More to the Paula Broadwell Classified Material

Posted on June 9, 2016June 9, 2016 by Denise Simon

FBI found hundreds of classified files on Petraeus biographer Broadwell’s computer

CharlotteObserver: FBI agents found hundreds of classified documents on Paula Broadwell’s home computers in Charlotte during their investigation into her relationship with then-CIA Director David Petraeus, according to newly unsealed FBI documents obtained by the Observer.

More than 300 of those documents were classified as secret, according to a 2013 FBI affidavit accompanying the agency’s request to search Petraeus’ home in Arlington, Va.

A newly unsealed FBI search warrant reveals that agents found hundreds of classified documents on Paula Broadwell’s computers when they searched her Charlotte home in 2012, part of the agency’s investigation into her relationship with then CIA Director David Petraeus. File photo, July 13, 2011 AP

The documents, which were unsealed Tuesday by the U.S. District Court in Eastern Virginia, offer new details of the sweeping federal investigation into the relationship between Broadwell, a Charlotte author, and Petraeus, a highly decorated military commander, the subject of Broadwell’s book as well as her former lover.

The probe uncovered their affair, revealed their mishandling of classified documents and lead to Petraeus’ resignation as head of the CIA. Last year, Petraeus pleaded guilty in Charlotte to a misdemeanor charge of mishandling government documents and was fined $100,000.

Broadwell, the author of Petraeus’ biography, was never charged. Legal experts say her role as a journalist made any prosecution problematic.

Broadwell did not respond Wednesday to a phone message and email seeking comment. Neither did her Washington-based attorney Robert Muse. Jacob Sussman, the Charlotte member of Petraeus’ defense team during his plea hearing, had no comment.

The documents, partially redacted, have been sealed for more than three years. At the time of the search warrant request, the FBI asked that the affidavit remain sealed to protect an ongoing investigation. It was released in response to a public-information request by the media.

The affidavit is signed by a Charlotte-based FBI agent. Its allegations include:

▪ The documents show that when confronted by the FBI, both Broadwell and Petraeus appeared to mislead investigators about their extensive exchange of classified material, most of it involving military and diplomatic operations during Petraeus’ years as commander of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Petraeus admitted his affair with Broadwell during an October 2012 interview with the FBI in his CIA office. But he said he never gave classified information to her. That answer led some prosecutors to recommend that Petraeus be hit with a felony charge of obstructing a federal investigation. As part of his plea deal with Charlotte-based prosecutors, Petraeus admitted he lied to the FBI.

Interviewed in Charlotte, Broadwell claimed to have gotten some of the documents doing research for her book but “was unable to provide specifics as to how she obtained them … Broadwell advised that she never received classified information from Petraeus,” the affidavit says.

On the contrary, the new documents include details of multiple emails between the two over classified records, including the “black book” diaries and logs Petraeus kept as commander.

In one exchange included in the affidavit, Broadwell told Petraeus that certain records he’d shared were “naturally very helpful … (I want more of them! I know you’re holding back.)”

In June 2011, the affidavit says she expressed excitement at Petraeus’ willingness to share certain files. “(I)’ll protect them. And I’ll protect you,” she wrote.

During the same conversation, Petraeus referred to some files from his time as Iraqi War commander. “Class’d, but I guess I might share!” he told Broadwell.

From 2003 to 2012, Broadwell had security clearance to handle classified information, the affidavit says. But that came with the understanding that she not unlawfully remove the information “from authorized storage facilities” and not store the classified information “in unauthorized locations.”

The FBI found that Petraeus shared eight of his black books with Broadwell in 2011. Those contained secret codes, highly sensitive diplomatic information and wartime strategies, among other highly classified information. At the time, she was writing “All In,” Petraeus’ biography.

None of the classified information appeared in the book, documents say. But the affidavit says the FBI seized numerous photographs of the contents of the black books during a search of Broadwell’s home.

▪ The FBI gathered recordings Petraeus made as military commander in the Middle East in which he discussed information classified as “Top Secret” with reporters.

In an audio file taken from Broadwell’s home in November 2012, Petraeus can be heard discussing “sensitive military campaigns and operations” with reporters from the Washington Post. His only demand was to be referred to in the subsequent stories “as a senior military officer,” the affidavit says.

▪ Petraeus tried to stop the FBI investigation as soon as he heard about it. According to the affidavit, the FBI began its probe in Tampa, Fla., after a person identified as “Witness 1,” who is clearly Tampa socialite and Petraeus confidante Jill Kelley, complained of receiving threatening emails from someone who had access to the CIA director’s schedule – a potential breach of security.

According to Kelley’s recent book, an email went to her husband, Scott, on June 1, 2012, and referred to a Washington, D.C., dinner when Kelley and Petraeus, after a night of drinking, had compared each other’s muscles.

“As her husband, you might want to examine your wife’s behavior and see if you can rein her in before we publicly share the pictures of her with her hands sliding between the legs of a senior service official,” the email said.

The FBI later traced those messages to Broadwell.

On June 22, 2012, the FBI notified Petraeus’ security detail of its investigation. A month later, Kelley notified the FBI that she no longer wanted to press charges against the cyber stalker. That August, Kelley told the FBI that Petraeus “personally requested” that Kelley “call off the G-men,” and that the stalker “possessed information which could embarrass Petraeus and other public officials,” the affidavit says.

▪ Broadwell, who is married, and Petraeus, also married, took steps to hide their correspondences. The affidavit says the two used prepaid cellphones and email accounts “using non-attributable names.”

In September 2012, Broadwell told agents that she and Petraeus would use the same email account, saving messages in the “draft” folder instead of sending them.

[READ MORE: The aftermath of a scandal]

In the years since, Broadwell has apologized for the affair and says she has attempted to rebuild her marriage and has focused on charitable issues such as returning veterans and “Wounded Warriors.” She has also started a foundation to examine gender bias in the media.

‘I’m the first to admit I screwed up,” Broadwell recently told the New York Times. “… But how long does a person pay for their mistake?

At Least 12 Former Gitmo Detainees Killed Americans Since

Posted on June 8, 2016June 8, 2016 by Denise Simon

They were not even the worst of the worst. Has anyone tracked those 5 Taliban released for Bergdahl?

“Despite the current restrictions of the [Memorandum Of Understanding], it is clear… that the five former detainees have participated in activities that threaten U.S. and coalition personnel and are counter to U.S. national security interests–not unlike their activities before they were detained on the battlefield.,” the Intelligence Committee statement said.

Last year, the non-partisan Government Accountability Office also found that the Obama administration violated the law on the Bergdahl swap.

Related reading: House Report Taliban 5 Report

About 12 released Guantanamo detainees implicated in attacks on Americans

WaPo: The Obama administration believes that about 12 detainees released from the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have launched attacks against U.S. or allied forces in Afghanistan, killing about a half-dozen Americans, according to current and former U.S. officials.

In March, a senior Pentagon official made a startling admission to lawmakers when he acknowledged that former Guantanamo inmates were responsible for the deaths of Americans overseas.

The official, Paul Lewis, who oversees Guantanamo issues at the Defense Department, provided no details, and the Obama administration has since declined to elaborate publicly on his statement because the intelligence behind it is classified.

But The Washington Post has learned additional details about the suspected attacks, including the approximate number of detainees and victims involved and the fact that, while most of the incidents were directed at military personnel, the dead also included one American civilian: a female aid worker who died in Afghanistan in 2008. The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter, declined to give an exact number for Americans killed or wounded in the attacks, saying the figure is classified.

[Pentagon official: Release of Guantanamo detainees has led to American deaths]

Lewis’s statement had drawn scrutiny on Capitol Hill, where some lawmakers see the violence against Americans as further evidence that the president’s plans for closing the prison are misguided and dangerous. They also describe the administration’s unwillingness to release information about the attacks as another instance of its use of high levels of classification to avoid discussion of a politically charged issue that could heighten political opposition to its plans.

One U.S. official familiar with the intelligence said that nine of the detainees suspected in the attacks are now dead or in foreign government custody. The official would not specify the exact number of detainees involved but said it was fewer than 15. All of them were released from Guantanamo Bay under the administration of George W. Bush.

The official added: “Because many of these incidents were large-scale firefights in a war zone, we cannot always distinguish whether Americans were killed by the former detainees or by others in the same fight.”

Military and intelligence officials, responding to lawmakers’ requests for more details, have provided lawmakers with a series of classified documents about the suspected attacks. One recent memo from the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), which was sent to the House Foreign Affairs Committee after Lewis’s testimony, described the attacks, named the detainees involved and provided information about the victims without giving their names.

But lawmakers are prohibited from discussing the contents of that memo because of its high classification level. A similar document provided last month to the office of Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.), a vocal opponent of Obama’s Guantanamo policy, was so highly classified that even her staff members with a top-secret clearance level were unable to read it.

“There appears to be a consistent and concerted effort by the Administration to prevent Americans from knowing the truth regarding the terrorist activities and affiliations of past and present Guantanamo detainees,” Ayotte wrote in a letter to Obama this week, urging him to declassify information about how many U.S. and NATO personnel have been killed by former detainees.

Rep. Edward R. Royce (R-Calif.), who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has also written legislation that would require greater transparency surrounding the transfer of Guantanamo detainees.

Royce and Ayotte are among the lawmakers who opposed a road map for closing the prison that the White House submitted to Congress earlier this year. That plan would require moving some detainees to U.S. prisons and resettling the rest overseas.

“The administration is releasing dangerous terrorists to countries that can’t control them, and misleading Congress in the process,” Royce said in a statement. “The president should halt detainee transfers immediately and be honest with the American people.”

Just under 700 detainees have been released from Guantanamo since the prison opened in 2002; 80 inmates remain.

Secrecy about the top-security prison, perched on an inaccessible corner of Cuba, is nothing new. The Bush administration for years refused to provide a roster of detainees until it was forced to do so in a Freedom of Information Act case in 2006. To this day, reporters have never been able to visit Camp 7, a classified facility that holds 14 high-value detainees, including the five men on trial for organizing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Both the Bush and Obama administrations have provided only limited information on current and former detainees; most of what the public knows about them comes from defense lawyers or from documents released by WikiLeaks.

According to a 2012 report from the House Armed Services Committee, the Defense Intelligence Agency ended the practice of naming some suspected recidivists in 2009 when officials became concerned that it would endanger sources and methods.

National Security Council spokesman Myles Caggins said it was difficult to discuss specific cases in detail because the information was classified.

“But, again, we are committed to being forthcoming with the American people about our safe and responsible approach to Guantanamo detainee transfers, including about possible detainee re-engagement in terrorist activities,” he said.

One Republican aide who has reviewed the classified material about the attacks on Americans said the information has been “grossly overclassified.”

Administration officials say that recidivism rates for released Guantanamo inmates remain far lower than those for federal offenders. According to a recent study, almost half of all federal offenders released in 2005 were “rearrested for a new crime or rearrested for a violation of supervision conditions.” Among former Guantanamo detainees, the total number of released detainees who are suspected or confirmed of reengaging is about 30 percent, according to U.S. intelligence.

Nearly 21 percent of those released prior to 2009 have reengaged in militancy, officials say, compared with about 4.5 percent of the 158 released by Obama.

Human rights activists say the statistics are suspect and cannot be verified because the administration provides almost no information about whom it is counting and why.

Most of those suspected of re-engagement are Afghan, reflecting the large numbers of Afghans detained after the Sept. 11 attacks and the ongoing war there. More than 200 Afghan prisoners have been repatriated from the prison.

Officials declined to identify the woman killed in Afghanistan in 2008. But there are two female aid workers killed that year who might fit the description.

Cydney Mizell, a 50-year-old employee of the Asian Rural Life Development Foundation, was abducted in Kandahar as she drove to work. Her body was never recovered, according to a former colleague who said he was told about a month later that she had died.

Another woman, Nicole Dial, 30, a Trinidadian American who worked for the International Rescue Committee, was shot and killed the same year south of Kabul, along with two colleagues.

Relatives of Mizell and Dial said they have not been in touch with the FBI for years. Dial’s brother said he was unaware of a former Guantanamo detainee being involved in his sister’s killing.

Mizell’s stepmother said she was never told the exact circumstances of her daughter’s death or who abducted her.

“She was definitely killed,” Peggy Mizell said. “I figured she was shot.”

Afghanistan: Schools are Bunkers

Posted on May 31, 2016May 31, 2016 by Denise Simon

This was Afghanistan in 1960’s.

How Afghan Classrooms Became Bunkers

HRW: Since the 2001 U.S.-led military intervention in Afghanistan, Western countries have invested heavily in education there. But as security across the country deteriorates, schools in many places are under threat, not only from resurgent Taliban forces but also from the very Afghan security forces that are mandated to protect them.

Increasingly, the country’s national forces are using schools—many of them constructed by foreign donors and often the only concrete-reinforced, multi-story buildings in smaller villages—as their military bases during offensives into Taliban-held areas. Even if the buildings remain unscathed, the military occupation interrupts children’s education. But all too often, the schools become battlegrounds as the Taliban counter-attacks government positions, leaving the buildings damaged or in ruins and denying children an education until they can be rebuilt, if ever.

In 2015, the United Nations mission in Afghanistan documented 20 cases in which government security forces and armed opposition groups occupied schools for military purposes. During a brief research mission in April, Human Rights Watch identified 11 schools that were under occupation and being used for military purposes in just one small area of the Baghlan province alone, suggesting that the problem is underreported and getting worse. An investigation by the Guardian newspaper in April uncovered two British-built schools in Helmand province being used as Afghan army bases, including one in which students were still attending school on a lower floor.

The Ustad Golan Jelani Jelali Middle School, in the village of Postak Bazaar in the Baghlan province, is a case in point. Its most recent troubles are only the latest in a long litany of woes. In 2010, the Taliban laid siege to the school when it was occupied by the Afghan police, gunning down seven policemen inside a classroom. “Their blood just wouldn’t wash away,” a school official told me, “so we had to chip it away from the wall with an axe.”

In 2015, the Afghan police were back at the school, setting up base with sandbagged positions on the second level while students tried to continue their schooling below. Alarmed school officials managed to get a letter from the Kabul authorities ordering the police to leave, but the police commander ignored them, saying that he was staying put. When the students needed to take exams, school officials again presented the letter to the commander, but his police officers fired their guns in the direction of the assembled teachers and students, forcing them to flee.

Nearly a year later, the police were still occupying the school despite the repeated entreaties of the teachers and school officials. When we visited in April, the Taliban fighters were closing in, putting the children’s school right on the front lines of a brutal conflict. A school official told us:

Now the Taliban are getting closer, and we have had to close the school because of the security. All of the schools in our area are closed for the moment. The Taliban front line is now just 30 meters from the school. The students, out of fear, are not coming to school. We went to see the police chief again, but he just said that as with the prior agreement, the police stay on the second floor and we can use the school on the first floor.

The Taliban, too, have used schools in the area as military bases, refusing to abandon them even in response to pleas from village elders desperate to save their schools. The Swedish government financed construction of the Khail Jan Shahid Primary School in Omar Khail. In 2015, the school opened its doors to 350 boys and girls. Soon afterward, Taliban fighters came to occupy the school, refusing to leave when asked by village elders.

Early this year, government forces attacked the Taliban forces based at the school, raking the building with gunfire and mortar rounds. The Taliban fled, but the school compound was left in ruins less than a year after it had opened. Even in its ruined state, the school continues to serve as a military base. When Human Rights Watch was there in April, a contingent of Afghan local police paramilitaries occupied the building.

For many families in Afghanistan, education for their children remains one of the few routes out of poverty. The increasing presence in schools of government security forces and the Taliban is not only putting education out of reach but also destroying much of the educational infrastructure that Afghanistan’s donors have invested in so heavily over the last 15 years. In many villages, it is also turning Afghan security forces into despised occupiers rather than giving villagers a sense of security.

Parents of girls are particularly less likely to allow their children to attend school if it means co-habiting a school with armed men or facing a potential attack. When a school or the route to the school is perceived as becoming more dangerous or when a school closes and students are forced to travel farther to one that is still open, girls are far more likely than boys to be kept home by anxious parents.

People in the United States and Europe who take pride in the fact that their governments are supporting education in Afghanistan are likely to take a dim view of their aid money being used to essentially build bases for security forces. Governments that have taken steps to limit the use of schools for military purposes by their own armed forces will be in a better position to credibly work with the Afghan government to discourage it in Afghanistan, ensure that occupied schools are vacated, and promote security force policies and practices that better protect schools.

An international Safe Schools Declaration, which provides guidance on how to better protect schools from attacks and military use, is helping to focus attention on the issue. Since the declaration was published, 53 states, including Afghanistan and many other conflict-affected countries, have made a political commitment to this effort. About half of the European Union countries have signed on. For countries that sign on, the next step is to incorporate these protections into domestic policy and operational frameworks. For those states that haven’t yet endorsed the declaration, which is one year old today, that’s a clear first step to demonstrating their commitment to safer schools around the world.

Ultimately, signing on to the Safe Schools Declaration is the easy part. A true commitment to protecting schools from attacks and preventing their use for military purposes requires political will and action on the ground. It requires governments to be willing to issue orders to their troops not to occupy schools and to hold security forces that ignore such orders, such as those occupying schools in Afghanistan, accountable.

Every day, children in many parts of Afghanistan risk their lives to reach their schools and get the education they hope will give them better futures. The continuing use of such schools by Afghan security forces and the Taliban risks depriving yet another generation of Afghan children of an education and puts children in the direct line of fire. Even in a place as torn by conflict as Afghanistan, children have a right to a safe school that shelters them from the effects of war, and Afghanistan’s government and donors need to do more to protect that most basic of rights.

Is My Daddy an Angel?

Posted on May 30, 2016May 30, 2016 by Denise Simon

Here’s how a little girl who lost her Marine dad taught the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff the full cost of war

by Ward Carroll by – May 29, 2016 2:08:13 pm Memorial Day

General Dempsey talking to the troops in Iraq. (Photo: CBS News)

Mighty: Like most general officers commissioned right after the Vietnam War ended, Gen. Martin Dempsey’s firsthand experience of dealing with combat losses came relatively late in his career. During the summer of 2003, then-Major General Dempsey was commanding “Task Force Iron” in Iraq when the post-invasion lull ended and the insurgency began going after American troops.

“We started taking casualties,” Gen. Dempsey recounted. “And during the morning briefing, after we talked about the high-level mission items and what we called ‘significant incidents,’ we’d flash up the names of the fallen and have a moment of silence.

“The names were up there on the screen and then, whoosh, they were gone,” he said. “After about two or three weeks of the same thing, I became really uncomfortable with that. One minute it was there and real, and then the next minute it was somebody else’s problem.”

Gen. Dempsey attended a number of the memorial services held at the forward operating bases downrange for those killed in action.

“They were both heart wrenching and inspirational,” the general said about the services. “To see the love that these soldiers had for each other made me take my responsibilities that much more seriously.”

But as he greeted the battle buddies of the fallen, Gen. Dempsey wasn’t sure what to say to them that would help at those moments. “I had nothing,” he said. “I mean, I’d say, ‘hang in there’ or ‘we’re really sorry about what happened’ . . . I felt so superficial.”

Then it hit him one morning after he was just waking up in his quarters in Baghdad. “A phrase was echoing in my head,” he remembered. “Make it matter.”

He did two things immediately after that: First, he had laminated cards made for every soldier who had been killed to that point. The cards were carried by all the general officers in theater as a constant physical reminder of the human cost of the war. In time the number of casualties became so great that it was impractical to carry the cards at all times, so he had a mahogany box engraved with “Make it Matter” on the top and put all but three of the cards inside of it. He would constantly rotate the three he carried in his pocket with the ones in the box.

Second, from that point forward when he would address the soldiers in units that had experienced losses, he’d simply say, “Make it matter.”

“They knew exactly what I meant,” Gen. Dempsey said.

****

Five years after Gen. Dempsey’s introduction to the challenges a two-star leader faces during periods of significant combat losses, Marine Corps Major David Yaggy, a veteran of three combat deployments, was an instructor flying in the rear cockpit of a Navy T-34C trainer on a cross-country flight between Florida and South Carolina when the airplane went down in the hills of Alabama. Yaggy and his flight student at the controls in the front cockpit were both killed in the crash.

The day of that crash is burned into the memory of Maj. Yaggy’s widow, Erin. She first heard from a realtor friend that a helicopter had gone down, and she immediately went online and saw a report that, in fact, a T-34 had crashed in Alabama. Fearing the worst, she put her 18-month-old daughter Lizzy in a stroller and went for a walk, in denial and hoping to avoid any officials who might show up to tell her that her husband had been killed.

During the walk, she received a phone call from her cousin. “Where are you?” she asked.

“I’m at your house,” he replied. That was all he said.

Erin ran home pushing the stroller, in her words, “like a crazy person.” When she arrived she caught a glimpse of a uniform, and she broke down, hysterical. “That didn’t go so well,” she said.

She had a long period of vacillating between shock, anger, and sorrow. “I felt like other people wanted me to cry,” she said. “I was like, ‘I don’t want permission to cry, I just want him here.”

Lizzy Yaggy visiting the Arlington National Cemetery gravesite of her father. (Photo: Erin Yaggy)

The sister of the flight student killed with Erin’s husband convinced her to get involved with Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, and she wound up making the short trip from Baltimore to Washington DC to attend her first Good Grief Camp — the organization’s signature gathering — when Lizzy was four years old.

****

General Dempsey had just taken over as Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army when his aide briefed him that he was scheduled to address the TAPS Good Grief Camp attendees gathered in a hotel ballroom across the interstate from the Pentagon. Although the general had heard of TAPS and was armed with the requisite three-by-five cards filled with talking points provided by his staff, when he got there he realized he wasn’t fully ready for what he was walking into.

“I walked into this room with 600 kids all wearing big round buttons with images of their parents, and I knew I was ill-prepared,” Gen. Dempsey said. “It was emotionally overwhelming. It’s hard enough meeting a single family that’s had a loss. It’s another thing altogether meeting 600 families.”

Gen. Dempsey started his appearance with a question-and-answer session, and after a couple of innocent ones like “do you have your own airplane?” and “do you like pizza?” a little girl dramatically shifted the mood by asking, “Is my daddy an angel?”

“I was stunned,” Gen. Dempsey recalled. “How do you answer that question?”

Lizzy Yaggy greets Gen. Dempsey during TAPS Good Grief Camp. (Photo: Erin Yaggy)

The general thought for a few moments before calling an audible of sorts. Fearing that he could well break down if he tried to talk he decided to attempt something else.

“I knew I could sing through emotion instead of trying to speak,” he said.

So he answered that, of course, her father was an angel — like the fathers of everyone there — and that the entire group should sing together because singing is joyful and the fact that their fathers were angels should bring them great joy.

Then he launched into the Irish classic, “The Unicorn Song,” including a lesson in the proper hand gestures required during the chorus. Soon the entire room was singing.

After his appearance, General Dempsey asked Bonnie Carroll, the founder of TAPS, if he could meet the little girl who’d asked the question and her family, so Bonnie introduced him to the Yaggys. The general was immediately struck by Lizzy’s spark, and, as Erin put it, Lizzy was drawn to the man with lots of silver stars on his Army uniform who’d raised her spirits by singing with all of the kids.

“His timing was perfect,” Erin said. “Before [General Dempsey’s singalong], Lizzy had just said, ‘I don’t want to talk about daddy being dead anymore.’ Her attitude changed after she met General Dempsey.”

****

At the following year’s Good Grief Camp, they began what blossomed into a tradition: Lizzy introduced him as the keynote speaker.

“She stood up and said, ‘this is General Dempsey. We love him, and he loves to sing, and he makes us feel good,’” the general recalled. “And she finished with, ‘and now my friend, General Dempsey.’” With that, once again, General Dempsey had to fight back tears as he faced hundreds of military survivors.

Lizzy introducing Gen. Dempsey at the TAPS Gala for the first time. (Photo: Erin Yaggy)

General Dempsey and his wife Deanie stayed in touch with the Yaggys, exchanging email updates and Christmas cards. The third year Lizzy introduced the general he’d taken over as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Pentagon’s senior-most position. Before they got on stage together she gave him a little box with an angel-shaped medallion in it, saying, “You’re my guardian angel.”

The general was deeply moved and wanted to return the gesture, but all his aide had in his possession was a ballcap with the numeral “18” on the front of it, signifying the 18th CJCS. He wrote in black ink on the bill: “To Lizzy — From your chairman friend. Martin E. Dempsey.”

“It was so cute to see her wearing that hat for the rest of the night,” Deanie Dempsey said. “Here was this little girl in this long green dress with a ballcap on.”

“She wore that hat all the time after that,” Erin said. “She even took it to bed with her.”

Lizzy wearing her favorite hat, a gift from the 18th CJCS. (Photo: Erin Yaggy)

The entire time General Dempsey served as the chairman he only had two things on his desk in the Pentagon: The mahogany “Make it Matter” box full of the laminated cards that profiled those who were killed under his command in Iraq and the guardian angel medallion Lizzy gave him.

****

When it came time for the general to retire, the Pentagon’s protocol apparatus sprang into action — after all, a Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff change of command is like the Super Bowl of military ceremonies. As the officials were coordinating all the moving parts, including the details surrounding President Obama’s attendance, they were surprised to learn who the outgoing chairman wanted to introduce him. They pushed back, but the general was insistent.

The day arrived and at the appropriate moment in the event, a little girl on the dais confidently strode by the dignitaries and political appointees and the President of the United States and stood on the box positioned behind the podium just for her.

And without any hesitation, Lizzy Yaggy delivered her remarks to the thousands in attendance, and finished with, “Please welcome my friend, General Dempsey . . .”

Lizzy hugging now-retired Gen. Dempsey at this year’s TAPS Good Grief Camp in DC. (Photo: TAPS.org)

Chemical Weapons in Iraq and Beyond

Posted on May 29, 2016May 29, 2016 by Denise Simon

During the first Gulf War, distribution was made to our soldiers for the protection of chemical weapons.

U.S. troops were frequently ordered to don their gas masks and protective suits. The term Mission Oriented Protective Posture (MOPP) refers to the amount of protective gear that troops are ordered to wear in response to an assessed chemical-warfare threat, and ranges from MOPP-0 (no protection) to MOPP-4 (the entire protective ensemble).

The incidents are recorded here by date, location and the type of chemical weapon. The Veterans Administration noted the types of risks and was careful omitting admission of chemical weapons, yet did include them on the website.

There was also congressional testimony in 1992/1993. One cannot ignore the in depth report the New York Times did about two years ago.

Soldiers Exposed to “Chemical Unknown” in Iraq not Getting Adequate FOIA Responses from DOD, and More: FRINFORMSUM 5/19/2016

May 19, 2016

The two-page 2003 Camp Taji Incident report — released a dozen years after the dangerous exposure.

The Defense Department is telling soldiers that were exposed in 2003 to a “chemical unknown” in Taji, Iraq that it has no documents on the incident – after a decade of saying that documents on the event were classified.

C. J. Chivers of the The New York Times reported in May 2015 that, for over a decade, the US military denied FOIA requests on the chemicals soldiers were exposed to, resulting in chronic illnesses. The Army only released the two-page 2003 Camp Taji Incident report, written by the multinational Iraq Survey Group, after years of FOIA requests; the report found that the chemical soldiers came in contact with was a potentially fatal “carcinogen and poisonous chemical.” The Archive’s Director Tom Blanton told the Times in 2015 that, in addition to the secrecy trumping common sense, that “the outrage here is extraordinary.” Blanton noted, “Soldiers exposed to something really dangerous cannot find out what it was because ‘Sorry it’s classified’?” he said. “It’s creepy and it’s crazy.”

Now, according to reporting by Samantha Foster at the Topeka Capital-Journal, the Army is telling soldiers like Army Spc. Sparky Edwards and former Sgt. First Class Dennis Marcello that there are no documents on the chemical they were exposed to or the incident. Nate Jones, the Archive’s FOIA project director, notes that the DOD may be claiming to have no documents because they were possibly destroyed or misfiled during the war – or because the large, decentralized Defense Department genuinely doesn’t know where to look to find the records. Jones identifies this as a prime example of why FOIA requesters “must specify exactly where they want to search or risk the agency not going the extra mile” to find them, and that it is always a good idea to appeal a “no records” response.

According to Department of Justice statistics, last fiscal year an obscenely high 130,113 FOIA requests (16.9 percent of requests processed) were deemed to result in “no records” responses. As the Archive has learned, more often than not, appealing a “no records” response and explaining why you think the records exist and even suggesting which records (including the Washington Records Center –control f) the agency should search leads to more records being found. Link for citation is here.

As recently as last month, it was found that Islamic State had taken cached and reserve chemical weapons and made a new factory at Mosul University.

Just last week:

ISIS testing chemical weapons on prisoners and animals in grisly laboratories

VILE Islamic State (ISIS) jihadis are testing chemical weapons on its prisoners in grisly suburban laboratories, terrified Iraqi citizens have claimed.

ExpressUK: The sick militants are testing chlorine and mustard gas on its captives, in direct opposition to the Geneva Protocol’s war crime guidelines.

ISIS’s laboratories are located deep within its territory in the city of Mosul in northern Iraq.

The lunatic extremists are understood to be working frantically to improve its chemical and nuclear weapon capabilities, with plans to launch attacks in Iraq, Syria and on the West.

Abu Shaima, the head of ISIS’s chemical warfare unit, has now moved the operation away from the city’s university to residential areas like al-Mohandseen, which are surrounded by innocent civilian homes.

Concerned residents have reported several houses in the area have now been taken over by ISIS researchers, according to The Telegraph.

Chillingly, dozens of dead dogs and rabbits have also been found nearby, hinting at the cruel experiments taking place within, while nearby residents are suffering from breathing difficulties and rashes.

The extremists are believed to have seized chemicals and weapons from Syrian forces, with which they have already launched a devastating chemical attack on the Iraqi town of Taza.

That attack this March killed a three-year-old girl and injured 600 others, as well as highlighting the terror group’s chemical warfare intentions.

Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, formerly of the UK Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Regiment, said: “ISIL’s chemical weapons operation has been heavily targeted – as is detailed in this report – and moving into residential areas is exactly what you would expect them to do now.

“Now we know the extent of the ISIL chemical and dirty bomb aspirations we must make doubly sure that our security in the UK is absolutely water-tight against this threat.”

Iraqi forces uncover an Islamic State weapon hideaway including gas canisters used to make homemade bombs. For the slide show on photos, go here.

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Chemical Agents as Weapons of Terror Rather Than as Weapons of Mass Destruction

In February 2012, the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency identified that “terrorist organizations are working to acquire and employ chemical, biological, and radiological materials.”43 Many experts believe that it would be difficult for terrorist groups to use chemical agents as weapons of mass destruction. In 1993, the Office of Technology Assessment estimated that VX, the most lethal of nerve agents, spread uniformly and efficiently would require tons of material to kill 50% of the people in a 100 km2 area.44 On the other hand, chemical agents might be effectively used as weapons of terror in situations where limited or enclosed space might decrease the required amounts of chemical. That is, the use of the weapon itself, even if casualties are few, could cause fear that would magnify the attack’s effect beyond what would be expected based solely on the number of casualties. Full summary here.