MFP'S NEWS

Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Ten Times in Past Two Years Terrorists Slipped Through Immigration Process into U.S.

In the wake of the terrorist attacks in New York City and Minnesota during the weekend, the focus of the national debate has again shifted back to America’s enemies exploiting weaknesses in U.S. immigration screening processes to get into the country to attack the United States.

By: Matthew Boyle

NEW YORK CITY, New York (Breitbart) - While President Barack Obama’s administration, and his would-be successor, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton, have promised to increase the amount of people they bring into the United States through immigration, refugee, and asylum programs, the Republican nominee for president, Donald J. Trump, has promised to put the brakes on allowing potential terrorists into the United States.

Below is a by-no-means comprehensive list of at least ten times in the last couple years—there are certainly many more instances—that terrorists have exploited the Obama-Clinton immigration weaknesses to get into the United States. This is the first in a series of stories that will examine specific examples on this front.

1.) Eritrean Plans Terror in Ohio

Twenty-one-year-old Munir Abdulkader of West Chester, Ohio, pleads guilty, according to the Department of Justice, “to attempting to kill officers and employees of the United States, providing material support to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), a designated foreign terrorist organization, and possession of a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence.”

According to the Columbus Dispatch, Abdulkader is a “native of Eritrea in east Africa,” who “became a citizen of the United States in September 2006.”

He hit law enforcement’s radar while a student at Xavier University in Cincinnati when he was posting messages on Twitter that the Columbus Dispatch said were “seen as sympathetic to Islamic State fighters.”

“On a Twitter account that began in July 2014 and continued into 2015, Abdulkader posted an IS training video, lamented that his cousin had died fighting for IS and expressed his desire to travel and join the terrorist insurgency,” James Steinbauer wrote in the Columbus Dispatch in July. He added:

Abdulkader also stated his wish to attain martyrdom. From March to mid-April 2015, Abdulkader began speaking with a confidential source about his intentions to travel to Syria and fight for the insurgency. He secured a passport, saved money for the trip and began making travel plans, but postponed the trip until May 2015 because of increased arrests of individuals traveling to join IS. During May 2015, Abdulkader communicated with one or more people overseas who were tied to IS. One, a member of IS identified as Junaid Hussein, encouraged Abdulkader to commit terrorist attacks in the United States before going to Syria. IS has advocated for lone-wolf jihadis and extremists to conduct attacks in their home countries.

In his communications with Hussein, the Islamic State recruiter encouraged the Eritrean immigrant—according to the Justice Department—“to plan and execute a violent attack within the United States.”

“Abdulkader communicated with Hussein and the CHS [confidential human source] about a plan to kill an identified military employee on account of his position with the U.S. government,” the Justice Department said in a press release. “The plan included abducting the employee at the employee’s home and filming the execution. After killing the employee, Abdulkader planned to perpetrate a violent attack on a police station in the Southern District of Ohio using firearms and Molotov cocktails.”

None of this would have been possible if the United States government had not let this Eritrean man into the United States in the first place.

2.) Virginia Man? Not Quite.

Also back in July, The Washington Post’s Rachel Weiner and Joe Helm detailed the story of Mohamed Bailor Jalloh—an immigrant from Sierra Leone—who was caught plotting a terrorist attack in support of the Islamic State in Virginia.

“When Mohamed Bailor Jalloh walked into the Blue Ridge Arsenal gun store and indoor target range in Chantilly, Va., on Friday to purchase a Bushmaster AR-15 rifle, he had no idea that his every move was being monitored by the FBI,” Weiner and Helm wrote on July 5. “Jalloh, 26, spent about 10 minutes in the shop before attempting to buy the assault weapon, but he was told that he did not have the required three forms of identification to make the purchase, said Earl Curtis, the store’s owner. Jalloh told employees that he would return.”

Jalloh had apparently been a former member of the Virginia National Guard—and that was how The Washington Post’s headline identified him. What the leading newspaper did not say until 16 paragraphs into the article is that Jalloh is not from the United States.

“Jalloh, a native of Sierra Leone, is a U.S. citizen,” the Post wrote.

That’s all the nation’s capitol’s major newspaper said in that story about his immigration history.

According to Justice Department documents, Jalloh was born in Sierra Leone—a West African nation that is predominantly Muslim—and actually after becoming naturalized later as a U.S. citizen traveled back to Sierra Leone in 2015. In addition to disclosing that he listened to lectures from Anwar Al-Awlaki, Jalloh—according to court records available of the Department of Justice’s website—told a confidential human source for federal law enforcement he is “originally from Sierra Leone and has been a Muslim his entire life.” During his trip back to his home nation of Sierra Leone, federal authorities—according to the court records—believed he had contact with representatives for the Islamic State. He was gone for months.

“A review of U.S. Customs and Border Protection travel records indicated JALLOH departed the United States on or about June 11, 2015 via John F. Kennedy International Airport with a final destination of Sierra Leone,” the court document, filed by an FBI agent, says, continuing:

On or about January 16, 2016, JALLOH returned to the United States from Sierra Leone via John F. Kennedy International Airport. Based on the length of time JALLOH was overseas for this trip and the comments made by JALLOH to CHS1 [confidential human source number one] on or about April 9, 2016, I believe it was during this overseas trip that JALLOH met ISIL members in Nigeria and first established contact with UCCl [un-indicted co-conspirator number one].

But it all started, of course, when the U.S. government decided to let this guy into the United States in the first place.

3.) Kenyan Somali ‘Refugee’ — Or Minnesota Man? — Convicted on Terrorism Charges

Guled Ali Omar, a Somalian born in a refugee camp in Kenya but later admitted into the United States as a refugee and subsequently granted citizenship by the U.S. government, was one of three “Minnesota Men” convicted in June of conspiring to join the Islamic State and “commit murder in Syria.”

“Guled Ali Omar, Abdurahman Yasin Daud and Mohamed Abdihamid Farah were convicted by a federal jury today of conspiring to commit murder in Syria on behalf of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and to provide material support to the designated foreign terrorist organization,” the Justice Department announced on June 3. “Omar was also convicted of one count of attempted financial aid fraud, and Farah was also convicted of one count of perjury and providing a false statement.”

Omar’s case is particularly interesting. His family, in the wake of his conviction, was given fawning coverage by local Minnesota media. In a large profile in the Minneapolis StarTribune, his mother Fadumo Hussein was described as “heartbroken” and portrayed as having her “home” being “shadowed” by “the question of terrorism” for years.

The local newspaper paints the FBI agents who raided their home as jackbooted thugs who disrupted their life.

“On Sunday morning, that question once again stormed into her life, when FBI agents crashed through the door of her south Minneapolis house in search of her youngest son, Guled Omar,” Paul McEnroe wrote in the Star Tribune on April 21, 2015, adding:

Rousting her from sleep, the agents had surrounded the house about 9 a.m. and then stormed in to arrest her 20-year-old son. The young man, who works as a security guard for Target and attends community college part-time, is now charged with leading a secret life centered on plotting with five friends to leave the United States in order to fight with terrorists in Syria and Iraq.

Deeper in the story, though, the StarTribune lets it slip: Omar was not just any typical “Minnesota Man.”

The newspaper quotes the mother as saying, “Guled was born by myself under a tree” during their time “spent in a Kenyan refugee camp.” Never mind that this is Hussein’s second—not her first, her second—son who has been connected with radical Islamic terrorism, the Minneapolis StarTribune focuses on how Hussein, about Omar, was “protesting his innocence.”

“Still reeling from the weekend’s trauma, a tearful Hussein sat on her couch Monday morning and tried to come to grips with now losing her second son to the nationwide investigation of terrorist recruitment among Somali-Americans,” McEnroe wrote:

Omar is the youngest brother of indicted fugitive Ahmed Ali Omar, who left the U.S. in late 2007 as part of the first wave of Somali-Americans in the Twin Cities to fight for Al-Shabab in Somalia. Hussein said she hasn’t heard from Ahmed since — that he’s simply disappeared off the family’s radar. Now, she faces the prospect of losing Guled too, through a terrorism trial or a guilty plea that, either way, could put him in prison for decades.

While the StarTribune article, even further down, tells readers finally that Hussein is a “naturalized U.S. citizen,” it says nothing of the immigration status of Omar. For that information—whether or not Omar was granted U.S. citizenship by the government after coming to the United States—readers need to turn to another newspaper: The Chicago Tribune. More than ten paragraphs into that article from the Tribune wire service, readers finally learn: The United States government gave this man citizenship.

“All six are of Somali descent. Daud is a permanent resident, and Guled is a naturalized citizen,” the paper wrote of the six charged men. “The others were born in the U.S.”

To the wire service’s credit, though, it does—a few paragraphs deep—admit there is a problem in Minnesota:

The Minneapolis area is home to the largest concentration of Somali immigrants in the U.S. Since 2007, more than 22 young Somali men have also traveled from Minnesota to Somalia to join the militant group al-Shabab, which is also listed by the U.S. State Department as fomenting terrorism. Authorities have said a handful of Minnesota residents have traveled to Syria to fight with militants in the past year, and at least one has died.

4.) Legal Permanent Resident Abdurahman Yasin Daud Moves In Next Door

One of the others charged in the case in the third example—Abdurahman Yasin Daud—is a native Somalian who wound up in Minnesota, thanks to the U.S. government. But not only was he allowed into the country, according to the Tribune wire service piece in the Chicago Tribune, he was granted “permanent resident” status by the U.S. government.

Maybe if federal policy did not let people like this into the United States in the first place, FBI agents would not have to chase people like Daud and his buddies across the country as they plot to leave the United States to join the Islamic State in Syria.

In fact, federal law enforcement agents spent years—years—building this case.

Omar and two other members of the conspiracy also made an attempt to join ISIL by traveling across the U.S.–Mexico border near San Diego in May 2014, but failed when members of Omar’s family prevented his travel.

“In October 2014, members of the conspiracy communicated with ‘Antar,’ a self-described member of ISIL in Syria, about how best to travel to Syria to join ISIL,” the Justice Department said in a press release, adding:

Members of the conspiracy met with one another to discuss routes, methods and the timing of leaving the United States to join ISIL in Syria. Omar again attempted to join ISIL in Syria on Nov. 6, 2014, by flying from Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport to San Diego, crossing the border into Mexico and traveling onward to Syria. Before he could board the flight in Minnesota, Omar was stopped at the airport and prevented from boarding the plane. In order to fund this second attempt to join ISIL in Syria, Omar intended to use federal financial aid provided to him by the U.S. Department of Education to attend college. Also in November 2014, Farah and three of his co-conspirators, Zacharia Abdurahman, Hanad Musse and Hamza Ahmed, took a bus from Minneapolis to New York City and attempted to board flights to Europe with an eventual destination of Syria. Federal agents in New York prevented the four from traveling abroad. In April 2015, Daud and Farah drove from Minneapolis to San Diego, where they intended to purchase fake passports, cross the border into Mexico and travel to Syria to join ISIL. Unbeknownst to them, the individual from whom they purchased the fake passports was a law enforcement officer and both were arrested by federal agents immediately after obtaining the phony travel documents.

5.) Sudanese Man Caught in Virginia Conspiring to Join Islamic State

While the January 16 press release from the Department of Justice was headlined “Two Virginia Men Charged with Terrorism Offenses Related to Attempted Travel to Syria to Join ISIL,” it turns out one of these “Virginia men” was actually an immigrant from the great nation of Sudan.

Mahmoud Amin Mohamed Elhassan—whom the DOJ admits “ is a legal permanent U.S. resident originally from Sudan,” but was living in Woodbridge, Virginia—was “charged with aiding and abetting [his friend Joseph Hassan] Farrokh’s attempt to provide material support and resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization.” Farrokh was born in Pennsylvania.

Elhassan, the Sudanese man, according to a later release from the DOJ announcing his indictment on May 27, was a taxi driver who used his taxi to try to help Farrokh get to Syria to join the Islamic State.

“In furtherance of the conspiracy, on Jan. 15, 2016, Elhassan drove Farrokh to Richmond in order to enable Farrokh to fly to overseas to join ISIL,” the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia announced in the indictment press release:

According to the indictment, Elhassan also attempted to provide material support or resources to ISIL by aiding and abetting the attempt of Farrokh to join ISIL. Elhassan’s aiding and abetting included introducing Farrokh to an individual that Elhassan believed could facilitate Farrokh’s travel to the Islamic State; driving Farrokh from Farrokh’s home to Richmond in Elhassan’s taxi cab so that Farrokh could embark on his travel to join ISIL; and making false statements to the FBI about Farrokh’s travel in order to hinder the government’s investigation of Farrokh’s travel. According to the indictment, Elhassan knowingly, unlawfully, and willfully made material false, fictitious, and fraudulent statements and representations in a matter involving international terrorism, including: On Jan. 15, 2016, Elhassan falsely stated to FBI agents that Farrokh had flown out of Dulles Airport earlier that day on a flight to California to attend a funeral; that Farrokh had said that he would be back in about two weeks; that neither he nor Farrokh supported the ISIL; and neither he nor Farrokh ever tried to find someone to help them get to ISIL.

Sudan is a northeastern African nation that is run by a legal system operating based on Sharia law, something that has been a source of controversy for the nation as it has handed out death sentences to those who engage in “apostasy.”

“Twenty-five Muslim men, including three teenagers, are facing the death penalty in Sudan after being charged with apostasy for following the wrong version of Islam,” The Guardian reported last December.

That is where Elhassan came from, before the U.S. government allowed him into America.

6.) Iraqi in Texas Sentenced to Four Years in U.S. Prison on Terror Charges

Bilal Abood, a 38-year-old Iraqi man who lives in Mesquite, Texas, was sentenced to 48 months in prison on May 25 for lying to the Feds about terrorism.

In this case, the Justice Department notes right up front that he was born in Iraq—but is now a U.S. citizen. Abood had traveled to Syria from Texas—and then back—and had pledged allegiance to Abu Bakr Al-Badhdadi, the leader of the Islamic State.

“Abood admitted that on March 29, 2013, he attempted to depart the United States at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, but was not allowed to board the international flight,” the Justice Department press release said. It continued:

While at the airport, FBI special agents asked Abood about his planned travel and he stated he was merely planning to travel to Iraq to visit family. During a subsequent interview, Abood admitted to FBI special agents that his intent was to travel to Syria to fight the regime of Bashar al-Assad. On approximately April 29, 2013, Abood left the United States through Mexico and traveled through various countries into Syria. On Sept. 16, 2013, Abood returned to the United States and admitted to FBI special agents that he had traveled to Syria, but he denied supporting any terrorist groups. A search warrant was executed on Abood’s computer on July 9, 2014. A review of that computer revealed that on approximately June 19, 2014, Abood stated, while using his Twitter handle @ibnalislaam, “I pledge obedience to the Caliphate Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.” Abood admitted that he knew that al-Baghdadi is the self-proclaimed leader of ISIL and was designated as a specially designated global terrorist on Oct. 4, 2011, and remains so to date. Abood also admitted that on April 14, 2015, FBI special agents advised him that lying to a federal agent is a crime. He further admitted that on that date, he falsely told FBI special agents that he had never pledged allegiance to al-Baghdadi and that he was aware that the agents were investigating a matter that they suspected could involve international terrorism.

What the Justice Department doesn’t say in this release, or a prior one, is how this Iraqi man got into the United States—and obtained U.S. citizenship—in the first place.

For that, we turn to The Dallas Morning News, which details how Abood helped U.S. armed forces in Iraq as a translator during the Iraq war—and then took advantage of a special program for such translators.

“Abood, a translator for American forces during the Iraq War, left Iraq in 2009 to take advantage of a rare opportunity for U.S. Army interpreters to become American citizens,” The Dallas Morning News’ Kevin Krause wrote on May 25, 2016, continuing:

Abood, who speaks Arabic, said during testimony Wednesday that he was offered the interpreter job after warning U.S. troops that large weapons caches were being kept inside Iraqi schools. He said he also worked as a U.S. military contractor on civil affairs projects, such as building schools and roads. He joined the Army in 2010 and went through basic training at Fort Jackson, S.C. Abood said he trained U.S. troops on how to deal with Iraqi culture and customs. He said he left the Army because it wouldn’t allow him to return to Iraq to see his sick mother. Abood said he settled in an apartment in Mesquite around 2010 where he lived with his common law wife and worked two jobs — one for UPS and the other as a security guard. He said he saved enough money to buy his mother a house in Iraq.

7.) The Uzbeki from Brooklyn Caught Funding Islamic State

Azizjon Rakhmatov, a 28-year-old man from Uzbekistan, whom the U.S. government permitted into United States, was—according to the New York Post—the “sixth man” charged “in an ISIS recruitment plot tied to Brooklyn.”

“Azizjon Rakhmatov, 28, originally from Uzbekistan, helped fund the foiled trip of Akhror Saidakhmetov and Adburasul Juraboev to Turkey and Syria so they could join ISIS, Brooklyn federal prosecutors said Wednesday,” the New York Post’s Pricilla DeGregory and Georgett Roberts wrote on May 11.

8.) Another Uzbeki from Brooklyn

Also previously charged in the case was Abdurasul Hasanovich Juraboev—a 25-year-old man whom an FBI agent in an affidavit available on the Justice Department website notes is a “citizen of Uzbekistan” and was granted “lawful permanent resident” status in the United States.

Juraboev, according to The New York Times, pleaded guilty in August 2015 of “conspiring to provide material support to” the Islamic State after trying to join the organization. He and a co-conspirator, the Times wrote, “had talked of violence on behalf of the Islamic State, like planting a bomb in Coney Island and attacking President Obama, the authorities said.”

9.) Kazakh Man U.S. Government Let In Tries to Join ISIS

Akhror Saidakhmetov, a 19-year-old man, was also connected to the case with Rakhmatov and Juraboev—and was described by progressive media outlet the Daily Beast as just another “Brooklyn Punk” and “Central Asian immigrant” who wanted to join the Islamic State. It turns out, according to the FBI agent’s affidavit, Saidakhmetov was a “citizen of Kazakhstan” who was also—thanks to the U.S. government—a “lawful permanent resident” of the United States.

10.) Visa Overstay: Another Uzbeki in Brooklyn’s Islamic State Case

Abror Habibov, a 30-year-old citizen of Uzbekistan, was arrested in Jacksonville, Florida, in connection with the same case from the last few examples. According to CNN, police accused Habibov of being the one who “helped organize and finance” the entire operation.

“Court documents say Habibov operates mall kiosks that sell kitchenware and repair mobile phones,” CNN reported in 2015. “He has locations in Florida, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Virginia.”

CNN also reported that while Habibov was admitted to the United States “legally,” again by the federal government, he “overstayed his visa.” That, ironically, is exactly what many of the 9/11 terrorists did—and as Breitbart News has reported, the federal government still has not implemented the reforms laid out for the visa program recommended by the 9/11 Commission, particularly an entry-exit visa program. As Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) told Breitbart News on 9/11 this year—15 years after the attack—implementing such a program, as Donald Trump has promised he will do, would be extraordinarily simple, cost very little, and only take a matter of months. But 15 years after 9/11, the U.S. government still has not done it.

Nonetheless, Habibov would not have been here if the government did what it was supposed to do.

Saturday, September 3, 2016

FBI found extensive evidence Hillary emails violated federal records laws

By: John Solomon and Kellan Howell

Though it was not their primary mission, FBI agents who investigated Hillary Clinton's email collected significant evidence suggesting she and her team violated federal record-keeping laws, including persisting to use a private Blackberry and server to conduct State Department business after being warned they posed legal and security risks, government sources tell Circa.

The evidence was compelling enough to convince FBI Director James Comey that the Clinton team had not complied with record-keeping laws and to cause at least one witness to raise their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination during an investigative interview, the sources said.

In public, the FBI recommended not filing criminal charges against Clinton on national security grounds. But in private, the Bureau chose to defer to the State Department on whether to recommend anyone to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution on records law violations, the sources said, speaking only on condition of anonymity.

Each email transmission of a government document that was not preserved or turned over to the State Department from Mrs. Clinton's tenure could theoretically be considered a violation of the Federal Records Act, the main law governing preservation of government records and data.

Other federal laws make it a felony to intentionally conceal, remove or destroy federal records as defined under the act, punishable with a fine and imprisonment of up to three years.

A single conviction also carries a devastating impact for anyone looking to work again in government because the law declares that any violator "shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States."

The FBI "indirectly documented hundreds, and likely thousands, of violations of the Records Act," one source with direct knowledge of the FBI's investigation told Circa.

Using forensics, the FBI recovered from computer drives and other witnesses about 17,500 emails from Mrs. Clinton's private account that dealt with government business, most that had not been turned over by her or her aides, the sources said.

Some of the emails recovered by agents were germane to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests from the public and congressional investigations and had not yet been produced, the sources said.
Accounts from witnesses suggested the efforts to keep Mrs. Clinton's government email communications on a device and server outside the reach of public records laws or congressional oversight were "systemic and intentional" and began as soon as Mrs. Clinton took office in 2009, one source told Circa.
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For instance, the sources said agents secured testimony and documents suggesting that Mrs. Clinton's team:
-Was informed in 2009 that she had an obligation under the records law to forward any government-related records contained in private email to a new record preservation system known as SMART but chose not to do so because her office wanted to keep control over "sensitive" messages.

-Was specifically questioned by a technical worker who was involved with her private email server in the Clinton family home in New York whether the arrangement was appropriate for a government official under the federal records law. The worker was assured there were no problems.

-Wanted to keep her private Blackerry email service because of fears a government email address would be subject to public scrutiny under the Freedom of Information Act.

-Was aware that government officers complying with FOIA requests did not have access to search Mrs. Clinton's private email for responsive records.

-Persisted in allowing her to use private email to conduct State Department business even after a cable was sent under her name in 2011 to all diplomats worldwide urging them to stop using private email because of foreign hacking fears.

-Allowed Clinton to keep using the private email system after after she personally received a 2011 presentation warning of dangers of the private email for government business.

-Had prior reason from earlier legal cases involving their conduct to know that emails covering government business were legally required to be preserved and turned over to their agency and the National Archives.

-Failed to preserve private emails from Clinton that clearly involved significant government business, including discussions with Army Gen. David Petraues, the Benghazi tragedy, meeting requests with foreign leaders and the State Department's quadrennial policy and performance review.

During a brief aside at a House Judiciary Committee hearing in July, Comey, the FBI Director, was asked by a congressman if he believed Clinton complied with State Department procedures and federal record keeping laws.

"I don't think so. I know you have the State inspector general here, who's more of an expert on all the department's policies, but at least in some respects, no," he answered. Comey, however, offered no explanation why charges weren't filed.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch said in mid-July that she did not believe her department had assessed whether Clinton or her team violated the Records Act.
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"I don't know if that was under the purview of the investigation. I don't recall a specific opinion on that," she said.

The Clinton campaign did not respond to a request for comment. But Mrs. Clinton has said she regrets using private email to conduct official State Department business.

Her former chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, also expressed some regret, saying the Clinton team thought her records would be preserved because her private emails usually went to other government email accounts, but that was mistaken.

Former President Bill Clinton was less apologetic, strongly dismissing Comey's and the FBI's criticism of his wife. "This is the biggest load of bull I ever heard," he said a few weeks ago.

A retired federal prosecutor told Circa the FBI and DOJ could easily have brought a case if the evidence pointed toward intentional violations.

"If you get enough instances of people violating the Federal Records Act and if it's a group of folks then you could look at things like a conspiracy, or a criminal enterprise, that could bump it up to a felony," he said.

Matt Whitaker, who served as U.S. Attorney for Iowa under President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama and now runs a conservative-leaning government ethics group, had this to say:

"There are a lot of intentional acts, including the setting up of the private email server, that probably could go to a question of was this intentional and was this violation of both the records act and the handling of classified material."

Whitaker said he believes a special prosecutor should be appointed to review the Records Act questions because "in this political silly season it appears that the FBI and especially the Department of Justice doesn't have the stomach to pursue the potential charges that emanate from this behavior."

Ronald Hosko, who retired two years ago as the Assistant FBI Director in charge of the bureau's criminal division, agreed Mrs. Clinton's actions at the State Department showed a disregard for her obligation to preserve and protect sensitive government information.

He said such responsibilities were "taken seriously" inside the FBI but that "does not appear to be the case in the State Department under Hillary Clinton. To me, this was a systemic failure at State, top to bottom."

The FBI's former criminal division chief said the State Department email scandal was a "systemic failure."

But Hosko said a misdemeanor case wouldn't be sexy enough for the FBI -- stretched by higher terrorism, organized crime and cybersecurity priorities -- to pursue, especially against a candidate leading the presidential race right now in a polarizing election. "The FBI is an agency with finite resources. Seldom do you expend resources when the top available penalty is a misdemeanor," he said. I'm not saying you don't consider it or contemplate it. I would say you contemplate it if the facts are so compelling and the intent is so overwhelmingly clear, that her desire was to violate that statute.

"But we are in a hyper-politicized time in America. Would the electorate take to that? You have to take that all into consideration."

Sources directly familiar with the FBI's thinking said the bureau was not concerned about the election and did make a short reference to Federal Records Act issues in its final report to the Justice Department.

But it chose to defer to State to decide if criminal charges should be filed. "It's their records and their determination to make," one source said, describing the philosophy that governed the FBI's final decision.

In a non-investigative report in June, the State Department's internal watchdog concluded Mrs. Clinton was one of only three senior department officials in the last two decades to use a private email account exclusively for government business and that her team did not comply with the record-keeping policies of the Federal Records Act.

Douglas Welty, a spokesman for the State IG, said Thursday the office has no further work planned on the Clinton email scandal. "The OIG has completed its work. The OIG does not comment on whether or not it has referred, or will refer, any particular matter to DOJ," he wrote in an email to Circa.

State Department officials declined comment.

The Federal Records Act was passed by Congress 66 years ago to ensure federal agencies properly managed and maintained government records so they are preserved for historical purposes at the National Archives and for public access and congressional oversight.

The law was updated by lawmakers in 2014, legislation that President Obama himself signed.
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Since the mid-1990s, the State Department has made clear to its employees that emails were public records covered by the Act, even those sent on their private accounts.

In 2009, State employees were instructed if they used personal email for work they had an obligation to upload the emails to a special system called SMART to preserve the records.

Much of the focus during the presidential race has been on the more than 100 emails that moved between Mrs. Clinton and her top aides that contained intelligence classified at the confidential, secret and top-secret level at the time it was transmitted.

Comey announced earlier this summer that Mrs. Clinton's and her staff's handling of intelligence was "extremely careless" but the bureau decided not to request criminal charges for violating national security laws because agents found insufficient evidence of intent and motive.

After her private email system was discovered, Mrs. Clinton eventually turned over 55,000 pages from about 30,000 emails involving State Department work.

But FBI officials recovered about 15,000 additional emails on her private account that involved government business by sweeping her old devices and servers or scouring the government emails of other people she corresponded with.

"There was plenty of evidence from our interviews, especially from technical and compliance staff, as to the intention of creating a private email system outside the State Department's record keeping. It was well known, and it persisted even after people raised legal and security concerns," one source told Circa.

At least one witness in the technical community involved in setting up, maintaining or wiping Clinton's email equipment was concerned enough about their legal liability under federal records laws to invoke their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination during an FBI interview, sources said.

Hosko said if there is compelling evidence of intent to evade the law, the FBI could consider recommending misdemeanor charges.

Among the strongest evidence gathered by investigators occurred in late 2010, when Mrs. Clinton was directly approached by one of her top deputies and informed that her government emails from her private account were not reaching State Department officials and possibly were going to spam. Mrs. Clinton was encouraged to get an official State email address.

Mrs. Clinton told her deputy she was willing to get a govermment email address if she could be assured her personal emails wouldn't be "accessible" to the public.

Rather than create the government email address, State officials went to a technical person maintaining her private server and made adjustments to the server to ensure emails wouldn't be treated by the agency's email screening systems as spam, the sources said.

Around the same time, two information management employees inside State began raising concerns that material in Clinton's personal email server likely contained government records that needed to be preserved under the Federal Records Act.

One raised the concern to a supervisor at a staff meeting but was scolded and eventually told never to raise the issue of Secretary Clinton's personal email account again, according to the sources.

Agents also found evidence Mrs. Clinton herself was acutely aware of the security and legal dangers of using her private Blackberry to conduct government business. For instance:

-In 2009, Mrs. Clinton and her chief of staff were briefed in a classified memo from the Assistant Secratary for Diplomatic Security on the security dangers of private Blackberry service and the secretary of state responded to that official a few days later that she "gets it."

-Mrs. Clinton received a second classified email in March 2011 about foreign government hacking attempts specifically aimed at State Department officials. The memo included this warning: "We also urge Department users to minimize the use of personal Web email for business" citing evidence of "compromised home systems." A version of that briefing was found in Mrs. Clinton's personal files at State.
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-In June 2011, a cable entitled "securing personal email accounts" was sent to all U.S. diplomatic posts worldwide under Clinton's own name that highlighted growing cybersecurity threats and specifically warned "to avoid conducting official department business from your personal email accounts."

-By that time, officials maintaining Mrs. Clinton's private email server had detected attempts to hack into it but still she persisted in using the private email to conduct government business.

Agents also found evidence hinting at a possible motive for Clinton's team to maintain a private email server: a fear records could be obtained by the public via FOIA if they were moved to a government system.

In 2011, shortly after the information management staff raised concerns about her private email, Clinton's top aides discussed replacing her private Blackberry with a government-owned device, but that idea was scrapped after a top aide warned the materials on the government Blackberry would be subject to FOIA.

"You should be aware that any email would go through the Department's infrastructure and be subject to FOIA searches," a top State official warned.

The government Blackberry was never issued.

When Mills, Clinton's former chief of staff, was recently deposed in a civil lawsuit over FOIA practices brought by the watchdog group Judicial Watch, she admitted that State Department FOIA officers would not have had access to Mrs. Clinton's private email to search for responsive records.

We are probably seeing more of Secretary Clinton's emails now than we would have if they had actually been stored at State Department...

— Patrice McDermott

"No is the answer," Mills testified. "I don't think I reflected on were there occasions where there might still be something with respect to a personal e-mail where someone had either emailed me or I had responded back or the system had been down and we ultimately needed to use it, that there was information that hadn't been captured. And I wish it had."

But it's not just the State Department. Experts say the federal government as a whole has a serious problem when it comes to maintaining electronic records.

Patrice McDermott, executive director of the non-partisan OpentheGovernment.org, told Circa that federal agencies have largely failed to preserve electronic records since the government switched to emails in the 1980s. That's nearly four decades of records that, for the most part, haven't been fully archived.

Regret for lost government records isn't new to the Clinton political machine. Both Mills and Mrs. Clinton were mentioned in a lawsuit in the late 1990s during Bill Clinton's presidency over the loss of more than 1 million White House emails that were not saved for FOIA, congressional or criminal investigations.

The Clinton White House blamed a technical error for the loss of the records.

But subsequent litigation by the Judicial Watch group found evidence that a White House official disabled the archiving function for White House emails.

A federal judge sharply criticized the Clinton White House for what he called a "fiasco" and singled out Mills, who had been a deputy White House counsel for Bill Clinton, for having "failed miserably" to resolve the problem or give the court accurate information.

In another embarrassment, Sandy Berger, President Clinton's national security adviser and a longtime confidant of both Bill and Hillary Clinton, was caught a decade ago trying to secret classified information about terrorism out of the National Archives in his socks.

He pleaded guilty and apologized. Berger died last December after a brief illness.

But Republicans have had their fair share of records act violations too. Most famously in the late 1980s, Fawn Hall, secretary to Marine Corps Lt. Col. Oliver North -- one of President Ronald Reagan's national security advisers -- smuggled documents related to the Iran-Contra affair out of the White House in her boots and shredded them.

And Clinton is not even the first secretary of state to use a private email account. George W. Bush's secretary Colin Powell had one too.

Whether Secretary Clinton's deleted her emails with the intention of evading records laws or not, the FBI and other experts agree conducting government business on a private email account was reckless.

"It was irresponsible of state to let her do it," McDermott said. "I know it's difficult to manage the head of your agency and tell her she can't do something. But, the attorneys should have told her she can't do this."

Thursday, September 1, 2016

Of the 10,000 Syrian Refugees Obama Just Admitted Into The Country, Only 0.47 Percent Are Christians

By: John Binder

Of the over 10,000 Syrian refugees President Obama has admitted into the country, against the will of the people, only a tiny fraction are Christians, while the vast majority are followers of Islam.

Only 0.47 percent (47 refugees) of those admitted into the country are Christian, while the other more than 95 percent are either Shi’a Muslim, Sunni Muslim or just simply identified as “Muslim,” according to CNS News.

The vast majority of the Syrian refugees permitted to resettle in the United States are Sunni Muslims – 9,726 of the 9,902, or 98.2 percent. Another 20 are Shi’a Muslims, and a further 85 are identified in the data simply as Muslims.

The 47 Christians comprise seven Catholics, four Protestants, six Orthodox, one Greek Orthodox and 29 refugees self-reported simply as “Christian.”

Apart from the Muslims and Christians, others admitted during FY 2016 are 14 Yazidis, four Jehovah’s Witnesses, five refugees identified as “other religion,” and one as having “no religion.”

The Hayride reported how particular states close to Louisiana have become full-on dumping grounds for Obama’s Syrian refugee project, which GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump strictly opposes, citing the security risks that come along with accepting un-vetted refugees.

Detroit, Michigan will become a new home for a massive Muslim refugee community, much like Minneapolis. More than a 10th of the 10,000 refugees being brought into the country are going to Michigan.

Likewise, California has taken in more than 1,000 Syrian refugees, while Arizona and Texas have both taken more than 700 refugees each.

Tuesday, August 23, 2016

The MFP Report 08 23 2016

Thursday, August 18, 2016

Whistleblower Retaliation Alive and Well at Hanford

It's getting real out at Hanford in eastern Washington, the site of the most expensive (and likely dangerous) environmental clean-up in the world.

By: Joshua Frank

SPOKANE, Washington (TIF) - On July 21, Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson, along with watchdog group Hanford Challenge and UA Local Union 598 Plumbers and Steamfitters, filed an emergency legal motion asking US Judge Thomas Rice to intervene and force the US Department of Energy and federal contractor Washington River Protection Solutions to protect their workers from toxic vapor exposure at the site.

"[It's] as serious as it gets," Ferguson told King 5 News. "At Hanford there's a culture of indifference by the federal government and their contractors. Frankly, we're not going to put up with it anymore.... So right now we're trying to get before the judge immediately asking for immediate steps required from the federal government to protect workers. That's the bottom line."

Allegedly, that "culture of indifference" is what got Sandra Black, an employee concerns program manager (ECP), fired in January 2015. Black, who worked for DOE contractor Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS), was in charge of hearing out grievances raised by workers who have safety concerns, such as those working at Hanford. Black claims that she was terminated after speaking to investigators from the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

"I would not lie or cover up substantiated concerns or engage in unethical or illegal activities that I was directed to do," Black said at a news conference, where she, along with three US senators presented the GAO report. "My disclosures included describing numerous incidents in which an SRNS corporate lawyer interfered with an ECP investigation, directed an ECP investigator to change findings or substantiated retaliation to not substantiated."

SRNS strongly denies firing Black for her cooperation with the GAO. Nonetheless, the GAO report, which was released in July, was damning in what it revealed.

The report claimed that the DOE had "taken limited or no action to hold contractors accountable for creating a chilled work environment — in part because DOE has not clearly defined what constitutes evidence of a chilled work environment or the steps needed to hold contractors accountable."

In other words, the buck stops with nobody.

"Our problems are with the way the Energy Department allows the contractors basically to self-assess how open their environment is," Diane LoFaro, who worked on the GAO report, told the Center for Public Integrity. "Our recommendation is that those assessments need to be independent. The contractor should not be assessing themselves. The DOE should be assessing the contractors' cultures."

So what happens when over 100 workers are exposed to toxic vapors while working to remediate Hanford's 56 million gallons of radioactive and chemical waste? According to Dave Lee, an instrument technician at Hanford, when issues are raised that may help prevent such exposures, the DOE and their contractors fight back.

Lee recently told King 5 News that he was assigned to cleaning tasks after raising safety concerns. "Retaliation and harassment is very, very real at Hanford and that's a fact…. I'm cleaning closets and I'm replacing filters and if that's not degrading and retaliatory, explain to me what is."

Lee, who works in Hanford's 222-S Lab, analyzes chemical vapors that are in underground storage tanks. At one point Lee noticed oil leaking from one of the lab's testing instruments, which he got on his hand. Shortly after the incident Lee claims he broke out in a rash on his arms, neck and face. After a little digging through an employee manual Lee learned more about what he was dealing with — the oil was likely contaminated and ought to be treated as toxic waste.

"I can't sleep at night. After my exposure I had a metallic taste in my mouth and I had a super bad headache … and I forget things a lot," Lee told King 5 News. Soon after his exposure to the oil, he issued a "stop work" action, which Hanford employees are technically allowed to do if they feel they are working in an unsafe environment. Lee demanded the lab be shut down so the oil could be tested. One day later Lee was sent home by his superiors after being placed on "investigative removal" for "extremely serious misconduct."

"Why would we deliberately use taxpayer money to endanger public safety and discourage whistleblowers from coming forward to report security or safety violations or fraudulent activity?" Sen. Edward Markey asked during the GAO press conference. "This make no sense."

To answer Markey's question, could it be that the DOE simply can't get the job done because they lack the staff to do so? That's what Dr. Donald Alexander, who is a high-level DOE physical chemist working at Hanford, told me a few years back.

"One of the main problems at Hanford is that DOE is understaffed and overtasked," Alexander explained. "As such, we cannot conduct in-depth reviews of each of the individual systems in the facilities. Therefore there is a high likelihood that several systems will be found to be inoperable or not perform to expectations."

Looks like certain things haven't changed much at Hanford. Taxpayers will continue to be stuck with the projected $100 billion clean-up tab while employees endure dangerous working conditions with little to no recourse when shit hits the fan.

As for the emergency stop motion filed by Washington state AG and others, Judge Rice has set the preliminary injunction hearing to be held on October 12 in Spokane, Washington. No doubt Hanford workers are eager for the outcome.

Gimme a Break! IRS Tax Loophole Can Reward Excessive Water Use in Drought-stricken West

Experts fear tax deductions for water use as a “depleted asset” could actually worsen the crisis as rivers and reservoirs dry up.

By: Abrahm Lustgarten

This is part of an ongoing investigation Killing the Colorado

LEVELLAND, Texas (Propublica) - ProPublica’s reporting on the water crisis in the American West has highlighted any number of confounding contradictions worsening the problem: Farmers are encouraged to waste water so as to protect their legal rights to its dwindling supply in the years ahead; Las Vegas sought to impose restrictions on water use while placing no checks on its explosive population growth; the federal government has encouraged farmers to improve efficiency in watering crops, but continues to subsidize the growing of thirsty crops such as cotton in desert states like Arizona.

Today, we offer another installment in the contradictions amid a crisis.

In parts of the western U.S., wracked by historic drought, you can get a tax break for using an abundance of water.

That’s a typo, right? A joke?

Ah, no. But we understand your bafflement. The Colorado River has been trickling, its largest reservoirs less than half full. As recently as 2014 parts of Texas literally almost dried up. The National Academy of Sciences predicts the Southwest may be on the cusp of its worst dry spell in 1,000 years. Scientists are warning that the backup plan — groundwater aquifers from California to Nebraska — are all being sucked dry.

But, yes, the tax break exists — in parts of eight High Plains states.

Here’s how it works: Farmers — or anyone who uses water in a business — can ask the Internal Revenue Service for a tax write-off for what’s called a “depleted asset.” In certain places, water counts as an asset, just like oil, or minerals like copper. The more water gets used, the more cash credit farmers can claim against their income tax. And that’s just what almost 3,000 Texas landowners in just one water district appear to have done last year — a year in which nearly half of Texas was in a state of “severe” or “extreme” drought.”

Yikes. How much can they write off?

A bunch it seems, especially if you’re a big farm and own a lot of land. We talked to an accountant in Levelland, Texas. He had a client who wrote off $10,000. “Whenever you buy land, you’re getting the dirt … and of course you are getting the water,” said Sham Myatt, the accountant. And the idea is that that water is part of what you paid for in the land deal. If the aquifer was 50 feet deep at the time of the land sale, and it drops 10 feet in a dry year, then the farmer can deduct one-fifth of the value, and so on, until all the water is gone.

That’s not going to do much to conserve water, is it?

No. It’s not. In fact it’s an incentive to do the exact opposite. A farmer who tries to use less water because of the drought, say, by switching to really efficient irrigation techniques, could actually make less money. His water might last longer, but producing his crop would get a lot more expensive.

We called Nicholas Brozovic, an associate professor of agricultural economics and director of policy at the University of Nebraska’s Robert B. Daugherty Water for Food Institute. He’d actually never heard of the water deduction; it’s that obscure. But he laid out some textbook economics: If you’re overusing your water, then you are depreciating it, he said. And if the government pays for that, they are subsidizing that depreciation. “The more you deplete your groundwater, the higher your tax exemption and that must create an incentive not to conserve,” he said.

Hasn’t the federal government spent billions subsidizing conservation and the protection of the West’s groundwater, in part by building dams and encouraging people to use the water in rivers instead? Why would they forfeit federal tax dollars to do the opposite?

We called the IRS, and they initially shared our doubts. Not because they cared much about groundwater (it’s a tax agency!) but because they said they were pretty sure no such deduction was legal. They pointed us to section 613 of the tax code, and it couldn’t be more explicit: For the purposes of deducting the depreciating value of minerals, the definition “does not include soil, sod, dirt, turf, water, or mosses.” Ok, who would ever have thought of deducting mosses or sod? But anyway. That left us really confused.

Right, there were, after all, those farmers in Texas who seemed to have benefited from what the IRS said was not possible.

We encouraged the IRS to check again. They did. And then they found the provision they thought didn’t exist — right there in the text for Revenue Rule 65–296. An IRS spokesperson laid out for us the specifics: “Taxpayers are entitled to a cost depletion deduction for the exhaustion of their capital investment in the ground water extracted and disposed of by them in their business of irrigation farming specifically from the Ogallala Formation.”

Seems like some follow-up questions were in order.

For sure. We asked for clarification. The IRS said it would try to explain. Most importantly, they wanted to say it wasn’t quite as crazy as it sounded. The deduction is only available for one small part of the country — an area that includes parts of Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Kansas, South Dakota, Wyoming and Colorado. And it should only apply if people are using water from a source that is running dry anyway.

But wait, what? You get a break when you use resources that are already in danger of vanishing?

Yes, that’s why it is what’s called a depleted asset. It’s of less and less value with every day. Your car is worth less the moment you drive it off the lot. Or, more similarly, oil companies track the falling value of their reserves the more they pump out from underground. In fact, energy companies have been taking oil depletion breaks for decades. Texas landowners would say their property is getting less valuable the less water there is to use on it.

Okay, okay, but water isn’t oil. It’s not a commodity. Access to it is a basic right. Yes? Please say that’s right.

Wrong. Ouch. I know, it hurts. But ProPublica last year wrote about all the ways water is coveted and controlled — and then often wasted — by just a few powerful groups. In most of the West, only some people and businesses have rights to it, depending on who showed up to claim it first. One big trend is that water is increasingly being bought and sold — including by hedge funds and big Wall Street investors, and the less water there is, the more the price is going up.

That’s a little scary. Let’s get back to depleted assets. So when did this tax break start?

About 50 years ago. A farmer in the Texas panhandle — along with his local water district — successfully sued the IRS, arguing that the roughly 200 million gallons he drew from his groundwater each year was no different than the depletion of the state’s other great natural resource, oil. He won, and the IRS was obliged to create rule 65–296 — the special allowance for tax credits that the IRS almost forgot about.

Again, it was supposed to be limited — just to a slice of Texas and eastern New Mexico. The court even went so far as to warn that the case shouldn’t become a precedent for groundwater tax claims elsewhere, saying the conditions in that area of the country were unique. But it didn’t take long for the rule to be expanded, albeit just a little bit. By the mid 1980’s any landowner overlying the sprawling Ogallala aquifer — a giant underground vault of precious but dwindling water — was eligible to file for the deductions, not just in North Texas and New Mexico.

That still doesn’t sound like much of a big deal … why does it matter?

Well, the Ogallala, which spans from central Texas north to Nebraska and South Dakota is the nation’s largest groundwater reserve and is one of the most important, and (famously) threatened water supplies in the country. Its heavy overuse and plummeting water levels rang alarms among policymakers more than half a century ago. So this is no insignificant place to be even indirectly encouraging overuse. Texas’ High Plains are one of the most intensely irrigated and productive farming regions in the country. Hundreds of thousands of acres of cotton and corn, among other staple commodities, are grown there using this Ogallala water.

So, do we know what’s happening to the Ogallala where all this farming is taking place?

We looked at recent water level changes in just one district — the one with thousands of tax credit claims — and found a disturbing trend. Underground water levels in the 16 counties of the High Plains Underground Water Conservation District have dropped nearly 10 feet over the last 10 years. Some parts of Castro County saw water levels drop more than five feet over the course of 2015 alone. The federal government estimates nearly 100 cubic miles of water have been withdrawn from the Ogallala in that part of Texas. That doesn’t automatically mean the tax credits are responsible — water levels are dropping in most places thanks to overuse and it would take a lot more research to link up the cause and effect. But it certainly isn’t a portrait of sustainability.

Aquifers are at risk across Arizona, California and other states as well, right? At least people can’t claim tax breaks there?

Not yet. But that could change, as water supplies worsen and word of the tax break circulates more widely. Almost no one we spoke with had heard of it — not water lawyers in Arizona or groundwater conservation scientists in California. Armed with the knowledge, there’s a pretty good chance farmers and businesses across the West could seek tax relief.

Because there is precedent?

Exactly.

What does the IRS say to that?

They say it’s very unlikely, mostly because they think the conditions in the Ogallala are rare, and that the agency’s policy is to reject water allowance claims anywhere outside of the places covered in the original lawsuit. But if more landowners, in more places, were to file suits challenging the IRS to allow them to deduct for their water, or if they were to petition the IRS directly, the agency says it would undertake a review to consider it on a case by case basis. Landowners would have to present extensive scientific evidence that showed their situation was more or less the same as in North Texas.

Is the IRS equipped to make such judgments?

Fair question. John Leshy, professor emeritus at the University of California Hastings College of the Law, and a former solicitor for the U.S. Department of Interior, isn’t persuaded. “The IRS has really created a can of worms for itself,” he said. “It doesn’t have any hydrological expertise.”

Hmmm. Not ideal. But what’s the bottom line? Are these tax breaks going to make any real difference in how quickly we use up the water supply?

It’s hard to tell, partly because no one appears to have examined that question. We asked the IRS for data on the number of claims and it hasn’t responded. Folks in Texas dismiss the suggestion that the tax benefits are incentivizing water use as ludicrous. Myatt, the accountant, points out that only about one-third of the deducted value translates to cash in hand, and says for many smaller farmers that amounts to just a few hundred dollars. Jason Coleman, manager of the High Plains Underground Water Conservation District, says his members are as concerned about conserving their water for the future as anyone. “Its already a declining resource,” he said. “I just can’t imagine someone saying I’m going to depreciate our resource any more because of a tax claim.”

But the academic consensus is that incentives encourage use, even overuse. And if the effect of depletion allowances on oil production are any guide — Leshy says they have spurred overproduction and led to artificially cheap, subsidized fuel prices — any significant expansion of the groundwater tax credit to other states could have lasting impacts on the way groundwater is used across the country.

So is anyone trying to do anything about this?

Not really, which is why people like Brent Blackwelder, president emeritus of the environmental group Friends of the Earth, which has long been involved in rooting out tax policy disincentives to conservation, are fuming. “It’s a pretty major outrage that we would so stupidly reward the over extraction and non-sustainable use of groundwater,” he told me. Blackwelder helped push to purge the tax code of perverse anti-conservation incentives like this one way back in the Reagan administration, with the 1986 Tax Reform Act. They were largely successful, weeding out several other odd loopholes. But the groundwater depletion allowance persisted. And since then, apparently, it’s been forgotten about by all but the farmers who rely on it.