Contractors: ” Hillary Broke all the Rules”

Primer: JWICS =

The Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System, is a Top Secret/SCI network run by the United States’ Defense Intelligence Agency and used across the Department of Defense, Department of State, Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice to transmit especially sensitive classified information.

FNC/EXCLUSIVETwo State Department contractors, with decades of experience protecting the United States’ most sensitive secrets, are speaking out for the first time about Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state and how the rules for government security clearance holders did not seem to apply to Clinton and her team.

“The State Department was her oyster and it was great for the [Clinton] foundation and great for the Clintons to be able to have such a great position,” Dave Whitnah told Fox News.

Whitnah said he worked within the State Department’s Office of Security Technology which is responsible for cameras and alarms and sweeping for bugs. Whitnah said everyone understood the secretary of state is the primary target of foreign intelligence services.

“The number one person would be the secretary of state and their communications,” Whitnah explained. “You can think of the Iran negotiations, nuclear negotiation, negotiations with Russia, talks with Russia. You know, anything to do with foreign policy.”

Whitnah emphasized that tens of millions of dollars were spent on technical security for Clinton that apparently was disregarded as her team traveled around the world on official U.S. government business.

“It was unfathomable that [her BlackBerry] would be used for anything other than just unclassified communication,” Whitnah said. Clinton’s devices were not certified as secure by the State Department. As for her use of a non-secure BlackBerry, Whitnah stressed that email can be intercepted and, “Even if turned off, it’s still a listening device so that’s why you take out the batteries.”

As Clinton was sworn in as secretary in January 2009, government contractor Amel Smith said he was also working at the department and: “State Department rules are clear. I helped write those rules.”

Smith says his 30 years of experience includes serving in the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne, before becoming a counter-intelligence and counter-espionage investigator at State tracking down breaches of classified materials. He reviewed some of the FBI witness interviews from the Clinton email investigation with Fox News, and questioned those who claimed not to have the proper training in handling sensitive information.

“I hear things like, well, I forgot, um, I don’t know that I was trained, I don’t know this. You know — every single person that had access to that information when it was sent is in violation,” Smith emphasized.

The FBI witness interviews also show secure facilities for classified information — known as SCIFs — were specially built for Clinton in her in Washington, D.C., and Chappaqua, N.Y., homes. Doors that were supposed to be locked were left open.

“If you’ve got an uncleared person in there, it’s automatically a compromise,” Smith said.

Another FBI interview summary said there were personally owned desktop computers in the secure facilities at Clinton’s homes, yet she told the FBI that she did not have a computer of any kind in these facilities.

“If somebody said they’re there, then they probably were there, and you know, the reason you would deny it was because you probably didn’t have approval,” Smith said.

Having unapproved computers in a SCIF would automatically call for a security investigation.

Asked for his reaction to Clinton’s claim that nothing she sent or received was marked classified, Whitnah called that assertion a “misrepresentation.” Fox News was first to report in June that at least one of the emails contained a classified information portion marking for “c” which is confidential. FBI Director James Comey later said in July when he recommended against criminal charges that a handful of Clinton emails contained classified markings.

But more than 2,100 emails with classified information, and at least 22 at the “top secret” level, passed through Clinton’s unsecured private server. Asked how it happened, Smith said, “Personally, there had to have been somebody moving classified information from C-LAN, C-LAN again is Secret, Confidential only, and JWICS. JWICS is where all top secret information is.”

After new emails were found in the Anthony Weiner sexting case belonging to his estranged wife Clinton aide Huma Abedin, the FBI reopened the Clinton email investigation. On Sunday, Comey said the emails did not change his recommendation against criminal charges because his investigators did not find intent to move classified materials outside secure government channels

“Whether it’s the private email server, whether it’s this private laptop. If there’s classified — one document on there — that’s classified, it’s a violation. Somebody violated [the] law,” Smith said. “Throw all the politics out the window, what we’re talking about is the defense of this nation.”

Asked about Smith and Whitnah, who filed a complaint against the State Department, a department spokesman said they were not direct hires — adding that the head of diplomatic security told the FBI that Clinton was “very responsive to security issues.”

****

And her State Department approved that security team in Benghazi

Benghazi guards turned on US diplomats in 2012 attack, sources say

stevenspic1Expand / Contract

Stevens, shown in rear wearing black, with several of the guards sources say turned on him. (Special to Fox News)

FNC: An obscure private firm hired by the State Department over internal objections to protect U.S. diplomats in Benghazi just months before the American ambassador and three others were killed was staffed with hastily recruited locals with terror ties who helped carry out the attack, multiple sources told Fox News.

The explosive charge against Wales-based Blue Mountain Group comes from several sources, including an independent security specialist who has implemented training programs at U.S. Consulates around the world, including in Benghazi, where he trained a local militia that preceded Blue Mountain. The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Blue Mountain used local newspaper ads to assemble a team of 20 guards, many of whom had terror ties, after securing a $9.2 million annual contract.

“The guards who were hired were locals who were part of the Ansar al-Sharia and Al Qaeda groups operating in Benghazi,” said the source, whose assignment in Benghazi had ended in November 2011. “Whoever approved contracts at the State Department hired Blue Mountain Group and then allowed Blue Mountain Group to hire local Libyans who were not vetted.”

TIMELINE OF CLINTON’S BENGHAZI STATEMENTS

Many were members of the Libyan government-financed February 17th Martyrs Brigade, an Islamist militia that had previously guarded Americans before being replaced by Blue Mountain.

John “Tig” Tiegen, one of the CIA contractors that responded to the Sept. 11, 2012 attack and co-author of “13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi,” confirmed to Fox News that the local Libyans who attacked the consulate that night included guards working for Blue Mountain.

“Many of the local Libyans who attacked the consulate on the night of Sept. 11, 2012, were the actual  guards that the State Department under Hillary Clinton hired to protect the Consulate in Benghazi,” Tiegen told Fox News. “The guards were unvetted and were locals with basically no background at all in providing security. Most of them never had held a job in security in the past.

“Blue Mountain Libya, at the time of being awarded the contract by our State Department, had no employees so they quickly had to find people to work, regardless of their backgrounds,” he said.

One former guard who witnessed the attack, Weeam Mohamed, confirmed in an email sent to the Citizens Commission on Benghazi and obtained by Fox News, that at least four of the guards hired by Blue Mountain took part in the attack after opening doors to allow their confederates in.

“In the U.S. Mission, there were four people [who] belonged to the battalion February 17,” Mohamed wrote to the Commission, an independent body formed with Accuracy in Media to investigate the attack and the administration’s handling of it.

“Always armed. And they are free to move anywhere inside a building mission.

“And therefore, they had a chance to do an attack on the mission’s headquarters. They have all the details about the place. At the same time they have given the United States a painful blow,” Mohamed wrote.

Blue Mountain officials did not return multiple requests for comment. The State Department acknowledged in internal emails obtained by FoxNews.com the local recruits fell short of their duty, but discounted the claim any took an active role in the attack that resulted in the deaths of Ambassador Christopher Stevens, Foreign Service Information Officer Sean Smith and CIA contractors and former Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty.

“While the Accountability Review Board report and other reports were critical of our local guards’ performance, we are not aware of any evidence that they participated in the attacks themselves,” said State Department spokesman John Kirby.

Blue Mountain was hired in February 2012, following an uprising that ended Col. Muammar Gaddafi’s 42-year rule and plunged Libya into violent chaos. Congressional testimony in the wake of the attack on a consular office in Benghazi revealed that Stevens and his staff had made hundreds of requests for security upgrades but had been ignored by officials in Washington.

“We kept asking for additional support, including a 50-caliber mounted machine gun, but the State Department would not give it to us, because they said it would upset the locals,” the source told Fox News. “Instead, the State Department hired a company that doesn’t have employees, which then hired terrorists.”

Clare Lopez, a member of Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi, said the Clinton State Department bears blame for the security situation.

“Think about it: Hillary Clinton’s State Department actually hired the very people who, along with their jihadist allies in Benghazi, attacked us and killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and Sean Smith as well as CIA contractors Glen Doherty and Ty Woods,” Lopez said.

According to government records obtained by the Washington-based Judicial Watch, the State Department was in a “rush” to hire Blue Mountain UK, and its affiliate, Blue Mountain Libya, which together formed The Blue Mountain Group to secure the Benghazi contract.

“I understand there was a tremendous rush to get the original contract awarded, and the Service level agreement was most likely overlooked in the rush,” wrote State Department contracting officer Jan Visintainer, in a June 6, 2012, email. Emails obtained from [missing word] after the attack showed Visintainer urged Blue Mountain officials not to talk to the media.

Blue Mountain UK was formed in 2008 by David Nigel Thomas, a former Special Air Service official. Charles Tiefer, a commissioner at the Commission on Wartime Contracting, told Reuters the company was not well known.

“Blue Mountain was virtually unknown to the circles that studied private security contractors working for the United States, before the events in Benghazi,” Tiefer said.

Despite the size of the operation, and having no staff or track record with the State Department, Blue Mountain Group landed the $767,767-per-month contract to protect the Benghazi consular office, beginning on Feb. 17, 2012.

The company solicited applications in local newspapers and on websites, and very little, if any, screening of guards was done, the security specialist told Fox News. The lack of vetting led to several potentially dangerous hires beginning in March of 2012, he said.

“One of those guards hired by Blue Mountain was the younger brother of the leader of Al Qaeda of Benghazi,” he said.

In an email obtained by Judicial Watch, Jairo Saravia of the Regional Security office for the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, told his superiors in Washington that Blue Mountain had held and lost security contracts in Tripoli, with the Corinthian Hotel and Palm City complex.

“The latest information is Blue Mountain is not licensed by the GOL (Government of Libya) to provide security services in Libya,” Saravia wrote. “I would advise not to use their services to provide security for any of our annexes and/or offices due to the sensitivity this issue has with the current GOL.”

Prior to Blue Mountain, security for Americans in Benghazi had been provided by the February 17th Martyrs Brigade under a direct agreement with the State Department. Despite its Islamist orientation, the militia included dozens of locals who had been carefully cultivated and trained by the U.S., according to the source. The majority of the February 17 Militia guards were fired without warning when Blue Mountain was hired, leading some members to turn against the Americans, he said. The State Department kept on at least three February 17 employees for patrol.

Eric Nordstrom, the regional security officer in Libya who has vast, first-hand knowledge of some 600 security requests denied to the U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya, testified on May 8, 2013, before the Congressional Committee On Oversight & Government Reform that he was aware that employees with both February 17 Martyrs Brigade and Blue Mountain had ties to Islamist terrorists.

“I had met with some of my agents and then also with some annex personnel. We discussed that,” Nordstrom told lawmakers.

Nordstrom testified that the “ferocity and intensity” of the 13-hour, four-phase attack, on the 11th anniversary of 9/11, was nothing that they had seen in Libya, or that he had seen in his time in the Diplomatic Security Service, with as many as 60 attackers in the consulate.

“I am stunned that the State Department was relying on [locals] with extremist ties to protect American diplomats,” U.S. Rep. Blake Farenthold, R-Texas, told Fox News. “That doesn’t make any sense. How does that happen?”

Fox News was able to verify through a former Libyan guard the identities of several February 17 employees hired despite terrorist ties, who he said participated in the attack. While their identities have been provided to federal authorizes, none have been prosecuted.

NYT’s and HRC Team on First Email Story/ Then IRS

Re: NYT | Email Content

Date: 2015-03-17 18:46 Subject:
Re: NYT | Email Content

Cyber CIA: Brennan Rebuilt the Agency for Digital Future

    

NEW DIRECTION: John Brennan at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on his nomination to be the director of the CIA in 2013. Brennan has restructured the agency to REUTERS/Jason Reed

John Brennan’s attempt to lead America’s spies into the age of cyberwar

The CIA director has put the U.S. spy agency through a historic restructuring to cope with the era of digital warfare. Many in the agency are unhappy with the shake-up. In a series of interviews, Brennan outlines his strategy. “I think CIA really needs to up its game.”

ReutersInvestigates:WASHINGTON – When America goes to the polls on Nov. 8, according to current and former U.S. intelligence officials, it will likely experience the culmination of a new form of information war.

A months-long campaign backed by the Russian government to undermine the credibility of the U.S. presidential election – through hacking, cyber attacks and disinformation campaigns – is likely to peak on voting day, the officials said.

Russian officials deny any such effort. But current and former U.S. officials warn that hackers could post fictional evidence online of widespread voter fraud, slow the Internet to a crawl through cyber attacks and release a final tranche of hacked emails, including some that could be doctored.

“Don’t underestimate what they can do or will do. We have to be prepared,” said Leon Panetta, who served as CIA director and defense secretary in President Barack Obama’s first term. “In some ways, they are succeeding at disrupting our process. Until they pay a price, they will keep doing it.”

John Brennan, the current CIA director, declined to comment on the Russian efforts. But he said Russian intelligence operatives have a long history of marrying traditional espionage with advances in technology. More broadly, Brennan said, the digital age creates enormous opportunities for espionage. But it also creates vulnerabilities.

Citing an array of new cyber, conventional and terrorist threats, Brennan announced the most sweeping reforms of the CIA in its 69-year history 18 months ago.

Weakening the role of the Directorate of Operations, the agency’s long-dominant arm responsible for gathering intelligence and conducting covert operations, Brennan created 10 new “mission centers” where CIA spies, analysts and hackers work together in teams focused on specific regions and issues. He also created a new Directorate for Digital Innovation to maximize the agency’s use of technology, data analytics and online spying.

The information age “has totally transformed the way we are able to operate and need to operate,” Brennan told Reuters in a series of interviews. “Most human interactions take place in that digital domain. So the intelligence profession needs to flourish in that domain. It cannot avoid it.”

When a new American diplomat arrives for duty at the U.S. embassy in Moscow or Beijing, CIA official say, Russian and Chinese  intelligence operatives run data analytics programs that check the “digital dust” associated with his or her name. If the newcomer’s footprint in that dust – social media posts, cell phone calls, debit card payments – is too small, the “diplomat” is flagged as an undercover CIA officer.

The Russian-backed campaign to discredit the U.S. election is not isolated. Hackers believed to have links to Chinese intelligence began stealing the personal information of 22 million federal employees and job applicants in 2014, the worst known data breach in U.S. government history. Islamic State’s online propagandists continue to inspire lone wolf attacks in the United States even as the group loses territory.

A senior official from the Directorate of Operations, who backs the shake-up, said the agency is experiencing its greatest test in decades.

“The amount of threats and challenges that are facing this organization and this nation are greater than at any time in the last 30 years,” said the official, who declined to be named. “The days of a black passport, a fistful of dollars and a Browning pistol are over.”

INNER CIRCLE: President Barack Obama with Brennan and Chief of Staff Denis McDonough at the White House in 2013. The president and the CIA chief are criticized by some former agents for being overly cautious in Syria, Russia and elsewhere. Courtesy Pete Souza/The White House/Handout via REUTERS

“Most human interactions take place in that digital domain. So the intelligence profession needs to flourish in that domain. It cannot avoid it.”

John Brennan, CIA director

James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, praised Brennan and his efforts to retool the CIA for a new era in an interview. So did Lisa Monaco, Brennan’s successor as the President Obama’s Homeland Security and Counterterrorism adviser.

But some current and former officials question Brennan’s strategy, arguing his reforms are too digitally focused and will create a more cautious, top-heavy spy agency. At a time when the agency needs to refocus its efforts on human espionage, they say, the concentration of power in the new mission centers weakens the ability of the Directorate of Operations to produce a new generation of elite American spies.

The reforms have hurt morale, created confusion and consumed time and attention at a time of myriad threats, according to interviews with ten former officials.

Glenn Carle, a former CIA covert officer, supports Brennan and his reforms but said they have sparked a mixed reaction among directorate of operations officials who believe human intelligence is getting short shrift.

“The value the CIA can fundamentally add is to steal secrets, and the ultimate secret is intention,” the often inscrutable aims of foreign leaders, Carle said. “Obtaining that is a human endeavor.”

At the same time, Brennan has stirred a different sort of criticism – that he has defied Congressional oversight. Liberal Democrats and libertarian Republicans in Congress say the Brennan-Obama tenure has been tarnished by a lack of transparency with congressional oversight committees and the public regarding surveillance, drone strikes and the agency’s use of torture against terrorism suspects during the administration of George W. Bush.

“While I think John’s overall legacy will be as a reformer, that legacy will suffer from his refusal to come to grips with the CIA’s troubled torture program,” said Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif, vice chair of the Senate’s intelligence committee. “I think the new president’s CIA director must prioritize a high level of trust between the CIA and Congress to insure proper oversight is conducted.”

It’s unclear how closely the country’s next president will hew to Brennan’s strategy.

The front-runner, Democrat Hillary Clinton, has an incentive to beef up American cyber-espionage: U.S. intelligence officials blame the continuing leak of emails from her campaign on Russian-backed hacking. Clinton also expressed support for covert action in a transcript of a 2013 speech she gave to Goldman Sachs that was recently released by Wikileaks.

Republican Donald Trump, meanwhile, pledged to make cybersecurity a top priority in his administration in an October 3 speech. “For non-state terror actors, the United States must develop the ability – no matter how difficult – to track down and incapacitate those responsible and do it rapidly,” Trump said. “We should turn cyber warfare into one of our greatest weapons against the terrorists.”

In interviews at agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia, Brennan declined to comment on either candidate or discuss operational details of the CIA. But he and eight other senior CIA officials gave the most detailed description yet of their rationale for the most radical revamp of the agency since its founding in 1947.

“I look out at the next 10, 20, 30 years, and I look at technology, I look at complexity, I look at the global environment,” Brennan said. “I think CIA really needs to up its game.”

JUST-WAR THEORIST

Brennan, a 61-year-old native of north New Jersey, looks like a linebacker but talks like a technocrat. He speaks excitedly about how the CIA and other government bureaucracies can be configured in “a way to ensure optimal outcomes.”

The son of devout-Catholic Irish immigrants, Brennan speaks reverently of CIA officers as public servants who risk their lives without public accolades. He joined the agency in 1980, at the age of 24, after receiving a Master’s Degree in government with a concentration in Middle Eastern studies from the University of Texas.

“The value the CIA can fundamentally add is to steal secrets, and the ultimate secret is intention. Obtaining that is a human endeavor.”

Glenn Carle, former CIA covert officer

Educated in various Catholic schools, including Fordham University, Brennan says he is an adherent of just war theory – a centuries-old Christian theological argument that war is justified when it is waged in self defense, as a last resort and minimizes civilian casualties. Those beliefs, he says, have guided him in one of the most controversial aspects of his tenure in the Obama administration.

As Obama’s White House counter-terrorism adviser and CIA director, Brennan played a central role in carrying out 473 U.S. airstrikes outside conventional war zones between 2009 and 2015, primarily by drone. U.S. officials estimate the attacks have killed 2,372 to 2,581 people, including 64 to 116 civilians. Human rights groups say the totals are vastly higher. Last year, for instance, a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan accidentally killed American aid worker Warren Weinstein and Italian aid worker Giovanni Lo Porto, who were both being held captive by al Qaeda.

Brennan declined to comment on specific strikes, but said, “I still can look myself in the mirror everyday and believe that I have tried to do what is morally right, what is necessary, and what is important to keep this country safe.” He also acknowledged mistakes.

“You question yourself. You beat yourself up. You try to learn from it,” Brennan said, in a rare display of emotions. “But you also recognize that if you’re not prepared to make the tough decisions in the jobs that have been entrusted to you, you shouldn’t be in those jobs.”

Today, Brennan says the United States faces the most complex array of threats he has seen since joining the agency 36 years ago. As a CIA analyst, operative and executive, he has lived through the Cold War espionage duels of the 1980s; the disintegration of nation-states after the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall; the rise of non-state terrorist groups since 2001; and the current digital disruption. Now, he says, all four dynamics are converging at once.

BOLD AND INNOVATIVE RIVALS

CIA officials say their greatest state competitors are the Russian and Chinese intelligence services. While smaller countries or terrorist groups may want to strike at the United States, Russia and China are the only two adversaries with the combination of skills, resources and motivation needed to challenge Washington.

In recent years, Moscow’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, has become adept at waging “gray zone” conflicts in Ukraine, Crimea and Syria, the officials said. In all three countries, Russian intelligence operatives have deftly shrouded protagonists, objectives and war crimes in ambiguity.

GREAT RIVALS: U.S. President Barack Obama with his Chinese and Russian counterparts, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, in Beijing in 2014. Washington has faced barrages of digital threats from Beijing and Moscow; CIA insiders say the two nations remain the biggest challenge for the United States. REUTERS/Pablo Martinez Monsivais

“You beat yourself up…. But you also recognize that if you’re not prepared to make the tough decisions in the jobs that have been entrusted to you, you shouldn’t be in those jobs.”

John Brennan, CIA director

One target is America’s increasingly politically polarized democracy. As Russian-backed hacking unfolded this summer, the Obama White House’s response fueled frustration among law enforcement and intelligence officials, according to current and former officials. The administration, they said, seemed to have no clear policy for how to respond to a new form of information warfare with no rules, norms or, it seemed, limits.

White House officials said the administration is still considering various methods of responding, but the responses won’t necessarily be made public.

China presents another challenge. Chinese businessmen and students continue trying to scoop up American state and economic secrets. In one bright spot, Beijing appears to be abiding by a 2015 pact signed by Obama and Chinese leader Xi Jinping that the two governments would not conduct economic espionage against one another. Chinese hacking appears to have slowed from the voracious rate of the past, which included hacking into the computers of the 2008 presidential campaigns of John McCain and Barack Obama but not releasing what was found.

“The question is whether or not it is due to greater care in terms of covering one’s tracks,” Brennan said of the apparent change. “Or whether or not they realize that they’re brand is being tarnished by this very rapacious appetite for vacuuming up things.”

Regional powers are also increasing their digital espionage efforts.

In 2014, the Obama administration blamed North Korea for the hacking of Sony Pictures’ computer system. This spring, U.S. prosecutors indicted seven Iranian hackers for allegedly trying to shut down a New York dam and conducting a cyber attack on dozens of U.S. banks. They also indicted three Syrian members of the “Syrian Electronic Army,” a pro-Syrian government group,  who hacked into the websites of U.S. government agencies, corporations and news organizations.

In a 2015 case that U.S. officials said marks a worrying new trend, federal prosecutors indicted a 20-year-old hacker from Kosovo. With the help of a criminal hacker, Ardit Ferizi stole the home addresses of 1,300 members of the U.S. military, providing the information to Islamic State and posting it online, and calling for attacks on the individuals. Ferizi was arrested in Malaysia, where he was studying computer science. In September, he pleaded guilty in a U.S. federal court and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

“This blend of the criminal actor, the nation-state actor and the terrorist actor, that’s going to be the trend over the next five years,” said John Carlin, who recently stepped down as head of the Justice Department division that monitors foreign espionage in the United States.

But some active clandestine officers argue that the intelligence community has grown too reliant on technology, a trend they trace back four decades to the directorship of Stansfield Turner. Satellite photography, remote sensors and communications intercepts have become more sophisticated, but so have encryption techniques and anti-satellite weapons.

More important, they argue, is that technology is no substitute for “penetrations” – planting or recruiting human spies in foreign halls of power. The CIA missed India’s 1998 nuclear tests and misjudged Saddam Hussein’s arsenal in 2003 because it lacked spies in the right places.

Today, these current and former CIA officials contend, American policymakers have little insight into the thinking of Vladimir Putin’s inner circle. Presidents, kings and dictators often don’t share their true intentions electronically, putting this valuable information largely beyond the scope of digital spying. The best sources are still people, and these officials believe the agency is not mounting the kind of bold human spying operations it did in the past.

Brennan and other CIA officials flatly denied downplaying human intelligence. They said aggressive, high-risk human spying is under way but they cannot go into operational detail.

One of Brennan’s predecessors, Michael Hayden, former CIA chief under President George W. Bush, says the agency strayed from its core mission during the Bush years. After the Al Qaeda attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Hayden said, the CIA had to shift to become a paramilitary organization that devoted its most talented officers to tracking and killing terrorists. It now needs to reverse that trend by focusing on espionage against rival nations, he said.

“The constant combat of the last 15 years has pushed the expertise of the case officer in the direction of the battlefield and in the direction of collecting intelligence to create physical effects,” said Hayden, using an intelligence euphemism for killing. “At the expense of what the old guys called long-range, country-on-country intelligence gathering.”

‘OPTIMIZING CAPABILITIES’

Brennan and the eight other senior CIA officials made the case that their modernization effort will address the needs and threats described by Hayden and others. Technological advances, they said, have leveled the intelligence playing field. The web’s low cost of entry, creativity and speed benefits governments, hackers and terrorists alike.

A veteran covert operative who runs a new CIA mission center compared Brennan’s reforms to the Goldwater-Nichols Act. The landmark 1986 legislation reorganized the U.S. military into a half dozen regional commands where the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines work together. It was a response to inter-service rivalries that bedeviled the American military in Vietnam.

The CIA equivalent involves having the agency’s five main directorates – Operations (covert spies), Analysis (trends and prediction), Science and Technology (listening devices and other gadgetry) and Digital Innovation (online sleuthing) and Support (logistics) – provide the personnel needed by each regional mission center.

CORE MISSION: Former CIA Director Michael Hayden says the agency went deeply into anti-terrorist operations during the Bush years and needs to return to its traditional mission of spying. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

Andrew Hallman, director of the new Directorate for Digital Innovation, said the CIA has embraced cloud computing as a way to better share intelligence. In a move that shocked insiders and outsiders, the CIA awarded an $600 million contract to Amazon in 2013 to build a secure cloud computing system where multiple CIA databases can be quickly accessed.

For decades, different directorates maintained their own separate databases as a security measure, said Hallman. Some of the applications the agency used were so old – up to 30 years – that the manufacturer was no longer in business.

Turning to Amazon was designed to immediately put private-sector computing advances at the fingertips of CIA operatives. It was also an admission that it was easier for the agency to buy innovation from the private sector than try to create it internally.

Several former CIA officials criticized the new team-focused system, saying it dilutes the cultures that made each agency directorate strong. The best analysts are deeply skeptical and need to be separated from covert operatives to avoid group-think, they said. And the best covert operatives are famously arrogant, a trait needed to carry out the extraordinarily difficult task of convincing foreigners to spy for America.

Richard Blee, a former CIA clandestine officer, said the agency needed reform but highlighted a separate problem created by technological change. Instant secure communications between CIA headquarters and officers in the field has centralized decision-making in Washington, Blee said. And regardless of administration, senior officials in Washington are less willing to take a risk than field officers – virtually all of whom complain about headquarters’ excessive caution.

“The mentality across the board in Washington is to take the lowest common denominator, the easiest option, the risk-free option,” Blee said. “The Chinese are taking tough decisions, the Russians are taking tough decisions and we are taking risk-averse decisions. And we are going to pay a price for that down the road.”

Brennan says his reforms will empower CIA officers: The integrated teams in each new mission center will improve speed, adaptability and effectiveness.

“To me, that’s going to be the secret of success in the future, not just for CIA but for other organizational structures,” Brennan said. “Taking full advantage of the tools, capabilities, people and expertise that you have.”

The old ways of spycraft, Brennan argues, are no longer tenable. Asked what worries him most, he gave a technocratic answer: Twentieth century American government management practices are being rendered obsolete in the digital age.

“U.S. decision making processes need to be streamlined and accelerated,” he said. “Because the problems are not going to wait for traditional discussions.”

THE LONG VIEW: CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. “I look out at the next 10, 20, 30 years, and I look at technology, I look at complexity, I look at the global environment,” Brennan says. “I think CIA really needs to up its game.” REUTERS/Jason Reed

—————

Digitizing the CIA

By David Rohde

Additional reporting by John Walcott and Jonathan Landay

Video: Zachary Goelman

Graphics: Christine Chan

Photo editing: Barbara Adhiya

Edited by Michael Williams

 

Obama and John Kerry Covering Ransom and Iran’s Terror Attacks

Why Iran supported Houthi attacks against the US Navy

**** Primer:

The Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program is a form of security assistance authorized by the Arms Export Control Act (AECA), as amended [22 U.S.C. 2751, et. seq.] and a fundamental tool of U.S. foreign policy.

Then we go back to the money Obama and Kerry approved to be paid to Iran:

The Story of Obama’s Ransom Payment to Iran Gets Worse

America paid Iran $1.7 billion in cash—funds that by law were not to be released unless and until Iran paid what it owed to American victims of its terrorism.

Mosaic: On the morning of January 17, 2016, President Obama declared that this was “a good day, because, once again, we’re seeing what’s possible with strong American diplomacy.”

The Iran nuclear deal had been implemented the day before—an example, the President said, of his “smart, patient, and disciplined approach to the world.” Now Iran was releasing five American hostages, the result of the administration’s “tireless” efforts. “On the sidelines of the nuclear negotiations,” the president explained, “our diplomats at the highest level, including Secretary [of State John] Kerry, used every meeting to push Iran to release our Americans.” In return for that gesture, the president continued, he was making a “reciprocal humanitarian gesture”: namely, clemency for seven Iranians imprisoned or awaiting trial for criminal violations of American sanctions. Later it was announced that the U.S. had also dropped outstanding warrants against another fourteen Iranians.

The president then added something else: with the nuclear deal implemented, and the hostages released, “the time was right” for “resolving a financial dispute that dated back more than three decades.” That dispute involved an Iranian claim regarding money advanced by the government of the Shah for military equipment that Washington did not deliver after the 1979 revolution. Now, the president asserted, we were returning Iran’s “own funds,” including “appropriate interest,” but “much less than the amount Iran sought.” The savings, he said, came potentially to “billions”—a figure quantified by his press secretary as “up to $6 billion or $7 billion” in a “very good deal for taxpayers.” In other words, now that the larger issues had been resolved, the U.S. was simply issuing a long-delayed refund to Iran, and in the process saving Americans a significant amount of money.

The president’s statement, however, omitted a great deal of relevant information. The president was returning $400 million in Iran’s “Foreign Military Sales” (FMS) account with the Pentagon, plus $1.3 billion in interest, but he failed to mention that in 1981, when Iran filed its claim before the Claims Tribunal at The Hague, the U.S. had responded with a counterclaim for $817 million for Iran’s violations of its obligations under the FMS program. In 2016, with both the claim and the counterclaim still pending, it was possible that Iran owed billions of dollars to the U.S., not the reverse.

Nor did the president mention the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act, signed by President Bill Clinton in 2000 and stipulating that Iran’s FMS account could not be refunded until court judgments held by the U.S. government against Iran for damages from terrorist acts against American citizens were resolved to America’s satisfaction. Those judgments, including interest accumulated between 2001 and 2016, totaled about $1 billion. The president did not explain how, under the 2000 law, with those judgments still outstanding, he could pay Iran anything at all.

Nor did the president mention that his “refund” to Iran was being paid in untraceable European cash, a fact discovered by reporters seven months later. He would then contend that, in light of the sanctions on banking transactions with Iran, “we had to give them cash.” But the sanction regulations expressly authorize bank payments to settle Iran’s claims at The Hague, as Michael Mukasey, the former U.S. attorney general, later testified to Congress, adding that there was “no legitimate reason why [Iran] should want cash other than to pursue terrorism.” Indeed, the Hizballah International Financing Prevention Act, passed by Congress in December 2015, had resulted in Tehran’s needing significantly more cash to continue funding its terrorist organization in Lebanon, Syria, and elsewhere.

In a February 3 letter, Ed Royce, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, asked the administration to provide the legal basis for paying Iran’s claim, as well as a specific computation of the interest paid. He repeated the request in a June 1 letter, adding that according to information provided to him by the Congressional Research Service, the Hague tribunal paid 10-percent simple interest on such claims. Computed at that rate, and before considering the U.S. counterclaim under the FMS and the terror judgments still outstanding, Iran’s total claim on the FMS account was virtually identical to the $1.7 billion the administration paid, with no “billions” in savings.

To date, the administration has released no legal analysis to support its payment, no evaluation of the U.S. counterclaim, no text of the settlement agreement, no computation of the interest, no credible explanation for issuing the payment in cash, and no document showing the approval of the attorney general as required for issuing such a payment. For months, the administration hid important facts—including how the settlement was paid—even in response to direct congressional inquiries.

The $1.7-billion payment thus appears to have been a ransom, just as an Iranian general claimed it was at the time—a huge cash payment to accompany the lopsided exchange of 21 Iranians, duly charged or convicted under American law, for five American hostages who had been seized by Iran and held on fabricated charges in secret proceedings.

 

As for the outstanding claims against Tehran for the terror judgments, the administration has asserted that these were satisfied “by securing a favorable resolution on the interest owed to Iran.” What favorable resolution? In effect, the settlement cost the United States $2.7 billion—the $1.7 billion in cash plus about $1 billion in forgiven court judgments—to pay a claim that was not yet due, may not in fact have been owed, and may have been more than offset by the U.S. counterclaim that exceeded Iran’s own claim.

And therein lies the most troubling aspect of President Obama’s settlement, which is neither its amount nor its appearance as ransom but the fact that Iran succeeded in having U.S. taxpayers bear the cost of the damages owed by Iran for committing despicable acts of terrorism against them. To understand the magnitude of what the President did on January 17, some background is necessary.

 

In April 1995, Alisa Flatow, a twenty-year-old Brandeis University honors student spending her junior year abroad in Israel, boarded a bus in Jerusalem bound for a popular resort area in Gaza. It was the height of the “peace process,” celebrated the year before with Nobel Peace prizes. As the bus entered Gaza, a van filled with explosives slammed into it. Eight people, including Alisa, were killed, and more than 40 others were injured. The attack was carried out by a faction of Islamic Jihad controlled, financed, and directed by the highest levels of Iran’s government.

Alisa’s father, Stephen M. Flatow, filed suit in U.S. federal court against Iran, pursuant to legislation Congress had enacted permitting such suits against state sponsors of terrorist attacks on American citizens. A federal district court issued a 35-page opinion, Flatow v. Islamic Republic of Iran (1998), awarding a total of $20 million in compensatory damages as well as punitive damages, with both types of damages specifically authorized by the U.S. Congress. The court noted that expert testimony had “detailed an annual expenditure [by Iran] of approximately $75 million for terrorist activities” and that Iran “is so brazen in its sponsorship of terrorist activities that it carries a line item in its national budget for this purpose.” Accordingly, the court awarded punitive damages of $225 million—three times Iran’s publicly-disclosed annual terrorist budget. It was the minimum amount the expert had testified was necessary to have a significant deterrent effect, which was what Congress had intended to achieve in its authorizing legislation.

Over the next four years, a series of cases held Iran liable for similarly horrific terror operations. Cicippio v. Islamic Republic of Iran (1998) involved Joseph Cicippio (comptroller of the American University of Beirut), David Jacobsen (CEO of the medical center there), and Frank Reed (who operated two private schools in Beirut)—all abducted by Hizballah, an entity the court found was “sponsored, financed, and controlled by Iran.” Jacobsen had been chained and blindfolded for eighteen months; Reed had been held blindfolded or in darkness for more than three-and-a-half years; Cicippio had been held for over five years, chained in scorpion-infested cells and randomly beaten throughout his captivity. The court awarded them a total of $65 million in compensatory damages.

Anderson v. Islamic Republic of Iran (2000) involved Terry Anderson, chief Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press, who was kidnapped in Beirut by Hizballah and held shackled in filthy conditions for nearly seven years, fed only bread and water. The court again found Iran responsible, and awarded $41.2 million in compensatory damages and $300 million in punitive damages.

Eisenfeld v. Islamic Republic of Iran (2000) was brought by Leonard Eisenfeld for the death of his son Matthew, a twenty-five-year-old Yale graduate studying at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Israel, and by Arline Duker for the death of her twenty-year-old daughter, Sara, a Barnard College graduate enrolled in a program at the Hebrew University. They had been on an Israeli bus, en route to visit the archeological site at Petra, Jordan, when a passenger—acting under directions from a Hamas official funded and trained by Iran—detonated a bomb that destroyed the bus and killed them and others. The court awarded $22.5 million in compensatory damages and $300 million in punitive damages.

In still other cases, Iran was held legally responsible for the kidnapping, torture, and death of CIA station chief William Buckley in Beirut; the kidnapping of Father Lawrence Jenco, the director of Catholic Relief Services in Beirut, held for 564 days in conditions described by the court as “little better than [for] a caged animal”; the kidnapping of Thomas M. Sutherland, the dean of Agricultural and Food Sciences at the American University of Beirut, tortured for more than six years; the murder of Petty Officer Raymond Wagner in the 1983 car bombing of the American embassy in Beirut; the murder of Petty Officer Robert Stethem, beaten during the hijacking of TWA Flight 847, his body dumped on the tarmac, and the holding of nine other American hostages on that flight; and many other hostage-takings, with one court noting that Tehran “virtually directed the terms and conditions under which hostages would be held or released.”

In all, sixteen cases were decided against Iran by courts in the United States between 1998 and 2004, with awards of compensatory damages totaling some $400 million and punitive damages totaling $3.5 billion.

Of course, the problem faced by each victorious plaintiff was collecting the judgment. Stephen Flatow, after unsuccessfully seeking to have the damages paid out of various Iranian assets held in the United States, learned of the $400 million in the FMS fund. The Clinton administration had supported the legislation that allowed suits such as Flatow’s, but then strenuously opposed any effort to have the judgments satisfied from that fund. In its 1999 brief in federal court, the administration stated that the U.S. had a $817-million counterclaim against Iran, that the “current cash balance in Iran’s FMS program account [was] about $400 million,” and that “It is unknown how much, if any, of that amount will be owed to Iran by the United States until the claims before the [Hague] Tribunal are resolved” (emphasis added).

The court rejected Flatow’s contention that the FMS funds were the property of Iran, which could satisfy his judgment, on the grounds that “the United States does not share [his] characterization of these U.S. Treasury funds as ‘Iranian property.’” The court held instead that the FMS fund was U.S. property.

With Flatow’s subsequent appeal pending, Congress and the Clinton administration agreed on legislation directing the U.S. Treasury to pay the American holders of terror judgments against Iran for the amount of their compensatory damages plus 10 percent of their punitive damages, up to the amount in the FMS fund. The law subrogated the United States—meaning that the terror judgments became direct U.S. government claims against Iran to the extent the Treasury had paid them. Finally, the law included a provision to ensure that Iran would ultimately have to bear the cost of those payments: “no funds shall be paid to Iran . . . from the [FMS] fund until such subrogated claims have been dealt with to the satisfaction of the United States.”

Sixteen years later, with the $400 million still held by the U.S. government, and with no payments by Iran of a single cent of any of the sixteen court judgments against it, President Obama nevertheless gave the $400 million in the FMS account to Iran, plus interest. His statement that he was merely refunding Iran’s “own funds” directly contradicts the court’s determination in 1999. Indeed, since he made no mention of “resolving” the unpaid terror judgments in his January 17 statement, it is reasonable to conclude that the president simply ignored the 2000 statute as well.

 

January 17, 2016, was thus very far from “a good day . . . [for] strong American diplomacy.” It was a day of extraordinary diplomatic deception, practiced not against Iran—which knew exactly what the administration was doing—but against the American people, who were intentionally kept in the dark by the administration about critical aspects of the deal. President Obama paid Iran $1.7 billion that may not have been owed; paid it in cash—the currency of international terror; did not tell the American people he had relieved Iran from longstanding court judgments; did not add the cost of those judgments to the $1.7 billion payment that he announced; and did not faithfully execute the 2000 law—all the while congratulating himself on his accomplishment and claiming he had saved the U.S. billions.

The president’s actions with respect to the lawsuits won by American victims of Iranian terror, after years of litigation, stand in stark contrast to the resolution of the court cases concerning Libya’s terrorism, including the 1988 Pan Am 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland. In 2008, Libya sought to re-establish relations with the United States, but Congress and the State Department blocked action until Libya satisfied the terror claims of American citizens against it. Libya agreed to pay and did pay the U.S. $1.5 billion to resolve those claims. Nothing of the sort accompanied the seemingly endless negotiations with Iran over the nuclear deal, as the administration made concession after concession to obtain it.

January 17, 2016 was in fact a shameful day in the history of American diplomacy. The only question is which aspect was most shameful: the craven abandonment of American claims against the Islamic Republic of Iran for past terrorism, the provision of a huge amount of cash enabling it to engage in future terrorism, the systematic mendacity about the process and the willful failure to inform the American people of everything that had been done, or the underlying policy of appeasing Iran that precipitated both the process and its cover-up.

What happened on January 17, 2016 was much worse than paying ransom.

Illegals are Covered Under Obamacare, Words Matter

7 Years ago, Barack Obama delivered a speech declaring that Obamacare would not insure those that are here illegally. Congressman Joe Wilson yelled, ‘you lie’. Well Joe Wilson was right all along, so he deserves the apology.

CRS: The degree to which foreign nationals (noncitizens/aliens)1 should be accorded access to certain benefits as a result of their presence in the United States, as well as the responsibilities of such persons given their legal status (e.g., immigrants, nonimmigrants, unauthorized aliens), often figures into policy discussions in Congress. These issues become particularly salient when Congress considers legislation to establish new immigration statuses or to create or modify benefit and entitlement programs.

The 111th Congress enacted the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (P.L. 111-148), which has been amended by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 (P.L. 111-152) and several other bills. (ACA refers to P.L. 111-148 as amended by P.L. 111-152 and the other legislation.)2 The ACA created new responsibilities (e.g., the requirement that most people in the United States obtain health insurance) and new benefits (e.g., tax credits to help certain people purchase health insurance), and it addressed the eligibility and responsibility of foreign nationals for these provisions. One issue that has arisen during debates to amend provisions in the ACA and during discussions of immigration reform is the eligibility of foreign nationals for some of the ACA’s key provisions.

This report opens with a discussion of several different statutory and regulatory definitions of lawfully present. On the surface, alien eligibility for provisions under the ACA appears straightforward. In general, those who are lawfully present are eligible, and those who are not lawfully present are not eligible. However, due to differing definitions of “lawfully present” and the interaction between the treatment of noncitizens under tax law, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and the ACA, the eligibility of individuals with certain immigration statuses for these provisions can become more complicated.

 

This report then analyzes the eligibility of foreign nationals for key provisions in the ACA that have restrictions based on immigration status: the requirement to maintain health insurance, the ability to purchase insurance through an exchange, and eligibility for the premium tax credit and cost-sharing subsidies.3 It includes consideration of the implementing regulations and the impact of the Supreme Court’s ruling in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius.4 This report concludes with information on the alien-status verification process.

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Treatment of Noncitizens Under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA)

The following section discusses alien eligibility for the following provisions under the ACA: the health insurance mandate, the exchanges (the Marketplace), and premium tax credits and cost-sharing subsidies. In general, aliens are separated into two groups for eligibility purposes under the ACA: aliens who are “lawfully present in the United States” are eligible for these provisions, while aliens who are not “lawfully present in the United States” are ineligible.

Definition of Lawfully Present

One of the complexities of alien eligibility for the ACA stems from the difficulty of defining who is considered lawfully present. The regulations implementing the ACA define lawfully present to include immigrants, asylees/refugees, nonimmigrants, and most other noncitizens who are known to the U.S. government and have been given some type of permission to remain temporarily in the United States. (For the full list, see Appendix A.) “Lawfully present” was first defined by regulation in this context for the purposes of eligibility for the high risk pools for uninsured people with pre-existing conditions.5 Since then, all regulations regarding the ACA have referenced that definition for the health insurance mandate, the exchanges, and the premium credit and cost-sharing subsidies.6 The definition of lawfully present for the ACA is identical to the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) policy definition of “lawfully residing” for Medicaid and CHIP eligibility7 and is similar to the definition of “lawfully present” for Social Security eligibility.8

 

Nonetheless, “lawfully present” is not a term that is widely used within the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). The INA divides foreign nationals into two general types of legal statuses for admission to the United States: immigrants and nonimmigrants. Under the INA, other aliens may have permission to be in the United States, but they do not have an immigration status. The term “lawfully present” in the INA is only defined in regards to noncitizen eligibility for Social Security.9 The INA also defines the term “unlawfully present” specifically for purposes of determining inadmissibility, but that definition is not equivalent to the definition of “lawfully present” for purposes of the ACA.

There are noncitizens who have temporary permission to remain in the Unites States under narrowly defined circumstances such as those with temporary protected status (TPS),11 withholding of removal,12 Deferred Enforced Departure,13 and parole14—often referred to as the “quasi-legal population.” This “quasi-legal” population is counted by researchers at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and at the Pew Research Center’s Hispanic Trends Project—the two main entities that estimate the unauthorized alien population—as part of the unauthorized (illegal) population. Although these “quasi-legal” migrants comprise a small percentage of the total noncitizen population, most are considered “lawfully present” for the purposes of the ACA.15 (For a discussion of these estimates, see Appendix B, “Estimates of the Noncitizen Population in the United States.”)

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Tax Treatment of Noncitizens

For purposes of the ACA, understanding the U.S. income tax treatment of noncitizens may be important for several reasons, including that any noncitizen who is a nonresident alien—which is a tax law term—is not subject to the individual mandate.22 Also, some might be interested in understanding the tax liability of noncitizens in light of the fact that the IRS may face difficulty in enforcing the mandate against any taxpayer (citizen or resident alien) who does not receive a tax refund.

For federal tax purposes, foreign nationals are classified as resident or nonresident aliens.23 These terms are used in the Internal Revenue Code (IRC) but do not exist in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).24 As a result, the specific immigration statuses under the INA do not align directly with the terms resident and nonresident alien.25

In general, an individual is a nonresident alien unless he or she meets the qualifications under either residency test:

Green card test: the individual is a lawful permanent resident of the United States at any time during the current year, or

 Substantial presence test: the individual is present in the United States for at least 31 days during the current year and at least 183 days during the current year and previous two years (counting all the qualifying days in the current year, one-third of the days in the prior year, and one-sixth of the days in the earliest year).

There are several situations in which an individual may be classified as a nonresident alien even though he or she meets the substantial presence test. For example, an individual will generally be treated as a nonresident alien if he or she has a closer connection to a foreign country than to the United States, maintains a “tax home” in the foreign country, and is in the United States for fewer than 183 days during the year.27 Another example is that an individual in the United States under an F-, J-, M-, or Q-visa—students, teachers, trainees, and cultural exchange visitors—may be treated as a nonresident alien if he or she has substantially complied with visa requirements.28 This treatment generally applies to foreign students (most foreign students are on F visas) for their first five years in the United States and to teachers and trainees for the first two years. (You can read the full report here if you can stand it.)