The CIA has been using MQ-9 Reaper drones as part of the Trump administration’s use of national security tools at the southern border with Mexico amid a fentanyl crisis, CNN, the Daily Mailand DNYUZ reported.

The drones are unarmed but could be armed as needed to conduct precision strikes on fentanyl labs and cartel activities if needed, CNN reported.

Continue reading HERE

Source: https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2025/02/18/cia-drone-flights-mexico-drug-cartels/2481739908894/

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The post Beijing Arrests Chinese National For Allegedly Spying For The CIA first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Ilyasah Shabazz filed notices of intent to sue federal and New York agencies for $100 million in damages “for the alleged assassination and fraudulent concealment of evidence surrounding Malcolm X’s murder,” her lawyer Ben Crump said.

“For years, our family has fought for the truth to come to light concerning his murder,” Shabazz said at a press conference with her attorneys Tuesday.

The announcement was made at a memorial site for civil rights leader in Washington Heights, on the spot he was assassinated on Feb. 21, 1965 while speaking at the Audubon Ballroom.

Two men wrongfully convicted in the assassination — and who spent decades in prison — were exonerated in 2021 following a renewed probe by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.

Continue reading HERE

Source: https://nypost.com/2023/02/21/malcolm-xs-daughter-to-sue-law-enforcement-over-dads-murder/

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[Disclaimer]

The post Malcolm X’s daughter to sue NYPD, FBI and CIA over dad’s assassination first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

WikiLeaks released on Tuesday what the whistleblower group claimed were thousands of secret CIA files showing how U.S. spies hack smartphones, as well as exposing a major secret listening post in Germany.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment, and in a statement the CIA would not say whether the files are authentic.

“We do not comment on the authenticity or content of purported intelligence documents,” said CIA spokesperson Jonathan Liu.

However, several current and former intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told ABC News the documents appear to be authentic and likely have origins at the National Security Agency, where most national security hacking of overseas targets occurs.

“Somebody really screwed up to let this get out,” a former official familiar with the activities outlined in the WikiLeaks-released files told ABC News.

WikiLeaks said a former government contractor leaked the tranche of files.

“Recently, the CIA lost control of the majority of its hacking arsenal, including malware, viruses, trojans, weaponized ‘zero day’ exploits, malware remote control systems and associated documentation. This extraordinary collection, which amounts to more than several hundred million lines of code, gives its possessor the entire hacking capacity of the CIA. The archive appears to have been circulated among former U.S. government hackers and contractors in an unauthorized manner, one of whom has provided WikiLeaks with portions of the archive,” WikiLeaks said in a statement accompanying more than 8,000 pages of documents.

The WikiLeaks files also revealed that the U.S. Consulate in Frankfurt is a major hacker outpost for the most important and sensitive operations, and a former official confirmed that it is the major nerve center for covert joint CIA and National Security Agency voice collection around the globe. The official said it was the likely origin of the hacking of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s personal phone — which was revealed in a leak by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013.

In fact, many of the hacker tools and files referred to in the documents appear to be the NSA’s, in the possession of the CIA rather than the CIA’s capabilities, an official said.

“There are only specific people at [the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence] who are allowed to see tailored access operations products by NSA hackers,” the official told ABC News.

The U.K.’s signals intelligence spy agency GCHQ, for example, is known to conduct proxy cyberactivities in places where the U.S. faces legal restrictions the British government does not have to contend with, a former official involved in hacking said. That intelligence is often shared with or gathered at the behest of American spy services.

The current and former officials could not corroborate WikiLeaks’ claim that a former contractor was behind the massive security breach but said it was very possible, if not highly likely.

“I’m not denying there are people leaking information,” Tyler Wood, a former senior Defense Intelligence Agency cyberprograms official, told ABC News today.

The leaked files show a large effort undertaken by CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence to find ways to turn consumer electronic devices — from smart TVs to Google Android and Apple IOS devices, including smartphones and tablets — into remotely activated spy devices. The files detail efforts made to access messages before they are encrypted by security apps and to turn on phones and activate tablet cameras and microphones without owners’ awareness. An entire office at CCI is devoted to exploiting mobile smart devices, the documents suggest.

While Snowden, in hiding in Russia and still wanted by U.S. authorities for his breach, tweeted today that the CIA files reveal a “security hole the CIA left open to break into any iPhone in the world,” an official familiar with such intelligence activities said usually a human spy is necessary — a “cyber middleman” — who can first gain physical access to a device. That is an often dangerous task and is rarely accomplished, the official told ABC News.

The programs revealed today have a series of cover names, such as BrutalKangaroo, RickyBobby, AfterMidnight and WeepingAngel — the last being the name of a set of characters in the BBC sci-fi drama “Dr. Who.”

Countless intelligence programs with similar cover names — approved by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in a lengthy process — had to be renamed after Snowden blew the lid on those activities.

“And everything will have to be renamed after this,” an official familiar with many of the named programs told ABC News.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., said Americans should pay attention to such breaches that reveal vulnerabilities to privacy and national security.

“This is of the utmost seriousness. If they can hack into the CIA, they can hack into anybody,” he said today.

Many cybersecurity experts on social media after the leaks focused attention on the apparent capability of U.S. intelligence to hack smart devices such as Samsung smart TVs, which the leaked files said can be in “fake off mode” when in reality the microphone is turned into a room-listening device without anyone nearby knowing it because the TV appears to be off.

“Pretty much anything can be made into an eavesdropping device,” said a former official.

Samsung, in its user manuals’ privacy statement, warns users that their speech can be transmitted through the internet to third parties.

In the last 10 years, WikiLeaks has published an incredible amount of secret U.S. information — about military operations in Iraq, Guantanamo Bay and, more recently, Democratic National Committee emails hacked by Russian intelligence.

Devin Nunes, R-Calif., the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said he is “extremely concerned” by the WikiLeaks publications on Tuesday, telling reporters his panel has reached out to the intelligence community for more information.

“We’ve had initial inquiries into the [intelligence community]. Look, this is early on in the investigation, but these appear to be very, very serious. But at this time, that’s really all the information that I have on it,” he said. “I’ve long said this — that emails and many of our electronic devices are not safe, and they’re primarily not safe from our adversaries like the Russians and the Chinese and others who are actively trying to get into government institutions and private businesses.”

Asked about supposed security vulnerabilities detailed in the documents that are relevant to its devices, Apple said, “While our initial analysis indicates that many of the issues leaked today were already patched in the latest iOS, we will continue work to rapidly address any identified vulnerabilities. We always urge customers to download the latest iOS to make sure they have the most recent security updates.”

“As we’ve reviewed the documents, we’re confident that security updates and protections in both Chrome and Android already shield users from many of these alleged vulnerabilities,” Heather Adkins, Director of Information Security and Privacy at Google, said in a statement to ABC News after original publication of this story. “Our analysis is ongoing and we will implement any further necessary protections. We’ve always made security a top priority and we continue to invest in our defenses.”

Samsung, when asked for comment, said, “Protecting consumers’ privacy and the security of our devices is a top priority at Samsung. We are aware of the report in question and are urgently looking into the matter.”

Last October, Trump as a presidential candidate said, “WikiLeaks, I love WikiLeaks. And I said, write a couple of them down. Let’s see.”

In the regular White House press briefing on Tuesday, press secretary Sean Spicer declined to comment on the matter.

ABC News’ Matthew Mosk, Alexander Hosenball, Paul Blake, Cho Park, Benjamin Siegel and Elizabeth McLaughlin contributed to this report.

This story was originally published on March 7, 2017 and has been updated as new information has become available.

Source: https://abcnews.go.com/International/wikileaks-docs-allege-cia-hack-smartphones-exposes-frankfurt/story?id=45977302

The post WikiLeaks docs allege CIA can hack smartphones, expose Frankfurt listening post first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Notwithstanding all the hysterical rhetoric surrounding the events of January 6, 2021, two critical things stand out. The first is that what happened was much more hoax than insurrection. In fact, in my judgment, it wasn’t an insurrection at all.

An “insurrection,” as the dictionary will tell you, is a violent uprising against a government or other established authority. Unlike the violent riots that swept the country in the summer of 2020—riots that caused some $2 billion in property damage and claimed more than 20 lives—the January 6 protest at the Capitol lasted a few hours, caused minimal damage, and the only person directly killed was an unarmed female Trump supporter who was shot by a Capitol Hill Police officer. It was, as Tucker Carlson said shortly after the event, a political protest that “got out of hand.”

At the rally preceding the events in question, Donald Trump had suggested that people march to the Capitol “peacefully and patriotically”—these were his exact words—in order to make their voices heard. He did not incite a riot; he stirred up a crowd. Was that, given the circumstances, imprudent? Probably. Was it an effort to overthrow the government? Hardly.

I know this is not the narrative that we have all been instructed to parrot. Indeed, to listen to the establishment media and our political masters, the January 6 protest was a dire threat to the very fabric of our nation: the worst assault on “our democracy” since 9/11, since Pearl Harbor, since the Civil War! (Really: Joe Biden said last April that the January 6 protest at the Capitol was “the worst attack attack on our democracy since the Civil War.”)

Note that phrase “our democracy”: Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, and various talking heads have repeated it ad nauseam. But you do not need an advanced degree in hermeneutics to understand that what they mean by “our democracy” is their oligarchy. Similarly, when Nancy Pelosi talks about “the people’s house,” she doesn’t mean a house that welcomes riff-raff like you and me.

I just alluded to Ashli Babbitt, the unarmed supporter of Donald Trump who was shot and killed on January 6. Her fate brings me to the second critical thing to understand about the January 6 insurrection hoax. Namely, that it was not a stand-alone event.

On the contrary, what happened that afternoon, and what happened afterwards, is only intelligible when seen as a chapter in the long-running effort to discredit and, ultimately, to dispose of Donald Trump—as well as what Hillary Clinton might call the “deplorable” populist sentiment that brought Trump to power.

In other words, to understand the January 6 insurrection hoax, you also have to understand that other long-running hoax, the Russia collusion hoax. The story of that hoax begins back in 2015, when the resources of the federal government were first mobilized to spy on the Trump campaign, to frame various people close to Trump, and eventually to launch a full-throated criminal investigation of the Trump administration.

From before Trump took office, the Russia collusion hoax was used as a pretext to create a parallel administration shadowing the elected administration. Remember the Steele Dossier, the fantastical document confected by the “well-regarded” British spy Christopher Steele? We know now that it was the only relevant predicate for ordering FISA warrants to spy on Carter Page and other American citizens.

But in truth, the Steele Dossier was just opposition dirt covertly paid for by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign. From beginning to end, it was a tissue of lies and fabrications. Everyone involved knew all along it was garbage—rumors and fantasies fed to a gullible Steele by shady Russian sources. But it was nonetheless used to deploy, illegally, the awesome coercive power of the state against a presidential candidate of whom the ruling bureaucracy and their favored candidate disapproved.

The public learned that the Democratic National Committee paid for the manufactured evidence only because of a court order. James Comey, the disgraced former director of the FBI, publicly denied knowing who paid for it, but emails from a year earlier prove that he knew all along. And what was the penalty for lying in Comey’s case? He got a huge book deal and toured the country denouncing Trump to the gleeful satisfaction of his anti-Trump audiences.

What was true of Comey was also true of the entire intelligence apparat, from former CIA Director John Brennan to Adam Schiff and other Democratic members of the House Intelligence Committee to senior members of the FBI. All these people said publicly that they had seen clear evidence of collusion with Russia. But they admitted under oath behind closed doors that they hadn’t.

General Mike Flynn had his career ruined and was bankrupted as part of a political vendetta. Meanwhile James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Lisa Page, John Brennan, Peter Strzok, and all the rest of the crew at the FBI, the CIA, and other intel agencies suffered nothing. When it came to light that an FBI lawyer altered an email in order to help get a FISA warrant—in other words, that he doctored evidence to spy on a political opponent, which is a felony—he got probation. Andrew McCabe, meanwhile, a former FBI deputy director, just got his pension restored notwithstanding the fact that an Inspector General’s report concluded that he lied multiple times under oath.

The recent news that Special Counsel John Durham has indicted Michael Sussman, a lawyer who covertly worked for the Clinton campaign and lied to the FBI, is welcome news. Granted, it is too early to say where Durham’s investigation will ultimately go, but Sussman’s indictment seems like small beer given the rampant higher-level corruption that saturated the Russia Collusion hoax.

At least 74 million citizens voted for Donald Trump in 2020, which is at least 11 million more than voted for him in 2016. Many of those voters are profoundly disillusioned and increasingly angry about this entire story—the years-long Robert Mueller “investigation,” the two impeachments of President Trump, the cloud of unknowing that surrounds the 2020 election, and the many questions that have emerged not only from the January 6 protest at the Capitol but, even more, from the government’s response to that protest.

Which brings me back to Ashli Babbitt, the long-serving Air Force vet who was shot and killed by a nervous Capitol Hill Police officer. Babbitt was a useful prop when the media was in overdrive describing the January 6 events as an “armed insurrection” in which wild supporters of Donald Trump, supposedly at his instigation, attacked the Capitol with the intention of overturning the 2020 election.

According to that narrative, five people, including Babbitt, died in the skirmish. Moreover, it was said, Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick was bludgeoned to death by a raging Trump supporter wielding a fire extinguisher. That gem of a story about the fire extinguisher, reported in our former paper of record, The New York Times, was instantly picked up by other media outlets and spread like a Chinese virus.

Of course, it is absolutely critical to the Democratic Party narrative that the January 6 incident be made to seem as violent and crazed as possible. Hence the crazed comparisons to 9/11, Pearl Harbor, and the Civil War. Only thus can pro-Trump Americans be excluded from “our democracy” by being branded as “domestic extremists” if not, indeed, “domestic terrorists.”

The Sixth Amendment of the Constitution accords American citizens the right to a speedy trial. But most of the political prisoners of January 6—many of whom have been kept in solitary confinement—are still waiting to be brought to trial. And although the media was full of predictions that they would be found guilty of criminal sedition, none has.

Indeed, the prosecution’s cases seem to be falling apart. Most of the hundreds who have been arrested are being charged with trespassing. Another charge being leveled against them is “disrupting an official proceeding.” This is a felony charge designed not for ceremonial procedures like the January 6 certification of the vote, but rather for disrupting Congressional inquiries—for example, by shredding documents relevant to a Congressional investigation. It originated during the George W. Bush administration to deal with the Enron case.

The indisputable fact about January 6 is that although five people died at or near the Capitol on that day or soon thereafter, none of these deaths was brought about by the protesters. The shot fired Capitol Police Officer Michael Byrd that hit Ashli Babbitt in the neck and killed her was the only shot fired at the Capitol that day. No guns were recovered from the Capitol on January 6. Zero.

The liberal commentator Glenn Greenwald further diminished the “armed insurrection” meme in an important column last February titled “The False and Exaggerated Claims Still Being Spread About the Capitol Riot.” The title says it all. Kevin Greeson, Greenwald notes, was killed not by the protesters but died of a heart attack outside the Capitol. Benjamin Philips, the founder of a pro-Trump website called Trumparoo, died of a stroke that day. Rosanne Boyland, another Trump supporter, was reported by The New York Times to have been inadvertently “killed in a crush of fellow rioters during their attempt to fight through a police line.” But later video shows that, far from that, the police pushed protesters on top of Boyland and would not allow fellow protesters to pull her out.

Four of the five who died, then, were pro-Trump protesters. And the fifth? Well, that was Officer Sicknick—also a Trump supporter, as it turned out—who, contrary to the false report from The New York Times that went viral, went home, told his family he felt fine, but died a day later from, as The Washington Post eventually and grudgingly reported, “natural causes.” No fire extinguishers were involved in his demise.

***********

The January 6 insurrection hoax prompts lots of questions.

Why, for example, did the government mobilize 26,000 federal troops from all across the country to surround “the people’s house” following January 6? Why were those troops subjected to loyalty tests, with those discovered to be Trump supporters sent packing?

Why is there some 14,000 hours of video footage of the event on January 6 that the government refuses to release? What are they afraid of letting the public see? More scenes of security guards actually opening doors and politely ushering in protestors? More pictures of FBI informants (read: “fomenters”) covertly salted among the crowd?

My own view is that turning Washington into an armed camp was mostly theater. There was no threat that the Washington police could not have handled. But it was also a show of force and an act of intimidation. The message was: “We’re in charge now, rubes, and don’t you forget it.”

In truth, there is little threat of domestic terrorism in this country. But there is plenty of domestic conservatism. And that conservatism is the real focus of the establishment’s ire.

It is important to note that while the government provides the muscle for this war on dissent, the elite culture at large is a willing accomplice. Consider, for example, the open letter, signed by more than 500 “publishing professionals” (authors, editors, designers, and so on), calling on the industry to reject books written by anyone who had anything to do with the Trump administration.

These paragons pledged to do whatever they could to stop “enriching the monsters among us.” But here’s their problem: approximately 75 million people voted for Trump. That’s a lot of monsters.

Many people have been quoting Benjamin Franklin’s famous response when asked what sort of government they had come up with at the Constitutional Convention of 1787. “A republic,” Franklin said, “if you can keep it.” Right now, it looks like we couldn’t. It looks as if the American constitutional republic has given way, at least temporarily, to an American oligarchy.

As the years go by, historians, if the censors allow them access to the documents and give them leave to publish their findings, may well count the 2016 presidential election as the last fair and open democratic election in U.S. history. I know we are not supposed to say that. I know that the heads of Twitter and Facebook and other woke guardians of the status quo call this view “The Big Lie” and do all they can to suppress it. But every honest person knows that the 2020 election was tainted.

The forces responsible for the taint had tried before. Hitherto, their efforts had met with only limited success. But a perfect storm of forces conspired to make 2020 the first oligarchic installation of a president. It would not have happened, I think, absent the panic over the Chinese virus. But that panic, folded in a lover’s embrace by the Democratic establishment, was not only a splendid pretext to clamp down on civil liberties; it also provided an inarguable excuse to alter the rules for elections in several key states.

“Inarguable” is not quite the right word. There could have been plenty of arguments, and many lawsuits, against the way the executive branch in these states usurped the constitutionally guaranteed prerogative of state legislatures to set the election rules when they intervened to allow massive mail-in voting. But the Trump administration, though foreseeing and complaining about the executive interventions, did too little too late to make a difference.

Among the many sobering realities that the 2020 election brought home is that in our current and particular form of oligarchy, the people do have a voice, but it is a voice that is everywhere pressured, cajoled, shaped, and bullied. The people also have a choice, but only among a roster of candidates approved by the elite consensus.

The central fact to appreciate about Donald Trump is that he was elected president without the permission, and over the incredulous objections, of the bipartisan oligarchy that governs us. That was his unforgivable offense. Trump was the greatest threat in history to the credentialed class and the globalist administrative state upon which they feed. Representatives of that oligarchy tried for four years to destroy Trump. Remember that the first mention of impeachment came 19 minutes after his inauguration, an event that was met not only by a widespread Democratic boycott and hysterical claims by Nancy Pelosi and others that the election had been hijacked, but also by riots in Washington, D.C. that saw at least six policemen injured, numerous cars torched, and other property destroyed.

You will search in vain for media or other ruling class denunciations of that violence, or for bulletins from corporate America advising their customers of their solidarity with the newly installed Trump administration. As the commentator Howie Carr noted, some riots are more equal than others. Some get you the approval of people like Nancy Pelosi and at least the grudging acceptance of oligarchs of the other party. Others get the FBI sweeping the country for “domestic terrorists” and the lords of Big Tech canceling people who defend the protesters’ cause.

Someday—maybe someday soon—this witches’ sabbath, this festival of scapegoating, and what George Orwell called the “hideous ecstasy” of hate will be at an end. Perhaps someday people will be aghast, and some will be ashamed, of what they did to the president of the United States and people who supported him: proposing, for instance, to put Senator Ted Cruz on a “no fly” list, or Simon & Schuster canceling Senator Josh Hawley’s book contract. Donald Trump is the Emmanuel Goldstein (the designated principal enemy of the totalitarian state Oceania in “1984”) of the movement. But minor public enemies are legion. Anyone harboring “Trumpist” inclinations is suspect, hence the widespread calls for “deprogramming” his supporters, who are routinely said to be “marching toward sedition.”

Michael Barone, one of our most perceptive political commentators, got it right when he wrote of the rapid movement “from impeaching incitement to canceling conservatism.” That is the path our oligarchs are inviting us to travel now, criminalizing political dissent and transforming policy differences into a species of heresy. You don’t debate heretics, after all. You seek to destroy them.

Donald Trump’s accomplishments as president were nothing less than stunning. Trump was, and is, a rude force of nature. He accomplished an immense amount. But he lacked one thing. Some say it was self-discipline or finesse. I agree with a friend of mine who suggested that Trump’s critical flaw was a deficit in guile. That sounds odd, no doubt, since Trump is supposed to be the tough guy who mastered “the art of the deal.” But I think my friend is probably right. Trump seems never to have discerned what a viper’s nest our politics has become for anyone who is not a paid-up member of The Club.

Maybe Trump understands this now. I have no insight into that question. I am pretty confident, though, that the 74 million people who voted for him understand it deeply. It’s another reason that The Club should be wary of celebrating its victory too expansively.

Friedrich Hayek took one of the two epigraphs for his book, The Road to Serfdom, from the philosopher David Hume. “It is seldom,” Hume wrote, “that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.” Much as I admire Hume, I wonder whether he got this quite right. Sometimes, I would argue, liberty is erased almost instantaneously.

I’d be willing to wager that Joseph Hackett, confronted with Hume’s observation, would express similar doubts. I would be happy to ask Mr. Hackett myself, but he is inaccessible. If the ironically titled “Department of Justice” has its way, he will be inaccessible for a long, long time—perhaps as long as 20 years.

Joseph Hackett, you see, is a 51-year-old Trump supporter and member of an organization called the “Oath Keepers,” a group whose members have pledged to “defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.” The FBI does not like the Oath Keepers. They arrested its leader in January and have picked up many other members in the months since. Hackett came from his home in Florida to join the Trump January 6 rally. According to court documents, he entered the Capitol at 2:45 that afternoon and left some nine minutes later, at 2:54. The next day, he went home. On May 28, he was apprehended by the FBI and indicted on a long list of charges, including conspiracy, obstruction of an official proceeding, destruction of government property, and illegally entering a restricted building.

As far as I have been able to determine, no evidence of Hackett destroying property has come to light. According to his wife, it is not even clear that he entered the Capitol. But he certainly was in the environs. He was a member of the Oath Keepers. He was a supporter of Donald Trump. Therefore, he must be neutralized.

Joseph Hackett is only one of hundreds of citizens who have been branded as “domestic terrorists” trying to “overthrow the government” and who are now languishing, in appalling conditions, jailed as political prisoners of an angry state apparat.

Hayek’s overriding concern in The Road to Serfdom was to combat the forces that were pushing people further along that road to servitude. His chief concern was unchecked state power. The Road To Serfdom was first published in 1944. In a new preface in 1956, Hayek noted that one of the book’s “main points” was to document how “extensive government control produces a psychological change, an alteration in the character of the people.”

“This means,” Hayek said, “that even a strong tradition of political liberty is no safeguard if the danger is precisely that new institutions and policies will gradually undermine and destroy that spirit.”

This dismal situation, Hayek continues, can be averted, but only if the spirit of liberty “reasserts itself in time and the people not only throw out the party which has been leading them further and further in the dangerous direction but also recognize the nature of the danger and resolutely change their course.” Note the power of that little word “if.”

It was not so long ago that an American could contemplate totalitarian regimes and say, “Thank God we’ve escaped that.” It’s not at all clear that we can entertain that happy conviction any longer.

That’s one melancholy lesson of the January 6 insurrection hoax: that America is fast mutating from a republic, in which individual liberty is paramount, into an oligarchy, in which conformity will be increasingly demanded and enforced.

Another lesson was perfectly expressed by Donald Trump when he reflected on the unremitting tsunami of hostility that he faced as President. “They’re after you,” he more than once told his supporters. “I’m just in the way.”

Bingo.

Roger Kimball is editor and publisher of The New Criterion and publisher of Encounter Books. He is the author or editor of many books, most recently, “Who Rules: Sovereignty, Nationalism, and the Fate of Freedom in the Twenty-First Century” (Encounter Books, 2020).

Source: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/10/31/the_january_6_insurrection_hoax_146663.html#!

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The officials said the Biden team has not been able to engage with leaders at the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and other military-run spy services with classified budgets and global espionage platforms.

The Defense Department rejected or did not approve requests from the Biden team this week, the officials said, despite a General Services Administration decision Nov. 23 clearing the way for federal agencies to meet with representatives of the incoming administration.

The delays came even as Biden advisers spent much of this week meeting with officials at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the CIA, intelligence agencies that are independent of the Defense Department.

But Pentagon officials said their agency was taking steps required to provide outside officials access.

[Biden to nominate Avril Haines as next director of national intelligence; she would be the first woman to hold the position]

Sue Gough, a Defense Department spokeswoman, said Friday that the Biden team “has not been denied any access.” After being asked by The Washington Post about the apparent standoff, Gough said the requested meetings could take place as early as next week.

By then, Biden advisers will have waited more than a month since the election to have meaningful contact with intelligence agencies that have multibillion-dollar budgets, satellite networks that ring the planet, and vast surveillance authorities.

The delays have added to the unprecedented tensions surrounding the transition, fueled by a president who refuses to concede that he lost the election and spent much of his tenure accusing the nation’s spy agencies of disloyalty to him.

A Biden transition team spokesman declined to comment, as did NSA and DIA officials.

Current and former officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter, said the delays have impaired the Biden team’s ability to get up to speed on espionage operations against Russia, China, Iran, and other U.S. adversaries.

The inability to meet with the NSA was described as particularly worrisome. The agency is the largest U.S. intelligence service, and its eavesdropping capabilities have been a critical source of intelligence on threats as varied as weapons proliferation and foreign interference in U.S. elections.

Officials said that rejections relayed this week to the Biden team cited seemingly petty procedural barriers.

One person said the Pentagon had asked repeatedly for rosters of those who would take part in a visit, lists of topics, and estimates of time to be allotted — information that in some cases had been provided at the outset.

“If they were in a cooperative mood, none of this would be happening,” said another person with knowledge of the interactions.

The Pentagon has been in significant turmoil since the election. Acting secretary of defense Christopher C. Miller was installed last month after Trump fired Mark T. Esper, his Pentagon chief.

Miller has presided over the removal of senior Pentagon officials, replacing them with perceived Trump loyalists including chief of staff Kash Patel and Ezra Cohen-Watnick, who is serving as interim undersecretary of defense for intelligence. In her statement to The Post, Gough indicated that Cohen-Watnick’s office has played a central role in matters related to the transition.

Pentagon officials, in turn, blamed Biden advisers. One defense official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the subject, said that Biden transition officials had improperly contacted agencies directly to arrange visits and briefings, and were told that they instead needed to submit requests to the Pentagon.

The result has been an awkward standoff in which former officials were spurned by agencies they formerly helped run. Among those ex-officials is Vincent Stewart, a retired three-star U.S. Marine Corps general who previously served as DIA director and is a leading member of the Biden intelligence transition team.

Other spy agencies have been far more receptive. At the CIA, for example, the Biden transition team has had extensive access to senior officials, computer equipment connected to the agency’s classified systems, and office space at “Scattergood,” a historic homestead on the CIA compound often used for hosting VIPs.

Biden recently named Avril D. Haines, a former top White House official and deputy director of the CIA, as his nominee to be director of national intelligence. Biden has made no other announcements about his intelligence team, but former deputy CIA director David S. Cohen is seen as a top candidate to be the director of that agency.

While scrutiny intensifies of the transition at Defense Department intelligence agencies, officials have taken steps to advance that effort at the Pentagon itself. The first virtual meeting between the Pentagon’s internal transition task force and the Biden team occurred Nov. 25. Since then, officials have taken administrative actions including granting access badges for the Biden team and completing non-disclosure agreements, Pentagon officials said.

missy.ryan@washpost.com

Ellen Nakashima, Shane Harris and Greg Jaffe contributed to this report.

Source: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/pentagon-blocks-visits-to-military-spy-agencies-by-biden-transition-team/ar-BB1bDYxq?ocid=uxbndlbing

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The U.S. is monitoring intelligence that suggests North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, is in grave danger after undergoing a previous surgery, according to a U.S. official with direct knowledge.

A second source familiar with the intelligence told CNN that the US has been closely monitoring reports on Kim’s health.

Kim recently missed the celebration of his grandfather’s birthday on April 15, which raised speculation about his well-being. He had been seen four days before that at a government meeting.

Another U.S. official told CNN Monday that the concerns about Kim’s health are credible but the severity is hard to assess.

•  Read more: Seoul says Kim Jong Un handling North Korea affairs as usual 

Daily NK, an online newspaper based in South Korea that focuses on North Korea, reports that Kim reportedly received a cardiovascular system procedure on April 12.

Kim received the cardiovascular system procedure because of “excessive smoking, obesity, and overwork,” according to the news site, and is now receiving treatment in a villa in Hyangsan County following his procedure.

After assessing that Kim’s condition had improved, most of the medical team treating him returned to Pyongyang on April 19 and only part of them remained to oversee his recovery situation, according to the news site. CNN is unable to independently confirm the report.

A South Korean source told CNN Monday that the country’s top leaders are very much aware of reports about Kim’s health status but cannot independently verify details published by Daily NK. The source acknowledged that Kim’s issues related to weight and smoking are well known but made clear they are waiting for more information.

South Korea’s Presidential Blue House said in a statement provided to reporters that they have nothing to confirm on reports about Kim’s health and that “no unusual signs” have been detected inside North Korea.

South Korea’s Unification Ministry and Defense Ministry have given a “no comment.”

The National Security Council and Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment when reached by CNN on Monday. CNN has also reached out to the CIA and the State Department for comment.

In the meantime, U.S. officials have been reaching out to North Korean experts — particularly those who have studied the Kim regime — to talk about contingency planning, a third source familiar with the communications told CNN.

Still, the situation remains murky as gathering intelligence out of North Korea is notoriously difficult — one of the most challenging targets for US intelligence.

North Korea tightly controls any information surrounding its leader, who is treated almost like a deity within the country. His absences from official state media often spark speculation and rumors about his health. North Korea has no free press and is often a black hole when it comes to the country’s leadership. Analysts are heavily reliant on scanning state media dispatches and watching propaganda videos for any semblance of a clue.

Kim last appeared in North Korean state media on April 11. April 15 — North Korea’s most important holiday, the anniversary of the birth of the country’s founding father, Kim Il Sung — came and went without any official mention of Kim Jong Un’s movements.

Experts are unsure of what to make of Kim’s absence from any festivities celebrating his grandfather. When North Korean leaders have not shown up to these important celebrations in the past, it has portended major developments. But it has also turned out to be nothing.

“There have been a number of recent rumors about Kim’s health (smoking, heart, and brain). If Kim is hospitalized, it would explain why he wasn’t present on the important April 15th celebrations,” said Bruce Klingner, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation and former CIA deputy division chief for North Korea. “But, over the years, there have been a number of false health rumors about Kim Jong-un or his father. We’ll have to wait and see.”

Kim Jong Il’s absence from a parade celebrating North Korea’s 60th anniversary in 2008 was followed by rumblings that he was in poor health. It was later revealed he had a stroke, after which his health continued to decline until his death in 2011.

Kim Jong Un disappeared from the public eye for more than a month in 2014, which also prompted speculation about his health. He returned sporting a cane, and days later South Korean intelligence said that he had a cyst removed from his ankle.

“It’s easy to be wrong on this one,” said John Delury, a professor of international relations at Yonsei University in Seoul.

Still, with concerns about Kim’s health mounting, the state of U.S.-South Korean relations has U.S. officials worried, sources tell CNN.

On Monday, President Donald Trump said the two countries have a “great relationship,” but added he wants them to pay more for the U.S. presence in the country. The two countries have missed multiple deadlines for those negotiations. And now in-person negotiations are hindered because of the coronavirus pandemic.

This is a breaking story and has been updated with additional reporting.

Source: https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/u-s-monitoring-intelligence-that-north-korean-leader-is-in-grave-danger-after-surgery-1.4904798

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A member of Iranian Border Guards wears a protective face mask, following an outbreak of the new coronavirus, inside the Shalamcha Border Crossing, after Iraq shut a border crossing to travelers between Iraq and Iran, Iraq March 8, 2020 – (photo credit: REUTERS/ESSAM AL-SUDANI)

The post The coming giant internal Israeli war over a nuclear Iran – A 2010 rematch first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

President Trump took extraordinary steps on Thursday to give Attorney General William P. Barr sweeping new authorities to conduct a review into how the 2016 Trump campaign’s ties to Russia were investigated, significantly escalating the administration’s efforts to place those who investigated the campaign under scrutiny.

In a directive, Mr. Trump ordered the C.I.A. and the country’s 15 other intelligence agencies to cooperate with the review and granted Mr. Barr the authority to unilaterally declassify their documents. The move — which occurred just hours after the president again declared that those who led the investigation committed treason — gave Mr. Barr immense leverage over the intelligence community and enormous power over what the public learns about the roots of the Russia investigation.

The order is a change for Mr. Trump, who last year dropped a plan to release documents related to the Russia investigation amid concerns from Justice Department officials who said making them public could damage national security. At the time, the president was being encouraged by a group of Republican Congress members to declassify the information.

Mr. Barr, who has used the word “spying” to describe how the Trump campaign was investigated, has been deeply involved in the department’s review of how intelligence was collected on the campaign. Mr. Barr has told Congress that he personally authorized the review. While he has asked John H. Durham, the United States attorney in Connecticut, to spearhead it, a Justice Department official said that Mr. Barr has personally met with the heads of the intelligence agencies to discuss the review and that the project was a top priority after the release last month of the special counsel’s report.

One official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified matters, said previously that Mr. Barr wanted to know more about what foreign assets the C.I.A. had in Russia in 2016 and what those informants were telling the agency about how President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia sought to meddle in the 2016 election.

The C.I.A. on Thursday referred questions to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. A spokeswoman for the office did not respond to messages seeking comment.

The directive is likely to irk the intelligence community, which has long prized its ability to determine what information about its operations can be released to the public. During the investigations of the C.I.A.’s enhanced interrogation programs, the agency stymied investigators by refusing to declassify documents.

There could be other implications for the intelligence agencies. The C.I.A. considers confidential sources its most highly classified and most protected assets, and any investigation that could possibly force it to reveal those identities is likely to create a standoff. Last year, the agency lost trust in the Justice Department’s ability to keep the names of informants and sources secret after the identity of an F.B.I. informant who interacted with two Trump campaign officials under investigation, Stefan Halper, was revealed as part of congressional inquiries, according to former intelligence officials.

Late Thursday, Jeremy Bash, a chief of staff at the C.I.A. under President Barack Obama, said that the president’s move was “a very significant delegation of power to an attorney general who has shown he’s willing to do Donald Trump’s political bidding.”

“It’s dangerous,” he continued, “because the power to declassify is also the power to selectively declassify, and selective declassification is one of the ways the Trump White House can spin a narrative about the origins of the Russia investigation to their point of view.”

He added that confidential sources around the globe might be fearful of talking now.

“It sends a signal that their identity may be exposed for purely political purposes,” Mr. Bash said. “If I were in charge of intelligence operations, I would be worried about sources clamming up tonight.”

Mr. Barr has said that he believes Mr. Trump’s campaign was “spied” on, appearing to bolster unfounded accusations that Mr. Trump has made about the Obama administration illegally wiretapping his associates.

The dual decisions on Thursday were announced in a presidential memorandum, and explained in a statement by the White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

The directive will “help ensure that all Americans learn the truth about the events that occurred, and the actions that were taken, during the last presidential election and will restore confidence in our public institutions,” the statement said.

Despite the significant step, there are indications there may be little criminality to uncover. Mr. Durham is conducting only a limited review, not a criminal investigation, which suggests Mr. Barr may not have identified enough wrongdoing to open such an inquiry.

Mr. Durham is not the only federal prosecutor who has been examining this issue. For over a year, John W. Huber, the United States attorney in Utah, also examined aspects of the Russia investigation until Mr. Durham subsumed that part of his work. When Mr. Barr’s predecessor, Matthew G. Whitaker, was the acting attorney general, and Mr. Trump repeatedly pressed for him to appoint a second special counsel, Mr. Whitaker told people he considered Mr. Huber to essentially be serving in that role.

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Jerome Corsi, seen during an interview in New York on Nov. 27, repeats in the suit his contention that he never had any direct knowledge of WikiLeaks’ plans to leak information about emails stolen from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta.Shannon Stapleton / Reuters

The conservative writer and conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi filed a lawsuit on Sunday accusing special counsel Robert Mueller of blackmailing him to lie about President Donald Trump in the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The suit, which seeks $350 million in actual and punitive damages in U.S. District Court in Washington, was filed six days after Corsi entered a formal complaint with the Justice Department alleging prosecutorial misconduct by Mueller.

Corsi, 72, the former Washington bureau chief of the conspiracy website InfoWars, accuses Mueller’s office of having illegally leaked secret information from the grand jury investigating Russian election interference.

The suit also accuses the special counsel’s office of having threatened him with prison unless he agreed to testify falsely that he served as a liaison between WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and the Republican political strategist Roger Stone, who was an adviser to Trump’s presidential campaign.

NBC News reported last month that Corsi sent an email alerting Stone that WikiLeaks planned to release damaging information about emails stolen from John Podesta, who was chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign — two months before WikiLeaks actually did so.

And it accuses the FBI, the CIA and the National Security Agency — all of whom are named as co-respondents — of having placed Corsi under illegal surveillance “at the direction of Mueller and his partisan Democrat, leftist, and ethically and legally conflicted prosecutorial staff.”

The goal, the suit alleges, was to bring about a “‘legal coup d’etat,’ negating the will of the American voters who elected Donald J. Trump on November 6, 2016.”

The suit repeats Corsi’s contention that he never had any direct knowledge of WikiLeaks’ plans, arguing that he simply deduced the coming email dump using his talents as a journalist.

Stone has said he had no communication with Corsi about Podesta’s emails until after WikiLeaks published them.

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/roger-stone-associate-jerome-corsi-sues-mueller-justice-cia-fbi-n945846

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