Category Archives: Treasury

ISIS, Islamic State has a Help Desk

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The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) uses a 34-page manual to instruct its followers on how to stay invisible on the Internet.

The Arabic document was translated and released this week by analysts at the Combating Terrorism Center, an independent research group at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. It includes warnings to avoid Instagram because it is owned by Facebook, and Dropbox because former secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sits on its board of investors. Famous government leaker Edward Snowden has also criticized Dropbox over its privacy, the document notes.

Users are also directed to use Apple’s encrypted FaceTime and iMessage features over regular unencrypted text and chat features. More here.

New ISIS ‘help desk’ to aid hiding from authorities

TheHill: The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has opened up a new technical “help desk” that instructs terrorists on how to hide from Western authorities, according to researchers.

The Electronic Horizon Foundation (EHF) was launched on Jan. 30 as a joint effort of several of the top ISIS cybersecurity experts, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) said in a new report.

While researchers have previously uncovered an ISIS “help desk” and 34-page manual that help extremists encrypt their communications, MEMRI said the EHF takes these services to an “alarming” new level.

“Jihadis have long sought technical information, which has been confined in the past to various password-protected jihadi forums,” said the MEMRI report, shared exclusively with The Hill. “However, the freedom and ease by which they can now obtain that information is alarming, especially when such information is shared over private and secure channels.”

The EHF operates on the encrypted messaging platform Telegram but also maintains a Twitter account that disseminates information and directs followers to its secure Telegram channel.

The group’s self-stated goal is clear: “Spreading security and technical awareness among the monotheists.”

According to an announcement celebrating the EHF launch, ISIS has spent a year establishing the group with the goal of “unifying the technical and security efforts, and uniting the ranks of the mujahideen’s supporters.”

It brings together several technical support entities, such as the Information Security channel on Telegram and the “Islamic State Technician,” an ISIS security specialist thought to be behind a leading password-protected technical forum.

The announcement, which the MEMRI translated, was also direct that the EHF had been formed “due to the electronic war and tight surveillance imposed by the Western intelligence apparatuses over Internet users, and their tracking and following of the mujahideen and their supporters, and targeting them based on their data and information, which they share over the Internet.”

EHF pledged to provide resources to help combat this surveillance.

“It is time to face the electronic surveillance, educate the mujahideen about the dangers of the Internet, and support them with the tools, directives and security explanations to protect their electronic security, so that they don’t commit security mistakes that can lead to their bombardment and killing,” the announcement said.

As of early this week, the EHF Telegram account had over 2,200 members.

MEMRI said EHF has not posted much yet, “but it is expected to take the lead nonetheless in content posted as time goes by.”

If the group follows in the footsteps of its creators, its content will be “defensively-oriented,” such as tutorials on mobile phone security, instead of “offensively-oriented,” such as instructions on launching cyberattacks, MEMRI said.

In the wake of the terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif., law enforcement officials have cautioned that potential terrorists are increasingly using encryption to hide from investigators, a phenomenon they call “going dark.”

The warnings have led to some calling for legislation that would guarantee government access to encrypted data, although momentum on Capitol Hill for such a bill has cooled in recent months.

“I don’t think we’re any closer to a consensus on that than we were, I think, six months ago,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the House Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat, said last week. “Or if there is a consensus, it is that a legislative solution, I think, is very unlikely.”

 

IS Encryption Guide by AlyssaBereznak

Subpoena: State Dept vs. Clinton Foundation

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How the Clinton Foundation is organized

What We Know About WJC, LLC, Bill Clinton’s Consulting Company

Financial disclosures show that the former president started a pass-through company to channel his consulting fees.

Clinton Foundation received subpoena from State Department investigators

Investigators with the State Department issued a subpoena to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation last fall seeking documents about the charity’s projects that may have required approval from the federal government during Hillary Clinton’s term as secretary of state, according to people familiar with the subpoena and written correspondence about it.

The subpoena also asked for records related to Huma Abedin, a longtime Clinton aide who for six months in 2012 was employed simultaneously by the State Department, the foundation, Clinton’s personal office, and a private consulting firm with ties to the Clintons.

The full scope and status of the inquiry, conducted by the State Department’s inspector general, were not clear from the material correspondence reviewed by The Washington Post.

A foundation representative, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing inquiry, said the initial document request had been narrowed by investigators and that the foundation is not the focus of the probe.

A State IG spokesman declined to comment on that assessment or on the subpoena.

Representatives for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and Abedin also declined comment.

[How Huma Abedin operated at the center of the Clinton universe]

There is no indication that the watchdog is looking at Clinton. But as she runs for president in part by promoting her leadership of the State Department, an inquiry involving a top aide and the relationship between her agency and her family’s charity could further complicate her campaign.

For months, Clinton has wrangled with controversy over her use of a private email server, which has sparked a separate investigation by the same State Department inspector general’s office. There is also an FBI investigation into whether her system compromised national security.

Bill Clinton used LLC as a pass through

Clinton was asked about the FBI investigation at a debate last week and said she was “100 percent confident” nothing would come of it. Last month, Clinton denied a Fox News report that the FBI had expanded its probe to include ties between the foundation and the State Department. She called that report “an unsourced, irresponsible” claim with “no basis.”

During the years Clinton served as secretary of state, the foundation was led by her husband, former president Bill Clinton. She joined its board after leaving office in February 2013 and helped run it until launching her White House bid in April.

Abedin served as deputy chief of staff at State starting in 2009. For the second half of 2012, she participated in the “special government employee” program that enabled her to work simultaneously in the State Department, the foundation, Hillary Clinton’s personal office and Teneo, a private consultancy with close ties to the Clintons.

Abedin has been a visible part of Hillary Clinton’s world since she served as an intern in the 1990s for the then-first lady while attending George Washington University. On the campaign trail, Clinton is rarely seen in public without Abedin somewhere nearby.

Republican lawmakers have alleged that foreign officials and other powerful interests with business before the U.S. government gave large donations to the Clinton Foundation to curry favor with a sitting secretary of state and a potential future president.

Both Clintons have dismissed those accusations, saying donors contributed to the $2 billion foundation to support its core missions: improving health care, education and environmental work around the world.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.), Clinton’s opponent in the Democratic primary, has largely avoided raising either issue in his campaign. Last spring, Sanders expressed concerns about the Clinton Foundation being part of a political system “dominated by money.”

Sanders has batted away questions about the email scandal, famously saying at a debate last fall that, “The American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails.”

The potential consequences of the IG investigation are unclear. Unlike federal prosecutors, inspectors general have the authority to subpoena documents without seeking approval from a grand jury or a judge.

But their power is limited. They are able to obtain documents, but they cannot compel testimony. At times, IG inquiries result in criminal charges, but sometimes they lead to administrative review, civil penalties or reports that have no legal consequences.

The IG has investigated Abedin before. Last year, the watchdog concluded she was overpaid nearly $10,000 because of violations of sick leave and vacation policies, a finding that Abedin and her attorneys have contested.

Republican lawmakers, led by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), have alleged that Abedin’s role at the center of overlapping public and private Clinton worlds created the potential for conflicts of interest.

Examples of fees paid for speeches

Iran’s Windfall From Nuclear Deal Cut in Half by Debts

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NYT’s -WASHINGTON — Iran gained access to about $100 billion in frozen assets when an international nuclear agreement was implemented last month, but $50 billion of it already was tied up because of debts and other commitments, a U.S. official said on Thursday.

Stephen Mull, the State Department’s lead coordinator for implementing the international nuclear agreement with Tehran, also told the House Foreign Affairs Committee there was no evidence Iran had cheated in the first few weeks since the deal was implemented.

Mull and John Smith, acting director of the Treasury Department office that oversees sanctions, faced heated questioning from some members of the committee, where several Democrats had joined Republican lawmakers in opposing the nuclear pact that was reached in July.

Many have worried that Iran would cheat on the deal and use unfrozen funds for action against Israel or to support Islamist militants elsewhere in the region.

“Of that amount, a significant portion of it, more than $50 billion, is already tied up,” Mull said.

It was the first top-level congressional hearing on the nuclear pact since Jan. 16, when world powers lifted crippling sanctions against Iran in return for it compliance with the agreement to curb its nuclear ambitions.

“We seem to be in many instances talking tough about Iran,” said U.S. Representative Eliot Engel, the panel’s top Democrat, a deal opponent. “In reality our actions are far away from our rhetoric and that’s a worrisome thing. We want to make sure that Iran’s feet are held to the fire.”

Many members of the U.S. Congress, where every Republican and a few dozen Democrats opposed the agreement, have been calling for legislation to impose new sanctions on Iran over its ballistic missile program and human rights record.

House Republicans have been pushing legislation to restrict the ability of President Barack Obama, a Democrat, to lift sanctions under the nuclear pact. One measure passed the House on Feb. 2 almost entirely along party lines but it has not yet been taken up in the Senate and Obama has promised a veto.

*** Not so fast, all is still not kosher….

WASHINGTON (AP) — A State Department official says the U.S. does not know the precise location of tons of low-enriched uranium shipped out of Iran on a Russian vessel under the landmark nuclear agreement.

Testifying Thursday, Ambassador Stephen Mull tells the House Foreign Affairs Committee the stockpile is a Russian custody issue.

Critics of the nuclear deal seized on the shipment’s status to show the agreement’s flaws. New Jersey GOP congressman Chris Smith says it’s “outrageous and unbelievable” that Russia is being trusted to be the repository for such sensitive material. Russia is a close ally of Iran.

The low-enriched uranium is suitable mainly for generating nuclear power and needs substantial further enrichment for use in the core of a nuclear warhead. Mull says he’s confident the material will be controlled properly.

***

Saudi Arabia and Bahrain have banned Iranian-flagged vessels from entering their waters and imposed other shipping restrictions, according to ship insurers citing local reports, potentially escalating tensions between Tehran and Riyadh.

Iran has been struggling to ramp up oil exports and still faces insurance and financing hurdles despite the lifting of international curbs on its banking, insurance and shipping sectors last month as part of a nuclear deal with world powers.

A ban on Iranian ships in those ports is unlikely to affect international trade, although the uncertainty will add to trade hiccups for Iran.

Some ship insurers in recent days, citing reports from local agents and correspondents, said in notes to members that Saudi Arabia and Bahrain had banned all Iranian-flagged ships from entering their waters.

Norwegian ship insurer Gard said Bahrain had imposed a ban on any vessel that has visited Iran as one of its last three port calls.

“There is currently no such restriction in Saudi Arabia,” Gard wrote, citing information from a logistics provider. Saudi Arabian and Bahraini authorities did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Ship insurer West of England said separately: “An entered vessel has since been denied entry to Bahrain after visiting an Iranian port two port calls earlier, resulting in the fixture being cancelled.”

Other ship insurers had yet to issue any guidance or confirm there were new regulations in place.

 

While oil companies such as Italy’s Eni and France’s Total have been looking to book cargoes from Iran, international insurers are no nearer to resolving concerns over US sanctions that remain in place.

Last month, Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia cut ties with Shi’ite Iran after its Tehran embassy was attacked following Riyadh’s execution of a Shi’ite cleric.

In solidarity with Riyadh, Kuwait and Qatar subsequently pulled out their ambassadors from Tehran, and the United Arab Emirates downgraded its ties. Bahrain and two non-Gulf states, Djibouti and Sudan, severed relations completely.

Saudi Arabia and Iran – leading members of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries – continue to grapple with weak oil prices.

The Double Life of a FL. Congressman

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  Hello Ethics Committee….

Email Shows Concern About Alan Grayson’s Hedge Fund

Email correspondence from June 2015 between Representative Alan Grayson and his campaign manager at the time involves concern among his staff about the political damage Mr. Grayson’s hedge fund could cause his Senate bid.

For just a few additional facts on Grayson, his scandals and his history, go here. Even the Huffington Post has several items on his highly contested and perhaps even violent marriage, annulment or divorce.

Alan Grayson’s Double Life: Congressman and Hedge Fund Manager

WASHINGTON — The hedge fund manager boasted that he had traveled to “every country” in the world, studying overseas stock markets as he fine-tuned an investment strategy to capitalize on global companies’ suffering because of economic or political turmoil.

But the fund manager had an even more distinctive credential to showcase in his marketing material in June 2013: He was a “U.S. congressman,” Representative Alan Grayson, Democrat of Florida, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Now he is also among the leading Democratic candidates for one of Florida’s United States Senate seats.

This highly unusual dual role — a sitting House lawmaker running a hedge fund, which until recently had operations in the Cayman Islands — has led to an investigation of Mr. Grayson by the House Committee on Ethics.

The inquiry has become public, but emails and marketing documents obtained by The New York Times show the extent to which Mr. Grayson’s roles as a hedge fund manager and a member of Congress were intertwined, and how he promoted his international travels, some with congressional delegations, to solicit business.

Interviews and the documents show that Mr. Grayson told potential investors in his hedge fund that they should contribute money to the fund to capitalize on the unrest he observed around the world, and to take particular advantage when there was “blood in the streets.”

The emails also show how Mr. Grayson’s work for the hedge fund — which had $16.4 million in assets as of October and only for investors since it was established — at times interfered with his other duties. In August 2015, after Mr. Grayson introduced legislation calling for larger annual increases in Social Security benefits, he signed off on a plan to highlight the proposal at an event in Tampa, Fla., emails obtained by The Times show. But the plan was scuttled, two former aides said, when economic turmoil in China sent stock markets tumbling globally and Mr. Grayson had to turn his attention to the fund.

Ken Scudder, a spokesman for Mr. Grayson, disputed that account. “There has never been any time when Representative Grayson’s investment activities have disrupted any of his work, whether official or campaign-related,” he said.

Mr. Grayson says he has done nothing wrong. “Here is something that is not true: that I somehow traded on my membership as a U.S. congressman to get clients for this fund,” Mr. Grayson said in an interview. He added that in the last year he had refunded the full original investments put in by his two outside investors in a fund that had faced steep losses — leaving only Mr. Grayson and a family trust invested in the fund.

Mr. Grayson has closed the Cayman Islands branches of the hedge fund, and in September, after the ethics complaint was filed, he changed the name of the fund from the Grayson Fund to the Sibylline Fund, LP. He did so, he said, to try to assuage critics who said he was violating congressional ethics rules by naming a professional business after himself. Although Mr. Grayson said he did not agree that the name was a violation, “there was no point in arguing about it any longer.”

But Mr. Grayson’s activities have long concerned his campaign aides. In private emails in June, Mr. Grayson’s aides pleaded with him to close the hedge fund, convinced that its focus on investing in nations hit by political or economic strife, and its ties to the Cayman Islands, a notorious tax haven, sharply conflicted with his image as a scold of Wall Street — even if he had not done anything wrong.

“This is going to be the drip, drip, drip story that never goes away,” Doug Dodson, Mr. Grayson’s Senate campaign manager until the end of 2015, wrote in a June email to Mr. Grayson, saying his political opponents would “try to make you look like a hypocrite and a fraud and not the populist you claim to be.” Read the whole summary here.

Possibly up to 30 Accounts on Hillary’s Server?

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Official: Top Clinton aides also handled ‘top secret’ intel on server

FNC: EXCLUSIVE: At least a dozen email accounts handled the “top secret” intelligence that was found on Hillary Clinton’s server and recently deemed too damaging for national security to release, a U.S. government official close to the review told Fox News.

The official said the accounts include not only Clinton’s but those of top aides – including Cheryl Mills, Huma Abedin, Jake Sullivan and Philippe Reines – as well as State Department Under Secretary for Management Patrick Kennedy and others.

A second source not authorized to speak on the record said the number of accounts involved could be as high as 30 and reflects how the intelligence was broadly shared, replied to, and copied to individuals using the unsecured server.

The State Department recently confirmed that the messages in question include the most sensitive kind of intelligence. On Jan. 29, Fox News first reported that some emails on Clinton’s server were too damaging to release in any form. The State Department subsequently announced that 22 “top secret” emails were being withheld in full; these were the messages being handled by more than a dozen accounts.

Kennedy recently told the House Benghazi Select Committee that he knew about Clinton’s personal email account from the beginning, but did not understand the “scope,” thinking it was for reaching husband Bill Clinton and their daughter Chelsea — and not for the exclusive handling of State Department business. Kennedy’s testimony appears to conflict with emails released through the Freedom of Information Act that show he routinely sent and received government business from the Clinton account.

Fox News has asked the State Department to comment on the email accounts that shared the highly classified information, and how it was that Kennedy did not understand the “scope” of Clinton’s personal email being used for government business.

A spokesman for the intelligence community inspector general, which has been reviewing the classification of the Clinton server emails, had no comment.

*** From ABC and the White House last year:

President Obama Knew Hillary Clinton’s Private Email Address, But Not Details of Server

President Obama exchanged emails with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at her private address — @clintonemail.com — but did not know the details of her account or how she would comply with administration policy and federal records law, the White House said today.

“Yes, he was aware of her email address. He traded emails with her,” Obama spokesman Josh Earnest told ABC’s Jonathan Karl. “But he was not aware of her personal email server or that she was using it exclusively for all her business.”

Asked how often Obama and Clinton emailed, Earnest said he “would not describe the number as large.”

In an interview Saturday, Obama said he learned of his secretary of state’s private email address use through recent news reports, “the same time everybody else learned it.”

Earnest explained that the president was referring to details of her email system and the fact that she had not been in compliance with State Department policy for nearly six years after failing to submit the records for transfer to government computers.

Clinton has called for the public release of 55,000 emails turned over to the State Department for archiving. Her team handpicked the messages off her private server that pertained to official business; Clinton’s camp said roughly 10 percent were of a personal nature and not handed over.

“I’m glad that Hillary [has] instructed that those emails about official business need to be disclosed,” Obama said Saturday.

Earnest said an independent, third-party review of Clinton’s private server should not be required, but suggested that the White House would not oppose one if she elected to do so.

The former Secretary of State has remained mum on the email controversy. She has yet to explain why she exclusively used private email through a server built inside her New York home while Secretary of State, or why it took six years to submit the records as required under the department policy she oversaw.

*** Some emails being withheld could have Obama’s communication exchanges included:

“We can confirm that later today, as part of our monthly [Freedom of Information Act] productions of former secretary Clinton’s emails, the State Department will be denying in full seven email chains”, he said.

In the past few months, Clinton had been facing issues of trustworthiness during surveys as a result of evidence of the existence of top secret material in her private email server.

Clinton has encouraged the State Department to release her email as quickly as possible and, when delays have occurred, her campaign has been quick to point out that they do not control the schedule, which was set by the court and government bureaucrats.

Officials in the State Department have asked for additional time to vet the messages because of the recent snowstorm that hit Washington.

“This seems to be over-categorization run amok”, it said in statement.

So far, officials haven’t really described what’s in the emails or even if Clinton sent them.

The presidential hopeful has acknowledged that her choice to make use of a personal email server at her Nyc house was a blunder. We feel no differently today. But as is often the case with the Democratic presidential candidate, she dodged the question and gave an inconsistent answer.

The State Department is separately withholding 18 e-mails comprised of eight e-mail chains between Clinton and President Barack Obama, Kirby said. Such operations are widely discussed publicly, including by top USA officials, and State Department officials debated McCullough’s claim.

The AP reported last August that one focused on a forwarded news article about the classified US drone program run by the Central Intelligence Agency.