Category Archives: Veterans

The Letter: Declassified but Somewhat Redacted

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ODNI & DOJ Announce the Release of a Previously Classified Letter from Former Deputy Assistant Attorney General Yoo to former FISC Presiding Judge Kollar-Kotelly

February 29, 2016

The Letter

ODNI: The Department of Justice has released today in redacted form a previously classified 2002 letter from former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo of the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel addressed to former Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court Presiding Judge, Colleen Kollar-Kotelly.

The letter was designed to address certain questions that Judge Kollar-Kotelly raised during her first briefing on May 17, 2002, concerning certain collection activities authorized by President George W. Bush shortly after the attacks of September 11, 2001, referred to as the President’s Surveillance Program.  As described in the publicly released Inspectors General reports concerning the PSP dated July 10, 2009 (published April 25, 2015 and September 21, 2015), Judge Kollar-Kotelly was permitted to read the letter, but was not authorized to retain a copy or take notes. The 2002 letter purports to generally outline the scope of the President’s legal authority to conduct possible electronic surveillance techniques after the attacks of September 11, 2001. Beginning in 2004, the Department of Justice thoroughly reexamined the factual underpinnings and legal analysis for the PSP culminating in a legal opinion issued by the Office of Legal Counsel on May 6, 2004. (That opinion is also publicly available in redacted form)

Additional Background

As previously released in the IC on the Record posting of December 21, 2013, President Bush authorized the NSA, via a series of classified authorizations beginning in October 2001, to collect three “baskets” of information, including: (1) the contents of certain international communications (which was later referred to as the Terrorist Surveillance Program); and the bulk collection of non-content (2) telephony and (3) Internet metadata, subject to various conditions. NSA’s content interception activities under the TSP were limited to the acquisition of specific international communication (i.e., to or from the United States) involving persons reasonably believed to be associated with al Qaeda and affiliated terrorist organizations. Over time, these presidentially-authorized activities were transitioned to the authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The collection of communications pursuant to the TSP ended in 2007, and the Government transitioned this collection to be undertaken pursuant to FISA authority and orders of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Later, in August 2007, Congress enacted the Protect America Act as temporary authority to provide for the acquisition of certain communication content. The PAA, which expired in February 2008, was replaced by the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which was enacted in July 2008 and remains in effect.

Today, content collection targeting non-U.S. persons reasonably believed to be located overseas for foreign intelligence purposes is conducted pursuant to section 702 of FISA.  No U.S. person or person located in the United States may be intentionally targeted pursuant to section 702. The bulk collection of Internet metadata under the PSP was transitioned to the authority of the FISA in July 2004 (and ceased in December 2011, when the U.S. Government decided to not seek reauthorization from the FISC).The bulk collection of telephony metadata under the PSP was transitioned to the authority of the FISA in May 2006. In November 2015, the USA FREEDOM Act ended the NSA’s collection of telephone metadata in bulk, and provided a new mechanism for the Government to obtain the targeted production of call detail records relating to authorized investigations to protect against international terrorism through applications to the FISC.

The transition of PSP activities to authority of the FISA is described in greater and more specific detail in documents previously disclosed in IC on the Record.

***

As noted by the Bush White House Archives:

Fact Sheet: President Bush Has Kept America Safe

President Bush Fundamentally Reshaped Our Strategy To Protect The American People

“Because of … the efforts of many across all levels of government, we have not suffered another attack on our soil since September the 11th, 2001.”

President George W. Bush (March 8, 2008)

On December 17, President Bush visited the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and discussed efforts to protect the security and liberty of the American people.  Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, President Bush took the fight to the enemy to defeat the terrorists and protect America.  The President deployed all elements of national power to combat terrorism, which had previously been considered primarily a “law enforcement” issue.  He transformed our military and strengthened our national security institutions to wage the War on Terror and secure our homeland.  The President also made missile defense operational and advanced counterproliferation efforts to help prevent our enemies from threatening us, and our allies, with weapons of mass destruction.

Secured the Homeland 

  • Protected our Nation and prevented another attack on U.S. soil for more than seven years, modernized our national security institutions and tools of war, and bolstered our homeland security.  Under the President’s watch, numerous terrorist attacks have been prevented in the United States.  These include:
    • An attempt to bomb fuel tanks at JFK airport;
    • A plot to blow up airliners bound for the East Coast;
    • A plan to destroy the tallest skyscraper in Los Angeles;
    • A plot by six al Qaeda inspired individuals to kill soldiers at Fort Dix Army Base in New Jersey;
    • A plan to attack a Chicago-area shopping mall using grenades; and
    • A plot to attack the Sears Tower in Chicago.
  • Arrested and convicted more than two dozen terrorists and their supporters in America since 9/11.
  • Froze the financial assets in the United States of hundreds of individuals and entities linked to terrorism and proliferation.
  • Doubled the Border Patrol to more than 18,000 agents, equipped the Border Patrol with better technology and new infrastructure, and effectively ended the process of catch and release at the border.  Increased border security and immigration enforcement funding by more than 160 percent and constructed hundreds of miles of fencing and vehicle barriers.
  • Instituted a process to screen every commercial air passenger in the country, launched credentialing initiatives to better identify passengers, and expanded the Federal Air Marshal Program.  Replaced the multiple watchlists that were in place prior to 9/11 with a single, consolidated watchlist, and incorporated biometrics in screening and identifying individuals entering our country.  Created US-VISIT to screen foreign travelers and prevent terrorists from entering America.  Required secure identification at our ports of entry to better monitor individuals entering the United States.
  • Invested more than $38 billion in public health and medical systems, created a biothreat air monitoring system, and developed a national strategy and international partnership on avian and pandemic flu.
‘History – assuming it is written by free men and women not intimidated into silence by the fear of attracting the terrorists’ notice – will be exceedingly kind to this president.’

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Sept. 16, 2007)

Waged the Global War on Terror

  • Removed the Taliban from power and brought freedom to the 25 million people of Afghanistan.
  • Freed 25 million Iraqis from the rule of Saddam Hussein, a dictator who murdered his own people, invaded his neighbors, and repeatedly defied United Nations resolutions.
  • Captured or killed hundreds of al Qaeda leaders and operatives in more than two dozen countries with the help of partner nations.  September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is in U.S. custody and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the former leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, was killed in 2006.  Removed al Qaeda’s safe-haven in Afghanistan and crippled al Qaeda in Iraq, including defeating al Qaeda in its former stronghold of Anbar Province.

Transformed Our Approach to Combating Terrorism After the 9/11 Attacks

  • Increased the size of our ground forces and number of unmanned aerial vehicles and strengthened special operations forces by increasing resources, manpower, and capabilities.  Increased the Defense Department’s base budget more than 70 percent since 2001, including increased funding for military pay and benefits, research, and development.  Started moving American forces from Cold War garrisons in Europe and Asia so they can deploy more quickly to any region of the world.  Modernized and transformed the National Guard from a strategic reserve to an operational reserve.
  • Forged a new, comprehensive cybersecurity policy to improve the security of Federal government and military computer systems and made protecting these systems a national priority.
  • Improved cargo screening and security at U.S. ports and increased containerized cargo screening overseas.
  • Established a more unified, collaborative intelligence community under the leadership of a Director of National Intelligence to ensure information is shared among intelligence and law enforcement professionals so they have the information they need to protect the American people while respecting the legal rights of all U.S. persons, including freedoms, civil liberties, and privacy rights guaranteed by Federal law.
  • Consolidated 22 agencies and 180,000 employees under a new agency, the Department of Homeland Security, to foster a comprehensive, coordinated approach to protecting our country.
  • Advocated for and signed into law the USA PATRIOT Act, the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act, and a modernization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
  • Shifted the FBI’s focus from investigating terrorist attacks to preventing them.  Created the National Security Branch at the FBI, which combines the FBI’s counterterrorism, counterintelligence, intelligence, and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) elements under the leadership of a senior FBI official.
  • Created the Terrorist Screening Center and the National Security Division at the Department of Justice.

Invigorated International Alliances And Partnerships To Make America Safer And More Secure

  • Partnered with nations in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and the Western Hemisphere on intelligence sharing and law enforcement coordination to break up terrorist networks and bring terrorists to justice.
  • Transformed NATO to face 21st century threats, including strengthening the Alliance’s capabilities against WMD and cyber attacks, while leading the international military effort in Afghanistan.
  • Established the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) and other multilateral coalitions to stop WMD proliferation and strengthen our ability to locate and secure nuclear and radiological materials around the world.  Dismantled and prevented the reconstitution of the A.Q. Khan proliferation network, an extensive, international network that had spread sensitive nuclear technology and capability to Iran, Libya, and North Korea.
  • Worked with European partners to limit Iran’s ability to develop weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles and finance terrorism, and initiated targeted sanctions against Iran’s Quds Force.  Gathered support for and won passage of three Chapter VII United Nations Security Council resolutions that impose sanctions on Iran and require it to suspend its uranium enrichment and other proliferation-sensitive nuclear activities.
  • Established the Six Party Talks framework in partnership with China, South Korea, Japan, and Russia.  Obtained a commitment from North Korea to abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs.  Since November 2007, USG experts have supervised North Korea’s activities to disable its plutonium production capability.
  • Persuaded Libya to disclose and dismantle all aspects of its WMD and advanced missile programs, renounce terrorism, and accept responsibility for prior acts of terror.  Normalized our relations with Libya as a result.
  • Signed agreements for missile defense sites in the Czech Republic and Poland to help protect America and its allies from the threat of WMD delivered by ballistic missiles.  Obtained NATO endorsement of plans to deploy missile defense assets in Europe.

FBI/NSA Versus Encryption, Investigating Plotting Attacks

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Perspective only: Paris Attack and operating in a realm before any attack

NSA chief: ‘Paris would not have happened’ without encrypted apps

Michael Isikoff

Chief Investigative Correspondent

National Security Agency Director Adm. Michael Rogers warns that encryption is making it “much more difficult” for the agency to intercept the communications of terrorist groups like the Islamic State, citing November’s Paris attacks as a case where his agency was left in the dark because the perpetrators used new technologies to disguise their communications.

In an exclusive interview with Yahoo News, Rogers confirmed speculation that began right after the attack: that “some of the communications” of the Paris terrorists “were encrypted,” and, as a result, “we did not generate the insights ahead of time. Clearly, had we known, Paris would not have happened.”

Rogers’ comments were made on Friday, just days before the FBI obtained a court order requiring Apple to provide a “backdoor” into the data on the iPhone of one of the shooters in the San Bernardino, Calif., terror attack in December — an order the company is resisting. But his remarks are likely to fuel the debate over encryption that has sorely divided the U.S. intelligence and law enforcement community, on one side, and privacy advocates and U.S. technology companies. (A spokesman for the NSA had no comment today on the court order or on Apple’s response.)

Rogers has at times sought to steer a middle ground in this debate, acknowledging that encryption is “foundational to our future” and even saying recently that arguing about it “is a waste of time.” In the Yahoo News interview, he frankly acknowledged, “I don’t know the answer” to unencrypting devices and applications without addressing the concerns over privacy and competitiveness, calling for a national collaboration among industry and government officials to solve the problem.

But he left little doubt about the impact encryption is having on his agency’s mission.

“Is it harder for us to generate the kind of knowledge that I would like against some of these targets? Yes,” Rogers said. “Is that directly tied in part to changes they are making in their communications? Yes. Does encryption make it much more difficult for us to execute our mission. Yes.”

Rogers also provided new details about his agency’s efforts to implement the USA Freedom Act, a law passed in the wake of the Edward Snowden disclosures, which he said has made it “more expensive” for his agency to access the phone records of terror suspects inside the United States and has resulted in a “slightly slower” retrieval of data from U.S. phone companies.

But Rogers said the delay in retrieving phone records is measured “in hours, not days or weeks,” and he has not yet seen any “significant” problems that have “led to concerns … this is not going to work.”

“When I say more difficult to do the job, it’s certainly a little slower,” he said. “There is no doubt about that. It is not as fast.”

The new law — which has become a contentious issue in the presidential campaign — requires the NSA to get a secret court order to retrieve individual domestic phone records rather than collecting them in bulk and storing them in agency computers, as it had been doing before the Snowden disclosures. Critics, such as Sen. Marco Rubio, charge that the act has weakened the country’s defenses in the face of the mounting threats from the Islamic State and other terror groups.

But Rogers confirmed for the first time that the law was used successfully by the NSA after the San Bernardino terror attack to retrieve the phone records of the two perpetrators, and the agency “didn’t find any direct overseas connections.” Those records provided “metadata” — the time and duration of phone calls — but not the content of emails and text messages that the FBI is seeking by requiring Apple to unlock one of the iPhones. The FBI is continuing its efforts to track down who the two shooters “may have communicated with to plan and carry out” the attack, according to a court filing Tuesday.

Rogers’ comments came during a rare and wide-ranging interview inside the “Battle Bridge,” a special NSA situation room at its headquarters in Fort Meade, Md., equipped with teleconference screens to the White House and secure facilities around the world. It was built after the Osama bin Laden raid for use during international crises.

The former Navy cryptographer described a far-reaching reorganization of the electronic spying agency — dubbed NSA21 — that he is implementing this month to cope with evolving new national security threats. Chief among them: persistent cyberattacks from “nation state actors,” who he said are repeatedly hacking into — and Rogers believes laying the groundwork for manipulation of — the nation’s critical infrastructure systems, such as the electrical grid, the banking system and the energy sector.

Those foreign powers — widely acknowledged to be Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, although he wouldn’t name them — are “penetrating systems, what we think is for the purpose of reconnaissance. To get a sense of how they are structured. Where are their vulnerabilities? What are the control points that someone would want to access?”

While Rogers said he was “not going to get into specifics,” U.S. officials have confirmed that those attacks included an Iranian hack into the computer system of a New York dam that alarmed White House officials in 2013 and a highly sophisticated Russian infiltration of an unclassified Pentagon Joint Staff computer network that prompted the NSA director to shut down the entire network for two weeks last summer.

“This is not episodic or short-term focused,” said Rogers, who also serves as commander of the U.S. Cyber Command. “My sense is you are watching these actors make a long-term commitment. How do we ensure we have the capability to potentially impair [their] ability to actually operate?”

Yahoo News asked Rogers what motivated the attacks.

“I believe they want to have the capability, should they come to a political decision, that they in some way want to interfere with the United States or send a message to us,” he said.

One question Rogers pointedly declined to address is whether any overseas intelligence services had penetrated Hillary Clinton’s unsecured private email server — a scenario that former Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently said was “highly likely.”

“It’s something I’m not going to get into right now,” he said when pressed by Yahoo News as to whether such a penetration had taken place.

Rogers’ answer to the threat of foreign cyberattacks, incorporated into NSA21, is to create a new Directorate of Operations by merging the agency’s Signals Intelligence directorate — its electronic spying arm, which intercepts hundreds of millions of telephone calls, emails and text messages around the globe — with its smaller Information Assurance arm, which works with private industry to defend U.S. computer networks.

The proposal has prompted criticism that it will heighten suspicions of the NSA, making private companies even less willing to cooperate with the agency for fear of being seen as part of its massive global surveillance mission.

“I have to admit, it was something I spent a lot of time, as did the team, thinking about,” Rogers said when asked about the criticism. He added later, “I certainly acknowledge that there are some who would argue, ‘Hey, but you have this perception battle.’ My statement to that would be, ‘We have that perception battle every single day of the year, given the fact that the NSA, we acknowledge, works in both the offensive [signals interception] and defensive [cybersecurity] structures.’”

Dealing with the “perception” of the NSA as an unchecked surveillance colossus has been Rogers’ principal challenge since he took over the agency nearly two years ago during the biggest crisis in its history — the aftermath of the Snowden leaks, described by his predecessor, Gen. Keith Alexander, at the time as “the greatest damage to our combined nation’s intelligence systems that we have ever suffered.”

A congenial career Navy cryptologist who previously was commander of the Navy’s Fleet Cyber Command, Rogers has sought to repair the agency’s image and mend fences with Capitol Hill, striking a noticeably more measured and less combative tone in his public statements than Alexander did.

But when pressed about the lingering impact of the Snowden disclosures and persistent questions among privacy advocates and members of Congress about the NSA’s continued “incidental” collection of U.S. citizens’ communications, Rogers was unyielding and unapologetic.

He twice refused, for example, to shed any light on how many Americans’ emails and phone calls are “incidentally” collected by the NSA in the course of intercepting the communications of foreign targets. “We don’t talk about the specifics of the classified mission we do,” he said. He declined to explain why such information would be classified but insisted that access to those communications by the FBI is governed by legal processes.

Rogers warned that terrorist groups such as the Islamic State are moving to encrypted apps and networks, the so-called dark Web — a trend he asserted was “accelerated” by the Snowden disclosures.

“The trend has happened much faster than we thought,” he said. “And the part that is particularly discouraging to me is when we get groups, actors, specifically discussing the [Snowden] disclosures saying, ‘Hey, you need to make sure you don’t do X, Y or Z, or you don’t use this, because remember we know the Americans are into this.

“You’ve seen al-Qaida expressly, for example, reference the [Snowden] disclosures. You’ve seen groups — ISIL does the same — talk about how they need to change their discipline, need to change their security as a result of their increased knowledge of what we do and how we do it.”

But while many experts have argued that the movement toward encryption is the inevitable result of evolving new technologies, Rogers pointed to Snowden.

“No one should doubt for one minute there has been an impact here,” Rogers said. “I will leave it to others to decide right, wrong, good or bad. But there shouldn’t be any doubt in anybody’s mind that there has been an impact as a result of these disclosures.”

Rogers has strong feelings about what should happen to Snowden, who remains in Moscow, hailed around the world by many civil liberties groups, receiving accolades and awards (and financial compensation for speeches he delivers via Skype) — all while remaining a fugitive from U.S. justice. Rogers has not seen “Citizenfour,” the Oscar-winning documentary by Laura Poitras that presents the former NSA contractor as a courageous whistleblower, and he says he will “probably” not see the upcoming film “Snowden,” due in theaters this May, by Oliver Stone.

Asked about proposals that Snowden should receive some sort of leniency as part of a deal that would bring him home, Rogers talked about the concept of “accountability.” He recalled a conversation he had with his father about the My Lai Massacre when he joined the Naval ROTC in the post-Vietnam era in 1981.

“Dad, what do you do when you get an order that you think is immoral, unethical or illegal?” he said. “And my father, something I’ll always remember, said to me, ‘Michael, you must be willing to stand up and say, “This I will not do.” But Michael, you must also be willing to be held accountable for the decision you have made. And don’t ever forget, son, responsibility and accountability are intertwined. And it ain’t one or the other. It’s about both.’ And that seems to have been forgotten in all of this.”

For Afghanistan, we Need Charlie Wilson

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Anyone in Congress remember Charlie Wilson without the booze and women of course. Why you ask? Deja Vu for sure….1980.

While Russia has won Syria, could it be they are about to declare victory in Afghanistan as well?

From Russia with Bullets: Moscow Gifts Kabul 10,000 AK-47s

Russia gives Afghanistan 10,000 assault rifles, but abstains from joining American efforts at peace talks.

 

TheDiplomat: Wednesday, Afghanistan accepted a gift of 10,000 AK-47s and millions of rounds of ammunition from Russia. In recent months there has been much discussion about increased Russian engagement with Afghanistan, although Moscow’s cooperation with Washington’s initiatives–such as peace talks with the Taliban–remains seemingly out of the question.

Speaking at a ceremony to accept the weapons gift, Afghan National Security Adviser Mohammad Hanif Atmar said: “This important donation is from an important friend of Afghanistan in a crucial time for Afghanistan and the region.”

Twenty-seven years ago this month, the final Soviet troops withdrew from Afghanistan, where they’d been fighting a war for a decade. The communist government of Muhammad Najibullah, which they left in Kabul held out for three more years until the collapse of the Soviet Union cut off the financial inflow from Moscow, estimated at $3-4 billion annually, and the mujahedin closed in. More here.

Sidebar: The Afghan forces and the United States have pulled back from Helmand Province….

Russia Pulls Back From Cooperating With U.S. on Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan — For all the conflicts in the world in which Washington is at odds with Moscow, the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan has been one area where the Obama administration’s interests and Russia’s concerns coincide.

Disputes over the wars in Ukraine and Syria had not stopped the governments from cooperating on counternarcotics and securing military supply lines. But after initial success on those fronts, Russia now seems to be disengaging with both the United States and the American-backed Afghan government.

On an old Cold War battlefield where Russia fought a nearly decade-long war against United States-supplied fighters, Moscow has a new strategy: the cold shoulder.
“We won’t join the useless events, and we’ve already told the Americans,” President Vladimir V. Putin’s envoy to Afghanistan, Zamir N. Kabulov, told Russian state news media this month. Russia, he said, would sit out any talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government in Kabul, backed by the United States, Pakistan and China.
“Honestly speaking, we’re already tired of joining anything Washington starts,” Mr. Kabulov said. The Kremlin, he added, “has no desire to participate in what the Americans organize ‘on the fly’ just for their own pre-election interests and where they give us the role of extras on the set.”
The government of Mr. Putin has instead decided to address on its own what it sees as the immediate security threat from the chaos in Afghanistan and the emergence there of militants other than the Taliban, especially those from the Islamic State.
Russia has reinforced its largest foreign military base in Tajikistan, along the border with Afghanistan, and the Russian military has held regular exercises with Tajik soldiers. The Kremlin has committed $1.2 billion to train and equip the Tajik Army, forming a new bulwark in Central Asia north of Afghanistan.

Mr. Kabulov also recently disclosed that Russia had opened direct channels to the Taliban to exchange information about militants in northern Afghanistan allied with the Islamic State. (The Taliban have denied being in touch with Moscow.)
Afghan officials worry that a breakdown of consensus among the international powers with an interest in Afghanistan, and the establishment of direct contacts with those governments and the insurgent Taliban, would undermine the government in Kabul.
They are also concerned that the Russian government’s recent moves are motivated by forces outside their control, such as a lack of a clear American strategy and Mr. Putin’s tense relationship with the United States.
“Bilaterally, we have struggled to convince the Russians on certain issues because they increasingly see us only as part of this larger game with the United States,” said one senior Afghan official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear his comments would further stoke the mistrust in Moscow.


The Kremlin’s recent moves are seen as a shift from the role Russia played during 14 years of NATO presence in Afghanistan — one of guarded cooperation marked by frequent contradictions.

Even as Moscow was alarmed by the presence of nearly 140,000 Western troops in its backyard, often deriding the mission as a failure, Mr. Putin’s government was happy to let the American-led coalition contain the common threats posed by Al Qaeda and the Taliban, and by drugs, of which Afghanistan produced plenty that are trafficked and consumed in Russia.
In a little more than a year since the end of the NATO combat mission in Afghanistan, the fighting here has intensified, shifting to the north along the 1,250-mile border with three Central Asian states Russia still considers as its underbelly. The Taliban briefly overran the city of Kunduz last fall.
The top American general here offered contradictory statements about the insurgent group. In a hearing at the Senate Armed Services Committee this month, the commander of United States and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. John F. Campbell, said, “Our country has made a decision that we are not at war with the Taliban.” Just days later in Kabul, he said the Taliban were the enemy.
The Russian government does not fear a direct threat from the Taliban as much as it is worried about Central Asian fighters who could use Afghanistan as a staging ground to penetrate Russia’s borders. One group of particular concern is the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, some factions of which have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State. Afghan officials have also reported the presence of militants from Tajikistan, Chechnya and Chinese Uighurs, many who relocated to Afghanistan from Pakistan’s tribal areas.
Fighting drug trafficking rings that partially fund the Afghan insurgency had been an area of common interest for the Russians and the Americans, said Yuri V. Krupnov, an adviser to the head of Russia’s antidrug agency, Viktor P. Ivanov. But that stopped when the United States Treasury Department in 2014 imposed sanctions on Mr. Ivanov, a close associate of Mr. Putin’s.
“Washington had no dialogue with us, and just asserted its interests and sovereignty, and was uninterested in the views of Russia or anybody else,” Mr. Krupnov said, adding, “The Obama administration buried this promising line of cooperation. All room for cooperation is exhausted.”
The alliance between the foreign militants in Afghanistan may not be as threatening as Russia fears. In Badakhshan Province, the number of foreign fighters is estimated to be about 500, some traveling with their families, Taliban commanders there say. The largest group is Tajik fighters, followed by Uzbeks from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. Chechens and Uighurs have a smaller presence.
The militants from Central Asia have been problematic to their Afghan Taliban guests, the local commanders say, because they use harsher methods, and, somewhat scandalously, are more relaxed in how they observe Islam. On top of all of that, the local Taliban have grown furious that some of their guests have recently warmed toward the Islamic State, which they see as intruding on their turf.
“The Quetta Shura insisted that we treat them nicely, that they need our cooperation, but they have a lot of shortcomings,” said Malawi Amanuddin, the Taliban’s shadow governor in Badakhshan. “They say they are waging jihad, but their women here walk around not covering themselves according to Islamic hijab.”
It is these internal rifts, perhaps, that have encouraged Russian officials to explore their channels directly with the Taliban and drive a wedge deeper between the militants who threaten Russia and their Afghan hosts.
“The official position, and this is from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is that Russia is risking a lot and has nothing to gain” from cooperating with the United States, Aleksei V. Malashenko, a researcher at the Carnegie center in Moscow, said in a telephone interview. “We couldn’t agree on Georgia, on Ukraine and on Syria; why get involved in another conflict where we cannot agree?” he said, describing the Russian position as “let the Americans boil.”

35 and 56…Watch Out, Ask Lots of Questions, Gitmo

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The White House Guantanamo Detention Center plan calls for transferring another 35 detainees to other countries and shifting the remaining 56 to US-based facilities. These guys really want to give up top notch healthcare, food, housing and soccer?     

In 2009: TheHill: The House instructed conferees negotiating with the Senate on a final version of the Homeland Security spending bill to include language prohibiting the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to U.S. soil. The bill already includes a provision prohibiting the detainees from air travel within or to the United States.

Appropriators have placed Guantanamo provisions into at least four other bills. The Senate Defense spending bill, which has yet to pass the chamber, and the House-approved version would also block the use of federal money for the transfer of detainees to the United States. The House Commerce, Justice and Science appropriations bill and the State Department spending bill would block 2010 federal funding for the closure of the prison. Those bills have been passed by the House and are awaiting Senate action. *** The Senate did confirm and Obama signed it into law as it was in the spending bill. Note the year, this was a Democrat controlled Congress. If Obama does move forward in any method, he will have to sign a waiver of the law and then a Constitutional crisis begins as the military knows this is a law. Does the military comply with the Commander in Chief or do they comply with the law?

Then again in 2010:

Congress Bars Gitmo Transfers  

WSJ: Congress on Wednesday passed legislation that would effectively bar the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to the U.S. for trial, rejecting pleas from Obama administration officials who called the move unwise.

A defense authorization bill passed by the House and Senate included the language on the offshore prison, which President Barack Obama tried unsuccessfully to close in his first year in office.

*** Then again this month, February 2016:

Military Tells Congress It Can’t Send Gitmo Detainees to U.S.

Bloomberg: Just as President Barack Obama is planning to send Congress his plan to close the Guantanamo Bay prison this year, leaders of the military say it will not transfer any detainees to the U.S., unless the law prohibiting such transfers is changed.

Lt. General William Mayville Jr., the director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said as much in a letter to Congress last week, which I obtained. Mayville’s letter gets to the heart of a knotty constitutional issue on Guantanamo: Does President Obama have the authority to close the facility without the consent of Congress?

Writing to 16 House members who served in the military, Mayville writes: “Current law prohibits the use of funds to ‘transfer, release or assist in the transfer or release’ of detainees of Guantanamo Bay to or within the United States, and prohibits the construction, modification or acquisition of any facility within the United States to house any Guantanamo detainee. The Joint Staff will not take any action contrary to those restrictions.”

Start here and this was today further telling how reckless the whole release thing really is:

4 Arrested in Spain, Morocco for IS Armed Group Ties

ABC: Spanish and Moroccan police on Tuesday arrested four suspected members of a jihadi cell that sought to recruit fighters for the Islamic State group, including one described as a former Guantanamo detainee who once fought with militants in Afghanistan.

Three people were arrested in Spain’s North African enclave city of Ceuta while a Moroccan was arrested in the Moroccan border town of Farkhana, next to Melilla, Spain’s other North African enclave, statements from the two nations’ interior ministries said.

One of those detained in Ceuta was the former Guantanamo detainee who was not named by Spanish authorities but described as “a leader who was trained in handling weapons, explosives and in military tactics.” After being captured in 2002 and held in Guantanamo, he was returned to Spain in 2004, said Interior Minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz.

Another suspect was the brother of a fighter who blew himself up during an attack in Syria and man detained Tuesday “was inclined to do the same thing,” he said.

The suspects had set up contacts to try to acquire weapons and bomb-making materials and were aiming “to carry out terrorist acts in Spanish territory,” the Spanish ministry statement said, without specifying possible targets.

They also worked to recruit teenagers from Ceuta to join IS in Iraq and Syria, the Spanish statement said.

Spanish police arrested about 100 suspected Islamic extremists last year and more than 600 total since the 2004 train bombings in Madrid that killed 191 people and injured nearly 2,000.

Rubio: Today, In the Senate, I have sponsored and supported legislation to prohibit dangerous detainee transfers, block funds for closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay, and prevent the return of the facility to Cuba. And I have stood with Senators Tim Scott (R-SC), Cory Gardner (R-CO), and Pat Roberts (R-KS) to oppose bringing terrorists to facilities in South Carolina, Colorado, and Kansas, because it is unnecessary, expensive and, most importantly, dangerous.

 

 

Is There a Future for Gitmo?

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For the Obama administration when it comes to terrorists or enemy combatants, the title of the playbook is ‘Let Some Other Country Handle It’.

Guantánamo parole board OKs release of Osama bin Laden bodyguard

Majid Ahmed at Guantánamo in a photo from his 2008 prison profile provided to McClatchy Newspapers by WikiLeaks.

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba

MiamiHerald: The national security parole board, in just a month, has approved a former Osama bin Laden bodyguard for release to another country as the Pentagon-run panel works on accelerating reviews.

The board has six more hearings scheduled into May — two of them so-called “forever prisoners” like the man whose approval to go was disclosed Friday and four of them who were at one time considered candidates for war-crimes trial.

In the latest decision, the board recommended release of Yemeni Majid Ahmed, 35, to an Arabic-speaking country with security precautions. An intelligence assessment concluded that he was recruited to join the Taliban at age 18 or 19 and became a bin Laden bodyguard at 21, a month before the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

The decision to approve the release of Ahmed means that, of Guantánamo’s 91 captives, 35 are approved for transfer, 10 are in war crimes proceeding and the rest are either forever prisoners or candidates for war crimes trial.

The board said Ahmed “has been relatively compliant during his time at Guantánamo, although he has been largely uncooperative with interrogators.” The intelligence profile said he “still harbors anti-U.S. sentiments and holds conservative Islamic views that may make transfer and reintegration to many countries difficult.”

The board’s three-paragraph statement disclosing Ahmed’s approval for transfer, dated Feb. 18, recommended release to resettlement in an Arabic-speaking country, “with appropriate security assurances.” It was available on the Pentagon’s parole board website Saturday, a month after his Jan. 19 hearing. Full story here.

*** What will a new U.S. president do on the war on terror and will there be an approval for capturing future terrorists?

What to do if U.S. begins capturing more suspected terrorists?

MilitaryTimes: WASHINGTON — President  Obama has refused to send any suspected terrorists captured overseas to the detention center at Guantanamo Bay. But if the U.S. starts seizing more militants in expanded military operations, where will they go, who will hold them and where will they be tried?

Those are questions that worry legal experts, lawmakers and others as U.S. special operations forces deploy in larger numbers to Iraq, Syria and, maybe soon, Libya, with the Islamic State group and affiliated organizations in their sights.

Throughout Obama’s presidency, suspects have been killed in drone strikes or raids, or captured and interrogated, sometimes aboard Navy ships. After that, they are either prosecuted in U.S. courts and military commissions or handed over to other nations.

This policy has been enough, experts say — at least for now.

“If you’re going to be doing counterterrorism operations that bring in detainees, you have to think through what you are going to do with them,” said Phillip Carter, former deputy assistant defense secretary for detainee policy. “If the U.S. is going to conduct large-scale combat operations or large-scale special ops and bring in more detainees, it needs a different solution.”

Rebecca Ingber, an associate law professor at Boston University who follows the issue, warns that if the U.S. engaged in a full ground war in Syria, “chances are there would need to be detention facilities of some kind in the vicinity.”

Obama has not sent a single suspected terrorist to the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where many have been detained for years without being charged or tried — something the president says is a “recruitment tool” for militant extremists.

He is to report to Congress this month on how he wants to close Guantanamo and possibly transfer some of the remaining detainees to the United States. That report also is supposed to address the question of future detainees.

Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., believes that the absence of a long-term detention and interrogation facility for foreign terrorist suspects represents a “major shortcoming in U.S. national security policy.”

Republican candidates who want to succeed Obama are telling voters that they would keep Guantanamo open.

“Law enforcement is about gathering evidence to take someone to trial, and convict them,” said Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. “Anti-terrorism is about finding out information to prevent a future attack so the same tactics do not apply. … But, here’s the bigger problem with all this: We’re not interrogating anybody right now.”

That’s not true, said Frazier Thompson, director of the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group. The tight-lipped team of interrogators from the FBI, Defense Department, the CIA and other intelligence agencies gleans intelligence from top suspected terrorists in the U.S. and overseas.

“We were created to interrogate high-value terrorists and we are interrogating high-value terrorists,” Thompson said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Since it was established in 2009, that team has been deployed 34 times, Thompson said, adding that other government agencies conduct independent interrogations as well. “We are designed to deploy on the highest-value terrorist. We are not going out to interrogate everybody,” he said.

Thompson would not disclose details of the cases his team has worked or speculate on whether he expects more interrogation requests as the battle against IS heats up.

“If there is a surge, I’m ready to go. If there’s not, I’m still ready to go,” Thompson said.

The U.S. has deployed about 200 new special operations forces to Iraq, and they are preparing to work with the Iraqis to begin going after IS fighters and commanders, “killing or capturing them wherever we find them, along with other key targets,” Defense Secretary Ash Carter said.

Brett McGurk, special presidential envoy for the global coalition to counter IS, told Congress this month that in the final six months of 2015, 90 senior to midlevel leaders were killed, including the IS leader’s key deputies: Haji Mutazz, the top leader in Iraq, and Abu Sayyaf, the IS oil minister and financier.

Sayyaf was killed in a raid to rescue American hostage Kayla Mueller; his wife, known as Umm Sayyaf, was captured.

Her case illustrates how the Obama administration is prosecuting some terrorist suspects in federal courts or military commissions or leaving them in the custody of other nations.

Umm Sayyaf, a 25-year-old Iraqi, is being held in Iraq and facing prosecution by authorities there. She also was charged Feb. 9 in U.S. federal court with holding Mueller and contributing to her death in February 2015.

Ali Soufan, a former FBI agent who investigated and supervised international terrorism cases, including the U.S. Embassy bombings in East Africa and the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen the 1990s, said sending suspected terrorists through the American criminal justice system works. He said the courts are more effective than military commissions used at Guantanamo that have been slow in trying detainees who violate the laws of war.

“The current practice of investigating and prosecuting terror suspects has proved incredibly effective,” Soufan said, noting that since the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, only seven people have been tried and convicted under military commissions. “During that same time period, hundreds of terrorists have been convicted in federal courts and almost all are still in jail.”

But it’s hard to evaluate the effectiveness of the system.

The Justice Department declined to provide the number of foreign terrorist suspects who have been prosecuted or the number handed over to other countries, or their status. Lawmakers, including Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., have asked the Defense Department for the numbers.

Reports on how other countries handle the suspects are classified.

Raha Wala, senior counsel at Human Rights First, also is concerned about detention operations abroad.

“The government needs to be more transparent to the American people — and to the world — about who it is transferring overseas, and what procedures are in place to make sure we are not transferring individuals into situations where human rights will be abused,” he said.