal risk and the national security risk, exceptions to the department’s policies reinforce the narrative that the Obama administration lets senior officials skirt the rules, including by keeping their communications secret.  The pattern was present in the previous administration as well, but after the OPM hacks and the deletion of Clinton’s e-mails, it is widely criticized and hard to defend.

A Redline for Islamic State Chemical Weapons?

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It was reported last month and confirmed that ISIS hired chemical experts.

Islamic State recruiting chemical weapons experts, Australia’s foreign minister says

In January of 2015, an ISIS chemical expert was killed in an Iraq airstrike.

So, where is that impassioned speech by John Kerry? Where is the United Nations? Where is the White House redline? Where is the UK?

crickets….

NYT’s: ISIS Has Fired Chemical Mortar Shells, Evidence Indicates

A 120-millimeter mortar shell struck fortifications at a Kurdish military position near the Mosul Dam in June, arms experts said, sickening several Kurdish fighters who were nearby. Conflict Armament Research and Sahan Research

The Islamic State appears to have manufactured rudimentary chemical warfare shells and attacked Kurdish positions in Iraq and Syria with them as many as three times in recent weeks, according to field investigators, Kurdish officials and a Western ordnance disposal technician who examined the incidents and recovered one of the shells.

The development, which the investigators said involved toxic industrial or agricultural chemicals repurposed as weapons, signaled a potential escalation of the group’s capabilities, though it was not entirely without precedent.

Beginning more than a decade ago, Sunni militants in Iraq have occasionally used chlorine or old chemical warfare shells in makeshift bombs against American and Iraqi government forces. And Kurdish forces have claimed that militants affiliated with the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, used a chlorine-based chemical in at least one suicide truck bomb in Iraq this year.

Firing chemical mortar shells across distances, however, as opposed to dispersing toxic chemicals via truck bombs or stationary devices, would be a new tactic for the group, and would require its munitions makers to overcome a significantly more difficult technical challenge.

Chemical weapons, internationally condemned and banned in most of the world, are often less lethal than conventional munitions, including when used in improvised fashion. But they are indiscriminate by nature and difficult to defend against without specialized equipment — traits that lend them potent psychological and political effects.

In the clearest recent incident, a 120-millimeter chemical mortar shell struck sandbag fortifications at a Kurdish military position near Mosul Dam on June 21 or 22, the investigators said, and caused several Kurdish fighters near where it landed to become ill.

The shell did not explode and was recovered nearly intact on June 29 by Gregory Robin, a former French military ordnance disposal technician who now works for Sahan Research, a think tank partnered with Conflict Armament Research, a private organization that has been documenting and tracing weapons used in the conflict. Both research groups are registered in Britain.

The tail of the shell had been broken, Mr. Robin said by telephone on Friday, and was leaking a liquid that emanated a powerful odor of chlorine and caused irritation to the airways and eyes.

It was the first time, according to Mr. Robin and James Bevan, the director of Conflict Armament Research, that such a shell had been found in the conflict.

In an internal report to the Kurdish government in Iraq, the research groups noted that the mortar shell appeared to have been manufactured in an “ISIS workshop by casting iron into mold method. The mortar contains a warhead filled with a chemical agent, most probably chlorine.”

Conflict Armament Research and Sahan Research often work with the Kurdistan Region Security Council. Mr. Robin and Mr. Bevan said the council had contracted a laboratory to analyze residue samples removed from the weapon.

He added, “What I don’t know is what kind of burster charge it had,” referring to the small explosive charge intended to break open the shell and distribute its liquid contents. The shell had not exploded, he said, because, inexplicably, it did not contain a fuse.

Whether any finding from tests underwritten by Kurdish authorities would be internationally recognized is uncertain, as the Kurdish forces are party to the conflict.

The week after Mr. Robin collected the shell, on July 6, another investigator found evidence that the research groups said indicated two separate attacks with chemical projectiles in Kurdish territory in the northeastern corner of Syria.

Those attacks, at Tel Brak and Hasakah, occurred in late June and appeared to involve shells or small rockets containing an industrial chemical sometimes used as a pesticide, the investigators said.

In the incidents in Syria, Mr. Bevan said, multiple shells struck in agricultural fields near three buildings used by Kurdish militia forces known as the Y.P.G., or Peoples Protection Units, in Tel Brak. More shells, he said, landed in civilian areas in Hasakah; at least one struck a civilian home.  More on the story here.