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The Michael Flynn Selection

November 19, 2016

The Michael Flynn Selection, Power Line, Paul Mirengoff, November 18, 2016

Donald Trump has selected Michael Flynn to be his national security adviser. The selection is a natural one. Flynn was Trump’s go-to guy on national security matters during the campaign.

The retired Lt. General is already under attack on a number of fronts, both personal and substantive. The focus should be on substance.

I don’t know Flynn’s views on the full range of national security related topics. I agree with his line on two vital issues — ISIS and Iran. His general view of the threat posed by Islam also strikes me as sound, if not always expressed with sufficient nuance.

As for Russia, Flynn will continue to take fire for his recent trip to Moscow. However, as we noted here, Flynn criticized Russian foreign policy while in Moscow.

Flynn’s recent book, discussed below, also comes down on Russia. It takes issue with the view, advanced by Trump, that Russia can be a reliable partner in the fight against ISIS in Syria.

Keep this in mind as those speaking out against Flynn make him out to be pro-Putin. Critics of the Russian autocrat may end of being pleased that Trump is getting advice from Flynn.

Folks who have heard Flynn speak — be it at the Republican Convention, on cable news, or in person — may share my impression that he isn’t very articulate. Flynn probably comes across well in conversation, though. Otherwise, it’s unlikely that Trump would elevate him to national security adviser, however loyal Flynn has been. Indeed, it’s unlikely that Flynn would gotten Trump’s ear to begin with.

Flynn’s views on the all-important issue of combating radical Islam come through clearly in the book, mentioned above, that he wrote with out friend Michael Ledeen — The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies. In evaluating Flynn’s approach to radical Islam, his book, not his tweets or off-hand comments, should be the touchstone.

Finally, when critics complain that Flynn’s selection is just a reward for his loyalty to Trump, think of Susan Rice, the current national security adviser. She got the job after loyally peddling the Obama-Clinton tale that the attacks in Benghazi were due to an anti-Islam video.

Flynn may be loyal, but to my knowledge he never spread falsehoods on behalf of Trump.

Is Flynn an ideal national security adviser? Not in my view. However, he’s the voice Trump wants most to hear on national security issues. I believe that most of what Trump hears from Flynn will be sound.

Categories: Donald Trump and Islamists, Donald Trump and Russia, Intelligence community, Michael Flynn, President Elect Trump, Trump appointments
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Clueless Clapper Calls It Quits

November 18, 2016

Clueless Clapper Calls It Quits, Front Page Magazine, Robert Spencer, November 18, 2016

crapper

While he was Director of National Intelligence, Clapper made every American less safe. He epitomized the denial and willful ignorance that characterized the Obama administration’s approach to the jihad threat. In this time of swamp-draining, Clueless Clapper is leaving the stage not a moment too soon.

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Barack Obama’s Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, submitted his letter of resignation on Wednesday, and the next day he told the House Select Committee on Intelligence that doing so “felt pretty good….I have 64 days left and I’d have a pretty hard time with my wife going past that.” Why? Is Mrs. Clapper opposed to intelligence policies based on politically correct fantasies and willful ignorance?

Nothing epitomizes more perfectly the Obama Administration’s consistent refusal to come to grips with the reality of the global jihad than Clapper’s embarrassing tenure as Director of National Intelligence.

One incident that took place in December 2010, four months after Clapper took office, epitomized his abject incompetence. British authorities arrested twelve jihadists who had been planning to set off bombs in a variety of locations; that same day, Clapper appeared on Diane Sawyer’s ABC show, on which Sawyer said to him that she expected he must be very busy with the London arrests. Clapper looked confused, and admitted that he had no idea what she was talking about. Arrests? A terror plot?

Had Sawyer been conducting a man-on-the-street interview, and Clapper was in reality the befuddled accountant he appears to be, he might be excused for having no idea that a large-scale anti-terror operation had just been carried out in London. But this was the Director of National Intelligence, and he was far less informed and up to speed on the situation than was Sawyer herself, or probably an entire legion of befuddled accountants.

Obama’s team ran interference for Clapper, claiming essentially that Clapper had been so involved with the London arrests that he was too preoccupied to answer Sawyer’s question properly, but that his display of cluelessness was no indication of…cluelessness.

But it was. Clapper showed that again in February 2011, when he claimed at the height of the Egyptian “Arab Spring” that the Muslim Brotherhood was “largely secular,” a claim as absurd as it was inaccurate. Although the subsequent torrent of ridicule compelled the Obama camp to issue a correction, the subtext of Clapper’s statement was clear: the Obama Administration had no problem with Muslim Brotherhood rule in Egypt, and was not only going to do nothing to stop it, but was going actively to enable it.

The Brotherhood that Obama worked so assiduously to aid is dedicated, of course, to establishing the rule of Islamic law not only in Egypt, but everywhere that it possibly can. And if that rather commonplace fact was too much for Clapper and his boss, they could have resorted to a much simpler indicator of the religious foundation of the Brotherhood’s political program: its name. It isn’t, after all, called the Arab Nationalist Brotherhood, or the Egyptian Brotherhood, but rather the Muslim Brotherhood. Its name itself shows that it is no more secular than the Christian Brothers religious order.

Clapper also appeared woefully (if not willfully) ignorant of the Brotherhood’s pro-Sharia agenda, and no doubt completely oblivious to the implications for the United States and the world of an Egypt governed by Islamic law.

There was, of course, more. In March 2011, Clapper told Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) that Russia and China represented the greatest “mortal threat” to the United States.

Russia and China? Not North Korea and Iran, or the forces of the global jihad that grew steadily more aggressive while Clapper was Director of National Intelligence? Clapper’s statement sounded like a Rip Van Winkle who had been sleeping for twenty years or longer, and nobody had gotten around to clueing him in to the fact that the Cold War was over.

Had Clapper, a retired lieutenant general in the Air Force and longtime intelligence professional, made any study in the area of national intelligence since 1985? Was he aware that the world situation has drastically changed since 1985? Had he had any kind of thought at all since 1985?

James Clapper is perhaps the most abysmally ignorant and unqualified individual ever to have held a position of so much responsibility. While he was Director of National Intelligence, Clapper repeatedly demonstrated that he had no idea about the nature of the world today, no sense of the genuine threats that face the United States, and no clue as to what to do about those threats.

Yet instead of firing him, Obama continually made excuses for him, explaining away his idiotic remarks, and running interference for him with the international media. What Clapper did to merit such solicitude is unclear, but the stakes were far too high for the nonsense and fantasy that Clapper purveyed. While he was Director of National Intelligence, Clapper made every American less safe. He epitomized the denial and willful ignorance that characterized the Obama administration’s approach to the jihad threat. In this time of swamp-draining, Clueless Clapper is leaving the stage not a moment too soon.

Categories: Fantasy Islam, Intelligence community, Intelligence failures, Islamic terrorism, Islamisation, James Clapper, Muslim Brotherhood
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Unsolicited Advice for the Trump Transition Team on National Security Intelligence

November 10, 2016

Unsolicited Advice for the Trump Transition Team on National Security Intelligence, PJ Media, Andrew C. McCarthy, November 10, 2016

isis

It was encouraging Wednesday to hear that President Obama intends to emulate President Bush, who generously provided Obama with a highly informative and smooth transition process.

Running the Executive Branch is a daunting task, so there is no aspect of the transition to a new administration that is unimportant. But obviously, the most crucial focus for New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who is heading up President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team, must be national security.

That transition is going to be more complicated than it should be, but there are things Gov. Christie can do – better to say, people he ought to consult — to make sure his team is getting accurate information.

The Bush National Security Council was very good about putting together briefing books so their successors could hit the ground running. The problem now, however, is the trustworthiness of what is in those books.

As PJ Media has reported, a highly disturbing report by a congressional task force this summer found that the Obama administration had politicized its intelligence product.

Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KS), who has been stellar on national security issues and was among the leaders of the task force (comprised of the Intelligence, Armed Services, and Appropriations Committees), put it this way when the report was issued:

After months of investigation, this much is very clear: from the middle of 2014 to the middle of 2015, the United States Central Command’s most senior intelligence leaders manipulated the command’s intelligence products to downplay the threat from ISIS in Iraq.The result: consumers of those intelligence products were provided a consistently “rosy” view of U.S. operational success against ISIS. That may well have resulted in putting American troops at risk as policymakers relied on this intelligence when formulating policy and allocating resources for the fight.

The intelligence manipulation became a controversy in 2015, when 50 intelligence-community whistleblowers complained that their reports on the Islamic State and al-Qaeda terror networks were being altered.

The manipulation, driven by Obama’s Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and carried out in the Defense Department by senior Central Command (CENTCOM) officers, aimed to downplay the jihadist threat.

This is a reckless practice I have written about several times over the last eight years (see, e.g., here). The Obama administration has made a concerted effort to miniaturize the terrorist threat in order to project a mirage of policy success.

Intelligence has routinely been distorted — portraying the networks as atomized, largely detached cells that are not unified by any overarching ideology — in an attempt to make them appear smaller and less threatening. Basically, a nuisance to be managed rather than an enemy to be defeated.

Even when the terrorists are on the march, the administration claims they are in retreat. Indeed, less than 24 hours after four Americans, including our ambassador to Libya, were killed by al-Qaeda-affiliated jihadists in the 2012 siege of Benghazi, President Obama stated this in a political fundraising speech:

A day after 9/11, we are reminded that a new tower rises above the New York skyline, but al-Qaeda is on the path to defeat and bin Laden is dead.

Intel manipulation ran rampant after Obama fired Marine General James Mattis, CENTCOM’s commander, in 2013. General Mattis had the irksome habits of demanding clear-eyed assessments of America’s enemies and forcing administration policymakers to confront the potential consequences of their ludicrously optimistic assumptions, particularly regarding Iran’s behavior. Obama officials replaced him with Army General Lloyd Austin.

Meanwhile, it was made clear to the Pentagon that because the president made campaign commitments to end the U.S. mission in Iraq, he did not want to hear information contradictory to his narrative that withdrawing our forces was the right thing to do. After retiring, Army General Anthony Tata confirmed that an ODNI official instructed the Defense Department not to put in writing assessments that portrayed al-Qaeda and ISIS as fortified and threatening.

The result, of course, was that the president was told what wanted to hear.

This eventually led to Obama’s infamous assertion that ISIS was merely a “JV” terrorist team. Naturally, when the JV team rampaging through Iraq and Syria rendered that judgment embarrassing, the White House shifted the blame to General Austin, pushing him out the CENTCOM door.

The administration has done more to sculpt the narrative than quell the enemy. So Gov. Christie and his team will need to regard with skepticism any briefing books Obama’s transition coordinators supply.

Of course, Team Trump already has a tremendous resource to rely on: retired Army General Michael Flynn, the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (and the author, along with PJ Media columnist Michael Ledeen, of The Field of Fight, which pleads for a desperately needed strategy for fighting the global war against jihadists and their allies). Like General Mattis, General Flynn (in 2014) was pushed out of his job because he rejected the politicization of our intelligence product for purposes of low-balling the terrorist threat. He knows his stuff, knows what we are up against, and will be a major asset not only to the transition, but to the Trump administration.

I would also respectfully suggest that Gov. Christie consult with General Mattis and General Jack Keane: smart, experienced former commanders who have given a great deal of thought to, and sound advice to Congress regarding, the current administration’s strategic and intelligence voids.

In understanding global jihadist networks — who the players are, how the organizations collude and compete — Tom Joscelyn, editor of The Long War Journal, is the best expert in the United States, bar none. While his value would be limitless, Tom is especially knowledgeable about the jihadists released from Guantanamo Bay, many of whom have gone back to the jihad.

Yet again, this is a context in which briefings from the Obama administration would be suspect. The president adheres to another narrative driven by foolish campaign promises, namely: the cost of Gitmo as a “recruiting tool” for the enemy outweighs the benefit of detaining committed, capable, anti-American jihadists. To justify both this absurd premise and the release of the terrorists, the administration watered down intelligence that supported holding the terrorists as enemy combatants who posed continuing danger to the United States.

The new administration needs accurate information for purposes of grasping the threat and formulating sound detention policy.

Finally, it is vital to understand “Countering Violent Extremism,” the Obama administration’s strategic guidance — their playbook for military, intelligence, and law-enforcement officials on how to approach and respond to terrorism. CVE is where the dereliction that I have labeled “willful blindness” has devolved into compulsory blindness.

Under CVE guidelines, the fact that Islamic-supremacist ideology spurs the jihadist threat and knits together terrorists and their sponsors is no longer just consciously avoided; taking notice of it is verboten.

The most thoroughgoing critique of this lunacy is Catastrophic Failure: Blindfolding America in the Face of Jihad. Its author is Stephen Coughlin, a trained military intelligence officer and an attorney who has made a point of learning how Islamic law principles inform the goals and tactics of our enemies. Steve is extraordinarily informed about the administration’s wayward assumptions. If the Trump transition team wants to check the premises on which their work is based, he’s the guy.

Let’s welcome President Obama’s assurances of a seamless transition to the Trump administration. But my best unsolicited advice to Gov. Christie: When it comes to briefing books, don’t believe everything you read.

Categories: Donald Trump and Islamist terror, Foreign policy establishment, Homeland Security, Intelligence agencies, Intelligence community, Intelligence failures, Islamic State, Islamic terror groups, National secuity, Obama and intelligence, Obama and Islamic terrorism, Obama's America 2016, President Elect Trump
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Director of National Intelligence: Climate Change (Not Sharia) Leads to Jihad

September 13, 2016

Director of National Intelligence: Climate Change (Not Sharia) Leads to Jihad, Counter Jihad, Bruce Cornibe, September 13, 2016

It’s ridiculous when an elite university like MIT promotes bogus lectures such as Is Islamophobia Accelerating Global Warming? However, one can argue that it’s even worse when our top U.S. government leaders advocate for similar bogus theories such as linking climate change to terrorism.

This is what happened recently at the annual Intelligence & National Security Summit in Washington, D.C., when DNI’s James Clapper suggested a connection between environmental issues and terrorism.

The political left has been trying to establish a linkage between the two topics to provide a way to divert attention away from the actual radical Islamic ideology that is at the heart of modern day terrorism.

For example, in Paris a couple weeks after the horrific November 2015 attacks, U.S. President Obama had the audacity to insinuate a connection between climate change and terrorism. It’s bad enough that some leftists continue to push the narrative that humans are the main reason for climate change – now we have to hear our government officials promote a political agenda that basically says if we don’t go “green” we can expect terrorism to continue. Defense One reveals Clapper’s rationale behind this climate change and terrorism connection stating:

…Increased competition for “ever-diminishing food and water resources” will amplify socio-economically motivated armed conflicts, countries’ difficulties controlling their borders, and instability more generally, he said.

“I think climate change is going to be an underpinning for a lot of national security issues,” Clapper said. It affects “so many things: the availability of basics like water and food and other resources which are continually going to become matters of conflict, and already are, between and among countries.”

Defense One goes on to add:

The Pentagon has been getting increasingly serious about preparing for it, warning that warming global temperaturesand extreme weather events would act as a “threat multiplier” and foster terrorism. Earlier this year, Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work ordered the military to adapt current and future operations to address climate change.

Clapper echoed this warning. Climate change-driven instability and other factors mean that “after ISIL is gone, you can expect some other terrorist entity to arise, and the cycle of extremism [to] continue for the foreseeable future.”

It seems like the line of logic is as follows: Humans (implied) -> climate change -> diminished resources -> struggle for resources -> “extremism”/terrorism

To say that climate change is causing a depletion of our resources like food and water–which then causes conflict that leads to terrorism is a massive stretch of the imagination. Of course, this didn’t stop President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry from linking climate change to the Syrian civil war.

Even left-leaning national security analyst Peter Brookes debunked this in an article last year, writing that, “there seems to be no strong quantitative (i.e., empirical) evidence to prove a cause-and-effect relationship between changes in the climate and conflict.”

It’s one thing to say that natural resources like fresh water are a security concern in arid regions like areas in the Middle East and Africa, and enter into countries’ national security policy. That much is true– and also obvious. However, to say Islamic jihad is a result from supposed conflict caused by a lack of resources is ludicrous.

Jihadists are driven by motives such as Sharia law and bringing back the Caliphate, not by frustration over the contention of scarce food and water supplies. This type of linkage is even weaker than the belief that terrorists are essentially joining the cause of jihad because of a lack of jobs/economic opportunities. ISIS could be living on the most resource-replete land and they still wouldn’t be satisfied until they bring the world under Islamic rule.

Regardless of their differences, there is a commonality between those who are hyper-ideological; a link between those who are so obsessed with their worldview that they believe it explains literally everything: In Paris last year, Obama said, “climate change — affects all trends”; the totalitarian Islamist thinks implementing Sharia law globally is the answer to solving the world’s problems.

Of course, Obama wants to see the establishment of liberal-progressive values, while the Islamist wants everything Islamic; however, both groups need each other politically at least temporarily in order to build up a powerful enough coalition to launch their respective agendas on the world stage.

Leftist politicians tend to dismiss or ignore the worldwide jihadist movement and seek to combat what they call “extremism” with vague solutions that furthers their political agenda.

Anyone with common sense realizes that hardcore jihadists like ISIS are not going to put down the sword of jihad through diplomacy and random acts of global kindness. The West needs to militarily wipe jihadists like those involved with ISIS off of the face of the earth, but also seek ways in countering their Sharia ideology that is reaching our next generation’s youth.

Categories: Climate change, Intelligence community, Islamic terrorism, James Clapper, Obama and Islamic terrorism
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Trump Will Face a Huge Challenge with U.S. Intelligence If He Wins

August 18, 2016

Trump Will Face a Huge Challenge with U.S. Intelligence If He Wins, Center for Security Policy, Fred Fleitz, August 18, 2016

cia logo

Before his classified national-security briefing yesterday, Donald Trump said he didn’t trust U.S. intelligence. His comments attracted the expected condemnations and ridicule from the media pundits and foreign-policy experts. However, based on my 25 years working in U.S. intelligence, I believe Trump’s concerns are well-founded.

On Wednesday, Trump received the intelligence briefing traditionally provided by the U.S. Intelligence Community to newly nominated presidential candidates. This briefing was preceded by calls from the Clinton campaign, other Democrats, and, privately, by some intelligence officials that Trump be denied these briefings because, they claim, he can’t be trusted to protect classified information.

Harry Reid, the top Democrat in the Senate, actually asked intelligence analysts to give Trump fake briefings.

The Washington Post’s intelligence reporter Greg Miller reported on July 28 that a senior intelligence official told Miller privately that he would refuse to brief Trump because of concerns about Trump’s alleged admiration of Russian president Putin and because “he’s been so uninterested in the truth and so reckless with it when he sees it.” Reuters ran a similar story on June 2, reporting that eight senior security officials said they had concerns about briefing Trump; Reuters did not indicate how many of the officials cited were intelligence officials or Obama appointees.

These calls to deny intelligence briefings to a presidential candidate are unprecedented, but they also reflect a serious problem within the U.S. intelligence community that awaits a possible Trump administration: the politicization of American intelligence by the Left.

I saw this constantly during my 19 years as a CIA analyst. CIA officers frequently tried to undermine CIA directors Casey and Gates because they disagreed with President Reagan’s policy goal of defeating the Soviet Union. Several testified against Gates’s nomination to be CIA director in 1991 by lodging false claims that he and Casey had politicized intelligence. Former senator Warren Rudman, a moderate Republican who headed President Clinton’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, described these attacks by CIA analysts as “an attempted assassination, an assassination of [Gates’s] character . . . McCarthyism, pure and simple.”

The liberal tilt within the CIA, especially in the Directorate of Intelligence (the analysis office), grew worse during the Clinton years as personnel were hired and promoted to support Clinton-Gore policy objectives. These included wasteful initiatives such as the DCI Environmental Center, launched at the same time the CIA was dangerously downplaying counterterrorism analysis.

Unfortunately, the intensified liberal tilt at the CIA during the Clinton years was not reversed by the George W. Bush administration. Bush kept on Clinton’s CIA director, George Tenet, who had no interest in cleaning house or taking steps to ensure that CIA analysis would be balanced and not politicized. When his successor, Porter Goss, tried to clean up the agency, CIA careerists fought back aggressively by leaking to Congress and the media, eventually forcing Goss out.

As a result, intelligence careerists often paid no price for engaging in blatantly political activities to undermine the Bush administration. One officer in the CIA inspector general’s office was fired after she admitted she’d leaked classified information on Bush counterterrorism programs to aWashington Post reporter. In 2005, several intelligence officers attempted to sabotage John Bolton’s nomination to be U.N. ambassador — an act of political skullduggery for which they were never punished.

The most notorious example of partisan political activity by U.S. intelligence officers occurred just before the 2004 presidential election when Paul Pillar, the CIA’s national intelligence officer for Near East and South Asia, while giving a speech at a dinner on September 21, criticized President Bush and CIA director Tenet for ignoring critical intelligence that he claimed might have prevented the Iraq War. Incredibly, CIA management had cleared Pillar’s comments, saying that the substance of his remarks, but not the speaker or the audience, could be disclosed. The late columnist Robert Novak, who attended the dinner, sparked an uproar when he reported Pillar’s identity and the dinner anyway. Clearly, Pillar’s presentation was intended to affect the outcome of the 2004 presidential election.

The Wall Street Journal condemned such political activities by CIA officers in a scathing September 29, 2004, editorial titled “The CIA’s Insurgency”:

It’s become obvious over the past couple of years that large swaths of the CIA oppose U.S. anti-terror policy, especially toward Iraq. But rather than keep this dispute in-house, the dissenters have taken their objections to the public, albeit usually through calculated leaks that are always spun to make the agency look good and the Bush administration look bad. . . . Yet what the CIA insurgents are essentially doing here, with their leaks and insubordination, is engaging in a policy debate. Given the timing of the latest leaks so close to an election, they are now clearly trying to defeat President Bush and elect John Kerry.

Politicization of America’s intelligence agencies by the Left has grown worse during the Obama years. Recall that the CIA drafted the politicized (and later discredited) 2012 talking points on the Benghazi terrorist attacks. Additionally, the agency now uses racial, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, religion, socioeconomic status, and other quotas for CIA hiring and promotions.

Significant examples of politicization in other intelligence agencies since 2009 include the congressional testimony of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. During a briefing to the House Intelligence Committee in February 201, Clapper tried to downplay the Muslim Brotherhood as a radical Islamist group, saying: “The term Muslim Brotherhood is an umbrella term for a variety of movements. In the case of Egypt, a very heterogeneous group, largely secular, which has eschewed violence and has decried al-Qaeda as a perversion of Islam.”

And in 2015, as widely reported, more than 50 U.S. Central Command intelligence analysts lodged a formal complaint with the Pentagon’s inspector general. In the complaint, they alleged that their intelligence assessments were being intentionally manipulated by senior officials to downplay the threat from ISIS and the al-Nusra Front (the al-Qaeda branch in Syria) in order to support the Obama administration’s claim that the U.S. was making progress in defeating these Islamist terrorist groups. A recent congressional task force concluded this month that these complaints were valid and expressed alarm that nothing has been done to improve CENTCOM intelligence analysis in response to them.

In light of this history, it is no surprise that Democrats, intelligence officers, and the liberal media urged that Trump be denied an intelligence briefing as the GOP presidential candidate. Naturally, they did not raise similar concerns about briefing Hillary Clinton, although the FBI director determined she was “extremely careless” in handling classified information as secretary of state, even sharing classified intelligence with people who had no security clearance. Comey also stated that due to this carelessness, it’s possible hostile actors have gained access to the highly classified information that traveled through the multiple private servers Clinton used.

It’s true that intelligence briefings to presidential candidates are offered at the discretion of a sitting president. But calls to deny these briefings to Trump or to give him fake briefings are an affront to the American tradition of peaceful transfer of power and could undermine his presidential transition if he wins the election.

It is not up to Senator Reid or U.S. intelligence officers to prevent a duly elected major-party presidential candidate from receiving intelligence briefings because they don’t like him or because he is from the wrong political party. Of more concern is whether some intelligence personnel, out of political bias, would refuse to provide a President Trump with the intelligence support he would need to protect American national security.

Trump may have been too hard on U.S. intelligence agencies when he said that they got it wrong before the Iraq War; and perhaps he was unfair to lambaste Obama’s dismissal of ISIS as the “jayvee” team. Intelligence agencies must be held accountable for their work, but their analysis will never be 100 percent accurate. In addition, intelligence agencies only advisepolicymakers. They cannot force a president to use their analysis.

I was pleased to hear that Trump realizes he will have a lot of work ahead of him to fix the U.S. intelligence community if he becomes president. To get the objective, accurate, and hard-hitting intelligence support he will need if elected, Trump must name strong, decisive leaders — including good managers from the business community — to top intelligence posts. He must hire people who understand that America’s intelligence agencies do not work for themselves, for either party in Congress, or the foreign-policy establishment; they work for the president. Any U.S. intelligence officer who is not prepared to loyally provide whomever wins the presidency with his best efforts should find another job.

Categories: CIA, Donald Trump, Intelligence community, Intelligence failures, Trump intelligence briefing
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US intelligence misses cues to terror – again

June 13, 2016

US intelligence misses cues to terror – again, DEBAfile,June 13, 2016

Moner_Mohammad_AbusalhaMoner Mohammad Abusalha, the suicide bomber who was the Orlando killer’s buddy

Omar Mir Seddique Mateen, a US Muslim citizen aged 29, son of Afghan migrants, perpetrated the deadliest shooting attack in American history on June 12, when he massacred 50 people and injured 53 at the Pulse gay club in Orlando, Florida, with an AR 15 assault rifle and a Glock 17 handgun.

The guns were purchased legally a few days earlier at a local shop. This alone ought to have alerted the various US intelligence and surveillance agencies responsible for countering terrorism – except that, for lack of coordination, they missed the fact that a man twice questioned by the FBI was suddenly loading up on deadly weapons.

Mateen fit the profile of an Islamic terrorist, whose attributes the incumbent US administration consistently refuses to acknowledge: He was a Muslim, whose Afghan immigrant father is a Taliban supporter; a religious extremist, who recently made the pilgrimage to Mecca; he was divorced, known for violence, and licensed as a security officer to carry a gun.

The Orlando killer had long been overdue for close monitoring – or least a flag to prevent him from working as a security officer or carrying arms.

In 2013-14, the FBI interviewed him after he made “inflammatory remarks” to a colleague, before closing its investigation.

In 2014, the FBI hauled him in again over a connection with Mohammad Abu-Salha, a 22-year old Palestinian American. They had grown up together at the small Florida coastal town of Fort Pierce. Abu Salha went off to Syria, joined the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front and killed himself in a suicide attack by driving a massive truck bomb into a restaurant filled with Syrian government soldiers.

Yet the FBI against closed the file on Mateen after determining that the links between the two young Muslims did not warrant a full-dress inquiry.

Compiling all the known data on the Orlando killer with the results of the FBI interviews with him would have placed him high on the list of suspects and called in for further questioning.

The oversights of US law enforcement, intelligence and security agencies recur each time Islamists terrorist strike. The Ramadan 2016 attack in Orlando showed that no lessons had been learned from the lapses that led to 9/11.

The FBI erred gravely in closing the case over the Mateen connection with the Palestinian American suicide bomber. This explains why senior FBI officials are down-playing the importance of that connection.

When he was exculpated, the federal authorities also discontinued electronic surveillance of the terrorist’s movements. So they missed his mounting extremism, his frequent attendance at a mosque led by a radical imam, who regularly incited his flock to murder (“Gays must die”). He thus kept his Security Officer’s ID which gave him access to secure government sites. His name was kept on the list of licensees for carrying firearms.

It is especially hard to understand the lackadaisical handling by federal agents of this prime suspect when the FBI Director James Comey was reiterating: “The Islamic State remains the top threat America is facing.”

Before entering the Pulse night club with the intent to slaughter those partying inside, Mateen called 911 and swore allegiance to the leader of the ‘Islamic State’ Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and recalled Tamerlan and Dzhokhar, the brothers responsible for the 2013 Boston Marathon terror attack.

Orlando_Terror480

For 20 minutes, the dispatchers did not understanding what he was saying and lost the chance to triangulate his cellular phone’s location and send police to nab him.

At the door of the club, he got into a brief exchange of fire with policeman before going in. Mateen went from room to room, firing well aimed semi-automatic rounds, killing tens of people, wounding tens more, and rounding up 30 people as hostages. He knew enough from his experience as a security guard to lock them in the restrooms which had no windows.

Long before the police, the city hall or any other official entity came to their senses, the club’s management sent a message via social networks: ‘Everyone get out of pulse and keep running.’

For three precious hours, dozens of police cars and ambulances, with FBI agents, dog handlers, special bomb disposal units, and other security officials huddled outside the club without doing anything. During these hours only a few shots sounded and many of those wounded lost their lives from blood loss and lack of medical treatment.

Only at 5 am, did the special anti-terror unit enter the scene, with one team using small detonators and firing at the terrorist to distract him while a force of 9 officers blew up the opposite wall and broke a hole through which officers could enter, fire and kill the terrorist. This entire event took 4 minutes.

Despite the three-hour wait, not enough ambulances had reached the scene, and some of the casualties had to be driven in civilian vehicles.

Mateen committed his murderous assault on the 300 partygoers at the Pulse club with ease, due to a number of factors:

  1. US law enforcement agencies have shown inexplicable tolerance toward Islamist extremists to the point that the Orlando killer was free to purchase an unlimited amount of deadly weapons.
  2. Due to lack of coordination between intelligence and law enforcement agencies, this killer was able to gain employment with a firm that trains its personnel in the use of firearms.
  3. As soon as the local police were alerted to gunfire at the door of the club, they should have swarmed in to neutralize the killer. The three-hour wait for the SWAT team’s arrival betokened weakness and an unwillingness to fight, so leaving the horrendous event in the hands of the terrorist.
  4. Pinning the dreadful episode on lack of gun control avoids the issue. Terrorists will always find murder weapons – if not guns, then homemade bombs like the Boston Marathon brothers, kitchen knives or vehicles. Even in countries with strict gun control, there is always a black market.

Categories: FBI, Gun control, Intelligence community, Islam and homosexuality, Islamic jihad, Islamic radicalization, Islamisation, Islamists, Islamists in America, Law enforcement, Nusra Fron, Orlando massacre, Syrian war
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Clapper: Iran Views Deal as ‘Means to Remove Sanctions While Preserving Nuclear Capabilities’

February 9, 2016

Clapper: Iran Views Deal as ‘Means to Remove Sanctions While Preserving Nuclear Capabilities’ Washington Free Beacon, , February 9, 2016

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testified to lawmakers Tuesday that Iran sees the nuclear deal it struck with the United States and five other world powers as a way to remove burdensome sanctions while simultaneously maintaining a strong nuclear infrastructure.

Clapper made his statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee at a hearing in which the intelligence chief discussed the intelligence community’s annual assessment of worldwide threats to U.S. interests and national security.

Part of Clapper’s testimony focused on the threats posed by the Islamic Republic and how the Iran nuclear deal, known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), affects the country’s relationship with America going forward.

“Iran probably views the JCPOA as a means to remove sanctions while preserving nuclear capabilities,” Clapper told lawmakers.

He added that “Iran’s perception of how the JCPOA helps it achieve its overall strategic goals will dictate the level of its adherence to the agreement over time.”

The nuclear deal was signed in July and implemented on Jan. 16, at which time Iran received an estimated $50 billion to $150 billion in sanctions relief after it took steps to curb its nuclear program.

Some experts have said Iran’s objective throughout negotiations was to ensure the removal of sanctions that were crippling its economy while retaining a nuclear weapons capability to possibly exercise at a future time.

One argument critics of the JCPOA make is that the agreement grants Tehran large-scale sanctions relief whileallowing it to have a vast nuclear infrastructure whose most important restrictions have clear expiration dates, after which time Iran could breakout to a nuclear weapon in little time.

The Obama administration maintains that the deal ensures Iran cannot obtain a nuclear weapon and is at least a year away from producing one.

Clapper’s testimony comes upon his release of the annual “Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community,” which outlines the current array of challenges threatening U.S. national security.

The report says the intelligence community “continue[s] to assess that Iran does not face any insurmountable technical barriers to producing a nuclear weapon, making Iran’s political will the central issue.”

Directly addressing Iran’s political will, the document adds that “Supreme Leader [Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei continues to view the United States as a major threat to Iran, and we assess that his views will not change, despite implementation of the JCPOA deal … Iran’s military and security services are keen to demonstrate that their regional power ambitions have not been altered by the JCPOA deal.”

The assessment also describes how Tehran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons is part of its “overarching strategic goals of enhancing its security, prestige, and regional influence.”

Beyond the nuclear deal, the intelligence assessment calls the Islamic Republic the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism. Clapper explained to lawmakers how Iran’s aggression in the Middle East and elsewhere is dangerous to American interests and national security, as well as its growing missile arsenal and cyber capabilities.

The intelligence community, according to its assessment, views Iran as “an enduring threat to US national interests” and a country that sees itself as leading an “axis of resistance” against American influence and the influence of U.S. allies.

“Tehran might even use American citizens detained when entering Iranian territories as bargaining pieces to achieve financial or political concessions in line with their strategic intentions,” the report added.

Categories: Intelligence community, Iran - sanctions relief, Iran scam, Iranian nukes
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Humor | Hillary is Transparent and Open

January 31, 2016

Hillary is Transparent and Open, Dan Miller’s Blog, January 31, 2016

(The views expressed in this post are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or any of its other editors. — DM)

President Obama claimed to be the most open and transparent president ever but did not follow through. During her term as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton showed her persistent openness and transparency to friend and foe alike.

Right.

Clinton emails

Hillary demonstrated her openness and transparency to the entire world  — friend and foe alike — through her use of an unsecured home-brew server for e-mails containing classified national security information. As of late December, more than 1,200 e-mails found on Hillary’s server had been deemed classified. More continued to be found.

According to a report by Intelligence Community Inspector General I. Charles McCullough III dated January 14th, “‘several dozen’ additional classified emails — including specific intelligence known as ‘special access programs’ (SAP)” had been discovered.

That indicates a level of classification beyond even “top secret,” the label previously given to two emails found on her server, and brings even more scrutiny to the presidential candidate’s handling of the government’s closely held secrets.

As of January 29th, at least twenty-two of the most recently discovered e-mails were top secret and contained such damaging information that not even redacted copies can be released to members of the Congress.

With such undiscriminating openness to our enemies, Hillary demonstrated unprecedented impartiality. By doing so, she helped to dispel vicious rumors that America helps only its few remaining friends. The State Department, now under the direction of John Kerry, was unwilling to extend the same courtesy to the Congress, doubtless a greater enemy than any foreign nation. This may have been hard for him to do. But then, sometimes it’s hard to be John Kerry.

Hillary’s principal opponent in the race for the Democrat presidential nomination, Bernie Sanders, merely says that to be true socialists we must share everything. Hillary does more than talk; she shares.

A vote for Hillary is a vote for openness. Due to her exceptional devotion to non-discriminatory transparency, our enemies will love us even more, perhaps even until death do us part.

Categories: Democrats, Foreign policy, Hillary Clinton, Humor, Intelligence community, Iran scam, national security, Obama's America, U.S. Congress
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Iran Already Sanitizing Nuclear Site, Intel Warns

August 5, 2015

Iran Already Sanitizing Nuclear Site, Intel Warns, Bloomberg View, &  August 5, 2015

The U.S. intelligence community has informed Congress of evidence that Iran was sanitizing its suspected nuclear military site at Parchin, in broad daylight, days after agreeing to a nuclear deal with world powers.

For senior lawmakers in both parties, the evidence calls into question Iran’s intention to fully account for the possible military dimensions of its current and past nuclear development. The International Atomic Energy Agency and Iran have a side agreement meant to resolve past suspicions about the Parchin site, and lawmakers’ concerns about it has already become a flashpoint because they do not have access to its text.

Intelligence officials and lawmakers who have seen the new evidence, which is still classified, told us that satellite imagery picked up by U.S. government assets in mid- and late July showed that Iran had moved bulldozers and other heavy machinery to the Parchin site and that the U.S. intelligence community concluded with high confidence that the Iranian government was working to clean up the site ahead of planned inspections by the IAEA.

The intelligence community shared its findings with lawmakers and some Congressional staff late last week, four people who have seen the evidence told us. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence briefed lawmakers about the evidence Monday, three U.S. senators said.

“I am familiar with it,” Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr told us Tuesday. “I think it’s up to the administration to draw their conclusions. Hopefully this is something they will speak on, since it is in many ways verified by commercial imagery. And their actions seem to be against the grain of the agreement.”

Burr said Iran’s activities at Parchin complicate the work of the IAEA inspectors who are set to examine the site in the coming months. IAEA’s director general, Yukiya Amano, was in Washington on Wednesday to brief lawmakers behind closed doors about the side agreements.

“They are certainly not going to see the site that existed. Whether that’s a site that can be determined what it did, only the technical experts can do that,” Burr said. “I think it’s a huge concern.”

A senior intelligence official, when asked about the satellite imagery, told us the IAEA was also familiar with what he called “sanitization efforts” since the deal was reached in Vienna, but that the U.S. government and its allies had confidence that the IAEA had the technical means to detect past nuclear work anyway.

Another administration official explained that this was in part because any trace amounts of enriched uranium could not be fully removed between now and Oct. 15, the deadline for Iran to grant access and answer remaining questions from the IAEA about Parchin.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker told us Tuesday that while Iran’s activity at Parchin last month isn’t technically a violation of the agreement it signed with the U.S. and other powers, it does call into question Iran’s intention to be forthright about the possible military dimensions of its nuclear program.

“The intel briefing was troubling to me … some of the things that are happening, especially happening in such a blatant way,” he said. “Iran is going to know that we know.” He added the new information gave him “a lot of concerns” about Iran coming clean on military dimensions of its nuclear work.

According to the overall nuclear agreement, sanctions relief for Iran can come only after the IAEA and Iran resolve their outstanding concerns about possible military dimensions of past and current work. But the agreement does not specify how the issue must be resolved, only that it be resolved to the IAEA’s satisfaction.

Several senior lawmakers, including Democrats, are concerned that Iran will be able to collect its own soil samples at Parchin with only limited supervision, a practice several lawmakers have compared to giving suspected drug users the benefit of the doubt to submit specimens unsupervised. Iran’s sanitization of the site further complicates that verification.

Democratic Senator Chris Coons, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, told us Tuesday that this area is part of why he is undecided on supporting the Iran deal.

“I have concerns about the vigorous efforts by Iran to sanitize Parchin,” he said. “I’ve gotten some reassurance about how difficult it is for them to effectively conceal what we know to have been their illicit nuclear weapons developments there.”

Coons said he was most concerned about the integrity of the IAEA inspection process going forward and not as concerned about figuring out what happened in the site in the past: “We know what the Iranians did at Parchin.”

David Albright, the president of the Institute for Science and International Security, obtained a commercially available image of the Parchin site taken by satellites on July 26 that shows renewed activity at the Parchin site. He told us there are two new large vehicles, alterations ongoing to roofs of two of the buildings and new structures near two of the buildings.

“You have to worry that this could be an attempt by Iran to defeat the sampling, that it’s Iran’s last-ditch effort to eradicate evidence there,” he said. “The day is coming when they are going to have to let the IAEA into Parchin, so they may be desperate to finish sanitizing the site.”

The facility, outside of Tehran, first came to the attention of the international community in 2004 when news reports surfaced that it was being used to test explosives for a nuclear warhead.

A 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Assessment concluded that Iran halted this kind of work in 2003. Between 2005 and today, Iran has allowed IAEA inspectors access to Parchin — a vast complex with dozens of buildings — on only five occasions. In 2012, Abright’s group reported on satellite imagery that it said showed efforts to clean up evidence of an explosives testing chamber there.

Representative Ed Royce, the Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said that Amano had told him in recent conversations that the IAEA had “thousands of pages of documentations on tests to weaponize a nuclear device.” Royce added, “For a long time, they have been altering sites.”

The IAEA has documented this as well. The agency’s report from May 29 this year said there was  satellite imagery of vehicles, equipment and “probable construction materials” at Parchin. The report said, “The activities that have taken place at this location since February 2012 are likely to have undermined the Agency’s ability to conduct effective verification.”

Secretary of State John Kerry has said that the U.S. government has “absolute knowledge” about what Iran has done in the past. Ahead of the vote on the agreement next month, many lawmakers don’t share Kerry’s confidence. Iran would seem to have its doubts as well, since it’s still trying to cover its tracks.

Categories: Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, IAEA, Intelligence community, Iran nuke inspections, Iran scam, Iranian military sites, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Obama, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, P5+1, Parchin, U.S. Congress
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Documents: Feds Knew Benghazi Attack Planned in Advance

May 19, 2015

Documents: Feds Knew Benghazi Attack Planned in Advance, Washington Free Beacon, , May 18, 2015

(Please see also, Arab military chiefs approve Egyptian-led intervention in Libya — DM)


Gutted U.S. consulate in Libya / AP

Documents obtained by Judicial Watch from their May 2014 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits filed against the State Department and the Department of Defense revealed that the Obama administration knew about the attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi at least 10 days before the attack.

The documents also revealed that the DOD immediately reported the attacks on the consulate.

The documents included an August 2012 analysis predicting the failure of President Obama’s policy of a regime change in Syria as well as a warning about the rise of the Islamic State. The documents also included a confirmation that United States was aware of an arms shipment from Benghazi to Syria.

One of the documents from the DOD’s Defense Intelligence Agency dated September 12, 2012, the day after the attacks in Benghazi, lays out the details of the attack on the consulate and assesses that it was carefully planned by the terrorist group “Brigades of the Captive Omar Abdul Rahman.”

The group is known to have connections to the Muslim Brotherhood as well as  to al Qaeda. Rahman is serving a life sentence in prison for his role in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.

The group’s goal was to “kill as many Americans as possible,” according to the documents, which were sent to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the National Security Council.

An October 2012 DOD document contained the first official document that the Obama administration knew of the shipment of weapons from the Benghazi to rebel forces in Syria.

Weapons from the former Libya military stockpiles were shipped from the port of Benghazi, Libya to the Port of Banias and the Port of Borj Islam, Syria. The weapons shipped during late-August 2012 were Sniper rifles, RPG’s, and 125 mm and 155 mm howitzers missiles.

During the immediate aftermath of, and following the uncertainty caused by, the downfall of the (Qaddafi) regime in October 2011 and up until early September of 2012, weapons from the former Libya military stockpiles located in Benghazi, Libya were shipped from the port of Benghazi, Libya to the ports of Banias and the Port of Borj Islam, Syria. The Syrian ports were chosen due to the small amount of cargo traffic transiting these two ports. The ships used to transport the weapons were medium-sized and able to hold 10 or less shipping containers of cargo.

The heavily redacted document did not reveal which weapons were sent to Syria

The DIA consistently warned of the deterioration of the situation in Iraq and warned that it creates an ideal situation for Al Qaeda to return to Mosul and Ramadi, according to an August 2012 report. During this time the U.S. was monitoring weapons flows from Libya to Syria. The agency warned of dire consequences but blocked out what most of what those consequences were.

The State Department produced a single document from a separate lawsuit that Judicial Watch had filed against the department. The document was created by Hillary Clinton’s office the morning after the attacks on the consulate in Benghazi and was sent throughout the State Department.

Neither the State Department nor Hillary Clinton have turned over any documents in regards to Benghazi or her personal email account that was used during her as well as other top aides during her time as Secretary of State.

Judicial Watch has filed multiple FOIA requests and has waited over two years for the documents that they have received.

“These documents show that the Benghazi cover-up has continued for years and is only unraveling through our independent lawsuits,” said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch. “The Benghazi scandal just got a whole lot worse for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.”

Categories: Benghazi, Clinton, Department of Defense, Foreign policy, Funding terrorism, Ideology, Intelligence community, Libya, Obama
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