Displaying posts categorized under

HOMELAND SECURITY

Whereabouts Unknown of Dozen Afghans Who Went AWOL During Military Training in U.S. By Bridget Johnson

ARLINGTON, Va. — The Pentagon today said that the U.S. government has pinpointed the whereabouts of most — but not all — of dozens of Afghan troops who came to the United States for training and went AWOL.

Reuters reported today that 44 Afghan troops have gone missing since January 2015, including eight who have left U.S. bases without authorization since last month alone.

Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook told reporters today that all Afghan trainees who come to the United States “first of all go through a vetting process to be able to qualify to come here to the United States.”

“In those instances where they have gone missing — and this has been something we’ve had to deal with over the years — we’ve been training Afghans in this country for some time. I think more than 2,000 have been trained even in the last few years alone — there’s a notification process that we go through, of course trying to determine where these people are,” Cook said.

“Of the people who have been missing in — over the last two years or so, I believe the number that was provided to you was somewhere around 40 — more than 40 individuals; 32, we understand the status of those people.”

He added that “every effort’s made to try to determine where these people are going, what the reasons are.”

“In some cases they’ve gone home. In some cases there have been efforts — as I understand it — to go to Canada. Some have sought to legally remain in the United States,” Cook continued. “And so there are different explanations for each one of these circumstances.”

Should Family Affiliations with Foreign Islamist Movements Prevent a Security Clearance? A former Pentagon Assistant Inspector General is the son of a prominent American Muslim Brotherhood official. Now he wants his old job back. BY Christine Brim

In 1980, Robert Dickson Crane converted to Islam. From that year to the present day, Crane has built a successful career as a high-level official in multiple Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas-affiliated organizations in the U.S. and Qatar. At the same time, from 1988 to 2013, his son John Ruedel Crane rose to similar prominence in the Department of Defense to the position of Assistant Inspector General and director of both the Department of Defense and NSA’s whistleblower programs. Crane’s position in the DoD Inspector General office came with high-level clearances and access to a broad scope of DoD information. His tenure of twenty-five years within DoD also encompassed a time of multiple jihadist attacks against American targets, including the 1993 and 2001 World Trade Center attacks and the global war on terror waged in response. http://counterjihad.com/should-family-affiliations-with-foreign-islamist-movements-prevent-a-security-clearance

In a recent phone conversation, John Crane confirmed that Robert Crane is his father and stated that, during background investigations throughout his career, he was never asked, nor did he volunteer, any information about his father’s affiliations. We don’t know if the relationship was, in fact, known and approved by the Department of Defense, the intelligence community or by political administrations during Crane’s over two-decade year career. But we can state that the relationship between Robert Crane and John Crane is being described for the first time to the general public in this investigative report.

John Crane’s management of the whistleblower offices included the years when Edward Snowden stole over 1.5 million classified documents. Crane has recently been the subject of numerous media interviews as “The Third Man” in the new book Bravehearts: Whistleblowing in the Age of Snowden, a defense of Edward Snowden’s theft of classified documents from the U.S., UK and Australia. John Crane was quietly removed from his Inspector General and whistleblower office positions in February 2013, four months before the Edward Snowden case became public knowledge. He immediately became a consultant for the General Accountability Project (GAP), the legal counsel for Snowden. GAP was founded in 1977 by the extreme far left Institute for Policy Studies.

On September 15, 2016 the House Intelligence Committee issued a bipartisan, unanimous report summarizing their investigation of National Security Agency computer technician Edward Snowden’s theft of 1.5 million classified documents. The Committee’s critique of Snowden was devastating: “These findings demonstrate that the public narrative popularized by Snowden and his allies is rife with falsehoods, exaggerations, and crucial omissions, a pattern that began before he stole 1.5 million sensitive documents.” As former Intelligence Committee staff Fred Fleitz has observed, “Snowden is not a whistleblower; he is a disgruntled former intelligence employee who did enormous damage to U.S. national security.”

Left-wing activists have mounted a campaign for Snowden’s vindication and pardon before Obama leaves office, including Oliver Stone’s hagiographic movie, Snowden, and Bravehearts, the book by Nation magazine reporter Mark Hertsgaard in which John Crane figures so prominently. Crane’s allegations against the DoD in Bravehearts have been cited as a vindication of Snowden’s acts by the Intercept, the website of Snowden advocate Glenn Greenwald (“Vindication for Edward Snowden From a New Player in NSA Whistleblowing Saga”).

In February 2013, John Crane was placed on “administrative leave” from his position as DoD Assistant Inspector General, his security clearances and pay were suspended, and he was forbidden to come to the office. He has resurfaced in the public eye in 2016 as the subject of numerous articles and interviews promoting the Bravehearts book in Der Spiegel, The Guardian, Government Executive, Democracy Now!, Russia Today, New York Times, The Intercept, and of course Hertsgaard’s Nation. Crane asserts in Bravehearts and in these interviews that Edward Snowden’s theft of U.S. classified information was simply an understandable reaction to the DoD’s prior treatment of whistleblowers, which discouraged Snowden from becoming a “whistleblower” himself inside the system.

Comey Predicts Tsunami of ISIS Terrorists Heading for U.S. An administration ignores the findings and recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. Michael Cutler

Huge sums of money are spent by our government and the governments of other countries to enable meteorologists to more accurately predict the weather.

For decades the United States has orbited fleets of ever more sophisticated weather satellites that circle the globe, taking measurements and tracking storms from orbit, while super-computers on the ground create models to predict when hurricanes or tornados may form and then predict the areas that will likely be endangered.

Courageous storm-hunters on the ground, who seek to observe and measure tornados “up close and in person,” drive heavily armored vehicles with a wide array of instruments in efforts to get a front-row view and develop a better understanding of how tornados form and better predict their destructive paths.

Heroic pilots and their crews of intrepid meteorologists fly into the hearts of violent hurricanes for similar purposes.

However, the purpose of all of these efforts is not simply garner information as a matter of academic curiosity, but to make certain that those who may be at risk are warned about the risks they face. Once the likely track of dangerous storms are established, those who live within the path of the storms are warned to take appropriate action.

Such action may require residents of low-lying areas or those areas along threatened coastlines to evacuate their homes and head for higher ground. It may require that homeowners and store-keepers board up windows and doors and remove anything from their property that could become a dangerous flying projectile.

Those in the path of such monstrous storms might be advised to stock up on food, water, batteries and other supplies to help them ride out the storm.

Those in the path of tornados are alerted to head for their storm cellars to maximize their likelihood of surviving the onslaught of winds and destruction.

Storms of course, are not the only threat we face, especially in this turbulent and volatile era. Increasingly terrorists have gone on bloody rampages around the world and here, within the borders of our nation.

Huge sums of money and Herculean efforts are being expended by various elements of our military and intelligence and law enforcement agencies to develop effective intelligence about the activities of these terrorist organizations that, not unlike major storms, are on the move around the world. The intelligence reports that these agencies produce forecast threats America and Americans face- not from natural events but from threats posed by America’s adversaries.

Brennan: Comments That ‘Taint’ Islam ‘Tremendously Detrimental’ to Counterterrorism By Bridget Johnson

WASHINGTON — CIA Director John Brennan said comments that “taint” Islam “as being the source of the problem” are “tremendously detrimental to our interests and to a better understanding of this phenomenon” of terrorism.

Speaking at the Washington Ideas Forum this week, Brennan said he’s met with “princes or presidents and prime ministers throughout the Middle East” who are “outraged that their community — their Muslim community — has been infected by this cancer, individuals who have this distorted and very perverted interpretation of Islam that pursue these psychopathic agendas of horrific violence, and they recognize that they have a very important role — the leading role to help purge their communities of these influences.”

“These individuals who are fanatics — extremists and terrorists — they are driven by this ideology that is not rooted in Islam,” Brennan said. “It’s a psychopathic ideology that is very absolutist, that either you are with us or against us.”

“And that’s why the establishment of the caliphate — the so-called caliphate by ISIL, as well as al-Qaeda’s agenda, really, are trying to cause this …clash of civilizations. They want to drive this wedge between the West and the Muslim world.”

Brennan said he has not spoken with Donald Trump, but “anybody who promotes that type of characterization of the problem, and mischaracterization, in my mind, I would try to describe how those comments are being interpreted and how they are feeding this narrative that the terrorist organizations are propagating, that it does not help to arrest this cancer that has taken over so many of the communities because of a lot of the underlying conditions that exist within Middle East and Africa, South Asia, the areas, because of economic deprivation, political disenfranchisements, lack of opportunity.”

Syrian Refugee U.S. Arrivals in September: 1825 Muslims, 22 Non-Muslims (1.1 Percent) By Patrick Poole

The State Department admissions for all of September of non-Muslim Syrian refugees represented only 1.1 percent of the total, with 1,825 Muslim refugees admitted, and only 22 from Yazidi and various Christian sects who are being targeted for genocide by the Islamic State in Syria.

Admissions for the month of August were 3,159 Muslim and 30 non-Muslim refugees—fewer than one percent.

Year-to-date, non-Muslim Syrian refugee admissions account for less than one percent (0.8) overall, with 11,818 Muslims and only 95 non-Muslims of all groups.

Those were the numbers as of today from the State Department’s Refugee Processing Center.

These numbers are highly skewed when compared with Syria’s religious demographics.

According to The Gulf/2000 Project at Columbia University, the religious breakdown of the Syrian population from 2008-2009 shows that 15.98 million are Sunnis (73 percent of the population) while 3.29 million are Shiites (14.7 percent of the population). Christians account for 2.04 million people, or 9.3 percent of the population, while other religions account for 590,000 people, or 2.7 percent of the population.

I noted a few weeks ago that as hundreds of Muslim Syrian refugees were pouring in during early September, only two Christians had been admitted by September 10.

FBI Director Comey Said ISIS Fighters Welcome Back From Syria in 2014, Now Warns of ‘Terrorist Diaspora’ By Patrick Poole see note please

Comey’s reputation is unraveling……..rsk
Earlier this week FBI Director James Comey told the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs about a looming “terrorist diaspora” that would come from the eventual defeat of ISIS in Syria and Iraq, and yet in October 2014 he told 60 Minutes that any American with a passport who fought with the Islamic State was welcome to return to the U.S.

Testifying on Tuesday in the wake of the NY-NJ bombings by Ahmad Rahami just over a week ago, Director Comey issued this ominous warning:

The number of Americans traveling to Syria to fight alongside the Islamic State group has slowed to a trickle in the last year, but as the so-called caliphate is “crushed,” many militants from Western nations who are already there will stream out of the region and create new security threats.

“There will be a terrorist diaspora sometime in the next two to five years like we’ve never seen before,” Comey said.

This is identical to his warning in late July, when he told a cybersecurity conference about the “terrorist diaspora” threat:

At some point, there is going to be a terrorist diaspora out of Syria like we’ve never seen before. Not all of the Islamic State’s killers are going to die on the battlefield. Hundreds and hundreds of them, when the coalition succeeds and I’m confident they will in crushing the Islamic State–through the fingers of the crush–are going to come hundreds of really dangerous people and they’re going to flow out primarily towards Western Europe, but we might as well be right next door to Western Europe given the ease with which people can travel.

And this is an order of magnitude greater than any diaspora we’ve seen before. A lot of terrorists fled out of Afghanistan in the late 1980s and the early 1990s. This is 10 times that or more.

But in an interview with 60 Minutes’ Scott Pelley in October 2014, Comey said that any American with a passport who had fought with the Islamic State (and presumably with any other designated terrorist organization operating in Syria) was welcome to return:

Surprise! Administration does not vet refugees for extremist ideological views By Rick Moran

How screwed up is our vetting policy for admitting refugees? In April, the administration cut the refugee vetting process that would ordinarily take 18 to 24 months down to 3 months. They won’t pore over social media sites used by refugees to ferret out radicals.

Now we learn from the agency in charge of bringing refugees to the U.S. that no effort is made to discover radical ideological leanings of the potential newcomers.

Lifezette:

The United States runs the names of potential refugees through terrorism and law enforcement databases and conducts health screenings but makes no effort to learn whether they harbor extremist views, an administration official acknowledged Wednesday.

Simon Henshaw, principal deputy assistant secretary of the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, made the admission during testimony at a Senate hearing on President Obama’s Syrian refugee program.

Republicans on the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest have expressed concerns that Obama’s decision to admit more than 10,000 Syrian refugees over the past 12 months and his plan to increase that number in the coming 12 months is reckless in light of the threat posed by Islamic extremism.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, the Alabama Republican who chairs the subcommittee, grilled Henshaw about the procedures for screening refugee applicants. “Do you make any inquiry about practices that we reject in the United States, like female genital mutilation?” he asked. “Do you say, ‘Do you believe in that and when you come to the United States will you comply with the laws of the United States on that kind of question?’”

Henshaw said U.S. officials explain American law and customs but do not inquire about refugees’ political beliefs.

“On all questions, we make it clear to refugees that we’re a nation of laws and that they need to comply with our laws,” he said.

Sessions pointed to a Justice Department report indicating that the United States last year experienced 27 “honor killings,” a practice that wins widespread approval in some Muslim-dominated countries that practice Sharia Law.

Susan Jones:DHS Secretary Doesn’t Know How Many People Mistakenly Granted Citizenship Were From Iran, Syria, Libya

On Sept. 8, the Homeland Security Department’s inspector-general reported that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services mistakenly granted citizenship to at least 858 individuals who were under deportation or removal orders.

On Tuesday, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson told Congress the actual number is “somewhere around” 750. But Johnson could not say how many of them were from countries known to be havens for terrorists.

“Were any of them from special interest countries?” Sen. Ben Sasse, a member of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, asked Johnson.

“Not off hand,” Johnson replied. “I — I can’t — I can’t give you that breakdown offhand. It is a — I suspect it is a knowable fact, which we can provide you.”

Johnson said a process to “denaturalize” those people is now under way. “And we’re going to continue to do that.”

“Were any of them from Iran, Syria, or Libya?” Sasse asked Johnson.

“I’d have to check. I don’t know sitting here right now, sir,” the secretary responded.

“How — how would you not know that?” Sasse asked. “Why would that not be something that’s urgent to you to understand the categories under the 700–”

“Oh, yes. It’s a knowable fact,” Johnson repeated. “I can get you the information. Just sitting here right now, I don’t have the list in front of me. You know, I don’t want to be wrong.”

“Do you think any of them were terrorists?” Sasse asked.

FBI Warns of “Terrorist Diaspora” of ISIS Migrants to West Daniel Greenfield

He might want to talk to his boss about it. Because his boss is the one bringing them here to enrich us and become “part of our story”. Just like in New York, Boston and Orlando.

Intelligence and law enforcement agencies worry that a surge of violent extremists will eventually move from ISIS-controlled areas in Syria and Iraq into Western nations with the aim of committing terrorist attacks, FBI Director James Comey told Congress on Tuesday.

“The caliphate will be crushed,” but hundreds of people will remain and become part of a “terrorist diaspora” in the next two to five years. “When ISIS is reduced to an insurgency, those people will try to come to Western Europe and here,” Comey said in testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee.

They’re already coming here. And Obama has brought thousands into this country. We’ve already seen ISIS acts of terror on our soil due to our immigration policies.

Comey testified alongside Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and Nicholas Rasmussen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, at a hearing examining threats to national security 15 years after the 9/11 attacks. The hearing took place just over a week after bombings in New York and New Jersey and a separate stabbing attack at a Minnesota mall.

Rassmussen said the U.S. watchlisting system “allows us to have confidence that if we have an identity, we are very likely to prevent an individual from getting into the United States.”

Muslim mall shooter voted three times but is not a US citizen : Martin Barillas

Arcan Cetin, the suspect in the deadly Sept. 24 Cascade Mall shooting in Washington State, is facing prosecution for killing five people in just 60 seconds at a Macy’s store. Cetin used a Ruger rifle with a 25-round clip. He already had a criminal record going back two years and was charged in 2015 for assaulting his stepfather. After his arrest, he received a mental evaluation to determine his mental competence. Subsequently, he confessed to the crimes.

In addition, he may be facing additional investigation into his voting record and citizenship.

Cetin was born in Turkey and is not an American citizen, according to federal authorities cited by KING 5 News in Washington. This means that he cannot legally vote in the United States. However, records show that he registered to vote in 2014 and voted in three election cycles, including the May presidential primary.

The young Muslim man emigrated to the U.S. from his native Turkey as a minor and is permanent resident of the U.S. While permanent residents may apply for U.S. citizenship, KING’s sources say that Cetin’s status has not changed.

In the State of Washington, voters can merely attest their American citizenship when registering online or registering to vote at an office of the Department of Licensing. State law in Washington does not require any proof of citizenship. It is thus that state officials contend that the voter registration process operates under an honor system rather than rigorous proof.

Secretary of State Kim Wyman said that an investigation is going forward in an effort to preserve public confidence in the integrity of elections, and due process for Cetina. In an interview with KING, Wyman said “We don’t have a provision in state law that allows us either county elections officials or the Secretary of State’s office to verify someone’s citizenship.” In Washington State, the penalty for voting as a non- U.S. citizen can result in five years of prison time or a $10,000, according to state law.