Speaking of Mike Pompeo...

Speaking last week at United Against Nuclear Iran’s (UANI) annual conference, Pompeo announced the administration was expanding its pressure campaign, targeting Chinese entities believed to be transporting Iranian oil.

[...]

Pompeo’s choice of venues was a curious one. What UANI is and who is behind it appears to be a closely held secret but documents reviewed by LobeLog show a funding apparatus funneling over $35 million over two years into anti-Iran and anti-Qatar advocacy work. LobeLog was provided emails that appear to show UANI principals soliciting diplomats and government advisers from regional rivals of Iran for funding, raising questions about UANI’s funding sources and whether the group is acting as an undeclared foreign agent.

The “non-governmental” anti-Iran pressure group’s summit included Bahraini Ambassador to the U.S. Sheikh Abdullah bin Rashed bin Abdullah Al Khalifa, Saudi Minister of State for Arabian Gulf Affairs Thamer al-Sahban, Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer, U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, and U.S. Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Sigal Mandelker.

  LobeLog

Her again.

UAE Ambassador to the U.S. Yousef Al Otaiba was also visible in the audience. Billionaire Thomas Kaplan, who was shown to be the majority funder of UANI in 2013, was also in attendance.

[...]

Last Tuesday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Seyyed Abbas Mousavi announced the addition of UANI to Iran’s list of terrorist groups due its “close ties and cooperation with terrorist groups,” according to the Islamic Republic News Agency. The reference to “cooperation with terrorist groups” is presumably regarding a conference of Iranian opposition groups held last week in New York. The event had murky ties to UANI and was primarily attended by supporters of the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), an opposition group that the U.S. listed as a terrorist organization until 2012. Iran still considers the MEK a terrorist group.

[...]

UANI’s support for Iranian opposition groups, including those who have engaged in terrorism according to the State Department, makes a lot more sense when clues to the organization’s financial backers are examined.

In 2017, UANI received $5 million of its $5,084,533 in contributions from is umbrella group, the Counter Extremism Project United Inc (CEPU), according to publicly available tax documents. UANI’s sister group, the Counter Extremism Project (CEP), which receives State Department funding and echoes Saudi and UAE accusations about Qatar’s ties to terrorism, received $7 million of its $7.8 million in contributions from CEPU.

Continue reading.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Another Obama First

“An anti-Iranian group calling itself “United Against Nuclear Iran” (UANI)” launched a smear – or “name and shame” – campaign against Grek billionaire Victor Restis, claiming his hipping company trades with Iran. Restis denied the charge and sued, claiming that UANI destroyed his reputation. And then a strange thing happened…

This group of neocon extremists [UANI] was literally just immunized by a federal court from the rule of law. That was based on the claim — advocated by the Obama DOJ and accepted by Judge Ramos — that subjecting them to litigation for their actions would risk disclosure of vital “state secrets.” The court’s ruling was based on assertions made through completely secret proceedings between the court and the U.S. government, with everyone else — including the lawyers for the parties — kept in the dark.

[...]

Usually, when the U.S. government asserts the “state secrets privilege,” it is because they are a party to the lawsuit, being sued for their own allegedly illegal acts (such as torture or warrantless surveillance), and they claim that national security would be harmed if they are forced to defend themselves. In rare cases, they do intervene and assert the privilege in lawsuits between private parties, but only where the subject of the litigation is a government program and one of the parties is a government contractor involved in that program — such as when torture victims sued a Boeing subsidiary, Jeppesen, for its role in providing airplanes for the rendition program and the Obama DOJ insisted (successfully) that the case not go forward, and the victim of U.S. torture was thus told that he could not even have a day in court.

But in this case, there is no apparent U.S. government conduct at issue in the lawsuit. [...] [B]ased on what they claim about themselves, UANI is just “a not-for-profit, non-partisan, advocacy group” that seeks to “educate” the public about the dangers of Iran’s nuclear program. Why would such a group like this even possess “state secrets”? It would be illegal to give them such material. Or could it be that the CIA or some other U.S. government agency has created and controls the group, which would be a form of government-disseminated propaganda, which happens to be illegal?

  Glenn Greenwald

Gasp! Surely not.

We don’t know the answers to those questions, nor do the lawyers for the plaintiffs whose lawsuit the DOJ wants dismissed. That’s because, beyond the bizarre DOJ intervention itself, the extreme secrecy that shaped the judicial proceedings is hard to overstate.

[...]

[V]irtually everything has been hidden, even from the plaintiffs’ lawyers. Not only did the U.S. government provide no clue as to what the supposedly endangered “state secrets” are, but they concealed even the identity of the agency making the claim: was it the CIA, the Treasury Department, the State Department, some combination? Nothing is known about any of this, not even who is making the secrecy claim.

[...]

This sham worked. This week, Judge Ramos issued his ruling dismissing the entire lawsuit. [...] As a result of the DOJ’s protection, UANI cannot be sued. Among other things, it means this group of neocon extremists now has a license to defame anyone they want. They can destroy your reputation with false accusations in a highly public campaign, and when you sue them for it, the DOJ will come in and whisper in the judge’s ear that national security will be damaged if — like everyone else in the world — UANI must answer in a court of law for their conduct.

[...]

What kind of “justice system” allows a neocon “advocacy” group to be immunized from the law, because the U.S. government waltzed into court, met privately with the judge, and whispered in secret that he had better dismiss all claims against that group lest he harm national security?

The American kind.

The Bush Justice Department used this weapon to prevent its torture, detention, rendition and surveillance victims — even those everyone acknowledged were completely innocent — from having a day in court. They would simply say that the treatment of the plaintiffs was classified, and that disclosure would risk harm to national security, and subservient U.S. federal judges (an almost redundant term) would dutifully dismiss the lawsuits before they even began. It literally removed high U.S. government officials from the rule of law.

[...]

But in some important respects, this latest abuse is a step beyond that. It’s certainly true that legally immunizing brutal violations of human rights on secrecy grounds (as both the Bush and Obama DOJs have done) is worse than preventing a Greek billionaire from prosecuting a lawsuit. But to intervene in a private lawsuit in order to shield an extremist neocon group from the consequences of their actions — through secret meetings with the judge in which unaccountable “secrecy” assertions are made — is even more offensive to basic legal rights than what has preceded it.

[...]

Why they are so eager to prevent discovery and investigation into this Iran-obsessed neocon group — who funds it, who controls it, what are its objectives? — should be of great interest to everyone.

Above the Law, But Not Above Subverting It

A new wrinkle in an already bizarre lawsuit is shaping up to potentially embarrass the Obama administration.

  The Nation

I haven’t noticed that they CAN be embarrassed.

If allegations made in a recent court filing are true, then the Justice Department, with an unprecedented assertion of the state secrets privilege, might be shielding from any accountability a group actively engaged in spreading false information.

No, really. That’s being done regularly by the entire Washington machine. Every department. Including the Justice Department itself. But, go on.

The lawsuit revolves around an anti-Iran group called United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), a pro-sanctions outfit that takes a hard line against Iran and lodges name-and-shame campaigns against companies it says are doing business with Iran. The group is made up of former officials from the Bush and Obama administrations, as well as a host of academics, former diplomats and former intelligence officials from foreign countries, including Israel.

In this case, UANI has publicly accused a company of illegally trading with Iran, and the company has countersued for defamation. Then the US DOJ stepped in.

Justice officials asserted the so-called state secrets privilege, claiming that national security secrets would be at risk of exposure if [...] disclosures proceeded. The government also suggested the court dismiss the suit. The Justice Department’s reasons for intervening remain a mystery and, unlike any case in the past where the government has intervened in a private suit to which it is not party, refused to even explain privately to the court its reasoning for asserting the privilege

Meh. We don’t have to tell you  nuh.THING!