WarSclerotic

By John Solomon and Alison Spann – 10/17/17 06:00 AM EDT

Source: FBI uncovered Russian bribery plot before Obama administration approved controversial nuclear deal with Moscow | TheHill

Before the Obama administration approved a controversial deal in 2010 giving Moscow control of a large swath of American uranium, the FBI had gathered substantial evidence that Russian nuclear industry officials were engaged in bribery, kickbacks, extortion and money laundering designed to grow Vladimir Putin’s atomic energy business inside the United States, according to government documents and interviews.

Federal agents used a confidential U.S. witness working inside the Russian nuclear industry to gather extensive financial records, make secret recordings and intercept emails as early as 2009 that showed Moscow had compromised an American uranium trucking firm with bribes and kickbacks in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, FBI and court documents show.

They also obtained an eyewitness account — backed by documents — indicating Russian nuclear officials had routed millions of dollars to the U.S. designed to benefit former President Bill Clinton’s charitable foundation during the time Secretary of State Hillary Clinton served on a government body that provided a favorable decision to Moscow, sources told The Hill.

The racketeering scheme was conducted “with the consent of higher level officials” in Russia who “shared the proceeds” from the kickbacks, one agent declared in an affidavit years later.

Rather than bring immediate charges in 2010, however, the Department of Justice (DOJ) continued investigating the matter for nearly four more years, essentially leaving the American public and Congress in the dark about Russian nuclear corruption on U.S. soil during a period when the Obama administration made two major decisions benefiting Putin’s commercial nuclear ambitions.

The first decision occurred in October 2010, when the State Department and government agencies on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States unanimously approved the partial sale of Canadian mining company Uranium One to the Russian nuclear giant Rosatom, giving Moscow control of more than 20 percent of America’s uranium supply.

When this sale was used by Trump on the campaign trail last year, Hillary Clinton’s spokesman said she was not involved in the committee review and noted the State Department official who handled it said she “never intervened … on any [Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States] matter.”

In 2011, the administration gave approval for Rosatom’s Tenex subsidiary to sell commercial uranium to U.S. nuclear power plants in a partnership with the United States Enrichment Corp. Before then, Tenex had been limited to selling U.S. nuclear power plants reprocessed uranium recovered from dismantled Soviet nuclear weapons under the 1990s Megatons to Megawatts peace program.

“The Russians were compromising American contractors in the nuclear industry with kickbacks and extortion threats, all of which raised legitimate national security concerns. And none of that evidence got aired before the Obama administration made those decisions,” a person who worked on the case told The Hill, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution by U.S. or Russian officials.

The Obama administration’s decision to approve Rosatom’s purchase of Uranium One has been a source of political controversy since 2015.

That’s when conservative author Peter Schweitzer and The New York Times documented how Bill Clinton collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in Russian speaking fees and his charitable foundation collected millions in donations from parties interested in the deal while Hillary Clinton presided on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.

The Obama administration and the Clintons defended their actions at the time, insisting there was no evidence that any Russians or donors engaged in wrongdoing and there was no national security reason for any member of the committee to oppose the Uranium One deal.

But FBI, Energy Department and court documents reviewed by The Hill show the FBI in fact had gathered substantial evidence well before the committee’s decision that Vadim Mikerin — the main Russian overseeing Putin’s nuclear expansion inside the United States — was engaged in wrongdoing starting in 2009.

Then-Attorney General Eric Holder was among the Obama administration officials joining Hillary Clinton on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States at the time the Uranium One deal was approved. Multiple current and former government officials told The Hill they did not know whether the FBI or DOJ ever alerted committee members to the criminal activity they uncovered.

Spokesmen for Holder and Clinton did not return calls seeking comment. The Justice Department also didn’t comment.

Mikerin was a director of Rosatom’s Tenex in Moscow since the early 2000s, where he oversaw Rosatom’s nuclear collaboration with the United States under the Megatons to Megwatts program and its commercial uranium sales to other countries. In 2010, Mikerin was dispatched to the U.S. on a work visa approved by the Obama administration to open Rosatom’s new American arm called Tenam.

Between 2009 and January 2012, Mikerin “did knowingly and willfully combine, conspire confederate and agree with other persons … to obstruct, delay and affect commerce and the movement of an article and commodity (enriched uranium) in commerce by extortion,” a November 2014 indictment stated.

His illegal conduct was captured with the help of a confidential witness, an American businessman, who began making kickback payments at Mikerin’s direction and with the permission of the FBI. The first kickback payment recorded by the FBI through its informant was dated Nov. 27, 2009, the records show.

In evidentiary affidavits signed in 2014 and 2015, an Energy Department agent assigned to assist the FBI in the case testified that Mikerin supervised a “racketeering scheme” that involved extortion, bribery, money laundering and kickbacks that were both directed by and provided benefit to more senior officials back in Russia.

“As part of the scheme, Mikerin, with the consent of higher level officials at TENEX and Rosatom (both Russian state-owned entities) would offer no-bid contracts to US businesses in exchange for kickbacks in the form of money payments made to some offshore banks accounts,” Agent David Gadren testified.

“Mikerin apparently then shared the proceeds with other co-conspirators associated with TENEX in Russia and elsewhere,” the agent added.

The investigation was ultimately supervised by then-U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein, an Obama appointee who now serves as President Trump’s deputy attorney general, and then-Assistant FBI Director Andrew McCabe, now the deputy FBI director under Trump, Justice Department documents show.

Both men now play a key role in the current investigation into possible, but still unproven, collusion between Russia and Donald Trump’s campaign during the 2016 election cycle. McCabe is under congressional and Justice Department inspector general investigation in connection with money his wife’s Virginia state Senate campaign accepted in 2015 from now-Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe at a time when McAuliffe was reportedly under investigation by the FBI.

The connections to the current Russia case are many. The Mikerin probe began in 2009 when Robert Mueller, now the special counsel in charge of the Trump case, was still FBI director. And it ended in late 2015 under the direction of then-FBI Director James Comey, whom Trump fired earlier this year.

Its many twist and turns aside, the FBI nuclear industry case proved a gold mine, in part because it uncovered a new Russian money laundering apparatus that routed bribe and kickback payments through financial instruments in Cyprus, Latvia and Seychelles. A Russian financier in New Jersey was among those arrested for the money laundering, court records show.

The case also exposed a serious national security breach: Mikerin had given a contract to an American trucking firm called Transport Logistics International that held the sensitive job of transporting Russia’s uranium around the United States in return for more than $2 million in kickbacks from some of its executives, court records show.

One of Mikerin’s former employees told the FBI that Tenex officials in Russia specifically directed the scheme to “allow for padded pricing to include kickbacks,” agents testified in one court filing.

Bringing down a major Russian nuclear corruption scheme that had both compromised a sensitive uranium transportation asset inside the U.S. and facilitated international money laundering would seem a major feather in any law enforcement agency’s cap.

But the Justice Department and FBI took little credit in 2014 when Mikerin, the Russian financier and the trucking firm executives were arrested and charged.

The only public statement occurred a year later when the Justice Department put out a little-noticed press release in August 2015, just days before Labor Day. The release noted that the various defendants had reached plea deals.

By that time, the criminal cases against Mikerin had been narrowed to a single charge of money laundering for a scheme that officials admitted stretched from 2004 to 2014. And though agents had evidence of criminal wrongdoing they collected since at least 2009, federal prosecutors only cited in the plea agreement a handful of transactions that occurred in 2011 and 2012, well after the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States’s approval.

The final court case also made no mention of any connection to the influence peddling conversations the FBI undercover informant witnessed about the Russian nuclear officials trying to ingratiate themselves with the Clintons even though agents had gathered documents showing the transmission of millions of dollars from Russia’s nuclear industry to an American entity that had provided assistance to Bill Clinton’s foundation, sources confirmed to The Hill.

The lack of fanfare left many key players in Washington with no inkling that a major Russian nuclear corruption scheme with serious national security implications had been uncovered.

On Dec. 15, 2015, the Justice Department put out a release stating that Mikerin, “a former Russian official residing in Maryland was sentenced today to 48 months in prison” and ordered to forfeit more than $2.1 million.

Ronald Hosko, who served as the assistant FBI director in charge of criminal cases when the investigation was underway, told The Hill he did not recall ever being briefed about Mikerin’s case by the counterintelligence side of the bureau despite the criminal charges that were being lodged.

“I had no idea this case was being conducted,” a surprised Hosko said in an interview.

Likewise, major congressional figures were also kept in the dark.

Former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), who chaired the House Intelligence Committee during the time the FBI probe was being conducted, told The Hill that he had never been told anything about the Russian nuclear corruption case even though many fellow lawmakers had serious concerns about the Obama administration’s approval of the Uranium One deal.

“Not providing information on a corruption scheme before the Russian uranium deal was approved by U.S. regulators and engage appropriate congressional committees has served to undermine U.S. national security interests by the very people charged with protecting them,” he said. “The Russian efforts to manipulate our American political enterprise is breathtaking.”

BY: Adam Kredo
October 16, 2017 6:35 pm

Source: UN Accused of ‘Blackmailing’ Israeli Telecomm Company to Cut Services to Jews

The United Nations Human Rights Council is pressuring a major Israeli telecommunications company to cease operations in disputed areas of the Jewish state or face a potential designation as a human rights abuser, according to a copy of communications sent by the Human Rights Council that is being viewed as an attempt to blackmail international corporations into boycotting the Jewish state.

The UNHRC recently sent a letter to the CEO of Bezeq, a major Israeli telecoms firm, accusing it of promoting settlement activity in Israel and of providing cellular services to areas that the Council believes are Palestinian territory.

The UNHRC’s effort to create a database of companies working in and with Israel is being viewed by pro-Israel leaders as an effort to intimidate Israeli and Western businesses as part of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, or BDS, a global effort that has been described by the United States and others as anti-Semitic in nature. Bezeq is among a number of companies, including those in America, who have received such letters from the UNHRC.

A senior U.S. official familiar with the situation said the Trump administration opposes the UNHRC database and views it as part of a larger effort to isolate the Jewish state and use the United Nations to bully international corporations.

The UNHRC has long been accused of harboring an anti-Israel bias and recently elected a number of prominent global human rights abusers to take a seat at the council, including nations such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Afghanistan, Angola, and Qatar, all of which have been accused of violating their citizens’ human rights.

The UNHRC’s effort to create a database of corporations that it claims support Israeli settlement growth and the abuse of Palestinian human rights has been described by some pro-Israel voices as a blackmail effort meant to undermine the Jewish state’s international standing.

The UNHRC sent a letter to Bezeq in late September accusing it of “supporting the maintenance and existence of settlements, as well as the “use of nature resources, in particular water and land, for business purposes,” according to a copy of that letter that first circulated on Facebook.

The UNHRC threatens to add Bezeq to its database of companies operating in what it claims are Israeli settlements and the occupied Palestinian territories.

“Bezeq owns approximately 40 real estate properties in the West Bank used for telecommunications infrastructure, and operates antennas throughout the West Bank,” the UNHRC wrote in its letter.”

“Bezeq provides landline, cellular, internet, and cable TV services to residents of settlements in the West Bank,” according to the UNHRC, which considers this activity a violation of its accords.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Mission to the UN criticized the creation of the database, telling the Washington Free Beacon the United States will not participate in such an effort.

“We have made clear our opposition regarding the creation of a database of businesses operating in Israeli settlements in the occupied territories, and we have not participated and will not participate in its creation or contribute to its content,” the official said.

Anne Bayefsky, a prominent pro-Israel activist and head of Human Rights Voices, a watchdog group that monitors anti-Israel bias at the UN, told the Free Beacon the letter to Bezeq represents an effort by the international body to promote BDS efforts against Israel.

“The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Jordanian Prince Zeid Al Hussein, acting in cahoots with the UN Human Rights Council, has been blackmailing companies around the world as part of a UN BDS campaign directed at Israel,” Bayefsky said.

Similar letters have been sent to companies across the globe, threatening them with inclusion into this anti-Israel database.

“Until now, the UN High Commissioners Office has been sending around secret letters both to companies and to states, threatening them with inclusion in a database of offenders that the UN plans to release by the end of the year,” Bayefsky said. “The database is to include companies that ‘directly or indirectly’ are connected to Israeli settlements. It is nothing short of an assault on the economic welfare of the state of Israel, period.”

As many as 30 American companies are believed to have received similar letters, according to Bayefsky, who urged the Trump administration to take greater action to counter the campaign.

“American shareholders and businesses, and the communities that depend on them, have no idea whether the State Department has been in touch with these companies and given them immediate and appropriate advice about how to handle this dangerous UN affront,” Bayefsky said. “The fact is that the high commissioner and the Council have no legal basis whatsoever in writing these letters or demanding any response to the Council’s anti-Israel resolutions that in turn have no legal status. Moreover, American companies that write back to the high commissioner may well violate American law, especially given numerous states that have adopted anti-BDS legislation.”

“The silence from American officials has been deafening and totally inexcusable,” Bayefsky said. “Blackmail is not defeated by playing by the blackmailers rules.”

Representatives from Bezeq and the UNHRC did not immediately respond to Free Beacon requests for comment on the matter.

Source: After Syria strike, PM says, ‘We will hit anyone who hits us’ – Israel Hayom

Source: After IAF strikes anti-aircraft battery, Syria warns of ‘dangerous consequences’ | The Times of Israel

Syrian military claims it fired at Israeli jets that penetrated its airspace, but IDF maintains they were over Lebanon

On Monday morning, the Syrian air defense battery fired an interceptor missile at Israeli reconnaissance planes. In response, a second IAF sortie, reportedly made up of F-16 fighter jets, attacked the SA-5 missile defense system that launched the interceptor, some 50 kilometers (31 miles) east of the Syrian capital.

In a statement published in official state media, the Syrian military warned Israel of “dangerous consequences for its repeated attempts of aggression.”

The Syrian military claimed the IAF aircraft entered its airspace, prompting the anti-aircraft attack. But IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus said, both initially and in response to the Syrian assertion, that the reconnaissance planes “were in the skies over Lebanon, and not in Syria.”

According to the Syrians, the planes were flying near the Lebanese city of Baalbek, which is located near the Syrian border, approximately 50 kilometers (31 miles) north of Damascus.

The IDF would not confirm where the reconnaissance aircraft were flying when they were targeted.

Conricus said the reconnaissance planes were not struck by the interceptor missile, but the Syrian military claimed one Israeli plane was “directly hit” and “forced to flee.”

An SA-5 interceptor missile on display at the Ukrainian Air Force Museum. (George Chernilevsky/Wikimedia/CC BY-SA 3.0)

In response to the anti-aircraft missile, the IAF sent out a second sortie, which targeted the anti-aircraft system and “incapacitated” the offending SA-5 battery, the IDF said.

The SA-5, also known as the S-200, is a Russian-designed anti-aircraft system that has been in use since the late 1960s.

According to the Syrian statement, the anti-aircraft battery targeted the Israeli planes at 8:51 a.m., and the IAF retaliated approximately three hours later — which basically matched the timeline described by the Israeli military.

The Syrian military said the Israeli strike caused “material damage” to the battery, but did not report any casualties.

The exchange of fire was out of the ordinary for a number of reasons, notably that the Syrian military launched its interceptor missile not in response to an Israeli airstrike but to a more mundane reconnaissance mission, and that the IDF did not retaliate immediately but waited several hours before bombing the Syrian battery.

Analysts ascribed the former to Syrian dictator Bashar Assad’s battlefield successes, which may have prompted him to take a more aggressive approach toward Israel.

The delay in Israeli response, meanwhile, was seen as coming from the impending visit of Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, who is due to arrive in Israel on Monday afternoon.

The Russian military is allied with Assad and operates extensively in the war-torn country, and so an airstrike against Syrian forces hours before Shoigu lands in Tel Aviv would likely require a more serious consideration and approval process.

According to Conricus, the Russians were notified of the Israeli airstrike on the SA-5 battery “in real-time.”

The spokesperson said that when Shoigu arrives in Tel Aviv, “he will get a full briefing on the matter.”

Conricus acknowledged the sensitivity of the timing of the incident and the potential for it to cause tension during Shoigu’s visit, but said the military was “confident it won’t influence anything else.”

“This was obviously not a preplanned event,” he added.

In order to avoid unwanted clashes with the Russian troops in Syria, Jerusalem and Moscow have maintained a communication system over the past two years.

Israeli officials do not typically discuss the full extent of the coordination between the two militaries, but stress that the IDF does not seek Russian permission before carrying out airstrikes in Syria.

In general, Israel’s operation in Syria consist of bombing sites that are used to develop, store and transport advanced weaponry to the Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorist group. There have also been cases of the IAF responding when mortar shells and rockets “spillover” into Israel from the fighting in Syria.

Conricus said that while the army will continue to defend itself, it was not looking to “destablize” the situation with Syria.

“Preserving the relative stability is a common interest,” the lieutenant colonel said.

According to Conricus, this was the first time that Israeli aircraft were targeted by Syrian anti-aircraft missiles over Lebanese airspace since the start of the Syrian civil war. However, it was not the first time that IAF jets had been attacked by an SA-5 system.

In March, Assad’s military fired multiple interceptor missiles from an SA-5 system at Israeli jets flying over Jordan on their way back from a bombing run in Syria. The IAF jets were unharmed, but one Syrian missile seemed to be on a trajectory that took it toward an Israeli community and so it was shot down by the Arrow 2 air defense system, in the first reported use of the system.

However, in that case, Israel did not respond to the anti-aircraft attack on the IAF jets with a retaliatory airstrike on the SA-5 battery that launched it.