An affordable price is probably the major benefit persuading people to buy drugs at www.americanbestpills.com. The cost of medications in Canadian drugstores is considerably lower than anywhere else simply because the medications here are oriented on international customers. In many cases, you will be able to cut your costs to a great extent and probably even save up a big fortune on your prescription drugs. What's more, pharmacies of Canada offer free-of-charge shipping, which is a convenient addition to all other benefits on offer. Cheap price is especially appealing to those users who are tight on a budget
Service Quality and Reputation
Although some believe that buying online is buying a pig in the poke, it is not. Canadian online pharmacies are excellent sources of information and are open for discussions. There one can read tons of users' feedback, where they share their experience of using a particular pharmacy, say what they like or do not like about the drugs and/or service. Reputable online pharmacy canadianrxon.com take this feedback into consideration and rely on it as a kind of expert advice, which helps them constantly improve they service and ensure that their clients buy safe and effective drugs. Last, but not least is their striving to attract professional doctors. As a result, users can directly contact a qualified doctor and ask whatever questions they have about a particular drug. Most likely, a doctor will ask several questions about the condition, for which the drug is going to be used. Based on this information, he or she will advise to use or not to use this medication.
The Department of Defense announces transfer of a Guantanamo detainee to Saudi Arabia. Leaves 103 detainees left at Gitmo. This transfer was approved in October.
Reuters:President Barack Obama will make good on a promise to close the U.S. naval prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, his chief of staff Denis McDonough said on “Fox News Sunday.”
Obama will first present a long-awaited plan to Congress about how to close the facility, and seek its approval, McDonough said in an interview. If Congress fails to act, the White House will determine what steps to take, he said.
“He feels an obligation to the next president. He will fix this so that they don’t have to be confronted with the same set of challenges,” McDonough said.
Obama pledged during the 2008 presidential election campaign that he would close the military prison, which housed foreign terrorism suspects after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
That pledge, still unfilled, has been a feature of his annual State of the Union addresses to the nation ever since.
Obama has said the facility has been used as a recruiting tool in propaganda from groups like al Qaeda, and also is far too costly to maintain. There are 104 detainees left at the prison.
Where possible, his administration has transferred detainees to other countries. But there is a small number of detainees who the administration says it would like to detain in a U.S. facility for national security reasons.
Congress has explicitly banned the transfer of detainees to the United States.
McDonough declined to say whether Obama would close the prison using his own executive powers if Congress rejects his plan.
So what are the options for Barack Obama on those Gitmo detainees that no country will take in a transfer? Enough money and politics will force any country being strong-armed by the White House to take the worst of the worst. If not, there are other options. Obama can use his pen and force a Federal prison in the U.S. to take the remaining detainees or he can transfer the jihadis to another U.S. held prison facility/detention center in a foreign country.
Could they be transferred to the control of the United Nations and be placed in a U.N. prison facility?
If he is successful in closing the detention facility what will happen to it? Could Obama cancel the lease with Cuba? Yes. Could the facility be transferred to Cuba and then handed over to Iran, Russia or China? Yes.
What is worse, Obama is bent on taking robust action on Gitmo such that the next administration cannot restore it after it is closed. This leaves few options for the next president or does it?
At issue is fundamentally, Naval Station Guantanamo Bay is a full service military base that provides regional security to the Caribbean and monitors activity in Central and South America. It also provides the Department of Homeland Security with assistance in migrant operations.
Other detachments located at the base are: Personnel Support Activity, Naval Atlantic Meteorology and Oceanography Command, Naval Media Center, Naval Communications Station, Department of Defense Dependent Schools, Navy Brig, and Fleet and Industrial Supply Center.
NAVSTA GTMO garrison facilities
The bay area is divided into two parts known as the outer and inner harbours. The inner harbour includes commercial ports while the outer harbour accommodates naval station and the main anchorage space. Pier and wharf facilities are located at the small inlets located between Corinaso Point and Deer Point.
Air facilities
NAVSTA GTMO had two airfields namely Leeward Point Field and McCalla Airfield. The operations at McCalla Airfield were ceased in 1976. The Leeward Point Field is the only active military airfield in the base. It has a single runway (10/28) measuring 2,438m x 61m and surfaced with asphalt.
Other base facilities and services
The naval station has four wind turbines generating 3,800kW electricity, enough to fulfil 25% its power requirements. A desalination plant capable of producing 2.25 million gallons of fresh water a day is attached to the base. The plant also produces a combined 15,000kw of electricity through its two turbine generators.
Guantanamo has had operations that includes air fields with aircraft including F8U Crusaders and A4D Skyhawks. It was also an anti-submarine center and a training center. It can handle and has handled 50 warships.
Further, the Haitian crisis , the Balkan crisis and the famous Cuban missile crisis.
Imagine a foreign government in control of U.S. naval infrastructure and technology. Just imagine.
Those operating in the Middle East at the behest of Iran for Iran and Syria have been identified, now what? Saudi Arabia with the cooperation of other Gulf nations has been quite assertive to end the conflicts in Syria, Yemen, Iraq and so forth yet Iran, Syria and Russia have zero interest in stopping Assad. How long into the future will this fester and will it eventually plateau only when the United States has a new president and who can lead and be effective among the candidates?
To understand the history between Shiite and Sunni, click here.
Not long before the Riyadh-Tehran diplomatic row that followed the execution of Saudi Shia cleric Nimr Al Nimr, a showdown between the two countries unfolded in New York. While it is difficult to draw a direct correlation between the two events, the incident can help us understand the depth of the continuing crisis.
On December 18, heated debate ensued between representatives of the two countries at a meeting in New York over the listing of armed groups operating in Syria for possible determination as terrorist organisations. The list, which Jordan was asked to develop, would name extremist groups that must be defeated as part of the UN-sponsored political process for Syria.
A month earlier in Vienna, Saudi Arabia had insisted on including in the list foreign Shia militias fighting on the side of president Bashar Al Assad. Riyadh argued that all foreign fighters must leave Syria, regardless of which side they supported. In New York, Iran, joined by Russia, strongly objected to the demand and the standoff caused a deeper rift between the two countries.
For now, the designation of terror groups in Syria has been referred to a committee comprising several European and regional countries. They first determined indicators and criteria of what constitutes a terrorist organisation, then named armed groups currently fighting in Syria. There is a preliminary list of more than 160 Sunni and Shia organisations.
Iran categorically rejects including any Shia groups in the list. For Tehran, the fate of the Assad regime it supports is critically tied to the presence of those Shia militias. It is a fact that adds to the many issues that compound the conflict in Syria – issues that the international community would seemingly rather sweep under the carpet instead of deal with head on.
The Syrian regime controls about 30 per cent of the country, though it probably controls over 50 per cent of the population. According to the defence think tank IHS Jane’s, the regime lost 16 per cent of its territory over the past year. These figures are particularly damning if one considers that foreign Shia militias were on the front line of key battles against the rebels – in the Qalamoun region, Aleppo and central and western Syria – over this period.
The growing role of these militias last year came as the Syrian army showed signs of internal weakening, something that Mr Al Assad has admitted. During his most recent speech, almost exactly a month before the Russian intervention in September, the president said that the army lacked “manpower”. Also last year, paramilitary fighters with the National Defence Forces (NDF) began to focus on their local areas rather than deploy in the front lines elsewhere – a task that foreign fighters took on.
Youssef Sadaki, a Syrian researcher who closely focuses on Shia militias, says those foreign fighters acted as the main strikers in battles outside the regime’s heartlands, while the NDF fighters defended their areas or secured and held newly-captured areas.
According to Mr Sadaki, foreign militias lead the regime’s battles in southern Aleppo, and the front lines between Idlib, Aleppo, Latakia, Homs and Hama. Hizbollah has spearheaded key battles in southern Syria near the Lebanese borders, while other militias guard the front lines in Damascus and fought in Deraa.
Phillip Smyth, a close observer of Shia militancy, says that most of the regime’s offensives over the past two years were led by foreign forces, including in areas where the regime’s elite units operate, such as in Damascus.
“When we look at Aleppo, the entire offensive there was spearheaded and planned by the Iranians, it was their Shia militia proxy forces which showcased the entire campaign,” said Mr Smyth, from the University of Maryland. “It’s quite clear that they are a – if not the main – fighting force in many areas.”
Last month on these pages, I highlighted that while Iran and Russia might in theory be willing to accept the removal of Mr Al Assad, there are practical reasons why they would not do that, because consequences are unpredictable and the result is not guaranteed.
For the rebels, no peace is possible while Mr Al Assad is in power, so his future complicates the peace talks. So does the presence of Shia militias in Syria.
Reliance on these foreign forces means that their departure will have to follow the consolidation of the government’s military control over the country. They operate in critical areas and the regime’s army or NDF do not appear to be prepared to take their place.
The presence of Shia militias is important for the regime and for its backer in Tehran. Many of these militias are also key Iranian proxies in Iraq, with recent reports suggesting that Iran has diverted them to Syria to assist in the wake of the Russian intervention in Syria. So the issue has also a regional dimension that cannot be ignored.
Iran finds itself in a situation where it seeks to save the regime in Syria through the help of religious zealots, while pushing for the designation as terrorists of Sunni extremists fighting on the side of the opposition.
In western capitals, strangely, that seems to be a reasonable position. For the opposition and regional backers such as Saudi Arabia, that is double dealing that further complicates the already-complex conflict in Syria.
Meanwhile, back to Iran and the big money. What future trouble will the monetary windfall coming for Iran play in the region?
FreeBeacon: Expert: ‘Kerry might as well have wired the money directly into the Revolutionary Guards’ bank accounts’
Iran’s economy is set to receive a substantial boost in the next two years as a result of billions in sanctions relief from the nuclear deal, according to a new forecast, a windfall that could also secure more resources for the Iranian military and its terrorist proxies.
The World Bank said in a report that Iran’s GDP is projected to increase by 5.8 percent this year, compared to just 1.9 percent last year. Economic growth is then estimated to rise by 6.7 percent in 2017.
As part of the nuclear agreement reached between Iran and world powers last year, the Islamic regime could collect as much as $150 billion in unfrozen assets from foreign accounts after it places some restrictions on its nuclear program. Tehran will also be permitted to resume more oil exports, which could increase its sales by 0.5 to 0.7 million barrels per day this year.
The nuclear deal “opens the door for reintegration of [Iran] into the global economy and the reinvigoration of its oil, natural gas, and automotive sectors,” the World Bank said in its global economic prospects report.
“Sanctions could begin to be lifted in early 2016 if the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) indicates the Iranian government has fulfilled its commitments under the pact,” the report continued. “Renewed optimism about the potential of the Iranian economy has already generated a flurry of investment interest by foreign companies.”
Michael Rubin, an expert on Iran and the Middle East at the American Enterprise Institute, said in an email that he also expects the Iranian economy to grow in the wake of the nuclear deal, though he cautioned that the World Bank can be too reliant on flawed statistics from Tehran. Rising growth in Iran would represent a stark contrast to the economic situation before the nuclear negotiations, when the country’s economy contracted under the weight of U.S.-led sanctions.
At the talks, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry turned in “probably the worst negotiating performance any U.S. secretary of state has had in the last century,” Rubin said, because he failed to pressure Iran into eliminating all aspects of its nuclear program.
“Rather than use Iran’s precarious economic situation as leverage in U.S. negotiations, Secretary of State John Kerry effectively caved,” said Rubin, who is also a former Pentagon official in the George W. Bush administration.
“The Obama administration effectively bailed Iran out,” he added.
Analysts have raised concerns that the Islamic regime could devote billions of its sanctions relief to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the elite paramilitary unit that also supports terrorist groups in Lebanon, Gaza, and Yemen. The American Action Forum estimated last year that the Guard Corps’ budget could increase by about $3 billion after the nuclear deal is fully implemented.
“If Iran’s economy does grow—and that growth is not eroded from significant inflation from the hard currency influx—then the chief beneficiaries will be the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps who have a stranglehold over the oil industry, import-export, and construction,” Rubin said. “Kerry might as well have wired the money directly into the Revolutionary Guards’ bank accounts, because that is the net effect.”
Iran could also use the sanctions relief to bolster its ballistic missile program. Iranian forces have tested two ballistic missiles since the nuclear agreement was reached, including one in October that was capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and violated a United Nations Security Council ban. President Hassan Rouhani has said the military should allocate more resources to its missile program if the United States decides to impose sanctions for the missile tests.
Additionally, an Iranian military with more funding could further exacerbate sectarian tensions in the Middle East. Following the execution of a Shiite cleric by Saudi Arabia, a Sunni Muslim nation and Iran’s bitter regional rival, Iranian protesters stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran, prompting the Saudis to break off diplomatic relations. Iran has now accused a Saudi-led coalition of launching airstrikes near its embassy in Yemen.
Rubin warned that Iran previously capitalized on negotiations and trade in the early 2000s to augment its nuclear program.
“Between 1999 and 2005, Europe’s trade with Iran almost tripled and the price of oil about quintupled,” he said. “Iran put about 70 percent of that hard currency windfall into its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.”
“The reason for the expansion of Iran’s illicit programs early the last decade was too much diplomacy, not too little,” he continued. “The Supreme National Security Chairman at the time directing those programs? Hassan Rouhani. Kerry is simply making the same mistake twice.”
By Zerohedge: Serco. Chances are you’ve never heard of the company. If you have heard of the company, chances are you misunderstand the shear enormity of the global company and their contracts.
From transport to air traffic control, getting your license in Canada, to running all 7 immigration detention centers in Australia, private prisons in the UK, military base presence, running nuclear arsenals, and running all state schools in Bradford, Serco, somewhere, has played a part in moving, educating, or detaining people.
New contracts awarded to Serco include a Saudi Railway Company, further air traffic control in the US and also IT support services for various European agencies. You can read more on their future projects below.
Serco’s history began in 1929 as a UK subsidiary, RCA Services Limited to support the cinema industry.
In the 1960s the company made a leap into military contracts to maintain the UK Air Force base Ballistic Missile Early Warning System. From there, the company continues to grow.
Now trading as Serco Group, 2015 trading as of August 11 2015, maintained a revenue of £3.5 billion, and an underlying trading profit of £90 million. The data was presented at JPMorgan in London.
In 2013 Serco was considered a potential risk, and became a representation of the dangers of outsourcing. The U.K. government developed contingency plans in case Serco went bankrupt. When the concerns came to light, Serco faced bans (along with G4S, another outsourcing contractor) from further bidding on new U.K. government work for six months. It wasn’t until Rupert Soames OBE – Sir Winston Churchill’s grandson – took on the job as Serco’s Chief Executive in 2014, that Serco turned a new corner of profit growth.
Serco Today
Serco today is one of the biggest global companies to exist. They have contracts with:
Alliant – the vehicle for IT services across the Federal IT market;
National Security Personnel System (NSPS) – For “(NSPS) training and facilitating services throughout the Department of Defense (DoD) and agencies that needs NSPS training and implementation services;”
Seaport – The NAVSEA SEAPORT Multiple Award contract focuses on “engineering, technical, and programmatic support services for the Warfare Centers.” This is inclusive of Homeland Security and Force Protection, Strategic Weapons Systems, and multiple warfare systems.
CIP-SP3 Services and Solutions(Cost $20 Billion, expiration date 2022) – biomedical-related IT services with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) with the main objective focused on Biomedical Research and Health Sciences extending to information systems throughout the federal government. Also implementation in several key areas of Biomedical Sciences including legislation and critical infrastructure protection.
The few contracts listed above are among the vast array of transport, detention center and private prison contracts.
Serco, the biggest company you’ve never heard of…..
The site, known as ‘Playpen’, launched in August 2014 and allowed users to sign up and upload images, primarily for “the advertisement and distribution of child pronagraphy”. This websites isn’t like an adult pornography website as it’s on the dark web, adult pornography websites such as fulltube you can find simply by searching in your normal browser but sites like Playpen you need to access the dark web first.
Within a month of Playpen’s launch, the website had garnered nearly 60,000 members. By 2015 that number had jumped to almost 215,000, with 11,000 unique users visiting the site each week, and a total of 117,000 posts.
Many of those posts contained some of the most extreme child abuse images one could imagine, according to FBI testimony seen byMotherboard.
Although the website also included advice on how users could avoid online detection, a sting operation began in February 2015 when the FBI hacked into the website’s server, but decided not to shut it down.
The bureau took the ‘unprecedented’ measure of running Playpen to spy on its users and hack their IP addresses, leading to the arrests.
According to Motherboard, a public defender for one of the accused called the operation an “extraordinary expansion of government surveillance and its use of illegal search methods on a massive scale.”
*** The Dark Web and the FBI
Motherboard: While it looks like several of those already charged will plead guilty to online child pornography crimes, one defense team has made the extraordinary step of arguing to have their client’s case thrown out completely. Their main argument is that the FBI, in briefly running the child pornography site from its own servers in Virginia, itself distributed an “untold” amount of illegal material.
“There is no law enforcement exemption, or statutory exemption for the distribution of child pornography,” Colin Fieman, one of the federal public defenders filing the motion to dismiss the indictment, claimed in a phone interview earlier this week. Jay Michaud, a Vancouver teacher arrested in July 2015, is also being represented by Linda Sullivan.
“THE GOVERNMENT’S OPERATION OF THE WORLD’S LARGEST ‘HIDDEN SERVER’ CHILD PORNOGRAPHY SITE AND ITS GLOBAL DISTRIBUTION OF UNTOLD NUMBERS OF PICTURES AND VIDEOS IS OUTRAGEOUS CONDUCT THAT SHOULD RESULT IN DISMISSAL OF THE INDICTMENT,” a court filing dated November 20, 2015 reads.
Fieman and Sullivan reason that if the methods of the investigation that supposedly identified his client “cannot be reconciled with fundamental expectations of decency and fairness,” then the indictment should be dismissed.
A section of the filing, which outlines the defense lawyers’ argument.
In February 2015, the FBI seized the server of “Playpen,” which court documents described as “the largest remaining known child pornography hidden service in the world.” Instead of shutting the site down straight away, however, the FBI moved Playpen to a government controlled server in Virginia, and deployed a network investigative technique (NIT)—the agency’s term for a hacking tool—in an attempt to identify people logging into the site. This NIT, according to other court documents, collected approximately “1300 true internet protocol (IP) addresses” between February 20 and March 4.
In their argument, Fieman and Sullivan point to the Department of Justice’s own view on the harm caused by the proliferation of child pornography. “Once an image is on the Internet, it is irretrievable and can continue to circulate forever,” the Department of Justice website reads. In an April 2015 press release, US Attorney Josh J. Minkler said that “Producing and distributing child pornography re-victimizes our children every time it is passed from one person to another.”
In essence, the lawyers’ point is that the FBI was, by running Playpen from its own servers, essentially distributing child pornography.
So, according to their argument, it is unclear how the “Government can possibly justify the massive distribution of child pornography that it accomplished in this case.”
They then posit that, rather than taking over the site to deploy a bulk hacking technique, and allowing the site to continue to distribute child pornography material in the process, the FBI could have posted individual links to malware-laden files on the site without running it from their own servers. Or, after seizing the site, the agency could have redirected users to a spoofed version of it, minus the child pornography material.
“We are in a protracted street fight with the Department of Justice and the FBI”
Instead, the FBI “continued to distribute thousands of illicit pictures and videos to thousands of visitors,” the filing states. It compares the case to “Operation Fast and Furious”: Between 2009 and 2011, law enforcement agents infamously proliferated illegal weapons in an attempt to trace them to Mexican drug cartels. Some of the weapons, however, ended up being used in the murder of a US Border Patrol agent.
The Department of Justice did not reply to repeated requests for comment. The FBI did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication, but a spokesperson previously told Motherboard, “We are not able to comment on ongoing investigations, or describe the use of specific investigative techniques.”
This argument to dismiss the indictment is just one of the more recent phases of a heated legal back-and-forth between Michaud’s lawyers and the government. Since October, dozens of documents have been filed in the case, including motions to seal documents, affidavits, modifications to protective orders, and delays to responses.
“We are in a protracted street fight with the Department of Justice and the FBI,” Fieman told Motherboard.
Some of the issues circle around evidence: the defense argues that its client has not had access to important discovery information. It has had some success on that front though: on December 10, the Government wrote that the defense counsel will be provided with the computer code of the NIT under a protective order. The defense is also expected to receive a detailed list of the number of child pornography materials on Playpen while it was being run from an FBI server.
The government’s response to the motion to dismiss the indictment is currently sealed. It’s unclear how the government has replied to the lawyer’s arguments, but this move to have the indictment against a suspected online child pornographer totally scraped is a surprising and dramatic turn in a case that continues to grow in scope.
There are only a handful of results of the FBI investigation into Hillary. 1. The DoJ’s Loretta Lynch will give Hillary as pass if there is a criminal referral. 2. Barack Obama will give Hillary full protection under ‘Executive Privilege’ under the excuse of national security. 3. There will be a full blown revolt by the whole intelligence community. 4. Leaks will come out forcing a criminal referral of Hillary Clinton and we could see a Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren ticket.
Schlinder: Back in October I told you that Hillary Clinton’s email troubles were anything but over, and that the scandal over her misuse of communications while she was Secretary of State was sure to get worse. Sure enough, EmailGate continues to be a thorn in the side of Hillary’s presidential campaign and may have just entered a new, potentially explosive phase with grave ramifications, both political and legal.
The latest court-ordered dump of her email, just placed online by the State Department, brings more troubles for Team Hillary. This release of over 3,000 pages includes 66 “Unclassified” messages that the State Department subsequently determined actually were classified; however, all but one of those 66 were deemed Confidential, the lowest classification level, while one was found to be Secret, bringing the total of Secret messages discovered so far to seven. In all, 1,340 Hillary emails at State have been reassessed as classified.
There are gems here. It’s hard to miss the irony of Hillary expressing surprise about a State Department staffer using personal email for work, which the Secretary of State noted in her own personal email. More consequential was Hillary’s ordering a staffer to send classified talking points for a coming meeting via a non-secure fax machine, stripped of their classification markings. This appears to be a clear violation of Federal law and the sort of thing that is a career-ender, or worse, for normals. The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee termed that July 2011 incident “disturbing,” and so it is to anyone acquainted with U.S. Government laws and regulations regarding the handling of classified material.
Part 1
But the biggest problem may be in a just-released email that has gotten little attention here, but plenty on the other side of the world. An email to Hillary from a close Clinton confidant late on June 8, 2011 about Sudan turns out to have explosive material in it. This message includes a detailed intelligence report from Sid Blumenthal, Hillary’s close friend, confidant, and factotum, who regularly supplied her with information from his private intelligence service. His usual source was Tyler Drumheller, a former CIA senior official and veteran spy-gadfly, who conveniently died just before EmailGate became a serious problem for Hillary’s campaign.
Part 2
However, the uncredited June 8 memo, which Mr. Blumenthal labeled as “Confidential” – his personal classification system, apparently – but which the State Department has labeled Unclassified, doesn’t appear to be from Drumheller, whose assessments were written just like CIA intelligence reports. This is not.
Part 3
Remarkably, the report emailed to Hillary by “sbwhoeop,” which was Mr. Blumenthal’s email handle, explains how Sudan’s government devised a clandestine plan, in coordination with two rebel generals, to secure control of oil reserves in the disputed region of Abyei. This is juicy, front-page stuff, straight out of an action movie, about a region of Africa that’s of high interest to the American and many other governments, and the report is astonishingly detailed.
Part 4
Its information comes from a high-ranking source with direct access to Sudan’s top military and intelligence officials, and Mr. Blumenthal’s write-up repeatedly states the sources – there turn out to be more than one – are well-placed and credible, with excellent access. It’s the usual spytalk boilerplate when you want the reader to understand this is golden information, not just gossip or rumors circulating on the street, what professionals dismiss as “RUMINT.” Needless to add, this is generating a lot of talk in Sudan, where the media is asking about this shady affair – and how Sid Blumenthal, who’s not exactly an old Africa hand, knew all about it.
Part 5
But the most interesting part is that the report describes a conversation “in confidence” that happened on the evening of June 7, just one day before Mr. Blumenthal sent the report to Secretary Clinton. It beggars the imagination to think that Sid’s private intelligence operation, which was just a handful of people, had operators who were well placed in Sudan, with top-level spy access, able to get this secret information, place it in a decently written assessment with proper espionage verbiage, and pass it all back to Washington, DC, inside 24 hours. That would be a feat even for the CIA, which has stations and officers all over Africa.
In fact, the June 8, 2011 Blumenthal report doesn’t read like CIA material at all, in other words human intelligence or HUMINT, but very much like signals intelligence or SIGINT. (For the differences see here). I know what SIGINT reports look like, because I used to write them for the National Security Agency, America’s biggest source of intelligence. SIGINT reports, which I’ve read thousands of, have a very distinct style and flavor to them and Blumenthal’s write-up matches it, right down to the “Source Comments,” which smack very much of NSA reporting and its “house rules.”
But is this an NSA assessment? If so, it would have to be classified at least Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information, a handling caveat that applies to most SIGINT, and quite possibly Top Secret/SCI, the highest normal classification we have. In that case, it was about as far from Unclassified as it’s possible for an email to be.
No surprise, NSA is aflutter this weekend over this strange matter. One Agency official expressed to me “at least 90 percent confidence” that Mr. Blumenthal’s June 8 report was derived from NSA reports, and the Agency ought to be investigating the matter right now.
There are many questions here. How did Sid Blumenthal, who had no position in the U.S. Government in 2011, and hasn’t since Bill Clinton left the White House fifteen years ago, possibly get his hands on such highly classified NSA reporting? Why did he place it an open, non-secure email to Hillary, who after all had plenty of legitimate access, as Secretary of State, to intelligence assessments from all our spy agencies? Moreover, how did the State Department think this was Unclassified and why did it release it to the public?
It’s possible this Blumenthal report did not come from NSA, but perhaps from another, non-American intelligence agency – but whose? If Sid was really able to get top-level intelligence like this for Hillary, using just his shoestring operation, and get it into her hands a day later, with precise information about the high-level conspiracy that was just discussed over in Sudan, the Intelligence Community needs to get him on our payroll stat. He’s a pro at the spy business.
*******
Hillary Clinton was battered with questions by CBS host John Dickerson on Sunday about new revelations from her private email server.
Appearing on Face The Nation, Clinton was asked about ordering an aide to send information through “nonsecure” channels and her hypocritical surprise that another State Department employee was not using a government account at the time.
In the June 2011 email exchange, Jake Sullivan, then-Secretary Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, discussed forthcoming “TPs,” appearing to refer to talking points, that Clinton was waiting to receive.
“They say they’ve had issues sending secure fax. They’re working on it,” Sullivan wrote of the forthcoming information in an email dated June 17, 2011.
“If they can’t, turn it into nonpaper [with] no identifying heading and send nonsecure,” Clinton wrote Sullivan in response the same day.
“Aren’t you ordering him to violate the laws on handling classified material there?” Dickerson asked.
“No, not all, and as the State Department said just this week, that did not happen, and it never would have happened, because that’s just not the way I treated classified information,” Clinton said. “Headings are not classification notices, and so, oftentimes, we are trying to get the best information we can, and obviously what I’m asking for is whatever can be transmitted, if it doesn’t come through secure, to be transmitted on the unclassified systems. So, no, there is nothing to that, like so much else has been talked about in the last year.”
Dickerson said the email was “striking” because it suggested she knew how to get around restrictions for sending classified information.
“You’re saying there was never an instance, any other instance, in which you did that?” Dickerson asked.
“No, and it wasn’t sent,” Clinton said. “This is another instance where what is common practice, namely, I need information. I had some points I had to make, and I was waiting for a secure fax that could get me the whole picture, but oftentimes there’s a lot of information that isn’t at all classified, so whatever information can be appropriately transmitted, unclassified, often was. That’s true for every agency in the government and everybody who does business with the government.”
Clinton said the “important point” was she had “great confidence“ she wasn’t in breach of government regulations on classification.
“In fact, as the State Department has said, there was no transmission of any classified information, so it’s another effort by people looking for something to throw against the wall … to see what sticks, but there’s no ‘there’ there,” she said.
Dickerson wasn’t finished, though, pointing to a 2011 email showing Clinton expressing surprise that another State Department staffer wasn’t using a government account, even while she was flouting rules by using a private email to do business.
That was “what you were doing,” Dickerson said, so “why was that a surprise to you?”
“Well, I emailed two people on their government accounts, because I knew that all of that would be part of the government system, and indeed, the vast majority of all my emails are in the government systems, so that’s how I conducted the business,” she said. “I was very clear about emailing anything having to do with business to people on their government accounts.”
In other words, Clinton did not answer the question about her fairly blatant hypocrisy.
