9/11 Revisited: Declassified FBI Files Reveal New Details About ... by 21wire
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John Massaria asked for the data on the hardrives but instead, was given the following FBI Report –doc-1 (141 pages), Police Report (4 pages), and FOIA-2 – FOIA-6. Special thanks to Ken Doc for making me aware of these ...
News Roundup and Notes: September 11, 2015
Just Security FBI Director James B. Comey asserted that major Internet companies maintain a key to unlock encrypted communications “so they can read our emails and send us ads.” His comments target a frequent argument of technologists and privacy experts that ... and more » |
The report also shows the CIA provided classified information to the filmmakers. Over one hundred pages of documents reveal a symbiotic relationship between the high-powered film producers and intelligence officials and ...
President Barack Obama will travel to Fort Meade, Md., on Friday for his first “Worldwide Troop Talk,” to be broadcast live from the Army installation beginning at 3 p.m. EDT. To ask the president a question, email AskPOTUS@mail.mil, or tweet using the hashtag #AskPOTUS.
Ars Technica |
FBI, intel chiefs decry “deep cynicism” over cyber spying programs
Ars Technica The directors of the FBI, CIA, NSA, NGO, DIA, and NRO stand for a group picture with Fox News' Catherine Herridge (second from left) and executives of INRA and AFCEA at the conclusion of their panel discussion at the Intelligence & National Security ... and more » |
Despite pushback from Washington and NATO over the Russia's widening military buildup in Syria, Moscow is now calling on world powers to help arm government forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad, calling them the "most efficient and powerful ground force" in the fight against the Islamic State.
The assertion ...
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This expanded military presence may signal Moscow's intent to play a more direct role in the Syrian endgame — or at the very least help the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad preserve what limited control it has over the war-ravaged country. But, as The Washington Post noted earlier, the move may not present a significant policy shift.
Hundreds of victims' relatives gather to remember when hijacked planes hit WTC, Pentagon, Pa. field
 The Globe and Mail |
At ground zero, Sept. 11 anniversary is now both private and public occasion
The Globe and Mail After years as a private commemoration, the anniversary of Sept. 11 at ground zero now also has become an occasion for public reflection on the site of the terror attacks. An estimated 20,000 people flocked to the memorial plaza on the evening of Sept. and more » |
Some 22,500 refugees and migrants arriving on the Greek island of Lesbos have been registered by officials since Monday evening, police told AFP late Thursday.
When rumours spread through Lebanon this week that a massive boat was coming to bring Syrian refugees to Germany, huge crowds rushed to Berlin's embassy outside Beirut.
VOA's Heather Murdock reports from Izmir, Turkey on migrants who risk their lives on boats to seek a better life in Europe.
Originally published at - http://www.voanews.com/media/video/on-the-scene-in-izmir-turkey/2955149.html
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Turkey should grant independent observers immediate access to the besieged city of Cizre, the Council of Europe says.
 National Post |
Are the Russian troops reportedly being sent to Syria from the same brigade ...
National Post Some of the Russian troops reportedly being sent to Syria are from the same brigade that helped annex Crimea, according to a lengthy investigation conducted by Ruslan Leviev, a specialist in social-media intelligence. The Kremlin has declined to ... Russia urges world leaders to arm Syrian government to counter ISHindustan Times Russia tells Washington: talk to us over Syria or risk 'unintended incidents'Reuters Canada Russia calls on other nations to help arm Syrian government to fight Islamic ...Fox News all 331 news articles » |
VENICE WATCH: Laurie Anderson dwells on death; 'Behemoth' shows China's pollution nightmare
 Washington Post |
Hillary Clinton's national lead is now smaller than Donald Trump's
Washington Post This continues to be one of the more unexpected charts of the 2016 primary, so far. It shows the distance between the leading and No. 2 candidates in Real Clear Politics' average of national polls since June 1. Once upon a time, it seemed like the ... Hillary Clinton's Authenticity ProblemWall Street Journal (blog) First Read: A Third Dose of Cold Water from Joe BidenNBCNews.com What is the House Republicans' plan to defeat Obama's Iran deal?MSNBC The Week Magazine-ABC News- Daily Mail all 697 news articles » |
(VIENNA) — Desperate to head west even after Austria cut the number of border trains, a trickle of migrants marching toward Vienna swelled into a torrent Friday as thousands made their way toward the city on foot.
But the Austrian capital has only been a transit point for many of those arriving over the past week. Most have gone on to Germany, which saw its efforts to get fellow European Union nations to help share the burden firmly rejected Friday by four Central European nations.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier had urged fellow E.U. nations to give more help to those seeking safety in Europe, describing the influx as “probably the biggest challenge for the European Union in its history.”
“No single country can resolve such a challenge alone — we need European solidarity,” he told reporters in the Czech capital of Prague.
Despite his warning, he failed to persuade his Czech, Slovak, Polish and Hungarian counterparts to drop their objections to a proposed E.U.-wide quota system to help migrants already in the E.U.’s most overburdened nations. Steinmeier then left a joint news conference early, allegedly due to a busy schedule.
Germany has already seen 450,000 migrants enter the country and is expecting at least 800,000 this year, the most in Europe.
“We need to have control over how many (migrants) we are capable of accepting,” said Czech Foreign Minister Lubomir Zaoralek, who hosted the meeting.
The plan to share 120,000 refugees now in Greece, Italy and Hungary among the E.U.’s 28 nations was unveiled Wednesday by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and will be debated Oct. 8 during an emergency E.U. interior ministers’ meeting. An earlier plan to share 40,000 other asylum-seekers among E.U. nations is expected to get the ministers’ final approval on Monday.
Tens of thousands of people, many from war-torn Syria, have traveled across the eastern flank of Europe this summer, from Turkey to Greece by sea, over land in Macedonia, Serbia, Hungary and Austria. Tense bottlenecks have developed at those borders, especially since Hungary began building a fence to keep the migrants out.
Friday’s foot march began after rail traffic to Vienna from the Nickelsdorf crossing was sharply reduced due to overcrowding. Buses and taxis then were called to Nickelsdorf to take migrants to the Austrian capita, but thousands decided not to wait.
Hungarian police spokesman Helmut Marban said a “group dynamic” started, with a few people beginning to walk toward Vienna from the border, inspiring thousands of others to join them on the 40-mile (60 kilometer) trek.
Police briefly closed the A4 expressway to vehicles because of the potential dangers posed by the migrants.
The trek petered out a few hours after it began with police and emergency crews persuading those wanting to push on to the Austrian capital that there would be enough buses for them eventually.
Hans Peter Doskozil, the police chief of eastern Burgenland, said on Thursday alone 7,500 people had crossed into Austria at Nickelsdorf — a number that apparently overwhelmed the Austrian Federal Railways.
Regularly scheduled trains from Nickelsdorf continued Friday to other Austrian destinations, including Vienna, with three departures scheduled. But the railway company announced an end to special shuttles for the migrants between Nickelsdorf and Vienna that had been running for days.
The rail company on Thursday had already suspended all train service toward Vienna from the Hungarian capital, Budapest, where thousands of migrants and refugees have overwhelmed the train station.
In Munich, the first arrival point in Germany for most of those traveling from Austria, authorities said more than 40,000 people have arrived over the past six days.
Bracing for the continued influx, the U.N. refugee agency announced the deployment of hundreds of pre-fabricated homes to central and southeastern Europe. UNHCR spokesman William Splinder said his agency estimates over 380,000 people have arrived in Europe across the Mediterranean so far this year. The International Organization for Migration has put the figure at more than 432,000.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been criticized by other E.U. leaders and human rights groups for what they say is gross mismanagement in housing, feeding and processing the thousands of arriving migrants.
Human Rights Watch on Friday released video footage from inside a holding facility at the Hungarian border town of Roszke. Metal fences surrounded clusters of tents and border guards were shown throwing food into the air for desperate migrants to grab. Peter Bouckaert of the rights group claimed migrants and refugees were “kept in pens like animals, out in the sun without food and water.”
Orban, who has ordered his country’s border with Serbia to be turned into a razor-tipped fortress, shrugged off the criticism, saying Friday the solution to the migration crisis lies in Greece.
“We have to take care of the problem where it exists,” Orban told a Budapest news conference. “If Greece is not capable of protecting its borders, we need to mobilize European forces to the Greek borders so that they can achieve the goals of European law.”
More than 250,000 people have reached Greece so far this year, the vast majority arriving on its eastern islands from the nearby Turkish coast, especially the island of Lesbos. Few, if any, want to remain in financially stricken Greece.
In Budapest, a Hungarian camerawoman caught on video kicking and tripping migrants near the Serbian border offered a qualified apology Friday for her behavior.
In a letter published by the daily Magyar Nemzet newspaper, Petra Laszlo said she was “sincerely sorry for what happened,” but added: “I was scared as they streamed toward me, and then something snapped inside me.”
The 40-year-old was fired by the right-wing N1TV online channel after footage went viral on social media.
Police have released Laszlo without charges after questioning her on suspicion of disorderly conduct. They say the investigation is continuing.
___
Geir Moulson and David Rising in Berlin, Shawn Pogatchnik in Budapest, Elena Becatoros in Greece, Jamie Keaten in Geneva and Philip Jenne in Nickelsdorf, Austria, contributed to this story.
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Ukrainian president urges Russian withdrawal from eastern Ukraine, sealing of border
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Sweden summons the Russian envoy to Stockholm after a spokeswoman in Moscow warns of "consequences" should Sweden join Nato.
The United States is marking the 14th anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks on Friday with a series of observances to remember that horrifying day.
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Sweden has called in Russia's ambassador to explain comments by a foreign ministry spokeswoman who said any Swedish decision to join NATO would have "consequences" that would compel Russia to respond.
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin will visit Tajikistan next week where he will discuss what Moscow can do to help the Central Asian nation handle a recent bout of violence, the Kremlin's top foreign policy aide said on Friday.
DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan (Reuters) - A U.S. drone strike killed at least 15 Pakistani militants in Afghanistan's Gomal district on Wednesday, intelligence officials said on Friday, part of an intensifying drone campaign against Pakistani militants in Afghanistan.
MOSCOW Russia called on Friday for Washington to restart direct military-to-military cooperation to avert "unintended incidents" near Syria, at a time when U.S. officials say Moscow is building up forces to protect President Bashar al-Assad's government.
The United States is leading a campaign of air strikes against Islamic State fighters in Syrian air space, and a greater Russian presence would raise the prospect of the Cold War superpower foes encountering each other on the battlefield.
Both Moscow and Washington say their enemy is Islamic State. But Russia supports the government of Assad, while the United States says his presence makes the situation worse.
In recent days, U.S. officials have described what they say is a buildup of Russian equipment and manpower.
Lebanese sources have told Reuters that at least some Russian troops were now engaged in combat operations in support of Assad's government. Moscow has declined to comment on those reports.
At a news conference, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia was sending equipment to help Assad fight Islamic State. Russian servicemen were in Syria, he said, primarily to help service that equipment and teach Syrian soldiers how to use it.
Russia was also conducting naval exercises in the eastern Mediterranean, he said, describing the drills as long-planned and staged in accordance with international law.
Lavrov blamed Washington for cutting off direct military-to-military communications between Russia and NATO over the Ukraine crisis, saying such contacts were "important for the avoidance of undesired, unintended incidents".
"We are always in favor of military people talking to each other in a professional way. They understand each other very well," Lavrov said. "If, as (U.S. Secretary of State) John Kerry has said many times, the United States wants those channels frozen, then be our guest."
U.S. officials say they do not know what Moscow's intentions are in Syria. The reports of a Russian buildup come at a time when momentum has shifted against Assad's government in Syria's 4-year-old civil war, with Damascus suffering battlefield setbacks this year at the hands of an array of insurgent groups.
Moscow, Assad's ally since the Cold War, maintains its only Mediterranean naval base at Tartous on the Syrian coast, a strategic objective.
In recent months NATO-member Turkey has also raised the prospect of outside powers playing a greater role in Syria by proposing a "safe zone" near its border, kept free of both Islamic State and government troops.
COMMON ENEMY
The four-year-old multi-sided civil war in Syria has killed around 250,000 people and driven half of Syria's 23 million people from their homes. Some have traveled to European Union countries, creating a refugee crisis there.
Differences over Assad's future have made it impossible for Moscow and the West to take joint action against Islamic State, even though they say the group, which rules a self-proclaimed caliphate on swathes of Syria and Iraq, is their common enemy.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on Friday it was too early to judge what exactly Russia's motivations at present were in Syria, but that "adding war to war" would not help resolve the Syrian conflict.
"If it's about defending the base in Tartous why not? But if it's to enter the conflict ...." he said, without finishing the thought.
BARGAINING POWER
Diplomats in Moscow say the Kremlin is happy for the West to believe it is building up its military in Syria, calculating that this will give it more bargaining power in any international talks about whether Assad stays in power.
Western and Arab countries have backed demands from the Syrian opposition that Assad must give way under any negotiated settlement to the war. Assad refuses to go and so far his enemies have lacked the capability to force him out, leaving the war grinding on for years. All diplomatic efforts at a solution have collapsed.
Assad’s supporters have taken encouragement this week from an apparent shift in tone from some European states that suggests a softening of demands he leave power.
Britain, one of Assad’s staunchest Western opponents, said this week it could accept him staying in place for a transition period if it helped resolve the conflict.
France, another fierce Assad opponent, said on Monday he must leave power “at some point or another”. Smaller countries went further, with Austria saying Assad must be involved in the fight against Islamic State and Spain saying negotiations with him were necessary to end the war.
The pro-Syrian government newspaper al-Watan saw Britain’s position as “a new sign of the changes in Western positions that started with Madrid and Austria”.
(Editing by Peter Graff)
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St. Petersburg, Russia — People who came of age after the end of the Cold War may not realize how powerfully Russia influenced Western culture for 150 years. For more than a century, intellectuals, writers, artists and activists were partly defined by the stances they took toward certain things Russian: Did they see the world like Tolstoy or like Dostoyevsky? Were they inspired by Lenin and/or Trotsky? Were they alarmed by Sputnik, awed by Solzhenitsyn or cheering on Yeltsin or Gorbachev?
That was because Russian culture had an unmatched intensity. It was often said that Russian thinkers addressed universal questions in their most extreme and illuminating forms.
In his classic book, “The Icon and the Axe,” James H. Billington wrote that because of certain conditions of Russian history, “the kind of debate that is usually conducted between individuals in the West often rages even more acutely within individuals in Russia.”
Russian influence was especially strong in America. There were certain mirror image parallels. Both nations didn’t quite know what to make of the sophistication and polish of Western Europe. Both countries had Eurocentric elites who copied Parisian manners, and populist masses who ridiculed them. Both nations had mental landscapes defined by the epic size and wild beauty of their natural landscapes.
But Russia stood for something that America has never been known for: depth of soul. If America radiated a certain vision of happiness onto the world, Russian heroes radiated a vision of total spiritual commitment.
“The ‘Russian’ attitude,” Isaiah Berlin wrote, “is that man is one and cannot be divided.” You can’t divide your life into compartments, hedge your bets and live with prudent half-measures. If you are a musician, writer, soldier or priest, integrity means throwing your whole personality into your calling in its purest form.
The Russian ethos was not bourgeois, economically minded and pragmatic. There were radicals who believed that everything should be seen in materialistic terms. But this was a reaction to the dominant national tendency, which saw problems as primarily spiritual rather than practical, and put matters of the soul at center stage.
In the Middle Ages, Russian religious icons presented a faith that was more visual than verbal, more mysterious than legalistic. Dostoyevsky put enormous faith in the power of the artist to address social problems. The world’s problems are shaped by pre-political roots: myths, morals and the state of the individual conscience. Beauty could save the world.
Even as late as the 1990s, one could sit with Russian intellectuals, amid all the political upheaval in those days, and they would talk intensely about the nature of the Russian soul. If it was dark in the kitchen at night, they wouldn’t just say, “Let’s replace the light bulb.” They’d talk for hours about how actually the root problem was the Russian soul.
Many of Russia’s most charismatic figures were on a lifelong search for purity. For the elder Tolstoy, you could live with material abundance and rot inside, or you could live the pure, simple rural life of the peasant. Solzhenitsyn wrote, “It makes me happier, more secure, to think … that I am only a sword made sharp to smite the unclean forces, an enchanted sword to cleave and disperse them.”
All of this spiritual ardor, all of this intense extremism, all of this romantic utopianism, all of this tragic sensibility produced some really bad political ideas. But it also produced a lot of cultural vibrancy that had an effect on the world.
While the rest of the world was going through industrialization and commercialism and embracing the whole bourgeois style of life, there was this counterculture of intense Russian writers, musicians, dancers — romantics who offered a different vocabulary, a different way of thinking and living inside.
And now it’s gone.
Russia is a more normal country than it used to be and a better place to live, at least for the young. But when you think of Russia’s cultural impact on the world today, you think of Putin and the oligarchs. Now the country stands for grasping power and ill-gotten money.
There’s something sad about the souvenir stands in St. Petersburg. They’re selling mementos of things Russians are sort of embarrassed by — old Soviet Army hats, Stalinist tchotchkes and coffee mugs with Putin bare-chested and looking ridiculous. Of the top 100 universities in the world, not a single one is Russian, which is sort of astonishing for a country so famously intellectual.
This absence leaves a mark. There used to be many countercultures to the dominant culture of achievement and capitalism and prudent bourgeois manners. Some were bohemian, or religious or martial. But one by one those countercultures are withering, and it is harder for people to see their situations from different and grander vantage points. Russia offered one such counterculture, a different scale of values, but now it, too, is mainly in the past.
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· · ·
LONDON — On this day 14 years ago, Sept. 11, 2001, I was newly arrived in Berlin as bureau chief and doing an interview in a cafe. The normally unflappable bureau manager, Victor Homola, telephoned and said I should get back to the office, because an airplane had just hit the World Trade Center in New York.
I filed and had lunch the next day with Susan Sontag, talking about what had happened and why, and then soon it became clear that the plotters were from Hamburg. Suddenly my life was wrapped up in that of Mohamed Mohamed el-Amir Awad el-Sayed Atta, the Egyptian architecture student who had been personally charged by Osama bin Laden with this spectacular attack on the United States.
I visited Mr. Atta’s apartment on Marienstrasse 54, in a moldy yellow building, and his school, the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg. I read his dissertation, with his elegant, hand-drawn maps of Aleppo, in Syria, one of the oldest cities in the world. Mr. Atta studied the urban development of Aleppo and decried how modernity was destroying its ancient beauty.
Today, Mr. Atta and Bin Laden are dead, Al Qaeda is atomized, the old city of Aleppo that Mr. Atta cherished is nearly destroyed, and so is Syria.
Bin Laden’s distant dream of a caliphate in lands cleared of Western influence is being reshaped by the Islamic State, which exercises terror very differently, with less interest in attacking the “far enemy” of the West than in creating a Salafist revolutionary regime.
And it is the Islamic State, not Western development, that is systematically destroying the treasures of the ancient world — the very treasures that mattered so much to Mr. Atta, and the despoiling of which did so much to radicalize him.
It is a measure of how the world was changed that day, and how much it hasn’t.
Richard Dearlove, head of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, known as MI6, from 1999 to 2004, points out that “some of what we worried about after 9/11 and were sure would happen — a dirty bomb, some sort of biological attack — didn’t happen.” That kind of strategic threat never materialized, in part because of good intelligence and the disruption of Qaeda networks.
The July 7, 2005, suicide bombing attacks on London subways and buses killed 52 people. But since then, he noted, only one person in Britain has been killed by terrorism.
“It’s quite easy to exaggerate the threat and overplay it,” Mr. Dearlove said. “A lot of these young jihadis are not a serious, strategically organized group driven by a clever brain.”
But the nature of the threat has changed and in some sense has become more pervasive, as single actors (“lone wolves”) or small cells, often with little contact with any central authority and inspired by social media, suddenly decide to shoot up a museum or a train.
Florence Gaub, an analyst of the Arab world at the European Union Institute for Security Studies in Paris, was herself in New York on Sept. 11. Afterward, she noted, “we got the illusion that the problem was contained and manageable,” and at the NATO Defense College, where she worked on new threat assessments after the death of Bin Laden, the focus was on climate change and cybersecurity.
But now the Arab world is imploding, she said, and the Islamic State poses a new challenge to the current world order — it has become a self-styled nation highly unlikely to join the United Nations or subscribe to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
And the threat is different, and in a sense, more pervasive. “We have managed to deter high-profile attacks like 9/11 but now have pressed it down to attainable targets like supermarkets and trains,” she said. “But it’s almost as effective, because now you’re afraid everywhere.”
Too often now, she said, we see Muslim migrants “as a threat, not as an opportunity.”
Terrorism is not about numbers, Ms. Gaub said. “It’s about fear.”
Correction: September 11, 2015
An earlier version of this article misspelled the given name of The Times’s bureau manager in Berlin. He is Victor Homola, not Viktor.
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· · ·
In recent days, there's been a steady stream of reports detailing an escalation of Russian military activity in Syria.
An investigation by Reuters, citing Lebanese sources, suggested that Russian troops had begun participating in operations in support of forces of the Syrian regime, a longtime Moscow ally. U.S. officials indicated that two Russian tank landing ships, aircraft and naval infantry forces had reached Syria this week.
This expanded military presence may signal Moscow's intent to play a more direct role in the Syrian endgame -- or at the very least help the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad preserve what limited control it has over the war-ravaged country.
But, as The Washington Post noted earlier, the move may not present a significant policy shift.
"Russia has never made a secret of its military-technological cooperation with Syria. Russian military specialists help Syrians master Russian hardware," a Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman toldjournalists on Wednesday.
On Thursday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was a bit more direct. "We have always been frank regarding the presence of our military experts in Syria who help the Syrian army in training and learning how to use the equipment," he told a press conference in Moscow. "And if further steps are needed we will stand ready to fully undertake those steps."
The following day, Lavrov went even further, arguing that supporting the Syrian regime was essential if the world wanted to defeat the jihadists of the Islamic State.
"You cannot defeat Islamic State with air strikes only," Lavrov said on Friday. "It’s necessary to cooperate with ground troops and the Syrian army is the most efficient and powerful ground force to fight the IS."
Some speculate that Russia's actions are not a reflection of a genuine strategy, but rather, more crudely, are the tactics of an authoritarian regime holding desperately onto its remaining levers of power.
"It is the confrontation between Russia and the West that drags Russia into the Middle East," Nikolay Kozhanov, a fellow at London's Chatham House think tank, told NBC News.
This has been the case for quite some time. Ever since the days of Catherine the Great, political elites in Moscow have coveted their own dominion -- or at least, a sphere of influence -- in the Middle East and the Mediterranean.
The Cold War brought more focus to Soviet ambitions. The United States, the Western superpower, had close allies throughout the region -- Israel, of course, but also authoritarian or military regimes in Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iran (until the 1979 revolution).
Syria and quasi-socialist Egypt gravitated to Moscow's orbit. Between 1955 to 1960, the Soviet Union gave Syria more than $200 million in military aid. Some Western and Israeli observers believe the Soviets played a key role in instigating the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, which Israel won in six blistering days (with the U.S.S.R. nowhere to be seen).
The Syrian-Soviet alliance, though, tightened in 1971 with the rise to power of Bashar's father, Hafez al-Assad, a military officer who spent years in the Soviet Union learning to fly the MiG fighter jets that soon became the mainstay of Syria's air force.
His Baathist regime was built loosely on the model of a Soviet single-party state, supported by an all-pervasive network of intelligence agencies. Many of Syria's elites were educated in top Soviet schools in Moscow.
The Assad regime let the Soviet Union set up a repair and resupply center in the port of Tartous, a facility which is now Moscow's last outpost on the Mediterranean. Considerable Soviet military aid went to supporting the Syrian forces that intervened in fractious Lebanon in the mid-1970s and only finally withdrew in 2005.
Even in the past decade, after the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia accounted for the bulk of Syrian weapons purchases. In 2011, on the eve of the Syrian uprising, Russia had some $4 billion worth of outstanding weapons contracts with Damascus. An estimated 100,000 Russian citizens were still living in the country. Between 2009 and 2013, Russian companies invested some $20 billion in Syria.
"Since 2000, [President Vladimir] Putin has sought to restore Russia as a Great Power, shaping its policy as an anti-American zero-sum game in order to position the country as a counterweight to the West in the Middle East," wrote Anna Borshchevskaya, an analyst at the Washington Institute, in 2013. "Syria is Russia's most important foothold in the region and a key to Putin's calculus."
But this footprint is a tiny dot compared to the influence and assets the United States and NATO have already in place in the region.
"It is not even a contest between David and Goliath, but between an elephant and a pug," wroteRussian military analyst Alexander Korolkov earlier this year. "Russia’s permanent naval task force in the Mediterranean, announced in March last year, will consist of 5-6 ships — a tenth of the size of the Soviet Union’s 5th Squadron, which was still inferior to its opponent."
It's unclear how much difference even the new escalation may make.
“There has always been a Russian presence in the Middle East,” the Atlantic Council's John E. Herbst told The Post. “It’s not surprising that they are reasserting themselves in Syria.”
Related on WorldViews
Ishaan Tharoor writes about foreign affairs for The Washington Post. He previously was a senior editor at TIME, based first in Hong Kong and later in New York.
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Now Playing
Flashback 9/11: As It Happened
In somber remembrances from New York City to Shanksville, Pa., from the White House to cities around the nation, America paused once again Friday to mark the 14th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.
The largest ceremony was taking place Friday morning at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum near the site of the World Trade Center's twin towers, which were brought down when two hijacked passenger jets slammed into them that day. Families of the victims gathered at the memorial's plaza and marked the day tolling bells, moments of silence, and the sad reading of the names of those who died.
The plaza was reserved for victims' relatives and invited guests for the ceremony, but will be open for the public to pay their respects in the afternoon. An estimated 20,000 people flocked to the site last year, the first year the public was able to visit on the anniversary.
"When we did open it up, it was just like life coming in," National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum President Joe Daniels told the Associated Press this week, adding "the general public that wants to come and pay their respects on this most sacred ground should be let in as soon as possible."
The Flight 93 National Memorial near Shanksville in western Pennsylvania is marking the completion of its visitor center, which opened to the public Thursday. At the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter and other officials joined in remembrances for victims' relatives and Pentagon employees.
President Obama observed a moment of silence with the first lady and White House staff on the mansion's South Lawn. He then planned to visit Fort Meade in Maryland, in recognition of the military's work to protect the country.
The observance began at 8:46 a.m. when the first plane slammed into the World Trade Center's North tower. The second plane hit the South tower at 9:03 a.m.
Ohio's statehouse will display nearly 3,000 flags — representing the lives lost — in an arrangement designed to represent the World Trade Center towers, with a Pentagon-shaped space and an open strip representing the field near Shanksville. Sacramento, Calif., will commemorate 9/11 in conjunction with a parade honoring three Sacramento-area friends who tackled a heavily armed gunman on a Paris-bound high-speed train last month.
Major League Baseball will pay its own tribute to mark the anniversary of the attacks. At every stadium where a big league game is played Friday, there will be moments of silence, as well as other remembrances. Players, managers, coaches and umpires will wear caps with flag patches
In Washington, some members of Congress plan to spend part of the anniversary discussing federal funding for the ground zero memorial. The House Natural Resources Committee has scheduled a hearing Friday on a proposal to provide up to $25 million a year for the plaza.
The memorial and underground museum together cost $60 million a year to run. The federal government contributed heavily to building the institution; leaders have tried unsuccessfully for years to get Washington to chip in for annual costs, as well.
Under the current proposal, any federal money would go only toward the memorial plaza. An estimated 21 million people have visited it for free since its 2011 opening.
The museum charges up to $24 per ticket, a price that initially sparked some controversy. Still, almost 3.6 million visitors have come since the museum's May 2014 opening, topping projections by about 5 percent, Daniels said.
Any federal funding could lead to expanded discounts for school and other groups, but there are no plans to lower the regular ticket price, he said.
This year's anniversary also comes as advocates for 9/11 responders and survivors are pushing Congress to extend two federal programs that promised billions of dollars in compensation and medical care. Both programs are set to expire next year.
But some of those close to the events aim to keep policy and politics at arm's length on Sept. 11.
Organizers of the ground zero ceremony decided in 2012 to stop letting elected officials read names, though politicians still can attend. Over the years, some victims' relatives have invoked political matters while reading names — such as declaring that Sept. 11 should be a national holiday — but others have sought to keep the focus personal.
"This day should be a day for reflection and remembrance. Only," Faith Tieri, who lost her brother, Sal Tieri Jr., said during last year's commemoration.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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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.
IRAN
Senate Democrats blocked a GOP resolution rejecting the nuclear accord negotiated between Iran and the P5+1 yesterday, handing President Obama a significant foreign policy victory and guaranteeing the historic agreement takes effect without the president invoking his veto. [New York Times’ Jennifer Steinhauer] The Senate voted 58-42, short of the 60 votes needed. [Wall Street Journal’s Kristina Peterson]
Following the vote, President Obama praised the result,saying he was “heartened” by the support of so many Senators which will “enable the United States to work with our international partners to enable to implementation of the comprehensive, long-term deal.”
The GOP refused to accept the defeat, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell setting up a second procedural vote on the resolution of disapproval for the accord for Tuesday evening, minutes after Democrats filibustered the first one, reports Jordain Carney. [The Hill]
Republicans are looking to “make Democrats pay dearly” for their support of the accord, asserting that they will suffer politically, comparing the deal to Obamacare in its “scope and potential” to inflict damage, report Burgess Everett and Seung Min Kim. [Politico] The conservative American Action Network has already initiated an ad campaign on broadcast television targeting House Democrats who have expressed their support for the deal. [Politico’s Jack Sherman]
The House voted 245-186 in favor of a resolution accusing President Obama of withholding documents pertaining to side deals between the IAEA and Iran yesterday, thereby failing to uphold the terms of the congressional review law. [The Hill’s Cristina Marcos]
Following the landmark vote, President Obama will face a different battle over how stringently to impose economic sanctions on Tehran. [New York Times’ Michael R. Gordon]
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has toned down his rhetoric on the Iran issue since it became clear that Republicans would not succeed in blocking the deal, reports Jodi Rudoren. [New York Times]
IRAQ and SYRIA
Russian presence in Syria. Moscow confirmed that “humanitarian” flights to Syria carry military equipment in addition to humanitarian aid, however denied claims of a military buildup in the conflict-torn country, amid US concerns that Russia is taking on a more active role in the war. [Wall Street Journal’s Olga Razumovskaya] A Russian foreign ministry spokesperson complained of a “strange hysteria” over Moscow’s role in Syria, saying there was nothing unusual about its military-technical cooperation with Damascus. [The Guardian’s Shaun Walker and Ian Black] And Israel has added its voice to the “growing chorus” of parties worried about Russian involvement. [The Guardian’s Peter Beaumont]
Chemical weapons in Iraq and Syria. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has promised the “speedy” establishment of an accountability investigation into the use of chemical weapons in the Syrian war. [UN News Centre] Russia withdrew its objections to the probe, clearing the way for the investigation to begin, diplomats said yesterday. [AFP] And there is mounting evidence that the Islamic State is making and using crude chemical weapons in both Iraq and Syria, according to a US official speaking with the BBC.
A Royal Air Force drone attack in Syria was justified as part of a “collective self-defence of Iraq,” the British ambassador to the UN Matthew Rycroft wrote in a letter to the Security Council. [BBC] The argument is a further legal justification for the strike, in addition to that given by Prime Minister David Cameron of the individual right of self-defence of the UK, under Article 51 of the UN Charter. [The Guardian’s Owen Bowcott and Nicholas Watt]
Turkish airstrikes hit PKK targets in northern Iraq overnight, according to a security source. Hundreds of fighters have died since the Kurdish group and Turkey resumed hostilities in July. [Reuters]
A “frank discussion” between Iran and Saudi Arabia is critical to finding a diplomatic solution to the Syrian conflict, UN special envoy Staffan de Mistura told the Wall Street Journal, adding that he believes many parties realize a victory is not possible, including Bashar al-Assad, reports Laurence Norman.
Leading Congressmen from the armed services and intelligence committees are investigating reports of skewed intelligence on US progress against the Islamic State; Sen John McCain told The Daily Beast that the Senate Armed Service Committee is “looking at it,” reports Tim Mak.
The director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) acknowledged the existence of an investigation into the military’s analysis of the Islamic State, but defended the process involved in collecting and sorting information, pointing out that there are often disagreements among experts on such topics. [Wall Street Journal’s Damian Paletta] Lt. Gen. Vincent Stewart also commented that Iraq and Syria may not survive as states due to ongoing conflict and sectarian tensions, during a panel appearance at an industry conference. [AP]
Former Vice President Dick Cheney said that there is something “seriously wrong” with how the intelligence community is operating if reports of “cooked” ISIS intelligence are true, reports The Daily Beast.
Director of national intelligence, James Clapper is in “frequent and “highly, highly unusual” contactwith Central Command intelligence officer, Army Brigadier General Steven Gove, the Guardian has learned. Grove is reportedly implicated in the Pentagon inquiry into potentially manipulated intelligence, mentioned above, reports Spencer Ackerman.
China said a national reportedly held hostage by ISIS matched the “characteristics” of one of its citizens who has traveled overseas. [Reuters]
President Obama has decided to raise the number of Syrian refugees accepted into the United States to 10,000 over the next year, in response to mounting international pressure. [New York Times’ Gardiner Harris et al]
“Syria will be the biggest blot on the Obama presidency.” Roger Cohen considers that while American interventionism can have “terrible consequences,” equally, American “non-interventionism” can have a “devastating” impact. [New York Times]
YEMEN
Parties to the ongoing conflict in Yemen have agreed to hold direct talks mediated by the UN envoy to that country next week, the UN announced yesterday. [New York Times’ Somini Sengupta]
Special envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed applauded the parties’ decision in a statement yesterday, urging the participants to engage constructively and in good faith. [UN News Centre]
Is AQAP gaining the most from the conflict in Yemen? asks Yaroslav Trofimov, explaining that the answer “depends on who you ask.” [Wall Street Journal]
OTHER DEVELOPMENTS
Today marks the 14th anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001. A live stream of the memorial can be found here. President Obama will spend the day at Fort Meade for an “unprecedented, live, worldwide televised troop talk.” [DoD News]
The UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly in favor of permitting Palestine to fly its flag in front of the international body’s headquarters in New York, a symbolic achievement, opposed by the US and Israel. [New York Times’ Somini Sengupta]
An apparent Western hostage was identified by the CIA in Pakistan, but that person was not kept under drone surveillance. US officials now suspect that it was American aid worker Warren Weinstein who was killed in an agency drone strike targeting al-Qaeda this year. [Washington Post’s Greg Jaffe]
The US is deploying 75 additional military personnel, along with vehicles and equipment, to Egypt’s restive Sinai Peninsula to heighten the security of international peacekeepers, the Pentagon announced yesterday. [Reuters]
Encryption debate. FBI Director James B. Comey asserted that major Internet companies maintain a key to unlock encrypted communications “so they can read our emails and send us ads.” His comments target a frequent argument of technologists and privacy experts that holding such a key poses a security threat. [Washington Post’s Ellen Nakashima]
The UN Security Council extended the mandate of the Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) until 15 March 2016, while urging all parties to “engage constructively” with efforts to finalize political agreement. [UN News Centre] And Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin will testify before the House Benghazi committee at some point before the former secretary of state appears for public testimony on October 22. [The Hill’s Julian Hattem]
The ICC has issued an arrest warrant for two Kenyans suspected of bribing witnesses for the prosecution; the two men were reportedly taken into Kenyan police custody in July. [AP]
Eight suspects in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre have had charges brought against them by Serbia’s war crimes prosecutors. [AP]
A Dutch national held captive has been released after she was kidnapped in Kabul, Afghanistan three months ago. It is not known where she was held or by whom. [Reuters]
A Marine was killed and others injured during an accident which occurred during routine training at Camp Pendleton, California. [San Diego Union-Tribune’s Susan Shroder]
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Anti-terror police, pictured, guarded Benjamin Netanyahu as he visited Downing Street to discuss working together to defeat terror threats in the Middle East in London today.
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