Category Archives: Whistleblower

Ruh Roh, State Dept. Knew of Hillary’s Emails

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While Hillary blamed her ‘Blackberry’ for malfunctions, she knew so little that it was the server, not her NON-issued mobile device(s). Huma pushed back hard to several at the State Department, calling for more secure conditions, calling them silly. State even offered generators to ensure that private server would not fail. What????

EXCLUSIVE: Clinton Aides Resisted State Department Suggestion That Clinton Use State.gov Account

Great job to DC and Chuck:

Bombshell emails from the State Department show that a top official at the agency suggested to Hillary Clinton’s aide, Huma Abedin, in Aug. 2011 that the then-secretary of state begin using a government email account to protect against unexpected outages of her private email server.

But as the emails show, Abedin pushed back on the suggestion, telling the official, Stephen D. Mull, then the executive secretary of the State Department, that a State-issued Blackberry equipped with a state.gov email address “doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

Besides showing that Clinton’s top aides were against the idea of her using a state.gov email account, the emails show for the first time that top State Department officials were aware of Clinton’s private email server arrangement.

The Daily Caller obtained the emails through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed on its behalf by the government watchdog group, Cause of Action.

The State Department — and Clinton — have resisted questions about who inside the State Department knew about and signed off on the private server, which Clinton kept at her house in New York. The FBI seized that device in August after it was discovered that two “top secret” emails had been sent to Clinton.

Besides Mull, the emails show that Patrick Kennedy, the under secretary for management at the State Department, knew of the private server. Kennedy is a powerful figure within the State Department. The career diplomat handles logistical issues within the agency and was the official responsible for requesting emails from Clinton and her aides.

The first email in the Aug. 30, 2011 chain was sent from Mull and addressed to Mills, though Abedin, Kennedy, and Monica Hanley, another Clinton aide, were copied on the correspondence.

“Thanks for alerting me to the communications issues the Secretary has been having,” Mull wrote.

In the email, Mull mentioned Clinton’s use of the personal email server and also proposed providing Clinton with a new Blackberry equipped with a state.gov email account.

“We are working to provide the Secretary per her request a Department issued Blackberry to replaced her personal unit which is malfunctioning,” wrote Mull, noting that the device was malfunctioning “possibly because of [sic] her personal email server is down.”

He offered to prepare two Blackberries, one of which would include “an operating State Department email account.”

And curiously, Mull noted that the official version “would mask her identity” but “would also be subject to FOIA requests.”

Mull also suggested a new communications package for Clinton which, he wrote, “will include things that anticipate the normally unexpected such as hurricanes, power outages, earthquakes, locusts, etc.”

The package included “generators, uninterrupted power supplies, supplementary satellite capabilities, including satellite phones for when local infrastructure fails.”

Other emails released by the State Department have showed that Clinton’s email sever crashed at least three other times. The crash in and around Aug. 30, 2011 seems to be the fourth documented outage. Other crashes occurred in Oct. 2012, well after Mull offered suggestions to Clinton’s staff, suggesting that the problem was never fixed.

Likewise, Mull’s suggestion that Clinton begin using a state.gov-equipped Blackberry device was met with resistance from Abedin, the emails show.

“Let’s discuss the state blackberry, doesn’t make a whole lot of sense,” Abedin wrote.

The State Department has claimed in court filings that Clinton was not provided a government-issued Blackberry. In August, the agency stated in response to another FOIA lawsuit that it “does not believe that any personal computing device was issued by the Department to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and has not located any such device at the Department.”

The filing made no mention of the effort to provide Clinton with an official device.

In her email to Mull, Abedin also asserted that “even the white house attested” that outages were a “pretty wide spread problem, not just affecting us.”

“Thanks for reminding all of this very helpful context,” Mull responded solely to Abedin.

She emailed back: “Its pretty silly and she knows it.” It is unclear if Abedin was referring to Clinton or to Mills, who was the first to email Mull about the communications issues.

 

Stephen Mull Emails to Cheryl Mills

No comment from the State Department…Hillary?

 

 

 

 

Where is Barbara Boxer on the Iran Deal Now?

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Inspectors will monitor Iran’s key nuclear facilities 24 hours a day, 365 days a year,” President Obama promised yesterday. Praising the Iran deal’s implementation, he asserted that Iran cannot build a nuclear weapon and that the Middle East has been made safer. Tellingly, the president also referenced Iran’s detention of U.S. sailors last week: “We worked directly with the Iranian government and secured the release of our sailors in less than 24 hours.” These two quotes illustrate President Obama’s kidnapping of realist international-relations theory, which, as he sees it, involves balancing U.S. interests with the realities of a complicated world. Or, as he puts it, “Don’t do stupid sh**.”

The president believes that, with a mix of hard compromise and unwavering leadership, he has prevented a nuclear-arms race and facilitated Iranian political moderation. But this isn’t realism; it is delusion.
First off, it’s willfully ignorant. Consider again President Obama’s remark on inspecting “Iran’s key nuclear facilities.” It’s relevant because it reminds us that the deal in fact prevents timely inspections of other Iranian military sites. And by describing only some nuclear facilities as “key,” President Obama is tacitly accepting Iran’s obstruction of non-key facility inspections. Iran will simply use military sites for nuclear-weaponization research and then claim those facilities are off limits or clean them up before inspections. This isn’t really debatable; after all, Iran’s ongoing ballistic-missile tests prove its public determination to build a nuclear-weapons delivery platform. Of course, announcing new sanctions yesterday on eleven individuals and organizations connected to Iranian ballistic-missile research, the president said he will “remain steadfast in opposing Iran’s destabilizing behavior elsewhere.” He neglected — as do most in the media — to mention that these new sanctions are so weak that they’re functionally irrelevant. Iran will simply use new cut-out entities and further evasion to continue its ballistic activities. The Obama administration knows this, the Sunni monarchies know this, the Iranians know this, and the Europeans — who cannot wait to get their hands on Iranian business contracts — are banking on it.

The second way in which this deal distorts realist theory is in its fatally narrow-minded strategic vision. As I noted recently at National Review Online, Iran’s unchallenged dissection of U.S. credibility on inspections, missile tests, support for regional terrorism, etc., is fueling reciprocal escalation by the Sunni-Arab monarchies. As a consequence, opportunities for political moderation in the Middle East are rapidly being displaced by sectarian extremism. Making matters worse, as attested by President Obama’s failure to meet with Jordan’s King Abdullah in Washington last week, the president seems to have decided to simply ignore America’s Sunni allies. This preference for a short-term perceived win (the Iran deal) over long-term U.S. influence with the Sunni kingdoms (promoting political reform and restraining their sectarian impulses) further exemplifies the president’s defective realism. Yet the president’s realist delusion is enabled by many in the international-relations community. Just contemplate how his Twitter supporters mobilized this weekend. Professor Daniel Drezner of Tufts University gleefully tweeted: “All US negotiations with Iran this week have been a win-win. Which, if you believe relations with Iran’s regime are zero-sum, is infuriating.” Drezner also claimed that the Iranians released in exchange for Jason Rezaian and Amir Hekmati and two other Americans were largely insignificant actors. Vox’s Max Fisher tweeted: “Amazing fact: Iran surrenders the bulk of its nuclear program, and it is considered a partisan issue in America whether that is good or bad.” From the Council on Foreign Relations, Micah Zenko tweeted that every Joint Staff and Central Command defense planner is “elated.” All these claims deserve great scrutiny. First, while defense planners hope the Iran deal will hold, they also know it fuels second- and third-order risks of sectarian escalation. Moreover, although I support the deal to release Rezaian and company, we shouldn’t pretend that the released Iranians are insignificant. They were variously involved in supporting Iran’s satellite communications capability, in stealing U.S. technology for the Iranian military, and in hacking into the U.S. power-grid and airline-service databases. According to an American cyber-investigations firm, the airport hacking involved Iranian attempts to access ground-crew credentials. It doesn’t take a genius to understand why Iran wants access to civilian aircraft and power infrastructure: the capability to launch spectacular attacks on U.S. and allied interests. Again, realism demands our assessment of the facts in the context of Iran’s previous actions. For one, we should remember Iran’s 2011 attempt to blow up a packed Washington, D.C., restaurant. Oh, and as Josh Rogin reports, two other Iranian suspects the Obama administration has agreed to stop pursuing are involved in the drowning and starving of Syrian civilians. Related: Assad Is Deliberately Starving Sunni Muslims in Syria Finally, any true realist must also accept what this deal means for hard-liners aligned with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRGC). Holding dominion over key sectors of Iran’s economy and controlling foreign commercial access to the economy, the IRGC is getting a big payday. Realism also requires our objective assessment as to where the IRGC will spend its money: exported death. Consider that in the past five years, the IRGC has plotted an attack on the U.S. capital, supported the Taliban, assassinated U.S. allies in cities such as Beirut, and kidnapped U.S. citizens. And upon presenting these tests of U.S. resolve, the IRGC has witnessed two distinct Obama-administration responses: silence and, as in the case of last week’s sailor kidnap, gratitude. Yesterday, we learned of another Iranian test: Within the past few days, several Americans were kidnapped by a militia in Baghdad. I would confidently venture that an IRGC-proxy such as Kataib Hezbollah is responsible. As I warned back in December, “if the IRGC leadership senses American weakness, it will take hostile action (directly, via KH, or via covert subgroups) against U.S. interests.” Don’t get me wrong; realism demands that we actively pursue diplomacy with Iran. Iran’s youthful population is an existential threat to the theocrats and a source of major internal political pressure. We must not alienate these future leaders with a leap to military action. Yet by our failure to deter Iran’s hard-liners, we only encourage them further. And in their empowerment, political moderation perishes. Foreign-policy realism demands that we sometimes deal with unpleasant people. But it also requires our commitment to honest policy.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/429907/obamas-realism-iran?utm_campaign=trueAnthem%3A+Trending+Content&utm_content=569ce98d04d3012242625e14&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter

Eric Holder has Teamed up with Hillary

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via GIPHY   (Hat tip, Weekly Standard)

This could also tell us that Holder is working deeply with the Clinton campaign on all her legal issues that include the server and the foundation….wow, no doubt eh?

Eric Holder: ‘Progressive’ Hillary Best to ‘Protect Obama Legacy’

She’s an “agent of change.”

TruthRevolt: Anyone who watched Sunday evening’s Democrat debate, or who has followed presidential contender Hillary Clinton’s rhetoric of late, knows she has been doing an inordinate amount of pandering to Obama voters.

Full of praise for the Obama administration, its policies and initiatives, Clinton is beginning to sound like an Obama’s greatest cheerleader. While on its face it seems the former First Lady is simply looking to garner the support of Obama disciples, according to Attorney General Eric Holder, who recently endorsed the Democrat frontrunner, Clinton is actually the best candidate to uphold Obama’s legacy.

In fact, Holder thinks the former Secretary of State is just as “progressive” as socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders. He also said that black voters can’t afford to allow “wistfulness” at the closer of Obama’s presidency keep them from the polls. During an interview with The Washington Post on Sunday Holder discussed why Clinton is the best candidate to “continue the great work that President Obama and his administration did.”

When asked what he would say to black voters who are not as excited about the candidates this time around, Holder explained why Clinton will “protect the Obama legacy” and that she is an “agent of change.”:

“I think what people have to understand is that what we have to do is protect the Obama legacy. We’ve made really substantial progress in the last eight years — it’ll be eight years at the end of 2016 — and the question is who is best situated to protect that legacy and not let the progress that we have made get rolled back. And there is no question that there are going to be attempts to roll back the Affordable Care Act, they sent [President Obama] a bill the week before last that he had to veto. There will certainly be efforts to counter the executive actions that he’s taken on immigration issues, when it comes to gun safety issues and his foreign policy.

“You need somebody who’s got a record on those issues that’s consistent with the positions that the president took, and Hillary Clinton is that person, there’s no question. They are in lockstep when it comes to gun safety issues. Sen. [Bernie] Sanders, quite frankly, is not. So to the extent that people are a bit of a nostalgic, wistful feeling, I think that ought to be converted into a concern for the future and for the preservation of all the great work that President Obama and his administration did.”

Some voters don’t think Clinton, compared to Sen. Bernie Sanders, is progressive enough.

“People have not, for whatever reason, focused on the fact that Hillary Clinton is and always has been a change agent. If you look at her record as a progressive and think about what she did early in her career at Children’s Defense Fund. We can talk about here in South Carolina where she worked to make sure that kids were not incarcerated, jailed with adults. Health care — Hillary Clinton led the fight for health care during the Bill Clinton administration. Although the overall effort wasn’t successful, the CHIP program came out of that effort.

Holder told the Post that, from his perspective, people are confused about who Clinton is as a political figure.

“There’s no question in my mind that she is a progressive,” he said.

And there’s no question in our minds either, Holder.

NY Judge Gives Victory Decision to U.S. Islamists

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Court Requires NYPD to Purge Docs on Terrorists Inside U.S.

Muslim community sued police over surveillance programs

FreeBeacon: The New York Police Department has been directed by a U.S. court to remove from its online records an investigation pertaining to the rise of Islamic extremists in the West and the threats these individuals pose to American safety, according to legal documents.

As part of a settlement agreement reached earlier this month with Muslim community advocates in U.S. District Court, the NYPD will purge from its website an extensive report that experts say has been critical to the department’s understanding of radical Islam and its efforts to police the threat.

The court settlement also stipulates that the NYPD make a concerted effort to mitigate the impact of future terror investigations on certain religious and political groups, according to a copy of the court documents published by the American Civil Liberties Union, which has spearheaded the case since June 2013.

Legal experts and critics of the settlement maintain that it could hamper future terrorism investigations and view it as part of a larger campaign by Muslim advocacy organizations in the United States to dismantle surveillance programs encompassing that community.

Critics expressed particular concern about the case in light of a recent surge in attacks on U.S. citizens committed by individuals pledging allegiance to terror groups such as ISIS.

A key portion of the settlement focuses on the NYPD’s purported use of a document produced by the department’s intelligence division to examine how radicalized individuals make their way to the United States and carry out terror attacks.

The document, “Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat,” aimed to provide local law enforcement and policy makers with information about domestic terrorists and their operations.

As part of the settlement agreement, the NYPD will be forced to remove the publication from its database and vow not to rely on it in the future.

The NYPD and New York state government agencies included in the case “represent that they do not, have not, and will not rely upon the Radicalization in the West report to open or extend investigations,” according to the settlement. “Defendants will remove the Radicalization in the West report from the NYPD website.”

The settlement further affirms that the NYPD will be “committed to mitigating the potential impact” of future investigations on political and religious groups, such as those in the Muslim-American community.

While NYPD officials would not comment Thursday when contacted by the Washington Free Beacon, a spokesperson directed a reporter to a recent press release affirming the department’s commitment to upholding the court settlement.

The NYPD and relevant New York state agencies will “provide additional guidance to police officers as part of a settlement of lawsuits accusing the NYPD of improperly investigating Muslim groups,” according to the Jan. 7 press release. “While the City did not admit to engaging in any improper practices, the changes represent an effort to provide more detailed guidance to NYPD personnel within the existing Handschu Guidelines,” which govern how authorities investigate political activities.

The NYPD confirmed that it would remove from its website the 2007 radicalization report.

The department will additionally incorporate into the guidelines “police policies against religious profiling” and insert an additional “provision for considering the impact investigations have on people who are not targets of investigations,” according to the statement.

John Miller, the NYPD’s deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism, maintained in a statement that the settlement would not “weaken the [department’s] ability to fulfill its steadfast commitment to investigate and prevent terrorist activity in New York City.”

However, some experts have cast doubt on this statement, claiming that the decision to delete the anti-terrorism handbook will impact officers’ ability to understand how terrorists organize and operate in the United States.

Benjamin Weingarten, a writer and national security analyst who has covered the court case, said that local police departments should be relying more heavily on the now-banned counterterror analysis.

Referring to the recent shooting of a Philadelphia police officer by a radicalized individual who allegedly pledged allegiance to ISIS, Weingarten noted that the assailant followed the “‘four stages of radicalization’ detailed in the NYPD report.”

The information about radical terrorists provided in “the NYPD’s analysis may have at the least led Philadelphia authorities to dig deeper and flag him,” he said.

The settlement further reflects a larger cultural shift in America that shuns terms such as “war on terror” and “Muslim terrorism,” Weingarten said.

“To pursue a see-no-Islam counter-jihadist strategy is not only absurd and contradictory on its face, but its a severe dereliction of duty—ignorance is not an excuse, and it represents a failure to do everything necessary to defend against an ideology that seeks to undermine the Constitution and subvert and destroy Western civilization again, according to Islamic supremacists themselves,” he said.

Stephen Coughlin, an attorney and intelligence officer, expressed concern about what he described as a widening attempt by local and federal authorities to redefine the nature of domestic counter-terror efforts.

“I am greatly concerned with the imposition of [the case] which, I believe, exists to replace counter-terror efforts,” Coughlin said. “This is a continuation of a purging of evidentiary based counter-terror analysis first initiated in 2011.”

The ACLU and Muslim community advocates initially filed the lawsuit following reports after the 9/11 terror attacks that the NYPD was running a domestic spy operation centered on the American-Muslim community.

The ACLU, which would not comment on record for this report, directed the Free Beacon to a recent editorial published in the Guardian celebrating the court decision.

“Bias-based policing legitimizes religious discrimination, It can pave the way to copy-cat approaches by other agencies and set the stage for hate crimes nationwide,” wrote Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU’s national security project, and Ramzi Kassem, a law professor at the City University of New York.

“We hope the settlement announced this week pulls our city and its police department out of a downward spiral by reaffirming core values and principles, ones just as necessary to a local police force as they are to a rational debate on civil rights and liberties nationally,” they wrote.

*** It goes back a long way, directly post 9/11.

3 Americans Kidnapped from Brothel in Baghdad

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Three Americans reported missing from a Baghdad neighborhood were kidnapped by militiamen from an apartment in the capital on Saturday, a senior police official and resident of the building said.

A statement from Baghdad Operations Command on Monday confirmed that “three people with American citizenship” were kidnapped in the capital.

A Baghdad police colonel, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media, said that the Americans are employed as contractors at the Baghdad International Airport. He did not say which company employed the individuals.

Another police official in Baghdad, a major general also speaking on condition of anonymity, gave the names of the abducted individuals as Amro Mohamed, Wael al-Mahdawi, and Rusul Farad, a woman. The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad did not respond to a request to verify the names. Two senior security officials said that the missing Americans are of Iraqi origin.

The three Americans appear to have been seized by Shiite militiamen in the Dora neighborhood in southern Baghdad, the police colonel said. The area from which they were taken is controlled by Shiite militias, including the Iran-backed Asai’b Ahl al-Haq, or League of the Righteous, he said.

The colonel said that the group had been invited to the home of their Iraqi interpreter.

Missing Americans in Iraq reportedly kidnapped from ‘brothel’ apartment

FNC: A group of Americans who disappeared in Baghdad over the weekend were kidnapped from their interpreter’s apartment, according to multiple Iraqi sources.

The apartment is well-known in southern Baghdad as a brothel and is subject to frequent raids by Shiite militias, including the Iran-backed Asa’ib ah al-Haqq, a police official and a building resident told The Washington Post.

“We are in very direct contact with the Iraqi authorities… there is a very full effort going to find them as soon as possible,” Secretary of State John Kerry told Fox News Monday.

An Iraqi intelligence official told the Associated Press that the Americans were invited into the apartment in the neighborhood of Dora. After they were abducted, they were taken to Sadr City, at which point the official said, “all communications and contact stopped.”

A spokesman for Baghdad’s Joint Operations Command told The Washington Post that the three citizens were Iraqis who had acquired U.S. citizenship. A Baghdad police official said they worked as contractors at Baghdad International Airport, but did not say which country employed them.

The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad confirmed Sunday that “several” Americans had vanished, while the State Department said it was working with the Iraqi government to locate them.

The Arab news channel Al-Arabiya first reported that three Americans had been kidnapped by militas. However, U.S. officials have not confirmed either the number of missing Americans or that they were kidnapped.

“The safety and security of American citizens overseas is our highest priority” State Department spokesman John Kirby told Fox News Sunday.‎ We are working with the full cooperation of the Iraqi authorities to locate and recover the individuals. Due to privacy considerations, I have nothing further.”

There were no immediate claims of responsibility. Kidnappings in Iraq have been carried out by ISIS, Shiite militias and criminal gangs often demanding ransom payments or seeking to resolve workplace disputes.

Following the ISIS takeover of Iraq’s second largest city Mosul and large swaths of territory in the country’s north and west, Iraq has witnessed a deterioration in security as government forces were sent to front lines and Shiite militias were empowered to aid in the fight following the collapse of the Iraqi military.

Last month a Qatari hunting party was kidnapped in Iraq’s south by unidentified gunmen and their whereabouts are still unknown. In September 18 Turkish workers were kidnapped from their construction site in Baghdad’s Sadr city by masked men in military uniforms. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi blamed organized crime for the kidnapping. The workers were released later that month.

The most recent incident comes after a week that has seen a deterioration of security in and around the Iraqi capital after months of relative calm.

ISIS claimed a number of attacks in Baghdad and Diyala province last week that killed more than 50 people, including a high profile attack on a mall in the Iraqi capital.

***

Details on this Shiite militia:

Asaib Ahl al-Haq Asaib Ahl al-Haq (AAH) emerged between 2006 and 2008 as part of an effort by the IRGC Qods Force to create a popular organization similar to Lebanese Hizb Allah that would be easier to shape than Moqtada al-Sadr’s uncontrollable Jaysh al-Mahdi (JAM) movement. AAH was built around one of al-Sadr’s key rivals, a protégé of al-Sadr’s father called Qais al-Khazali who had consistently opposed al-Sadr’s cease-fire agreements with the U.S. and Iraqi militaries. After AAH undertook the kidnap and murder of five U.S. soldiers on January 20, 2007, al-Khazali was captured by coalition forces alongside his brother Laith Khazali and Lebanese Hizb Allah operative Ali Musa Daqduq in Basra on March 20, 2007. In time, al-Khazali was transferred to Iraqi custody and then released in exchange for kidnapped Briton Peter Moore on January 5, 2010. Although far less senior in the IRGC Qods Force hierarchy than al-Muhandis and 20 years his junior, Qais al-Khazali could become a significant political force in mainstream politics and is being courted by both al-Maliki and al-Sadr precisely because he has the capability to draw away a portion of Moqtada’s supporters if he so chooses.

During al-Khazali’s absence in prison, AAH played a delicate game, balancing the need to negotiate for the release of detainees against the desire of many AAH members to continue attacking U.S. forces. Like its predecessor, Jaysh al-Mahdi, AAH is becoming a catch-all for a wide range of militants who seek to engage in violence for a host of ideological, sectarian or purely commercial motives.[16] Notorious Special Group commanders such as Sadrist breakaway Abu Mustapha al-Sheibani (whose real name is Hamid Thajeel al-Sheibani) and infamous Shi`a warlord Abu Deraa (whose real name is Ismail al-Lami) are reported to be returning from Iran to join AAH.