Hagel: WH Worked to Destroy Me

Posted on December 18, 2015December 18, 2015 by Denise Simon

Hagel: The White House Tried to ‘Destroy’ Me

In an exclusive interview, Chuck Hagel said the Obama administration micromanaged the Pentagon, stabbed him in the back on the way out — and still has no strategy for fixing Syria.

De Luce at FP:

Jet-lagged from a long overseas trip, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel had just sat down with his wife for a quiet dinner at an upscale Italian restaurant in northern Virginia when his phone rang. It was the White House on the line. President Barack Obama wanted to speak with him.

It was Aug. 30, 2013, and the U.S. military was poised for war. Obama had publicly warned Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad that his regime would face consequences if it crossed a “red line” by employing chemical weapons against its own people. Assad did it anyway, and Hagel had spent the day approving final plans for a barrage of Tomahawk cruise missile strikes against Damascus. U.S. naval destroyers were in the Mediterranean, awaiting orders to fire.

Instead, Obama told a stunned Hagel to stand down. Assad’s Aug. 21 chemical attack in a Damascus suburb had killed hundreds of civilians, but the president said the United States wasn’t going to take any military action against the Syrian government. The president had decided to ignore his own red line — a decision, Hagel believes, that dealt a severe blow to the credibility of both Obama and the United States.

“Whether it was the right decision or not, history will determine that,” Hagel told Foreign Policy in a two-hour interview, his first extensive public comments since he was forced out of his position in February.

“There’s no question in my mind that it hurt the credibility of the president’s word when this occurred.”

“There’s no question in my mind that it hurt the credibility of the president’s word when this occurred.”

In the days and months afterward, Hagel’s counterparts around the world told him their confidence in Washington had been shaken over Obama’s sudden about-face. And the former defense secretary said he still hears complaints to this day from foreign leaders.

“A president’s word is a big thing, and when the president says things, that’s a big deal,” he said.

Hagel, now that time has passed and he’s willing to discuss his tenure in office, cited the episode as an example of a White House that has struggled to formulate a coherent policy on Syria, holding interminable meetings that would often end without a decision, even as conditions on the ground worsened and the death toll grew steadily higher.

The 69-year-old former Nebraska senator and Vietnam War veteran, speaking for the first time about his treatment by the Obama administration, said the Pentagon was subject to debilitating meddling and micromanagement by the White House — echoing criticism made by his predecessors, Robert Gates and Leon Panetta.

Looking back on his tenure, Hagel said in the Dec. 10 interview that he remains puzzled as to why some administration officials sought to “destroy” him personally in his final days in office, castigating him in anonymous comments to newspapers even after he had handed in his resignation.

Although he does not identify her by name, Hagel’s criticisms are clearly aimed at Obama’s national security advisor, Susan Rice, and some of her staff. Hagel’s former aides, and former White House officials, say the defense secretary frequently butted heads with Rice over Syria policy and the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo.

The former Pentagon chief offers a view from inside an administration that was caught flat-footed by the multi-sided conflict in Syria and by the subsequent onslaught of the Islamic State. His account describes an administration that lacked a clear strategy on Syria during his time in office and suggests that it may not have one anytime soon — despite the mounting carnage and waves of refugees.

The White House declined to comment for this story after being told about Hagel’s comments regarding the fallout from Obama calling off strikes against Damascus, the absence of a clear policy on Syria, and his treatment by the administration.

But a senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the president was not ready to go forward with the military operation in 2013 without consulting Congress first and it endorsing his decision. And the final outcome of Obama’s decision opened the way for a diplomatic deal brokered by Russia that saw the Assad regime hand over its declared chemical weapons stockpiles. “The end result of all this is a Syria that’s free of its chemical weapons program,” the official told FP.

The senior official also insisted the president has a clear strategy to defeat the Islamic State, relying on U.S.-led air power and the training of local forces while pushing for a diplomatic bid to end the civil war in Syria and negotiate Assad’s exit.

Appointed to shift the Pentagon to a peacetime footing and oversee tough budget cuts, Hagel ended up having to contend with Russia’s incursion into Ukraine and a new war in the Middle East after he entered office in February 2013.

And inside the Defense Department, he faced a series of crises: automatic budget cuts and a government shutdown that threw the Pentagon’s budget into chaos; a shooting rampage at the Washington Navy Yard facility that left 12 people dead; a spate of sexual assault cases in the military; and a cheating scandal by nuclear missile crews.

As defense secretary, Hagel carried out the administration’s policies dutifully without missteps. But his meandering public comments seemed to strike the wrong note at a moment of upheaval. And if Hagel had no major mistakes, he also had no major accomplishments; during the height of then-Defense Minister Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Hagel’s aides boasted about the dozens of times the U.S. defense chief was speaking to his Egyptian counterpart and touted Hagel as the administration’s main conduit to Cairo. Left unsaid was that Sisi ignored Hagel’s entreaties and continued his brutal campaign to repress the group.

Hagel’s biggest hurdle, though, was that he was never fully embraced by Obama’s tight inner circle.

Even before he started the job, Hagel had been crippled by a bruising and unusually partisan Senate confirmation hearing in which many of his former Republican colleagues denounced him as unfit for office, painting him as hostile to Israel and weak on Iran.

A few Republicans had warned him in advance that they would have to “rough him up” at the hearing because of their dissatisfaction with the president, Hagel said. And conservative websites had painted him as “anti-Semitic” before the hearing began.

But the level of vitriol at the hearing — from lawmakers whom he had long worked with and even raised money for — came as a shock to Hagel.

More than one senator took Hagel’s comments out of context or simply misquoted him. During the 2006 Lebanon War, Hagel had called for an end to the “sickening slaughter” carried out by both sides, but Republican lawmakers wrongly accused him of singling out Israel.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), now a leading Republican contender for the White House, accused Hagel of possibly receiving speaking fees from “extreme or radical groups” but offered up no evidence.

“It is at a minimum relevant to know if that $200,000 that he deposited in his bank account came directly from Saudi Arabia, came directly from North Korea,” said Cruz, in a performance that some commentators compared to a Joe McCarthy-style smear.

Hagel looked taken aback but chose not to push back against the barrage.

“I was stunned at the whole thing,” Hagel told FP.

At one point Hagel misstated the president’s policy on Iran, saying the aim was to “contain” Tehran.

In the face of stiff opposition from Republicans, the former senator told the White House he was ready to withdraw as the nominee, “because I said don’t want to take the president nor the country through this.”

Obama, Vice President Joe Biden — an old friend from his time in the Senate — and White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough all called and encouraged him to hold steady. But some officials did not rally to his side.

“I know not everyone in the White House was that supportive,” he said, without elaborating.

After a filibuster from fellow Republicans, an unprecedented move for a defense secretary’s nomination, Hagel was confirmed in a narrow 58-to-41 vote that was mostly along party lines. Only four Republicans voted in favor. Afterward, Hagel said, some Republican senators privately apologized to him for their attacks.

For Hagel, the bitter confirmation fight illustrated the new hyperpartisan, take-no-prisoners brand of politics that had taken over Washington. And it served as yet another reminder that the moderate wing of the Republican Party he represented had virtually vanished. Hagel sees himself as a Republican in the tradition of former President George H.W. Bush and ex-National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, sober-minded pragmatists favoring a foreign policy driven by national interests and realpolitik. But that stream has “gotten thinner and thinner,” Hagel said.

“I’m not sure if you asked people, ‘What is the Republican Party?’ they could give you an answer,” Hagel said.

When Hagel was offered the job of defense secretary after Obama’s re-election in 2012, a position that he said he never asked or lobbied for, his only request was that he be given access to the president.

Once he was in office, Hagel’s request was generally granted. But he sometimes found that access to the president did not necessarily mean a one-on-one meeting in the Oval Office.

“There were times that I had called over and asked to have a private meeting with the president, and when I showed up, there were others in the room,” he said.

Deferring decisions

While Hagel preferred smaller meetings and one-on-one phone calls, the White House often summoned him to large Situation Room sessions with last-minute agendas sent out overnight or on the morning of the meeting.

The White House’s policy deliberations on Syria and other issues run by Rice and her deputies seemed to lead nowhere, according to Hagel.

“For one thing, there were way too many meetings. The meetings were not productive,” Hagel said.

“I don’t think many times we ever actually got to where we needed to be. We kept kind of deferring the tough decisions. And there were always too many people in the room.”

“I don’t think many times we ever actually got to where we needed to be. We kept kind of deferring the tough decisions. And there were always too many people in the room.”

At larger White House meetings, with some staffers in the room he did not even know, Hagel was reluctant to speak at length, fearing his stance would find its way into media reports. “The more people you have in a room, the more possibilities there are for self-serving leaks to shape and influence decisions in the press,” he said.

Instead, Hagel preferred to convey his views in weekly meetings he and then-Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey had with the president or in phone calls and meetings with Rice, Biden, or Secretary of State John Kerry.

In contrast, national security meetings led by the president were efficient and focused, with no time wasted on tangents, he said.

“We’d get in and get out,” Hagel said. “I eventually got to the point where I told Susan Rice that I wasn’t going to spend more than two hours in these meetings. Some of them would go four hours.”

But the same senior administration official defended the long National Security Council meetings, saying their length was only natural given the complexity of the security challenges facing the country: “It speaks to the rigorous policy process that we run.”

Hagel, however, said there was too much time spent on “nit-picky, small things in the weeds,” while larger questions were ignored. “We seemed to veer away from the big issues. What was our political strategy on Syria?”

While Hagel agreed with Obama’s reluctance to deploy a large ground force to Syria or Iraq, he wanted the administration to hammer out a plan for a diplomatic settlement in Syria and to clarify whether Assad needed to go and under what circumstances, he said.

While the White House sought to stay out of the conflict in Syria, the Islamic State’s lightning advance into northern Iraq in June 2014 — with Baghdad’s army collapsing in retreat — came as a “jolt” to the administration, Hagel said.

Asked at a press conference in August of that year about the nature of the threat posed by the Islamic State, Hagel told reporters that “this is beyond anything that we’ve seen.” He cited the group’s military skill, financial resources, and adept online propaganda as an unprecedented danger that surpassed previous terrorist organizations.

Some administration officials were not happy with Hagel’s description, and “I got some criticism from the White House,” he said.

But events have vindicated his remarks, he said.

“Then I got accused of trying to hype something, overstate something, and make something more than it was,” Hagel said. “I didn’t know all of it, but I knew we were up against something here that we had never seen before. And in many ways, we were not prepared for it.”

For Hagel, the administration’s indecision over how to address the conflict in Syria was driven home in a congressional hearing in September 2014, when he was grilled by senators about the administration’s plans to build a force of rebel fighters to take on the Islamic State.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), an outspoken critic of the White House’s anti-Islamic State strategy, asked Hagel if the administration would come to the aid of U.S.-backed rebels if they were attacked by the Assad regime. The administration had debated that pivotal question for weeks but had not made a decision, and Hagel was forced to improvise.

“We had never come down on an answer or a conclusion in the White House,” Hagel told FP. “I said what I felt what I had to say. I couldn’t say, ‘No.’ Christ, every ally would have walked away from us in the Middle East.”

McCain pressed him, and Hagel told the lawmakers: “Any attack on those that we have trained who are supporting us, we will help them.”

But the question remained a “glaring” omission in the administration’s policy that he raised in meetings afterward.

“Are we going to support our guys or not support our guys?” Hagel told FP. “It’s a damn crucial question.”

“Are we going to support our guys or not support our guys?” Hagel told FP. “It’s a damn crucial question.”

Asked for comment this week, the senior administration official rejected Hagel’s portrayal as misleading and said the Defense Department had a leading role in setting up the training program and could have addressed any shortcomings that arose.

A month later, with his concerns mounting about the absence of an overarching policy on Syria and the fight against the Islamic State, Hagel wrote a two-page memo to Rice and Kerry — and copied the president — saying the administration needed to decide on its approach to the conflict in Syria and its stance toward the Assad regime. The memo argued that “we don’t have a policy,” Hagel told FP.

“I was saying, ‘We’re not getting to where we need to be,’” he said, “because I’m getting this from all of my colleagues around the world. All of my counterparts are coming up to me at NATO meetings and everywhere, saying, ‘What are you doing? Where is this going?’”

But Hagel said the memo — which was not well-received by the White House — was meant only as an appeal to come up with a coherent way forward and did not attempt to dictate policy.

“In the memo, I wasn’t blaming anybody. Hell, I was part of the National Security Council,” Hagel said.

Since leaving office last February, Hagel said he has not seen a full strategy on Syria materialize.

“The administration is still struggling with a political strategy, but Secretary Kerry is making some progress toward the right strategy,” Hagel said, citing recent talks with Russia, Iran, and several Arab governments.

Although Hagel opposes a major escalation of the military campaign against the Islamic State, his criticisms of the administration will almost certainly feed a Republican critique, led by McCain, that the Obama administration has been weak and indecisive on the Syrian conflict.

That outcome is an ironic twist for Hagel, whose fierce criticism of President George W. Bush’s administration over the Iraq War — and opposition to the 2007 troop surge — generated lasting resentment among his fellow Republicans, including McCain.

Micromanaging the Pentagon

The White House’s penchant for meddling was a frequent problem, Hagel said. Dempsey complained that White House staffers were calling generals “and asking fifth-level questions that the White House should not be involved in,” he said.

Hagel’s predecessors, Gates and Panetta, as well as Michèle Flournoy, the former No. 3 official at the Pentagon, have all criticized the White House’s centralized decision-making and interference with the workings of the Defense Department.

Hagel said the politically motivated micromanagement, combined with a mushrooming bureaucracy at the National Security Council, raises a real risk for the executive branch — potentially undercutting the proper functioning of the Pentagon and other cabinet offices.

“There is a danger in all of this,” he said. “This is about governance; this isn’t about political optics. It’s about making the country run and function, and trying to stay ahead of the dangers and the threats you see coming.”

Responding to Russia

Russia’s seizure of the Crimean peninsula in March 2014 and its support for pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine blindsided Washington, and it produced another rift between Hagel and White House officials.

In National Security Council meetings, Hagel said he stressed the importance of avoiding a direct confrontation with Moscow and keeping communication channels open with the Russian military. But he urged the administration to send a clear signal to Moscow — and U.S. allies in Europe — by expediting communications and other gear to the Ukrainian government as it fought against pro-Russian separatists.

“I also made the point that the U.S. should be giving more non-lethal equipment to the Ukrainians than we were, at a much faster pace,” Hagel said.

“I also made the point that the U.S. should be giving more non-lethal equipment to the Ukrainians than we were, at a much faster pace,” Hagel said. “We had to keep in mind that there was a global leadership optic here. The world, including our NATO partners, was watching to see how we would respond.”

The administration moved too slowly to help Kiev, Hagel said, though he does not believe Washington should have given weapons to the Ukrainians.

“I think we should have done more, could have done more,” he said.

Guantánamo wars

Apart from his impatience with the administration’s drift over Syria, Hagel said some of his biggest clashes with the White House came over the controversial detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Under a law adopted by Congress, Hagel, as defense secretary, had the ultimate responsibility for approving the transfer of inmates to other countries. And it meant he would bear the blame if a released detainee later took up arms against the United States.

The White House, trying to fulfill Obama’s promise to close the facility that has been condemned by human rights groups as a legal black hole, pressed Hagel to approve transferring inmates to other countries.

But Hagel often refused or delayed signing off on dozens of transfers when he judged the security risk too high, often based on advice inside the Defense Department.

The White House grew deeply frustrated with Hagel over the delays.

“It got pretty bad, pretty brutal,” Hagel said. “I’d get the hell beat out of me all the time on this at the White House. “

Although he had long supported shutting the detention center, Hagel insisted that he would not be rushed into approving transfers. The White House kept pushing, arguing that security concerns had to be weighed against the damage done to America’s image abroad as long as Guantánamo remained open and the ammunition it provided for extremist propaganda.

The arguments over Guantánamo detainees were cited by White House officials as the last straw that led to Hagel having to step down. But during his two years in office, Hagel approved 44 detainee transfers. His successor, Ash Carter, has given the green light to only 15 transfers, according to the Pentagon, citing numbers from Dec. 15. At the current pace, Carter will fall short of the number Hagel approved by the time Obama’s second term ends.

After clashing repeatedly with the White House, Hagel said it was probably inevitable that he would have to step down as Pentagon chief, given the friction that had developed. But he was not prepared for the humiliating way in which he was let go, “with certain people just really vilifying me in a gutless, off-the-record kind of way.”

The White House asked Hagel if he would stay on until a successor was found, and he accepted. But even after he agreed to leave, Hagel said, some White House officials trashed him in anonymous comments to newspapers, claiming he rarely spoke at Situation Room meetings and deferred to Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

“They already had my resignation, so what was the point of just continuing to try to destroy me?” he said.

“They already had my resignation, so what was the point of just continuing to try to destroy me?” he said.

It was a painful end to a career in which Hagel had gone from success to success. After his 1968 combat tour in Vietnam, where he was decorated with two Purple Hearts, he had served as a Capitol Hill staffer, worked as the deputy administrator for the Veterans Administration under President Ronald Reagan, made his fortune in the early years of the cellphone industry, handily won two terms as a senator for Nebraska, and was at one point considered a potential contender for the White House.

Despite how his Pentagon stint ended, Hagel said he still holds Obama “in high regard.”

“I’ve always had a very good, positive relationship with the president,” he said.

Hagel — who shares with Obama a skepticism about resorting to military force — gives the president high marks for not over-reacting to terrorist threats, for pursuing a strategic “rebalance” toward the Asia-Pacific, and for clinching a landmark agreement with Iran to curtail its nuclear program.

But Hagel remains pained at how his term as Pentagon chief was tarnished by what he views as backstabbing by some in the White House.

“I don’t know what the purpose was. To this day, I’m still mystified by that. But I move forward. I’m proud of my service,” he said.

Still, he added: “I would have preferred that my days as defense secretary not end that way.”

21st Century Genocide, Syria

Posted on December 18, 2015December 18, 2015 by Denise Simon

On regime change in Syria, the White House capitulates to Russia

WashingtonPost Editorial Board: RUSSIAN PLANES are still bombing Western-backed forces in Syria every day and targeting hospitals, bakeries and humanitarian corridors. Moscow is still insisting that blood-drenched dictator Bashar al-Assad remain in power indefinitely while trying to exclude opposition groups from proposed peace negotiations by claiming they are terrorists.

Nevertheless, Secretary of State John F. Kerry insisted Tuesday after meeting with Vladimir Putin that the Russian ruler and the Obama administration see Syria “in fundamentally the same way.” Unfortunately, that increasingly appears to be the case — and not because Mr. Putin has altered his position.

For four years, President Obama demanded the departure of Mr. Assad, who has killed hundreds of thousands of his own people with chemical weapons, “barrel bombs,” torture and other hideous acts. Yet in its zeal to come to terms with Mr. Putin, the Obama administration has been slowly retreating from that position. On Tuesday in Moscow, Mr. Kerry took another big step backward: “The United States and our partners are not seeking so-called regime change,” he said. He added that a demand by a broad opposition front that Mr. Assad step down immediately was a “non-starting position” — because the United States already agreed that Mr. Assad could stay at least for the first few months of a “transition process.”

Mr. Kerry’s rhetorical capitulation was coupled with the observation that the administration doesn’t “believe that Assad himself has the ability to be able to lead the future Syria.” But he now agrees with Mr. Putin that the country’s future leadership must be left to Syrians to work out. That’s a likely recipe for an impasse — especially as Mr. Assad is still saying he won’t even negotiate with any opponents who are armed or backed by foreign governments. At the same time, the administration’s forswearing of “regime change” sends a message to Mr. Putin and his Iranian allies: The power structure in Damascus that has granted Russia a naval base and served as a conduit for Iranian weapons to the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon can remain. (complete editorial here)

“If the Dead Could Speak” reveals some of the human stories behind the more than 28,000 photos of deaths in government custody that were smuggled out of Syria and first came to public attention in January 2014.

The report lays out new evidence regarding the authenticity of what are known as the Caesar photographs, identifies a number of the victims, and highlights some of the key causes of death. Human Rights Watch located and interviewed 33 relatives and friends of 27 victims whose cases researchers verified; 37 former detainees who saw people die in detention; and four defectors who worked in Syrian government detention centers or the military hospitals where most of the photographs were taken. Using satellite imagery and geolocation techniques, Human Rights Watch confirmed that some of the photographs of the dead were taken in the courtyard of the 601 Military Hospital in Mezze.

If you can stomach more truth, torture and genocide click here.

Why is this an important story? It is a holocaust at the hands of the Syrian leader, Bashir al Assad, a deadly tyrannical leader who is fully supported by Vladimir Putin of Russia and the rogue regime of Iran. Further questions are required, where is the United Nations? Where is the International Criminal Court, why no modern day Nuremberg trial? Why have Western leaders including John Kerry, Barack Obama, David Cameron even the Middle East Gulf States come to accept this?

Many across America say that Syria is not our problem. While there is some truth to that, when the United States is taking in hundreds of thousands refugees without vetting and Europe is being crushed by migrants, it does become a problem for at least America.

The full Human Rights Watch report is here. In full disclosure, multi-billionaire George Soros gave $100 million to HRW in 2010, but it seems there is selective attention, attitudes and investigations by Human Rights Watch as noted with regard to Iran.

48 More Approved to Leave Gitmo

Posted on December 17, 2015December 17, 2015 by Denise Simon

The White House itself admits that around 10 percent of those released from Guantanamo have resumed fighting for Islamic extremist organizations, but says it is more important to shutter a facility that has become a recruiting tool for militants.

Obama’s comments come as Sudanese militant Ibrahim al-Qosi — who was released in 2012 — seemingly appeared in a recent video by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

“The judgment that we’re continually making is, are there individuals who are significantly more dangerous than the people who are already out there who are fighting?” Obama said.

“What do they add? Do they have special skills? Do they have special knowledge that ends up making a significant threat to the United States?”

“And so the bottom line is that the strategic gains we make by closing Guantanamo will outweigh, you know, those low-level individuals who, you know, have been released so far.”

The Republican-controlled Congress has thwarted Obama’s repeated efforts to close Guantanamo.

Obama came to office in 2009 vowing to shutter the facility, which opened under his predecessor George W. Bush to hold terror suspects after the September 11, 2001 attacks and became known for harsh interrogation techniques that some have said were tantamount to torture.

Obama is soon expected to put forward a new plan that would speed the release of inmates and transfer the most dangerous ones to US soil.

The plan is likely to accelerate the release of low-level detainees to foreign countries and move the most dangerous prisoners to a specialized facility in the United States.

Because of a congressional ban on funding US transfers, Obama has suggested he may have to resort to an executive order to close the prison. This would ignite a political and legal firestorm.

Obama also told Yahoo News that he “very much” hopes to travel to Cuba before leaving office a little over a year from now.

The United States and Cuba restored diplomatic ties this summer, ending a half-century of enmity stemming from the Cold War era.

Obama reiterated previous White House comments that some progress would need to be seen on human rights before any presidential trip.

Obama said he would go when aides could determine “now would be a good time to shine a light on progress that’s been made, but also maybe (go) there to nudge the Cuban government in a new direction.”

The periodic review list of detainees is here.

Transfers Could Reduce Guantánamo Detainees to 90

NYT’s: WASHINGTON — The Obama administration appears to be on the cusp of the largest round of transfers of Guantánamo Bay detainees in a single month since 2007, a move that could reduce the detainee population there to as low as 90 by mid- to late January, according to officials familiar with internal deliberations.

Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter has notified Congress in recent days that he has approved 17 proposed transfers of lower-level detainees, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss matters that have not yet been made public. Congress has required Mr. Carter to certify that security standards have been met at least 30 days before any transfers.

President Obama wants to close the Guantánamo prison in Cuba before he leaves office in a little over a year. His administration has stepped up efforts to find countries to take 48 detainees on a transfer list and moved to speed up the work of a parole-like board that might approve the release of others who are currently recommended for indefinite detention.

The Republican-led Congress, however, has shown little interest in lifting a ban on bringing any detainees to a prison inside the United States, which is Mr. Obama’s plan for those who are either facing trial or are deemed too dangerous to release.

But even as the administration seems to be trying to speed up its fitful effort to winnow down the Guantánamo population, the military is taking steps that will curtail journalists’ access to the wartime prison.

The commander who oversees the military base, Gen. John F. Kelly, has created new rules that will limit reporters to four “media day” trips a year in which large groups will come and depart the same day. Reporters will generally no longer be permitted to go inside the prison camp’s walls.

In a telephone interview, General Kelly connected his decision “to tighten things up a little bit, particularly on the scheduling” for news media visits, in part to what he described as a sharp rise in visits by delegations from foreign governments that are considering resettling detainees.

The operational strains of handling such visitors, he said, formed the backdrop to an episode in October that focused his attention on rules for visits. He said that a journalist, whom he would not identify, was “extremely impolite” during an interaction with a service member who worked at a detainee library.

All that, he said, prompted him to fix what he saw as a problem before his designated successor, Vice Adm. Kurt Tidd, who is awaiting a Senate confirmation vote, takes over.

Until now, the military has generally permitted small numbers of reporters to visit the prison throughout the year if no military commission hearing is going on. The reporters have flown to the base on a Monday and flown out the following Thursday.

Reporters have spent that time on a tour that included walking through the two camps that hold lower-level detainees. While reporters have never been permitted to speak to the detainees, they have seen them from afar, talked to the officers in charge of each camp, interviewed the senior medical officer in the detainee clinic and interviewed lower-ranking guards.

General Kelly said he decided it would be easier for everyone if groups of reporters came to the base only during quarterly “media days,” in which they could talk to a handful of officials like the joint task force commander and the military’s cultural adviser, and then leave that same day.

The general said he no longer wanted reporters to talk to lower-level guards because it was not their role to opine about detention operations, or to go inside the prison because that could cause disruptions. However, he said, depending on what else is going on, exceptions might be made to let first-time visitors inside.

“The camps have not changed since the last time you’ve been there,” he told a reporter for The New York Times who has visited the prison several times, most recently in August 2014. “We still do the same things.”

Several news media outlets, including The Times, have asked the military to reconsider. Dave Wilson, a senior editor at The Miami Herald who oversees its coverage of Guantánamo, said he had told the military that it was important for experienced beat reporters to keep going inside the prison.

“A first-timer doesn’t know what they are seeing because they are seeing it for the first time,” Mr. Wilson said. “They don’t know if something has changed. They don’t know if it’s better or worse.”

General Kelly previously decided in September 2013 to stop telling reporters how many detainees were participating in a hunger strike each day.

FBI Prevented from Using Open Source?

Posted on December 17, 2015December 17, 2015 by Denise Simon

‘ISIS Supporters’ Twitter Accounts Traced To UK Government Department’: Report

NDTV: London: Hackers in Britain have claimed that a number of ISIS supporters’ social media accounts are being run from internet addresses linked to the UK government’s Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

A group of four young computer experts, who call themselves VandaSec, have unearthed evidence indicating that at least three ISIS-supporting accounts can be traced back to the DWP’s London offices, the ‘Daily Mirror’ reported.

Every computer and mobile phone logs onto the internet using an IP address, which is a type of identification number. The hacking collective showed the newspaper details of the IP addresses used by three separate so-called “digital jihadis” to access Twitter accounts, which were then used to carry out online recruitment and propaganda campaigns.

At first glance, the IP addresses seem to be based in Saudi Arabia, but upon further inspection using specialist tools they appeared to link back to the DWP.

The newspaper learned that the British government had sold on a large number of IP addresses to two Saudi Arabian firms.

After the sale completed in October of this year, they were used by extremists to spread their message of hate.

A Cabinet Office spokesperson said: “The government owns millions of unused IP addresses which we are selling to get a good return for hardworking taxpayers.

“We have sold a number of these addresses to telecoms companies both in the UK and internationally to allow their customers to connect to the internet. We think carefully about which companies we sell addresses to, but how their customers use this internet connection is beyond our control.”

The UK government has not revealed how much money it has made from the sale of IP addresses.

Now we have learned that DHS has an edit to not use social media or open source for reasons of profiling, which likely has handicapped the FBI from sourcing and connecting intelligence when it comes to cultivating data on would-be jihadists.

Jihadists are making their plans public. Why hasn’t the FBI caught on?

Each week, In Theory takes on a big idea in the news and explores it from a range of perspectives. This week we’re talking about Internet encryption. Need a primer? Catch up here.

WaPo: Rita Katz is the director of the SITE Intelligence Group and has spent nearly two decades tracking, studying and reporting on jihadists. She has testified before Congress and in terrorism trials, briefed the White House, and is the author of the book “Terrorist Hunter: The Extraordinary Story of a Woman who Went Undercover to Infiltrate the Radical Islamic Groups Operating in America.”

Following the terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif., FBI Director James Comey revealed to the Senate Judiciary Committee that one of the two Islamic State-inspired shooters in the May 3 attack in Garland, Tex., “exchanged 109 messages with an overseas terrorist” the morning of the attack. He followed up by saying that the FBI was unable to read those messages. His implication? Better regulation of message-disguising encryption technology could have revealed the shooters’ plans earlier and could help prevent attacks.

However, regulation of encryption is unlikely to provide the government with the counterterrorism benefit it says it will. Jihadists’ main tool for planning and executing attacks in recent years has been social media — to which the government has full access — not encrypted messaging. In addition, regulation of one messaging technology will lead to immediate adaptation and the creation of ways to circumvent it.

In recent years, smartphones and social media have enabled users from around the world to communicate easily, safely and free of charge. Programs facilitating such communications sprouted, and jihadists — the Islamic State in particular — quickly adopted them as their main means of communication. For over three years, Twitter has been the Islamic State’s most important platform. High-level operatives within the group have used Twitter’s unencrypted direct messaging to recruit, give instructions for donating and plan attacks. Jihadists even rely on Twitter to promote their channels on other platforms, such as Telegram, which supporters would otherwise have difficulty finding.

Jihadists’ presence on social media has also spread the Islamic State around the world, with people of all ages, sexes and ethnicities leaving their families and friends to join the group. Social media use has been linked to executed and attempted lone-wolf attacks in the United States, Canada, Australia, France, Denmark and other Western nations.

The Garland, Tex., shooting — the only example Comey used as an impetus to regulate encrypted technology — in fact makes the opposite point. Attacker Elton Simpson, who was under previous FBI terror-related investigations, used Twitter to openly follow and communicate with high-profile terrorists. His account was followed by prominent English-speaking Islamic State fighters and recruiters Abu Rahin Aziz and Junaid Hussain — both of whom for a long time were known to provide manuals on how to carry out lone-wolf attacks from Raqqa, Syria, before they were killed. Simpson also followed and communicated with Mohamed Abdullahi Hassan, a known American jihadist in Somalia who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.

Relatedly, the incitement for the Texas shooting came from Hassan’s 31st Twitter account. Simpson, a friend and follower of Hassan, retweeted the call and later requested that Hassan send him a direct message. We at SITE, using only open-source information, reported on the call before the attack took place, and the FBI had a week to investigate the matter before the shooting. Though only nine Twitter users retweeted the call for attack, the FBI failed to prevent it.

The encrypted messages Comey mentioned before the Judiciary Committee were discovered by the FBI only after the attack took place, but Simpson’s open-source communication was available far in advance. There is in fact no evidence that this or any of these other lone-wolf attacks could have been prevented by regulation of encryption technology.

In stark contrast, a proper, targeted open-source investigation could have. Yet the FBI is reluctant to recognize open-source as an important — arguably the most important — tool to track jihadists online.

It’s also important to note that jihadists are very quick to adapt online. In the past year alone, the Islamic State and al-Qaeda fighters have moved quickly from WhatsApp to Kik, Wickr, Surespot, then to Telegram – all different encryption programs created to give smartphone users safe and free text messaging available across multiple devices. Jihadists are constantly ranking, debating and explaining which of the services is the safest and most effective. Regulation of these programs will take jihadists next to no time to circumvent; the U.S. government would be the one taking years to catch up. And even if successful, they may be able to regulate companies based in the United States, but such programs would appear everywhere else, from Russia to India to China

SITE’s leadership and continued success do not stem from access to secret databases. Our research, investigations and reporting are based on open-source information — social media, forums, websites, blogs, IP addresses — which can be immensely powerful if used wisely. Government agencies, however, seem blind to this bountiful intelligence resource, and too often rely solely on classified documents and back-end access to websites.

Rather than try to create backdoors to encrypted communication services, or use the lack thereof as an excuse to intelligence failures, the U.S. government must first know how to utilize the mass amount of data it has been collecting and to improve its monitoring of jihadist activity online. A focused approach of this sort is much more likely to lead to success in the war on terrorism.

Fallen Angel: Extortion 17 Facts and Documentary

Posted on December 17, 2015December 17, 2015 by Denise Simon

The Final Flight of Extortion 17

It was the deadliest helicopter crash in the history of U.S. special operations. Why did it happen?

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AirandSpaceMagazine: A few minutes past 2 a.m. on August 6, 2011, at a dusty forward operating base 40 miles south of Kabul, Afghanistan, the rotors of two U.S. Army CH-47D Chinooks began to turn. Operating with no lights save for the faint green glow of night vision goggles and cockpit instrument panels, the two helicopters, call signs Extortion 17 (“one-seven”) and Extortion 16, lifted into the darkness and accelerated toward a destination less than 20 miles west.

Extortion 17 and its 38 occupants would not return. A Taliban fighter shot the helicopter out of the sky with a rocket-propelled grenade and all aboard were killed—the single greatest loss of American life in the Afghan war. Those killed ranked among the world’s most highly trained and experienced commandos, including 15 men from Gold Squadron of the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, popularly called SEAL Team 6. Just three months earlier, members of a counterpart SEAL Team 6 squadron successfully raided a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and killed Osama bin Laden. In light of that raid’s success, the shootdown of Extortion 17 incited a flurry of conspiracy theories: The Taliban were tipped off; it was a trap; it was retribution for the killing. No evidence has emerged to support any of these claims. Instead, two rigorous U. S. military investigations followed every moment of the mission to determine what went wrong on Extortion 17’s final flight.

The mission had begun about four hours prior to the shootdown, when the two helicopters touched down side by side in Juy Zarin, a village in the bare rock-walled Tangi Valley of Wardak Province. As two U.S. Army AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, an Air Force AC-130 gunship, and a small fleet of unmanned surveillance aircraft orbited overhead, a platoon of the 75th Ranger Regiment and members of an Afghan special operations unit stormed down the rear ramps of the Chinooks and into the night. Their target: an Afghan named Qari Tahir and his group of fighters. Intelligence had revealed Tahir to be the senior Taliban chief of the Tangi Valley region, with probable ties to upper-echelon Taliban leadership in Pakistan. As the ground assault force rushed toward Tahir’s compound, Extortion 17 and 16 sped back to base, where they were refueled, and awaited word to extract the team, evacuate wounded, or race reinforcing troops to Juy Zarin.

When the two Chinooks had first touched down in the village, a group of eight fighters armed with AK-47 rifles and RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenade launchers bolted from the compound. One AH-64 crew, after identifying the men as enemy combatants, fired on them with their gunship’s 30mm cannon, killing six. The remaining two fighters ducked into a stand of trees and disappeared from the Apaches’ infrared scanners. Three hours after disembarking from the Chinooks, the assault force had secured the compound and detained a number of Tahir’s men, but they hadn’t found Tahir himself. Through sensors on manned and unmanned aircraft, U.S. forces observing the mud walls and terraces of the village saw new groups of fighters gathering and maneuvering. Mission commanders, believing that Tahir was likely among one of the groups, deployed an Immediate Reaction Force (IRF) to interdict them while the Rangers held the compound. Planners then chose a new landing zone for the IRF, but it was large enough to accommodate only one Chinook.

Faced with the possibility of confronting nine or 10 Taliban fighters, planners increased the reinforcement team from 17 to 32 men, formed around the 15-man SEAL group. The IRF also included two SEALs from another team, five Navy special operations support personnel, three Air Force special tactics airmen, seven Afghan National Army commandos, a translator, and a combat assault dog. The IRF commander then made a critical decision: In order to get everyone on the ground as quickly as possible and deny the Taliban time to react, he ordered the entire force to fly in Extortion 17. Extortion 16 flew empty.

Commanders frequently request CH-47 Chinooks to insert troops. The helicopters are capacious and fast, and they can perform well in Afghanistan’s performance-degrading high altitudes and heat. U.S. Special Operations Command possesses its own specialized Chinooks—MH-47s—flown by the ultra-secretive 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, the “Night Stalkers.” The MH-47s’ modifications include inflight refueling probes, additional and upgraded sensors, more powerful engines, and more powerful defensive weapons than their conventional counterparts. Night Stalker pilots and crew rigorously train for nighttime raids, like the one in Juy Zarin.

Extortion 17 and 16 weren’t MH-47s and their crews were not Night Stalkers. The mission was flown by conventional pilots flying unmodified CH-47Ds. “It’s a math problem. There are more operations than can be supported by the 160th at any given time,” says Major Matthew Brady, a former 160th pilot and company commander.

The pilots and crew of Extortion 17, however, had ideal experience and abilities for the mission that night. At the flight controls were David R. Carter of the Colorado Army National Guard and copilot Bryan J. Nichols, a Kansas-based Army reservist. Nichols had deployed three times to combat zones, and Carter, with more than 4,000 hours of flight time, was one of the most experienced helicopter pilots in the U.S. military. He was also an instructor at the High Altitude Army National Guard Aviation Training Site (see “Triple Threat: High, Hot, and Heavy,” Aug. 2014), where many U.S. and foreign helicopter pilots train for mountainous and high-altitude flying, often before deployment to Afghanistan.

During a previous deployment to Iraq, Carter’s unit flew dozens of similar raids, which he often planned and led, and gained a reputation for working well with special operations troops. “Our area of operation was the entire country of Iraq, and every mission was at night,” says David “Pat” Gates, a pilot with Carter’s unit , the 2nd Battalion, 135th Aviation Regiment (2-135th), a Colorado Army National Guard unit based in Aurora, Colorado. “We were on goggles the whole time. We were supporting special operations, but not to the degree of the 160th. We didn’t do fast-rope inserts, building insertions, or anything like that.” Subsequent to their Iraq deployment, the unit flew the SEALs of Team 6 on practice raids around Fort Carson, Colorado, and during nighttime urban training in Denver, further cementing the 2-135th’s reputation with special operations units. At the time of the Juy Zarin raid, the battalion had been flying in Afghanistan for about two weeks.

Flying to the Tangi Valley for the second time, Extortion 17 and 16 took a different route, approaching from the northwest instead of the south. Six minutes from their estimated landing time, Extortion 16 broke away from the lead Chinook and orbited at a location close enough to help if needed. Extortion 17 sped alone toward the landing zone.

For helicopter crews in Afghanistan, the most dangerous times are landing and taking off. Approaching to land or having just taken off, the craft is flying slow and low, so it presents a tempting target. But even a precisely aimed shot fired from an unguided weapon by a seasoned fighter is subject to the ballistics-altering whims of atmospheric variation, subtle and undetected flaws in launcher or projectile, and uncontrollable environmental factors such as wind gusts, large temperature variations, or even particulates in the air.

“There are a lot of bullets out there that say ‘To whom it may concern,’ ”says Major Doug Glover, a U.S. Marine F/A-18D weapons and sensors operator who was a senior watch officer for the Marine air operations center in southern Afghanistan. “The RPG is not a laser. It does not fly in a straight line, and there is no way to know what exact path it will take—just a fairly good idea of its trajectory.”

Sometimes the enemy succeeds in delivering one of these “To whom it may concern” projectiles. In July 2010, an RPG-wielding fighter put a round into the tail boom of a Marine AH-1W Super Cobra, downing it and killing both pilots. In June 2005, a rocket-propelled grenade connected with the rear transmission of a 160th MH-47E Chinook as it attempted to come to a hover, downing it; all 16 on board were killed. In March 2002, two MH-47s were downed by machine gun and rocket-propelled grenade fire while close to ground level. “What we saw is that if the enemy knew where you were going to attack, they would back some guys with RPGs off 500 meters or so, to shoot during an ingress,” Glover explains.

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Now deep in the Tangi Valley, their night vision goggles showing the world around them in greenish hues, the IRF team members readied to hit the ground running as the pilots slowed Extortion 17 and descended toward the village. At 2:36 a.m., Extortion 17 requested an infrared spotlight, visible only through night vision goggles, to illuminate the landing zone. The crew of Slasher 02, the AC-130 circling above, flipped the switch on their powerful light. “Burn is on,” they radioed. Through the goggles, the landing zone shone brilliantly. Carter and Nichols continued the descent. “LZ is ice,” transmitted one of the Rangers on the ground, indicating the landing zone was free of enemy activity.

Seconds later, with the Chinook just over 100 feet off the ground and traveling at 58 mph, two or three previously unseen fighters emerged from the tower of a two-story building roughly 220 yards south of the helicopter, shouldering RPG launchers. They may have seen Extortion 17 and its landing zone through their own night vision goggles or simply aimed by sound alone. Two fired at roughly the same time. The first round sailed past the helicopter. The second slammed into one of the Chinook’s rear rotor blades and exploded, severing 10 feet of it. The torque of the spinning rotor assembly, now catastrophically imbalanced, ripped the rear pylon off the Chinook’s fuselage. The forward rotor system then tore off, stressed by the imbalance and the strain of carrying what would normally be a shared load. Less than five seconds after the RPG round hit, the helicopter spun uncontrollably, plummeting into a dry creek bed and erupting in a ball of fire that killed all on board.

The United States military continually works to improve protection for transport helicopters and their occupants, according to Glover and Brady. One of the most significant tactical evolutions of the Afghanistan conflict is the ever-heavier use of unmanned aerial systems and other airborne intelligence-gathering systems. Capable of loitering overhead for hours undetected, small fleets of unmanned craft passed imagery to mission planners before and during the raid at Juy Zarin, allowing them to recognize individual fighters, learn their habits, pinpoint where they slept, and identify the types of weapons they carried.

But U.S. forces didn’t know about every fighter during the raid, and they lost track of at least two—one of whom fired the deadly shot. Since the shootdown of Extortion 17, the military has continued to gain vital experience and equipment to enable an ever greater understanding of an enemy force, aiming to know every combatant and potential combatant and his weapon system before a raid. According to Glover, improved systems in place enable U.S. forces to monitor a target for days or even weeks prior to an operation, so they theoretically will know of even well-hidden potential RPG shooters throughout a village before transport helicopters first touch down.

The military has worked diligently to more tightly integrate gunship escorts with transport craft, according to Brady. While classification veils the specifics of these tactics, particularly for special operations raids, manned gunships can detect potential threats through a range of sensors and immediately attack if needed. Another tactic sometimes employed by gunships, according to Glover, is a show of force, in which pilots and crew fire into an empty field or stand of trees just before a transport helicopter prepares to land, using the sound of a gun alone to keep enemy heads down and fingers off triggers.

The two military investigations, one conducted by United States Central Command and one by the multi-service Joint Combat Assessment Team, pored over the details of the crash with excruciating focus and concluded that no planners or participants bore any fault regarding the circumstances leading to the shootdown of Extortion 17. Though both noted that airborne sensor coverage and closer AH-64 gunship escort should be considered in future operations, nothing could have kept the shooters from firing their RPGs that night. The Joint Combat Assessment Team report further noted that despite a robust deck of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets, none identified the location from which the shooters fired prior to the helicopter downing.

The shooters’ origin remains a mystery. The two may have been those who escaped Apache cannon fire, or they may have split away from either of the groups that formed after the start of the raid. The duo may also have had no ties to Tahir or any of his suspected fighters, and attacked the helicopter on their own. Should the Apache pilots have fired into the stand of trees after the two fighters ducked out of sight? Should the Apaches, or the AC-130 overhead, have fired upon the groups of suspected Taliban that gathered in the village after the raid began?

Restrained by strict rules of engagement in force at the time, the helicopter crews could not have fired without a strong indication of hostile intent. Afghanistan has long been a counter-insurgency campaign: The United States’ strategy has been to win Afghan trust through cooperation and aid. Having studied and directly observed the counter-insurgency campaign in Afghanistan, I’ve watched commanders and individual American troops consistently lean far to the side of restraint to encourage Afghans to side with American interests long after U.S. forces have left. Because unarmed villagers, unaffiliated with the Taliban, could also have been in those trees and among the groups milling about the village, the gunships could not have fired. Following a “scorched earth” tactic may have killed the two shooters—and possibly a greater number of innocents—prior to Extortion 17’s return that night, but counterinsurgency doctrine dictates that such tactics lead to potentially far worse long-term consequences.

With a keen understanding of the propaganda value of downing Coalition helicopters, the Taliban single them out as targets. Classified reports, published by Wikileaks, teem with notes from pilots and crew of all types of military helicopters who saw RPG attacks throughout the war. According to one Army report, in the three months prior to the Juy Zarin raid, as many as 17 RPGs were fired at helicopters over Wardak and Logar provinces, a relatively small part of the country. And while all military helicopters carry countermeasures for guided missiles, nothing can interdict the dumb luck of an unguided RPG round sailing through the air. The vast majority miss. “Chance is still part of the battlefield,” says Brady. “For every one that gets lucky, there are hundreds, even thousands, that zip by you.”

“As we’ve seen a number of times, there’s a point that a lucky shot is going to get you and there is only so much you can do to mitigate it,” says Glover, the Marine aviator. “To remove the risk of rocket-propelled grenades downing helicopters in Afghanistan 100 percent, you’d have to remove the opposable thumbs of every fighting-age male in the objective area, and that’s not how we win a counter-insurgency.”