Joining the panel on today's show are Mike Barnicle, John Heilemann, Jonathan Capehart, Matt Apuzzo, Chris Jansing, Jayne Miller, Keir Simmons, Ali Rezaian, Danica Patrick, Sara Eisen, Sallie Krawcheck, Paige McKenzie and more
Media Fail to Identify Leader of Baltimore riots. Ex-New Black Panther chairman a notorious racist. Major news media outlets have failed to report one of the main leaders of the “splinter group” of Baltimore protesters who turned violent is a notorious racist and the former national chairman of the New Black Panther Party, WND has found.
The New York Times, the Associated Press, the New York Daily News, CBS local and other news media outlets all name Malik Shabazz as a leader of the breakaway, chaotic protests. Yet each of these news outlets only identify Shabazz only as “president of Black Lawyers for Justice.”
The AP reported: “One of the protest’s organizers, Malik Shabazz, the president of Black Lawyers for Justice, said the crowd exceeded their expectations, adding that protesters’ anger is not surprising. “‘This is a problem that has not been solved,’ he said. ‘When there’s no justice, they tend to want to take matters into their own hands.’”
Reported the New York Times on the Baltimore riots: “There, Malik Shabazz, president of Black Lawyers for Justice, a Washington, D.C.-based group that called for the demonstration and advertised it on social media, told the crowd that he would release them in an hour, adding: ‘Shut it down if you want to! Shut it down!’
“Mr. Shabazz said in a later interview that his rhetoric was intended only to encourage civil disobedience – not violence – but added that he was ‘not surprised’ by the scattered angry outbursts because people here ‘haven’t received justice.’”
The New York Daily News informed its readers: “‘Things will change on Saturday, and the struggle will be amplified,’ said Malik Shabazz of Black Lawyers for Justice. ‘It cannot be business as usual with that man’s spine broken, with his back broken, with no justice on the scene.’ CBS Local featured a photo of Shabazz leading protest chants in Baltimore yesterday, with a caption that identified the radical simply as “Attorney Malik Shabazz.”Later in the article, CBS reported: “Malik Shabazz of Black Lawyers for Justice has demanded the arrest of six officers involved in the arrest of Gray, who died Sunday a week after suffering a spinal injury while in police custody.”
Not a single news media outlet quoted above informed its readers of that which a simple Google search of “Malik Shabazz” reveals. As highlighted on his Wikipedia page, until October 2013, Shabazz notoriously served as the national chairman of the New Black Panther Party. The NBPP was the focus of national attention after Eric Holder’s Department of Justice dismissed voter intimidation charges against the groups leaders related to the 2008 presidential election.
The 2008 case centered on two NBPP members accused of standing in front of the entrance to a Philadelphia polling station in uniforms that have been described as paramilitary, with one member wielding a billy club. According to complaints, both men standing in front of the polling station pointed at voters and shouted racial slurs, using such phrases as “white devil” and “You’re about to be ruled by the black man, cracker.” Racism, anti-white activism. The NBPP is a controversial black extremist party whose leaders, including formerly Shabazz, are notorious for their racist statements and for leading anti-white activism.
The NBPP’s official platform states, “White man has kept us deaf, dumb and blind,” refers to the “white racist government of America,” demands black people be exempt from military service and uses the word “Jew” repeatedly in quotation marks. Shabazz has led racially-divisive protests and conferences, such as the 1998 Million Youth March, in which a few thousand Harlem youths reportedly were called upon to scuffle with police officers, and speakers demanded the extermination of whites in South Africa.
The NBPP chairman was quoted at a May 2007 protest against the 400-year celebration of the settlement of Jamestown, Virginia, stating, “When the white man came here, you should have left him to die.” He claimed Jews engaged in an “African holocaust,” and he has promoted the anti-Semitic urban legend that 4,000 Israelis fled the World Trade Center just prior to the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
When Shabazz was denied entry to Canada in May 2008 while trying to speak at a black action event, he blamed Jewish groups and claimed Canada “is run from Israel.” Canadian officials justified the action stating he has an “anti-Semitic” and “anti-police” record, but some reports blamed what was termed a minor criminal history for the decision to deny him entry. In 2007, WND reported on a photo that surfaced showing President Obama, then campaigning for president, marching with members of the New Black Panther Party in Selma, Alabama, in March 2007.
Rioting in Baltimore. The Baltimore riots yesterday centered around the death of Freddie Gray, 25, a black man who died in police custody. Police acknowledged that Gray should have immediately received medical attention instead of being put inside a police transport van handcuffed and without a seat belt, in violation of the police department’s policy.
According to reports, Gray requested medical help several times, but instead was driven around for at least 30 minutes, with the police making at least three stops before paramedics were called. An attorney for Gray’s family said 80 percent of his spine had been severed at the neck. On Saturday, about 1,200 mostly-peaceful protesters reportedly gathered at city hall to protest Gray’s death.
The AP reported: “A smaller ‘splinter group’ looted a convenience store and threw tables and chairs through storefront windows, shattering the glass. One group smashed the window of a department store inside a downtown mall and, at one point, a protester tossed a flaming metal garbage can toward a line of police officers in riot gear as they tried to push back the crowd. “Earlier, a group of protesters smashed the windows of at least three police cars and got into fights with baseball fans outside a bar.” Shabazz was a leader of that “splinter group.”
Instead, everyone was covering the White Correspondence Dinner and actually, here is my post about it and I also wrote up a blurb about what was happening in Baltimore that evening. I also touched into the long time problems that city has faced with regard to the police and that community.
Here is my review about it from Saturday night:
Nerd Prom (aka The White House Correspondence Dinner) Review; "The Night Where Washington DC celebrates itself" "Somebody's Got to do it." I must state upfront that I cannot stand using that term "Nerd Prom" as the way to describe the event tonight that is officially called the White House Correspondence Dinner. But I fell into it any way. I also hate using the term 'nerd' today because it is not real (such a back slapping compliment to refer to yourself as one ('a nerd') today) but after the toast to him, the President of our United States of America got up to speak. President Obama during his speech at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner in Washington, D.C., Saturday night. He makes no bones about it being in his '4th quarter' of his terms to which his wife Michelle gives that comment a big cheer. I love his jokes about his bucket list and how after the mid term election last year, he just uses the term that sounds like it. Especially with regard to his executive action with Immigration. Bucket. New climate regulations? Bucket.
He says that the Castro brothers are at the event but then again, it was the ones from Texas of course. I will say that he is correct in that Michele has not aged a day. She is very pretty. And, she is way cool! Obama though is also a good looking man even though he is poking fun about his age during this part of his speech.
He really gets at himself too. Saying that people think he is arrogant and then exclaiming how dumb people are is just great but the best one so far is that jab at (George) Bush Jr. and especially at Dick Cheney. I guess (Dick) Cheney stated lately that Obama is the worst POTUS in his lifetime (as if anyone listens to Dick Cheney and is most likely why i did not know about him making that claim; I do NOT listen to what Dick Cheney has to say about anything) and Obama says that Cheney was the worst POTUS in his lifetime. That was great to say out loud today. "What a coincidence."
Good jab also at Mike Huckabee and at the 47 congress people that wrote to the Ayatollahs just before his legacy joke when describing Michelle Bachmann's comments about Obama bringing the end of our days in that biblical sense. And no, (Abe) Lincoln nor (George) Washington did not do that (bring the end of days) when they were at the helm.
I also love the joke about the fool proof way to keep people off his lawn(s). A picture of John McCain with a broom was shown before a picture of Joe Biden about to swat down a DJI Phantom Drone flying at him with a Go Pro Camera attached to it.
Great words are being said about our Vice President while making a comment about the gay issues in Indiana. Good one.
Cecily Strong is also very pretty. Anyway you look at it, she is a very pretty woman. I never saw the show Blackish and I missed the joke about about SNL's Weekend Update show and with CNN.
And, what would be a White Correspondence Dinner without an Obama "is not from America joke?"
Yes, Ted Cruz does believe that our sun revolves around him and it is very odd when a person that has his picture above the word hope, calls this POTUS self centered which Cruz has done. The Rick Santorum joke about gays and lesbians not being a problem when he (Santorum) stated that he would not show up at any friends same sex marriages, is brilliant. "Don't sweat that one Rick".
It happens to be great to see the Donald (Trump) laugh at himself. That jab to Donald Trump by the POTUS was not even that bad. The Koch Brothers get their mention for donating almost one billion dollars for the next GOP candidate. Compared to say how Obama raised a lot of money but then again, the Kochs donating money to whomever will never have the name Hussain in it. The Hillary Instagram pictures are great and oh jeez, the Martin O'Malley joke about him not being recognized at his own campaign event is rough. I like Martin O'Malley. He spoke well at that last Democratic Convention and he seems like he is a nice guy. He has some good ideals too while doing great things for the state of Maryland. Notwithstanding what is happening today in Baltimore, but then again, Baltimore is Baltimore. We have all seen The Wire TV show and series when it was shown on HBO.
Uh Oh. Bernie Saunders is up next. Is he a pot smoking guy? I doubt it but Obama goes there saying we could get a third Obama term with a pot smoking socialist if (Bernie) Saunders gets nominated for POTUS.
Luther, Obama's anger translator is introduced now. This is priceless stuff. Obama is talking in his normal and every day speaking voice (are both (normal and everyday & speaking and voice?) of what i just redundant?) and then Luther translates what Obama says in great slang while yelling at the top of his lungs and while roaming around the podium. This is great. That joke about the donor wasting six million dollars giving it to Ted Cruz is a great one. And, Luther did not even have to scream to make that point. The California drought jokes are great about it looking like a Mad Max set today. Obama then getting angry on his own when talking about the environment is amazing as he gets interrupted by Luther for yelling about it. Luther throws up his arms so to speak as he leaves the stage saying that Obama needs counseling and not a translator. That was priceless comedy. Pardon my ignorance BTW but am I supposed to know Luther? I don't so therefore, I feel inadequate if he made some mark doing this shtick before tonight.
Obama is now getting serious talking about the people that have died at the hands of terrorists. And, about our people still in captivity after being kidnapped by terrorist groups. I hope we can bring them home and it just hit me that he is mentioning this and toasting them because they are journalists. Some people taken by these terrorists are indeed part of the media which is scary now that I think about it. Some are also humanitarian aids which is why I lost track of that fact but his seriousness at the end was so perfect. These people are part of the media and they do need to be mentioned on a night like this one. Obama was great tonight. Very edgy. Very risque. Very harsh. Very Good. I loved it.
And, as someone from NPR (I think they were from NPR) says, this is event is a long-time ritual — American presidents going before the Washington journalists who cover them to recognize some of the best work of the prior year from the assembled crowd. Here is the recap of about eight or so Obama jokes that stood out from tonight's White House Correspondents Dinner according to again, whom I think works at NPR:
The "Bucket" List Obama uses now as he asked, " 'Do you have a bucket list?' I say, well I have something that rhymes with bucket." Immigration executive action? "Bucket!" he deadpanned. Stricter climate rules. "Bucket!"
Those Grey Hairs: "I look so old John Boehner's already invited Netanyahu to speak at my funeral." Meanwhile, First Lady Michelle Obama looks great, he said. "I ask her her secret. She says, [Obama employing a nasally voice] 'Fresh fruits and vegetables.' It's aggravating." He also lamented that he has so much to do, like negotiate with Iran, "all while finding time to pray five times a day."
President Barack Obama bringing out actor Keegan-Michael Key from Key & Peele to play Luther, Obama's "Anger Translator" during the White House Correspondents dinner.
"Arrogant And Aloof" and how "people say I'm arrogant and aloof," the president said. "Some people are so dumb."
The end of Times when "Michele Bachmann predicted I would bring about the Biblical end of days. Now that's big. ... Lincoln, Washington — they didn't do that."
Hillary Clinton and how the economy's gotten so bad for some people, Obama said, "I had a friend, just a few weeks ago, she was making millions of dollars a year, and now she's living out of a van in Iowa."
The 2016 GOP Field with "the Koch brothers that think they need to spend a billion dollars to get folks to like one of these people," Obama said of the potential 2016 Republican presidential candidates. "I raised a lot ... but my middle name is Hussein."
Reach Out And Touch A Veep when he was talking about how close he and Vice President Biden have gotten, especially in stressful times, Obama joked that he loves Biden's back massages. "Those Joe Biden shoulder massages are like magic. You should try one." [Pause.] "Oh, you have?" He added, "We've gotten so close, in some places in Indiana, they won't serve us pizza anymore."
A Third Obama Term (Sorta) with regard to if a Bernie Saunders got elected and talking about how much he liked Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who could run for the Democratic nomination for president: "Apparently people really want to see a pot-smoking socialist in the White House. We could get a third Obama term after all."
Anyway, the lovely Cecily Strong steps up to the podium making no bones about "how great it feels to have a woman follow Obama."
Let's see where shoe goes tonight. She considers herself like a lot of people when that is wrong but still her mashable joke about her looking like everyone in Hillary's start up campaign video is funny I guess. But I got news for you Cecily Strong, you are way hot and you have always been considered to be way hot dating back to when I first noticed her/you at SNL but then again, what is she going to say about herself? I assume her being clever makes or made her more hot but anyway, I will get my head out of the gutter here now (BTW, remember when her and the other hotty (Kate McKinnon) from SNL were on Morning Joe together last year before they started that season that week?. That was amazing for the likes of me to see.)
Wait a second? Is Tina Fey gay? Cecily just said that "she is the first straight female that hosted this event."
I am glad she mentioned my man Joel McHale who did the hosting last year. I love everything Joel does even though Community went from being a show on Thursday nights at NBC in the last year, over to Yahoo TV.
Nice jabs at CSPAN and there are a few of them.
The Washington Hilton is getting crushed tonight because of how many things that happened in it, are corrupt.
Cecily now gets on the Secret Service which she should do but anyway, she states that they are "the only law enforcement agency that actually gets in trouble if a black guy gets shot."
Cecily now gets on Vice President Joe Biden too in the same way the POTUS did, with a massage joke. "I took Amtrak here. It was way more luxurious than I thought. Did you know they have massage seats on there? All you have to do is sit in front of Joe Biden. Those hands don’t get tired."
She then says that the Obama family is just like us! She also got on how President Obama is showing his age. "Your hair is so white now, it can talk back to the police."
The jokes about CNN and MSNBC are great. She talks about the many Lock Up shows on all weekend (Lock Up Bloopers, etc.) at MSNBC. Which i agree there are so many variations of it on all weekend these days. I think I watched a few of them way early and before the Steve Kornacki show this AM.
She also talks about how when there is a huge news story happening, that we can go to CNN to see Chef Anthony Bourdain "eat a cricket."
Cecily then explains to us how USA Today is around unless of course "it is Saturday or Sunday."
And, oof. The Amanda Knox joke or point she makes about that incident is a rough one. I did not know about DNA being on any knife and honestly, I thought she knocked the kid off a bluff or a hill near the ocean. Or, am I speaking about those deaths that went down on spring break in Aruba two times? Either way though, I also think Amanda Knox is hot which says it all about me.
The ISIS joke went over my head. Sorry but I don't get it or I missed it. I must be an idiot, however, the follow up to it about Brian Williams is a good one. She can't say anything about Brian because you know, "she works for NBC."
So did (went over my head) the Blackish and Sea World joke unless it has something to do with that documentary film, 'Blackfish.'
Cecily does get on the First Lady Michelle Obama for her eating lots of veggies (The POTUS did too BTW) saying that "it is a dream to sit next to you but it is a nightmare to eat next to you." I guess Cecily is a meat eater. Oh well. So, she is not perfect. She eats dead animals.
I am surprised she knows about Aaron Schock. Cool. Great Instagram photos of those two travelling together while being on vacation. Lots of Aaron Schock jokes tonight. Probably too many considering it is Aaron Schock. Plus, nothing about him taking people to that Bears football game on that plane. or, him taking the kids to that Katy Perry concert somewhere out of state too.
Great jab at Obama for him not going to France for that rally back in January and like Obama did tonight, Cecily (POTUS did too) gets on Jim Inhofe for him bringing in a snow ball to prove a point about global warming (or lack there of). She really gets on Tom Cotton for when he sent that note to the Ayatollah that was also signed by 47 other congress people.
Cecily's lead in to talk about women comes after a joke about Israel giving a great donation to he Hillary campaign, "It feels so weird to be up here. Since I’m only a comedian, I’m not going to try and tell you how to do politics. That would be like you guys telling me what to do with my body. I mean, can you even imagine? Crazy."
I never heard of Hobby Lobby BTW, until that issue broke although I did see a store in Florida when I was down there since that story broke last year.
And, overall about her (Cecily Strong) tonight, Cecily's excitement about Hillary Clinton's presidential bid came out many times during her set, "I’m excited about Hillary running, though I’m not sure she’s excited about having to run. I imagine she feels the same way Meryl Streep feels when she’s asked to audition for something."
Anyway, good night all around. Obama was great. Cecily was great. And, I am proud of both of them for only saying one blurb mentioning the back slapping compliment knows as a 'nerd."
A lot of amazing points were made about the USA today in that funny sorta way!
But another big story over the weekend and today is our drone policies. I may agree with John McCain quite frankly to maybe take that out of the hands of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The New York Times reported on it in the following ways:
About once a month, staff members of the congressional intelligence committees drive across the Potomac River to C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Va., and watch videos of people being blown up.
As part of the macabre ritual the staff members look at the footage of drone strikes in Pakistan and other countries and a sampling of the intelligence buttressing each strike, but not the internal C.I.A. cables discussing the attacks and their aftermath. The screenings have provided a veneer of congressional oversight and have led lawmakers to claim that the targeted killing program is subject to rigorous review, to defend it vigorously in public and to authorize its sizable budget each year.
That unwavering support from Capitol Hill is but one reason the C.I.A.’s killing missions are embedded in American warfare and unlikely to change significantly despite President Obama’s announcement on Thursday that a drone strike accidentally killed two innocent hostages, an American and an Italian. The program is under fire like never before, but the White House continues to champion it, and C.I.A. officers who built the program more than a decade ago — some of whom also led the C.I.A. detention program that used torture in secret prisons — have ascended to the agency’s powerful senior ranks.
Although lawmakers insist that there is great accountability to the program, interviews with administration and congressional officials show that Congress holds the program to less careful scrutiny than many members assert. Top C.I.A. officials, who learned the importance of cultivating Congress after the resistance they ran into on the detention program, have dug in to protect the agency’s drone operations, frustrating a pledge by Mr. Obama two years ago to overhaul the program and pull it from the shadows.
Perhaps no single C.I.A. officer has been more central to the effort than Michael D’Andrea, a gaunt, chain-smoking convert to Islam who was chief of operations during the birth of the agency’s detention and interrogation program and then, as head of the C.I.A. Counterterrorism Center, became an architect of the targeted killing program. Until last month, when Mr. D’Andrea was quietly shifted to another job, he presided over the growth of C.I.A. drone operations and hundreds of strikes in Pakistan and Yemen during nine years in the position.
Since 2004, the United States has carried out more than 400 drone strikes inside the tribal areas of Pakistan.
“We don’t take this work lightly,” President Obama said Friday to intelligence officials who set the standards for drone strikes.Amid Errors, Obama Publicly Wrestles With Drones’ Limits. In secret meetings on Capitol Hill, Mr. D’Andrea was a forceful advocate for the drone program and won supporters among both Republicans and Democrats. Congressional staff members said that he was particularly effective in winning the support of Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who was chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee until January, when Republicans assumed control of the chamber.
Ms. Feinstein for years has tried to beat back criticism of the program from some liberal Democrats and human rights groups who have raised questions about civilian casualties. C.I.A. officials have assured her, she has said, that there are hardly any civilian deaths in the strikes. “The figures we have obtained from the executive branch, which we have done our utmost to verify, confirm that the number of civilian casualties that have resulted from such strikes each year has typically been in the single digits,” Ms. Feinstein said in 2013.
But the recent accidental deaths of the hostages are only the latest example of how difficult it is for the C.I.A. to know exactly whom it is killing. The White House provided a public accounting of the deaths only because the victims were Westerners. The government has never offered a detailed explanation of attacks that witnesses say killed women and children. The confidence Ms. Feinstein and other Democrats express about the drone program, which by most accounts has been effective in killing hundreds of Qaeda operatives and members of other militant groups over the years, stands in sharp contrast to the criticism among lawmakers of the now defunct C.I.A. program to capture and interrogate Qaeda suspects in secret prisons.
But both programs were led by some of the same people. The C.I.A. asked that Mr. D’Andrea’s name and the names of some other top agency officials be withheld from this article, but The New York Times is publishing them because they have leadership roles in one of the government’s most significant paramilitary programs and their roles are known to foreign governments and many others.
When Ms. Feinstein was asked in a meeting with reporters in 2013 why she was so sure she was getting the truth about the drone program while she accused the C.I.A. of lying to her about torture, she seemed surprised. “That’s a good question, actually,” she said. Mr. D’Andrea was a senior official in the Counterterrorism Center when the agency opened the Salt Pit, a notorious facility in Afghanistan where prisoners were tortured. His counterterrorism officers oversaw the interrogation and waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. His actions are described in the withering Senate Intelligence Committee report about torture that was released late last year, although he was not identified publicly.
The drone program has been largely immune from the criticism in Congress that other C.I.A. programs have attracted. In 2009, for example, when it became public that the agency had once hired the private security firm Blackwater to hunt and kill suspected terrorists, a member of Congress called Mr. D’Andrea a “murderer” during a private briefing, even though the Blackwater program had never carried out any lethal operations. Mr. D’Andrea was furious about his treatment, a former colleague recalled. But he received no similar personal attacks for his leadership of the drone program.
It was two years ago that Mr. Obama gave a speech pledging to pull the targeted killing program from the shadows, and White House officials said they wanted to shift the bulk of drone operations from the C.I.A. to the Pentagon, with the stated intent of making the program somewhat more transparent. But the intelligence committees have resisted the plan, in part because Mr. D’Andrea and other top agency officials have convinced lawmakers that the C.I.A. strikes are more precise than those conducted by the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command.
As part of a bureaucratic reshuffling last month by John O. Brennan, the C.I.A. director, Mr. D’Andrea has been replaced as head of the drone program by Chris Wood. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Mr. Wood held leadership roles in Alec Station, the group that led the hunt for Qaeda suspects and was central to the interrogation program. He ultimately was in charge of that unit and would later serve as station chief in Kabul. Most recently, he supervised all operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Mr. Wood now runs a targeted killing program that is the subject of multiple investigations that Mr. Obama announced last week.
And yet the president has given no indication that he intends to shut down the drone program, and both he and his aides continue to praise it as a method of warfare that offers the White House an alternative to messy wars of occupation like in Iraq and Afghanistan. A leitmotif of Mr. Obama’s re-election campaign in 2012 was his administration’s success in killing high-ranking Qaeda operatives in Pakistan — even if it was never mentioned that the C.I.A. was doing the killing.
Despite the drone program reforms that Mr. Obama announced in May 2013, White House officials have shown little enthusiasm for ensuring that many of them are adopted. It is the C.I.A., not the Pentagon, that continues to carry out of all of the drone strikes in Pakistan and most of those in Yemen. An internal administration proposal to create a counterterrorism center at the Pentagon, modeled after the C.I.A. unit that runs the drone strikes, was quietly scrapped.
When Mr. Brennan, a former top White House counterterrorism adviser who remains close to Mr. Obama, became C.I.A. director in late 2013, he announced an intention to dial back the paramilitary operations that have transformed the agency since the Sept. 11 attacks. His goal, he said during his confirmation hearings, was to refocus the agency on the traditional work of intelligence collection and espionage that had sometimes been neglected.
But that effort too is slow going, and Mr. Brennan has not pushed forcefully for moving drone operations away from the C.I.A., something he advocated when he was in the White House during Mr. Obama’s first term. In a sign of the continued prominence of military operations inside the agency, Mr. Brennan recently named Greg Vogel, a former agency paramilitary officer, to take over the C.I.A.’s vaunted Directorate of Operations. That position has traditionally gone to C.I.A. officers who ascended the ranks because of their success in traditional espionage work.
Mr. Vogel, identified in news accounts as “Spider” and in a memoir by the former C.I.A. Director George J. Tenet as “Greg V.,” was one of the first C.I.A. officers to enter Afghanistan when the war began in 2001. He was credited during that time with saving the life of Hamid Karzai, the future Afghan president, during a bomb strike. He later served as the C.I.A. station chief in Kabul and eventually became the head of the agency’s Special Activities Division, which runs many paramilitary operations.
The C.I.A. launched its first drone strike in Pakistan in 2004, at a time of growing concern in the government about abuses inside the agency’s detention and interrogation program. Many in Congress expressed horror at the grim details of torture carried out in the secret C.I.A. prisons, even if some senior lawmakers had been briefed about many of the interrogation methods during the birth of the program in 2002.
Operatives in the C.I.A.’s Counterterrorism Center drew a lesson from this experience. They have given regular briefings to the intelligence committees about the drone strikes and made sure to have both committee members and their staffs visit the C.I.A. to watch the drone videos.
Sometimes, lawmakers have used the briefings to ask questions about why specific terrorism suspects have not yet been killed, and to express their dismay that the C.I.A. is not being aggressive enough in its killing operations. One such instance was in 2013, when senior Republicans on the House and Senate intelligence committees were furious after they heard that the C.I.A. had not yet killed Mohanad Mahmoud Al Farekh, an American citizen who had become a top Qaeda operations officer and was hiding in Pakistan.
At the time, there was a debate in the government about whether Mr. Obama should authorize another drone strike against an American citizen — the first since the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen in 2011 — and whether it might be possible to capture, rather than kill, Mr. Farekh. The Republican lawmakers, Senator Richard M. Burr of North Carolina and Representative Mike Rogers of Michigan, said during the closed sessions that the administration was being timid, and urged that Mr. Farekh be hunted and killed. He was eventually arrested by Pakistani security forces the next year, and is on trial in Brooklyn.
Also, Obama Emails Caught Up in Russian Hack. The more authorities dig into the hacking of the State Department and the White House, it's becoming increasingly clear that the Russians were hunting for weaknesses.
Sources tell ABC News that some of President Obama's emails were caught up in the Russian cyberattack last October that led to a partial shutdown of some White House computers. 'Trojan Horse' Bug Lurking in Vital US Computers Since 2011. Hackers associated with the Russian government accessed computers that contained archives of unclassified White House communications -- including some involving the president, sources say. None of the president's devices were hacked, but some White House computers contained summaries of email exchanges the president may have had with people outside the administration.
While the attack did not involve top secret information, a number of officials say it shows an intense level of aggression by Russian operatives, who appear to be stepping-up hacks against the United States. Defense Secretary Ash Carter has also described a new attack against the Pentagon earlier this year -- one remarkably similar in nature to the hacking of the State Department and the White House. "Earlier this year, the sensors that guard DoD's unclassified networks detected Russian hackers accessing one of our networks. They'd discovered an old vulnerability in one of our legacy networks that hadn't been patched," Carter said Thursday during an address at Stanford University. "The cyber threat against U.S. interests is increasing in severity and sophistication."
Officials are concerned by the Russians' aggression -- and worried the Russians may be hoping that hacking non-classified computer systems could be a gateway into more sensitive systems and information. Like Joe says now, we can now tap them to get the emails thrown away and written to and from Hillary Clinton when she had Secretary of State job a few years back.
BTW, over 3,700 people unfortantaly dead so far because of that massive Earthquake in Nepal. I was following Richard Engle's reports about it all weekend. He felt an aftershock (I think it was a rather large one too) when he got to the city after his flight and while he was exiting the airport.
Quake-aid need acute in Nepal capital, more so in villages. Shelter, fuel, food, medicine, power, news, workers — Nepal's earthquake-hit capital was short on everything Monday as its people searched for lost loved ones, sorted through rubble for their belongings and struggled to provide for their families' needs. In much of the countryside, it was worse, though how much worse was only beginning to become apparent. The death toll soared past 3,700, even without a full accounting from vulnerable mountain villages that rescue workers were still struggling to reach two days after the disaster.
Udav Prashad Timalsina, the top official for the Gorkha district, where Saturday's magnitude 7.8 quake was centered, said he was in desperate need of help. "There are people who are not getting food and shelter. I've had reports of villages where 70 percent of the houses have been destroyed," he said. Aid group World Vision said its staff members were able to reach Gorkha, but gathering information from the villages remained a challenge. Even when roads are clear, the group said, some remote areas can be three days' walk from Gorkha's main disaster center.
Some roads and trails have been blocked by landslides, the group said in an email to The Associated Press. "In those villages that have been reached, the immediate needs are great including the need for search and rescue, food items, blankets and tarps, and medical treatment." Timalsina said 223 people had been confirmed dead in Gorkha district but he presumed "the number would go up because there are thousands who are injured." He said his district had not received enough help from the central government, but Jagdish Pokhrel, the clearly exhausted army spokesman, said nearly the entire 100,000-soldier army was involved in rescue operations.
"We have 90 percent of the army out there working on search and rescue," he said. "We are focusing our efforts on that, on saving lives." Saturday's magnitude 7.8 earthquake spread horror from Kathmandu to small villages and to the slopes of Mount Everest, triggering an avalanche that buried part of the base camp packed with foreign climbers preparing to make their summit attempts. Aid is coming from more than a dozen countries and many charities, but Lila Mani Poudyal, the government's chief secretary and the rescue coordinator, said Nepal needed more.
He said the recovery was also being slowed because many workers — water tanker drivers, electricity company employees and laborers needed to clear debris — "are all gone to their families and staying with them, refusing to work." "We are appealing for tents, dry goods, blankets, mattresses, and 80 different medicines that the health department is seeking that we desperately need now," Poudyal told reporters. "We don't have the helicopters that we need or the expertise to rescue the people trapped."
As people are pulled from the wreckage, he noted, even more help is needed. "Now we especially need orthopedic (doctors), nerve specialists, anaesthetists, surgeons and paramedics," he said. "We are appealing to foreign governments to send these specialized and smart teams." More than 6,300 people were injured in the quake, he said, estimating that tens of thousands of people had been left homeless. "We have been under severe stress and pressure, and have not been able to reach the people who need help on time," he said.
Nepal police said in a statement that the country's death toll had risen to 3,617 people. That does not include the 18 people killed in the avalanche, which were counted by the mountaineering association. Another 61 people were killed in neighboring India, and China reported 20 people dead in Tibet. Well over 1,000 of the victims were in Kathmandu, the capital, where an eerie calm prevailed Monday.
Tens of thousands of families slept outdoors for a second night, fearful of aftershocks that have not ceased. Camped in parks, open squares and a golf course, they cuddled children or pets against chilly Himalayan nighttime temperatures. They woke to the sound of dogs yelping and jackhammers. As the dawn light crawled across toppled building sites, volunteers and rescue workers carefully shifted broken concrete slabs and crumbled bricks mixed together with humble household items: pots and pans; a purple notebook decorated with butterflies; a framed poster of a bodybuilder; so many shoes. "It's overwhelming. It's too much to think about," said 55-year-old Bijay Nakarmi, mourning his parents, whose bodies recovered from the rubble of what once was a three-story building. He could tell how they died from their injuries. His mother was electrocuted by a live wire on the roof top. His father was cut down by falling beams on the staircase.
"I have their bodies by the river. They are resting until relatives can come to the funeral," Nakarmi said as workers continued searching for another five people buried underneath the wreckage. Kathmandu district chief administrator Ek Narayan Aryal said tents and water were being handed out Monday at 10 locations in Kathmandu, but that aftershocks were leaving everyone jittery. The largest, on Sunday, was magnitude 6.7. "There have been nearly 100 earthquakes and aftershocks, which is making rescue work difficult. Even the rescuers are scared and running because of them," he said. "We don't feel safe at all. There have been so many aftershocks. It doesn't stop," said Rajendra Dhungana, 34, who spent Sunday with his niece's family for her cremation at the Pashuputi Nath Temple. Acrid, white smoke rose above the Hindu temple, Nepal's most revered. "I've watched hundreds of bodies burn," Dhungana said.
The capital city is largely a collection of small, poorly constructed brick apartment buildings. The earthquake destroyed swaths of the oldest neighborhoods, but many were surprised by how few modern structures collapsed in the quake. On Monday morning, some pharmacies and shops for basic provisions opened while bakeries began offering fresh bread. Huge lines of people desperate to secure fuel lined up outside gasoline pumps, though prices were the same as they were before the earthquake struck.
With power lines down, spotty phone connections and almost no Internet connectivity, residents were particularly anxious to buy morning newspapers. Pierre-Anne Dube, a 31-year-old from Canada, has been sleeping on the sidewalk outside a hotel. She said she's gone from the best experience of her life, a trek to Everest base camp, to the worst, enduring the earthquake and its aftermath. We can't reach the embassy. We want to leave. We are scared. There is no food. We haven't eaten a meal since the earthquake and we don't have any news about what's going on," she said.
The earthquake was the worst to hit the South Asian nation in more than 80 years. It and was strong enough to be felt all across parts of India, Bangladesh, China's region of Tibet and Pakistan. Nepal's worst recorded earthquake in 1934 measured 8.0 and all but destroyed the cities of Kathmandu, Bhaktapur and Patan. The quake has put a huge strain on the resources of this impoverished country best known for Everest, the highest mountain in the world. The economy of Nepal, a nation of 27.8 million people, relies heavily on tourism, principally trekking and Himalayan mountain climbing. Associated Press writers Muneeza Naqvi and Tim Sullivan in New Delhi contributed to this report.
We reported yesterday as the lead story headline at Sunset Daily (www.Sunset-Daily.com) that New Jersey doc, Google exec among Nepal earthquake victims on Everest. Hours before avalanche, Marisa Eve Girawong wrote on Facebook that she was craving sushi.
A Google executive-turned-mountain climber and New Jersey doctor working at a Mount Everest base camp were among three Americans killed in Saturday’s devastating earthquake in Nepal.
Marisa Eve Girawong, a 28-year-old doctor from Edison, N.J., died in an avalanche that struck the base camp area after the 7.9 magnitude earthquake that killed more than 2,200 people, including more than a dozen on the world’s highest mountain. Seattle-based Madison Mountaineering confirmed Girawong’s death on its website.
“It is with deep sorrow and profound grief that we can confirm the loss of our Everest/Lhotse base camp doctor,” Madison co-founder Kurt Hunter wrote in a blog post entitled “Our hearts are broken.” Girawong died at the expedition’s 17,500-foot elevation base camp. All 15 members of the expedition’s climbing team made it safely to Camp 2, where they were awaiting helicopter evacuation.
According her bio on the mountaineering company’s site, Girawong, who was born in Thailand, had been a physician’s assistant working in a Level 1 emergency room “with a focus on trauma and wilderness medicine” when she joined the Everest expedition earlier this year.
She completed her medical training at John Stroger Hospital of Chicago and was in the process of completing a second master’s degree in mountain medicine at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, her bio said. Girawong, an avid rock climber and mountaineer, had been working in the Everest region for more about a year. “Officially the highest I’ve been so far at 5,550 meters/18,300 ft.,” she wrote on Facebook on April 12. “Never made it last year but finally got to the top of Kala Patthar.”
Hours before the avalanche struck, Girawong wrote on Facebook that it was snowing and she was craving sushi. “Day 28 on this arduous journey, snow is falling & my food cravings are at an all time high,” Girawong wrote. “Is a crunchy spicy tuna roll with eel sauce too much to ask for?” Dan Fredinburg, a 33-year-old Google executive who was climbing Everest to raise awareness about climate change through his Save the Ice campaign, also died in the avalanche.
“I regret to inform all who loved him that during the avalanche on Everest early this morning our Dan suffered from a major head injury and didn’t make it,” Fredinburg's sister, Megan, wrote in a message posted to his Instagram account. “We appreciate all of the love that has been sent our way thus far and know his soul and his spirit will live on in so many of us. All our love and thanks to those who shared this life with our favorite hilarious strong willed man. He was and is everything to us. Thank you.” Actress Sophia Bush, who once dated Fredinburg, posted a long Instagram message mourning his loss:
There are no adequate words. Today I find myself attempting to pick up the pieces of my heart that have broken into such tiny shards, I'll likely never find them all. Today I, and so many of my loved ones, lost an incredible friend. Dan Fredinburg was one-of-a-kind. Fearless. Funny. A dancing robot who liked to ride dinosaurs and chase the sun and envision a better future for the world. His brain knew how to build it. His heart was constantly evolving to push himself to make it so. He was one of my favorite human beings on Earth. He was one of the great loves of my life. He was one of my truest friends. He was an incredible brother, a brilliant engineer, and a damn good man. I'm devastated and simultaneously so deeply grateful to have known and loved him, and to have counted him as one of my tribe. I was so looking forward to our planned download of “all the things” when he got home. I am crushed that I will never hear that story. I am crushed knowing that there are over 1,000 people in Nepal suffering this exact feeling, knowing that they too will never hear another tale about an adventure lived from someone that they love. Disasters like this are often unquantifiable, the enormity is too much to understand. Please remember that each person who is now gone was someone's Dan. Please remember that our time on this Earth is not guaranteed. Please tell those you love that you do. Right now. This very minute. And please send a kiss to the sky for my friend Dan. His energy is so big and so bright, and it's all around us, so put some love toward him today. And then hug your loved ones again. #goodbyesweetfriend #savetheice #Nepal
According to his LinkedIn page, Fredinburg — a self-described “Google Adventurer” — worked on Google’s privacy team, helping bring Google's Street View project to some of the world's most famous mountains, including Kilimanjaro and Everest. "Sadly, we lost one of our own in this tragedy," Google's Lawrence You wrote in a message to colleagues. "Dan Fredinburg a long-time member of the Privacy organization in Mountain View, was in Nepal with three other Googlers, hiking Mount Everest. He has passed away. The other three Googlers with him are safe and we are working to get them home quickly." Google is committing $1 million to earthquake response efforts, he added. Fredinburg, who survived an avalanche on Everest last year, was remembered by Save the Ice cofounder Mike North.
“Dan was a mountaineer/explorer because he loved to climb/see the world, but that was never the whole point,” North said in a statement. “His purpose in the world was much bigger. Much of it revolved around calling attention to how we as individuals can make a difference.” A Crowdrise campaign launched in Fredinburg’s memory has raised more than $10,000 in support of two Nepali orphanages he was also climbing for. “Day 22,” Fredinburg wrote on Instagram on April 24. “Ice training ... means frequent stops for morning cappuccino, regardless of danger.” On Sunday, the U.S. State Department confirmed three U.S. citizens were killed in earthquake, but did not release their names.
They just reported on the show (Morning Joe) that the US could shift on hostage negotiations. Families of American hostages who negotiate with kidnappers may no longer face prosecution, according to a new ABC News report. The Morning Joe panel discusses it briefly today.
I missed the morning papers today. i was too busy writing here. Sorry. I'll try to catch it when they re air it later on today. I know one was a story about the Long-awaited Colorado cinema massacre trial to get under way. Our (Sunset daily) Partner, Reuters wrote up over night that Colorado's long-awaited cinema massacre trial will start on Monday with jurors asked to decide whether gunman James Holmes was insane when he killed a dozen moviegoers in 2012, or a calculating mass murderer who deserves execution.
Public defenders trying to spare their 27-year-old client's life, and prosecutors seeking to put the onetime neuroscience graduate student on death row, are set to present their opening statements in a courtroom on the outskirts of Denver. Holmes has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to opening fire with a handgun, shotgun and semi-automatic rifle inside a crowded midnight screening of the Batman film "The Dark Knight Rises," killing 12 and wounding 70 people.
Arapahoe County District Court Judge Carlos Samour has said he expects the trial to take four months. Holmes is charged with multiple counts of first-degree murder and attempted murder. His lawyers concede he was the lone gunman, but have said the Southern California native was in the throes of a psychotic episode when he plotted and carried out the attack.
While prosecutors will invoke the gruesome images from the crime scene that they outlined in a preliminary hearing in 2013, the crux of their case is to prove Holmes was sane at the time. He has undergone two court-ordered sanity examinations since his arrest that have produced many hours of video and piles of documents, all sealed by the judge; according to court papers they provided conflicting results.
Until that evidence is presented in court, lawyers for both sides will likely use the two hours allotted to them on Monday afternoon to explain how they will go about proving their cases. Former Colorado prosecutor Bob Grant said the government must lay out for jurors the horror of the July night when Holmes, dressed in a gas mask, helmet and body armor, lobbed a teargas canister into the screening at Aurora's Century 16 multiplex, then strode in and opened fire.
"They will try to put the jury in those theater seats," said Grant, who prosecuted the only death-row inmate executed in Colorado in nearly 50 years. Holmes' public defenders will focus throughout the trial on the defendant's mental state, said longtime Colorado criminal defense lawyer Mark Johnson. "The defense theme from the get-go will be that as a civilized society, we don't put mentally ill people to death," Johnson said. Reporting by Keith Coffman; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Mohammad Zargham.
The WAPO wrote up a report about people going nuts about the Clinton Foundation taking funds from people and organizations in other countries. Foreign donations leave Hillary in a cloud.
Ruth Marus (Ruth Marcus is a columnist and editorial writer for The Post, specializing in American politics and domestic policy) wrote an article everyone seemed to have read yesterday. In thinking about donations to the Clinton Foundation from foreign governments and interests, an adage attributed to Benjamin Franklin and a Yiddish word come to mind.
From Franklin — actually, from Franklin’s alter ego, Poor Richard — comes the saying, “He that lieth down with dogs shall rise up with fleas.” In foreign policy, as in fundraising, lying down with dogs goes with the territory. Combine the two, and fleas become an occupational hazard.
Foreign interests, like their U.S. counterparts, may give to the Clinton Global Initiative out of the goodness of their hearts and their commitment to the foundation’s many important works. They may also give motivated by the perception, whether reality-based or not, that the way to Hillary Clinton’s attention is through her family’s foundation.
Indeed, this was the very reason that the Obama administration and the Senate, weighing her nomination to be secretary of state in 2009, appropriately insisted that donations to the foundation be publicly reported, and that — while existing foreign government donors would be permitted to keep giving at the same levels — new government donors or dramatically stepped-up donations would require approval from State.
But this was always an imperfect solution to a conundrum: how to allow the foundation to continue its unquestionably good programs without creating conflicts of interest for Clinton or the appearance thereof. The split-the-difference deal — effectively limiting foreign government gifts but keeping the spigot open for private foreign (and domestic) interests — was all but guaranteed to produce the current spate of news reports once she launched her presidential bid.
This inherent problem was exacerbated by another one, exasperatingly familiar to longtime Clinton watchers: The agreement was imperfectly implemented while Clinton was at State and was quickly discarded once she left. Now Clinton is reaping the consequences of this toxic combination of sloppiness and greed.
Granted, there is both an ideological animus and an intellectual smarminess to some of the recent criticism; lacking a clear-cut quid pro quo, Peter Schweizer, the conservative author of the forthcoming “Clinton Cash,” resorts to citing “a pattern of financial transactions involving the Clintons that occurred contemporaneous with favorable U.S. policy decisions benefiting those providing the funds.” Also, there was an increase in sunspots.
But no one — least of all Hillary Clinton — should be surprised by this unconvincing effort to smudge the difference between correlation and causation. For heaven’s sake, why not insulate yourself from the criticism sure to come?
As to the sloppiness, one problem, reported by The Post’s Rosalind S. Helderman and Tom Hamburger, involves a $500,000 gift from the government of Algeria that violated the agreement because the gift, from a new donor, was not submitted for review.
More odiferous: The check, for the undeniably worthy cause of earthquake relief in Haiti, came at a time when the Algerian government had dramatically ramped up its lobbying activities at State, where it was under pressure for human rights violations.
Did Clinton go soft on Algeria because it sent this check to her husband’s foundation? Did the foundation intentionally try to slip the check past the folks at State? I doubt it. Did Algeria give simply because its government was moved by the plight of the Haitian people? Pardon my cynicism.
Which brings us to greed, and the Yiddish word chazer. It means “pig ” but has a specific connotation of piggishness and gluttony. This is a chronic affliction of the Clintons, whether it comes to campaign fundraising (remember the Lincoln Bedroom?), compulsive speechifying (another six-figure check to speak at a public university?) or assiduous vacuuming-up of foundation donations from donors of questionable character or motives.
Thus, as Hillary Clinton left the State Department — when she was clearly contemplating running for president — the newly renamed Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation could have done the prudent thing and kept the existing restrictions in place. Instead, the foundation quietly freed itself from the limitations, creating ethics questions that could have been avoided.
For example, a donation last year of between $250,000 and $500,000, from a Canadian agency pushing the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. The Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development agency had never before given to the foundation; Hillary Clinton, whose State Department was in charge of reviewing the pipeline, has not expressed a position on approval. You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to question this donation. You don’t have to be a political strategist to lament that the Clintonian approach to ethics seems always to err in favor of taking the check. Read more from Ruth Marcus’s archive, follow her on Twitter or subscribe to her updates on Facebook.
There are so many moving parts in this story. It looks so bad and no one can really put there fingers on the actual issue outside of optics. It was probably done legally but morally and politically speaking is where I question it. Hillary and her people have done some stupid things considering that we should assume she knew she was going to run for POTUS next year. How she could think these things would NOT rise to the surface so to speak, is crazy to me. The bottom line is too, that people are not shelling out money to anyone for no reasons. They want something in return.
ISIL's sophisticated recruiting campaign poses persistent threat in U.S. A recent string of terror-related cases in the U.S., including the the arrests of six Minnesota men accused earlier this month of attempting to join the Islamic State, highlights an unprecedented marketing effort being waged by ISIL, U.S. law enforcement officials and terror analysts said.
It's a campaign that is finding resonance from urban metros to the American heartland, "this is not so much a recruitment effort as it is a global marketing campaign, beyond anything that al-Qaeda has ever done,'' a senior law enforcement official with knowledge of the matter said Thursday. The official, who is not authorized to comment publicly, said the Islamic State's slick multimedia productions, its use of social media and personal "peer-to-peer'' communication are proving to be effective parts of a sophisticated program aimed at the West. "I don't think there has been one case in which we haven't found some connection to the videos or other media the group has produced,'' the official said.
Federal authorities have identified more than 150 U.S. residents who have sought to join the ranks of the terror organization or rival groups in Syria. There is evidence that about 40 of those have traveled to the region and returned to the U.S. Most have been charged; an undisclosed number are free and subjects of intense surveillance, the senior official said. The smallest subset of the group, an estimated dozen, represents those who have actually joined the fighting ranks.
But the official said that the breadth of the ongoing inquiries suggests that the actual numbers of ISIL sympathizers, or those contemplating travel to join the group and other rival organizations, are likely much higher.
The threat posed by aspiring foreign fighters has been a blinking red light within the nation's counterterrorism network for months. But the flurry of new cases suggests a persistent problem for law enforcement officials who fear that some of the recruits could launch attacks against U.S. targets when they return home or will be inspired to lash out on their own.
They are young women and men who are "responding to the call to join violent jihad abroad at an alarming rate,'' Assistant Attorney General John Carlin, chief of the Justice Department's National Security Division, told a homeland security summit last weekend. He said that the federal government has brought 35 such cases involving aspiring foreign fighters, many of whom have been arrested before leaving the country.
FBI Director James Comey also has expressed serious concern, saying ISIL and similar terror-support inquiries are ongoing in each of the bureau's 56 field divisions across the country. A series of criminal cases filed in the past month highlight the varied nature of the threat facing the U.S., and ISIL's aggressive pursuit of U.S.-based and other converts.
In the most recent Minnesota case involving six young suspects, all intercepted by authorities before their planned travel to Syria, U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger said ISIL demonstrated a powerful recruiting tool that it is difficult to counter.
Luger described a so-called "peer-to-peer'' or "brother-to-brother'' campaign in which the close group of suspects engaged in the radicalization of each other, providing encouragement during each phase of a nearly year-long mission to reach Syria.
At the same time, the group also was getting support directly from the battlefield. Abdi Nur, a former associate of the Minnesota suspects, slipped past authorities last May and is believed to be in Syria with the terror group.
Since Nur reached Syria, Luger asserted that the suspected terror operative has been serving as the chief "foreign fighter recruiter'' for his former associates in Minneapolis.
Michael Leiter, former director of the U.S. Counterterrorism Center, said ISIL's recruiting strategy — its personal outreach efforts, application of slick YouTube productions and other social media — represents an unmatched level of sophistication demonstrated by terror organizations in the aftermath of 9/11.
"Al-Qaeda in Pakistan represented Version 1.0, with its static video of (Osama) bin-Laden's face. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula became Version 2.0, with (American cleric) Anwar al-Awlaki using graphics and the online magazine Inspire to reach potential English-speaking converts. Think of ISIL as Version 3.0.''
While officials believe that the U.S. will never produce the volume of recruits being drawn from Western Europe, where a disaffected Muslim population and a lack of integration has helped contribute thousands of foreign fighters to ISIL's cause, Leiter and others said the U.S. nevertheless remains an important focus.
"The image that there is a pipeline of soldiers for ISIL running out of the U.S. is a powerful one,'' said Bruce Hoffman, a longtime terrorism analyst and director of Georgetown University's Center for Peace and Security Studies program. "That's why you are seeing such a full-court press (from ISIL).'' Hoffman said the FBI and government's intelligence apparatus has devoted immense resources to counter the recruiting effort. But he said ISIL's multifaceted outreach and leveraging of social media is threatening to "outpace the government's capabilities across the intelligence community.''
"It's like the Dutch boy sticking his fingers in the dike,'' Hoffman said. Terror sympathizer back in the U.S. Among the most striking of the recent foreign fighter cases brought by federal prosecutors involves Abdirahman Sheik Mohamud.
The 23-year-old Columbus, Ohio, man, charged last week, returned from Syria last year. While there, he allegedly joined his brother, Abdifatah Aden, and received some training in a camp operated by the Al-Nusrah Front, an affiliate of al-Qaeda and rival of ISIL. Following Aden's death last June, Mohamud returned to the U.S. and began discussing an unspecified attack against the homeland. Although the outlines of the plot remain under investigation, Mohamud's alleged interest in such an attack strikes at the heart of a long-held fear by U.S. authorities: a terror sympathizer back in the U.S., searching for a target.
According to court documents, Mohamud "talked about doing something big in the United States.'' In conversations with one government informant who believed the suspect was attempting to recruit him for a U.S.-based attack, Mohamud "wanted to go to a military base in Texas and kill three or four American soldiers execution-style."
The senior law enforcement official, who is familiar with Mohamud's case, said that such suspects who have demonstrated a greater commitment by traveling to the region and returning are generally "graded higher'' as possible threats. The official cautioned that investigators are still gathering information on the extent of Mohamud's activities.
"We have very little patience for letting subjects plan, mature and develop,'' the official said, adding that the suspects' planning and known travel activities are dictating the timing of recent arrests across the country. Mohamud has pleaded not guilty. His attorney, Sam Shamansky, declined comment.
Hoffman said Mohamud's alleged designs on a potential U.S. target, as described in court documents, were "too opaque'' to assess as a credible threat. "I want to know a lot more. ... The good news is that we're catching them, but that may be just the tip of larger problem.''
Speaking of the White House Correspondence dinner from the other night and you read my blurb about those media people that report these stories for us, The Washington Post editor is on the show and he wrote a report about that Jason (Rezaian) guy in imprisoned over in Iran. He states that Iran has given ‘no evidence’ reporter Jason Rezaian did anything wrong.
In an appearance on CNN’s “Reliable Sources" with Brian Stelter on Sunday morning, Washington Post Executive Editor Martin Baron said the paper is doing everything to free its reporter in Tehran, who has been in prison for nine months.
Baron has been rallying for the release of The Post’s Tehran bureau chief Jason Rezaian, who has been charged with espionage and other crimes, including collecting classified information.
“There has been no evidence provided by the Iranian government that he engaged in espionage or did anything other than report on what was happening in that country,” Baron said. “In fact, most of his coverage focused on the culture and daily life of people in Iran.”
[Post reporter jailed in Iran faces 4 charges including espionage]
Baron said The Post is talking to U.S. officials, who have had conversations with the Iranian government about getting Rezaian released. The paper is also pleading its case to other governments in the region and elsewhere, but Baron said there are no prospects for an imminent release.
Rezaian’s imprisonment came up at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner Saturday night, with President Obama saying the government would not rest until the journalist is freed.
“For nine months, Jason has been in prison in Tehran for nothing more than writing about the hopes and fears of the Iranian people,” Obama said.
The president told the room full of reporters, many of whom were donning “Free Jason” pins, that he had spoken with Rezaian’s brother, Ali, who was at the dinner.
“I have told him personally that I will not rest until we bring him home to his family, safe and sound,” Obama said.
The president is among a growing chorus of government officials, including Secretary of State John F. Kerry, urging Iran to free Rezaian.
A group of Republican senators pressed the administration to make Rezaian’s release a condition for a nuclear agreement with Iran. But the administration has been averse to tying the imprisonment with the effort to block Iran’s ability to build nuclear weapons.
Rezaian, 39, has been a reporter for The Post since 2012. He and his journalist wife, Yeganeh Salehi, were arrested July 22. She was later released on bail, but Rezanian has remained in custody.
The Revolutionary Court, the venue for national security cases, took up the couple's cases. Although the court has never publicly disclosed the charges against Rezaian, his attorney has said that the charges stem from inquiries and contacts he made as a journalist.
Asked about the motivation for the arrest, Baron said, “There has been plenty of speculation that there is some sort of conflict between the Revolutionary Guard and the government of President Rouhani and his foreign ministers, but we don’t know that for sure. We’re not in a position to speculate. We’re mystified by it.”
No date has been set for the trial, but Rezaian’s attorney has said that it may begin in the next few weeks. A judge known for imposing harsh sentences, including the death penalty for anti-government protesters, is slated to hear the case.
[Hard-line judge in Iran is assigned case of jailed Post reporter Jason Rezaian]
“It’s a terrifying situation and an entirely unjust situation,” Baron said of Rezaian’s imprisonment. “There is absolutely no justification for this happening.”
Baron said Rezaian has been held longer than any other journalist in Iran. The reporter has spent much of the nine months in isolation, where he has suffered health problems and bouts of depression. Baron said Rezaian has been denied the treatment he needs and was granted time to meet with his attorney only in the past week, for 90 minutes.
“That is not a system of justice. That is a system of officially sanctioned injustice. And not a shred of evidence has been provided that he has done anything wrong,” Baron said.
Speaking of the White House Correspondence dinner from the other night and you read my blurb about those media people that report these stories for us, The Washington Post editor is on the show and he wrote a report about that Jason (Rezaian) guy in imprisoned over in Iran. He states that Iran has given ‘no evidence’ reporter Jason Rezaian did anything wrong.
Baron has been rallying for the release of The Post’s Tehran bureau chief Jason Rezaian, who has been charged with espionage and other crimes, including collecting classified information.
“There has been no evidence provided by the Iranian government that he engaged in espionage or did anything other than report on what was happening in that country,” Baron said. “In fact, most of his coverage focused on the culture and daily life of people in Iran.”
[Post reporter jailed in Iran faces 4 charges including espionage]
Baron said The Post is talking to U.S. officials, who have had conversations with the Iranian government about getting Rezaian released. The paper is also pleading its case to other governments in the region and elsewhere, but Baron said there are no prospects for an imminent release.
Rezaian’s imprisonment came up at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner Saturday night, with President Obama saying the government would not rest until the journalist is freed.
“For nine months, Jason has been in prison in Tehran for nothing more than writing about the hopes and fears of the Iranian people,” Obama said.
The president told the room full of reporters, many of whom were donning “Free Jason” pins, that he had spoken with Rezaian’s brother, Ali, who was at the dinner.
“I have told him personally that I will not rest until we bring him home to his family, safe and sound,” Obama said.
The president is among a growing chorus of government officials, including Secretary of State John F. Kerry, urging Iran to free Rezaian.
A group of Republican senators pressed the administration to make Rezaian’s release a condition for a nuclear agreement with Iran. But the administration has been averse to tying the imprisonment with the effort to block Iran’s ability to build nuclear weapons.
Rezaian, 39, has been a reporter for The Post since 2012. He and his journalist wife, Yeganeh Salehi, were arrested July 22. She was later released on bail, but Rezanian has remained in custody.
The Revolutionary Court, the venue for national security cases, took up the couple's cases. Although the court has never publicly disclosed the charges against Rezaian, his attorney has said that the charges stem from inquiries and contacts he made as a journalist.
Asked about the motivation for the arrest, Baron said, “There has been plenty of speculation that there is some sort of conflict between the Revolutionary Guard and the government of President Rouhani and his foreign ministers, but we don’t know that for sure. We’re not in a position to speculate. We’re mystified by it.”
No date has been set for the trial, but Rezaian’s attorney has said that it may begin in the next few weeks. A judge known for imposing harsh sentences, including the death penalty for anti-government protesters, is slated to hear the case.
[Hard-line judge in Iran is assigned case of jailed Post reporter Jason Rezaian]
“It’s a terrifying situation and an entirely unjust situation,” Baron said of Rezaian’s imprisonment. “There is absolutely no justification for this happening.”
Baron said Rezaian has been held longer than any other journalist in Iran. The reporter has spent much of the nine months in isolation, where he has suffered health problems and bouts of depression. Baron said Rezaian has been denied the treatment he needs and was granted time to meet with his attorney only in the past week, for 90 minutes.
“That is not a system of justice. That is a system of officially sanctioned injustice. And not a shred of evidence has been provided that he has done anything wrong,” Baron said.
BTW, that Peter Schweizer guy (author of the book creating the stir about Hillary and the author of the book coming out abut (George) Bush Jr. is on the Morning Joe show tomorrow.
And sweet! Danica Patrick is on the show today. Talk about being a hot woman, she is the epitome of one.
And sweet! Danica Patrick is on the show today. Talk about being a hot woman, she is the epitome of one.
Regardless of it all on this crazy news AM, Please Stay In Touch!
