Politicization of Intelligence: Lessons From a Long, Dishonorable History by Patrick Eddington - Tuesday September 1st, 2015 at 9:34 AM: "The actual politicization of intelligence occurs subtly and can take many forms. Context is all-important. Well before March 2003, intelligence analysts and their managers knew that the United States was heading for war with Iraq. It was clear that the Bush administration would frown on or ignore analysis that called into question a decision to go to war and welcome analysis that supported such a decision. Intelligence analysts — for whom attention, especially favorable attention, from policymakers is a measure of success — felt a strong wind consistently blowing in one direction. The desire to bend with such a wind is natural and strong, even if unconscious."
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Today's Headlines and Commentary by Quinta Jurecic
ISIS fighters have partially destroyed the 2,000-year-old Temple of Bel, continuing the group’s path of destruction across the ancient city of Palmyra. Earlier this month, the militant group detonated Palmyra’s Temple of Baalshamin, the Wall Street Journal reminds us. However, the Syrian antiquities chief told the Guardian that the temple appears to remain still standing at least in part, though other experts have been unable to assess the full extent of the damage.
As the battle against ISIS grows increasingly complicated, it’s worth taking a step back and tallying just how many conflicts have spun into the orbit of the anti-ISIS fight. The BBC is here to help with arundown of the “four wars and counting” currently roiling the Middle East: coalition forces versus ISIS, Iran versus the Gulf Arab states, Turkey versus the PKK, and the Syrian civil war. Got that?
ISIS has detained 200 residents of a remote Iraqi town near the Jordanian border, the AP reports. Following clashes between residents and the ISIS fighters who control the town, the latter punished protestors by tying more than 100 people to streetlight poles for over a day and abducting 100 more to an unknown location, where they continue to be held. The protests were an unusual incident of public demonstration against the militant group within the regions under its control.
Turkey has finally made good on its promise to contribute to the anti-ISIS air campaign, beginning its bombardment of ISIS targets starting Friday evening. According to the Journal, U.S. officials hadlobbied Turkey to bombard ISIS for over nine months before Ankara committed to joining the coalition in late July.
Ankara has announced a program to reward individuals who participate in the government’s anti-ISIS and -PKK efforts, AFP writes. Those who inform the government of the identity or location of a suspected “terrorist” may receive rewards of up to $1.37 million. And on another front of the Turkish crackdown, authorities have arrested two U.K. journalists associated with Vice News on suspicion of having ties to ISIS---though as the pair were covering the conflict between Turkish forces and the PKK, critics suggest that the move is likely politically motivated.
The bad news continues for freedom of the press: An Egyptian court has sentenced three Al Jazeera reporters and several co-defendants to three years in prison for reporting “false news” about the country. AFP tells us that, though the journalists were arrested in 2013 after the military overthrow of President Mohamed Morsi, current Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al Sisi has publicly stated that he regrets the initiation of the trial.
Meanwhile, Egypt has set the stage for the return of its parliament, which was dissolved in 2013 following the anti-Morsi coup. Elections will be held in two rounds beginning on October 17 and 18, Reuters reports. It remains to be seen what role the parliament will play under the government of President Sisi, who has been criticized for his anti-democratic leadership.
A literary interlude: Foreign Policy has an excerpt from Sean Naylor’s new book on JSOC, due out September 1. The piece details a 2008 JSOC mission to kill Abu Ghadiya, a senior al Qaeda operative whose responsibilities included running a major network of foreign fighters. But Defense One tells us that the Pentagon is less than happy over the leaks of classified information from within JSOC that contribute to Naylor’s book.
In Yemen, gunmen assassinated the government’s chief of security operations in the port city of Aden, AFP writes. The incident occurred as government officials struggled to maintain their control over the recently recaptured city. Meanwhile, airstrikes conducted by the Saudi-led coalition killed 36 civilians in what has become a sadly familiar refrain for an air campaign routinely accused of disregard for civilian life.
The Journal examines the growing role of the United Arab Emirates in the power vacuum that is southern Yemen. U.A.E. ground forces were instrumental in allowing the Yemeni government to seize control of Aden from Houthi fighters, in what is both an astonishingly ambitious foreign policy venture by the U.A.E. and the largest Sunni Arab ground operation against Iranian influence since the beginning of the Arab Spring. Yet in the absence of much of the Yemeni government, U.A.E. troops are increasingly taking on the role of nation-building.
With the end of August here and Congress soon heading back from its late-summer recess, it’s time for an updated whip count on the nuclear deal with Iran. 31 Senators are now in favor, The Hillreports, meaning that the Obama administration only has to round up three more votes to keep Congress from torpedoing the deal---or ten more votes to prevent an anti-deal measure from reaching the Senate floor, if the administration is feeling lucky. But even if the deal’s advocates manage to muster 41 votes to launch a filibuster, Republicans who oppose the nuclear agreement will do their best to exact a harsh political price.
On Sunday, an Iranian court sentenced two people to 10 years in prison on charges of spying for the United States and Israel. Yet their names were not released, meaning that the fate of the detained U.S. reporter Jason Rezaian remains unknown. The New York Times has more.
E.U. ministers will hold an emergency meeting on September 14 in an effort to address the growing European migration crisis, the E.U. Observer reports. France, Germany, and the United Kingdom requested the meeting. Europe faced harsh criticism over its failure to address the growing crisis last week, following the discovery of a truck filled with the bodies of refugees east of Vienna.
The Ukrainian parliament voted today on an initial measure to “decentralize” governance in the country’s separatist eastern regions. Backers hope the legislation will quell conflict and the threat of secession. Violence erupted outside the parliament building as nationalist protesters rallied against the law. One national guard member was killed and about 100 protesters were injured. The BBC has the story.
The Nigerian military has announced the arrest of 20 high-ranking members of the Boko Haram insurgency, Al Jazeera writes. The arrest occurred only days after Boko Haram militants killed 56 villagers in rural northeastern Nigeria.
For those of us still pondering the strange circumstances surrounding the delayed announcement of Mullah Omar’s death, some of the remaining questions have been answered: The Taliban has admitted to covering up their leader’s death for two years. The group continued to issue statements in Mullah Omar’s name, maintaining the fiction that he remained alive, in the hopes of lasting out the presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan. The Express Tribune has the story.
The Journal examines the shifting role of U.S. special-operations forces in Afghanistan. The forces occupy a “netherworld,” the Journal writes, “trying to find a middle ground between doing too much and too little” as the United States prepares for a total military withdrawal from the country by the end of 2016. Special-ops troops are doing their best to ensure the success of the Afghan security forces in the runup to U.S. withdrawal, tagging along on missions to help out but holding back from outright engagement in combat.
The Afghan district of Musa Qala has changed hands again, this time recaptured from the Taliban by Afghan forces. The Guardian writes that, according to officials, the Taliban’s lax efforts to hold onto the district may indicate that the militant group aims mostly to “attack for propaganda purposes.”
In a visit to Islamabad on Sunday, U.S. national security advisor Susan Rice urged the Pakistani government to increase its efforts against terrorism along Pakistan’s borders. Afghanistan has complained bitterly of Islamabad’s willingness to allow terror attacks to be plotted and launched from within Pakistan. According to the Times, Rice requested that Pakistan crack down more effectively on the militant Haqqani network especially---a particularly pointed appeal in the wake of reports that Pakistan may lose a significant amount of U.S. military aid over its failure to quash the network’s activities. She also pushed to restart Pakistan-sponsored peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government, which have been delayed since confirmation of Mullah Omar’s death.
This Thursday, Beijing will host an enormous parade marking the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II. The celebration is the first of its kind, Bloomberg tells us, and its display of Chinese power is unsettling China’s already-wary neighbors. Attending leaders will include Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as Sudanese President Omar al Bashir—the latter still staring down the International Criminal Court’s warrant for his arrest. China is not a member of the ICC and therefore is not obligated to act on the warrant. Reuters has more.
Speaking of China’s jittery neighbors, the Guardian brings us the news that Japan is preparing its largest-ever defense budget. Concern over China’s aggressive construction of islands in the disputed South China Sea has put Japan on high alert. But despite this anxiety, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe still faces public opposition over his efforts to increase the role of the Japanese military, in a policy move that many Japanese citizens see as contradictory to the country’s post-World War II pacifist constitution.
The Hill reports that a Virginia teenager has been sentenced to 11 years in prison for assisting a friend in traveling to Syria to join ISIS, along with running a popular pro-ISIS Twitter account. The Department of Justice’s aggressive prosecution of the 17-year-old is indicative of increased government efforts to crack down on ISIS’s use of social media to recruit from within the United States. Likewise, a Kenyan man has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for providing money to al Shabaab.
Across the pond, U.K. counterterrorism laws may have been a major factor in leading the British Library to cut ties with the Taliban Sources Project, which aims to digitize primary source material on the militant group. The library received legal advice that hosting the material could lead to prosecution under U.K. law, the Times writes---particularly a set of laws that prohibit the collection of “material which could be used by a person committing or preparing for an act of terrorism,” though such laws only apply if the material in question is intended to be used in support of terrorism.
Foreign Policy lets us know that, months after announcing a change in its policy toward families of hostages held abroad, the White House has finally picked a “Hostage Czar” to coordinate hostage-release efforts. Former State Department official James O’Brien will take the role.
The FISA Court has once again renewed the NSA’s authority to continue collection of phone metadata from within the United States, The Hill tells us. This decision will be the final renewal before the USA FREEDOM Act takes effect at the end of November and does away with the NSA's longstanding telephony metadata collection program.
The Los Angeles Times reports on Chinese and Russian efforts to “aggregate and cross-index” data on members of the U.S. intelligence community in order to identify overseas undercover operations. Recent data breaches from sources such as OPM and---yes---Ashley Madison have made U.S. officials and agents newly vulnerable to foreign counterintelligence efforts.
Meanwhile, the United States may not have officially blamed China for the OPM hack, but theWashington Post suggests that the Obama administration may be getting ready to implement sanctions in retaliation for continued Chinese economic espionage. The sanctions package aims to crack down on Chinese companies and individuals who likely benefited from their government’s cyberattacks. Yet implementing sanctions against a geopolitical player as important as China is a risky business, which is why the administration hasn’t yet reached a decision on the matter---but it may do so within two weeks. Stay tuned.
European publishers are doing their best to fight back against Google, the Times indicates. Europe’s efforts to regulate the internet are largely aimed at pushing back against the company’s extensive reach, and publishers are leading the charge through lobbying for the aggressive implementation of copyright law.
Parting shot: There’s a new targetable entity under the laws of armed conflict, and it’s…certain legal scholars critical of U.S. counterterrorism efforts. The Guardian reports on this, um, novel (to put it gently in the extreme) legal theory, put forward by a West Point assistant professor. Meanwhile, we at Lawfare will be hiding under our desks.
ICYMI: This Weekend, on Lawfare
Ben posted this week’s Lawfare Podcast, featuring a special summer reairing of a previous discussion on a crucial legal question: how to legally prepare for an imminent zombie apocalypse.
Seamus Hughes wrote this week’s Foreign Policy Essay on the use of material support to prosecute radicalized young people in the United States.
Email the Roundup Team noteworthy law and security-related articles to include, and follow us onTwitter and Facebook for additional commentary on these issues. Sign up to receive Lawfare in your inbox. Visit our Events Calendar to learn about upcoming national security events, and check out relevant job openings on our Job Board.
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The Daily Beast and the New York Times have reported allegations that senior (but thus far unidentified) Defense Department and United States Central Command (CENTCOM) officials have pressured intelligence analysts working ISIS to alter their conclusions to make their products more palatable to the Obama administration.
The Times story indicates that a DOD Inspector General (IG) investigation into the allegations is underway “after at least one civilian Defense Intelligence Agency analyst told the authorities that he had evidence that officials at United States Central Command — the military headquarters overseeing the American bombing campaign and other efforts against the Islamic State — were improperly reworking the conclusions of intelligence assessments prepared for policy makers, including President Obama.”
This current episode of alleged politicized intelligence estimates sounds eerily familiar to students of the history of the US Intelligence Community in wartime, particularly the top-down pressure to “only give us the good news.”
One paragraph in the Times story particularly caught my eye. In explaining the Defense Intelligence Agency’s conduct on a pivotal National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) during the Vietnam War, theTimes pointed out that analysts’ conclusions that the US would unlikely ever defeat North Vietnamese forces “were repeatedly overruled by commanders who were certain that the United States was winning, and that victory was just a matter of applying more force.” There is a complex history behind how the NIE numbers were established, and it is one that may provide some lessons for looking at the current stories about politicized intelligence reports.
During the writing of the NIE, DIA personnel and several senior intelligence and command staff officers at the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV), including America’s supreme commander in Vietnam, Gen. William Westmoreland, actively engaged in a successful effort to artificially lower the number of assessed Viet Cong (VC) guerillas facing US forces in Vietnam in NIE 14.3-67. That manipulation of intelligence data came after Westmoreland addressed a joint session of Congress on April 29, 1967, in which he said:
While [the enemy] is obviously is far from quitting, there are signs that his morale and his military structure are beginning to deteriorate. Their rate of decline will be in proportion to the pressure directed against him.
But at the very time Westmoreland made that statement, the available intelligence suggested the opposite the view of key CIA analysts and and even many on the general’s own intelligence staff—that the VC were getting stronger and that their numbers were far greater than Westmoreland’s official estimates claimed.
The DIA history cited by the Times includes this misleading paragraph on what was known as the “order of battle” (OB) controversy:
In any case, the episode did not cast Carroll’s Agency in a good light. By not budging on any figure over 300,000, MACV, supported by the Joint Chiefs, demonstrated DIA’s inability to resolve intelligence disputes and arrive at a universally agreed-upon estimate devoid of Service bias. Carroll repeatedly asked Williams and other subordinates to try to resolve the results, which they were unable to do. George Fowler, another Southeast Asia analyst in DIA (who would go on to become DIA’s Chief of Estimates for the region), was also unhappy with the conclusions, but no one in the Agency could dissuade MACV. DIA was subsequently buffeted by howls of protest from CIA—who misinterpreted DIA’s inability to revise the official OB as evidence that they actually sided with MACV—and continually rebuffed by MACV when it tried to revise the 300,000 figure.
Unsaid in that official history, was that DIA’s George Fowler was MACV’s chief defender in the confrontations with CIA analysts over what numbers the Intelligence Community should use on Viet Cong force levels in the NIE, which would be used by President Johnson, Secretary McNamara and other senior officials dealing with the war.
The controversy over that assessment sparked the most contentious Intelligence Community debate of the entire Vietnam War. It pitted Fowler and other DOD and MACV officials against CIA analystsGeorge Allen and Sam Adams, who each subsequently published their accounts of the June 1967 conference on the NIE and Fowler’s role in defending Westmoreland’s official figure.
As Adams noted in his posthumously published memoir, War of Numbers:
The chief Hun opposing the upward revision of the OB turned out to be George Fowler. … ”DIA cannot agree to this estimate as currently written. What we object to is the numbers. We feel we should continue with the official order of battle.” (pp. 93-94)
In None So Blind, Allen tells a virtually identical tale about Fowler’s, and thus DIA’s, role in the coming debacle:
When representatives of the intelligence community convened to discuss the CIA’s draft [of NIE 14.3-67], the DIA spokesman, indicating he was reflecting MACV’s views, rejected the proposed increase in enemy strength. DIA had sought MACV’s comments on the draft and stubbornly defended the field command’s position throughout the coordination sessions. (p. 245)
The years after the 1968 Tet offensive by VC and North Vietnamese Army forces put the lie to the bogus numbers contained in NIE 14.3-67. Indeed, many of Westmoreland’s own officers who privately disagreed with the low official estimates would later appear, along with Adams and Allen, in a 1982 CBS documentary entitled “The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception,” which subsequently sparked an unsuccessful libel suit by Westmoreland. (As a result of the settlement in that lawsuit, the program is no longer readily available to the general public.)
Having watched the documentary multiple times, I believe it is one of the best pieces of investigative TV journalism I’ve seen in my life. It should have served as a warning about the perils of senior government officials having the power to alter or even suppress intelligence estimates that contradicted their official spin. But it is clear that at least some at DIA today have failed to learn the correct lesson from that episode. DIA’s efforts to rewrite the history of that period to make the agency look like an unwilling victim of rather than an active participant in the politicization of NIE 14.3 also merits an independent investigation.
Unfortunately, as we saw in the case of the 2002 Iraq NIE (and the recent reports about ISIS intelligence reports), such episodes of politicization continue to be an occupational hazard in the IC.
Former senior CIA analyst Paul Pillar noted this repeatedly in his post-mortem on the Iraq intelligence debacle nearly a decade ago:
The actual politicization of intelligence occurs subtly and can take many forms. Context is all-important. Well before March 2003, intelligence analysts and their managers knew that the United States was heading for war with Iraq. It was clear that the Bush administration would frown on or ignore analysis that called into question a decision to go to war and welcome analysis that supported such a decision. Intelligence analysts — for whom attention, especially favorable attention, from policymakers is a measure of success — felt a strong wind consistently blowing in one direction. The desire to bend with such a wind is natural and strong, even if unconscious.
Indeed, Pillar has admitted that he regrets his own role in helping write a “white paper” and NIE that served as instruments to justify a decision to go to war. His first-person account of the events, of the pressures analysts faced to give Bush and his advisors what they wanted, sound very much like those described by CENTCOM analysts to the Times and Daily Beast.
His description of Bush administration official’s technique for politicizing the intelligence process should also serve as a guide for any investigation into alleged politicization of ISIS-related intelligence products at CENTCOM:
On any given subject, the intelligence community faces what is in effect a field of rocks, and it lacks the resources to turn over every one to see what threats to national security may lurk underneath. In an unpoliticized environment, intelligence officers decide which rocks to turn over based on past patterns and their own judgments. But when policymakers repeatedly urge the intelligence community to turn over only certain rocks, the process becomes biased. The community responds by concentrating its resources on those rocks, eventually producing a body of reporting and analysis that, thanks to quantity and emphasis, leaves the impression that what lies under those same rocks is a bigger part of the problem than it really is.
That is what happened when the Bush administration repeatedly called on the intelligence community to uncover more material that would contribute to the case for war. The Bush team approached the community again and again and pushed it to look harder at the supposed Saddam-al Qaeda relationship — calling on analysts not only to turn over additional Iraqi rocks, but also to turn over ones already examined and to scratch the dirt to see if there might be something there after all. The result was an intelligence output that — because the question being investigated was never put in context — obscured rather than enhanced understanding of al Qaeda’s actual sources of strength and support.
The allegations reported by the Times and the Daily Beast are too serious a matter to be left to the DOD IG, particularly given the DOD IG’s recent track record in dealing with high-profile whistleblower complaints. Indeed, DOD is currently the target of a $100 million lawsuit by NSA whistleblowers who reported waste, fraud, abuse and potential criminal conduct in the mismanagement of the THINTHREAD and TRAILBLAZER SIGINT collection and analysis programs. With respect to the CENTCOM analysts’ allegations of politicization, the Intelligence Community Whistleblowing and Source Protection Office would be a far more appropriate entity to conduct this inquiry than the DOD IG, now under a major legal cloud. Moreover, as CENTCOM is hardly the only Intelligence Community element producing estimates on ISIS, a thorough investigation would encompass all IC components that have produced analytical products or estimates on the group. Any report issued should include an unclassified version for public release. Only then will the public have a means to judge whether or not our government’s intelligence estimates are being compromised to advance an Obama administration political line on the campaign against ISIS.
In the struggle against ISIS, such “obscuration of the facts” is something our country cannot tolerate, particularly if it is being fostered by senior defense and intelligence community officials too afraid to speak truth to power. Only time will tell whether the current investigation — presently led by an agency facing a $100 million lawsuit by former intelligence whistleblowers — will be an honest one.
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Before the start of business, Just Security provides a curated summary of up-to-the-minute developments at home and abroad. Here’s today’s news.
IRAQ and SYRIA
ISIS fighters battled Syrian rebel forces in a neighborhood of Damascus yesterday, the jihadists pushing ever closer to the center of the capital, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported. [AFP]
Three staff members of VICE News have been chargedin Turkey of being members of ISIS; the three were arrested on Thursday in Diyarbakir while filming clashes between security forces and the PKK. [Al Jazeera] VICE News has condemned the men’s detention, describing the charges leveled against them as “baseless” and “alarmingly false.”
So-called moderate members of al-Qaeda should be used by the US to help in the fight against the Islamic State in Syria, retired Army General and former CIA Director David Petraeus has said. [The Daily Beast’s Shane Harris and Nancy A. Youssef]
The UN confirmed the destruction of the Temple of Bel in the ancient city of Palmyra in Syria late yesterday, with satellite imagery showing the majority of the structure had been destroyed. [The Guardian’s Ben Quinn] And Adam Taylor discusses the risk posed to nine out of ten of Iraq and Syria’s world heritage sites, at the Washington Post.
The Islamic State announced a new gold currency for use in its claimed territory in Iraq and Syria, in a new propaganda video. [Reuters]
President Obama’s withdrawal from Iraq led to the rise of ISIS, former Vice President Dick Cheney said yesterday, suggesting that the country was in “good shape” at the end of President George W. Bush’s time in office. [The Hill’s Julian Hattem]
A park in Damascus has been named after North Korea’s founding father Kim Il-sung, by the country’s embattled government. [Al Jazeera]
The war against ISIS is forcing the US to choose between allies; Nahal Toosi provides a detailed explanation of the challenges posed by Turkey’s stance on the Kurds, at Politico.
The New York Times editorial board discusses Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s war against the Kurds, calling on the US to “use its influence in the region to stop the fighting and deprive Mr Erdogan of an excuse to continue a military operation that makes the difficult struggle against the Islamic State even harder.”
The UK presents its strategy to combat the Islamic State, available here.
IRAN
A flurry of endorsements from House Democrats for President Obama’s nuclear accord yesterday lends “fresh momentum” to the deal, reports Alexander Burns. Reps Nydia M. Velazquez, Gregory W. Meeks, Yvette Clarke, and Patrick Murphy all expressed their support in quick succession. [New York Times] And Sen Jeff Merkley on Sunday announced that he backs the deal, the 31st Democratic senator to do so, reports Nick Gass. [Politico]
A group of 75 former lawmakers called on Congress to support the Iran accord, describing it as the “most viable means” to block Tehran from attaining a nuclear weapon, reports Jordain Carney. [The Hill]
Iranian civil society activists and intellectuals have called on the American people to support the nuclear accord, in an open letter.
The August congressional recess has failed to foster the level of opposition to the Iran deal hoped for by its critics, report Burgess Everett and Josh Breshnahan. [Politico]
Sen Tom Cotton met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a visit to Israel yesterday; in a statement, Cotton said the meeting “only reaffirms” his opposition to the deal. [The Hill’s Julian Hattem]
Americans’ views on the Iran deal fall strongly along partisan lines, a new poll has found. [Washington Post’s Scott Clement and Carol Morello]
The US states “have the power to limit” the threats posed by the Iran deal, write Sen James Inhofe and Oklahoma attorney general Scott Pruitt, calling on states to enforce sanctions against the Islamic Republic through “every executive and legislative action available,” in an op-ed at the Wall Street Journal.
Iranian authorities have arrested a reformist politician, hours after he held a news conference thanking the country’s president for a more open political environment, reports Thomas Erdbrink. [New York Times]
“Inside US Commandos’ shadow war against Iran.” Sean D. Naylor explores the history of the military’s special operations forces efforts against terrorists, and the apparent support of those jihadist groups by Tehran. [The Daily Beast]
HILLARY CLINTON EMAIL CONTROVERSY
A significant cache of emails was released by the State Department in response to a FOIA lawsuit filed by VICE News reporter Jason Leopold; the latest release contains more than 7,000 pages of emails, the largest batch to date. [VICE News] Peter Baker and Michael S. Schmidt analyze the “insights” arising out of the release, at the New York Times.
A number of the emails released contain redactions of information later deemed classified; about 150 of the emails were partially or entirely censored. [AP’s Lisa Lerer and Matthew Lee]
Clinton’s “army of yes men” is on display in the new batch of emails, suggests Gideon Resnick, who provides further details at The Daily Beast.
AFGHANISTAN
The Taliban has admitted to concealing the “depressing news” of the death of former leader Mullah Omar for over two years, a biography of the group’s new leader reveals. [The Guardian’s Jon Boone]
Afghanistan’s electoral reform commission has presented a list of proposals, though some reactions to the proposals, which mark a key step to holding overdue parliamentary elections, were skeptical. [New York Times’ Mujib Mashal]
OTHER DEVELOPMENTS
Israeli security forces clashed with Palestinian men in a West Bank refugee camp overnight; the clashes arose after a raid aimed at arresting suspected Palestinian militants turned violent. [New York Times’ Diaa Hadid and Rami Nazzal] An IDF officer was wounded during the incident. [Haaretz’s Gili Cohen et al]
A Ukrainian National Guard officer was killed following a grenade blast amidst clashes with nationalist protestors outside parliament yesterday. [AP] The incident, carried out by a far-right ultra nationalist, could cause Ukraine’s conflict to continue indefinitely, suggests James Miller. [The Daily Beast]
Pakistan denied that the Haqqani network is using that country as a base, in response to statements from US National Security Adviser Susan Rice this weekend during a visit to Islamabad. [Wall Street Journal’s Saeed Shah and Qasim Nauman]
Boko Haram shot dead nearly 80 people in attacks on three villages in the country’s restive Borno state in recent days, locals said. [Al Jazeera America] And Nigeria says it has uncovered a Boko Haram spy cell at the country’s international airport in Abuja, reportedly aimed at choosing targets for attack. [Reuters]
Al-Shabaab forces have killed “scores” of African Union troops in an attack south of Mogadishu, a spokesperson for the militant group told Al Jazeera.
The US deployed Predator drones to Latvia this weekend, part of the “European Reassurance Initiative.” The two drones and 70 personnel will stay in the region until September 15. [CNN’s Tal Kopan and Jim Sciutto]
The Obama administration is preparing a “menu of sanctions” against publically owned Chinese businesses and private companies which US officials believe to have benefited from American cybertheft, report Damian Paletta and Bob Davis. [Wall Street Journal] The US is also considering sanctioning Russia, though such a move could further strain relations, report Arshad Mohammed et al. [Reuters]
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France-UK border "fully under control" as EU pledges extra money to turn Calais' "jungle" into a "humanitarian camp" for 1,500 migrants in 2016
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Migrants are arriving in Europe in ever-increasing numbers, with waves of people coming into the EU from Greece, Italy and Hungary. Latest updates here
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The man, from Guinea, was trying to enter the Spanish enclave of Ceuta from Morocco
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The European Union unveiled plans to spend $5.6 million to help set up a new migrant camp in Calais and to help fund the transfer of asylum seekers from Calais to other parts of France.
Russian President Vladimir Putin will discuss “possible mutual steps” to stabilize the global oil prices at a meeting with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in China on Thursday, a Kremlin aide said, as both countries grapple with lower prices for their main export.
In pictures selected Monday by Wall Street Journal editors, people compete in a bathtub race in Germany, Blue Bell ice cream returns to stores, and more.
The White House is preparing a menu of sanctions against Chinese state-owned enterprises and private companies that officials believe benefited from the cybertheft of U.S. corporate secrets.
Evidence gathered pace on Tuesday that China’s economic slowdown is rippling across Asia, including a startling plunge in South Korean exports and softening manufacturing in Malaysia and Vietnam.
Hungarian authorities cleared hundreds of migrants from the country’s main international railway station where they were waiting to board trains to Austria and Germany, prompting protests.
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Hundreds of migrants reach Vienna after being held at the Hungarian border, as Austria introduces extra checks amid an unprecedented influx.
VIENNA/MUNICH (Reuters) - Trainloads of migrants arrived in Austria and Germany from Hungary on Monday as European Union asylum rules collapsed under the strain of a wave of migration unprecedented in the EU.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel called on Europe to tackle the migrant crisis and agree on a fair distribution of people, warning that failing to do so might put the EU’s open-border policy at risk.
 Ledger Gazette |
244 Immigrants With Criminal Records Face Deportation in California
New York Times LOS ANGELES — More than 240 immigrants with criminal records who are living in the United States illegally were taken into custody last week during a four-day sweep across Southern California, immigration authorities said Monday. All 244 people taken ... 244 undocumented immigrants arrested in LA sweep, most had a criminal recordFox News 244 arrested in Southern California immigration stingKSBW The Central Coast 244 undocumented immigrants arrested across SoCal in 4-day ICE raidWLS-TV all 63 news articles » |
A company has sold its first marijuana pills legally, and they are available to buy over the internet in Europe.
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Contestants clamber up a greasy pole as the traditional Gostra Festival pole climbing competition takes place in St. Julian's, Malta. Report by Victoria Nwosu-Hope.
One policeman has been killed and at least 50 people have been injured in clashes outside the Ukrainian parliament in Kiev. Report by Conor Mcnally.
Calais residents are pessimistic about the situation of their town which, they say is "suffering" from the migrant crisis and the MyFerryLink dispute. Report by Hettie Maylam.
Warning: video contains footage of the explosion and injured people
Injured riot police can be seen trying to flee an area outside the Ukraine parliament in Kiev, after a blast goes off on Monday. Police and protesters clash after a vote to give greater powers to separatist regions in the east of the country. During the demonstration, grenades are thrown, and an explosion is seen in the middle of the officers protecting the building. Reports suggest one person has been killed and many others are seriously injured
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John Casson, who was in the courtroom when two journalists were sentenced to prison, said the move would damage confidence in the rule of law in Egypt.
ISIS Damages Ancient Temple in Palmyra, Activists Sayby THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Islamic State militants in Syria severely damaged the Bel Temple, considered one of the greatest sites of the ancient world, in a massive explosion Sunday, activists said.
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In a daylong visit to Pakistan, the national security adviser urged leaders to stop militants from using Pakistani territory to stage attacks in Afghanistan.
While investigators in Austria continued inspecting the truck in which 71 migrants died last week, officials grappled with how to address the flow of migrants.
Priests and historians are battling over how best to memorialize the site of a historic Orthodox monastery used as a Soviet prison camp.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that fighters had destroyed part of the nearly 2,000-year-old temple.
The Saudi-led military coalition killed workers at a water plant on Sunday, the plant’s owner said, while a coalition spokesman said Houthi rebels had made explosive devices at the site.
Editorial: Turkey’s War of Distractionby THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Renewed fighting against the Kurds looks suspiciously like a move by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to salvage his political ambitions.
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ISIS Militants Severely Damage Temple of Baal in Palmyraby ANNE BARNARD, HWAIDA SAAD and KENNETH ROSEN
The attack was the group’s second on the ancient Syrian city’s world-renowned ruins in a week, according to local activists and residents.
Ukraine's parliament voted on Monday for constitutional changes to give separatist-minded eastern regions a special status - but divisions in the pro-Western camp and violent street protests suggested the changes would face a rougher ride to become law.
The Chinese Ministry of Public Security did not give details in announcing the move, but the accused have presumably been detained.
Demonstrations turned violent as Parliament moved to ratify constitutional changes granting autonomous status to parts of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House is considering applying sanctions against companies and individuals in China it believes have benefited from Chinese hacking of U.S. trade secrets, the Washington Post reported on Sunday.
BEIJING (Reuters) - People whose apartments were damaged in explosions in the northeastern Chinese port city of Tianjin can sell their homes to a group of property developers or choose to have the government renovate them, the official Xinhua news agency said.
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BEIJING (Reuters) - The removal of a stone plinth sign written by former Chinese president Jiang Zemin at the entrance of a key Communist Party training center is not a sign of disrespect, a senior official said on Monday, after rumors of destabilizing party infighting.
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union ministers were summoned on Sunday to meet in two weeks' time to seek urgent solutions to a migration crisis unprecedented in the bloc's history, as the mounting death toll on land and sea forced governments to respond.
BEIJING (Reuters) - China will open a high-speed rail line to the North Korean border on Thursday, state news agency Xinhua said, the latest effort to boost economic ties despite tension between the countries.
KIEV (Reuters) - Ukraine's parliament on Monday voted for constitutional changes to give its eastern regions a special status that it hopes will blunt their separatist drive, but divisions among pro-Western lawmakers suggested they will have a rougher ride to become law.
Some of the most compelling photographs from RFE/RL's broadcast region and beyond. For more photo galleries, see our "Picture This" archive by clicking on the banner above.
Taliban Admits Covering Up 2013 Death Of Leader Mullah Omarby support@pangea-cms.com (RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan)
The Taliban has admitted that it covered up the death of its leader Mullah Mohammad Omar for more than two years, confirming that he died in 2013 as was first claimed by Afghanistan’s intelligence.
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As Vladimir Putin heads to Beijing, it is becoming clear that China isn't the savior Russia had been hoping for.
Khadija Ismayilova's Final Words To Court: 'I Might Be In Prison, But The Work Will Continue'by support@pangea-cms.com (Charles Recknagel)
A prominent Azerbaijani investigative journalist and RFE/RL contributor has made a defiant closing statement in a courtroom in Baku, saying her trial on economic crimes charges has failed to crush her spirit or stop her work.
Baku Court Orders Halt To Ismayilova's Final Statement, Delaying Verdictby support@pangea-cms.com (RFE/RL's Azerbaijani Service)
The judge in the trial of Azerbaijani journalist Khadija Ismayilova has halted her from reading her final statement, leading the hearing and expected verdict to be postponed until September 1.
Kazakhstan's government says agreements worth $20 billion are to be signed in Beijing in the coming days during an official visit by President Nursultan Nazarbaev.
At least one Ukrainian National Guard soldier was killed in clashes with demonstrators after agrenade explodes outside parliament in Kyiv.
Azerbaijani investigative journalist Khadija Ismayilova says "I might be in prison, but the work will continue," in her final statement read to court ahead of trial verdict.
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Putin Pumps Iron, Internet Delivers Punch Linesby support@pangea-cms.com (Anna Shamanska)
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev spent their Sunday on a thoroughly photographed man-date. Whatever the official goal might have been, the photo shoot sparked a wave of Internet memes.
At Independence Day celebrations, Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambaev said upcoming elections will be a major test for the country.
A big question mark remains on the list of U.S. presidential hopefuls – will Vice President Joe Biden enter the race on the Democratic side, joining former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders? VOA’s Michael Bowman reports, the answer could come any day now and put an end to weeks of speculation and intrigue in Washington and beyond.
Originally published at - http://www.voanews.com/media/video/will-vp-joseph-biden-enter-us-presidential-fray/2938566.html
White House: Mt. McKinley to be Renamed Denaliby webdesk@voanews.com (Associated Press)
President Barack Obama will change the name of North America's tallest mountain peak from Mount McKinley to Denali, the White House said Sunday, bestowing the traditional Alaska Native name on the eve of a historic presidential visit to Alaska. By renaming the peak Denali, an Athabascan word meaning "the high one," Obama is wading into a sensitive and decades-old conflict between residents of Alaska and Ohio. Alaskans have informally called the 6,194-meter mountain Denali...
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