The U.S. and Global Security Review - Blog by Michael Novakhov

Yemen's al-Qaida branch has exploited the chaos in this embattled country to capture three towns near the southern port city of Aden, where pro-government forces have been advancing against Shiite rebels in recent weeks, officials said Thursday.

Kerry in Hanoi to mark 20th anniversary of US-Vietnam ties
Thursday August 6th, 2015 at 5:09 PM

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, a Vietnam War veteran, is in the communist nation's capital to mark the 20th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Washington and Hanoi as he wraps up a five-nation tour of the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

Iran blocking access to nuclear personnel, U.N. inspector saysby Dave Boyer
Thursday August 6th, 2015 at 5:08 PM

Undermining one of President Obama's primary arguments for the nuclear deal with Iran, the head of the United Nation's nuclear watchdog agency said Iran has refused to allow U.N. inspectors to interview scientists and military officers to investigate allegations that Tehran operated a covert nuclear-weapons program.

Yukiya Amano, director general ...

Why let former presidents cash in?
Thursday August 6th, 2015 at 5:07 PM

President Harry Truman once said that he would never lend himself “to any transaction, however respectable, that would commercialize on the prestige and dignity of the office of the presidency.” His successors have not held themselves to the same standard.

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McConnell: Obama Administration ‘Misled’ Congress, Hid Evidence to Conceal IRS Targeting by Morgan Chalfant
Thursday August 6th, 2015 at 5:06 PM

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) accused the Obama administration of misleading Congress and hiding evidence in order to conceal the effort by the Internal Revenue Service to target conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status.

The Hill reported that McConnell slammed the White House in a statement Wednesday following the release of a bipartisan Senate Finance Committee report that revealed the extent to which the “delinquent” IRS mismanaged applications from Tea Party groups.

“The report makes clear that civic groups were harassed specifically because they identified as conservative,” McConnell declared. “It underlines the seething contempt partisan officials like Lois Lerner had for them. It also reveals that administration officials continually misled Congress and attempted to hide evidence that might have brought the truth to light sooner.”

Among the 142-page report’s key findings, it concluded that Lois Lerner, former head of the government agency’s Exempt Organizations Unit, “failed to adequately manage” members of her staff processing the applications in question for two years beginning in 2010.

“The Nixonian harassment of Americans with the gall to think differently than the president was outrageous enough when it first came to light,” McConnell added of the IRS targeting, to which Lerner admitted in 2013. “It’s even more outrageous today.”

The release of the congressional report comes as multiple lawmakers demand that President Obama fire current IRS Commissioner John Koskinen for hindering the congressional investigation into the targeting scandal.

Reps. Ron Desantis (R., Fla.) and Jim Jordan (R., Ohio), both members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed last week, “Commissioner Koskinen … has failed the American people by frustrating Congress’s attempts to ascertain the truth,” threatening to pursue impeachment should Obama refuse to act.

Chairman of the House committee Jason Chaffetz (R., Utah) authored a letter to Obama asking him to do the same by “work[ing] hand-in-hand with Congress to fix the problem.”

The IRS addressed the report in a statement Wednesday, alleging that it has “cooperated with Congress and other investigators.”

“We have already taken many steps to make improvements in our processes and procedures, and we are pleased to have other suggestions from the committee to help us in our continuing effort,” the government agency said.

McConnell insisted that “the time for forthright answers and an actual, serious plan from the Obama administration to prevent this from ever happening again is now.”

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France seeking new buyers for Mistral warshipsby JOHN-THOR DAHLBURG
Thursday August 6th, 2015 at 5:06 PM

BRUSSELS (AP) - If you're looking for a boat to carry 16 helicopter gunships, 700 troops and up to 50 armored vehicles, the French may be ready to make you a super deal.

After France reached agreement to cancel the sale of two warships it had been building for Russia, ...

FBI Releases Video Of Suspicious Man In Gardner Museum Hours Before $500 ... - Hartford Courant
Thursday August 6th, 2015 at 5:05 PM

Hartford Courant

FBI Releases Video Of Suspicious Man In Gardner Museum Hours Before $500 ...
Hartford Courant
The FBI released a never-before-seen video Thursday that appears to show a security guard at Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum allowing a suspicious, unidentified man into the museum the night before a sensational robbery of a half billion ...
New Gardner Museum Art Heist Video Released By FBICBS Local
FBI hopes grainy video will help solve 25-year-old $500 million art heistYahoo News
FBI Releases Intriguing Isabella Stewart Gardner Security Footage From the ...ARTnews
FOX CT -WHDH-TV
all 144 news articles »

Henry on Clinton Email: FBI ‘Doesn’t Just Play Around’ With Investigations by David Rutz
Thursday August 6th, 2015 at 5:04 PM

The New York Post reports:

After a report that the federal investigation into the security of Hillary Clinton’s private email server is a “criminal probe,” Fox News correspondent Ed Henry said Thursday that the FBI “doesn’t just play around” if it’s making an official inquiry.

The FBI investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s unsecured email account is not just a fact-finding venture — it’s a criminal probe, sources told The Post on Wednesday.

The feds are investigatingto what extent Clinton relied on her home server and other private devices to send and store classified documents, according to a federal source with knowledge of the inquiry.

“It’s definitely a criminal probe,” said the source. “I’m not sure why they’re not calling it a criminal probe.

News broke this week that the FBI had launched an investigation into Clinton’s server, which violated Obama administration policy since it was not an official government account. Press outlets repeatedly saidClinton was not the target of the probe and “not accused of any wrongdoing.”

Henry said Clinton’s presidential campaign was “aggressively” trying to spin the coverage around the story to emphasize that point.

“This is Hillary Clinton’s email server, and she was the one who set it up,” Henry said. “So even if it technically is not a criminal investigation today, the FBI doesn’t just play around.

“A lot of people find that out when they have the FBI looking around, FBI agents trying to get information, and one would expect they’re going to try to get their hands on that server at some point. Look, if you’re a political campaign, and basically part of your defense is, she’s not under criminal investigation, that suggests at the very least you’re dealing with some serious political fallout.”

Iranian Terrorism Victims Ask Court to Block Release of Iranian Assets Under Nuclear Deal by Cody M. Poplin
Thursday August 6th, 2015 at 5:04 PM

Lawfare - Hard National Security Choices

Two dozen plaintiffs filed suit yesterday in the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York to enjoin the Obama administration from releasing an estimated $100 billion in frozen Iranian assets as part of the nuclear deal with world powers and Tehran.

The plaintiffs, who are all families of terror victims, claim to hold more than a billion dollars in court judgments against the Islamic Republic for its sponsorship of terrorist attacks committed from 1995 through 2006. In their complaint, the families claim that releasing funds as required by the Iran Deal necessarily means that they will never collect on their judgments; and further that the President cannot lawfully release the funds without certifying first that Iran has ceased to fund international terrorism---which it continues to do. They accordingly ask for mandamus as well as injunctive relief. The funds belong to the Central Bank of Iran and are primarily held in overseas bank accounts.

A State Department spokesmanPooja Jhunjhunwala told Bloomberg "the U.S. does not hold or control any of this money" and that they would "continue to work with Congress, the Department of Justice and others to explore ways to compensate victims of Iran's past activities." She also stressed that there is no connection between the expected sanctions relief and the court judgments held by the plaintiffs.

You can read the complaint below:

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A Soldier of the Great War by Gabriel Schoenfeld
Thursday August 6th, 2015 at 5:03 PM

Lawfare - Hard National Security Choices

The Great War of Our Time: The CIA's Fight Against Terrorism--From al Qa'ida to ISIS

By Michael Morell

Twelve/The Hachette Group (2015)

Reviewed by Gabriel Schoenfeld

When the history of United States in the 21st century is written, the role of the Central Intelligence Agency will loom large in its early chapters. Two of the spy agency’s mistakes had terrible consequences for the future of the country. First, it failed to detect the September 11 plot. Second, it issued a faulty estimate that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction, which led to a major war. What went wrong?

Not long ago, Michael Morell hung up his trench coat after a 31-year career in the agency that took him from an entry level position to an array of high-level postings, ending up as CIA deputy director under Barack Obama. His memoir, The Great War of Our Time: The CIA's Fight Against Terrorism--From al Qa'ida to ISIS, offers a tour of agency successes and failures and also explores a number of other highly controversial matters, including the “enhanced interrogation” of terrorists, and the agency’s convoluted role in the 2012 Benghazi imbroglio.

Morell’s career exposed him to a diverse array of agency activities, especially the year he spent as the principal CIA briefer for President George W. Bush. In the summer of 2001, Morell found himself in the Oval Office telling the president that the “system was blinking red” with signals that a major terrorist strike was imminent. Not long after, he was with the president in Florida at the instant that word came through about a plane flying into the World Trade Center. Needless to say, Morell’s reconstruction of such moments makes for a gripping tale.

Morell traces the agency’s efforts to understand and counter the rising threat posed by Osama bin Laden in the 1990s. George Tenet was Bill Clinton’s pick as CIA director and Morell was his executive assistant who saw everything Tenet did up close. Counterterrorism in those years was not, as Morell writes, a “front-burner issue,” and al Qaeda was only a blip among many on the radar screen. Yet George Tenet had the problem very much on his mind. In 1996, after the name of Osama bin Laden kept showing up in raw intelligence reporting as a terrorist financier and/or plotter, the agency created a unit called Alec Station to find out more about him. Tenet was mobilized and “we were not sitting on our hands,” writes Morell, but unfortunately the agency as a whole, “with the exception of Alec Station, did not take al Qaeda as seriously as did its director.”

One sign of this lack of seriousness was the inappropriate background of the man selected to run Alec Station. “I couldn’t get over that the leader of Alec Station,” Morell writes, “an officer by the name of Michael Scheuer—was not a trained operations officer and that few operations officers played a significant role in the unit. “ Not only did Scheuer lack the requisite experience for the job, he was also “a zealot” who was “constantly getting into fights with the FBI, the NSA, and his own bosses.”

Part of this behavior stemmed from Scheuer’s justifiable frustration that his superiors were not taking the bin Laden threat with sufficient seriousness. But part of it was the fact that the CIA had placed someone with an unhinged personality—a man with a “penchant for angering anyone who didn’t see things exactly as he did”—into a critical job. Morell’s verdict is harsh. The inadequate work of Alec Station “significantly lowered the chances that we would detect an attack in preparation and disrupt it” and indeed the shortcomings of the unit “helped lead to the bombings of embassies in East Africa” in 1998. Matters only began to improve after the attacks, when Scheuer was removed from his post and Tenet put the agency on a war footing to meet the al Qaeda challenge. Unfortunately, the Clinton White House, preoccupied with the Monica Lewinsky drama in that critical year, then dropped the ball. Morell’s overly diplomatic judgment is that “much more could have been done on the military and paramilitary fronts” but President Clinton “faced constraints on how far he could go.”

The genesis of the Iraq WMD fiasco, like the 9/11 fiasco, has been explored in depth by a bipartisan government commission. Morell adds some insights and some color to existing analysis. He explains what he calls the “largest failure in agency history” by reference to a swarm of biases that fatally undermined the agency’s analytical product.

Analysts were prone to “hindsight bias”: having failed to discover Saddam’s nuclear program in the early 1990s before the first Gulf war, they did not want to make the same mistake twice. Because of “analytic creep,” mere assumptions about Saddam Hussein hardened into firm convictions. Saddam was known to possess chemical weapons, having employed them against the Kurds; thanks therefore to “historical bias,” analysts believed he still possessed them. Analysts also succumbed to “review bias,” which led them to ignore outlying possibilities in favor of the most likely finding. On top of that, there was “confirmation bias,” which Morell defines as “the tendency to accept facts as true if they support one’s view and reject them otherwise.” The worst lapse of all, recounts Morell, was a failure by analysts to “rigorously ask themselves how confident they were in their judgments.” If they had seriously pondered that question, they would have arrived at the answer: “not very” instead of the “slam dunk,” with which Tenet reassured the president that weapons of mass destruction were in Iraq.

In telling this story, Morell takes up the question of whether the Bush administration attempted inappropriately to shape the CIA’s intelligence reporting for ends of their own. He notes that Vice-President Cheney—accompanied by his aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby—made frequent visits to CIA headquarters. “The vice president was thorough and came armed with a lot of questions, but he did not push a particular line of argument” (emphasis in the original). There was nothing untoward about such visits; “Asking a lot of questions was his right—indeed, his responsibility.” On the other hand, Morell also recounts an episode in which Libby pressed the CIA hard to withdraw a paper asserting that there was “no working relationship” between al Qaeda and Iraq before, during, or after the 9/11 attacks. Morell calls Libby’s importuning “the most blatant attempt to politicize intelligence that I saw in thirty-three years in the business, and it would not be the last attempt by Libby to do so.”

Morell is a shrewd bureaucratic operator, with a wealth of experience in national security. How should we appraise his account? Overall, his book is thoroughly researched and carefully written, as one would expect from the work of a master briefer. I found myself persuaded by his treatment of some issues. He offers a thoughtful examination of the “enhanced interrogation” controversy, concluding that for Bush it was a “Lincoln moment,” a juncture where a president chose to violate basic principles “because he thought it necessary to save the Union.”

Especially cogent is Morell’s account of the Benghazi affair, in which CIA generated talking points seemed to give political cover to the White House following the murder of the American ambassador to Libya and three other American officials on September 11, 2012. Morell acknowledges his own mistakes and mistakes by the agency in the episode, but they appear to have stemmed more from sand in the bureaucratic gears than any effort to protect Team Obama as the electoral contest with Mitt Romney was drawing to a close. (White House and State Department manipulation of the CIA-generated talking points for political ends is, of course, another matter entirely.)

But not every aspect of Morell’s account is equally compelling. For one thing, George Tenet gets an unwarranted pass. Amid other glowing terms, Morell describes his boss as “brilliant in an unthreatening way.” Tenet may be that and more, but it remains difficult to credit Morell’s assertion that in the mid-1990s the CIA director was taking the al Qaeda threat “seriously,” that he was “focused on it, laser-like," and that “the terror threat was the single issue that would keep [him] up at night.” Even on the evidence that Morell himself presents this is hokum and bunkum.

Was it laser-like for Tenet to have allowed the CIA’s al Qaeda unit to languish for critical years under the ministrations of the ill-equipped Michael Scheuer? Among other things, Morell recounts that he himself suggested to Tenet—before the embassy bombings—that Scheuer should have been shifted away from responsibility. Tenet took no action on that suggestion until after Americans had died.

A more central indicator is the progression of National Intelligence Estimates about terrorism. NIEs are the most authoritative pronouncements of the intelligence community; when issued, they often have a major influence on the direction of national policy. In 1995, two years before Tenet assumed the directorship, the CIA issued a National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism that presciently mentioned both the Pentagon and the World Trade Center as possible future targets. The agency updated that NIE in 1997, adding six pages that mentioned Osama bin Laden, but only in passing. Neither the twin embassy bombings in Africa in 1998 nor the attack on the U.S. S. Cole in 2000 prompted Tenet to return to the problem. Only after 9/11 did the CIA issue a new NIE on terrorism. Tenet was not exactly shaking the trees on this critical subject. One can appreciate the fierce loyalty that Tenet inspired in the people with whom he worked, including quite evidently Morell, but as the man running the CIA when it committed what were perhaps its two most consequential lapses ever, his place in history does not look particularly heroic.

Regarding Morell’s allegation that Scooter Libby attempted to politicize intelligence, the story he tells is incomplete. However much the CIA regards itself as a paragon of deep and dispassionate expertise, that was not the view from all quarters within the Bush administration—and for good reason. Coming into office, President Bush himself found CIA reporting to be sub-par. Morell acknowledges that there were occasions when the president would read a particularly banal CIA brief and then sarcastically utter, “Duh, no shit.” As a result, Tenet had to “routinely pull pieces” from the president’s briefing book “either because they told him something he already knew or because the analysis was not insightful enough.”

But beyond superficiality, there was the long and familiar record of CIA analytical and collection failures. Among other things, the agency missed the first Soviet atomic bomb test in 1949, the outbreak of the Korea war in 1950, the first Soviet H-bomb in 1953, the outbreak of the Suez war in 1956, the Soviet placement of missiles in Cuba in 1962, the Egyptian attack that started the Yom Kippur war in 1973, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, and the Iranian revolution that same year. Understanding secretive adversaries is a very difficult challenge, and even the best spy agencies in the world regularly get even the most important questions wrong. In the wake of the 9/11 lapse and all previous lapses, President Bush and his men would have been irresponsible if they did not look at CIA judgments sideways and upside down.

The dispute with Libby over the CIA’s appraisal of al Qaeda ties to Saddam Hussein must be understood in the context of this history. The CIA may be completely correct in maintaining now that the ties were minimal, buy that is certainly not how things looked to some at the time, including to some in the CIA itself. Indeed, just months after the quarrel with Libby, Tenet himself wrote to Senator Bob Graham, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, offering a declassified summary of what the agency believed. The letter read, in part:

We have solid reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda going back a decade.

Credible information indicates that Iraq and Al Qaeda have discussed safe haven and reciprocal nonaggression.

Since Operation Enduring Freedom, we have solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of Al Qaeda members, including some that have been in Baghdad.

We have credible reporting that Al Qaeda leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire WMD capabilities. The reporting also stated that Iraq has provided training to Al Qaeda members in the areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs.

Iraq's increasing support to extremist Palestinians coupled with growing indications of relationship with Al Qaeda suggest that Baghdad's links to terrorists will increase, even absent U.S. military action.

Morell does not take up this letter and the studies on which it was presumably based. If Libby and others were skeptical of CIA certitude and pressing hard for a change in a CIA judgment, they had no shortage of valid reasons for their stance.

While casting aspersions on agency outsiders, Morell conspicuously elides those episodes where insiders themselves appear to politicize intelligence. The most notorious recent example is the declaration in the unclassified summary of the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate that “We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.” This startling finding was reached, as a footnote reveals, by excluding from consideration "Iran's declared civil work related to uranium conversion and enrichment." In other words, relying on a preposterously narrow definition of a "nuclear weapons program," the NIE injected a profoundly misleading assertion into the bloodstream of national debate, thereby altering the direction of American policy.

The charge of politicizing intelligence is a sword that can cut two ways. Between his soft-pedaling of George Tenet’s lapses, his hard-pedaling of Libby’s alleged transgressions, and his non-pedaling of the CIA's own serious misdemeanors, one puts down Morell’s engrossing volume with a feeling of regret that he does not seem in every instance to have called things as they actually were.

(Gabriel Schoenfeld, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, is the author of Necessary Secrets: National Security, the Media, and the Rule of Law (W.W. Norton).)

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Palestinian vehicle runs down, injures three Israeli soldiers
Thursday August 6th, 2015 at 5:03 PM

August 6, 2015, 7:09 PM (IDT)

Two soldiers were seriously injured when a Palestinian car crashed into them at the Shilo junction north of Ramallah Thursday. They are in intensive care in hospital. A third soldier was hurt more slightly. Soldiers in the vicinity fired at the Palestinian driver trapping him in his vehicle. He was taken to hospital with serious injuries.

FBI Now Refers Some Potential Terror Suspects To Counseling - Daily Caller
Thursday August 6th, 2015 at 5:01 PM

FBI Now Refers Some Potential Terror Suspects To Counseling
Daily Caller
The FBI is now referring some potential terror suspects to counseling in a new strategy to defeat homegrown Islamic State supporters. Rather than lock up everyone in the U.S. suspected of potential terrorist activity, the FBI will refer up to 10 ...

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After tense hearings, Senate approves military chiefs
Thursday August 6th, 2015 at 5:01 PM

The Senate on Wednesday confirmed new uniformed leaders of the Army, Navy and Marine Corps, completing a change in the lineup for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

U.S. should embed military advisers to fight Islamic State, think tank says by Guy Taylor
Thursday August 6th, 2015 at 5:00 PM

Cyber Warfare - Google News

The U.S. should embed military advisers at the battalion level in Iraq and begin directly arming the nation's Kurdish militias and Sunni tribal fighters, according a policy brief issued Thursday by an influential Washington think tank that asserts the Obama administration's current efforts to counter the Islamic State are "not ...

Reporter's Notebook: In Cyber Security, All Eyes on Car Hacking - ABC News
Thursday August 6th, 2015 at 4:59 PM

ABC News

Reporter's Notebook: In Cyber Security, All Eyes on Car Hacking
ABC News
A few hundred people crowded into an expansive ballroom in Las Vegas are laughing and clapping at a joke I don't get. That happens a lot here. I'm at the Black Hat cyber security conference and a computer science minor has not prepared me for quips ...

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FBI Releases Surveillance Video Hoping to Solve Boston Art Heist - NBCNews.com
Thursday August 6th, 2015 at 4:59 PM

NBCNews.com

FBI Releases Surveillance Video Hoping to Solve Boston Art Heist
NBCNews.com
The FBI is hoping a jerky black-and-white surveillance video will lead to a break in one of America's major unsolved mysteries — who was behind the world's biggest art heist? A pair of men entered Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum on March 18, ...
FBI Releases Video Of Suspicious Man In Gardner Museum Hours Before $500 ...Hartford Courant
New Gardner Museum Art Heist Video Released By FBICBS Local
FBI hopes grainy video will help solve 25-year-old $500 million art heistYahoo News
ARTnews-FOX CT
all 130 news articles »

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FBI, US Marshal offer reward for capture of officer shooting suspect - FOX10 News
Thursday August 6th, 2015 at 4:59 PM

FBI, US Marshal offer reward for capture of officer shooting suspect
FOX10 News
Grover Cannon, 27, identified as suspect in shooting death of Shreveport police officer Thomas LaValley. (Source: Shreveport Police Department). Shreveport Officer killed Wednesday night has been identified as Thomas LaValley. (Source: Shreveport ...

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Treasury says US can snap back sanctions if Iran reneges
Thursday August 6th, 2015 at 4:59 PM

The Obama administration said the United States can reimpose sanctions against Iran "in a matter of days" if Iran violates terms of its nuclear accord, as Republicans sparred further with officials over the deal.

Black Hat USA 2015 Security Conference Kicks Offby Glynn Cosker
Thursday August 6th, 2015 at 4:58 PM

In Homeland Security

By Brett Daniel Shehadey
Special Correspondent for In Homeland Security

At the Mandalay Bay Hotel, the 2015 Black Hat USA Security Conference in Las Vegas kicked off the debate Aug. 6 with some 9,000 security executives.

The post Black Hat USA 2015 Security Conference Kicks Off appeared first on In Homeland Security.

Hollande: 'No Difficulty' For France To Find Mistral Buyers
Thursday August 6th, 2015 at 4:58 PM

Defense News - Home

ISMAILIYA, Egypt — French President Francois Hollande said Thursday there would be "no difficulty" in finding new buyers for two Mistral warships that had been intended for Russia before Paris scrapped the deal.

White House: ‘We Don’t Need Congress to Approve’ Iran Nuclear Deal by Andrew Kugle
Thursday August 6th, 2015 at 4:57 PM

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the White House didn’t need Congress to approve the Iran nuclear agreement during Thursday’s press briefing.

NBC reporter Chris Jansing asked Earnest how important it was that Congress supports this deal. A recent poll showed 2-to-1 opposition among Americans to the agreement.

“How important is that final number, if it’s breathtakingly close… what kind of message does that send and how much do the numbers matter to the President and to the White House?” Jansing asked.

“Not at all,” Earnest said. “The fact is we don’t need Congress to approve this deal. We just need Congress not to screw it up.”

Earnest and Jansing had an exchange earlier in the day on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, when Jansing reminded Earnest to his face that President Obama had in fact directly compared Iranian hardlinersto the Republican caucus.

New York Post Launches Countdown to End of De Blasio Eraby Brent Scher
Thursday August 6th, 2015 at 4:56 PM

The New York Post is literally counting down the seconds to the end of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s term as mayor.

“The quality of life in this city has plummeted since Mayor de Blasio took office,” writes the Post. “Let’s count down the minutes until his disastrous term ends.”

According to the clock, which is placed in front of a background of a fat man passed out on a bench, de Blasio currently has 878 days, 22 hours, 53 minutes, and 5 seconds left in City Hall.

The Post paints a sad picture of the current state of New York City.

“The city is swarming with panhandlers. Vagrants are peeing in the streets and taking over our parks. Crime is spiking,” it says.

Readers are also being asked to share their own stories of how the city has deteriorated under de Blasio.

The paper has set up a new email address, mail@deblasio.fail, to receive emails from residents furious with the mayor. Submissions will be published in the Post’s print edition.

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Informant in Twin Cities terrorism case paid $41000 by FBI - Minneapolis Star Tribune
Thursday August 6th, 2015 at 4:55 PM

Minneapolis Star Tribune

Informant in Twin Cities terrorism case paid $41000 by FBI
Minneapolis Star Tribune
The payments were disclosed in a motion filed Thursday by the defendants' attorneys, who allege the payments undermine the informant's credibility. The informant, code-named “Rover,” by FBI agents, is crucial in the government's case and was paid based ...

A Digest of DEBKAfile Round-the-Clock Exclusives in Week Ending Aug. 06, 2015
Thursday August 6th, 2015 at 4:55 PM

August 6, 2015, 9:24 PM (IDT)

A Digest of debkafile Round-the-Clock Exclusives in Week Ending Aug. 06, 2015

Obama Won’t – or Can’t – Fight the Chinese Cyber Invasion of US Computers
Thursday August 6th, 2015 at 4:55 PM

August 6, 2015, 9:24 PM (IDT)

Washington is hamstrung from retaliating for Chinese cyber aggression against US computer systems by a) not having a smoking gun, and b) lack of viable options.

US and Russia Head up New Grouping for Fighting ISIS, Sustaining Assad in Power
Thursday August 6th, 2015 at 4:54 PM

August 6, 2015, 9:24 PM (IDT)

The US, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf have lined up to fight ISIS, after each gives up on primary issues. Bashar Assad stays, by common consent, and the Houthis lose the Yemen war.

Finney: Probe Into Clinton’s Emails ‘Politically Motivated’by David Rutz
Thursday August 6th, 2015 at 4:54 PM

Hillary Clinton spokeswoman Karen Finney called the continuing probe into Hillary Clinton’s email server “politically motivated” while simultaneously acknowledging there were “valid questions” in an interview with CNN’s Brianna Keilar Thursday.

Keilar called the ongoing saga of her email server a “stumbling block” for the campaign. The New York Post reported Wednesday that the federal investigation into the server’s security was a “criminal probe.” Finney shifted into an attack on Rep. Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.) and the Benghazi Select Committee during her response.

“Let’s be realistic here, ok?” Finney said. “This is a politically motivated series of attacks that we’ve seen, and as you know, Chairman Gowdy and his committee, they’ve been dragging this out. They’re now saying they won’t be done until some time next year … We’re not necessarily expecting that it’s going to end. We’re prepared to fight that fight as long as we need to.”

“Are you saying there are no valid questions?” Keilar asked. “That there aren’t valid questions about the emails?”

“Brianna, no. No, no, no,” she said. “That’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is part of what’s going on here is a politically motivated series of attacks.”

Senate confirms the next members of the Joint Chiefs of Staffby Maria Stainer
Thursday August 6th, 2015 at 4:53 PM

Lawfare - Hard National Security Choices

The Senate recently confirmed the nominations of the next members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — Gen. Mark Milley to be chief of staff of the Army, Adm. John Richardson to be chief of Naval Operations, and Lt. Gen. Robert Neller to be general and commandant of the Marine ...

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Today's Headlines and Commentaryby Quinta Jurecic , Staley Smith
Thursday August 6th, 2015 at 4:53 PM

Yesterday, President Obama continued his push for the Iran deal in a speech at American University---a site likely chosen in order to draw parallels to a speech President John F. Kennedy gave in the same location promoting the nuclear test-ban treaty with the Soviet Union in 1963. In remarks that the New York Times called “aggressive,”the president argued that detractors of the deal have no reasonable, peaceful alternative to offer: “the choice we face is ultimately between diplomacy and some sort of war — maybe not tomorrow, maybe not three months from now, but soon.” The text of the speech is available here, courtesy of the Washington Post.

Yesterday also saw the head of the IAEA, Yukiya Amano, testify privately before the Senate on the IAEA-Iran agreement supplementing the nuclear deal. The Post informs us that Amano confirmed the agreement’s confidential status, saying that “confidentiality is an essential building block to protect the safeguard regime.”

Yet some reports indicate that the IAEA may already be having problems in implementing that “safeguard regime.” The Wall Street Journal writes that Tehran has so far refused to allow the IAEA to interview key officials who may have been involved in an Iranian nuclear weapons program, causing serious problems for the IAEA investigation of Iran’s past nuclear activities.

Moreover, both the U.S. intelligence community and the Institute for Science and International Security, a think-tank that monitors nuclear nonproliferation, have pointed to satellite images showing crates and trucks outside a suspected Iranian nuclear military site---perhaps indicating that Iran has begun “sanitizing” the site prior to IAEA inspections. Administration officials stated that the IAEA will retain full technological ability to detect nuclear activity despite any “sanitation” efforts. The AP andBloomberg News have the story.

Bloomberg also notes that victims of Iranian-sponsored terrorism are now asking a New York district court to block the unfreezing of Iranian assets, out of concern that releasing the assets will limit possibilities for compensation. U.S. officials stated that “the U.S. does not hold or control any of this money.”

As the news on Iran rolls in, Defense One reminds us that the Senate heads out for the August recess today---and so September will be the key month for Congress to debate and vote on the nuclear deal.

When Congress reconvenes in September, however, it will have a lot more on its plate than just the Iran deal. The Hill reports that trade groups backing major technology companies are urging Senate leaders to reject a proposal, included within the 2016 Intelligence Authorization Act, that would require social media and other tech companies to report “terrorist activity” on their services. The groups argue that “the provision will lead to reporting of items that are not of material concern to public safety, creating a ‘needle in the haystack’ problem for law enforcement.”

The United States has launched its first drone strike against ISIS from a Turkish airbase, the Journaltells us. The drone took off from a base in southern Turkey and conducted a strike against ISIS troops in northern Syria. Though the United States has long sought the use of Turkish airbases in the fight to launch airstrikes, Turkey only recently agreed to U.S. activity as part of newly aggressive Turkish efforts against ISIS.

But the Times writes that, within Turkey, those efforts are largely seen as a ploy by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to revitalize his slumping popularity. Turkish anti-ISIS efforts have included a robust---and to some, dismaying---military campaign against the Iraqi Kurdish PKK. The Timesspeculates that President Erdogan’s nationalist supporters may find this politically appealing.

Meanwhile,the PKK is fighting back by attacking pipelines that pump oil and gas through Turkey---the same tactic used by PKK fighters during conflict with Turkey in the 1990s. Reuters reports that Turkey is stepping up security along the pipelines in order to protect its energy infrastructure.

With the tiny cohort of U.S.-trained Syrian rebels still reeling from the al Nusra Front’s kidnapping of over a dozen of their members, an officer trained in the U.S. program has weighed in with more criticism. According to the BBC, Captain Ammar al Wawi has criticized the United States for failing first to train rebel troops and then to protect them. The Post also examines a failed U.S. effort to train a new Libyan military force in the wake of the Arab Spring, demonstrating the limits of American power in standing up military forces.

Secretary of State John Kerry announced that the United States and Russia will collaborate in bringing forward a United Nations Security Council resolution to identify the perpetrators of chemical attacks in Syria. The Security Council vote has been scheduled for Friday, the Times writes. Radio Free Europe also tells us that Iranian leaders will soon present a peace plan for Syria before the United Nations. “Iran and Russia,” the story notes, “are among the last allies of the regime of Syrian President Bashar al Assad.”

ISIS fighters have seized a potentially key town in central Syria from pro-government forces, the BBCreports. The capture of Qaryatain creates a clear route between the city of Palmyra and the Qalamun region near Damascus, both held by ISIS. The AP notes that Qaryatain is currently sheltering the large refugee population that had fled from Homs, the site of a prolonged siege between Syrian government and rebel forces.

The Journal studies therole of former Baathists in today’s Iraq: are they friends or foes of ISIS? And what about their relationship with the current Iraqi government, and Western forces? Though many Iraqi Shiites believe that ISIS is simply a “new incarnation” of the Ba'ath party, Iraqi Sunnis and some Western diplomats argue that bad blood between Baathists and ISIS may make some “good Baathists” into valuable allies.

A Times report indicates thatthe Department of Homeland Security is strengthening restrictions on a visa waiver program, which allows foreign citizens to enter the United States without a visa if they are staying for fewer than 90 days. But concerns over radicalized fighters carrying out attacks on U.S. soil have led DHS to demand new information-sharing protocols with those countries participating in the program, and to require the presence of U.S. air marshals on some flights to the United States. European countries including Britain, France, and Germany---all of which have struggled with the problem of radicalized young people traveling abroad to join ISIS---are all members of the program.

In Saudi Arabia, a suicide bomber attacked a mosque attended by the Saudi Interior Ministry’s special forces. At least 15 were killed, including 12 members of the security forces. Site Intelligence Group reports that “Al-Hijaz Province,” a newly-announced ISIS division in Saudi Arabia, has claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing.

Foreign Policy takes note of a joint eulogy of Mullah Mohammad Omar issued by three al Qaeda affiliates. The al Nusra Front, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb collaborated to memorialize the former Taliban leader, yet failed to even mention Omar’s replacement, Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour. The story quotes a “senior U.S. analyst” as stating that al Qaeda has little to gain from recognizing Mullah Mansour as the Taliban’s new leader until Mansour succeeds in consolidating his still-shaky hold on power.

In the first Taliban attack since confirmations of Mullah Omar’s death, the Taliban has detonated a truck bomb in a provincial capital in eastern Afghanistan. Meanwhile, an Afghan official stated that U.S. drone strikes have killed up to 60 ISIS fighters within Afghanistan in the last few days, and thecrash of an Afghan army helicopter led to the deaths of over a dozen people.

The Pakistani army has begun publicly shaming two retired Pakistani generals over past misuse of military funds, in a move that the Guardian describes as “almost unheard of.” This constitutes a major change in policy for the army, which has long been criticized for its corruption and lack of transparency.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al Sisi announced plans to expand the Suez Canal in an $8.5 billion building project. Al Jazeera suggests that the move is aimed at revitalizing the long-struggling Egyptian economy. Despite President Sisi’s efforts, crisis in Egypt continues to roil: fighters belonging to the ISIS-affiliated group Sinai Province released a video threatening to kill a Croatian citizenkidnapped last month in Cairo. The Post has the story.

Cameroon will soon repatriate roughly 12,000 Nigerian refugees who crossed the border seeking shelter from Boko Haram attacks. As Reuters tells us, the Boko Haram insurgency has so far led to the internal displacement of about 1.5 million people, with thousands more fleeing to outside Nigeria.

Foreign Policy reports on Russia’s faltering international energy deals. Though the Kremlin has done its best to bolster Russian power through energy partnerships with China and Turkey,the reality of low energy prices and new oil and gas sources have put the brakes on Russian plans for energy dominance.

The AP has more on yesterday’s meeting between Secretary Kerry and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations forum. Secretary Kerry criticized Chinese restrictions on navigation and airspace in the disputed South China Sea and stated that the United States “will not accept” these limitations. The secretary also commented that Minister Wang may not have been wholly “fulsome” during their meeting, despite the minister’s stated desire to resolve the territorial dispute diplomatically.

Today marks the 70th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima. At a commemoration ceremony in Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Park, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe remarked on Japan’s responsibility to promote nuclear disarmament, as the only nation ever to have suffered a nuclear attack. Yet the Japan Times adds that Prime Minister Abe’s perceived desire to build up Japan’s long-dormant military may undermine this pledge for peace. The Journal offers photographs from today’s commemoration event---and for a little history, Paul Ham of the Atlantic examines the bureaucrats who singled out Hiroshima to best demonstrate the destructive power of the atomic bomb.

Reuters reveals that the United States and the European Union are finalizing a long-awaited commercial data-sharing deal, which the parties moved to renegotiate following the Snowden Revelations. The deal would reform an existing E.U.-U.S. agreement allowing companies to transfer data easily between the two areas, but E.U. officials are demanding U.S. guarantees that “collection of EU citizens' data for national security purposes would be limited to what is necessary and proportionate.”

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter has been vocal in his appeals for collaboration between the Pentagon and technology firms in Silicon Valley, and his efforts may have finally paid off, the Journalreports. Yesterday, Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work announced the establishment of DIU-x, a new organization intended to bridge a gap between high-tech innovation and the military.

A researcher at the ongoing Black Hat cybersecurity conference claims that he can access---and even alter---data from the satellite network of Globalstar, which produces communications equipment for clients including the U.S. military. “How big a problem is this?” asks Patrick Tucker of Defense One. “Consider how the military might react if a small private plane appeared to be deviating from its flight path, making a beeline toward the White House. Or how the Navy might react if supertankers in the Strait of Hormuz suddenly vanished. Or how the Army might react if an enemy somehow knew just where to find U.S. soldiers lying in wait.”

Yesterday, the Fourth Circuit ruled in United States v. Graham that“the government conducts a search under the Fourth Amendment when it obtains and inspects a cell phone user’s historical [cell-site location information] for an extended period of time” and “that obtaining such records requires a warrant.” At the Post, Orin Kerr details the multiple circuit splits, which, he suggests, may lead to Supreme Court review.

Parting shot: Estonia recently introduced a program to create digital identities for even non-residents.The Estonian government is now teaming up with Garage48, an NGO, to host an international e-Residency hackathon aimed at developing existing services as well as working prototypes of new ones “in an intense 48 hours of inspiration and hard work.” The event, open to international developers, is set to take place from September 11-13 on Vormsi Island.

ICYMI: Yesterday, on Lawfare

Eric Mill made the argument for why it’s time to encrypt Lawfare.

Cody explained the Indian and Bangladesh land boundary agreement that ended one of the world's most intractable border disputes.

Cody also offered coverage of President Barack Obama’s address yesterday at American University in which he defended the nuclear deal reached with Iran last month.

Wellstipped us off to the Fourth Circuit’s important decision in United States v. Graham.

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 Lawfarein 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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Russian Cyber Attack Targets Pentagon Email Systems: Officials - NBCNews.com
Thursday August 6th, 2015 at 4:51 PM

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Russian Cyber Attack Targets Pentagon Email Systems: Officials
NBCNews.com
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