Category Archives: Whistleblower

Mr. Weinstein is Dead, Hostages Could Have Been Saved

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Warren Weinstein is shown in a still from video released anonymously to reporters in Pakistan, Dec. 26, 2013.

Additional details and video of testimony is here.

Amerine received the Bronze Star with “V” for “Valor” device for his service in Afghanistan, where he led the Special Forces Operational Detachment-Alpha team that protected Hamid Karzai after 9/11 as the future Afghan president drummed up Pashtun tribal support to lead the country.
Now he joins critics of the failed U.S. hostage policy — currently under review by a former Army Delta Force commander at the National Counterterrorism Center — such as Diane and John Foley, whose son James Foley was a journalist beheaded by ISIS in Syria in a grisly video last August.
Amerine claims he led a highly-secret Pentagon team tasked with finding ways to recover Americans held captive in Pakistan’s tribal areas — until a “dysfunctional” bureaucracy bungled the mission on the verge of success.
“In early 2013, my office was asked to help get Sgt. Bergdahl home. We informally audited the recovery effort and determined that the reason the effort failed for four years was because our nation lacks an organization that can synchronize the efforts of all our government agencies to get our hostages home. We also realized that there were civilian hostages in Pakistan that nobody was trying to free so they were added to our mission,” Amerine said in his testimony.
“To get the hostages home, my team worked three lines of effort: Fix the coordination of the recovery, develop a viable trade and get the Taliban back to the negotiating table. My team was equipped to address the latter two of those tasks but fixing the government’s interagency process was beyond our capability,” Amerine said.

Bergdahl was freed in 2014 after five years of captivity in a highly controversial swap for five Taliban leaders held at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Bergdahl now faces charges by the Army for deserting his post in Afghanistan and could wind up in prison for the rest of his life, if convicted.
Amerine said that he and his colleagues had designed a plan to trade an Afghan drug lord, Bashir Noorzai, for the American and Canadian hostages. Noorzai was lured to the U.S., Amerine said, where he was arrested and eventually sentenced to two life sentences on drug charges.
Amerine said his group got as far as working with Noorzai’s tribe and bringing the Taliban to the table about a deal for the drug lord, but then the State Department intervened and killed that deal in favor of the one that eventually freed Bergdahl for five Taliban fighters. Noorzai remains in a high-security prison in California.

The veteran Special Forces field-grade officer told the Senate committee that he, Amerine, also fell under criminal investigation by the Army because the FBI was irked over his criticism of how the Bureau and other agencies mismanaged the hostage crisis and for sharing his frustrations with Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., a member of the House Armed Services Committee. He helped Hunter craft legislation to reform and streamline how government agencies should work jointly to handle hostage cases.
“The FBI formally complained to the Army that information I was sharing with Rep. Hunter was classified. It was not,” Amerine said in his testimony, noting that federal law protects military whistleblowers. “The FBI made serious allegations of misconduct to the Army in order to put me in my place and readily admitted that to a U.S. congressman.”
The Army deleted his retirement paperwork and cut off his pay temporarily recently, Amerine recounted.
“It’s utterly ridiculous in my mind,” Amerine said.
U.S. officials at the Department of Justice and the FBI did not immediately offer comment today regarding Amerine and his claims.
Army spokesperson Cynthia Smith said that while the service’s policy dictates that they cannot confirm the names of anyone who “may or may not be under investigation,” Smith noted that “both the law and Army policy would prohibit initiating an investigation based solely on a Soldier’s protected communications with Congress.”
A spokesperson for Hunter, in turn, said that the Army had confirmed to Hunter their investigation into Amerine for “potential unauthorized disclosures” to Congress.


“It’s a sad day for the Army, in its struggle to be truthful,” said Joe Kasper, Hunter’s spokesperson.
Amerine plans to tell the Committee today, “You, the Congress, were my last resort to recover the hostages. But now I am a whistleblower, a term that has become radioactive and derogatory.
“And let us not forget: Warren Weinstein is dead while Colin Rutherford, Josh Boyle, Caitlin Coleman, and her child remain prisoners. Who is fighting for them?”

DHS Holds Employee as a Hostage

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Visa Program for Wealthy Foreigners Has Serious Security Challenges, Homeland Whistleblower Says

 

A senior federal agent became the first insider Wednesday to publicly expose what she said were serious national security concerns surrounding a controversial immigration program that has been providing Green Cards to wealthy foreigners.

Senior Special Agent Taylor Johnson said her Homeland Security investigation uncovered visa applicants from China, Russia, Pakistan and Malaysia who had been approved in as little as 16 days, even though their applications “lacked basic necessary law enforcement” screening.

“During the course of my investigation it became very clear that the EB-5 program has serious security challenges,” she said.

Her findings echo those reported in a series of stories this year by ABC News about the controversial program that gives wealthy foreigners the chance to turn a $500,000 investment into a U.S. Green Card – reports that were based on extensive interviews with five other whistleblowers.

The ABC News investigation uncovered records showing foreign applicants had successfully obtained EB-5 visas despite allegations of fraud, money laundering, forgery, and other crimes against them. In one case, an Iranian business man was able to gain recertification to participate in the program even as he was under active investigation for smuggling.

The program, known by the visa designation EB-5, is designed to create thousands of jobs by offering temporary residency and eventually Green Cards to foreigners who agree to invest more than $500,000 in approved American ventures. The two-part ABC News investigation found, however, that the program had become a magnet for those seeking to sidestep the scrutiny of the traditional immigration process.

Johnson came forward Wednesday as part of a U.S. Senate Hearing that was convened to bring attention to the plight of federal officials who have tried to report wrongdoing in their agencies, only to face retaliation for stepping forward. Johnson said she was sent an unmistakable message by senior Homeland Security officials when she began to report them up the chain of command – back off.

“After disclosing gross mismanagement, waste and fraud that threatened the general public’s safety, National Security Risks and public corruption surrounding an EB-5 project, I was subjected to a significant amount of harassment and retaliation,” Johnson said.

“I was removed from the investigation, a shoddy follow-up review was conducted and then in 2013, ultimately, the investigation was shut down,” she told senators.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday. But in earlier statements to ABC News, senior officials said they had already begun work on improving the EB-5 program to better insulate it from exploitation by foreign agents and criminals. They said they were hampered in their efforts by a lack of legal authority to crack down on the so-called “regional centers” — largely unregulated businesses that have sprung up to pair foreign investors with U.S. based projects that have the potential to create jobs.

Following the ABC News investigation, an internal investigation by the Inspector General was published which revealed evidence of political meddling in the program, also relying heavily on whistleblowers from inside Homeland Security. Senior members of the U.S. Senate last week proposed legislation aimed at better protecting the EB-5 program from abuse.

As all of the internal problems with the little-known immigration program have surfaced, however, none of the whistleblowers had stepped forward to talk in public. Those interviewed by ABC News expressed strong concerns that they would face retaliation if they spoke out. Homeland Security Inspector General John Roth expressed a similar concern when he testified on the issue before the House Homeland Security Committee in March.

“Being a whistleblower is seen to be hazardous,” Roth said.