Officials Masked Severity Of Hack - WSJ | FBI: Valerie Jarrett Family Communists | Russia 'playing with fire' with nuclear saber-rattling: Pentagon
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John Steffee7 hours ago
The revelation that the Obama Administration has lied, covered up and did all they could
to avoid disclosure of information is nothing new. It is, after all, their standard operating
procedure. A truly disgusting and dangerous group of people, these Obama clones.
Heaven help us as we become a third world nation at best as a direct result of
this pompous, arrogant, vengeful, deceitful, petulant, condescending and narcissistic liar
Exclusive: Chinese Cyberthieves Hack FBI in Dangerous Breach
Officials Masked Severity Of Hack
More news for fbi and opm hack
Volunteers try to identify a body among others of those who have died due to an intense heat wave at the Edhi Foundation morgue in Karachi on June 22. (Akhtar Soomro/Reuters)
A man waits, right, while volunteers search for the body of his deceased relative among the bodies of heat wave victims at Edhi Foundation morgue in Karachi on June 22. (Akhtar Soomro/Reuters)
The revelation that the Obama Administration has lied, covered up and did all they could
to avoid disclosure of information is nothing new. It is, after all, their standard operating
procedure. A truly disgusting and dangerous group of people, these Obama clones.
Heaven help us as we become a third world nation at best as a direct result of
this pompous, arrogant, vengeful, deceitful, petulant, condescending and narcissistic liar
Officials Masked Severity Of Hack - WSJ
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US government hacking number sparks unusual drama at Senate briefing
A brief dispute flared between senior officials from OPM and the FBI, laying bare a ...
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WASHINGTON—The Obama administration for more than a week avoided disclosing the severity ofan intrusion into federal computers by defining it as two breaches but divulging just one, said people familiar with the matter.
That approach has frustrated lawmakers as they probe the administration’s handling of one of the biggest-ever thefts of government records.
Agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation suspect China was behind the hack of Office of Personnel Management databases discovered in April, and that those hackers accessed not only personnel files but security-clearance forms, current and former U.S. officials said. Such forms contain information that foreign intelligence agencies could use to target espionage operations. Chinese officials have said they weren’t involved.
The administration on June 4 disclosed the breach of personnel files—but not the security-clearance theft. That theft was disclosed a week later, even though investigators knew about it much earlier, people familiar with the situation said.
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OPM Director Katherine Archuleta on Wednesday said her agency is investigating whether up to 18 million unique Social Security numbers were stolen as part of the attack on security-clearance records, though she cautioned that the number was unverified and preliminary.
Her statement came during testimony before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Many lawmakers have accused OPM of not providing enough information about what was stolen.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R., Utah), who heads the oversight panel, reiterated on Wednesday his call for Ms. Archuleta to resign, something she said she had no plans to do.
An OPM spokeswoman said the agency had been “completely consistent’’ in its accounting of the data breach.
“As the investigation into the personnel records intrusion continued, it was discovered that OPM systems containing information related to the background investigations of current, former and prospective federal government employees, and those for whom a federal background investigation was conducted, may also have been compromised,” the spokeswoman said. “We notified Congress of this intrusion as well.’’
As an investigation points to burgeoning effects of the OPM hack, with millions of personnel records, background checks and Social Security numbers possibly stolen, questions over the administration’s handling of the intrusion are growing.
Melanie Dougherty Thomas, who advises companies dealing with computer breaches, said deciding how much to say about a breach—and when—is critical.
“The general public understands there are breaches all the time. If you wait too long, you give the perception you’re trying to hide the facts, and that to people is unforgivable,” she said.
Before the OPM formally announced June 4 that it had been hacked, officials at the agency denied to The Wall Street Journal that security-clearance forms were taken, as people familiar with the attack had described.
A day after the public announcement, an OPM spokesman said there was “no evidence to suggest that information other than what is normally found in a personnel file has been exposed.’’ By that time, the FBI already knew—and told OPM—that security-clearance forms had been tapped, officials said.
On June 5, the same day as the OPM denial, Janet Napolitano, president of the University of California system, sent a letter to university officials saying anyone with a security clearance—including people who have never worked for the government—could be affected by the hack. Ms. Napolitano, a former head of the Department of Homeland Security, didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Officials familiar with the behind-the-scene discussions said officials at the White House and OPM agreed to handle the problem as at least two separate breaches—one of the personnel files, and one of the security clearance forms.
That had major implications for the initial description of damage. Rather than saying the hack potentially involved the private details of an estimated 18 million people—and possibly millions more if relatives and close friends listed on the security clearance forms are counted—the agency said about four million people were potentially affected.
The FBI, which is investigating the OPM hack, didn’t define it the same way. When responding to computer attacks on companies or government agencies, the FBI leaves it to the victimized agency to tell the public and its employees what was taken. But in the case of the OPM, FBI officials, including the director, James Comey, also had to speak to lawmakers about the incident, and Mr. Comey didn’t discuss the incident as two breaches—said people familiar with the matter.
Some administration officials defended the White House and OPM description of the breach, saying officials were following an internal decision-making process, which culminated in a June 8 finding by the National Security Council that officials had high confidence the security- clearance forms had been accessed.
Four days later, the administration announced these forms had, in fact, been tapped by the hackers.
Ms. Archuleta said in her testimony Wednesday she believes 4.2 million personnel records of current and former government employees were stolen, but said estimates were less precise about the hack of background- check investigations, which took place over a number of years.
“It is my understanding that the 18 million [number] refers to a preliminary, unverified and approximate number of unique Social Security numbers in the background investigations data,” she said. “It is a number I am not comfortable with.”
The dispute over the extent of the breach flared the day before in a private briefing with lawmakers, said people familiar with the discussion. When Ms. Archuleta said she didn’t know where the figure of 18 million Social Security numbers came from, a senior FBI official interjected and said it was based on her agency’s own data, these people said.
An FBI spokesman declined to comment on the closed-door briefing, as did an OPM spokeswoman.
Ms. Archuleta told Congress OPM and other agencies are looking through the files to try to tabulate a more precise number of records that were stolen. She said the numbers could be less than 18 million, as some of the Social Security numbers could have been duplicates from other forms. But, she warned, the number of people whose personal information was stolen could also grow.
“It may well increase from these initial reports,” she said.
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Valerie Jarrett’s father, maternal grandfather and father-in-law were dedicated communists under prolonged investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to FBI files obtained by Judicial Watch.
Jarrett is a trusted senior adviser to President Barack Obama.
Jarrett’s father was James Bowman, a medical doctor who specialized in pathology, genetics and hematology. He also served as a professor at the Pritzker School of Medicine at the University of Chicago. He died in 2011.
An extensive FBI dossier obtained by Judicial Watch shows that Bowman belonged to the Association of Internes and Medical Students, an organization which “has long been a faithful follower of the Communist Party line,” then-contemporary FBI files indicate.
The FBI also found that Jarrett’s father communicated with Alfred Stern, a scion of wealth and suspected spy for the Soviet Union who was indicted absentia on espionage charges in 1957. According to the charges, he and his wife Martha Dodd Stern, the daughter of a U.S. ambassador to Germany, transmitted military, commercial and industrial information to the Soviet Union.
In response to the federal investigation, the Sterns fled to Mexico in 1953, then communist Czechoslovakia, then communist Cuba, then, finally, back to communist Czechoslovakia. In Prague, Stern worked for the communist government’s housing ministry. He died in 1986.
Jarrett’s father also spent time in Iran working after his discharge from the Army Medical Corps in 1955, FBI records reveal. (At the time, Iran was led by a government supported by the United States and Great Britain.)
Jarrett was born in Shiraz, Iran in 1956.
Jarrett’s father and her maternal grandfather, Robert Rochon Taylor, also maintained a business partnership with Stern, FBI records reveal.
Jarrett’s father-in-law, Vernon Jarrett, was among the individuals named on the FBI’s Security Index, a database used by the FBI to track people potentially dangerous to national security, reports Judicial Watch.
Vernon Jarrett was a long-time Chicago journalist. He worked at the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times. He was also a founder of the National Association of Black Journalists. He came to the attention of the FBI because he had written propaganda for an unidentified Communist Party front group in Chicago which, FBI files indicate, distributed communist propaganda to “the middle class.”
The FBI further concluded that Vernon Jarrett could have been a Soviet saboteur and, in the event of a military conflict with the Soviet Union, the FBI would arrest him in a sweep of potential saboteurs. Vernon Jarrett died in 2004.
Valerie Jarrett was married to Vernon Jarrett’s son, William Robert Jarrett, for just five years. The couple happily married in 1983 and unhappily divorced in 1988.
Valerie Jarrett, who currently enjoys full-time Secret Service protection, served as a co-chair of Obama’s presidential transition team in 2009. She is one of three senior advisers to Obama and has long been a trusted svengali of the president as well as first lady Michelle Obama.
Jarrett’s official title is senior advisor to the president. She works in the White House and manages the White House Office of Public Engagement, Office of Intergovernmental Affairs and Office of Urban Affairs.
She holds a bachelor of arts degree from Stanford University and a law degree from the University of Michigan.
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· · ·
A heat wave in southern Pakistan has caused so much death in the country that morgues are overflowing, local medical workers say.
"They are piling bodies one on top of the other," Seemin Jamali, an official at a government hospital in Karachi, said of the city's overflowing morgues in an interview with Al Jazeera. Anwar Kazmi, an official with the Pakistani charity Edhi Welfare Organisation, told Agence France-Presse that the morgues had "reached capacity."
Pakistan's heat wave has been described as the worst in decades, with temperatures soaring to 120 degrees Fahrenheit. The high temperatures hit during the Islamic month of Ramadan, when many Muslims were fasting during daylight hours. As of Thursday, reports in the Pakistani media put the death toll at 1,200, though temperatures have begun to fall.
Things got so bad that some morgues have put up signs outside, explaining that they are full.
Photographs taken from inside one morgue show how crowded it has become.
Volunteers try to identify a body among others of those who have died due to an intense heat wave at the Edhi Foundation morgue in Karachi on June 22. (Akhtar Soomro/Reuters)
A man waits, right, while volunteers search for the body of his deceased relative among the bodies of heat wave victims at Edhi Foundation morgue in Karachi on June 22. (Akhtar Soomro/Reuters)
The scale of crowding at the morgues had some major ill effects, Kazmi told Reuters. "The refrigeration unit was not working properly because there were too many bodies," the official explained.
On Tuesday, the Express Tribune reported that authorities were now attempting to bury unidentified bodies within a day to help deal with the backlog, but gravediggers were taking advantage of the situation and charging double their normal rates.
As horrific as Pakistan's situation is, it's not the first major heat wave of the year to result in deaths in South Asia. A heat wave in India in late May was blamed for the deaths of 2,500, making it one of the deadliest heat waves in history (Pakistan's heat wave would also find a place on that list).
And while infrastructure problems definitely play a role in the death toll (power cuts coincided with the heat wave in Pakistan), an even more difficult factor also plays a major role. As The Post's Wonkblog noted this year, climate change may not always create these extreme weather events, but it certainly makes them worse.
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Adam Taylor writes about foreign affairs for The Washington Post. Originally from London, he studied at the University of Manchester and Columbia University.
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World | Thu Jun 25, 2015 4:04pm EDT
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a session of the Civic Chamber at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, June 23, 2015.
Reuters/Sergei Karpukhin
Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev walk to attend a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in central Moscow, Russia, June 22, 2015.
Reuters/Ekaterina Shtukina/RIA Novosti/Pool
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a session of the Civic Chamber at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, June 23, 2015.
Reuters/Sergei Karpukhin
Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev walk to attend a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in central Moscow, Russia, June 22, 2015.
Reuters/Ekaterina Shtukina/RIA Novosti/Pool
WASHINGTON Russia is "playing with fire" with its nuclear saber-rattling and the United States is determined to prevent it from gaining a significant military advantage through violations of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, the deputy U.S. defense chief said on Thursday.
Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work, speaking to lawmakers in the House of Representatives, also said modernizing and maintaining U.S. nuclear forces in the coming years would consume up to 7 percent of the defense budget, up from the current 3 to 4 percent, and could squeeze other programs unless additional funding was approved.
Speaking to the House Armed Services Committee, Work said Moscow's effort to use its nuclear forces to intimidate its neighbors had failed, actually bringing NATO allies closer. He also criticized what he called Russia's "escalate to de-escalate" strategy.
"Anyone who thinks they can control escalation through the use of nuclear weapons is literally playing with fire," Work said. "Escalation is escalation, and nuclear use would be the ultimate escalation."
The deputy defense chief said Russia continued to violate the Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty, which bans ballistic and cruise missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometers (315 to 3,450 miles).
Work said the Pentagon was developing options for President Barack Obama to consider to respond to the treaty violations and would not let Russia "gain significant military advantage through INF violations."
The United States is about to embark on a costly long-term effort to modernize its aging nuclear force, including weapons, submarines, bombers and ballistic missiles. Estimates of the cost have ranged from $355 billion over a decade to about $1 trillion over 30 years.
The modernization comes as the Pentagon struggles with tight budgets and the need for other expensive weapons like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and new warships.
Work said the nuclear force modernization was expected to cost an average $18 billion per year from 2021 to 2035 in constant 2016 dollars.
The Pentagon's annual base budget has been about $500 billion for several years.
"Without additional funding dedicated to strategic forces modernization, sustaining this level of spending will require very, very hard choices and will impact the other parts of the defense portfolio," Work said.
Arms control groups say the U.S. nuclear force is larger than needed to accomplish the president's strategic aims, and the Pentagon could save money by prudently trimming the size of the nuclear triad and other steps.
(Reporting by David Alexander; Editing by Paul Simao)
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Eurozone finance ministers concluded a meeting on Greece to give Athens and the institutions overseeing its bailout more time to agree on conditions, officials said.
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The face of America is changing.
The baby boomers, once the country's largest generation, can no longer hold claim to the title. The so-called millennial generation, or those Americans born between 1982 and 2000, is now the country's biggest segment of the population, with 83.1 million members, compared with 75.4 million for the boomers, according to a new U.S. Census report.
It's not only the numbers that are shifting, but also the country's diversity. Millennials, who represent more than one-quarter of the U.S. population, are more racially diverse than the nation's older generations, Census data shows. About 44 percent are part of a minority race or ethnic group, compared with only about 22 percent for Americans over the age of 65.
Still, there's another generation that's giving the millennials a run on the claim of being America's most diverse group. The country's youngest citizens, those younger than 5 years old, are the first group in U.S. history to represent a "majority-minority," which means more of them are minorities than whites. About 50.2 percent of Americans younger than 5 are minorities, the Census said.
That's having a long-term impact on America's racial and generational composition. A decade ago, minorities represented about 33 percent of the country. That's shifted to almost 38 percent in 2014.
Several trends are driving the changes, such as immigration from China and Mexico, along with an increase in multiracial families.
The share of multiracial babies has surged, rising from 1 percent in 1970 to 10 percent in 2013, according to a Pew Research Center study published earlier this month. Taboos against interracial marriage and relationships have faded, and demographers believe there will be more multiracial children born in future decades.
These social shifts are also having other effects. That includes how businesses market their products, with many companies eager to attract millennials, given the group's size. Whole Foods (WFM), just to cite one example, is opening a new chain that will target millennials. While details regarding the concept weren't available, millennials are a frugal group, often looking for bargains and good values.
That might be due to their values, but it could also reflect the fact that the millennial generation is coming of age during the slow economic recovery that has followed the Great Recession, an era of weak wage growth and, for many, diminished opportunity as inequality increases. Many are also struggling under the burden of student loans, with the class of 2015 graduating as the most indebted ever.
Indeed, while millennials are now the biggest generation in America, they are far from the richest. As a group they are heavily in debt, with half of them reporting that paying down their loans consumes more than half their monthly income, according to a 2014 study by Wells Fargo (WFC). Many are delaying buying a home and starting a family, given their debt issues and the uneven recovery.
A diverse future
The historic shift in America's racial composition is most visible in certain parts of the country. There are five U.S. states where the population has already shifted to a majority-minority, according to the latest Census data.
Hawaii has the most diverse population, with 77 percent of its residents counting as members of a minority race or ethnic group. Next is Washington, D.C., at 64.2 percent, followed by California at 61.5 percent. New Mexico is the fourth-most diverse state, at 61.1 percent, with Texas ranking fifth at 56.5 percent.
Several other states are on the threshold of switching from being predominantly white to a majority-minority. They include Nevada, with 48.5 percent of its population considered minorities.
What does America's minority population look like? Hispanics are the largest group, with 55.4 million as of July 2014, or an increase of 2.1 percent from the previous year.
The black population counts 45.7 million Americans, an increase of 1.3 percent since July 2013. Asians are the third-largest group, at 20.3 million, an increase of 3.2 percent from the previous year. American Indians totaled 6.5 million in mid-2014, an increase of 1.4 percent since the previous year.
As for non-Hispanic whites, there are 197.9 million in the country, an increase of 0.5 percent from the previous year.
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After a Supreme Court victory, the president says the law is working -- and the time has come for GOP opponents to admit it
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union leaders faced a daunting list of crises as they began their summit on Thursday, notably migrants crowding in at their southern borders, Russia growling in the east, Britain's threat to quit and a desperate need to create jobs.
ATHENS (Reuters) - Greek lawmakers passed a bitterly-contested law on citizenship for the children of migrants on Thursday, in a vote that split the ruling coalition but pointed toward possible alternative alliances for the ruling Syriza party.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States released a long-delayed annual human rights report on Thursday, with strong words for countries like Iran, Cuba, Myanmar and Vietnam, even as it seeks to improve relations with them.
Amid new engagements, US tags Cuba, Iran as rights abusersby By MATTHEW LEE and BRADLEY KLAPPER
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Obama administration has once again identified Iran and Cuba as serial human rights abusers even as it accelerates attempts to improve relations with both countries....
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WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration is increasingly confident that China's government, not criminal hackers, was responsible for the extraordinary theft of personal information about as many as 14 million current and former federal employees and others, The Associated Press has learned. One sign: None of the data has been credibly offered for sale on underground markets popular among professional identity thieves.
Investigators inside U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies, using secret "beacons" employed across the Internet, have been monitoring data transmissions across overseas networks for the file properties associated with the American personnel records, and scouring communications among targeted foreign hackers for credible references to the theft, two people directly involved in the investigation said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because parts of the case and techniques being used are classified.
The investigation is being coordinated at the little-known National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force, which is led by the FBI and includes 19 intelligence agencies and law enforcement, including the National Security Agency, CIA, Homeland Security Department, Secret Service and U.S. Cyber Command.
Investigators also have watched underground markets where identity thieves peddle information and found no trace of the data stolen from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, they said. In the chessboard world of espionage, they also acknowledged that by revealing what they said was indirect evidence that spying was actually the motive, it might encourage Beijing's government to sell at least some of the data surreptitiously to implicate identity thieves in what would be a counter-counterintelligence false-flag operation.
China has openly denied involvement in the break-in, and the U.S. has publicly provided no direct evidence proving China was responsible.
The administration acknowledged earlier this month that hackers stole the personnel files and background investigations of current and former civilian, intelligence and military employees, contractors and even job applicants. Initially, the U.S. said the stolen data included Social Security numbers, birth dates, job actions and other private information for 4.2 million workers.
Days later, it acknowledged that the cyber spies obtained detailed background information on millions of military, intelligence and other personnel who have been investigated for security clearances. That information included details about drug use, criminal convictions, mental health issues and the names and addresses of relatives and any foreigners with whom they had contact.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest on Wednesday said President Barack Obama continues to have confidence in OPM's director, Katherine Archuleta.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, head of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and Rep. Jim Langevin, D-R.I., who is considered a leader in Congress on cybersecurity issues, urged her to resign. "I am deeply concerned by her refusal to acknowledge her culpability in the breach," Langevin said. "Ms. Archuleta should tender her resignation immediately."
A day earlier, Archuleta acknowledged to Congress "a high degree of confidence" that hackers stole information from background investigations for current, former and prospective federal employees. She said OPM had not encrypted the sensitive information because "an adversary possessing proper credentials can often decrypt data." She did not acknowledge in Tuesday's congressional hearing that China was believed to be responsible or that more than 4.2 million employees were affected, telling lawmakers she would only discuss such subjects in a classified setting.
The two people who spoke to AP, and a third congressional aide familiar with the case who also spoke on condition of anonymity after classified briefings, said that as many as 14 million current and former employees were affected.
"What's your best estimate? Is the 14 million number wrong or accurate?" Chaffetz asked Archuleta at the congressional hearing.
She answered: "We do not have an estimate because where this is an ongoing investigation."
The new disclosures bode poorly for U.S. efforts to quietly and quickly locate the stolen data - especially the detailed personal histories of millions of people with security clearances - on foreign computer servers and hack them to delete, encrypt or corrupt the material to render it useless. The administration has assessed that multiple backup copies have already been made with at least some stored on computers physically disconnected from any networks, the two people involved in the investigation told the AP.
___
Associated Press writers Jim Kuhnhenn and Eric Tucker contributed to this report.
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Chron.com
US wonders: Why stolen data on federal workers not for sale?
Chicago Daily Herald-Jun 18, 2015
OPM and the Homeland Security Department publicly confirmed the data thefts on June ... Under the White House plan, companies who suffer routine hacking attacks can ... and the FBI or Secret Service can waive requiring notifications if it would damage .... Norovirus found after illness at Elgin golf outing.
Businesses avoid paying $200 billion annually in taxes by channeling their overseas’ investments through offshore financial hubs, said a U.N. agency
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