U.S. had Maria Butina, the EU had Bela Kovacs

Posted on July 25, 2018July 25, 2018 by Denise Simon

Primer: The Jobbik Party is/was a movement for a better Hungary. It is the strongest ‘right-wing’ party in Europe. (Right-wing in Europe is not so much what it is the United States)

Bela Kovacs is an agent of influence…those Russian agents are everywhere….

Moscow’s Man in Europe’s Parliament on Trial as a Spy

The espionage trial of Bela Kovacs is another milestone in the expanding influence of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

photo

BUDAPEST — While counter-intelligence agencies hunt Russian spies and agents of influence around the United States and Europe, the Kremlin-friendly government of Hungarian nationalist Viktor Orban could let an alleged Moscow spy off the hook.

Although Hungary is a member of the European Union, Orban has been accused by E.U. parliamentarians of a “systemic threat to democracy, the rule of law and fundamental rights in Hungary.” And it’s against that backdrop that this espionage trial, potentially another milestone in the expanding influence of Russian President Vladimir Putin, is taking place here in the Hungarian capital.

The accused is himself a member of the European Parliament: Bela Kovacs, 58, sometimes known derisively as “KGBela,” comes from the extremist Jobbik party, often accused of anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi tendencies. He is alleged to have worked for the Russian intelligence service for more than eight years, providing the Kremlin with secret information about the E.U.’s agendas regarding business, energy and politics.

Kovacs, a thin-lipped Moscow-educated Hungarian politician, is known for the way he uses crusader-style rhetoric to rouse meetings and protests organized by his far-right group in the E.U. parliament, the Alliance of European National Movements (AENM).

Meanwhile Bela has traveled around Russia and Russian-annexed Crimea, as well Abkhazia and Donbas, where Russia backs separatist movements that have torn away portions of the Republic of Georgia and Ukraine. His role, speaking both Russian and English, was to observe and praise the Kremlin’s “clean and well-ordered” election campaigns in those places, even as independent observers denounced coercion, subterfuges and fraud.

“The European Union is suffocating; if we do not turn to the east in time, we’ll have no other place to go,” he told the Russian popular newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda in 2014. “So, Mother Russia, you will be saving Europe again.”

“He has been an effective agent of influence for Putin,” says Peter Kreko, director of a Budapest think tank, the Political Capital Institute. “[Kovacs] is the ideologist of the Alliance of European National Movements, a far-right party in the European Parliament that has been lobbying for the Kremlin’s policies.” But Kovacs appeared to be perfectly open about his role and his beliefs.

Espionage is another matter. He has been accused in court of handing over to the GRU, Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate, information about the European Union’s energy policies, investigations, and internal discussions related to Russian issues, including oil and gas prices, pipelines, and the E.U.’s visa policy for Russian citizens.

The counts against Bela could earn him eight years in prison — but the chances of that happening are regarded as slim, since the agenda of Orban’s Fidesz party has come to include many of Jobbik’s positions, and Orban’s views would appear rather close to those of Kovacs’.

The biggest danger for KGBela, in a country where the independence of the judiciary is highly compromised, is that Orban will allow him to be convicted to appease other interests.

The allegations against Kovacs first surfaced more than four years ago, when members of the Hungarian parliamentary committee leaked a potentially damning bit of news to the press: there was “solid” evidence, they said, that their Hungarian colleague, MEP Bela Kovacs, had held secret meetings with Russian intelligence.

The European Parliament lifted Kovacs’ immunity from prosecution in 2015, but the far-right politician continues to serve, and enjoys access to sensitive materials.

“My client is not worried, he feels like he’s fine,” said Kovacs’ attorney, Istvan Szikinger. “He not only still works for the European Parliament, he gets assigned to travel on important missions to Tajikistan, Abkhazia, Russia and other countries. If he was not trustworthy, the European Parliament would have not trusted him.”

Kovacs will appear in court in September. “I have no doubt that the espionage accusations against him will prove wrong,” Szikinger said.

Meanwhile, unlike the jailed Maria Butina, an alleged Russian spy accused of working through the National Rifle Association to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, Bela Kovacs is walking around free here in Budapest.

For years, Hungarian investigative journalist Szabolcs Panyi and his colleagues at Index.hu, one of the most influential news portals in Hungary, have been collecting evidence to support the case against “KGBela,” and the narrative has become so compelling that they and their readers certainly would be disappointed to see him escape justice.

The story also has aspects that are plainly bizarre. An Index.hu report in 2014 published details about Kovacs’ Russian wife Svetlana Istoshina, claiming to discover her “parallel marriages, secret Japanese and Austrian husbands and mysterious trips.” It alleged that “the Russian secret service was one of the bonds holding the family in one piece.” The article concluded that “the politician has been known to the KGB almost from the day he was born and in the 1980s the organization recruited him through his wife. His political career starting in the early 2000s must also have benefited the Russians.” (The Daily Beast has asked Svetlana Istoshina, who is based in Budapest, for an interview. She did not respond.)

“I am convinced that Bela Kovacs is a GRU agent of influence—a non-charismatic and clumsy agent,” Panyi told The Daily Beast.

Panyi blames Hungarian authorities for botching the prosecution on purpose.

“Hungarian prosecutors intentionally fucked up the investigation,” says Panyi. “They should have caught Kovacs while he was having a meeting with Russian intelligence; but now, when all the case’s materials have been leaked to a pro-Viktor Orban newspaper, Bela Kovacs has had an opportunity to destroy all the evidence. The chance to punish him has been lost.”

Kovacs’ attorney, Szikinger, tells The Daily Beast that prosecutors do have audio recordings of Kovac’ meetings with Russian officials: “Both I and Kovacs have been insisting on making the tapes public, since there is nothing in them, Kovacs was meeting with Russian diplomats and not the intelligence.”

“Many of my colleagues wonder why the leadership put Bela Kovacs on trial,” says Szikinger. The attorney believes that his client’s case is highly political, that precisely because the ruling party of Hungary, Fidesz, has a far-right, anti-immigrant and pro-Russian agenda like Jobbik’s, Kovacs is a target.

Hungary’s independent analysts struggle to define Orban’s strategy for the Kovacs trial. “Orban tries to improve his relations with United States, so right after Helsinki summit, Orban said that the threat to Europe is coming from the South, the migration terrorism and also from the east and this is Russia,” Kreko told The Daily Beast. “The irony here is that just a few days before, Orban was sending a message to NATO that they should have good relationships with Russia; by putting Kovacs on the bench he is trying to prove to the E.U. and the U.S. that Hungary is not the servant of Putin.”

Since the war in Georgia in 2008, Europe has been facing an existential choice of saving peace or moving to a severe punishment for Russia. And since the U.S. intelligence agencies accused Russia of a concerted attack on American democratic institutions during the 2016 presidential campaign that put Donald Trump in office, scrutiny has grown even more intense.

International institutions, it is clear, are now much more concerned about Russian spies than they used to be. Earlier this week The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Special Monitoring Mission expressed concerns about a spy among the organization’s staff passing secret documents to Russian intelligence service. A former European diplomat told The Daily Beast on Sunday that the OSCE suspected an individual from the Russian Embassy in Ukraine, seconded to the OSCE mission for several months: “In this day and age no organization expects to be safe from infiltration, cyber attacks, manipulation,” the diplomat said.

Kovacs’s court case is one more test not only for Hungary but for the entire European Union: will it stay independent or, as Kovacs once predicted, will it be “saved” by Mother Russia?

About that Time Obama Gave an AQ Affiliate Grant Money

Posted on July 25, 2018July 25, 2018 by Denise Simon

There has been lots of chatter about removing the security clearance access of John Brennan and a few others. No one has asked about Hillary’s or…..Obama’s. There has been lots of chatter of impeachment, traitor and treason….but when it comes to aiding and supporting the enemy….check this out.

Grant money is a gift….by the way.

Islamic Relief Agency Admits Illegal Funds Transfer to ...

Islamic Relief Agency Admits Illegal Funds Transfer to ... story and photo, more detail here.

The Middle East Forum has discovered that the Obama administration approved a grant of $200,000 of taxpayer money to an al-Qaeda affiliate in Sudan — a decade after the U.S. Treasury designated it as a terrorist-financing organization. More stunningly, government officials specifically authorized the release of at least $115,000 of this grant even after learning that it was a designated terror organization.

The story began in October 2004, when the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated the Khartoum-based Islamic Relief Agency (ISRA), also known as the Islamic African Relief Agency (IARA), as a terror-financing organization. It did so because of ISRA’s links to Osama bin Laden and his organization Maktab al-Khidamat (MK), the precursor of al-Qaeda.

According to the U.S. Treasury, in 1997 ISRA established formal cooperation with MK. By 2000, ISRA had raised $5 million for bin Laden’s group. The Treasury Department notes that ISRA officials even sought to help “relocate [bin Laden] to secure safe harbor for him.” It further reports that ISRA raised funds in 2003 in Western Europe specifically earmarked for Hamas suicide bombings.

The 2004 designation included all of ISRA’s branches, including a U.S. office called the Islamic American Relief Agency (IARA-USA). Eventually it became known that this American branch had illegally transferred over $1.2 million to Iraqi insurgents and other terror groups, including, reportedly, the Afghan terrorist Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. In 2010, the executive director of IARA-USA and a board member pled guilty to money-laundering, theft of public funds, conspiracy, and several other charges.

ISRA’s influence also spread to Washington. Former U.S. congressman Mark Siljander (R., Mich.) pled guilty in 2010 to obstruction of justice and acting as an unregistered foreign agent after prosecutors found that IARA-USA had paid him $75,000 — using misappropriated USAID grant money — to lobby the government, in an attempt to remove the charity from the government’s terror list.

Despite this well-documented history, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in July 2014 awarded $723,405 to World Vision Inc., an international evangelical charity, to “improve water, sanitation and hygiene and to increase food security in Sudan’s Blue Nile state.” Of these funds, $200,000 was to be directed to a sub-grantee: ISRA.

Responding to a Middle East Forum (MEF) inquiry, a USAID official explains that World Vision had alerted it in November 2014 to the likelihood of ISRA being on the terror list. USAID instructed World Vision to “suspend all activities with ISRA” and informed the State Department, OFAC, and USAID’s Office of the Inspector General. USAID and World Vision then waited for OFAC to confirm whether ISRA was designated or not.

USAID emails obtained by the Middle East Forum reveal that in January 2015, World Vision was growing unhappy while waiting for OFAC’s assessment. Mark Smith, World Vision’s senior director of humanitarian and emergency affairs, wrote to USAID, stating that the Islamic Relief Agency “had performed excellent work” for World Vision in the past, and that “putting contractual relationships in limbo for such a long period is putting a significant strain” on World Vision’s relationship with the Sudanese regime. Smith also revealed that World Vision had submitted a notice to OFAC indicating its “intention to restart work with [ISRA] and to transact with [ISRA]” if OFAC did not respond within a week.

World Vision’s statement stunned USAID officials, who complained that World Vision’s behavior “doesn’t make sense.” USAID official Daniel Holmberg emailed a colleague: “If they actually said that they wanted to resume work with ISRA, while knowing that it was 99% likely that ISRA was on the list then I am concerned about our partnership with them, and whether it should continue.”

On January 23, OFAC confirmed that ISRA was a sanctioned entity and denied World Vision “a license to engage in transactions with [ISRA].” Mark Smith and World Vision’s country program director in Sudan expressed their disappointment, stating that they were in discussions with ISRA as well as the Sudanese regime’s Humanitarian Aid Commission, which regulates the activities of international charities in Sudan.

Despite OFAC’s ruling, in February, World Vision wrote to OFAC and Obama-administration official Jeremy Konyndyk (who then served as director of USAID’s Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance) to apply to OFAC for a new license from USAID to pay ISRA “monies owed for work performed.” According to Larry Meserve, USAID’s mission director for Sudan, World Vision argued that if they did not pay ISRA, “their whole program will be jeopardized.”

While World Vision waited for a decision, on February 22, a pro-regime Sudanese newspaper, Intibaha, reported that the Sudanese political leaders had requested that World Vision be expelled from Sudan’s Blue Nile state. USAID disaster operations specialist Joseph Wilkes and World Vision’s Mark Smith speculated that this was “punishment” for the cancellation of the grant with ISRA, which a USAID official noted is “well connected with the [Sudanese] government.”

Then, incredibly, on May 7, 2015 — after “close collaboration and consultations with the Department of State” — OFAC issued a license to a World Vision affiliate, World Vision International, authorizing “a one-time transfer of approximately $125,000 to ISRA,” of which “$115,000 was for services performed under the sub-award with USAID” and $10,000 was “for an unrelated funding arrangement between Irish Aid and World Vision.”

An unnamed World Vision official described the decision as a “great relief as ISRA had become restive and had threatened legal action, which would have damaged our reputation and standing in Sudan.” Senior USAID official Charles Wanjue wrote to colleagues: “Good news and a great relief, really!” In August 2015, USAID official Daniel Holmberg even told a State Department official that he had been approached by the executive director of ISRA, and requested guidance on helping ISRA remove itself from the U.S. government’s terror list.

Obama-administration officials knowingly approved the transfer of taxpayer dollars to an al-Qaeda affiliate, and not an obscure one but an enormous international network that was often in the headlines.

How was this prominent terror funder initially approved to receive American taxpayer funds ten years after it had been placed on the “Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons” terror list?

Existing measures to prevent the payment of government monies to designated terrorist organizations include: first, a requirement that all grantees and sub-grantees of U.S.-government grants register for a Data Universal Numbering System (DUNS) number; and second, a requirement that all government vendors register with the government’s System for Award Management (SAM) database. A designated organization should not be able to acquire a DUNS number, and any designation is explicitly recorded in the SAM database with a note that the designated organization is excluded from government grants.

However, ISRA was in fact assigned a DUNS number — as recorded at the government’s USAspending.gov website — which matched no organization in the government’s SAM database. The only listings for “Islamic Relief Agency” or “ISRA” in the SAM database are the designated Sudanese al-Qaeda affiliate and its branches.

Whoever approved this grant to ISRA either failed to check the government’s database of designated groups or did so and then chose to disregard it. Both explanations are alarming. And neither answer explains how ISRA acquired a DUNS number.

Most important: Now we know that the government deliberately chose to transfer at least $115,000 to ISRA after confirming that it was on the terror-designation list. In other words, an al-Qaeda front received taxpayers’ money with the apparent complicity of public officials.

It is no secret that the Obama administration sought to downplay the threat of Islamism, and even to coopt some Islamist movements to promote its agenda. In its foreign policy, the administration expressed support for Mohamed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt, while domestically, the White House invited Islamists to design the government’s Countering Violent Extremism program. It is difficult to argue that these efforts were the product of anything but great naïveté and political dogma. Is it possible that this combination extended to deliberately funding an al-Qaeda affiliate?

Congress must investigate this question and, more broadly, where USAID is sending taxpayers’ money, for ISRA might not be the only example. The House’s Foreign Affairs, Oversight, and Financial Services Committees, along with the Senate Finance Committee, must examine how a designated group came to qualify for government monies, why OFAC and the State Department authorized the transfer of funds after learning of ISRA’s terror ties, and which bureaucrat or political appointee was responsible for this mess.

Asked to comment, current State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert told National Review: “As this occurred under the prior Administration, the current Secretary of the State, Secretary of Treasury, and USAID Administrator had no involvement in decisions surrounding this award or subsequent license.”

The American people need to know how their dollars funded an al-Qaeda affiliate. They need to know how deep this problem runs.

*** Millions upon millions come to mind shrink-wrapped on pallets on un-marked airplanes to Tehran comes to mind actually.

About Those Sonic Weapons in China and Cuba

Posted on July 23, 2018July 23, 2018 by Denise Simon

When it comes to Cuba and China, getting any real cooperation is for the most part impossible. The matter of U.S. diplomatic personnel in both countries being affected with several health issues due to some kind of sonic weapon is a scandal few mention anymore. Actually is it any less important than the attacks on our posts in Benghazi, not to diminish the tragic deaths? The use of sonic weapons is an attack on our sovereign territory.

Let’s go deeper.

In a page taken from a Cold War-era playbook, existing evidence clearly suggests that sonic weapons are being used to attack American diplomatic officials in Cuba and China. The U.S. should operate as if this is a provocation that crosses a number of red lines, and it should consider stronger retaliatory actions against both governments.

More than 20 news sources in recent months have dubbed these incidents as a “mystery” or “perplexing.” No news source has been willing to recognize it as a strategic, deliberate action against our diplomatic officials. Thus, the only “mystery” is why the U.S. has not been more aggressive in pushing back against and increasing the consequences for the perpetrators, most likely official elements in China and Cuba. Fear of damaging the “normalization project” between the U.S. and Cuba should not encourage denial of what appears to be deliberate, hostile actions.

In late 2016, U.S. diplomats in Cuba reported serious medical ailments related to incidents that occurred over several months and initially appeared to be linked to sonic attacks. Many of the victims reported strange sounds that were incapacitating and led to a series of medical symptoms, including hearing loss, cognitive issues, temporary imbalance, even mild traumatic brain injuries. Several victims have undergone rehabilitation and every victim is anticipated to return to work eventually. Nonetheless, these patients likely will need to be monitored for the rest of their lives, to determine the full impact of these attacks.
In June, U.S. officials in China faced similar attacks that affected at least one diplomat. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the incident was “similar” and “entirely consistent” with what happened in Cuba.

There are studies that have proposed possible explanations based on experiments, but these tests were limited and did not account for potential physiological damage. A University of Michigan study examined whether ultrasound could be the potential cause of the incidents in Cuba. This experiment led to various possible explanations including ultrasonic emitters – intended for eavesdropping – that produced audible tones that inadvertently may have harmed U.S. diplomats.

The incidents in Cuba targeted 24 government officials and their spouses in specific hotel rooms or private residences; some individuals reported that shifting even a few feet within the room made the auditory sensations cease. Medical examiners have recognized that, while these symptoms could come from viral infections, given the pattern of injuries it is likely the result of a “non-natural cause.” There are some technologies from the Cold War era that could be the source, and intelligence officials are investigating that possibility.

Given the similarities in the attacks and the lack of robust research and development efforts in Cuba, it is plausible that the technology was given to Cuba by the Chinese. China has recently become interested in non-lethal weapons, having developed a weapon known as the Poly WB-1, a long-range pain beam that can be used to break up protests or riots.

China has strong diplomatic and economic ties to Cuba, is Cuba’s number one trading partner, whereby Cuba imported $1.8 billion in goods from China in 2015; President Xi has visited Cuba on several occasions between 2014 and 2015. China has much deeper ties to Latin America and the Caribbean than 15 years ago; it is very plausible that China has military and intelligence links with Cuba. As recently as March 2017, China’s former Defense Minister, Chang Wanquan, met with Leopoldo Cintra Frias, Cuba’s Head of Revolutionary Armed Forces with the hope of improving military cooperation.

The U.S. expelled 15 Cuban Embassy officials – roughly 60 percent of the Cuban Embassy staff – after the 2016 attack, though the diplomatic positions of these individuals remain a mystery. Likewise, the U.S. pulled around 60 percent of its 54 personnel from the U.S. Embassy in Cuba, removing all “nonessential personnel.” The incident in China has not yet led to any expulsion of Chinese Embassy officials although, following these most recent attacks, Secretary Pompeo has called for a taskforce to investigate the possible causes.

Congress held a hearing on the incident in January. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-Calif.) and Ranking Member Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) wrote a letter to the heads of the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control, calling upon them to investigate the matter.

If these investigations prove what appears to be the case – strategic and deliberate hostile actions – then, clearly, much stronger action is needed.

These recent incidents follow decades of low-level harassment of U.S. Embassy staff overseas. Many U.S. diplomats in Cuba have reported incidents of suspicious behavior, invasion of privacy, poisoning of family pets, and other forms of harassment similar to attacks used in Russia on U.S. diplomats.

Given the continued provocations, it is time to admit that these governments see us as adversaries and are likely taking actions against us. China certainly does, given the recent leak of a Chinese memo in February revealing China’s aim to surpass U.S. military strength. Likewise, Cuba does not want normalization of relations; for many years the dictatorship under both Castros has aimed at protecting “the revolution,” and a recent speech by Cuba’s newly appointed dictator, Miguel Diaz-Canel, suggests he does not want normalization either.

We need to address this diplomatically and consider a variety of options, including possibly expelling senior Cuban and Chinese diplomats, until what are very likely purposeful attacks on our personnel stop. We cannot have a normal relationship if we are being abused. We should recognize that this is part of standard operating procedures of both countries, and we need to increase the consequences.

Daniel Runde is a Senior Vice President and William A. Schreyer Chair in Global Analysis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He previously worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development, the World Bank Group, and in investment banking, with experience in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East.

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The LRAD sound cannon is one of the better-known acoustic weapons designed to disperse crowds or disable a hostile target. It emits bursts of loud, irritating sounds that can discourage violent behavior.

Aside from being annoyed from an ear walloping, those targeted can also experience effects like headaches and nausea.

Sound as ammo

Since acoustic weapons use sound, these weapons deliver what could be described as “invisible” attacks.

One interesting twist in acoustic weaponry is Raytheon’s research into a “sonic shield.” Towards the end of 2011, Raytheon filed a very interesting patent for this weapon.

Both shield and weapon

The Sonic Shield looks and functions like the riot shield that military and law enforcement use – but this shield is also a weapon.

Typically, acoustic weapons use sound against a target’s sense of hearing. But rather than target the ear, this acoustic weapon targets the lungs.

It would unleash this invisible “ammo” in a way that can cause the sensation of suffocation. So if you were a target, you would suddenly have a sense of suffocation but have no idea what was causing it – because the beam can not be seen.

The user can choose the intensity and unleash the invisible acoustic “ammo” at a level meant to warn and deter through to one intended to “temporarily incapacitate.”

Blasting wall of sound

According to the patent, Raytheon also aimed for a bunch of shields to be able to coordinate and work together to deliver a wall of sound.

The networked shields would provide a powerful combined beam. One shield could be designated as the lead or “master” shield, with the others being subserviant. The master shield would direct and coordinate the beam patterns.

A team of shields would deliver a more sophisticated beam with better power, range than the capabilities of a single shield.

For example, they could be used to create a more effective perimeter in a large riot scenario when trying to contain a dangerous situation.

How does it work?

The sonic shield looks and functions like a riot shield. It is a fortified “shell” with one side for the user and the other to face the target.

There is an acoustic horn as well as a sonic pulse generator built into the physical shell of the shield. This sonic pulse generator creates the acoustic pulses that blast out through the horn directed at the target.

When the user fires, the shield triggers the sonic pulse generator to generate a shot. The shot can include a burst of multiple pulses at a repetition rate fixed (or varied) for each of three settings: Warn, Stun or Incapacitate.

The shield could also be equipped with a sensor that measures the distance to the target. If the target moves, then the weapon could automatically adjust to maintain the same pressure. More here.

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In fact, LRAD, which is 33 inches in diameter and looks like a giant spotlight, has been used by the U.S. military in Iraq and at sea as a non-lethal force. In these settings, operators can use the device not only to convey orders, but also as a weapon.
When in weapon mode, LRAD blasts a tightly controlled stream of caustic sound that can be turned up to high enough levels to trigger nausea or possibly fainting. The operators themselves remain unaffected since the noise is contained in its focused beam.
“We’ve devised a system with a multiplicity of individual speakers that are phased so sound that would normally go off to the side or up or down, cancels out, while sound directly in front is reinforced,” Norris explained. “It’s kind of like the way a lens magnifies a beam of light.” The Department of Defense gave Norris and his team funding to develop LRAD following the 9/11 attacks. The concept is to offer an intermediate tool to warn and ward off attacking combatants before resorting to force.

Is John Brennan Exploiting his Security Clearance for Money?

Posted on July 23, 2018July 23, 2018 by Denise Simon

Did Brennan Start Russia Investigation Because of Liberal ...

Hat tip to Senator Rand Paul:

Is John Brennan monetizing his security clearance? Is John Brennan making millions of dollars divulging secrets to the mainstream media with his attacks on @realDonaldTrump ?

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) July 23, 2018

Former Obama National Security Council advisor and Director of the CIA, John Brennan is constantly on CNN. When there is a commercial break, Brennan is tweeting:

Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the threshold of “high crimes & misdemeanors.” It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump’s comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican Patriots: Where are you???

— John O. Brennan (@JohnBrennan) July 16, 2018

Mr. Trump: Your hypocrisy knows no bounds. Jim Clapper is a man of integrity, honesty, ethics, & morality. You are not. Jim Clapper served his country for over a half century, including in Vietnam. You did not. By your words & behavior, you diminish the Office of the Presidency. https://t.co/bYlmZInDoM

— John O. Brennan (@JohnBrennan) April 28, 2018

Why does Brennan still have security clearance?

Brennan spent 25 years at CIA. He was once the station chief in Saudi Arabia and worked as an Near East and South Asia analyst. Given his history and security clearance, Brennan is a paid national security and intelligence analyst for NBC, MSNBC and CNN. Sidebar reminder, in 1976, he voted for Gus Hall for president. Gus was the Communist Party USA candidate. Another sidebar, when he was CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia, the Khobar Towers were bombed killing 19 U.S. servicemen. Oh yeah, he was quite critical of the intelligence community for missing the signs of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Christmas Day bomber….ahem….what about Crimea and Ukraine? Oh yeah….ISIS the JV team? How was it too that his own personal emails were hacked and posted on Wikileaks in 2015? A British hacker, Kane Gamble posed as Brennan and hacked into Brennan’s private email and iCloud accounts as well as Brennan’s wife’s iPad.

A little over the top isn’t it?

Well meanwhile:

Congressman Goodlatte has a subpoena for Brennan and Comey. This is due to the released FISA document. One of the FISA applications was signed by Brennan and others also included Comey’s signature. Seems Goodlatte is gonna bring in Loretta Lynch as well. Let’s see about all that impartiality shall we?

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The Trump-Russia sleuthers have been back in the news, again giving Americans cause to doubt their claims of nonpartisanship. Last week it was Federal Bureau of Investigation agent Peter Strzok testifying to Congress that he harbored no bias against a president he still describes as “horrible” and “disgusting.” This week it was former FBI Director Jim Comey tweet-lecturing Americans on their duty to vote Democratic in November.

But the man who deserves a belated bit of scrutiny is former Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan. He’s accused President Trump of “venality, moral turpitude and political corruption,” and berated GOP investigations of the FBI. This week he claimed on Twitter that Mr. Trump’s press conference in Helsinki was “nothing short of treasonous.” This is rough stuff, even for an Obama partisan.

That’s what Mr. Brennan is—a partisan—and it is why his role in the 2016 scandal is in some ways more concerning than the FBI’s. Mr. Comey stands accused of flouting the rules, breaking the chain of command, abusing investigatory powers. Yet it seems far likelier that the FBI’s Trump investigation was a function of arrogance and overconfidence than some partisan plot. No such case can be made for Mr. Brennan. Before his nomination as CIA director, he served as a close Obama adviser. And the record shows he went on to use his position—as head of the most powerful spy agency in the world—to assist Hillary Clinton’s campaign (and keep his job).

Mr. Brennan has taken credit for launching the Trump investigation. At a House Intelligence Committee hearing in May 2017, he explained that he became “aware of intelligence and information about contacts between Russian officials and U.S. persons.” The CIA can’t investigate U.S. citizens, but he made sure that “every information and bit of intelligence” was “shared with the bureau,” meaning the FBI. This information, he said, “served as the basis for the FBI investigation.” My sources suggest Mr. Brennan was overstating his initial role, but either way, by his own testimony, he as an Obama-Clinton partisan was pushing information to the FBI and pressuring it to act.

Keep reading Kimberley Strassel’s column in the Wall Street Journal.

Putin Must Bring the KGB Files when he Visits White House

Posted on July 20, 2018July 20, 2018 by Denise Simon

There is much anticipation of the repatriation of the POW/MIA from North Korea as a result of the Singapore Summit. As of the time of this post, still none have been returned yet coordination is still underway as stated by the U.S. State Department.

But, it must be understood, the KGB, now FSB maintains files on many American military that in fact ended up in Soviet military hospitals as well as various gulags. To date, Russia for the most part not only denies this but the evidence remains not only from the conflict of North Korea but Vietnam as well.

In June 1951, Lois got a telegram telling her Moore had been shot down while piloting an F-51 Mustang over the South China Sea, off the coast of North Korea. He was reported as missing in action.

On Dec. 31, 1953, the Air Force notified Lois that Harry was presumed dead and was listed as killed in action.

Lois decided she had to move on. She moved to California. She connected there with Harry’s brother, Bob. They reminisced about Harry and grew closer. In 1954, they married. Bob raised Jana as his own daughter, and he and Lois had a daughter of their own, Nancy. They owned a medical-manufacturing business, and in 1996 retired to Star, Idaho.

In August 2002, Lois received a Federal Express package from the Air Force.

In it, a July 19, 2002, memo to the Air Force Missing Persons Branch from the Department of Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office read: “(I)t is possible that Capt. Harry C. Moore survived his shoot-down incident and may have been interrogated by Soviet officials. His fate afterwards remains unknown.”

The Moores were shocked. “We thought, goodness gracious, there is still hope he could be alive,” said Bob Moore. “For 50 years we had closure. … Now we have uncertainty. He may have been suffering for all that time in some Russian prison.”

In March 1954, the U.S. Air Force asked the CIA for assistance in finding U.S. servicemen in Communist custody. More here.

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Related reading: The ‘1205 Document’: A Story of American Prisoners, Vietnamese Agents, Soviet Archives, Washington Bureaucrats, and the Media

***

Mark Sauter began doing some lengthy research on his own for others.

Sauter, whose findings inspired him to co-author a book and start his own blog, was further inspired after the fall of the Soviet Union and the establishment of the U.S.–Russia Joint Commission on POW/MIAs in 1992. For the first time, U.S. officials were given access to Russian archives and former Soviet military personnel, some of whom appeared to confirm that U.S. pilots had indeed been taken prisoner in Russia. While Harry Moore was never named specifically, the commission reportedly turned up potential clues.

One former Soviet airman recalled hearing of a captured U.S. pilot with a similar physical appearance to Harry Moore’s who went on to become an instructor for Soviet recruits. An Estonian witness said in 1993 he remembered a Captain “Harry or Gary Moore” who was shot down in the summer of 1951 and had been interrogated by the Soviet 64th Fighter Aviation Corps. Perhaps the most shocking piece of evidence came in 1997, when U.S. representatives interviewed Aleksey Alekseevich Kalyuzhniy in Ukraine. Kalyuzhniy claimed to have piloted the MiG-15 that took down what may have been Harry Moore’s plane on June 1, 1951, and that he witnessed it land less than a hundred feet from shore.

“[T]he F-51 pilot appeared to be in complete control of the aircraft as it gently landed on the sea,” Kalyuzhniy said, adding that he believed the pilot could easily have survived the wreck. More here.

Going back to 1992, the LATimes reported that Stalin has executed some American prisoners after WWII. Russian investigators declared they have found no evidence including those POW/MIA’s from North Korea or Vietnam.

The Soviet Union under dictator Josef Stalin “summarily executed” some American prisoners after World War II and forced others, some of whom are still alive, to renounce their citizenship, Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin said in a letter to a Senate committee Wednesday.

But no evidence uncovered by Russian investigators so far indicates that American POWs from the Vietnam or the Korean wars were transferred to the Soviet Union, said Dmitri Volkogonov, the senior Russian emissary who read Yeltsin’s letter to the Senate Select Committee on POW-MIA Affairs.

Yeltsin’s letter spoke only in general terms of newly discovered documents indicating “the shocking facts” of some prisoners being executed by the regime of Stalin “and in a number of cases being forced to renounce their U.S. citizenship.”

But the letter also said the rights of all surviving American POWs “are now fully guaranteed” and they are free to return to the United States if they choose. “There are no American citizens forcibly held on the territory of Russia,” Yeltsin said.

*** The CIA has files in addition to the known KGB files, yet as of this writing they are still classified. Question is why?

There are locations of particular question and they include Military Hospital 404 located in Novosysoyevka. Two American spy planes were shot down in the waters near Vladivostok during the Cold War. There were yet another up to as many as 30 planes shot down above Soviet borders between 1950 and 1970 with an estimated 252 American crew members. Other locations possibly include Tayshet, Vorkuta.

Vladimir Central Prison - Vladimir

Ул. Московская. | Mapio.net

Please note page 43, Americans in the Gulag in this document.

Perhaps the WRINGER program, which the collection is housed at the Library of Congress can shed some daylight to a few questions.

Following World War II, thousands of German and Japanese prisoners of war (POWs) were incarcerated in the forced labor camps of the Soviet Union. These POWs were forced to help rebuild the Soviet Union following the Second World War. Beginning in 1946, the Soviet Union began releasing thousands of these German and Japanese POWs to their homeland. U.S. Air Force officers quickly realized the tremendous political and military information these ex-POWs possessed, and initiated an intensive interview program. From 1947 through 1956, U.S. Air Force personnel in the U.S. Zone of Germany interviewed over 300,000 ex-POWs. A similar program was intiated by the U.S. Air Force in Japan upon the return of thousands of Japanese POWs.

WRINGER sources ranged from common laborers to highly skilled technicians. These men were detained in forced labor camps throughout the former Soviet Union. The fact that an ex-POW had no particular knowledge did not make the individual valueless. Almost all German and Japanese ex-POWs had the ability to remember at least the broad details of the places where they had worked. Most importantly, some of them remembered meeting, seeing, or hearing about U.S. and allied servicemen who were also detained in the forced labor camps.

Researchers from the Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Persons Office (DPMO), Joint Commission Support Directorate (JCSD) have initiated a concerted effort to review the WRINGER reports. They are specifically searching for reports that may shed light on the numerous eyewitness sightings of U.S. servicemen reportedly held in Soviet forced labor camps. The WRINGER reports are now declassified and stored in 1,350 boxes at the National Archives’ College Park repository.

In addition, the WRINGER reports have triggered considerable interest among many outside researchers. Scholars of the Soviet period have commented on the detail and accuracy contained in the reports, indicating the importance they have for their own inquiries into those individuals unaccounted-for in the Gulag.

Working under authority of the U.S.-Russia Joint Commission on POW/MIAs, the Joint Commission Support Division (JCSD) of the United States Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) makes available to the public those documents obtained from archives in the former Soviet Union that pertain to Americans who are unaccounted for from World War II, the Korean Conflict, the Cold War, and the war in Southeast Asia. The documents have been translated from Russian into English.

The documents indexed in this database were retrieved from various official Soviet-era and Russian archives, and were redacted (edited) to remove personal information, as well as information regarding the location, condition, and treatment of the missing Americans. United States law requires redaction of such information in order to preserve privacy.

The archive folders often contain a large number of documents that relate to a particular event or subject. The documents offered to the public at this website were selected from those larger archival files according to their relevance to the actual cases of unaccounted-for Americans. Therefore, selected pages of often larger documents are included in this database. One archive subject heading may contain hundreds or thousands of pages of documents, only a few of which may cite information on the American(s) whose whereabouts is questioned. For example, the classification “TFR65-1” (designating “Task Force Russia”) refers to archive document number 65, page one (and, in some cases, additional following pages). The user may also find the designation “TFR65-23,” which indicates that the document being viewed is page 23 of document 65. Pages 2 through 22 may or may not have been translated and released to the public. This numbering system was established by the DPMO/JCSD personnel who actually examined and retrieved the documents.

The documents have been indexed in order to provide organized searching. The index includes the title of the document (or a statement concerning its subject if the document has no exact title), document date, the total number of pages, name(s) identified in the document, keywords, and comments giving the searcher additional information about the document. Once the search term(s) is entered in the search engine, a list of “hits” will appear. The searcher may click on each “hit” and then click on “view tiff image” link to view the image of the complete document.

More detail is here about the WRINGER program. The document was declassified in 2017. It is an interview, oral summary with Colonel Robert Work from the HQ Air Intelligence Agency.