MICHAEL MORELL
FORMER ACTING DIRECTOR, CIAOnce the Democratic and Republican parties officially nominate their Presidential candidates at their political conventions this summer, the nominees will be offered intelligence briefings before the general election. We asked Michael Morell, the former Deputy Director and twice Acting Director of the CIA, to explain how these briefings work.The Cipher Brief: Can you tell us why the sitting President offers those briefings to the nominee from each party?Michael Morell: There is a great deal of confusion about these briefings in the media. After a candidate has been formally nominated by her/his national convention, she/he is offered a one-time intelligence briefing (sometimes over multiple days if there are time constraints or if a candidate wants to go deeper on a particular topic). They do not receive a daily briefing. They do not receive regular update briefings during the campaign. They do not receive the President’s Daily Briefing. Those only come for the president-elect, after the election in November.There is also confusion in the media as to why every post-war president has offered these one-time, post-convention briefings to the candidates. The objective is not to start preparing the candidate to deal with the myriad national security issues that they will face six months down the road, if they win the election. The objective is to protect national security during the campaign by giving the candidates a deep sense of the national security landscape. Let me explain: both our adversaries and our allies and partners will be listening closely, extremely closely, to what the candidates say about the issues during the campaign, and saying the wrong thing could damage our national security. The briefings are meant to help prevent that.Let me be clear, though: during the initial, one-time briefing, the candidates are not advised on what to say or what not to say about national security issues on the campaign trail. The hope is that by simply giving them an objective, unbiased understanding of the issues, the dialogue on those issues during the campaign will be carried out in a way that does not undermine U.S. interests.TCB: Who is actually involved in the briefings?MM: On the government side, the briefing teams are usually composed of senior leaders from the analytic arms of the Intelligence Community agencies, along with senior analysts who, on a day-to-day basis, cover the issues to be discussed. I played the former role in a number of briefings for candidates over the years.On the candidate’s side, they are permitted to bring their closest national security aides. In my experience, that has ranged from just one person to two-to-three people. But there is no just showing up. The IC (Intelligence Community) must approve in advance all of the attendees.TCB: Are there any limits to what the nominees can be told? For instance, will they be provided with classified information or details of ongoing operations? Are the candidates in essence given security clearances?MM: Absolutely, there are limits on what candidates are told. The briefings are classified Top Secret, but the candidates are only provided the analytic judgments of the IC and the information used to support those judgments. They are not provided with the details of how that information was collected-what the IC calls sources and methods. They are not provided with any information on any ongoing covert actions programs related to the issue being discussed. They are not provided with any operational information. Those only come after a candidate wins the election.TCB: How does the IC prepare for the briefings? Will the briefings be the same for each candidate? What issues would you emphasize in the briefings?MM: The leadership of the IC, most likely the DNI (Director of National Intelligence), will decide on the topics, perhaps to be approved by the White House. If I were putting the list together, I would include the threat to the U.S. Homeland and to U.S. interests abroad posed by ISIS and al Qaeda; the threat posed by a variety of actors in cyber space; the political and military situation in Iraq and Syria; the situation in Afghanistan; as well as national security issues related to Iran, Russia, North Korea, and China.The briefing team will go into the room with the goal of providing the same analytic judgments to both candidates, but I would expect the two briefings to be very different. I would expect the briefing for Secretary Hillary Clinton (the presumptive Democratic nominee) to delve into issues more deeply and to be more of a dialogue than the briefing for Donald Trump (the presumptive Republican nominee), which I would expect to be more of a tutorial, more of a first cut at the issues, with the need to provide the history and background on issues. This is simply because the Secretary is starting at much greater level of understanding based on her experience working these issues, her experience working with the IC, and her knowledge of the IC judgments (she was a daily and engaged consumer of both IC collection and analysis). Trump, most likely, will be starting at square one. No value judgments here; just the reality of the situation.TCB: Any personal observations about a nominee’s response to a briefing you provided? Without getting into names, has a nominee seemed surprised by the information? Has it altered a position on an issue or impacted how the nominee publically presented a view?MM: In general, candidates who have not been involved in national security are surprised by the number of threats facing the U.S., by the seriousness of those threats, by the complexity of the threats, and by just how difficult they are to mitigate. They quickly realize that there are not simple solutions. They quickly realize that their sound bites on the campaign simply don’t fit realty. And, they quickly realize just how important intelligence is going to be keeping the country safe.Not surprisingly, the briefing team will get a sense of a candidate. Does the candidate know what they don’t know, are they trying to understand the issue, do they want to learn, are they open-minded, are they able to grasp complexity, do they ask good questions? Or do they try to convince the analysts of their point of view, are they just trying to find facts to fit their world view or their policy views, do they look at the issues through the lens of national security or through the lens of politics?The IC knows the Secretary well, and its expectation will be that she will fall into the first category because that is what she demonstrated as Secretary of State. I’m sure the analysts will be very interested to see where Donald Trump falls – largely because they will want to know what he would be like if he were to become their “First Customer,” as some analysts at CIA like to call the president. And they will be interested simply because of the nature of the campaign so far, the nature of the candidate so far.
Category Archives: U.S. Constitution
Examples of POTUS Power Over Agencies
Primer: CFPB Director: PHH Corp. took kickbacks for mortgage insurance referrals
Requires firm to pay $109M to the CFPB
FAS: Congressional authority to establish federal agencies with independence from political control is under scrutiny in a case pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (D.C. Circuit). At issue in PHH Corp. v. CFPB is whether the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) structure violates the constitutional principle of separation of powers. The CFPB is headed by a single director who enjoys a certain amount of protection from removal by the President, and the agency is funded outside of the annual appropriations process. As elaborated below, PHH claims that the restrictions on the President’s power to remove the Director improperly encroach on the executive power vested in the President under Article II of the Constitution, and that the combination of insulation from executive control and independence from yearly congressional appropriations violates separation of powers by shielding the agency from “democratic accountability.”
The Constitution divides the power of the federal government among the legislative, judicial, and executive branches. While the text does not contain a “separation of powers” provision, the Supreme Court has recognized a separation of powers principle that underlies the constitutional division of the federal government’s authority. Among other things, this doctrine prevents one branch of government from impermissibly encroaching on the powers of another or inappropriately delegating its own authority to another branch of government. These limits, in turn, shape the structure of federal agencies that exercise governmental power.
For example, a recurring theme in separation of powers cases is the extent to which Congress may impose restrictions on the President’s power to remove executive officers. Article II of the Constitution vests the executive power in the President, and the President is authorized to keep executive officers accountable by removing them. However, the Supreme Court has recognized that this power is not absolute. In Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, the Court held that Congress could establish independent agencies overseen by officers whom the President could only remove for “good cause.” The Court upheld similar restrictions on the President’s authority to remove lower-level officials in Morrison v. Olson. In Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Oversight Board, however, it invalidated the combination of these two otherwise permissible features – removal restrictions on both the principal and certain inferior officers within a single agency – as violating Article II’s vesting of executive power in the President because it improperly impeded his “constitutional obligation to ensure the faithful execution of the laws.”
Another constitutional provision that informs separation of powers is Article I’s prohibition on drawing money from the Treasury unless authorized by “Appropriations made by Law.” Congress thus has the “power of the purse” and controls the funding of executive branch agencies. While the Court has not faced a challenge to an independent agency receiving funds outside of the annual appropriations process, various federal entities, such as the Federal Reserve Board, are currently funded through their own earnings, rather than through the appropriations process.
The CFPB was established by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Financial Protection Act, which consolidated and expanded federal regulation of consumer financial products. Broadly, the Act gave the CFPB rulemaking, supervisory, and enforcement power over certain financial institutions. It also bestowed rulemaking and enforcement power under various consumer financial protection statutes, and more generally the authority to deter unfair, deceptive, or abusive practices by regulated entities. In this case, the Director of the CFPB concluded that a mortgage lender, PHH, violated the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act, imposed injunctive relief to prevent further violations, and required PHH to disgorge “kickback payments” it had received in violation of the Act. PHH appealed the decision to the D.C. Circuit, claiming that, among other things, the agency’s structure violates separation of powers.
The legislation establishing the CFPB provided the agency with a structure intended to ensure independence from the political influence of Congress and the President. The CFPB is headed by a single Director who is appointed by the President to a five-year term and removable by the President only for cause. Although established within the Federal Reserve System, the agency is considerably independent from the Federal Reserve Board’s authority, and the Federal Reserve Board is barred from intervening in the CFPB’s decisions or directing its employees. However, a supermajority of the Financial Stability Oversight Council—of which the Chairman of the Federal Reserve is a voting member—may veto CFPB regulations that would put the safety of the banking system or the financial system’s stability at risk.
Finally, the agency is funded via a transfer from the Federal Reserve System’s earnings, rather than through annual appropriations.
PHH argues that the combination of these features insulates the agency from “democratic accountability” and violates separation of powers. First, PHH claims that while Humphrey’s Executor upheld removal restrictions for nonpartisan, multi-member expert boards, its logic does not support upholding the restrictions here because the CFPB is headed by a single director and is not intended to be “non-partisan.” Further, PHH argues that just as the combination of two otherwise-permissible removal restrictions in Free Enterprise violated separation of powers, the marriage of removal restrictions with an independent funding stream is entirely unprecedented and grants the agency novel freedom from both presidential and congressional control. In response, the CFPB disputes PHH’s reading of Humphrey’s Executor, arguing that the Court upheld removal restrictions for agency heads because of the functions the officers performed, which mirror the duties of the CFPB Director. In addition, the CFPB distinguishes the principles announced in Free Enterprise – in that case, two otherwise-permissible removal restrictions combined to impede the President’s power under Article II. Here, in contrast, “each branch retains its constitutional powers” because the removal restriction does not reduce Congress’s authority over appropriations under Article I, and the independent funding mechanism does not hamper the President’s Article II duty to execute the law.
At oral arguments before a panel of the D.C. Circuit, Judge Kavanaugh, who has articulated a broad reading of Free Enterprise in the past, questioned CFPB’s counsel about the nature of the agency’s independence. In particular, he focused on whether restrictions on the President’s removal power were permissible for agencies headed by a single director. He noted that historically, most removal restrictions for independent agencies applied to multi-member commissions, rather than agencies with a single head. The justification being, he noted, that while typical agency heads must be subject to presidential control, removal restrictions are appropriate for a multi-member board because it is nonpartisan or bipartisan.
Resolution of the case may have important implications for the structure of the executive branch and the scope of presidential control over “independent” agencies. Several other agencies, whose principal officers enjoy removal protection, are also headed by a single director, including the Social Security Administration, the Office of Special Counsel, and the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Further, given the D.C. Circuit’s exclusive jurisdiction to hear challenges to a variety of federal agency actions, the court’s reading of Free Enterprise will be an important guidepost concerning future challenges to agency structural features.
Hillary Campaign Desperate Weekend Memo
Campaign Chairman: Clinton Knows Email Setup Was A “Mistake”
Buzzfeed: John Podesta sent hundreds of top Clinton supporters a memo over the weekend following the critical IG report on the former secretary of state’s email setup.
In a memo to top supporters, Hillary Clinton’s top official sought to clarify the campaign’s response to a new report from the State Department inspector general and move past a controversy that has dogged the candidate now for 15 months.
The 600-word letter from John Podesta, Clinton’s chairman and longtime adviser, addresses the IG report’s various findings, but comes back to a single point again and again: that Clinton knows the use of a personal email server was a “mistake.”
“And she has taken responsibility for that mistake,” Podesta wrote to several hundred of the campaign’s most active supporters and financial backers.
The memo, obtained by BuzzFeed News, went out by email over Memorial Day weekend, five days after the release of the highly critical IG report. The investigation, separate from an ongoing FBI inquiry, concluded that Clinton failed during her tenure as secretary of state to comply with record-keeping policies.
In the days after the IG’s findings became public, Clinton made appearances on four television networks to push back on the report as nothing new. “There may be reports that come out, but nothing has changed,” she said. “It’s the same story.”
(The IG report included some new details of how Clinton’s email arrangement was set up, including correspondence from within the State Department.)
The Podesta memo takes a more contrite posture, reminding backers three separate times that Clinton has called the email setup a mistake and continues to do so in the wake of the IG report. “The secretary has once again acknowledged this was a mistake,” Podesta writes. “If she could go back, she’d do it differently.”
Podesta also takes up one of the report’s key findings: that Clinton’s email practices did differ significantly from past secretaries of state, contrary to the candidate’s frequent argument that, broadly, her email use was not “unprecedented.”
Clinton used a non-government account to conduct State Department business, as did former secretary of state Colin Powell. But no other former secretary of state has maintained government correspondence on a private home-based server.
Although Clinton argued again in a Univision interview on Wednesday that her use of a personal account was “not at all unprecedented,” the memo from Podesta alludes to the distinct aspects of her arrangement. At the time, he writes, “she believed she was following the practices of other secretaries and senior officials.”
The IG report concluded that Clinton had an “obligation” to discuss such an arrangement with State Department officials, including for security reasons, but found “no evidence” that she “requested or obtained guidance or approval to conduct official business via a personal email account on her private server.”
The report came as an unwelcome development for Clinton’s campaign, just days before officials expect to clinch the Democratic nomination when polls close on June 7. The email scandal, dragging into its second year, has not helped Clinton fight the perception that she is untrustworthy or too often mired in controversy.
“We understand the questions about Secretary Clinton’s email practices,” Podesta writes in his memo. But, he adds, “voters will look at the full picture of everything she has done throughout her career. We have faith in the American people.”
Read the full memo below:
To: Interested Parties
From: John Podesta, Campaign Chair
Date: May 28, 2016
As Hillary Clinton nears the point where she will officially clinch the Democratic nomination for President, we intend to spend the coming months focused on the issues of greatest concern to the everyday lives of working families.However, we know that our opponents will continue to try to distract us with attacks, including on issues like Secretary Clinton’s use of personal email while at the State Department.
Since last year, Secretary Clinton has said her use of a personal email server was a mistake. And while there have been ongoing reviews of this matter, the completion of the Inspector General’s examination gets us one step closer to resolving this.
While the rules surrounding use of a personal email account were clarified after Secretary Clinton left office – and the Inspector General recommends the State Department take measures to even further clarify them – the Secretary has once again acknowledged this was a mistake. And she has taken responsibility for that mistake – including in many interviews she’s done since the report’s release.
What she thought would be a convenient way to communicate with family, friends and colleagues – by using one email account for both her work related and personal emails – has turned out to be anything but convenient. If she could go back, she’d do it differently.
Parts of the report underscore what Secretary Clinton has said all along about her email practices as Secretary of State. For instance, the report confirms Secretary Clinton’s email account was well-known by many State Department officials throughout her tenure, and there is no evidence of a breach of her email server.
Had Secretary Clinton known of any concerns about her email setup at the time, she would have taken steps to address them. She believed she was following the practices of other Secretaries and senior officials.
What has also been missed in a lot of the discussion is that the report brings to light the longstanding and systemic problems in the government’s electronic recordkeeping systems.
Secretary Clinton believed her emails to and from officials on their state.gov accounts were automatically captured and preserved in the State Department’s electronic system.
It was not until the Department contacted her in 2014 that she learned this was not the case. And since then, she has taken unprecedented steps to ensure public access to her emails — providing the Department with all of her work-related emails, totaling 55,000 pages, and calling for their release.
Secretary Clinton also agrees with the Inspector General’s recommendations that electronic recordkeeping practices and policies need to be upgraded. Printing out 55,000 pages of emails is not a good use of time or resources, nor should it be the standard for preserving records given technology available to us today.
There is a lot at stake in this election. This week Donald Trump officially clinched enough delegates to become the Republican nominee. That means an unqualified loose cannon is within reach of the most powerful job in the world.
While we understand the questions about Secretary Clinton’s email practices, we are confident that voters will look at the full picture of everything she has done throughout her career. We have faith in the American people. They know we have to be focused on solutions that will make a real difference in people’s lives.
Hillary Clinton will continue to dedicate her campaign to getting results on behalf of America’s working families. She rejects the strategy of pitting Americans against each other in favor of an approach that recognizes how much stronger we are when we come together. With your help, we will take that message across the country and earn a great victory this November.
Refugees with Active TB Arrived
Eleven Refugees With Active TB Arrived in Florida After 2013
Eleven refugees with active tuberculosis (TB) were among more than 111,000 refugees who arrived in Florida during the three years between 2013 and 2015, according to a report the Florida Department of Health recently sent to Breitbart News.
Their active TB status was determined in medical screenings completed within 90 days of their arrival in the Sunshine State.
This news comes barely a week after Breitbart News reported that four refugees with active TB were sent to Indiana in 2015.
The Florida Department of Health provided a breakdown, by year of arrival, of the eleven refugees who arrived in Florida with active TB:
Number of refugees who completed domestic medical screening who were diagnosed with active TB at the time of that screening.
Year Number Diagnosed with Active TB
2013 5
2014 5
2015 1Total 11
Breitbart: The vast majority of these refugees who arrived in Florida between 2013 and 2015–104,000 of the 111,000– came from Cuba under the “wet-foot, dry-foot policy,” the 1995 “amendment to the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act. . . [that] gives migrants from Cuba special treatment that no other group of refugees or immigrants receives… [and] puts Cubans who reach U.S. soil on a fast track to permanent residency,” as Dan Moffett reports.
Only a small percentage of these 104,000 Cuban refugees–an estimated total of 3,000–entered as “traditional arrival” refugees, the program through which approximately 70,000 refugees per year enter the United States from over 100 different countries.
The remaining 111,000 Cuban refugees were classified as part of the additional 70,000 migrants who enter the United States annually and are designated as “other served populations” eligible to participate in refugee programs administered by the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Many in this group are classified by the federal government as “non-traditional arrivals,” a designation that includes “irregular maritime arrivals. . . and border crossers.”
In 2015, for instance, of the 140,093 total migrants who were eligible to be served by the refugee programs administered by the Office of Refugee Resettlement 69,933 were refugees, while 70,160 were “other served populations.”
Another small percentage of the 111,000 refugees who entered Florida between 2013 and 2015–a total of 7,000–entered through the “traditional arrival” refugee resettlement program administered by the Office of Refugee Resettlement from countries other than Cuba.
While all 10,000 refugees (3,000 from Cuba, 7,000 from other countries) who arrived in Florida between 2013 and 2015 through the “traditional arrival” refugee resettlement program were medically screened overseas prior to being approved to come to the U.S., the 101,000 Cubans who came to Florida under the category “others served by the refugee resettlement program” over the same period were not medically screened prior to their arrival in the U.S.
Most startling of all the information included in the Florida Department of Health data is that only two of the eleven refugees (18 percent) who arrived in Florida with active TB were included in the B1, B2, B3 refugee tuberculosis medical risk notifications sent to the Florida Department of Health by the CDC through the National Electronic Disease Notification System.
Total number of refugees who arrived with a B1, B2, or B3 tuberculosis notification who were diagnosed with active TB at the time of that screening, expressed as an absolute number and also as a percentage of notification of refugees screened.
Year Number Diagnosed with Active TB Percentage of Refugee Notifications
2013 1 3.7%
2014 1 2.4%
2015* 0 0%
* Preliminary dataThe other nine refugees who arrived in Florida with active TB (82 percent) were most likely Cuban migrants in the category “others served by the refugee resettlement program” who were not medically screened overseas prior to their arrival in the U.S. It possible, however, that some of the non-Cubans who were given a clean bill of health by the CDC’s overseas medical screening program were in this latter group.
When the CDC provides the Florida Department of Health with advance notifications for each “traditional arrival” refugee bound for Florida when they arrive at a U.S. port of entry, it also provides B1, B2, and B3 tuberculosis medical risk notifications for those “traditional arrival ” refugees carrying those classifications. The Florida Department of Health provided Breitbart News with the number of refugees who arrived with B1,B2, and B3 medical risk notifications between 2013 and 2015:
Number of B1, B2, and B3 tuberculosis notifications sent to the Florida Department of Health by the CDC.
Arrival Number of Refugees
2013 61
2014 80
2015 92Source: Electronic Disease Notification system (EDN)
Refugees who entered Florida with these medical risk notifications were from among the 10,000 “traditional arrival” refugees between 2013 and 2015, 3,000 from Cuba, and 7,000 from other countries. None of the 111,000 Cubans who entered Florida between 2013 and 2015 from the “others served by the refugee resettlement program” category were subject to these medical notifications, since none had been medically screened overseas.
Though the CDC has gone to great lengths to assure Americans that refugees do not present a tuberculosis health risk to them, the actual data from Florida and Indiana belie that claim.
As Breitbart News reported previously:
Refugees who are diagnosed in overseas medical screenings as having “active infectious tuberculosis” are classified as Class A medical risks, and are not allowed to migrate to the United States without a special waiver.
Refugees who are diagnosed as having something the CDC calls, in a classic bureaucratic oxymoron, “active tuberculosis – non-infectious,” are classified as Class B1 medical risks and are allowed to migrate to the United States.
According to the most recent 2007 standards provided by the CDC to the approximately 700 medical doctors who have been authorized by U.S. embassies or consulates overseas to be part of the U.S. Control Panels that perform overseas medical screenings of U.S. bound refugees, any refugee who (1) has a chest radiograph that suggests the presence of TB and has either (1) sputum smears that test positive or (2) sputum cultures that test positive, is categorized as a Class A medical risk.
Class B2 tuberculosis medical risks are refugees who complete the overseas medical screening and require “[l]atent tuberculosis infection evaluation .”
Class B3 tuberculsosis medical risks are refugees who complete the overseas medical screening and require “contact evaluation.”
The Florida Health Refugee Health Program Report for 2010 to 2012 explains why refugees from Cuba and Haiti are treated differently than those from other countries:
Most refugee arrivals in Florida enter through the Miami port of entry and resettle in Miami-Dade County. However, Florida is experiencing an increase in refugees arriving through the Chicago and New York City ports of entry.
The RHP (Florida Refugee Health Program) is notified in advance of traditional port of entry (i.e.,international airports and seaports) refugee arrivals by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) Electronic Disease Notification (EDN) System.
The RHP does not receive prior arrival notifications for non-traditional refugee arrivals such as primary asylees, irregular maritime arrivals, and border crossers who are eligible for refugee services.
Irregular maritime arrivals and border crosser populations refer to Cuban/Haitian entrants who may have arrived via water or land (U.S./Mexico or U.S./Canada border) and have received an immigration status that deems them eligible for refugee benefits.
The vast majority of Texas arrivals consisted of border-crossers.
Arrivals through non-traditional ports of entry increased dramatically between 2010 and 2012.
There were 338 (1.4%) non-traditional arrivals in 2010, 2,298 (8.8%) in 2011, and 8,229 (26.9%) in 2012. Non-traditional arrivals include both border-crossers and irregular maritime arrivals.
Border-crossers are Cuban/Haitian entrants who may have arrived via water or land (U.S./Mexico or U.S./Canada) and have received an immigration status that deems them eligible for refugee benefits, such as public interest parole…
Closely related to the trends in ports of entry for refugee arrivals are the trends in the immigration status of refugee arrivals. Although the term refugee is used throughout this report to encompass all eligible populations, there are 11 different immigration statuses represented in Florida’s arrivals.
Since 2010, parolees ( …individuals granted entry into the U.S. for humanitarian reasons or for emergent or compelling reasons of significant public benefit) have been the largest immigration status represented in the eligible arrival population in Florida, followed by refugees and asylees.
Many Cuban refugees (the majority of whom are technically “parolees”) enter the United States by land, with Texas being the leading port of entry. These individuals, along with Cuban refugees who are classified as “non-traditional maritime” arrivals are not medically screened prior to their arrival here.
As Pew Research reported:
Thousands of Cubans have migrated to the U.S. by land. Many fly to Ecuador because of the country’s liberal immigration policies, then travel north through Central America and Mexico. The majority of Cubans who entered the country arrived through the U.S. Border Patrol’s Laredo Sector in Texas, which borders Mexico. In fiscal 2015, two-thirds (28,371) of all Cubans came through this sector, an 82% increase from the previous fiscal year.
However, a larger percentage increase occurred in the Miami sector, which operates in several states, but primarily in Florida. The number of Cubans who entered in the Miami sector during fiscal 2015 more than doubled from the previous year, from 4,709 .
Over 80 percent of the more than 56,000 Cuban refugees and migrants who arrived in the United States in FY 2015 were resettled in Florida. Ten percent were resettled in Texas, while the remainder were resettled in other states.
In Florida, Cuban refugees and migrants account for well over 90 percent of all resettled refugees, as this breakdown of refugees arriving in the Sunshine State between 2013 and 2015, as provided to Breitbart News by the Florida Department of Health, shows:
FY 2013-2015 Arrivals, By Country of Origin
Country 2013 2014 2015 Total
Cuba 29,506 31,443 43,681 104,630
Burma 383 408 467 1,258
Iraq 481 577 302 1,360
Haiti 486 538 189 1,213Total 31,906 33,978 45,907 111 ,791
NOTE: some of this data is still preliminary in nature.
Residents of the Sunshine State can take some comfort, however, in the fact that Florida has consistently had a very high rate–well over 90 percent–of arriving refugees who successfully complete their medical screenings within 90 days:
Total Arrivals, FY 2013 to FY 2015
Year Number of Arrivals Number Screened Percentage Screened
FY 13 31,906 29,838 93.52%
FY 14 33,978 33,217 97.76%
FY 15 45,907 44,672 97.31%This is just part of the TB refugee health data provided by the Florida Department of Health to Breitbart News, important information that is not made available to the public in many other states, particularly those like Tennessee where refugee resettlement operations are controlled by VOLAGs (voluntary agencies) selected by the Office of Refugee Resettlement under the statutorily questionable Wilson Fish alternative program.
The special treatment of Cuban refugees, however, may be coming to an end, a result of concerns over financial scandals reported in the resettlement program in Florida, as well as the re-establishment of formal relations with Cuba by the Obama administration in 2015.
Critics question why Cubans should not enter through the traditional refugee resettlement program like the 70,000 refugees resettled by ORR each year. Should that take place, Cuban refugees would then be subject to overseas medical screenings.
Since two of the eleven refugees who arrived in Florida with active TB between 2013 and 2015 went through that screening and were classified B1, B2, B3 tuberculosis medical risks cleared for entry into the U.S., it is not clear if adding overseas medical screenings to Cuban refugees will offer significant improvements to the public health risks Americans face from refugees who are now readily cleared by an obviously imperfect medical screening system.
But, since nine of the eleven refugees who arrived with active TB between 2013 and 2015 were likely not subjected to overseas medical screening, adding overseas medical screenings as a requirement for entry for all Cuban refugees would not make the current flawed system worse.
The only sure-bet policy that could make the current system better, however, at least in terms of guaranteeing that no refugees arriving in the U.S. will increase the risk of Americans being infected with active or latent TB, would be to completely shut down the program and allow no refugees to enter.
What Obama Did Not Mention in Hiroshima
Obama started off his speech by saying death fell from the sky. Sigh…. What is more interesting is part of his speech in both audio and text that has been published has been edited already. The sentence that has been removed by most sites is this:
“Let all the souls here rest in peace, for we shall not repeat the evil,” the president said. “We come to ponder the terrible force unleashed in the not so distant past. We come to mourn the dead.”
Evil?
Well there are some facts that the Obama White House protocol office and speechwriters clearly don’t know about that day Japan surrendered, where General McArthur crafted a well organized day demonstrating the full might of the United States and her military in the face of the Japanese aboard our battleship.
Every one of the Missouri’s crew received a card like this for taking part in the surrender in Tokyo Bay almost 59 years ago.
Tokyo Bay at the signing of the surrender by Japan:
Japan’s formal capitulation to the Allies climaxed a week of historic events as the initial steps of the occupation program went into effect. The surrender ceremony took place aboard the Third Fleet flagship, U. S. S. Missouri, on the misty morning of Sunday, 2 September 1945. As the Missouri lay majestically at anchor in the calm waters of Tokyo Bay, convoys of large and small vessels formed a tight cordon around the surrender ship, while army and navy planes maintained a protective vigil overhead. This was the objective toward which the Allies had long been striving-the unconditional surrender of the previously undefeated military forces of Japan and the final end to conflict in World War II.
The decks of the Missouri that morning were crowded with the representatives of the various United Nations that had participated in the Pacific War. Outstanding among the Americans flanking General MacArthur were Admirals Nimitz and Halsey, and General Wainwright who had recently been released from a Manchurian internment camp, flown to Manila, and then brought aboard to witness the occasion. Present also were the veteran staff members who had fought with General MacArthur since the early dark days of Melbourne and Port Moresby.
Shortly before 0900 Tokyo time, a launch from the mainland pulled alongside the great United States warship and the emissaries of defeated Japan climbed silently and glumly aboard. The Japanese delegation included two representatives empowered to sign the Instrument of Surrender, Mamoru Shigemitsu, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Gen. Yoshijiro Umezu of the Imperial General Staff, in addition to three representatives from the Foreign Office, three representatives from the Army, and three representatives from the Navy.68
As Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, General MacArthur presided over the epoch-making ceremony, and with the following words he inaugurated the proceedings which would ring down the curtain of war in the Pacific:
We are gathered here, representatives of the major warring powers, to conclude a solemn agreement whereby peace may be restored. The issues, involving divergent ideals and ideologies, have been determined on the battlefields of the world and hence are not for our discussion or debate. Nor is it for us here to meet, representing as we do a majority of the people of the earth, in a spirit of distrust, malice or hatred. But rather it is for us, both victors and vanquished, to rise to that higher dignity which alone befits the sacred purposes we are about to serve, committing all our peoples unreservedly to faithful compliance with the understandings they are here formally to assume.
It is my earnest hope, and indeed the hope of all mankind, that from this solemn occasion a better world shall emerge out of the blood and carnage of the past-a world dedicated to the dignity of man and the fulfillment of his most cherished wish for freedom, tolerance and justice.
The terms and conditions upon which surrender of the Japanese Imperial Forces is here to be given and accepted are contained in the instrument of surrender now before you ….69
The Supreme Commander then invited the two Japanese plenipotentiaries to sign the duplicate surrender documents: Foreign Minister Shigemitsu, on behalf of the Emperor and the Japanese Government, and General Umezu, for the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters. He then called forward two famous former prisoners of the Japanese to stand behind him while he himself affixed his signature to the formal acceptance of the surrender: Gen. Jonathan M. Wainwright, hero of Bataan and Corregidor and Lt. Gen. Sir Arthur E. Percival, who had been forced to yield the British stronghold at Singapore.
General MacArthur was followed in turn by Admiral Nimitz, who signed on behalf of the United States, and by the representatives of the other United Nations present: Gen. Hsu Yung-Chang for China, Adm. Sir Bruce Fraser for the United Kingdom, Lt. Gen. Kuzma N. Derevyanko for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Gen. Sir Thomas A. Blarney for Australia, Col. L. Moore-Cosgrave for Canada, Gen. Jacques P. LeClerc for France, Adm. Conrad E. L. Helfrich for the Netherlands, and Air Vice-Marshall Leonard M. Isitt for New Zealand.
The Instrument of Surrender was completely signed within twenty minutes. (Plate No. 132) The first signature of the Japanese delegation was affixed at 0904; General MacArthur wrote his name at 0910; and the last of the Allied representatives signed at 0920. The Japanese envoys then received their copy of the surrender document, bowed stiffly and departed for Tokyo. Simultaneously, hundreds of army and navy planes roared low over the Missouri in one last display of massed air might.
In signing the Instrument of Surrender, the Japanese bound themselves to accept the provisions of the Potsdam Declaration, to surrender unconditionally their armed forces wherever located, to liberate all internees and prisoners of war, and to carry out all orders issued by the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers to effectuate the terms of surrender.
On that same eventful day, the Supreme Commander broadcast a report to the people of the United States. Having been associated with Pacific events since the Russo-Japanese war, General MacArthur was able to speak with the authority of long experience to forecast a future for Japan:
We stand in Tokyo today reminiscent of our countryman, Commodore Perry, ninety-two years ago. His purpose was to bring to Japan an era of enlightenment and progress by lifting the veil of isolation to the friendship, trade and commerce of the world. But, alas, the knowledge thereby gained of Western science was forged into an instrument of oppression and human enslavement. Freedom of expression, freedom of action, even freedom of thought were denied through supervision of liberal education, through appeal to superstition and through the application of force. We are committed by the Potsdam Declaration of Principles to see that the Japanese people are liberated from this condition of slavery. It is my purpose to implement this commitment just as rapidly as the armed forces are demobilized and other essential steps taken to neutralize the war potential. The energy of the Japanese race, if properly directed, will enable expansion vertically rather than horizontally. If the talents of the race are turned into constructive channels, the country can lift itself from its present deplorable state into a position of dignity….70
Immediately following the signing of the surrender articles, the Imperial Proclamation of capitulation was issued. The Proclamation, the draft of which had been given to General Kawabe at Manila, read as follows:
Accepting the terms set forth in the Declaration issued by the heads of the Governments of the United States, Great Britain and China On July 26th 1945 at Potsdam and subsequently adhered to by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, We have commanded the Japanese Imperial Government and the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters to sign on Our behalf the instrument of surrender presented by the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers and to issue General Orders to the Military and Naval forces in accordance with the direction of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers.
We command all Our people forthwith to cease hostilities, to lay down their arms and faithfully to carry out all the provisions of the Instrument of Surrender and the General Orders issued by the Japanese Imperial Government and the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters hereunder.71
1. Although the formal surrender of Japan did not occur until September 2, 1945 aboard the U.S.S. Missouri, the occupation of that nation began five days earlier when a team of 150 American personnel arrived at Atsugi airfield on August 28. They were originally supposed to arrive on August 25 but a Japanese delegation in Manila informed the Americans that several more day were needed to ensure that military resistors to the surrender could be disarmed. They were correct since a few days before the Americans arrived, Japanese pilots took off from Atsugi airfield and dropped leaflets on Tokyo and other cities urging resistance by the civilians. Fortunately those pilots were gone, along with any resistance, by the time the Americans arrived at Atsugi.
2. The surrender ceremony aboard the U.S.S. Missouri on September 2 was carefully planned…except for one small but very important detail. The fancy British mahony table brought aboard the Missouri for the surrender was too small for the two large documents that had to be signed. In desperation, an ordinary table from the crew’s mess was drafted as a replacement. It was covered by a green coffee-stained tablecloth from a wardroom. After the 2 surrender documents were signed on the table, it was returned to the mess and was being set for lunch until the ship’s captain and others realized it was an historical object and removed for posterity.
3. There were 280 allied warships in Tokyo Bay when the surrender took place but no aircraft carriers. They were out at sea as a reserve force just in case the Japanese changed their minds.
4. There was a thick cover of low dark clouds over Tokyo Bay during the 20 minute surrender ceremony. Unfortunately, 2000 planes were scheduled to fly over the bay the moment the ceremony finished. However, at the last moment the clouds suddenly parted, as if in a Hollywood movie production, and the sun burst through allowing all aboard the U.S.S. Missouri to view the mightiest display of air power ever seen.
5. When Emperor Hirohito announced over the radio the acceptance of the allied terms of surrender on August 15 (Tokyo time), very few Japanese listening to him understood what he was saying because he was using formal formal court language not used by the general populace. It wasn’t until the radio announcers followed up by describing what he said that the public understood what he meant.
6. After Emperor Hirohito made his surrender announcement, the Japanese public ran through a gamut of emotions…anger, despair, sadness, and relief. However, one Japanese person had a very different thought on his mind…how to make money off the surrender. He was Ogawa Kikumatsu, a book editor. Ogawa was on a business trip when the surrender was announced on the radio. He immediately returned to Tokyo by train and while traveling he began thinking of how to take advantage of the impending occupation.. By the time he reached Tokyo, he had his idea…to publish a guide booklet of Japanese phrases translated into English with the aid of phonetics. It took less than three days for Ogawa and his team to prepare the 32 page booklet and it was published exactly a month after the surrender. Its first run of 300,000 copies sold out immediately and by the end of 1945, 3.5 million copies had been sold.