Category Archives: Trump Administration

Russian Special Forces now in Libya

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Image result for Khalifa Haftar libya oil ports Haftar was protected by and lived in the U.S., becoming a citizen. We dispatched him to Libya to launch an interim government. Now he and Egypt both have turned to Russia for full control and support, Putin has complied, happily. John Kerry, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are not responding to calls on line 4. Hah…

BBC: Forces loyal to Libyan military strongman Khalifa Haftar say they have retaken key oil-rich areas in the country’s east.

Ground, sea and air forces were engaged in the fight for sites at Ras Lanuf, Sidra and Ben Jawad from a rival Islamist militia, a spokesman said.

Meanwhile, Russia has denied reports that it has deployed special forces to the region in support of Gen Haftar. {See below, emphasis added}

Libya has been in chaos since the overthrow of Colonel Gaddafi in 2011.

The oil terminals had been seized by the Benghazi Defence Brigades (BDB) – a mix of militias that includes Islamists – earlier this month, which then handed them over to the Petroleum Facilities Guard, affiliated to the UN-backed unity government based in Tripoli.

Gen Haftar is allied to an administration based in the eastern city of Tobruk, which is challenging the authority of the UN-backed government.

Russia moving special forces into Libya

U.S. sources claim Russia moving special forces into Libya to aid Libyan military commander Khalifa Haftar.

U.S., Egyptian and diplomatic sources say that Russia has apparently been moving special forces to an airbase in western Egypt near the border with Libya in recent days, according to a report by Reuters.

Image result for Khalifa Haftar Newsweek

The U.S. is concerned that such a Russian deployment may signify Russian support for Libyan military commander Khalifa Haftar, who suffered a setback on March 3 when the Benghazi Defense Brigades (BDB) attacked oil ports controlled by his forces.

U.S. officials claimed that their surveillance units had observed Russian special operations forces and unmanned aircraft at Sidi Barrani, which is about 100 km from the Egypt-Libya border. The apparent Russian deployments have not been previously reported.

The Russian defense ministry did not respond to these claims on Monday and Egypt denied the presence of any Russian contingent on its soil.

Mohamed Manfour, commander of the Benina air base near Benghazi in Libya, denied that Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA) had received military assistance from the Russian state or from Russian military contractors, and said there were no Russian forces or bases in eastern Libya.

Over the past two years a number of Western countries, including the U.S., have sent special operations forces and military advisors into Libya. The U.S. also carried out air strikes to support a successful Libyan campaign last year to oust ISIS from its stronghold in the city of Sirte.

Russia has shown increasing involvement in Libya in recent months and appears to be taking steps to back Haftar to lead the battle-torn kingdom, which has been split between local warlords in the aftermath of a 2011 NATO-backed uprising against the late leader Muammar Gaddafi, who was an ally of Russia. Several dozen armed private security contractors from Russia operated until February in a part of Libya that is under Haftar’s control.

The top U.S. military commander overseeing troops in Africa, Marine General Thomas Waldhauser, told the U.S. Senate last week that Russia was trying to exert influence in Libya to strengthen its leverage over whoever ultimately holds power.

“They’re working to influence that,” Waldhauser told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday. Asked whether it was in the U.S. interest to let that happen, Waldhauser said: “It is not.”

Russian involvement in Libyan affairs appears to be growing at a time when it is limiting its operations in Syria to attempts to force a resolution without taking charge of the country. Waldhauser believes that this is Russia’s eventual goal in Libya, which will enable it to gain leverage there in the event that Haftar gains control of the country. It is also eyeing Libya’s oil fields as a source of economic opportunities.

Image result for libya oil ports

Russia, however, says that its primary objective in the Middle East is to contain the spread of violent Islamist groups.

Meanwhile who is Khalifa Belqasim Haftar? (Wikipedia file)

Haftar was born in eastern Libya. He served in the Libyan army under Muammar Gaddafi, and took part in the coup that brought Gaddafi to power in 1969. He commanded the Libyan contingent against Israel in the Yom Kippur War of 1973.[3] In 1987, he became a prisoner of war during the war against Chad. While held prisoner, he and his fellow officers formed a group hoping to overthrow Gaddafi. He was released around 1990 in a deal with the United States government and spent nearly two decades in the United States, gaining U.S. citizenship.[4] Haftar lived comfortably in Virginia, relatively close to CIA headquarters, from the early 1990s until 2011.[5] In 1993, while living in the United States, he was convicted in absentia of crimes against the Jamahiriya and sentenced to death.

Haftar held a senior position in the forces which overthrew Gaddafi in the 2011 Libyan Civil War. In 2014 he was commander of the Libyan Army when the General National Congress (GNC) refused to give up power in accordance with its term of office. Haftar launched a campaign against the GNC and its Islamic fundamentalist allies. His campaign allowed elections to take place to replace the GNC, but then developed into a civil war.

Haftar’s campaign attracted opponents to the GNC to join him as well as armed groups including Zintan‘s al-Qaqaa and Sawaaq brigades, regional military police, the Saiqa special forces group in Benghazi, the Libyan air force and Ibrahim Jadhran’s federalist militias.[6]

Haftar has been described as “Libya’s most potent warlord,” having fought “with and against nearly every significant faction” in Libya’s conflicts, and as having a “reputation for unrivalled military experience”.

***

Internal rivalries based on region, city, tribe, political factions, ethnicity, and militia membership have supplanted dictatorial repression. The costs of this multi-layered disunity are stark: Libya has lost billions of dollars in potential revenues due to fights over control of the oil sector. And nearly 5,000 people have been killed due to the instability since 2014, when Libya formally divided politically.

Perhaps the most immediate barrier to implementation is the role of General Khalifa Haftar, commander of the Libyan National Army (LNA). Although Secretary of State John Kerry did not mention him by name in his statement in Vienna after the meeting to support Libya on May 16, Haftar was clearly on his mind when he said battles of individuals serving their own interests undermined Libya’s security, and that Libya was at a crossroads between a fate of chaos fueled by personal rivalries or unity and peace. Article Eight of the current agreement stipulates that the Presidency Council should be the Supreme Commander of the Libyan Army, in control of all senior-level security official appointments and dismissals. In effect, this provision would give the Presidency Council control of Haftar’s fate. The pro-Haftar eastern government has made removal of this article one of its few conditions for recognizing the Government of National Accord (GNA).

This impasse underscores the need for Libyans to decide once and for all what relationship the military should have with civilian institutions in Libya, and specifically what role Haftar can or will play in the future of Libya. This has also been a difficult impasse for Western governments to navigate, harkening to a recurring Middle East policy battle between prioritizing counter-terrorism and security, and longer-term interests like political stability, rule of law and human rights. Haftar has contributed to counter-terrorism efforts against groups like Islamic State, especially in Benghazi, while undermining Libya’s long-term stability. More here from May of 2016.

Maritime Traffic, Pirates, Smuggling and Dark Beacons

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Maritime traffic is hardly considered a top priority and it should be. For illicit activities on the high seas, there is major intelligence value when it comes to smuggling and pirates.

Image result for gps maritime pirates cargo

— Israeli navy veteran Ami Daniel points at his computer screen and explains why the ship he was tracking should have been stopped and searched. It sailed near the Libyan port of Tobruk and waited four days more than a mile off the coast without ever docking, then moved west to Misrata, which it had never visited before.

Next came Greece, where it waited another four days offshore.

Whatever was on the ship — possibly drugs, weapons or people — likely eventually made its way to Europe’s shores, he said.

At a time of deep concern over migrant smuggling, Daniel said his company Windward has the ability to pick up such suspicious maritime behavior that would otherwise go unnoticed.

Ninety percent of the world’s trade is via the oceans, and ports simply cannot check even a fraction of all the containers. For that reason, they try to narrow it down with watch lists of ships.

But with turbulence in northern Africa and the collapse of Libya, smuggling networks have taken advantage of the situation while also becoming more sophisticated, Silvia Ciotti, head of the EuroCrime research body, explained.

And with the influx of hundreds of thousands of refugees across the seas, resources in Europe have been stretched threadbare.

The same smugglers taking desperate migrants and refugees into Europe also take contraband goods, Ciotti said.

“One day it is drugs. One day it is weapons. They do not care,” she said. If a ship’s activities are unusual — turning off its radar or visiting an at-risk port — it will be flagged. More here for ToI.

Image result for gps maritime traffic

The company is Windward, a rather new company that did get an interesting investor, former CIA director, General David Petraeus.

Using what it calls activity-based intelligence, Windward, a five-year-old maritime data and analytics firm here, probes beyond the ship-tracking services available on today’s market to validate identities of ocean-going vessels.

It compares their patterns of behavior and past associations with other ships —even where they loaded or didn’t load in specific ports of call.

“Nobody knows who’s the real owner of 75 percent of the world’s vessels,” said Daniel. “The reason is, for business reasons, they are registered under various flags of convenience by a lawyer who has one share and nobody knows who’s on top of him.

“So the tools of looking at data bases or registries are great in theory, but not in practice.”

The same holds true, company executives here say, for the Automated Information System (AIS), satellite-supported tracking system initiated in recent years by the US Coast Guard and now required by ocean-going vessels and passenger ships. Specific findings from the report showed an increase in GPS manipulation of 59 percent over the past two years; that 55 percent of ships misreport their actual port of call for the majority of their voyage; that large cargo ships shut off AIS transmissions 24 percent longer than others; and that 19 percent of the ships that “go dark” are repeat offenders.

To illustrate this point, Windward conducted an analysis specifically for Defense News, in which the company employed “reverse engineering” of a known arms smuggling incident to highlight similarly suspicious behavior by a ship that managed to evade detection by law enforcement authorities.

Its baseline case was the Haddad, a 39-year-old, Bolivian-flagged cargo vessel that embarked from Iskenderun, Turkey, in early September. It was ultimately seized by Greek authorities south of Crete with a cache of some 5,000 shotguns and a half million rounds of undocumented ammunition.

Using the route plied by the 66-meter Haddad, which sailed along the Turkish coast en route to Libya before being stopped, Windward came up with a similar profile of another ship which, for a variety of legal and proprietary reasons, it preferred to call Vessel X.

Like the Haddad, Vessel X was more than 30 years old and around the same size, about 75 meters. It left the same Turkish port on Aug. 19 — less than a month prior to Haddad — bearing a flag of convenience, this one from the South Pacific island of Vanuatu.

A day later, Vessel X stopped in an area near the Turkish shore where there was no other port in the area or any other reason to stop at that location, company analysts found. More here from DefenseNews.

Meanwhile, pirating is back in the news.

Somali pirates just hijacked a commercial ship for the first time in five years

WaPo: In 2010 and 2011, groups of armed Somali men were hijacking merchant vessels off Somalia’s coast at an almost daily pace. Thousands of hostages of myriad nationalities were taken, and billions of dollars were lost on ransoms, damages and delayed shipments.

The crisis was so severe that a naval task force with more than two dozen vessels from European Union countries, the United States, China, Russia, India and Japan banded together to restore order to one of the world’s busiest shipping routes. They largely succeeded. In 2015, there were 17 pirate attacks near Somalia, down from 151 in 2011. Many of those attacks were on smaller fishing boats from nearby countries, mostly by disgruntled Somali fishermen, but not commercial ships.

Until Tuesday.

Somali officials acknowledged that the Aris 13, an oil tanker, had been escorted to the Somali coast by at least eight and perhaps as many as dozens of armed men on two small skiffs. Reports from organizations that monitor piracy could not conclusively identify which flag the ship was flying or where it was owned, but Sri Lanka’s Foreign Ministry confirmed that eight of its nationals were on board as crew. The ship was on its way south to Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital.

The attack originated in the Puntland region, which is semiautonomous. “The vessel’s captain reported to the company they were approached by two skiffs and that one of them could see armed personnel on board,” an unidentified Middle East-based official told the Associated Press. “The ship changed course quite soon after that report and is now anchored.”

The U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet oversees anti-piracy efforts along Somalia’s coast. Concerns about piracy’s reemergence in the region have been growing in concurrence with greater exploitation of Somalia’s waters by foreigners engaged in illegal fishing. Deprived of a livelihood, some Somali fishermen have turned back to hijacking to get by.

Salad Nur, described as a “local elder” by the Associated Press, said that the men involved in Tuesday’s hijacking had been searching for a commercial vessel for days on the open water. “Foreign fishermen destroyed their livelihoods and deprived them of proper fishing,” Nur said.

Piracy is also on the rise on the other side of Africa. Armed groups based along Nigeria’s coast have made that region the most dangerous for seafarers. That coast is also a major oil shipping route. Now that oil prices have dropped, pirates there have taken to kidnapping crew members for ransom rather than siphoning off oil, as the abductions have proved more lucrative.

DoJ: Will AG Jeff Sessions Allow Extradition of Ricardo Martinelli?

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September of 2016: Panama has sent the U.S. Department of State an extradition request for former President Ricardo Martinelli to be returned to the Central American nation, a spokesman for Panama’s Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday.

Martinelli, who is accused of using public money to spy illegally on more than 150 people, left Panama in January 2015 and is believed to be living in Miami.

The former president presided over an infrastructure boom and Latin America’s fastest economic growth in recent years but his administration was tainted by allegations of corruption. More here from Reuters.

But why should we care? Last year, a team of journalists broke the story regarding the Panama Papers and it seems some of that swamp water touches President Trump.

This is not meant to be a tattle-tale story but rather a post to brace for the next scandal propelled by media against this White House.

Brace yourself for this one.

January 2015: Miami Herald/ PANAMA CITY

When the United States rejected former Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli’s request for spying equipment to eavesdrop, U.S. diplomats feared, on his political enemies, the former supermarket baron turned to another source: Israel.

Now scores of Panama’s political and social elite are learning that the eavesdropping program that Martinelli’s security team set in place sprawled into the most private aspects of their lives – including their bedrooms. Rather than national security, what appears to have driven the wiretapping was a surfeit of the seven deadly sins, particularly greed, pride, lust and envy.  

Nearly every day, targets of the wiretapping march to the prosecutors’ office to see what their dossiers contain, often emerging in distress. Martinelli, who left office in July, is facing a rising tide of outrage not only over the wiretapping, but also over reports of vast corruption. His personal secretary has left the country. The eavesdropping equipment has vanished. More here.

***

Trump’s Panama Problem

Ricardo Martinelli, the ex-president of Panama facing extradition on corruption charges, helped him launch his first international property.

By Anna Lenzer:

It was a big moment for Donald Trump.

On July 6, 2011, the future president was beaming as he celebrated the opening of his first international real-estate deal, the Ocean Club in Panama City, Panama. The flashy hotel-condo complex featured a 72-story tower that transformed the skyline of the city with its sail-shaped design. After a ceremony featuring dancers in traditional Panamanian dress, Trump stood at a podium, flanked by his two oldest sons, Don Jr. and Eric, paused during his remarks, gently leaned over and offered a special thanks to Ricardo Martinelli, the president of Panama.“You’re my friend. Great honor.”

Standing next to Trump’s children, Martinelli smiled back. The white-haired, stocky president was flattered, proud of the fact that the complex had the potential to transform his small country into a destination for the rich and famous. As they both delivered their remarks that afternoon, the sky broke open and a torrential rain flooded the streets, turning the peninsula on which the complex stood into a “swamp island.” Trump and Martinelli had to ride out through the flooded streets in their separate chauffeured SUVs.

***

More than five years later, Trump has taken over the Oval Office and Martinelli is a fugitive from justice wanted on multiple corruption charges and investigations, ranging from allegedly helping to embezzle $45 million from a government school lunch program to insider trading to using public funds to spy on more than 150 political opponents, lawyers, doctors, and activists. But their paths could intertwine again very soon in what may be a thorny dilemma for the Trump administration. At the end of September, Panama’s Supreme Court asked the United States to extradite Martinelli, who left office in 2014 and now lives in exile in a luxury waterfront condo in Miami.

Panama City Skyline: Trump Ocean Club International Hotel & Tower under construction[Photo: Flickr user Bruce Dailey]

While the United States has codified policies to deny visas to foreign officials facing criminal charges in their home countries, and Trump’s recent executive order on immigration enforcement targets for removal individuals with even unresolved criminal charges, Martinelli entered the U.S. in 2015 on a visitor visa as the criminal investigations around him and his inner circle were tightening and has reportedly remained since.

Before fleeing Panama, Martinelli sat on the board of a bank that became the co-trustee for the Ocean Club, a role that left it in charge of managing funds coming in from rentals and sales, and of disbursing money to Trump, who gets millions in fees from the project. The Ocean Club has been Trump’s largest individual source of branding fees, reports the Economist, earning Trump “at least $50 million on the project on virtually zero investment,” reported the Washington Post in January.

Now, the extradition request highlights the potential conflicts of interest that have swirled around Trump: A decision that is usually made on the merits by career diplomats could be complicated by the president’s personal and business ties to Panama. Officials at the State Department could be inclined to approve the extradition, mindful of not antagonizing the current government of Panama, which exerts plenty of influence over the fate of a development that makes millions for the president’s family—or to decline the request out of their awareness of Martinelli’s support for the Ocean Club and his admiration and kind words for Trump.

How Global Deals Could Complicate Diplomacy

The Panama skyscraper was the first building outside of America to bear the Trump name, in a licensing and management deal with local development company Newland International Properties. Trump’s companies today “have business operations in at least 20 countries, with a particular focus on the developing world, including outposts in nations like India, Indonesia, and Uruguay,” according to the New York Times. An analysis of Trump’s global deals published on January 25 by the Washington Post found that the Trump name has been contracted out “to at least 50 different licensing or management deals.” As the Post explained, “for his international projects, he has done a majority of his work through licensing—where a developer who is liable for the actual cost and responsibility of the contract uses Trump’s name for their hotels. This allows Trump to spread his brand and image worldwide without actually being liable for the project.” (In addition to real estate projects, Trump has also licensed his name in branding deals for a variety of consumer products such as Trump Vodka, Trump Steaks, and Trump Menswear.)

Trump has done branding deals ranging from a suite of private mansions in the United Arab Emirates, a luxury resort and golf course in Indonesia, a since-halted project in Azerbaijan that nevertheless earned him more than $2.5 million in fees, and a number of projects in India, where the Times found he had more projects in the works than anywhere else outside of North America. Several of the Trump projects in India “are being built through companies with family ties to India’s most important political party,” reported the Times. In the Philippines, Trump’s partner in a $150 million tower in Manila was named a special envoy to the United States in October by Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte, whose war on drugs has involved the summary execution of thousands of suspected drug users and sellers.

Michael H. Fuchs, who until recently helped to oversee American relations with the Philippines as deputy assistant secretary of state, explained to the Times that “the biggest gray area may not be a President Trump himself advocating for favors for the Trump Organization. It’s the diplomats and career officers who will feel the need to perhaps not do things that will harm the Trump Organization’s interests. It is seriously disturbing.”

Ethics experts have raised concerns about the potential for these global deals to complicate international diplomacy and whether Trump will weigh his political actions against their impact on his business allies. Another concern is that foreign officials might take actions to benefit Trump’s local business in order to curry favor with the White House.

“America has been treated to reports of multi-billion-dollar projects across the planet, to photos of Mr. Trump glad-handing businessmen and to images of exotic, Trump-branded buildings standing like monuments to the decay of American ethics,” noted the Economist in November.

Despite his global financial entanglements, as Trump and his inner circle have repeatedly emphasized, the conflict of interest laws that restrain other federal employees don’t apply to the president. “As you know, I have a no-conflict situation because I’m president, which is—I didn’t know about that until about three months ago, but it’s a nice thing to have,” Trump said at his January 11 press conference. Days after his inauguration, a group of ethics lawyers filed a lawsuit against Trump claiming that his holdings violate the Constitution’s emoluments clause, which bars federal officials from taking payments from foreign governments. Trump also hasn’t released his taxes or a list of his lenders, obscuring a complete picture of his potential global conflicts.

Though Trump announced at his January 11 press conference that he would not pursue additional foreign deals while in office and that he would move his assets into a trust controlled by his children, income from the Panama project will continue to roll in.

And that makes for a potential ethical conflict for the president. As the Wall Street Journal noted recently, “if the U.S. were to get into a dispute with [Panama] during the Trump administration, it might appear that his desire to maintain this revenue stream might influence his decision making.”

International extradition requests involve both executive and judicial processes, as the State Department receives the initial request from the foreign government in question and decides if it should be passed on to the Justice Department. If it is, and an ensuing court process finds the subject of the request to be extraditable, the case goes back to the Secretary of State, who is vested with the final decision-making power over whether to authorize the extradition. As explained in a recent article in Law360 co-authored by former Justice and State Department lawyers, “the Secretary of State has ultimate discretion to determine whether the subject should be released or surrendered. In making this decision, the Secretary may take into account ‘any humanitarian or other considerations for or against surrender,’ as well as ‘written materials submitted by the fugitive, his or her counsel, or other interested parties.’”

While the Secretary of State and the executive branch are unlikely to get involved in requests to extradite the average alleged criminal, an extradition request for a former head of state will inevitably become tangled with international politics and diplomatic concerns. “It would have to get red-flagged,” says John Parry, a professor of law at Lewis & Clark Law School who has worked on extradition cases. The United States generally tries to handle the average extradition request from close allies reasonably expeditiously through the judicial system, but for “the ones that have a diplomatic or political or foreign relations angle” like a former head of state like Martinelli, Parry explains, “the political people are going to want to be involved in some way, they just are.”

If the subject of such a high-profile extradition request were a friend or associate of the president, Parry says you’d expect the president to recuse himself from the decision-making process, even instructing their Attorney General and Secretary of State not to discuss the request with him. “If the president were to get directly involved or if the president’s close advisors on behalf of the president got directly involved with the extradition, sure that would raise a conflict of interest question, I think it definitely would,” says Parry.

The Trump administration hasn’t commented on the extradition request or whether the president has been in contact with Martinelli since his election, despite repeated requests from Fast Company. Shortly after his election victory, Trump had a phone call with current Panamanian president Juan Carlos Varela, who was Martinelli’s vice-president during his 2009-2014 term, with whom he reportedly discussed regional security, commerce, and the fight against organized crime and drug trafficking. It is unclear whether they also discussed the extradition request, and Panamanian officials declined to tell Fast Company if the two leaders discussed the fate of Martinelli. When asked about the current status of the request, a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs would only say that the process is in American hands. President Varela’s office did not respond to requests for comment. The U.S. Justice Department doesn’t comment on extradition requests as a matter of policy. (On February 19, Trump called Varela for another conversation about shared security concerns, and invited him to visit Washington in the months ahead.)

Despite all of his troubles in Panama, Martinelli seems confident that he remains in Trump’s good graces. The day after Trump’s victory, Martinelli tweeted his congratulations on the “triumph,” adding “God bless America.” And days before Trump’s inauguration, Martinelli tweeted an image of what he described as an “invitation” to the official Trump-Pence Inaugural Ball. (A few minutes later, after Twitter users in Panama took notice, he deleted the tweet and didn’t mention the inauguration again until the day of the ceremony, when he tweeted about what a beautiful city Washington was and how many people were in town for the event, posting similar sentiments on Facebook.) It’s not clear if Martinelli actually attended the inauguration or the inaugural ball and his spokesman declined to tell Fast Company whether the former president has been in touch with Trump or his staff since the U.S. election.

“We’ll do anything to support Trump in their mission.”

Soon after Martinelli took office in 2009, Trump became one of his biggest fans. Though there were already news reports detailing the Panamanian president’s “lack of commitment to ‘rule of law,’” per diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks in 2010, Trump anointed the Latin American leader a “great president” in 2011 and cheered the businessman-turned-politician’s corporate style. “Frankly, we need some of that in the United States,” he told the Christian Science Monitor in Panama City after inaugurating the Ocean Club. He lionized Martinelli as a “businessman with heart,” whose leadership in Panama showed Trump “that’s why the United States is doing so poorly, because it’s not being run properly, it’s not being run as a businessman would,” he told the Monitor.

That summer, Trump’s opening of the mixed hotel and condo development on Panama City’s waterfront to which he’d licensed his name and that his management company would run marked a new frontier in his ambitions. With his name recognition exploding due to his successful TV show, The Apprentice, and dogged by a mixed record at home with some high-profile U.S. projects ending up in foreclosure or unfinished, Trump’s decision to license his name overseas was a smart move. In Martinelli’s remarks at the Ocean Club’s opening event, he lavished praise on Trump, thanking him for “allowing this wonderful building to have his name,” toured the hotel with him, told Trump that “everything you touch turns to gold,” and invited him to go sport fishing.

Eric Trump told the crowd at another opening event in July 2011 that “first it takes an unbelievable government and you just heard it—‘We’ll do anything to support Trump in their mission.’ It’s not often that you hear governments say that and it’s such a relief to come into a country that’s so pro-development.”

It was the Trump Organization’s first international real estate deal, “the one by which the rest will be benchmarked,” as Eric put it. Ivanka explained in an earlier interview with the Monitor in February 2011 that “this building is a very important bridge for us as we begin to expand internationally, not just through South America, but the world.”

Мы, как всегда, с Ваней скромно в центре событий

Trump posing with Ocean Club staffers and associates during the development’s opening ceremony in Panama City on July 6, 2011.

Despite initial fears that Trump’s inflammatory campaign rhetoric might hurt his brand, by the time he was elected president buyers were eagerly snapping up Ocean Club units in a rush—the last of the developer-controlled condos were sold at the end of 2016. The project’s developer Newland International Properties had noted under “Risk Factors” in an October 2015 debt offering document that Trump’s campaign “may negatively impact potential buyers’ perceptions of Trump Ocean Club.” But the concerns turned out to be unfounded, as “demand spiked in the weeks following Mr. Trump’s election, with buyers betting that the Trump brand will surge in value,” noted the managing director of Punta Pacifica Realty, a local sales and management company that handled many of the final deals and tracked Ocean Club sales data. In a recent press release titled “New Interest for Trump Project in Panama City,” he wrote that “since the election, PPR has seen the trend continue, with inquiries high as potential buyers investigate the impact of the Trump Effect on the building’s values.”

When The Trumps First Met Martinelli

The Trump family first met Martinelli back in 2006, when Ocean Club developer Roger Khafif invited him to an early meeting with Ivanka, Eric, Donald Jr., and a handful of local government representatives including the mayor of Panama City. “I was friends with Ricardo from way before he became president,” Khafif says, adding that he’s “known him for the last 20 years or so.” “Panama is a small country, everybody knows everybody,” Khafif says, describing that early 2006 meeting with Martinelli as more of a social networking event. Martinelli was then a prominent businessman who owned one of the biggest and most visible companies in Panama, the supermarket chain Super 99, and was also the leader of the pro-business Cambio Democrático party.

Donald Trump speaks with Panama’s President Ricardo Martinelli during the inauguration ceremony of the Trump Ocean Club in Panama City on July 6, 2011.[Photo: STR/AFP/Getty Images]

Khafif says that he had previously sold Martinelli an apartment at a smaller resort project that he’d worked on in the past, but wasn’t aware of any stake that Martinelli may have acquired in the Ocean Club.

Still, in the small world that is Panama, Martinelli’s interest in the hotel was not just personal. He was a director of Global Bank, one of the largest banks in the country, whose subsidiary Global Financial Funds became the co-trustee for the project a couple of years after the complex opened in 2011. Global Financial Funds replaced the previous co-trustee, HSBC’s Panama unit, in 2013, the same year that HSBC sold its Panamanian assets to a Colombian bank. Khafif says that Global Bank was “a bank we used to work with” before signing them on in 2013, and insisted that Martinelli “had nothing to do with” the bank’s role as co-trustee of the Ocean Club.

As co-trustee, Global Financial Funds gained a view into the project’s books and buyers, and was “supposed to make sure money was spent the right way,” as Khafif puts it. Global Financial Funds was responsible for receiving funds coming in from rentals and sales accounts and for transferring it to a disbursement account, after having reserved or paid Trump’s commission for the licensing of his name. As co-trustee, Global Financial Funds was also given custody of certain collateral related to the Ocean Club, such as the original stock certificates.

Global Bank, where Martinelli’s son Ricardo (Rica) also became a director and his wife has been listed as an alternate director, was recently singled out by the Times as being “one of three Panamanian banks whose outlook was recently revised by S & P Global to negative from stable, reflecting ‘shortfalls in regulation, supervision, governance, and transparency in the Panamanian financial system.’”

Global Bank declined to tell Fast Company if Martinelli still serves on the bank’s board or in any other capacity. There is still a Ricardo Martinelli listed on the board of Global Bank subsidiary Global Valores, which offers investment products and services, on the company’s website. (A few hours after Fast Company reached out to Global Bank and the former president’s son Rica, the bank’s webpage listing this Martinelli on the board began redirecting to another part of the company’s website.)

Corruption, Bullying, And Blackmail

The Trumps’ admiration of Martinelli appeared to be unaffected by the cascade of international news about his increasingly authoritarian and vindictive behavior, blown open by WikiLeaks’ 2010 release of U.S. diplomatic cables, in the year before the family publicly heaped praise on him. Mainstream news outlets like the Times covered these revelations published by WikiLeaks—one of Trump’s favorite sources during the U.S. election—about Martinelli in great detail starting in late 2010. According to the cables, Martinelli ruled by “bullying and blackmail,” and had threatened to stop cooperating with the United States unless American officials helped him with a wiretapping program. The cables documented U.S. Embassy officials in Panama sounding red alarms over Martinelli beginning as early as the second week of his 2009-2014 administration. That’s when, as McClatchy noted, the U.S. Ambassador to Panama presciently warned that he was “almost certain to spell trouble for Panama’s democratic institutions.”

Panama’s anti-corruption czar Angélica Maytín Justiniani said that the amount lost to corruption in Martinelli’s administration is “possibly in the billions of dollars,” and that “it’s obvious that a lot of the money is outside Panama,” McClatchy reported in 2015. She added that “we’re learning of midlevel [former] officials who have assets of $25 million and 10 properties. We never saw anything like this, even under the military dictatorship.” A Panamanian law professor and human rights activist concurred in an interview with NPR that Martinelli “did more harm to the country than even the dictatorships of the last century,” as “even the militaries, they were not able to develop the degrees and the practice of corruption like Martinelli did.”

Trump’s previous statements implying that overseas corruption was just another cost of doing business suggest that the allegations wouldn’t have raised many red flags anyway. When Walmart’s massive Mexican bribery scandal broke in 2012, Donald Trump said that the U.S. anti-bribery law that applies internationally, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, is a “horrible law and it should be changed.” “Every other country in the world is doing it and we’re not allowed to. It puts us at a huge disadvantage…the world is laughing at us,” he said.

A glimpse into the magnitude of that alleged corruption was revealed in federal court in Brooklyn in December, where Latin America’s largest construction company, Odebrecht, pleaded guilty in a case brought by officials in the United States, Brazil, and Switzerland involving a global bribery scheme spanning a dozen countries. Panama’s current government says that the Martinelli administration was the recipient of Panama’s share of these bribes (Martinelli’s sons have denied any involvement to the local press). On January 12, Panama’s attorney general said that Odebrecht had agreed to pay the Panamanian government more than $59 million in reparations for the bribes it allegedly paid to secure contracts between 2010 and 2014, while Martinelli was president. “The sum is the amount in bribes Odebrecht admitted paying to officials and intermediaries there in a plea agreement disclosed in December in a U.S. court,” Reuters reported. Odebrecht, along with its affiliated petrochemical firm, would pay at least $3.5 billion in penalties in the global case, the biggest penalty ever for a violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, reports the Times.

At the end of January, Panama charged and ordered the investigation of 17 people in the Odebrecht bribery case, reportedly including Martinelli’s sons Rica and Luis Enrique. And on February 14 their government said thatInterpol had issued international “red notices” for Martinelli’s sons Ricardo (Rica) and Luis Enrique in the Odebrecht case, at the request of Panama’s anti-corruption prosecutor. Some of the money was allegedly laundered through Swiss bank accounts, and such Martinelli-controlled accounts containing $22 million were reportedly frozen in the process, according to Univision.

Since fleeing Panama, Martinelli has blamed his troubles on “rigged” circumstances engineered by political enemies who are a threat to his life. In response to the Panamanian Supreme Court’s ruling demanding his detention to face the charges against him, Martinelli wrote in a letter in late 2015 that “like those now detained illegally, I’m a victim of rigged proceedings, of coerced or manufactured witnesses and it is ever more evident the violations to the presumption of innocence and due process.”

Martinelli is just one of several foreign leaders suspected of corruption abroad who have found refuge in the United States. There are explicit government policies “designed to keep the United States from becoming a haven for corrupt officials,” but a number of such officials fleeing their legal systems back home “have slipped through the cracks,” reported ProPublica in a recent article co-published with the Miami Herald, calling Martinelli “one of the most prominent cases.” Proclamation 7750, issued by George W. Bush in 2004, has the force of law and instructs the State Department “to ban officials who have accepted bribes or misappropriated public funds when their actions have ‘serious adverse effects on the national interests of the United States.’” Under these rules, U.S. officials “do not need a conviction or even formal charges to justify denying a visa,” and can do so “based on information from unofficial, or informal sources, including newspaper articles,” noted ProPublica.

In response to the article, Martinelli’s spokesman released a letter declaring that “it is wrong to say that former President Martinelli is in the United States to avoid facing these political processes. Actually having no accused status and haven’t not being [sic] formally charged, he has faced each of this [sic] processes through his attorneys as granted by our laws and constitution.” Martinelli’s letter claimed that “in Panama his life is threatened by the political persecution of President Juan Carlos Varela,” and even accused the current administration of using “torture” to extract false accusations against him. Martinelli’s team added that “there is no documentary evidence or material that links former President Ricardo Martinelli in the alleged facts.”

Despite several requests for comment, Martinelli declined to be interviewed for this story.

The American Martinelli

Trump and Martinelli’s mutual affection seems to be partly based on their status as wealthy men with political ambitions who appear to be unmoved by concerns over conflicts of interest. By 2015, Martinelli’s net worth had risen to $1.1 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Aside from Super 99, he has other large holdings in media, real estate, banking, energy, and sugar, and owns a plane, two helicopters, and a yacht, according to Bloomberg. Martinelli was elected on the promise that he would run Panama as he ran his businesses. With his election in 2009, he had perfected the style of right-wing populism that Trump is selling to Americans today. Martinelli’s massive personal wealth, the campaign sales pitch went, made him the only outsider immune to influence and able to dismantle an entrenched and corrupt political establishment.

Trump’s campaign was so resonant with Martinelli’s that many Panamanians today refer to Trump as the “American Martinelli.” They even shared the same political operative, Republican strategist Alex Castellanos, who worked on Martinelli’s campaign in 2009 and guided a pro-Trump super PAC in 2016. Castellanos, a high-profile political and corporate consultant, appeared regularly on Meet the Press and CNN during the campaign as a Trump supporter (though he was a Trump critic before the nomination).

Castellanos has said that the now-fugitive leader, whom he referred to as “Panama’s version of Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi,” “was politically incorrect on the good days, ragingly out of control on others.” As with Trump, “we couldn’t hide his affluence so we celebrated it,” Castellanos explained, adding that “we used his wealth without apology, as inspiration for every Panamanian’s success.”

“One Of the Most Beautiful Buildings In The World”

The Trump Ocean Club tower that Martinelli helped to inaugurate in 2011 was heralded as the icon of Panama City’s rapidly expanding skyline–50 skyscrapers have been built around the crowded shoreline since 2007. (There is also one of Martinelli’s Super 99 supermarkets just a few blocks from the Ocean Club, to which the complex offers free shuttle service.)

[Photo: via Trump Hotels]

The Ocean Club’s official website explains that the goal was to build “the most spectacular development in Panama’s history,” and Trump called it “one of the most beautiful buildings in the world.” Trump tweeted that the building had become “Central America’s architectural icon,” announcing that “excellence has arrived to So. America.” The Ocean Club was supposed to be a kind of Elysium on the isthmus for rich expats drawn to Panama for its relaxed tax and immigration laws, and one of “the best retirement programs in the world,” according to its promotional material. Ivanka Trump explained to the Latin Business Chronicle that Panama’s incentives were “incredibly luring to international [investors], especially as we in America are being taxed to the hilt.” Ocean Club condo units are exempt from property taxes through 2031.

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Panama’s long-term global strategic importance, due to the Panama Canal connecting the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, has also helped reassure Ocean Club buyers that the region has some degree of economic stability. Today, a third of trade coming from Asia to America passes through the canal. The country has been the key passageway for interoceanic trade going back hundreds of years to the days of the Spanish Empire, when South America’s resources like the gold and silver of the Inca empire were shipped to Spain via Panama. Martinelli had also served as chairman of the board of directors of the Panama Canal Authority and as minister of Canal Affairs from 1999 to 2003.

Trump famously outraged many Panamanians in the year before the Ocean Club opening, when he lamented that the canal had just been given back to the Panamanian people. “We gave it to Panama. We didn’t say, here, take us, pay us $100 billion over a 10-year period or 50-year period. Who are these people that are making these decisions? So, we have very bad decision-makers in this country. And this country didn’t get great by having decisions like that made,” Trump told Wolf Blitzer in 2010. In response, Panama City councillors voted unanimously to declare Donald Trump “persona non grata” in March 2011, just months before his project’s grand opening there. Panama’s Commerce and Industry Minister Roberto Henriquez said that “somebody who has 400 million dollars invested in Panama should not speak this way,” and that “I think it was a political stupidity on the part of Donald Trump,” AFP reported. After the backlash, Trump issued a rare conciliatory statement and spoke to Panamanian press, insisting that he was simply criticizing the negotiating abilities of American politicians and that “if I were from Panama, I’d try and make the same kind of a deal, I respect that.” “I paid Panama a great compliment,” he explained.

To reduce the bottleneck effect at its gates as shipping traffic and the size of container ships increased over the years, Panama announced plans for a $5.2 billion expansion of the canal in 2006—on the same day that the Trump Ocean Club was launched in New York City. The canal expansion was another important marketing tool for the development, signaling Panama’s continued economic desirability. “Panama is amazing. It’s thriving. You know why? The canal is doing so well, and they’re now expanding the Panama Canal,” Trump told CNN. “Home to the number one shipping and trade canal in the world,” Ocean Club promotional material explained.

Panama’s location connecting South and Central America—and the vast, swampy and notoriously lawless Darién Gap border region with Colombia—has also raised persistent security concerns since it has served as a key conduit for smuggling for decades. Former U.S. Ambassador Barbara Stephenson noted the arrest of Martinelli’s second cousin Ramon Martinelli in Mexico for his role in a drug smuggling ring that was transporting up to $30 million a month through Panama’s Tocumen International Airport, McClatchy noted. President Martinelli later told Stephenson, according to the cable, that Ramon was the “black sheep” of the family and that his government would have arrested him if Mexico didn’t.

Panama’s status as a nexus of drug smuggling, money laundering, and strategic importance were notoriously embodied in former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, a paid CIA asset whose nefarious activities prompted President George H. W. Bush to launch Operation Just Cause, the invasion of Panama in late 1989 that involved tens of thousands of U.S. troops. Noriega was under indictment in Florida on drug trafficking charges before the invasion, and after his capture and arrest in Panama, he was taken back to the United States and sentenced to 40 years in prison (later reduced to 30) on drug trafficking, money laundering, and racketeering charges. He was the first foreign head of state to be convicted on criminal charges in a U.S. court. (In 2010, Noriega was extradited to France on further money laundering charges, where he received a seven-year sentence, but in 2011 was extradited back to Panama to serve a sentence there for the murder of opponents during his rule.)

While Trump constantly raged against “globalists” during his presidential campaign, the Ocean Club was meant to be a magnet for precisely the kind of borderless flow of money that he now loves to criticize. (Panama also has the second-largest free-trade zone on Earth, after Hong Kong, a fact highlighted in the Ocean Club’s sales pitch.) Panama has been a pillar of globalization for hundreds of years, in recent decades known as one of the world’s premier “money laundries” for its facilitation of opaque international financial transactions and corporate confidentiality laws. (The new government of Panama says that it is implementing greater transparency laws, though as President Varela admitted to the Times last year, “under previous governments, Panama was no doubt a target of money launderers.”)

Real estate in Panama City was booming in part because of all the dirty money flowing in from around the world. As a U.S. Embassy cable from 2007 released by WikiLeaks noted, “ultimately, real estate projects financed by the proceeds of criminal activity distort the market for legitimate developers and create excess supply, which may be why 20,000 luxury apartments are projected to be available in Panama City between now and 2010.” Pointing out the city’s noticeably dark skyline, photographer Paolo Woods told the Times in 2015: “What’s amazing is most of the skyscrapers are dark,” adding that “they’re just there to launder money.”

As the BBC put it in 2014, “the Russian mafia is believed to control some prime real estate in Panama City while the Sinaloa Cartel— perhaps the most powerful drug-trafficking organization in the world—brings its cocaine from Colombia via Panama on its route north.”

Some international buyers of Trump Ocean Club units were assisted by Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca with the creation of accompanying offshore shell companies set up to facilitate those purchases, according to emails released in last year’s infamous Panama Papers leak. One of the firm’s principals, Ramon Fonseca, also served as an advisor to then-President Martinelli. On February 9, Fonseca and the co-head of the firm, Jürgen Mossack, were taken into custody and denied bail by Panamanian authorities as part of the government’s investigation into the Odebrecht bribery scandal. The firm is just one of many other law firms and lawyers who assisted buyers of Trump Ocean Club units with creating such offshore entities, according to Panamanian corporate records. The leaked emails show the Ocean Club development company’s COO initiating contact with and offering to cover travel expenses for Mossack Fonseca lawyers, McClatchy reported.

(Panamanian shell companies have also been a popular vehicle for buyers of luxury Trump properties back home. As Forbes reported in a story about money laundering in 1986, “once the money enters the banking stream through shady banks, it is indistinguishable from other money. For example, fully one-third the apartments in Manhattan’s super-expensive condominium Trump Tower are owned by foreign corporations, mostly from Panama and the Netherlands Antilles.” Among these Panama-routed early Trump funds were those of Haitian dictator “Baby Doc” Duvalier, who famously acquired a foothold in Trump Tower in 1983, the year it opened, when his very close friend and family decorator purchased a unit. The condo, then worth $1.65 million, was paid for under cover of a Panamanian shell company, according to a 1986 lawsuit filed in the U.S. by the Haitian government.)

While marketing the Ocean Club to the global jet set crowd, the building’s sales team put extra emphasis on Russian investors looking to park cash overseas, and held Russian marketing events around the world from Moscow to Mar-a-Lago. As the Times put it in an examination of Trump’s Russian forays on January 16, “he discovered that his name was especially attractive in developing countries where the rising rich aspired to the type of ritzy glamour he personified.” Panama City became one of the preferred Trump projects for Russian investors looking to move their money offshore, offering a more affordable South Florida-type lifestyle with relaxed tax and immigration laws, and stable property rights. (The Trump brand also became popular in places like “Little Moscow” in South Florida, where as the Post reported in November, “Russians helped Donald Trump’s brand survive the recession.”) As the Trump Organization’s chief counsel told the Post, “there’s newfound wealth in Russia,” and “any developer is going to where you have a chance of selling your product.”

The “newfound wealth” that he was referring to included the vast amounts of cash that had long been pouring out of Russia’s chaotic post-Soviet economy, capital flight that is today estimated to have exceeded $1 trillion. This newfound Russian wealth became a valued part of the Trump Organization’s sales of condos, with Donald Trump Jr. noting in 2008 that “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”

Aside from global players, the Trump Ocean Club also became a favorite of Panama’s domestic elite, and hosted a number of high-profile Martinelli-attended events. Wharton’s Global Forum Panama featured a one-on-one discussion with Martinelli, and he attended Forbes magazine’s launch party for its Central American edition as a VIP guest. “Panamanians still talk about the lavish wedding of Martinelli’s private secretary, Adolfo ‘Chichi’ de Obarrio a year later [in 2013] at the luxury Trump Ocean Club,” attended by Martinelli and members of the ruling party, reported McClatchy in early 2015. The reporter noted that “de Obarrio, who hadn’t yet turned 30, was gatekeeper for nearly all government purchases and a friend of Martinelli’s son,” and that his wedding at Trump’s Ocean Club featured a “massive fireworks display.”

As the criminal investigations around his inner circle started to close in in early 2015, Martinelli fled Panama for his waterfront luxury condo in Miami, in a 20-story building made famous for its appearances in Scarface and on Miami Vice. Later that year, he set up a Florida company called White Shark Developments LLC. A few days after its incorporation, he tweeted that a visa was required to stay in the United States for up to 180 days, unless you invest at least $500,000 to get an investor visa.

Martinelli has remained an active presence on Twitter from his American sanctuary, where he has denied all wrongdoing. In an interview with Bloomberg reporters at a Miami cafe in 2015, he said that his political opponents “are so afraid of my tweets,” warning, “look what happened in the Arab Spring.” Martinelli was stripped of his immunity to criminal prosecution in 2015, and at the end of September the government of Panama asked the United States to extradite him to face the corruption and illegal spying charges.

Ocean Club Condo Owners To Trump’s Team: You’re Fired

Back in Panama, the Trump Ocean Club had its own legal meltdown. In 2010, Trump said that the units were “selling like hotcakes.” But just a few months after the tower’s 2011 inauguration, the project’s developer defaulted on the debt and later declared bankruptcy. By 2015, the condo owners voted to fire the Trump management team, citing “more than $2 million in unauthorized debts, paying its executives undisclosed bonuses, and withholding basic financial information from owners,” reported the Associated Press.

The condo owners’ board said that the Trump team had pulled all of this off by what the AP described as “fine print chicanery.” Trump’s management company refused to accept being fired, then announced that it was quitting and demanded a $5 million termination fee. The AP then broke the news a month later that Trump had filed a confidential claim with the Paris-based International Chamber of Commerce arbitration court demanding up to $75 million, asserting that his management team had been wrongfully fired. (The Washington Post reported in January that the dispute had ended in a confidential settlement.) Trump’s team is still managing the hotel portion of the Ocean Club, for which it has a 40-year contract.

As the AP put it, “the Trump Organization’s adventures in Panama provide a window into how these traits have filtered into his business empire—and the style of management that could be expected in a Trump White House. Transparency and close attention to expenses are not strengths. Squeezing the most from contractual language is.” One retired American doctor who had purchased a unit told the AP that “I thought it was pretty safe, because we had Trump involved,” but that he’d since realized that “he’s a predatory businessman.”

The last time a member of the Trump family appears to have visited Panama City was in December 2015, when Eric Trump travelled there to attend the Ocean Club’s fourth anniversary party and “to strengthen and support the plans to improve the property in the near future,” according to a press release. In an interview with the AP that fall, the president’s son dismissed the troubles inside the building as a sideshow to what the Ocean Club was really about–“an amazing icon and, frankly, a great testament to America.”

Meanwhile, Martinelli spends his time in Miami meeting friends, posting photos of himself working out at the gym, mocking current Panamanian president Varela, sharing his favorite songs like the Bee Gees’ “How Deep Is Your Love” on Facebook, and fulminating on social media about his political enemies. But he hasn’t mentioned Trump on Facebook or Twitter since the inauguration.

Plan to Destroy N. Korea Missile Nuclear Program

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Report: Japan’s Largest Warship Heading to South China Sea, Will Train With U.S., Indian Navies

Izumo is one of two helicopter carriers the Japanese have built for the stated claim of anti-submarine warfare and humanitarian aid and disaster relief operations. The ship entered into service in 2015 and its sister ship Kaga is set to commission this year.

Both ships field seven Mitsubishi-built SH-60k ASW helicopters and seven AgustaWestland MCM-101 mine countermeasure (MCM) helicopters, according to U.S. Naval Institute’s Combat Fleets of the World. Both ships can also accommodate U.S. Marine Corps MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft.

Japanese officials have said the threat of an expanded Chinese submarine fleet was a key driver of Japan developing the ship class.

Izumo’s ASW capability fits in with the goals of Malabar 2017 trilateral exercise with India and the U.S., according to a December interview with U.S. 7th Fleet commander Adm. Joseph Aucoin with the Press Trust of India.

Aucoin promised a larger and more complex ASW exercise in 2017 that would combine new capabilities of the Indian and U.S. forces in the region – like the Indian and U.S. P-8A and Indian P-8I ASW aircraft.

Beijing, for its part, has been vocally opposed to Japan operating warships in the South China Sea and leaned on memories of Imperial Japanese actions in World War II.

Meanwhile:

The aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson conducts a replenishment at sea with the fleet replenishment oiler USNS Tippecanoe in the South China Sea, March 5, 2017. Navy photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Sean M. Castellan

Side-by-Side
The aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson conducts a replenishment at sea with the fleet replenishment oiler USNS Tippecanoe in the South China Sea, March 5, 2017. Navy photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Sean M. Castellan.
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The United States will permanently station attack drones in South Korea, the US military announced.

The announcement came a week after North Korea shot off four ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan, also known as the East Sea, and while the US and South Korea are conducting their annual joint military exercises.
“The stationing of this company, which will be assigned to the 2nd Combat Aviation Brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division, directly supports the US Army’s strategic plan to add one Gray Eagle company to each division in the Army,” USFK said in a news release.
“The UAS adds significant intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capability to US Forces Korea and our ROK (Republic of Korea) partners.” More here from CNN.
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*** The conditions in N. Korea and the plan?  Military planners are beginning to consider the unthinkable — a first-strike targeting North Korea’s nuclear facilities
North Korea has been developing nuclear weapons now for more than two decades. A number of international diplomatic efforts slowed this progress, but the last such program failed in 2009. The country which calls itself the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), tested its first nuclear weapon in 2006. Since then the DPRK has accelerated its progress, testing new nuclear devices in 2009, 2013, and then two more last year.

The explosive yields on these bombs have been small (for nuclear weapons) however, analysts believe this points to a disturbing possibility– that North Korea is attempting to build miniaturized nuclear warheads. While its propaganda channels already claim to have achieved this capacity, the DPRK’s nuclear test program seems to be a step-by-step approach to building nuclear missiles.

Concurrent to its nuclear program, North Korea has also forged ahead with the testing of new missile types. Among these, are the Taepodong-2 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), theoretically capable of reaching the west coast of the United States, as well as the Scud-derived Hwasong and Rodong missiles, which were tested this week, and have a strike range which threatens regional US allies such as South Korea and Japan. One final, and perhaps most worrying threat is the Pukkuksong-1 submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) which can be launched from beneath the waves.

Clearly, the country is hell-bent on creating the ability to launch a nuclear attack. The likely reason for this is to function as a so-called “nuclear deterrent.” Should an adversarial nation such as the US or South Korea attempt to attack the North, they can retaliate with nuclear weapons and make such an attack too costly to be considered. Assuming this, all intentional diplomatic efforts have gone into trying to prevent it.

Unfortunately, they have failed.

“Many analysts believe that North Korea already has the capability to place a nuclear weapon on top of a Rodong missile, so South Korea and Japan are already threatened by a possible North Korean nuclear strike,” says Scott Snyder, Director of the Program on U.S.-Korea Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations.

John Schilling, an expert on missile technology from DPRK analysis portal 38 North also supports this view.

“North Korea is probably capable of mounting atomic warheads in the Scud-ER and similar Rodong missiles today, giving them a credible deterrent against South Korea and Japan. The history of their nuclear testing suggests a focused effort at developing lightweight atomic weapons, with consistent results in the last few tests pointing to at least one warhead design having achieved high reliability. Almost certainly this warhead will fit their existing missiles,” he explains.

Even using the small-yield devices so far developed by the DPRK, a nuclear first strike, if successful could easily kill millions in north Asia, and cripple the global economy. Given this, the US and its regional allies are taking defensive measures.

The most talked up of these is the US deployment this week of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system to South Korea. This anti-ballistic missile system fires its own missiles to intercept incoming threats before they hit their targets. It is combined with other systems in use including Aegis and Patriot to provide a measure of breathing room. But in a real war, it might not be sufficient.

“THAAD, Aegis, and Patriot are all capable of engaging multiple targets simultaneously, and will probably destroy most missiles aimed at South Korea or Japan. With nuclear warheads on some of those missiles, ‘most’ may not be enough,” says Schilling.

With the situation growing ever more dire, military planners are beginning to consider the unthinkable – a first-strike targeting North Korea’s nuclear facilities. This would theoretically cripple the country’s nuclear weapons production and would buy time for a more congenial government to come to power in Pyongyang.

To say such an action would be difficult and risky however would be a massive understatement.

Some North Korean nuclear sites, such as the Yongbyon nuclear complex are above ground and would be relatively easy to destroy. Other sites, however, are likely located in hardened underground shelters, meaning that a large strike element would be necessary.

“Much of the Yongbyon nuclear complex could be destroyed by air attacks — aircraft and/or cruise missiles. But underground facilities first have to be found and then have to be struck by precision munitions — finding things is the potentially difficult part — North Korea denies a lot of information to the outside world,” says Bruce W. Bennet, a senior defense researcher at RAND Corporation.

“A major attack against those facilities almost certainly cannot be done without starting a wider conflict.”

Even if nuclear weapons are not used, North Korea has enough artillery aimed at South Korea to all but level the capital Seoul and cause hundreds of thousands of casualties.

Scott Snyder agrees that such a first-strike would likely lead to a disastrous war.

“The United States could not strike North Korean nuclear facilities without running the risk of nuclear disaster. Pre-emptive options plausibly might be used to strike North Korean missile sites but North Korea would likely retaliate to such strikes,” he says.

Alternative options such as information operations aiming to destabilize the North Korean regime could be more attractive, as would be additional diplomatic pressure by China. But this itself could leave the DPRK’s leadership feeling even more under siege and may precipitate yet more irrational behavior.

The situation on the Korean Peninsula remains one of the greatest challenges currently facing the international community. With the DPRK preparing for what looks like yet another nuclear test, countries in the region, and major powers like the US and China need to present a united front in order to deter aggression and work together on a possible solution. The only other alternative would be war. More here.

*** In 2013 it was reported: North Korea is reported to have more than thousand missiles of varying capabilities, ranging from short-range (120 km and above) to long-range (greater than 5,500km). The country is believed to have developed its missile programme from Scuds, which it received from Egypt in 1970s. The following decade saw North Korea build its own Scuds – the Hwasong-5 and Hwasong-6, and a medium-range missile, the Nodong. These technologies are said to have been extensively used by the country in building its long-range missile, Taepodong.

***

A greater concern than multiple Scud-type missiles would be if North Korea proved the ability to fire simultaneous salvos of other types of missiles that could carry heavier payload, said one U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

North Korea theoretically had enough launchers to send at least 36 ballistic missiles of various types at the same time, said Joseph S. Bermudez, a strategic advisor at Allsource Analysis Inc and contributor to the 38 North Korea monitoring project. More here including comprehensive details on THAAD.

Vault 7 Breach the Worst Yet or this Military Holy Grail Breach?

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Do we have a concept of the insider threat condition within government with emphasis added on contractors within the intelligence community? Anyone? Combined with stupidity, lax security measures, no passwords and dated software platforms, is there anything left our adversaries don’t know by now?

Referencing Vault 7 and the CIA, the agency has agreements with several outside contractor firms. The employees of those firms have a much lower standard of security, behavior and access than that of the CIA. The agency holds contracts with 5 major outside firms that do 80% of the private contract work to include Booz, Allen and Hamilton. The next logical question is who else besides the CIA holds private contract work agreements, DNI, Defense Department, Geo-Spatial, NSA? Yes.

Where does one begin to document cyber vulnerabilities and how to close those gaps immediately and at what cost? Meanwhile little is being reported about NSA documents thief Harold Martin.

US military leak exposes ‘holy grail’ of security clearance files

Exclusive: These security clearance applications contain sensitive personal information, and are highly valuable to foreign adversaries seeking to undermine US national security.

ZDNet: A unsecured backup drive has exposed thousands of US Air Force documents, including highly sensitive personnel files on senior and high-ranking officers.

Security researchers found that the gigabytes of files were accessible to anyone because the internet-connected backup drive was not password protected.

The files, reviewed by ZDNet, contained a range of personal information, such as names and addresses, ranks, and Social Security numbers of more than 4,000 officers. Another file lists the security clearance levels of hundreds of other officers, some of whom possess “top secret” clearance, and access to sensitive compartmented information and codeword-level clearance.

Phone numbers and contact information of staff and their spouses, as well as other sensitive and private personal information, were found in several other spreadsheets.

The drive is understood to belong to a lieutenant colonel, whose name we are not publishing. ZDNet reached out to the officer by email but did not hear back.

The data was secured last week after a notification by MacKeeper security researcher Bob Diachenko.

Among the most damaging documents on the drive included the completed applications for renewed national security clearances for two US four-star generals, both of whom recently had top US military and NATO positions.

Both of these so-called SF86 applications contain highly sensitive and detailed information, including financial and mental health history, past convictions, relationships with foreign nationals, and other personal information.

These completed questionnaires are used to determine a candidate’s eligibility to receive classified material.

Several national security experts and former government officials we spoke to for this story described this information as the “holy grail” for foreign adversaries and spies, and said that it should not be made public.

For that reason, we are not publishing the names of the generals, who have since retired from service.

Nevertheless, numerous attempts to contact the generals over the past week went unreturned.

“Some of the questions ask for information that can be very personal, as well as embarrassing,” said Mark Zaid, a national security attorney, in an email. The form allows prospective applicants to national security positions to disclose arrests, drug and alcohol issues, or mental health concerns, among other things, said Zaid.

Completed SF86 forms aren’t classified but are closely guarded. These were the same kinds of documents that were stolen in a massive theft of sensitive files at the Office of Personnel Management, affecting more than 22 million government and military employees.

“Even if the SF86 answers are innocuous, because of the personal information within the form there is always the risk of identity theft or financial fraud that could harm the individual and potentially compromise them,” said Zaid.

One spreadsheet contained a list of officers under investigation by the military, including allegations of abuses of power and substantiated claims of wrongdoing, such as wrongfully disclosing classified information.

A former government official, who reviewed a portion of the documents but did not want to be named, said that the document, in the wrong hands, provided a “blueprint” for blackmail.

Even officers who have left in recent years may still be vulnerable to coercion if they are still trusted with historical state secrets.

“Foreign powers might use that information to target those individuals for espionage or to otherwise monitor their activity in the hopes of gaining insight into US national security posture,” said Susan Hennessey, a Brookings fellow and a former attorney at the National Security Agency.

Government officials use the form as a screening mechanism, said Hennessey, but it also offers applicants the chance to inform the government of past indiscretions or concerns that eliminate the possibility of blackmail in the future, she added. “These are people whose lives can depend on sensitive information being safeguarded, so the notion they would fail to put country over self in that kind of circumstance is far-fetched and supported by relatively few historical examples,” she said.

“Still, it is the obligation of the government to keep this kind of information safe, both in order to protect the privacy of those who serve and their families and to protect them against being placed in difficult situations unnecessarily,” said Hennessey.

Though many of the files were considered “confidential” or “sensitive,” a deeper keyword-based search of the files did not reveal any material marked as classified.

A completed passport application for one of the generals was also found in the same folder, as well as scans of his own and his wife’s passports and driving licenses.

Other data included financial disclosures, bank account and routing information, and some limited medical information.

Another document purported to show the lieutenant colonel’s username and password for a sensitive internal Dept. of Defense system, used to check staff security clearances.

Another document listed the clearance levels of one of the generals.

And, a smaller spreadsheet contained a list of Social Security numbers, passport numbers, and other contact information on high-profile figures and celebrities, including Channing Tatum.

The records were collected in relation to a six-day tour to Afghanistan by Tatum in 2015. An email to Tatum’s publicist went unreturned.

The drive also contained several gigabytes of Outlook email files, covering years worth of emails. Another document purported to be a backup.

Nevertheless, this would be the second breach of military data in recent months.

Potomac, a Dept. of Defense subcontractor, was the source of a large data exposure of military personnel files of physical and mental health support staff. Many of the victims involved in the data leak are part of the US Special Operations Command (SOCOM), which includes those both formerly employed by US military branches, such as the Army, Navy, and Air Force, and those presumably still on active deployment.

It’s not known how long the backup drive was active. Given that the device was public and searchable, it’s not known if anyone other than the security researchers accessed the files.

The Office of Personnel Management, which processes security clearance applications, referred comment to the Pentagon.

A Pentagon spokesperson would not comment in an email Monday.