RUTHFULLY YOURS

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.

“With this ruling, Judge Haight contributes to the slander of one of the world’s most professional police forces and encourages anti-cop activists to escalate their demands—all while making it more difficult to keep New Yorkers safe from attack.”

This week a federal judge fed the myth of a New York City police department bent on violating the rights of innocent Muslims by unlawfully spying on them.

Senior District Judge Charles Haight did so in an extraordinary ruling rejecting a settlement that Mayor Bill de Blasio had reached with liberal activists and Muslim groups. Though the settlement was good enough for the progressives, somehow it wasn’t for Judge Haight. He’s ordered them to return with an agreement that would give the court and a civilian appointee more authority over how police operate.

Never mind that the judge’s decision is mostly based on a politicized inspector general’s report that never found evidence of the widespread spying on innocent Muslims that was alleged. Or that most of the “violations” in this same report had to do with timetables and deadlines, not spying. The judge nonetheless ruled the cops were guilty of “near-systemic violations” of the so-called Handschu guidelines—which date from a 1985 settlement approved by Judge Haight in a class-action suit originally involving the Black Panthers and Communists.

Lost in this legal fog is the truth that the program at issue was never about Muslim “surveillance.” This was about the police gathering intelligence that would help them identify places and neighborhoods where a terrorist might seek a job, a meal or a place to crash. Such information would have come in handy if, say, the Tsarnaev brothers, after bombing the 2013 Boston Marathon, had made their way to New York City to bomb Times Square as they’d planned.

It speaks to the real agenda that one of the activist demands included in the earlier settlement was that the NYPD would purge from its website a 2007 report called “Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat.” The activists claimed the report was being used to justify discriminatory surveillance on Muslims. CONTINUE AT SITE

There are four cyber-security stories that have cropped up recently to which everyone should be paying close attention:

This past week, DMV offices all over California had their computer systems shut down by what was apparently a hardware failure. There’s evidently no reason to suspect the DMV’s systems were attacked, but the incident shows off the frailty of government computer systems, the ease with which the whole edifice can collapse when a single brick is smashed (accidentally or intentionally).

The week before, websites all over the country were shut down when a major American Domain Name System host was attacked. DNS hosts handle the conversion of web addresses that make sense to men — say, NationalReview.com — into the universal system of numerical addresses that make sense to computers. Without the conversion of one to the other, the name you type into your browser’s address bar won’t connect you to that website’s servers; your internet provider won’t understand what you’re looking for. Unless you know your destination website’s IP address (National Review’s is, for instance, 104.16.126.47) and unless it allows direct IP access (National Review does not) the website becomes inaccessible.

That is exactly what happened to large swaths of the Internet two weeks ago, when Dyn, one of the U.S.’s major DNS hosts, was flooded by a tidal wave of artificial internet traffic. It tried to convert addresses for so many fake browsing requests that it was unable to respond to the real ones, like a bartender getting 10,000 orders for Banana Daiquiris just before you try to order a beer. With their DNS host overwhelmed, sites such as Twitter, CNN, Paypal, Reddit, Spotify, and Netflix stopped working.

One week before that, WikiLeaks began publishing John Podesta’s e-mails, and the Clinton campaign decided that it would try to redirect the story toward Russia, which they say is responsible for stealing Podesta’s email. That might not be true; it’s certainly possible that it is — various intelligence agencies seem to think so. There is no doubt that Russia would like to tamper with our elections, or, short of that, to appear to be tampering with them. Because the Obama administration has a more or less established policy of non-response to cyber-attacks — from Russia, from China, from North Korea, from Iran — the Kremlin no doubt felt comfortable giving it a try.

LOS ANGELES—Federal prosecutors charged two California men with conspiring to smuggle fighter-jet parts to Iran in a scheme that allegedly dates to 2009.

The pair worked with two Iranian nationals to break laws that restrict exports to the longtime U.S. adversary, the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles said in a statement Friday.

A nine-count federal indictment unsealed Wednesday alleged that Zavik Zargarian of Glendale tried to help one of the Iranians purchase more than $3 million worth of parts for fighter jets, including F-15s and F-18s. Their would-be supplier was an undercover federal agent.

Prosecutors also said Vache Nayirian of Los Angeles exported more than 7,000 fluorocarbon rubber O-rings, which could have military uses, including for aircraft landing gear.

To evade detection, the shipments went to other destinations in the Persian Gulf before being routed to Iran, where the national air force received them, prosecutors said.

Both defendants have been assigned court-appointed attorneys and pleaded not guilty Wednesday. The attorney representing Mr. Nayirian questioned the strength of the government’s case, given that it began seven years ago and a grand jury produced the indictment in 2014.

Hey, kids! Thinking about becoming a “violent extremist”? Don’t Be a Puppet! (Wall Street Journal article here.)

Seriously – the FBI has created a website, complete with state-of-the-art graphics from about 25 years ago, to keep our youth from becoming “radicalized.” And no, the name of the site is not an oblique admonishment to Director James Comey. This is serious business.

The home screen shows a man-cave featuring a Snap-On tool chest, computers, and papers lying all about – those extremists sure are messy. Maybe the feds could use this as a teachable moment to promote kaizen and 5S.

For the kids who are toying with “radicalization,” “a symbol can build pride or create a positive emotional connection. Symbols can also be used to create fear and to control people. Violent extremists have used various symbols over the years to fuel feelings of revenge and hatred.” Need an example? Well here’s Old Glory. Not the sword and crescent, or even the hammer and sickle, but the American flag.

The section “Who Do Violent Extremists Affect?” features four videos: Boston Marathon Bombing, Attacks of 9/11, Hate Crime Survivor, and Oklahoma City Bombing. These must all be about equivalent, yes? Consider Hate Crime Survivor Nina Timani, “a Muslim Arab American and mother of two,” who received a threatening letter. Don’t worry – nothing happened to her, because the FBI caught the person who sent the letter, but she’s still a survivor, just like the families of the other victims. Yep, I’d say that’s just as horrific a crime as the other three. See, Arab-Americans are victims, too.

We learn that “violent extremists” have attacked in several places, including the Pentagon, where 189 people were killed on 9/11. But “the Pentagon was also bombed by domestic extremists in 1972, causing flooding in the building.” Oh, 189 dead vs. flooding. Seems equivalent to me.

And don’t forget Vail, Colo., where “environmental extremists torched and virtually destroyed a ski resort.” Or 1954, when Puerto Rican extremists attacked Congress. See? “Violent extremists” come in all shapes and sizes.

So what can cause this mysterious affliction?

Social Alienation (“Consider healthy ways you can connect with others.”)
Anxiety (“Teens can be stressed by problems at home, grades, peer pressure, bullying, and other issues.”)
Frustration (“It’s natural to feel frustrated or angry when you are treated unfairly or rejected by others.”)
Painful Experiences (“Painful experiences – including physical or emotional abuse, a romantic breakup, or the loss of a loved one – can upset a person and lead to lifelong challenges.”)

I was frustrated last week when my hard disk crashed. Recovery was a painful experience. Should I be put on the FBI’s watch list?

“Conflict Resolution Tips” has advice for dealing with these issues: “Keep your voice calm. Never yell or scream,” and so on. “Where to Get Help” even has a link to www.stopbullying.gov. The FBI as therapist to our victimized, therapeutic culture. How the Federal Bureau of Investigation has fallen from the heady days when it chased the likes of Al Capone and John Dillinger.

“How Do Violent Extremists Make Contact?” The answer will blow you away:

Internet
Cell phone
Flyer

I kid you not. Must be straight from Director Comey’s desk, ’cause he’s a real straight shooter, children, and he’d never lead you astray. Director Comey says in a video, “We created this website to talk about violent extremism.” At least the Wall Street Journal quotes the video, but I cannot find it. Maybe the director had it taken down, embarrassed by what it says about his time management. After all, he was too busy to go to Hillary’s interview but found the time to make a video for this puerile website.

LOS ANGELES—A Southern California man convicted of conspiring to provide support to the terrorist organization Islamic State was sentenced to 30 years in prison Wednesday by a federal judge in Santa Ana, Calif.

Muhanad Badawi, a 26-year-old resident of Anaheim, in Orange County, was convicted in connection with his efforts to help his co-defendant in the criminal case, 26-year-old Nader Salem Elhuzayel, get to Syria to fight for Islamic State, also known as ISIL.

In September, Mr. Elhuzayel was sentenced to 30 years in prison by U.S. District Judge David Carter, who also handed down Mr. Badawi’s sentence.

The U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles, which prosecuted the two men, had recommended a 30-year sentence for Mr. Badawi. Through words and action, Mr. Badawi “demonstrated his deep commitment to the ISIL ideology and his corresponding antagonism to the fundamental values of the U.S.,” said one government court filing.

“Badawi and Elhuzayel wanted to fight for ISIL, desired to become so-called martyrs and supported ISIL’s terrorist activities. Prosecutions such as this are critically important to our national security,” Eileen M. Decker, the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, said in a statement.

Mr. Badawi’s attorneys had recommended a sentence of no more than 15 years. Such a sentence “achieves the goals of deterrence, incapacitation and rehabilitation. A greater sentence does not achieve a greater level of justice,” said a defense court filing.

At a hearing Monday, Judge Carter had raised the possibility of assigning Mr. Badawi to a program aimed at “de-radicalizing” individuals who have become followers of terrorist groups. A federal judge in Minnesota has been exploring the use of such a program for defendants facing terrorism-related charges.