RUTHFULLY YOURS

Last year, John McCain told National Review that “the most disturbing briefing that I have ever received” had to do with cyberwar, adding: “We better start doing a helluva lot better job” addressing cybersecurity threats.

Given the current presidential prospects, the chances of that are slim. Donald Trump has made noises about “cyber” (it’s “becoming so big”), but has not outlined any plan. Meanwhile, it’s become undeniably clear that Hillary Clinton’s effort to avoid transparency requirements as secretary of state by setting up a private e-mail server endangered national security, including human-intelligence assets abroad, and that, unable to find more-plausible-sounding excuses, Clinton has opted to plead incompetence: She recently explained that she never realized the “(C)” in certain e-mails she forwarded indicated classified material.

This situation is particularly alarming in the wake of a new report. On Wednesday, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released the results of its year-long investigation into the unprecedented hack of the Office of Personnel Management. The 241-page document is unsubtly titled “The OPM Data Breach: How the Government Jeopardized Our National Security for More than a Generation.”

In March 2014, the Department of Homeland Security alerted OPM that its security had been breached and data stolen. Over the next two months, OPM monitored the hacker’s activity inside its system, developing with DHS a plan to expel him. So narrowly focused was OPM on its target that it did not notice that a separate hacker had gained access to the system in early May, posing as an employee of an OPM contractor. For almost a year, this second hacker operated at leisure in OPM’s system, stealing security-clearance background-investigation files, personnel records, and fingerprint data.

The two attacks, which the Oversight committee says were almost certainly coordinated, constitute the worst cybersecurity breach in American history: “Attackers exfiltrated personnel files of 4.2 million former and current government employees and security-clearance background-investigation information on 21.5 million individuals,” dating back to the Reagan administration. That background-investigation information, the Standard Form 86 or SF-86, which is required of anyone applying for a security clearance, demands an extraordinary range of personal information, as James Comey explained to the Washington Times last year: “My SF-86 lists every place I’ve ever lived since I was 18, every foreign travel I’ve ever taken, all of my family, their addresses. So it’s not just my identity that’s affected. I’ve got siblings. I’ve got five kids. All of that is in there.” (Comey’s was among the data taken.) The hack has been described as “Cyber Pearl Harbor.” Joel Brenner, senior counsel at the National Security Agency, called the stolen information “crown jewels material . . . a gold mine for a foreign intelligence service.” John Schindler, a former analyst at the National Security Agency, has written: “Whoever now holds OPM’s records possesses something like the Holy Grail from a [counterintelligence] perspective.”

I was wrong! In early 2013, my article “The American Babe In The Iranian Wood,” noted, “President Obama and his administration’s incomprehensible handling of Iran, as clueless, overconfident and counterproductive; not a good recipe for dealing with a sophisticated and determined adversary.”

As it turned out, and as every new expose of yet another secret deal shows, President Obama was anything but a clueless Babe. The President who initiated the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, aka The Iran Deal, is a sophisticated politician who deliberately and elaborately misled the American people about his concessions to the mullahs, accommodating their nuclear agenda and giving them some $150 billions, purportedly to help strengthen their economy. All the while acknowledging that “some” of that money will pay for the regime’s military expansion and even to fund their terrorist activities. Why was the U.S. President so keen on building up his nation’s sworn enemy’s nuclear capabilities? What was his motive in empowering the mullahs and fueling Iran’s intervention in and destabilization of the Middle East and beyond?

Also, where were the United States’ partners to the Iran Deal? The United Kingdom, Russia, France, and China — plus Germany, and the European Union (EU) participated in the negotiations and signed on. Why?

While the prospect of opening the Iranian market to business was tempting, why would any country, especially with geographic proximity to Iran, be interested in facilitating the belligerent Islamic Republic’s development of nuclear weapons? Has greed overcome existential fear? Or perhaps by the time the deal was announced Iran’s uranium enrichment program was close to or already a fait accompli. In that case, why not partake in the Obama administration’s magic show and reap real profits afterward? Perhaps this can explain why most of the murky details were not leaked.

From the start, President Barack Obama and his top aides viewed a nuclear deal with Iran as a singular good – a goal to pursue on its own rather than linked to Iran’s terror sponsorship, its efforts to destabilize Sunni Arab states, its grotesque human rights record or its other problematic behavior in the region and beyond.

With the deal in hand, administration officials argued, they would confront Tehran over its other activities that threaten the United States and its European partners and that alarm our allies in the region. But, recent events suggest, last year’s global nuclear deal has proved far less liberating then paralyzing for the administration. Washington seems so concerned that Tehran will abandon the deal, as Iranian leaders often threaten, that it refuses to confront the regime over its increasingly reckless behavior.

How important was a nuclear deal, and the broader goal of a U.S.-Iranian rapprochement, to Obama? Important enough that, in a persistent effort not to ruffle the feathers of Iran’s hard-line regime, he refused to support the democracy-seeking Green Movement after Iran’s rigged presidential election in 2009, to confront Syria’s Bashar Assad (a key Iranian ally) as he slaughtered his own people starting in 2013, or to voice outrage over Iran’s human rights crackdown of recent years.

How important does the deal remain to Obama as he finishes his term and ponders his legacy? Important enough, we learned in recent days from the Institute for Science and International Security, that Washington gave Tehran secret exemptions from the deal’s limits on the uranium that it could possess that’s enriched to 3.5 percent and 20 percent purity, both of which could be quickly converted to weapons grade purity in the future. Without those exemptions, Tehran wouldn’t have received the generous relief from tough economic sanctions that it so desperately sought.

VIENTIANE, Laos—One of President Barack Obama’s final turns on the international stage before leaving office spotlighted how some world leaders are testing the limits of U.S. power just months before a new American administration.

From the moment Mr. Obama stepped off the plane in the lakeside city of Hangzhou, China, through his meetings at a summit in Laos, he has faced challenges to his policies and overall American authority in ways large and small.

Russian President Vladimir Putin left the Obama administration empty-handed after intense negotiations on a deal to reduce violence in Syria. North Korea, the glaring setback in Mr. Obama’s Asia policy, tested ballistic missiles. On Tuesday U.S. officials said Iran made yet another provocative move toward a U.S. Navy ship in the Persian Gulf.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte made profane comments about Mr. Obama on the eve of their first meeting, leading the White House to cancel a sit-down with the leader of one of America’s treaty allies. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey was unexpectedly positive in public remarks about relations with the U.S., yet also challenged a core component of Mr. Obama’s strategy against Islamic State extremists: backing Kurdish forces in Syria.

And while Chinese President Xi Jinping hosted Mr. Obama for a lengthy one-on-one meeting and cooperated with the U.S. on climate change, significant areas of tension between the two countries went unresolved.

Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said most of these developments “are just the latest installments of long-running sagas,” citing Russia and Syria, North Korea and differences between the U.S. and Turkey over the Kurds.

“They are all manifestations of what I would describe as a world in disarray,” he said.

Still, the Obama administration’s effort to shift U.S. diplomatic and military attention toward Asia has left a mark, sending more U.S. forces, ships, planes and military sales toward the region. Two key steps include a new U.S.-Philippine military agreement implemented this year, and a decision this year to lift restrictions on military sales to Vietnam.

Given U.S. investments in Southeast Asia, and its massive military presence, “it’s China that is trying to compete with U.S. influence in the region—not the other way round,” said Ian Storey, a Southeast Asia expert at the Singapore-based ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute.

“That’s not to say that Southeast Asian countries aren’t eager to attract Chinese money,” he added. “But when you’re throwing your weight around the South China Sea, I think there’s a limit as to how much influence and reassurance you can buy.”CONTINUE AT SITE

As our dispiriting presidential campaign grinds on, the rest of the world is not standing still. And the news is not good.

At the G-20 meeting last weekend, Chinese officials treated the president of the United States and his senior aides with blatant disrespect. As Chinese nationalism surges, President Xi Jinping is asserting his country’s claims throughout the South China Sea, a move that episodic demonstrations of American naval power have failed to halt. Meanwhile, the linchpin of President Obama’s “pivot” to Asia—the Trans-Pacific Partnership—faces opposition from both presidential candidates and hangs by a thread in Congress. Its defeat would deal a heavy blow to American credibility.

In the Middle East, the Syrian civil war continues its bloody course, and the latest effort to negotiate a humanitarian cease-fire with the Russians has foundered over what the administration describes as “trust” issues. Mr. Obama’s prediction that Vladimir Putin’s use of military force would land him in a quagmire described his own state of mind rather than reality. Instead, at modest cost, Mr. Putin has restored Russia’s standing as a key player in the region, while our friends and allies see America in retreat.

In northern Syria, U.S.-backed Kurds have been the only effective fighters against Islamic State. But when Turkey sent its forces across the border, Mr. Obama sent Vice President Joe Biden to Turkey, where he demanded that the Kurds withdraw from ISIS-held territory they had recently seized. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sees every manifestation of Kurdish nationalism, wherever it may occur, as a threat to Turkey’s domestic security.

The U.S. is under no obligation to agree with him, especially at the expense of one of the few reliably pro-Western forces in the region. Mr. Obama’s meeting in China with Mr. Erdogan did not yield an agreement. The administration’s brand of “realism” in Syria has ended in a damaging muddle.

The group photo at the G-20 meeting spoke volumes. At one end, President Putin was speaking to President Erdogan, who listened attentively. At the other end, President Obama peered curiously at the colloquy. In the middle, President Xi smiled confidently. As the authoritarian entente cordiale flowers, the U.S. is reduced to a bystander’s role.

Mr. Obama seems to have assumed that events in Syria, however awful to behold, would have no effect on core American interests. If so, he was badly mistaken. The flood of Syrian refugees has destabilized its neighbors in the Middle East and Europe. CONTINUE AT SITE

The Obama administration followed up a planeload of $400 million in cash sent to Iran in January with two more such shipments in the next 19 days, totaling another $1.3 billion, according to congressional officials briefed by the U.S. State, Treasury and Justice departments.

The cash payments—made in Swiss francs, euros and other currencies—settled a decades-old dispute over a failed arms deal dating back to 1979. U.S. officials have acknowledged the payment of the first $400 million coincided with Iran’s release of American prisoners and was used as leverage to ensure they were flown out of Tehran’s Mehrabad on the morning of Jan. 17.
The revelations come as Congress returns from a summer recess with Republicans vowing to pursue charges that the White House paid ransom to Tehran, a charge President Barack Obama has repeatedly rejected. Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) introduced legislation on Tuesday that would bar such payments to Iran in the future and seeks to reclaim the $1.7 billion for victims of Iranian-backed terrorism.

The Obama administration briefed lawmakers on Tuesday, telling them that two further portions of the $1.3 billion were transferred though Europe on Jan. 22 and Feb. 5. The payment “flowed in the same manner” as the original $400 million that an Iranian cargo plane picked up in Geneva, Switzerland, according to a congressional aide who took part in the briefing.

The $400 million was converted into non-U.S. currencies by the Swiss and Dutch central banks, according to U.S. and European officials.

The Treasury Department confirmed late Tuesday that the subsequent payments were also made in cash. CONTINUE AT SITE

FROM THE SEPTEMBER ISSUE OF MIDEAST OUTPOST

http://www.mideastoutpost.com/archives/a-perspective-on-refugees-ruth-king.html
In 1924, after decades of free immigration from Europe, America enacted the Johnson-Reed Immigration Law which limited groups considered racially and ethnically “undesirable.” These were code words for Jews, Southern and Eastern Europeans, Africans, Arabs and Asians. When President Coolidge signed the law, his words were “America must remain American.”

It was scrupulously enforced on July 6, 1938 when an international conference convened in Evian, France to deal with Jewish refugees desperate to flee the racial laws of Germany and Austria which sought to make their nations judenrein— free of all Jews. But Jewish refugees found no succor from Western nations. With the British blockade of Palestine, Europe’s Jews were trapped and one of every three Jews in the world died during the Nazi genocide.

After World War II millions of people fled or were expelled from Eastern Europe. Many fled the Soviet controlled Communist tyrannies. Others, such as the displaced surviving Jews, found no welcome when they returned to their previous homes. Millions of Germans–even those that had lived in Hungary, Poland, Yugoslavia, Rumania and Czechoslovakia long before the war–were expelled. It has been estimated that in the peak year of 1946, about 14,000 people per day became stateless refugees.

Europe was devastated by the death and destruction wrought by the war. Food and housing were scarce and throughout the continent refugees and survivors were kept in displaced persons camps. American policy in the immediate post-war period limited immigration to those who had friends or relatives who could sponsor them and guarantee they would not become dependent on government assistance. This policy changed in 1948 when restrictions were eased by the Displaced Persons Act which offered sanctuary to refugees from Communist nations of Eastern Europe.

Restrictions were further relaxed in The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 and The Refugee Relief Act of 1953. By 1959 one million European refugees had been absorbed by free European countries, 476,000 had been accepted by the U.S. and another half million by Latin America and Asia. The bulk of Jewish refugees found a home in a liberated and independent Israel.

World Refugee Year, in 1959-1960, was designed as a ‘clear the camps’ drive. By the end of 1960, all the refugee camps of Europe were closed.

The only exceptions were the squalid “Arab refugee” camps established in 1948. In them 500,000 Arabs and their descendants, courtesy of the UN and their so-called “Arab brethren”, have been kept in sorry conditions for the last 68 years.

What made the Jewish refugees “undesirable” in 1924 is a question to ponder, particularly now that the word “refugee” is flagrantly abused by those prepared to destroy Western civilization through immigration.

From 1880 until 1924 approximately four million Jews arrived in America. Their contributions to every aspect of American culture–science, medicine, theater, music, cultural and philanthropic institutions– was outsize in every way. And if a well-known Jew committed a felony or murder, the shame and outrage was also disproportionate.

Although clustered in crowded and poor neighborhoods, Jews demanded no charity and depended on the help of Jewish organizations for settlement, schooling and medical care. They created the garment industry and pioneered in trade, retail and wholesale manufacturing and construction. Indeed it’s hard to think of any aspect of American life to which American Jews did not make a significant contribution. They attended night schools, learned English, participated in politics and gave their children anglicized names. Malka became Marilyn, Moshe became Marvin, Shmuel became Scott. They delighted in entertainment, told self-deprecating Jewish jokes and were pioneers in the labor union movement.

Senior officials in Germany’s army have called for background checks on all new recruits after discovering that dozens of soldiers with links to jihadi groups have enlisted in the country’s armed forces.

More than 60 recruits with Islamist links have already been exposed as Bundeswehr officials hastily proposed a draft amendment calling for new screening process to eliminate potential Islamist recruits as well as right and left-wing extremists, according to the Sunday’s Welt am Sonntag newspaper.

Military leaders are warning that infiltration means jihadists can quickly acquire both military skills and weapons training that can then be used to carry out attacks either inside Germany or abroad.

Under new fast-tracked proposals, army officials want pre-screening of new recruits ahead of acceptance into the country’s armed forces.

More than 800 Islamists, many of them German citizens, have left the country to join the ranks of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, as the country struggles with a growing radicalization problem.

Of those who have left to go fight alongside ISIS, more than 120 have been killed and over 200 have returned, according to Germany’s Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere.

Additionally, at least 29 ISIS recruits have previously served in the German army, according to an internal military reportreleased in April.

Currently, only soldiers serving with Germany’s armed forces are monitored for signs of radicalization, but new laws call for another 90 officers who will carry out more than 20,000 checks on new recruits at an estimated cost of more than $9 million.

Germany is presently on a high state of alert following a series of deadly attacks last month linked to the Islamic State.

“Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder,
is the sport of every wind. With such persons, gullibility, which they
call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason and the mind becomes
a wreck.” —Thomas Jefferson, to James Smith, December 8, 1822

You ask yourself: Why do the “gullible” make it so easy to mock and ridicule them? But, then, one could spend a career wondering about the cerebral workings of our politicians and other notables. Why is a stone so quiet, and inanimate? Because that’s just the way it behaves, or doesn’t behave. Here is a selection of memorable gaffes (or lies masquerading as innocent gaffes or lapses in synaptic activity).

We start with our reality-challenged, addled Secretary of State, John Kerry, who recently uttered something in Bangladesh that wins some kind of award for upper class twitism. According to CNS new and other sources, he opined:

Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday during an appearance in Bangladesh that the media could “do us all a service” if they didn’t cover terrorism “quite as much.”

What would he prefer the MSM to cover, instead of the continued spate of Islamic terrorism? It isn’t as though it regularly reported the rapes by Muslims in Germany and Sweden, or the numerous honor killings in Muslim countries, or the number of gays thrown off of roofs in ISIS territory. Perhaps the annual pie-eating contest in Indianapolis? The annual Iditarod race in Alaska? How about the horrendous murder rates in “gun-controlled” Chicago? Nix the latter. It would be too much like reporting on Syria.

No country is immune from terrorism,” Kerry said at a press conference in Dhaka, Bangladesh. “It’s easy to terrorize. Government and law enforcement have to be correct 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. But if you decide one day you’re going to be a terrorist and you’re willing to kill yourself, you can go out and kill some people. You can make some noise. Perhaps the media would do us all a service if they didn’t cover it quite as much. People wouldn’t know what’s going on.”

And that’s okay with Kerry. “Ignorance is Strength,” don’t you know? What the people don’t know won’t hurt them, until the next terrorist attack hurts them by the score. This piece of mental gibberish is in line with the German-Swedish policy of suppressing any news that would tend to make native Europeans less enthralled with how consistently and ubiquitously savage their new “refugee” neighbors” are. As the National Review’s Jim Geragehty noted on August 30th,

You can’t write satire about this administration anymore; it’s become too inherently contradictory and absurd.

Not even Saturday Night Live could make up this kind of statement for laughs. It’s too bad Edgar Bergen, the ventriloquist, isn’t around to create a John Kerry dummy.

In an important report issued yesterday, the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington, D.C. arms-control think tank, revealed that Iran was secretly granted exemptions to the July 2015 nuclear agreement (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA) so it could meet compliance requirements for what the agreement calls “Implementation Day” — when Iran was to receive an estimated $150 billion in sanctions relief.

Not coincidentally, the same day Implementation Day was announced (January 18), U.S. officials also announced a swap of 18 Iranian prisoners held by the United States for five U.S. citizens who had been illegally held by Iran. An additional 14 Iranians were removed from an INTERPOL wanted list.

The Institute report cites an unnamed official who said that without these exemptions, some of Iran’s nuclear facilities would not have been in compliance with the JCPOA by Implementation Day.

The exemptions were granted by the JCPOA’s “Joint Commission,” composed of the parties to the agreement: Iran, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, China, and Russia. Some of the exemptions were significant and allowed Iran to not report activities with nuclear weapons-related applications. These exemptions were:

Allowing Iran to violate a cap of 300 kg for its enriched-uranium stockpile under certain circumstances. The Commission gave Iran an exemption for reactor-grade enriched UF6 (uranium hexafluoride, the feed material for enrichment centrifuges) in the form of low-level and sludge waste. This may have been a minor violation although the report said the amount of this material is unknown.

Ignoring “lab contaminant” UF6 enriched to 20 percent uranium-235 judged as “unrecoverable.” Although this may also be a minor violation, the report says the amount of this material and how it was judged unrecoverable is not known.

Exemption for large “hot cells.” The JCPOA allows Iran to operate or build hot cells (shielded chambers used to handle radioactive substances), but to ensure they are used for peaceful purposes such as producing medical radionuclides, Iran agreed that for 15 years these cells will be limited to no more than six cubic meters. The Commission gave Iran an exemption to operate 22 larger hot cells. According to the Institute report, these larger cells could be secretly misused for plutonium-separation experiments. The Institute also raised concerns that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is not adequately monitoring Iran’s hot cells and that Iran is exploiting this exemption to win approval to operate more hot cells with volumes greater than six cubic meters. This is a potentially serious exemption because plutonium-separation experiments have only one purpose: developing the capability to produce plutonium nuclear-weapons fuel.

The report also noted two other secret decisions by the Joint Commission.