Clarion
Related reading: John Walker Lindh Sues For Prison Prayer Group
Related reading: Remembering Johnny Michael Spann
TheBlaze
FP: On Nov. 25, 2001, two CIA officers discovered a bearded 19-year-old English speaker among a group of captured Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.
The bedraggled teen stood out. “Irish? Ireland?” a CIA officer asked the prisoner, who gave no reply.
He turned out to be an American. And hours later, one of his CIA interrogators was killed when the captured Taliban prisoners staged an uprising.
Photographed naked and bound, California-born John Walker Lindh became detainee #001 in the global war on terrorism and dubbed the “American Taliban.” Branded a traitor and terrorist back home, he was convicted of supporting the Taliban and sentenced to 20 years in prison in a media firestorm that captured the zeitgeist of the post-9/11 era.
Now 36 years old, Lindh is set to be released in less than two years. And he’ll leave prison with Irish citizenship and a stubborn refusal to renounce violent ideology, according to the U.S. government. Foreign Policy obtained two government documents that express concerns about Lindh: One details the communications of Lindh and other federal prisoners convicted of terrorism-related charges, and the second, written by the National Counterterrorism Center, addresses the intelligence community’s larger concerns over these inmates, once released.
“As of May 2016, John Walker Lindh (USPER) — who is scheduled to be released in May 2019 after being convicted of supporting the Taliban — continued to advocate for global jihad and to write and translate violent extremist texts,” reads the National Counterterrorism Center document prepared earlier this year.
The report, marked “For Official Use Only” and dated Jan. 24, 2017, provides a window into how the intelligence community looks at the prospect of releasing American citizens still considered potential threats. The document indicates that intelligence and law enforcement agencies are already worried that “homegrown violent extremists,” like other criminals, could have high rates of recidivism.
The document, which cites various Federal Bureau of Prisons intelligence summaries, claims that in March of last year, Lindh “told a television news producer that he would continue to spread violent extremist Islam upon his release.”
The television news producer is not identified, no specific statements are quoted, and there is no public record that Lindh has participated in media interviews.
While Lindh’s case is the most prominent among these prisoners, it’s not unique. U.S. authorities are monitoring dozens of other inmates who they deem to be “homegrown violent extremists” and who will be released within the next several years.
By the end of 2016, according to the National Counterterrorism Center, there were 300 terrorism offenders in prison, including 80 arrested in the past two years. “We assess that at least some of the more than 90 homegrown violent extremists incarcerated in the US who are due to be released in the next five years will probably reengage in terrorist activity,” the report says, “possibly including attack plotting, because they either remain radicalized or are susceptible to re-radicalization as has already been demonstrated overseas.”
Back in 2002, Lindh’s case posed difficult challenges for a government just starting to grapple with how to prosecute the war on terrorism on the battlefield and in the courts. Fifteen years later, as Lindh approaches his release from prison, the federal government will again be venturing into unchartered waters as sentences for other convicted extremists expire.
Now it will be up to President Donald Trump to decide one of the trickiest legacies of the war on terrorism: how to treat so-called homegrown terrorists after they’ve served their time.
Several attorneys who worked on terrorism cases told FP the government doesn’t have any specific conditions in place for extremists once they’re released. Most of the emphasis is on the prosecution up front, and not what happens after they leave prison, they say.
Most sentences for terror-related cases involving U.S. citizens in the post-9/11 era “are ripening into release just now,” said Joshua Dratel, a lawyer who has defended suspected terrorists in federal court. “The government is just starting to run into the dilemma of what to do with them.”
Lindh’s journey from a liberal suburb in Marin County, California to northern Afghanistan began as an adolescent, when he watched the film Malcolm X. He told FBI interrogators that the movie inspired him to convert to Islam. In 1998, at just 17 years old, he dropped out of school and went to Yemen to learn Arabic, with his parents’ support.
From there, he traveled to Pakistan, where he spent time with a paramilitary group fighting for Kashmir’s independence from India. Then he made his way to Afghanistan, prior to the Sept. 11 attacks, to fight with the Taliban, which controlled much of the country and was waging a war with the Northern Alliance. It was then that he lost contact with his family, who wouldn’t hear from him again until after his capture.
Lindh spent seven weeks at a training camp near Kandahar, which was used to prepare Taliban militants for combat and al Qaeda volunteers for terrorist attacks. He met Osama bin Laden at least once and spoke briefly with the al Qaeda leader, who thanked the American and other foreign fighters for taking part in the jihad, according to the FBI’s account of his interrogation.
In November 2001, U.S. forces found Lindh among a group of Taliban fighters whose commander had surrendered to the Northern Alliance near Mazar-i-Sharif. Hours after Lindh was interrogated, his fellow prisoners staged a revolt in which some 500 were killed, including a CIA operations officer, Johnny Michael Spann. Lindh was shot in the leg during the fighting. He was one of only 86 who survived the uprising.
Lindh’s parents only learned of his whereabouts when CNN aired an interview with him shortly after his capture.
During more than 50 days of detention, U.S. authorities sometimes had Lindh blindfolded, naked and bound to a stretcher with duct tape. Although his family had retained a defense lawyer and told U.S. authorities about it, Lindh knew nothing about his attorney for a month.
Left: 14-year-old John Walker Lindh (Photo credit: Courtesy Frank Lindh); Right: The home of Frank Lindh on Dec. 3, 2001 in San Rafael, California. (Photo credit: JUSTIN SULLIVAN/Getty Images)
Brought back to the United States, Lindh found himself facing charges of terrorism, even though there was no evidence he plotted against Americans. In the frenzied aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft described Lindh as an al Qaeda-trained terrorist who “chose to embrace fanatics.”
In the first legal case of the “war on terror,” Lindh was charged with providing material support for terrorism. The government’s case eventually collapsed over questions about Lindh’s treatment and confession while he was held by the U.S. military in Afghanistan and on U.S. naval ships.
With the defense team ready to shine an embarrassing light on Lindh’s treatment, federal prosecutors — at the urging of the Defense Department — dropped nine of the ten counts, including charges he tried to kill a CIA officer or support terrorism. Lindh ultimately pleaded guilty to violating an executive order prohibiting aid to the Taliban, and for carrying weapons in Afghanistan, and he agreed to drop any claims that he was abused by the U.S. military.
At his sentencing, Lindh, then 21, denounced Osama bin Laden, expressed regret over joining the Taliban, and renounced terrorism. “I condemn terrorism on every level — unequivocally,” he said in a prepared statement. “My beliefs about jihad are those of mainstream Muslims around the world.”
More than 15 years after he was captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan, Lindh’s case remains the subject of debate and intense speculation. Is he a dangerous traitor or the victim of an angry nation lashing out after a terrorist attack?
“We’ll never know what actually happened to John Walker Lindh,” said Wells Dixon of the Center for Constitutional Rights. “John Walker Lindh, in many respects, was a victim of the time. It was the aftermath of 9/11.”
Marc Sageman, a former CIA operations officer and a terrorism expert, said Lindh’s rise to public infamy and lengthy prison term was an “overreaction” to the new threat of terrorism in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. “Of course he pled guilty to some kinds of charges. Because the country was ready to lynch him,” Sageman said.
For Sageman, Lindh was more of a foot soldier fighting for a U.S. adversary rather than a terrorist plotting attacks. “People bandy about the word terrorism when they describe him,” he added. “I don’t see him as a terrorist.”
John Walker Lindh knows he won’t walk out of prison as just another ex-convict, and will likely face a hostile American public. While in prison, he came up with the plan of possibly moving to Ireland, according to a Bureau of Prisons intelligence summary. The document, prepared by the Federal Bureau of Prisons Counter Terrorism Unit, summarizes communications of prisoners convicted of terrorism-related crimes, and includes excerpted emails in which Lindh discuss his desire to leave the United States after his release.
Lindh secured Irish citizenship in 2013, according to the intelligence summary. Sources familiar with the matter confirmed his Irish citizenship to FP, and said it was obtained thanks to his paternal grandmother, Kathleen Maguire, an Irish citizen from Donegal born in 1929.
His father, Frank Lindh, hopes that his son could build a new life in Ireland after his release. But under Irish law, even with his new citizenship, the Irish government could refuse to issue a passport on grounds that Lindh posed a threat to national security. The U.S. government also could bar him from traveling abroad for at least three years, under the terms of his “supervised release” from prison, and even after that, legal experts say.
When asked about Lindh’s case, the Irish Embassy in Washington said it “does not comment on individual cases.” U.S. authorities also declined to comment.
In his initial years in prison at Terre Haute, Indiana, John Walker Lindh was kept under what are known as “special administrative measures,” which heavily restricted his communications with the outside world. Those measures were lifted in 2009, though the Bureau of Prisons declined to say if any specific restrictions are currently applied to Lindh.
Whether by choice or government constraint, Lindh has communicated little about his life in Terre Haute, though some details can be gleaned from his lawsuits against the Bureau of Prisons. In 2013, he won the right for communal prayer, and in December 2014, Lindh joined another legal battle, this time arguing for the right to wear his pants above his ankle, in line with Muslim tenets.
The Bureau of Prisons intelligence summary obtained by FP indicates that Lindh does have email contact with his father and an advocacy group working on his behalf.
“Regarding the Ireland issue, I really don’t know what to expect from the Irish government. I know virtually nothing about them. I think the only reasonable way to present my case to them is to explain my unique circumstances that make my survival in the US practically impossible,” Lindh wrote to CAGE, a nongovernmental organization that advocates on behalf of prisoners and detainees caught up in the war on terrorism. “Essentially I am seeking asylum from one country where I am a citizen in another country where I am also a citizen. The worst they can do is to decline my request. I figure it is worth at least trying,” Lindh wrote.
In an email to his son in December 2016, Frank Lindh recounted his “hope-inducing conversation” with CAGE about emigrating. But first, CAGE required the assistance of an American defense lawyer to communicate with U.S. government officials, Frank Lindh informed his son.
There was one hitch: The renowned attorney who represented Lindh in his 2002 trial, James Brosnahan, had “dropped” his client, according to the intelligence summary. (Brosnahan did not respond to a request for comment.)
Frank urged his son “to mend fences with Jim,” referring to his former lawyer, adding that Brosnahan would likely demand that Lindh explicitly reject violence.
“We can discuss this in our next phone call, but one thing I anticipate Jim will absolutely demand is that you be willing to condemn, in all sincerity, publicly if needed, and without any reservation whatsoever, depravity of any kind, whoever commits it,” he wrote.
“You can visualize yourself what the list of depraved acts might consist of. I believe such a request should be easy for you, to fulfill as a devout Muslim and person of conscience.”
But John Walker Lindh refused. Replying to his father, he wrote: “I am not interested in renouncing my beliefs or issuing condemnations in order to please Brosnahan or anybody else.”
The Bureau of Prisons document says that “inmate Walker Lindh made pro ISIS statements to various reporters and was subsequently dropped by counsel.” It does not indicate which counsel, nor does it cite any specific statements.
CAGE has been at the center of its own controversy in recent years; proponents praise its work with detainees while critics accuse of it apologizing for terrorists. Amnesty International dropped its partnership with CAGE in 2015 and still refuses to share a public platform with the group, according to an Amnesty spokesperson. Despite the political baggage, it appears Frank Lindh is pinning his hopes on this organization.
Over the years, John Walker Lindh’s father has campaigned to win a possible commutation of his son’s sentence. In 2009, he participated in an interview with GQ in which he said, “I’m proud of my son.”
Lindh’s father has sought to portray his son as a spiritual, well-intentioned young man unjustly labeled as a terrorist. “Like Ernest Hemingway during the Spanish Civil War, John had volunteered for the army of a foreign government battling an insurgency,” he wrote in a 2011 New York Times op-ed. “His decision was rash and blindly idealistic, but not sinister or traitorous.”
Frank Lindh declined several requests for comment. A letter sent to John Walker Lindh at Terre Haute went unanswered. The Bureau of Prisons said that John Walker Lindh declined a request to comment for this article.
In October 2016, in the waning days of the Barack Obama’s presidency, the writer Paul Theroux published an op-ed in the New York Times asking that Lindh’s sentence be commuted, arguing that what Lindh did was comparable to his own youthful experience supporting rebels in Malawi in the 1960s. Theroux said that Lindh was “taking risks to help people perceived as oppressed; and like me, he did not fully understand the bigger picture, was in over his head, and was overtaken by events.”
The next month, Donald Trump, who has railed against the threat of Islamic extremism, was elected president, potentially snuffing out any chance of a commutation. It is now unclear how the government will deal with Lindh or others convicted of terrorism-related charges upon release.
It’s difficult to create a one-size-fits-all rehabilitation program for extremists because there are so few of these cases and each one is unique, said a former U.S. attorney who prosecuted numerous high-profile terrorists. “In this area of trying to rehabilitate extremists, it is really all over the map,” said the former U.S. attorney, who requested to remain anonymous. “The threshold question is what’s effective?
The National Counterterrorism Center suggested one option would be to widen government programs designed to counter violent extremism to include probation and parole officers, and to track convicted terrorists upon release. There’s a precedent with Megan’s Law, the document notes, which requires sex offenders to register their home address and check in frequently with law enforcement.
Lindh, for his part, does not appear to be optimistic. He tells his father in a December 2016 email quoted in the intelligence summary that he likely will have to “abandon this project” to move to Ireland. He says an earlier request to be released to Puerto Rico had not been answered, and that he anticipates having to endure threats and hostility on the U.S. mainland.
“I will just have to stay here for a while and deal with the lynch mobs as best as I can,” he writes. “It is a daunting predicament that I’m in, but many people around the world are in even more difficult situations and find ways to manage, so I am not worried.”
Category Archives: Trump Administration
Investigating the Other Collusion Case
Seems it at least began in 2015, long before Donald Trump was campaigning for the Oval Office.
Also, as an aside, John Podesta is testifying before the House Intelligence Committee next week. He too has financial ties to Moscow operations.
The Vnesheconombank is Russian owned and has been under a sanctions architecture due to the annexing of Crimea. In Russia, by law, the bank’s board chairman is the Prime Minister of Russia. Vladimir Putin increased leading when he became the bank’s chairman in 2008. Now precisely why is Russia investing at all in the United States in the first place? Well soft power and doing business with the Export Import Bank, an agency that is corrupt to the core. Further, Sergei Gorkov is head of the bank and is is/was a Russian spy.
ABC
BusinessInsider:The U.S. Treasury has added a bunch of entities to its Russia sanctions list, including a sovereign wealth fund that used to be connected to some pretty high-profile U.S. billionaires.
The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assistance Control on Thursday added The Russian Direct Investment Fund to the list, along with a number of entities linked to RDIF parent Vnesheconombank and energy giant Rosneft.
Vnesheconombank was first sanctioned last year, but RDIF hadn’t been explicitly targeted until the announcement on Thursday.
Private equity moguls Steve Schwarzman of Blackstone, David Bonderman of TPG, and Leon Black of Apollo Global Management all served as board members for RDIF when it was established in 2011, according to a press release at the time.
At some point, those names were removed from the RDIF website.
The Wall Street Journal first reported that the investors’ names had disappeared from the site in September 2014, but said that they still served on the board at that time. There are currently no names listed on the international advisory board on RDIF’s website.
Back in 2011, each board member issued statements about joining the board. Here are some highlights:
“We believe there are many attractive investment opportunities in Russia — the RDIF will provide the strong and experienced local partnership needed for investors to realize those opportunities.” — David Bonderman
“Russia has strong fundamentals that will continue to fuel its growth trajectory and offer attractive investment opportunities. We believe the Russia Direct Investment Fund will help further align U.S. and Russian objectives in terms of identifying paths toward partnership in the private sector.” — Leon Black
“It’s always good to have friends when you are going to a place that you are not as familiar with.” — Stephen Schwarzman
Bonderman has spoken publicly about investing in the country in recent months, telling an audience at the Milken Global Conference this year that the Russian market remains attractive, according to a report by CNN Money.
He is quoted as saying: “Sanctions are perfectly set up not to work at all but to make a political statement.”
Spokespeople for Blackstone and TPG declined to comment. Apollo could not be reached for comment.
A spokesperson for the Russian Direct Investment Fund said: “For Vnesheconombank subsidiaries the new clarification by the US Department of the Treasury is essentially a technical repetition of sanctions imposed a year ago, which targeted a number of Russian companies including Vnesheconombank and its subsidiaries.
“Given the nature of the Fund’s activity, RDIF has never attracted financing in the USA, it invests its own funds. Since the introduction of sanctions last year RDIF has continued to invest into the Russian economy and build new international partnerships.”
So what you ask?
Sergei Gorkov
Well due to sanctions, those on the Trump campaign team, transition team and now in the White House may have violated sanctions. If so, the reason would be why, to what end and how many may be involved? It should also be added that many Republicans have ties to Russians and oligarchs, not all is as it seems. We can only hope, while not knowing details, the Senate is also investigating Hillary Clinton in much the same condition. Yet as Secretary of State, Hillary and Obama had the ability to sign waivers to finesse sanctions. This was likely the case between Hillary and the Kremlin regarding Skolkovo.
Remember, don’t shoot the messenger. Furthermore, it seems some on the Senate committee are leaking too.
Senate investigators are examining the activities of a little-known $10-billion Russian investment fund whose chief executive met with a member of President Donald Trump’s transition team four days before Trump’s inauguration, a congressional source told CNN.
The source said the Senate intelligence committee is investigating the Russian fund in connection with its examination of discussions between White House adviser Jared Kushner and the head of a prominent Russian bank. The bank, Vnesheconombank, or VEB, oversees the fund, which has ties to several Trump advisers. Both the bank and the fund have been covered since 2014 by sanctions restricting U.S. business dealings.Separately, Steve Mnuchin, now Treasury Secretary, said in a January letter that he would look into the Jan. 16 meeting between the fund’s chief executive and Anthony Scaramucci, a member of the transition team’s executive committee and a fundraiser and adviser for Trump’s presidential campaign. At the time, Mnuchin had not yet been confirmed as Treasury Secretary. The Treasury Department did not respond to a request for an update.Two Democratic senators had asked Treasury to investigate whether Scaramucci promised to lift sanctions — a policy shift that would help the fund attract more international investment to Russia.The questions draw attention to the Russian Direct Investment Fund, a government investment arm that has helped top U.S. private-equity firms invest in Russia and that was advised by Stephen Schwarzman, who is now chairman of Trump’s Strategic and Policy Forum, an advisory group of business leaders.Schwarzman, chief executive officer of Blackstone Group, was named in 2011 to the fund’s International Advisory Board along with other leaders of major equity companies and sovereigh-wealth funds who reviewed the fund’s operations, plans and potential investments. Schwarzman declined to comment. A source close to him said Schwarzman has not spoken to anyone on the fund “for some time.”The fund also worked with Goldman Sachs, whose former president Gary Cohn is Trump’s chief economic adviser and where Kirill Dmitriev, the fund’s chief executive, worked as an investment banker in the 1990s. Goldman was part of a consortium created in 2012 to invest in large Russian businesses preparing to go public, and was hired in 2013 to burnish Russia’s investment image. The company declined to comment.‘I would reach out to people to help him”
Senate and House investigators are looking into various Russian entities to determine whether anyone connected to the Trump campaign helped Russians as they meddled in the 2016 presidential election, and whether Trump associates discussed sanctions with Russian officials.The congressional inquiries, along with a criminal investigation by special counsel Robert S. Mueller, have shadowed the Trump administration. Trump has denied any connection to Russia’s election-meddling, calling the criminal probe “a witch hunt.”Scaramucci, the founder of SkyBridge Capital, minimized his January meeting with Dmitriev in the resort town of Davos, Switzerland, at the celebrated annual gathering of the World Economic Forum. Scaramucci had met Dmitriev at previous Davos meetings, although at the gathering in January, Scaramucci was expecting to be named White House liaison to the business community.Dmitriev “came over to say hello in a restaurant, and I was cordial,” Scaramucci said in a recent email to CNN. “There is nothing there.”The day after the meeting, Scaramucci told Bloomberg TV that he had “as a private citizen” been working with Dmitriev on bringing a delegation of executives to Russia.“What I said to him last night, in my capacity inside the administration, I would certainly reach out to some people to help him,” Scaramucci said before describing a thicket of ethical clearances he would face. “The idea was many months ago to have more outreach with Russia but also other countries, not just Russia. China, other countries.”Scaramucci’s comments alarmed Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Ben Cardin of Maryland, who asked Mnuchin investigate whether Scaramucci sought to “facilitate prohibited transactions” or promised to waive or lift sanctions against Russia.In a reply Jan. 30, before he was sworn in, Mnuchin said he would “ensure the appropriate Department components assess whether further investigation of this matter is warranted.”A spokeswoman for the Russian fund said the two men did not discuss sanctions, and that the discussion itself did not violate sanctions that U.S. imposed in 2014 after Russia annexed part of neighboring Ukraine. The spokeswoman declined to describe the conversation, saying, “We do not comment on private meetings.”An advocate for lifting sanctions
Since Trump’s election, Dmitriev has been one of Russia’s most vocal officials in calling for an end to U.S. sanctions and arguing that joint U.S.-Russia projects can create jobs in the United States.The fund hired two U.S. lobbying firms in September 2014, after sanctions were imposed, paying them a combined $150,000 over two months for public relations work. The fund has not hired any lobbyists since then.With a history of helping U.S. manufacturers and asset management companies invest in Russia, the fund is a logical starting point for Russia’s push to lift U.S. sanctions, former State Department chief economist Rodney Ludema said.“If you’re going to get your nose under the tent, that’s a good place to start,” said Ludema, a Georgetown University economics professor. “I’m sure their objective is to get rid of all the sanctions against the financial institutions. But RDIF is one [sanctioned organizations] where a number of prominent U.S. investors have been involved.”Scaramucci also questioned U.S. sanctions while he was in Davos and echoed Trump’s statements about improving relations with Russia.Two weeks after the meeting between Scaramucci and Dmitriev, when President Trump spoke by phone to Russian President Vladimir Putin, the fund announced it would open an office in New York in May.No New York office has been opened but the fund “still expects to open a representative office in the US this year,” the spokeswoman said.
Should Voting Systems be Classified as Critical Infrastructure?
While members of all political party voters seem to diss the notion that Russia intruded on voting systems in 2016, the proof is there. If you watched former DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson during his congressional testimony, it was not so much his responses but more about what members of congress know, to pose questions to Johnson.
“We’ve found ways for hackers to sabotage machines and steal votes. These capabilities are certainly within reach for America’s enemies,” Halderman told senators.
He said he and his team spent 10 years researching cyber vulnerabilities of election equipment. The professor said:
Some say that the fact that voting machines aren’t directly connected to the internet makes them secure. But, unfortunately, this is not true. Voting machines are not as distant from the internet as they may seem. Before every election, they need to be programmed with races and candidates. That programming is created on a desktop computer, then transferred to voting machines. If Russia infiltrated these election management computers, it could have spread a vote-stealing attack to a vast number of machines. I don’t know how far Russia got or whether they managed to interfere with equipment on Election Day. More here from Daily Signal.
Okay…still a non-believer? Let’s see what the States experiences.
Click here for additional video and interactive map of states using paper ballot backup systems.
Elections officials outgunned in Russia’s cyberwar against America
Local officials consistently play down suspicions about the long lines at polling places on Election Day 2016 that led some discouraged voters in heavily Democratic Durham County, N.C., to leave without casting a ballot.
Minor glitches in the way new electronic poll books were put to use had simply gummed things up, according to local elections officials there. Elections Board Chairman William Brian Jr. assured Durham residents that “an extensive investigation” showed there was nothing to worry about with the county’s new registration software.
He was wrong.
What Brian and other election officials across eight states didn’t know until the leak of a classified intelligence is that Russian operatives hacked into the Florida headquarters of VR Systems, Inc., the vendor that sold them digital products to manage voter registrations.
A week before the election, the hackers sent emails using a VR Systems address to 122 state and local election officials across the country, inviting them to open an attachment wired with malicious software that spoofed “legitimate elections-related services,” the report said. The malware was designed to retrieve enough additional information to set the stage for serious mischief, said the National Security Agency report disclosed by the Intercept, an investigative web site.
That wasn’t the only type of attack.
The new revelations about the Kremlin’s broad and sophisticated cyber offensive targeting Democrat Hillary Clinton and aimed at seating Donald Trump in the Oval Office have set off a wave of worry about the security of the nation’s voting systems. State election officials, facing questions as to whether they ignored oddities or red flags, have responded by accusing intelligence agencies of failing to alert them of the risks.
The truth is a hodge-podge of electronic machinery that enables Americans to exercise their most sacred democratic right is weakly guarded by state and local agencies. Those officials are quick to assure the voting public that their systems are secure, but they lack the resources and technical know-how to defend against cyber intrusions, or even to perform forensic examinations to ensure nothing happened.
Election officials in Illinois, another state that VR Systems lists as a customer, did not find out they were hacked by Russian operatives late last June until a week or two later. By then, the Russian operatives had downloaded about 90,000 voter registration records, leading to an investigation by the FBI and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, said Ken Menzel, general counsel of the Illinois Board of Elections. Menzel confirmed a Bloomberg report that the Russians appeared to have made unsuccessful attempts to alter or delete some records.
In Georgia, where a nationally watched congressional runoff race is scheduled for Tuesday, Politico magazine reported that a U.S. hacker from a national laboratory seeking to expose vulnerabilities in election systems was able to easily download millions of voter records from Kennesaw State University’s Center for Election Systems, which manages them. Election watchdog groups say subsequent warnings to the state about a hole in their system went unheeded for months.
David Jefferson, a computer scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California who has acted in his personal capacity in trying to safeguard election integrity, said he believes it is “absolutely possible” that the Russians affected last year’s election.
“And we have done almost nothing to seriously examine that,” he said.
“The Russians really were engaged in a pattern of attacks against the machinery of the election, and not merely a pattern of propaganda or information warfare and selective leaking,” said Alex Halderman, a University of Michigan computer science professor. “The question is, how far did they get in that pattern of attacks, and were they successful?” Election officials across the country may not even know if they’ve been attacked, computer scientists say, pointing to the scenario that played out in Durham County.
EASY PREY
State and local voting systems appear to be easy prey for sophisticated hackers.
Five states use electronic voting machines with no paper backups, precluding audits that might verify the accuracy of their vote counts. They include Georgia, scene of Tuesday’s 6th District runoff election, Delaware, Louisiana, New Jersey and South Carolina. Parts of another nine states also are paperless, including the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania.
Although Congress has discouraged use of internet voting because of the potential for hackers to tamper with ballots, some 32 states allow military and overseas voters to transmit ballots online or via insecure fax machines. Alaska, Washington state and Hawaii have been the most permissive.
“If we don’t fix our badly broken system before the next major presidential election, we’re going to be hacked into,” said Barbara Simons, author of “Broken Ballots,” a 2012 book about election security published by Stanford University. “It might not just be Russia. It might be North Korea, China, Iran or partisans.”
While the Netherlands opted to shift to paper ballots when alerted the Russians were trying to swing its election outcome to the right, U.S. election officials have stood pat.
But former FBI Director James Comey, in widely watched testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee on June 8, said “there should be no fuzz” about Russia’s barrage of millions of social media messages spreading falsehoods about Clinton.
“The Russians interfered in our election during the 2016 cycle,” he said. “They did it with purpose. They did it with sophistication. They did it with overwhelming technical efforts … And it is very, very serious.”
America’s saving grace could be its decentralized system in which cities, counties and states have used federal grants to procure a wide variety of voting equipment, limiting the potential impact of a single attack.
But that doesn’t mean targeted attacks couldn’t tip the outcome of closely divided races, even for the presidency.
CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE
On Jan. 6, American intelligence agencies issued a declassified report accusing Russia of the cyber attack ultimately aimed at helping Trump, calling it the Kremlin’s “boldest” operation ever aimed at influencing the United States. In a brief notation, the report said that, while the Russians targeted state and local voting systems, they did not attempt to corrupt vote-tallying equipment.
On the same day the report was released, in one of his last acts as U.S. secretary of Homeland Security, Jeh Johnson proclaimed the nation’s election systems to be “Critical Infrastructure,” a designation that not only makes their security a higher priority, but improves the climate for federal-state cooperation. Because state and local officials exert total control over their operations, the agency only can investigate a vulnerability or possible breach if asked to do so – an obstacle the new designation didn’t change.
A senior Homeland Security official, in an interview with McClatchy, batted down as wildly exaggerated a Bloomberg report stating that Russian cyber operatives had made “hits” on voting systems in 39 states. Every web site is constantly scanned by “bad actors,” just as burglars might case homes in a neighborhood. That doesn’t equate to hacking, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
“The ability to manipulate the vote tally, that’s quite complicated,” the Homeland Security official said. “We didn’t see an ability to really accomplish that even in an individual voting machine. You have to have physical access to do that. It’s not as easy as you think.”
Some of the nation’s top experts in voting security disagree.
Lawrence Livermore’s Jefferson voiced frustration with the “defensive” refrain of denials from state and local election officials, including the National Association of Secretaries of State.
“Election officials do not talk about vulnerabilities,” Jefferson said, “because that would give the advantage to the attacker. And they don’t want to undermine public confidence in elections.”
Halderman said Homeland Security officials told him they were unaware of a single county in any state that had conducted post-election forensic examinations of their voting equipment.
The Homeland Security official who spoke with McClatchy said the main concern for agency cyber specialists is not about vote-tampering; it’s related to the ability of intruders to sow confusion and chaos. That could entail schemes to foul voter registration data by, for example, removing the names of voters from the rolls so they are turned away at polling stations.
“This scenario is what we witnessed on the ground in North Carolina on Election Day,” said Susan Greenhalgh, a spokeswoman for the election watchdog group Verified Voting.
“If attackers wanted to impact an election through an attack on a vendor like VR Systems,” she said, “they could manipulate or delete voter records impacting a voter’s ability to cast a regular ballot. Or, they could cause the E-Pollbooks (electronic databases of voters) to malfunction, hampering the check-in process and creating long lines.”
North Carolina was considered to be a swing state in the presidential race, and Durham County, with an African-American population of more than 37 percent, had voted more than 75 percent in favor of putting and keeping Barack Obama in the White House. Last year’s governor’s race was a dead heat entering Election Day.
The chaos in Durham County led to 90-minute delays. Some voters rang a Voter Protection Hotline to complain that their names had disappeared from the registration system or that they were told they already had voted.
The county hired a contractor to investigate the foul-up, but the inquiry never examined whether the system was hacked.
Twenty other North Carolina counties used the system, including Mecklenburg County, encompassing most of Charlotte. Though none reported problems on the scale of Durham County, release of the NSA report prompted the North Carolina Board of Elections to order a new investigation.
A former FBI agent is leading the inquiry. Critics say the three-member investigative team again lacks expertise in forensics.
Mindy Perkins, VR Systems’ president and chief executive officer, said in a statement that the company immediately notified all of its customers as soon as it was alerted “to an obviously fraudulent email purporting to come from VR Systems” and advised them not to click on the attachment.
“We are only aware of a handful of our customers who actually received the fraudulent email,” she said. “We have no indication that any of them clicked on the attachment or were compromised as a result.”
She said the company has “policies and procedures in effect to protect our customers and our company.”
Even so, Russia succeeded in sneaking up on U.S. agencies, voting system vendors and intelligence agencies.
Halderman, the University of Michigan expert, said he believes the best solution is for states to require paper trails for all voting equipment and post-election audits to ensure the vote counts are authentic.
“There’s no guarantee that we’ll know we’re under attack,” he said, “unless we do the quality control that we need by doing these audits to detect manipulation.”
Global Blackouts, Anywhere in the World, Courtesy Russia
Fitful sleep last night after reading a very long detailed piece on Russian hackers versus Ukraine. Why, well the same tools and language they use have been found on American infrastructure and systems. Last thoughts before sleep were those of life before the internet and how people get emails with attachments that should never be opened. The short summary is just below. The more detailed and terrifying truth follows. It is a long summary, must be read…it is something like a cyber Hitchcock Twilight Zone disaster thriller, but it happened and happened often.
Further, during a hearing in the House with former DHS Secretary, Jeh Johnson revealed a couple of key facts. One is told that during the election cycle, when the DNC hack, officials on numerous requests refused assistance, cooperation and discussions with DHS and FBI about foreign cyber intrusions. What was the DNC hiding? The other fact is Obama had the full details in intelligence briefings daily leading into November and December and refused to tell the country about Russian interference. He waited until after the elections and into December to take action. Why?
Okay, read on….
CommentaryMagazine
Russia’s New Cyber Weapon Can Cause Blackouts Anywhere in the World
Hackers working with the Russian government have developed a cyber weapon that can disrupt power grids, U.S researchers claim. The cyber weapon has the potential to be absolutely disruptive if used on electronic systems necessary for the daily functioning of American cities.
The malicious software was used to shut down one-fifth of the electric power generated in Kiev, Ukraine last December. Called ‘CrashOverride’ the malware only briefly disrupted the power system but its potential was made clear.
With development, the cyber weapon could easily be used against U.S with devastating effects on transmission and distribution systems.
Sergio Caltagirone, director of threat intelligence for Dragos, a cybersecurity firm that examined the malware said, “It’s the culmination of over a decade of theory and attack scenarios, it’s a game changer.”
Dragos has dubbed the group of hackers who created the bug and used it in Ukraine, Electrum. The group and the virus have also been under scrutiny by cyber intelligence firm, FireEye, headed by John Hultquist. Hultquist’s company has nicknamed the group Sandworm and are keeping watch for clues of another attack.
The news of the malware comes in the middle of the ongoing investigation into Russia’s influence on the recent Presidential election. The Russian government is accused of trying to influence the outcome of the election by hacking hundreds of political organizations and leveraging social media.
While there is no hard evidence yet, U.S. officials believe the disruptive power hackers are closely connected to the Russian Government. U.S. based energy sector experts agree the malware is a huge concern and concede they are seeking ways to combat potential attacks.
“U.S utilities have been enhancing their cybersecurity, but attacker tools like this one pose a very real risk to reliable operation of power systems,”said Michael Assante, who worked at Idaho National Labs and is former chief security officer of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation.
CrashOverride
CrashOverride is only the second known instance of malware specifically designed to destroy or disrupt industrial control systems. The U.S. and Israel worked together to create Stuxnet, a bug designed to disrupt Iran’s nuclear enrichment program.
Robert M. Lee, chief executive of Dragos believes CrashOverride could be manipulated to attack other types of industrial control such as gas or water, though there has been no demonstration of that yet. But the sophistication of the entire operation is undeniable. The hackers had the resources to only develop the malware but to test it too.
The malware works by scanning for critical components that operate circuit breakers, then opening these breakers, which stops the flow of electricity. It continues to keep the circuit breakers open, even if a grid operator tries to close them. CrashOverride also cleverly comes with a “wiper” component that erases the existing software on the computer system that controls the circuit breakers. This forces the grid operator to revert to manual operations, which means a longer and more sustained power outage.
Potential outages could last a few hours and probably not more than a couple of days as U.S. power systems are designed to have high manual override capabilities necessary in extreme weather.
As mentioned above, you need to read the full detailed version here and just how the FBI, global cyber experts at the request of Ukraine worked diligently for accurate attribution to a Russian cyber force intruding on power systems. Hat tip to these experts and the story needs to go mainstream, as we are in a cyber war, the depths impossible to fully comprehend. Ukraine is the target and cyber incubation center for Russian cyber terrorists where they test, review, adapts and keep going without consequence.
Okay, read it all here. Hat tip for the detailed summary and the people doing quiet investigative cyber work.
Iran and North Korea Historically Team Up on Nukes and Missiles
Iran launched 6 missiles, striking targets in Syria. Revolutionary Guards say in retaliation for last week’s Tehran terror attacks.
Using missiles is a major escalation of Iran’s role in the Syrian conflict. Until now it provided military advisors, volunteers, money. The missiles were launched from western Iran, flew over Iraq striking targets in Deir ez Zor, in eastern Syria. Iranian official Amirabdollahian says attack was “soft revenge” for twin terror attacks in Tehran last week. 800km away. Israeli defense systems followed the missiles and deemed the operation largely a failure due to some missiles failing and others missing targets.
Meanwhile there is some significant activity occurring at a North Korean nuclear test site. Intelligence officials in the United States and in the region are watching and analyzing the activities including using all high tech systems including spy satellites to determine a probable action by North Korea. There have been recent upgrades and currently several tunnels have seen additional people and vehicle movements.
(CNSNews.com)– Iran has intensified its development of ballistic missiles in recent years, particularly since the conclusion of the nuclear deal, and is doing so with significant collaboration with fellow pariah state North Korea, according to the exiled opposition National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI).
The regime has established at least 42 facilities for the production, testing and launching of ballistic missiles, the NCRI reported on Tuesday, revealing for the first time information on 12 previously-unknown sites.
The report was released by Alireza Jafarzadeh, deputy director of the NCRI’s Washington office, at a briefing in Washington.
The revelations come at a critical time, days after the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) for the first time fired ballistic missiles from Iranian territory at targets in Syria – ostensibly at ISIS terrorist positions. It’s believed to be the first time Iran has fired missiles at targets beyond its borders since the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.
Jafarzadeh said the missiles fired at targets in Syria were launched from an underground IRGC facility called Panj Pelleh, an older site in Kermanshah province in western Iran which he said had been the launchpad for missiles fired at targets in Iraq during the Saddam era.
The new NCRI report also comes shortly after the U.S. Senate passed, by a 98-2 vote, sanctions legislation targeting both Iran’s ballistic missile programs and the IRGC. The Countering Iran’s Destabilizing Activities Act, which Jafarzadeh praised as a good step, has been sent to the House.
The information released Tuesday, based on the opposition group’s sources inside the regime and IRGC, points to Iran having established missile facilities based on North Korean models, with the help of visiting North Korean experts.
“These North Korean experts who were sent to Iran, trained the main IRGC missile experts in IRGC garrisons, including the Almehdi Garrison situated southwest of Tehran,” the report says.
The IRGC has built a special residence in Tehran for the North Korean experts, who have been involved in helping develop warhead and guidance systems for Iranian missiles.
IRGC Aerospace Force personnel regularly visit North Korea to exchange knowledge, the report says.
Defying international condemnation, North Korea’s nuclear-armed regime has carried out a series of missile launches and Kim Jong-un has threatened to soon test an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).
The NCRI report includes satellite imagery and information on the locations of many of 42 identified IRGC-controlled missile-related facilities across Iran – including 12 which the group says have been hitherto-unknown.
The sites include missile manufacturing plants, launching pads, training facilities, missile storage and maintenance units. Some are located or partly located underground, or in mountainous areas.
None of the sites are in eastern Iran. Most are in the central region, or in Iran’s western and southern provinces. The locations of missile launch sites have evidently been selected taking into account potential targets in the Gulf or westward towards Israel and Europe.
“The sites that are involved with deployment, launching operations and testing are on the western side or on the southern border, here, with a clear objective of threatening the neighbors,” Jafarzadeh noted, pointing at the map, observing that Europe and the West lie in that direction too.
“Western countries as well as countries in the region, those are the countries that they threaten, and have been threatening,” he said.
Reaction to missile tests has been ‘mild’
Jafarzadeh said the objective of the ballistic missile program is two-pronged – to deploy shorter-range missiles to threaten their neighbors in the region, and to develop the capability of putting a nuclear warhead on a longer-range missile.
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the nuclear deal negotiated between Iran and six powers, did not touch on the missile program – at Tehran’s insistence – but the Obama administration asserted that by placing verifiable restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program it shut off all paths to developing a nuclear weapon.
In response to a question, Jafarzadeh said the NCRI does not link the expanding missile work directly to the JCPOA, but “when you lose leverage you want to make up for it somewhere else,” he said of the regime. “There is more emphasis on their missile program now than there was a few years ago.”
He pointed out that the JCPOA left Iran with a lot of “room to maneuver” when it comes to ballistic missile activity, and that international reaction to its missile tests has been “mild, to say the least.”
Of the facilities discussed on Tuesday, one extensive complex (Semnan), in a mountainous area south-east of Tehran, is actively associated with the Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research (Persian acronym SPND), which is believed to be a body tasked with the development of a nuclear weapons capability.
SPND’s existence was first unveiled by the NCRI in 2011, and in August 2014 the U.S. Treasury Department added the organization to its “specially designated nationals” list, making it subject to U.S. sanctions.
“The Iranian regime has remained in power in Iran by relying on two pillars: internal
repression and external export of Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism,” the report states, lumping the ballistic weapons program into the latter “pillar.”
“As the regime becomes more isolated domestically and its grip on Iranian society weakens,
it resorts more frantically to the second pillar of its bid to keep power,” it says.
The report noted that Iran re-asserted its intention to continue advancing its missile program after the U.S.-Arab-Islamic summit in Riyadh last month. The summit saw the U.S. and most of the world’s Sunni Muslim states take a hard line on Iran.
The NCRI called for effective and comprehensive sanctions targeting the ballistic missile program; the designation of the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization; and for IRGC and proxy militias to be evicted from countries in the region, especially Syria and Iraq.
The NCRI and affiliated People’s Mujahedeen Organization of Iran (MEK) has in the past provided valuable intelligence to the West, including pivotal information in 2002 that exposed nuclear activities Tehran had hidden from the international community for two decades.
The NCRI/MEK was designated a foreign terrorist organization under U.S. law until 2012, and is reviled by the clerical regime in Tehran, not least because it supported Saddam Hussein in his bloody eight year-long war against Iran in the 1980s.
It enjoys strong support from some current and former policymakers from both parties in Washington, as evidenced by the list of confirmed speakers at the NCRI’s annual convention, scheduled for July 1 in Paris.
Among them are former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, former FBI Director Louis Freeh, former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, former Sen. Joe Lieberman, former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and former Marine Corps commander Gen. (Ret.) James Conway.
