Category Archives: Whistleblower

Russian Ground forces in Syria, Air Strikes in Iraq?

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At risk, the United States has search and rescue personnel in Turkey that is deployed to locations in Syria and near regions in the case of pilot failure by coalition countries.

Vladimir Putin says Russia is the only legitimate military force in Syria due to a formal request by Bashir al Assad.

After Russia and Iran established intelligence cells in Iraq three weeks ago, coordination between Iraq and Russia is underway. The result is a new military relationship between Iraq and Russia. This has James Clapper, Director of the ODNI quite concerned over what intelligence and methods of the United States with Iraq has been compromised and shared with Russia.

Pentagon officials do not know what secrets the Iraqi government may be telling Moscow, after Iraqi leaders unexpectedly entered into an intelligence-sharing agreement with Russia this weekend.

Worse: Russia will consider Iraq air strikes if Baghdad asks

Russia will consider launching air strikes in Iraq if the government asks, a senior foreign ministry official has said, AFP reports.

“If we get such a request from the Iraqi government or a Security Council resolution that depends decisively on the will of the Iraq government,” Moscow would consider launching the strikes, Ilya Rogachev, told the RIA Novosti state news agency.

Assad allies, including Iranians, prepare ground attack in Syria: sources

Reuters: Hundreds of Iranian troops have arrived in Syria in the last 10 days and will soon join government forces and their Lebanese Hezbollah allies in a major ground offensive backed by Russian air strikes, two Lebanese sources told Reuters.

“The (Russian) air strikes will in the near future be accompanied by ground advances by the Syrian army and its allies,” said one of the sources familiar with political and military developments in the conflict.

“It is possible that the coming land operations will be focused in the Idlib and Hama countryside,” the source added.

The two sources said the operation would be aimed at recapturing territory lost by President Bashar al-Assad’s government to rebels.

It points to an emerging military alliance between Russia and Assad’s other main allies – Iran and Hezbollah – focused on recapturing areas of northwestern Syria that were seized by insurgents in rapid advances earlier this year.

“The vanguard of Iranian ground forces began arriving in Syria: soldiers and officers specifically to participate in this battle. They are not advisors … we mean hundreds with equipment and weapons. They will be followed by more,” the second source said. Iraqis would also take part in the operation, the source said.

Thus far, direct Iranian military support for Assad has come mostly in the form of military advisors. Iran has also mobilized Shi’ite militia fighters, including Iraqis and some Afghans, to fight alongside Syrian government forces.

Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, has been fighting alongside the Syrian army since early in the conflict.

The Russian air force began air strikes in Syria on Wednesday, targeting areas near the cities of Homs and Hama in the west of the country, where Assad’s forces are fighting an array of insurgent groups, though not Islamic State, which is based mostly in the north and east.

An alliance of insurgent groups including the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front and powerful Ahrar al-Sham made rapid gains in Idlib province earlier this year, completely expelling the government from the area bordering Turkey.

One more item:

7 Israeli Arabs in ‘ISIS cell’ planned attacks on IDF, police

In first known case of Islamic State plot in Israel, Shin Bet says suspects confessed to training in the north in preparation for attacks.

The Islamic State may have finally crossed Israel’s borders, according to an indictment presented to Nazareth’s District Court Thursday morning accusing seven Israeli Arabs of planning attacks in Israel on behalf of the organization, which is also known as ISIS. According to the Shin Bet, the accused “created an Islamic State cell with the intention of carrying out terror attacks.”

Some of the suspects were said to have been in contact with several Israelis who joined ISIS in Syria. The former residents of Yafa an-Naseriyye in the Lower Galilee region apparently recruited the seven into ISIS and helped them plot their attacks. A portion of the defendants allegedly trained in the woods near Yafa an-Naseriyye in preparation for the planned attacks.

Three of the accused, Ahmed Mahagna (20) from Yafa an-Naseriyye, Mohammad Sharif (22) from Nazereth and Mohammad Ghazali (23), were charged with contacting a foreign agent and an illegal organization while planning to attack Israeli military targets – specifically, to open fire at a police vehicle and an IDF base.

An illegal weapon found in their possession was bought in Fureidis, a town just south of Haifa.

Ibrahim Aljawabra (35) and his brother Ali (32) from Fureidis, were accused of selling weapons and committing additional criminal offenses. Baha Naaran (22) from Yafa an-Naseriyye was charged with possession of a weapon and involvement in criminal activity.

 

The seventh suspect, Ahmed Ahmed, who is already in jail for his involvement in the murder of taxi driver Yifim Weinstein in 2009, was accused by prosecutors of planning the attacks with the seven by telephone.

The Shin Bet claimed that the accused confessed during interrogation to trying to acquire weapons and training to use them, as well as collecting intelligence on an IDF base and police forces in order to carry out attacks in the name of the Islamic State.

Investigations revealed many files and photos on Sharif’s phone connected to the Islamic State. A video also surfaced in which Sharif explained how to deal with those who oppose the Islamic faith by cutting their throats.

Ghazali’s father also attended the indictment hearing Thursday and vehemently denied his son’s involvement with or connection to ISIS.

“It’s all lies,” he said. “We live here in this country and respect all its people – Jews and Arabs. No one in my family has ever harmed anyone else or the security of the state.”

More Hillary Emails are Here!

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The FBI investigation has reportedly centered on 18 US Code 793, a section of the Espionage Act related to gathering and transmitting national-defense information, and is being led by an FBI “A-team” out of its Washington, D.C., headquarters.

“Nearly all [FBI] investigations are assigned to one of the bureau’s 56 field offices,” The New York Times reported last month.

“But given this inquiry’s importance, senior FBI officials have opted to keep it closely held in Washington in the agency’s counterintelligence section, which investigates how national security secrets are handled.”

Hillary fought with the White House switchboard on who she was and then she sent an email asking how to turn on the ‘ringer’ on her cell phone. Sheesh…

Some samples coming your way. Just reviewing some of these tells us that not only can she not be president but a special prosecutor is now called for.

Mediaite: When Hillary Clinton fielded questions about her private server use in the past, one of the recurring defenses she has used was that there was no evidence that her doing so caused any major security problems.

Within the 6,300 pages of emails that were released today, however, it was shown that hackers linked to Russia tried to pry their way in at least five times.

While it is unclear whether she opened them and exposed her account, Clinton received several infected emails disguised as speeding tickets back in 2011. The emails instructed recipients to print the attached tickets, which would have given a virus a way into her computer:

Embedded image permalink      Numerous concerns have been raised regarding whether Clinton’s private server has made sensitive information more vulnerable to hackers, which were made more worrisome by the recent cyber-attacks on the government from the Chinese and the Russians. Security researchers have analyzed the software, and said that infected computers would end up transmitting information from victims to at least three server computers overseas.

Ambassador ousted for private email use sent Clinton classified info

WashingtonExaminer: An ambassador who was ousted from his position in part for using private email sent top State Department officials classified information a year before his removal.

Scott Gration, the former U.S. ambassador to Kenya, sent Hillary Clinton’s staff an “update on trilateral talks” in Sept. 2011 that is mostly redacted and marked classified, emails released Wednesday by the State Department show.

Gration appeared to reference officials from the governments of Ethiopia, Sudan and South Sudan in the first part of his email. The lengthy memo was forwarded to Clinton by Jake Sullivan, her former director of policy planning.

Clinton responded that she was “willing to make the calls [Gration] requested.”

Gration was pushed from his post in 2012 after setting up an unsecured email system in the bathroom of his embassy office.

His address in the memo to Sullivan was redacted. But if, as the State Department’s inspector general found in Aug. 2012, Gration had sent the official record using his personal account, Clinton and the agency’s top brass would have been aware of his private email use a year before the scathing watchdog report that prompted his removal.

Despite the inspector general’s findings that Gration violated agency policy, Clinton has defended her own private email use by insisting it was technically allowed by the State Department.

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Gen. Allen Quit, Russia Demands U.S. Aircraft Leave Syria

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CNN:

Russian airstrikes in Syria could happen at any time, a U.S. official with knowledge of the latest intelligence told CNN this week.

 “They could start at any moment,” the official said. “They are ready.”

After several days of Russian familiarization flights, there is no reason they could not begin, the official added. And Russian drones have been collecting potential targeting information in their flights. But the U.S. doesn’t know what the Russians have in mind and when they will make a decision on airstrikes.

Four Russian Su-34 Fullback fighter jets are now at the Latakia air base in Syria, and more than 600 Russian troops are in place.

Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook told reporters Tuesday that Secretary of Defense Ash Carter directed his staff to “open lines of communication with Russia on de-confliction.”

The timing of these discussions is to be worked out in the coming days. The purpose of the discussions is “to ensure the safety of coalition air crews,” he said.

Cook added that the two nations have common ground when it comes to fighting ISIS, also known as ISIL, with Carter making clear that “the goal should be to take the fight to ISIL and not to defend the Assad regime.”

The Russia government unanimously voted to authorize Russia troops in Syria, meanwhile, Putin tells the United States to remove all fighter aircraft out of Syria and the region. Never in the history of the United States has our country taken orders from a foreign power much less Russia. It is proven under Barack Obama the United States has taken a back seat to Iran in Iraq and now Russia in Syria.

France has launched airstrikes and Bashir al Assad stays in power. At the behest and orders by the White House, the Pentagon has been sent back to the locker room.

How does this begin and end?

FNC: EXCLUSIVE: Russian officials have demanded that American warplanes exit Syrian airspace immediately, a senior U.S. official told Fox News early Wendesday.

The official told Fox News that Russian diplomats sent an official demarche ordering U.S. planes out of Syria, adding that Russian fighter jets were now flying over Syrian territory. U.S. military sources told Fox News that U.S. planes would not comply with the Russian demand.

“There is nothing to indicate that we are changing operations over Syria,” a senior defense official said.

“We have had every indication in recent weeks that (the Russians) were going to do something given the build-up,” another defense official added.

The move by Moscow marks a major escalation in ongoing tensions between the two countries over military action in the war-torn country and comes moments after Russian lawmakers formally approved a request from the country’s president, Vladimir Putin, to authorize the use of troops in Syria.

The Russian demand also mirrors one made by Turkey this past July, when Ankara asked U.S. planes to fly only in airspace south of Mosul, Iraq. In that case, 24 Turkish jets bombed Kurdish positions, catching the U.S. off guard.

More on this…

Can Putin succeed where White House has not in ISIS fight?
Warm-water port key to Putin’s interest in Syria?
President Obama attempts to save face on Syrian conflict
The Federation Council, the upper house of Russia’s parliament, discussed Putin’s request for the authorization behind the closed doors. Sergei Ivanov, chief of Putin’s administration, said in televised remarks that the parliament voted unanimously to approve the request.

Ivanov said the authorization is necessary “not in order to achieve some foreign policy goals” but “in order to defend Russia’s national interests.”

Putin is obligated to request parliamentary approval for any use of Russian troops abroad, according to the Russian constitution. The last time he did so was before Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in March 2014.

Putin’s request comes after his bilateral meeting with President Barack Obama on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York, where the two were discussing Russia’s recent military buildup in Syria.

A U.S. official told Fox News Monday the two leaders agreed to discuss political transition in Syria but were at odds over the role that Assad should play in resolving the civil conflict. The official said Obama reiterated to Putin that he does not believe there is a path to stability in Syria with Assad in power. Putin has said the world needs to support Assad because his military has the best chance to defeat ISIS militants.

Putin said the meeting, which lasted a little over 90 minutes, was “very constructive, business-like and frank”.

“We are thinking about it, and we don’t exclude anything.” Putin told reporters at the time

The Kremlin reported that Putin hosted a meeting of the Russian security council at his residence Tuesday night outside of Moscow, saying that they were discussing terrorism and extremism.

On Tuesday, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius called on Russia to make a real contribution to the fight against ISIS, telling reporters at the United Nations that Moscow “is against the terrorists, it’s not abnormal to launch strikes against them.”

“The international community has hit (ISIS). France has hit (ISIS), Bashar al-Assad very little, and the Russians not at all. So one has to look at who does what,” Fabius added.

Russia has been a staunch supporter of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad during Syria’s bloody civil war, and multiple reports have previously indicated that Russian troops are aiding Assad’s forces. Israel’s defense minister also said earlier this month that Russian troops are in Syria to help Assad fight the ISIS terror group.

On Wednesday, Reuters reported that Russia’s Foreign Ministry told the news agency Interfax that a recently established operations center in Baghdad would help coordinate air strikes and ground troops in Syria. Fox News first reported last week that the center had been set up by Russian, Syrian and Iranian military commanders with the goal of working with Iranian-backed Shia militias fighting ISIS.

Over the weekend, the Iraqi government announced that it would begin sharing “security and intelligence” information with Russia, Syria and Iran to help combat ISIS.

Meanwhile, intelligence sources told Fox News Friday that Iranian Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani met with Russian military commanders in Baghdad September 22. Fox News reported earlier this month that Soleimani met Putin in Moscow over the summer to discuss a joint military plan in Syria.

“The Russians are no longer advising, but co-leading the war in Syria,” one intelligence official said at the time.

Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin and Lucas Tomlinson and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

 

WH has Task Force Terror Report, No Strategy

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Not since the Bush Administration and the 9/11 Commission Report has there been a task force or congressional study group that has investigated and evaluated a new domestic threat report. In March of 2015, a bi-partisan committee in Congress was established with 10 members to study domestic Islamic soldiers and sympathizers. The report is chilling and further it has declared the White House has no strategy, so the committee crafted 32 recommendations. The full report is here.

The report studied individual cases where they were provided access to files by the FBI as countless other cases are still under investigation. Minnesota, California, New York and New Jersey were the 4 top listed states that had the majority of travelers leaving the United States to join Islamic State or other in kind terror groups. Up to at least 250 are known at this time.

The United States has failed to stop the flow back and forth and further allied intelligence agencies and countries are not advanced enough or have authorization to fully cooperate with the United States.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The government has largely failed to stop more than 250 Americans who have traveled overseas since 2011 to join or try to join terrorist groups, including the Islamic State group, a new congressional study concluded on Tuesday. It did not provide details on the several dozen who have sneaked back into the United States without being arrested or monitored.

“The findings are concerning; we are losing in this struggle to keep Americans from the battlefield,” House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul said Tuesday after his committee released the 65-page report.

The report said the Obama administration lacked a strategy to prevent such travel abroad, identify all who try to return to commit terror attacks, or cope with new recruitment practices and technology that allow extremists to communicate securely.

“Of the hundreds of Americans who have sought to travel to the conflict zone in Syria and Iraq, authorities have only interdicted a fraction of them,” the report said. “Several dozen have also managed to make it back into America.” It noted that several people were identified and arrested this year trying to return to the United States.

In other cases, authorities are monitoring people who have returned form the region, said McCaul, R-Texas.

Rep. John Katko, R-N.Y., who helped author the report, said radicalization of Americans over the Internet “poses probably the biggest problem” for U.S. law enforcement and others trying to detect and combat efforts by international terrorist organization to recruit U.S. citizens to join the fight overseas.

The report said of particular concern were western Europeans who travel to Iraq or Syria and would be permitted to fly to the U.S. without applying for a visa.

“American returnees are not the only threat to the United States,” it said.

Katko said the committee will work to draft several pieces of legislation based on the report’s 32 recommendations.

After the release of the committee report, the State Department announced that 10 people and five groups were declared Specially Designated Global Terrorists. People in the U.S. are generally prohibited from doing business with those given that designation.

POTUS Granted Refugee Status to Terror Connectors

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Courtesy of Judicial Watch:

During Fiscal Year 2014, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) applied 1,519 exemptions to individual applicants under the Secretary of Homeland Security’s exercises of discretionary authority.1 Of those 1,519 exemptions:

 

 806 were processed for refugee applicants,

 19 were processed for asylum applicants,

 614 were processed for applicants for lawful permanent resident status,

 29 were processed for beneficiaries of petitions for derivative refugee or asylum status,

 34 were processed for applicants for Temporary Protected Status,

 9 were processed for applicants for Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act (NACARA); and

 7 were processed for applicants for relief before the U.S. Department of Justice Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR).

Regarding the reasons for the 1,519 exemptions:

 627 were processed for an applicant’s provision of material support, while under duress, to an undesignated terrorist organization as defined at INA section 212(a)(3)(B)(vi)(III), 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(3)(B)(vi)(III) (Tier III terrorist organization), under the Secretary of Homeland Security’s February 26, 2007 exercise of authority relating to Tier III organizations,

 189 were processed for an applicant’s provision of material support, while under duress, to a designated terrorist organization as defined under INA section 212(a)(3)(B)(vi)(I)-(II), 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(3)(B)(vi)(I)-(II) (Tier I or II terrorist organization), under the Secretary’s April 27, 2007 exercise of authority relating to Tier I and Tier II organizations,

 9 were processed for an applicant’s receipt of military-type training, while under duress, from a terrorist organization, under the Secretary’s January 7, 2011 exercise of authority relating to Tier I, Tier II and Tier III organizations,

 28 were processed for an applicant’s provision of voluntary medical care to members of a terrorist organization in the course of their professional responsibilities without assisting in the violent activities of an organization or individual, under the Secretary’s October 13, 2011 exercise of authority relating to Tier I, Tier II and Tier III organizations,

37 were processed for certain qualified aliens with existing immigration benefits under the Limited General Exemption2 who: provided material support to, solicited funds for, solicited individuals for membership in or received military-type training from certain qualified Tier III terrorist organizations, under the Secretary’s August 10, 2012 exercise of authority relating to certain Tier III organizations;3 and

 628 were processed for applicants who had certain activities or affiliations with specific groups which the Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Attorney General, has approved for consideration of an exemption.4

Exemptions allow certain refugees and other aliens the opportunity to receive a benefit or protection following the successful completion of a thorough vetting process. USCIS procedures require that all applicants’ names and fingerprints be checked against a broad array of records of individuals known to be security threats, including the terrorist watch list, and those of law enforcement concern. In addition to rigorous background vetting, including checks coordinated across several government agencies, the Secretary of Homeland Security’s discretionary authority is only applied on a case-by-case basis after careful review of all factors and all security checks have cleared.

Read the full DHS report here.