Ongoing war crimes in Iran

 

Pretty sure this is not the first "double tap" for the US military.

And, apparently, we've been seeing too much...

And now, he's threatening Hell to "reign" down on Iran, "Glory be to GOD!"  He's talking the talk of the Christian Nationalists and Pete Hegseth now.

One minute, it's all you European countries and the rest of the world, go get your own oil, we don't need it.  Next minute, it's Hell coming for Iran if they don't open the Strait.  He's totally fucking nuts.

Two days, 10 days, 48 hours.  He's totally fucking nuts.

Meantime, Iran is kicking our ass.

Another milestone for the orange god king.

UPDATE 07:20 pm:

Don't tell someone to do something you wouldn't do yourself.

UPDATE 04/05/2026:  Fucking nuts.

Remember those mysterious symptoms embassy staff in Cuba were suffering?

American officials in Cuba and China have experienced ‘Havana Syndrome’ : hearing strange sounds, then suffering dizziness, headaches and memory loss. A new report in New York Times suggests that the cause of the syndrome is being covered up by the State Department.

[...]

The incidents, first reported in Cuba in 2016, have been controversial from the start. Victims typically hear a burst of high-pitched, grating noise with no obvious source before suffering other symptoms. Other people in the same building do not experience either the sound or the other effects.

[...]

[E]xtensive brain scans of the victims found signs of injury, described as “a new syndrome….that resembles persistent concussion” in a paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2018.

Such effects could not be produced by a sonic weapon, which cannot travel through walls or be localized in this way. But researchers suggested that a microwave device might be involved.

[...]

“A minuscule but rapid rise in tissue temperature, resulting from the absorption of pulsed microwave energy, creates a thermoelastic expansion of brain matter,” says James Lin, a professor emeritus of bioelectromagnetic engineering at the University of Illinois, who has been investigating the effect for decades.

[...]

[T]here have been attempts to weaponize the effect.

In the early 2000s, the Sierra Nevada Corporation developed a device called MEDUSA, or Mob Excess Deterrent Using Silent Audio, for the U.S. Navy. The aim was to generate a microwave auditory effect loud enough to cause severe discomfort and disperse crowds – a microwave scream inside your skull. The most significant development was a novel electronic antenna able to form a narrow beam and target a specific individual. MEDUSA never made it past the prototype stage, and Sierra Nevada have declined to comment on later developments.

[...]

In the same time period, the U.S. Marine Corps funded work on another non-lethal weapon called EPIC — Electromagnetic Personnel Interdiction Control. This aimed to disable people inside a building through the walls using pulsed radio waves to influence tiny hairs in the vestibular system. These hairs give us our sense of balance and orientation; hitting then with a resonant frequency can make them vibrate, causing dizziness and loss of balance. EPIC was intended to prevent subjects from moving or even standing up, forcing them to give up without a fight.

[...]

However, the technology was not developed beyond this initial stages.

  Forbes

So they say. There was also, I recall hearing, interest in tuning microwaves to affect specific races of people.

Chinese researchers found that rats exposed to pulsed microwaves had difficulty in learning to negotiate a water maze for up to three days after exposure. The researchers believed this was due to damage to the hippocampus, a part of the brain associated with memory. It is suggestive of the memory loss and mental impairment suffered by some of the victims in Cuba and China.

In 2015, scientists in Tokyo carried out their own tests on rats, using intense pulsed power to cause microwave-induced traumatic brain injury. When they examined the damage to brain tissue afterwards, they concluded that “microwave-induced neurotrauma shows the same pathological changes as blast traumatic brain injury.” In other words, it is possible to produce concussion inside the skull with microwave pulses, exactly as seen in Havana Syndrome.

[...]

In August, the National Academies of Sciences finished up the most thorough study to date of the likely causes of the incidents in Cuba and China. [...] However, the State Department is withholding the report.

Dr. David A. Relman, chairman of the National Academies of Sciences committee that examined the cases, told the New York Times that the situation was “immensely frustrating” and that he did not know why the State Department is refusing to share the report with Congress or the public.

One possibility is that the report might complicate relations with China if it indicates that a Chinese weapon caused some of the cases.

It would also raise questions of whether U.S. agencies possess similar technology and whether it has ever been used.

Count on it. Or we will be doing so. 

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

It will only get worse

President Trump said Thursday he may end the practice of having national security and foreign service staff listen in on his calls with foreign leaders.

[...]

Top White House and national security officials typically listen in on presidential phone calls to keep everyone on the same page and create a record of the conversation.

[...]

Trump complained extensively about Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a key witness in the House impeachment inquiry, during a radio interview with Geraldo Rivera, accusing him of being "insubordinate" by raising concerns about the president's conduct on the July 25 call.

"Why are so many people allowed to listen to your phone calls anyway?" Rivera asked.

"Well, that’s what they’ve done over the years," Trump said. "When you call a foreign leader, people listen. I may end the practice entirely. I may end it entirely."

  The Hill

Ahhh, there's the Joe Manchin we've grown to know.  I still don't know how they got him to vote to remove Trump from office in the impeachment trial.

Expanding and consolidating the police state

On Friday, the Trump administration quietly designated the entire Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency, which polices US borders, as a “Security Agency,” according to an internal memo obtained by The Nation. This follows repeated attempts by federal immigration authorities to dramatically expand their reach in recent years.

The memo, which was signed by CBP’s Acting Commissioner Mark Morgan and dated January 31, places CBP under the same designation as highly secretive intelligence and law enforcement agencies like the FBI and Secret Service. This grants CBP greater secrecy by exempting certain records from disclosure to the public.

[...]

"This policy change now protects all CBP employee names from subsequent responses to Freedom of Information Act requests or other public disclosures for CGP employee data.”

  the Nation

Whistleblowers, however, don't get that courtesy.

The memo was provided to The Nation by a CBP contractor who requested anonymity to avoid professional reprisal. The contractor was critical of CBP’s new classification, saying, “Designating all of CBP a Security Agency exempt from OPM’s disclosure policy is simply absurd. There’s no need for the average CBP employee to have their name and position redacted from FOIA requests. This is another example of the current administration making it even more difficult to obtain pertinent information via official channels and claiming it’s related to security in some way.”

Careful, you might be outed yourself.

Under President Trump, immigration agencies have pushed for expanded powers and secrecy. For example, in February, The Daily Beast’s Betsy Swan reported that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sought to join the US Intelligence Community, which would grant them extraordinary new privileges like spying powers and secrecy measures. While the effort was ultimately rebuffed, as Swan reported in a subsequent article, ICE was granted enhanced intelligence capabilities.

And that was just the first stab at it.

Democracy may have had its run. Unless voters take away the GOP's power in November, fascism is here - perhaps to stay.

Fourteen Characteristics of Fascism

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
4. Supremacy of the Military
5. Rampant Sexism
6. Controlled Mass Media
7. Obsession with National Security
8. Religion and Government are Intertwined
9. Corporate Power is Protected
10. Labor Power is Suppressed
11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment
13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
14. Fraudulent Elections

From The Anatomy of Fascism by Robert Paxton (via Vox):

Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion. (p. 218)

More on the attempted assassination of Abdul Reza Shahlai

The attempt to take out Shahlai simultaneously with Soleimani suggests that this wasn’t an isolated, defensive operation but may have been part of a broader attack on the Quds Force.

Shahlai is operating in Yemen, meaning the conflict he is waging at the moment is less against the United States than against Saudi Arabia, which is engaged in a war in Yemen against Iran-backed rebels with our support.

In recent statements, administration officials have noted Shahlai’s role in a 2007 attack on American soldiers in Iraq, his support of Houthi rebels in Yemen and his “long history of involvement in attacks targeting the U.S. and our allies."

But if someone like Shahlai was planning to attack American forces — let’s say “imminently” — Yemen wouldn’t be the place to do it. Which suggests this may have been part of a broader operation to kill Iranian military leaders.

  WaPo

Further reason to discount all of the administration's excuses for assassinating Soleimani, except for retaliation.

“If the objective was to weaken the Quds Force irrespective of any intelligence about imminent attacks on Americans, then where does that end?” [Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.)] said. “And is it over?”

No. The move for regime change in Iran covers decades of American foreign policy. It might stop - or be halted temporarily - if Bernie Sanders were to be elected in November, but it certainly won't if Joe Biden, or Amy Klobuchar, or Pete Buttigieg - and possibly even Elizabeth Warren - is.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been invited to testify next week to the Foreign Affairs Committee.

But Engel told us that Pompeo has not said whether he’ll appear. “Right now it looks like he’s not coming,” [Rep. Eliot L. Engel (D-N.Y.), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee,] told us. “We haven’t heard from him.”

Congress has weakened itself nearly out of the picture.

Pompeo has also been struggling to clean up after Trump’s public statements. In extemporaneous remarks Thursday, Trump said Soleimani was about to blow up the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad — the first time it had been suggested by anyone.

That led Pompeo to tell reporters on Friday: “Soleimani was actively planning new attacks, and he was looking very seriously at our embassies and not just the embassy in Baghdad.”

And then Trump claimed ("I can reveal...") it was four embassies.

Numerous Democratic senators are now saying that the threat to embassies was not part of the briefing given to members of Congress on Wednesday.

Which raises the possibility that it’s not actually true, but once the president said it, his national security team felt obligated to back him up.

Wouldn't be the first time.

It’s hard to imagine that four GOP senators — which is all the war powers measure would need to pass — would not be willing to assert congressional authority, given this latest news and all it indicates about how much we do not know about what the administration is secretly up to.

Oh, it's not hard to imagine at all.

UPDATE:

Adam Schiff statement on the released unredacted Ukraine emails

Report on the documents

Schiff's statement:

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

Impeach the motherfucker; remove him from office

“Clear direction from POTUS to continue to hold.”

This is what Michael Duffey, associate director of national security programs at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), told Elaine McCusker, the acting Pentagon comptroller, in an Aug. 30 email, which has only been made available in redacted form until now. It is one of many documents the Trump administration is trying to keep from the public.

[...]

Earlier in the day on Aug. 30, President Donald Trump met with Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to discuss the president’s hold on $391 million in military assistance for Ukraine. Inside the Trump administration, panic was reaching fever pitch about the president’s funding hold, which had stretched on for two months. Days earlier, POLITICO had broken the story and questions were starting to pile up. [...] While Trump’s national security team thought withholding the money went against U.S. national security interests, Trump still wouldn’t budge.

[...]

[T]he Trump administration continues to try to obscure [the facts]. It is blocking key officials from testifying and is keeping documentary evidence from lawmakers investigating the Ukraine story. For example, this note from Duffey to McCusker was never turned over to House investigators and the Trump administration is continuing to try to keep it secret.

Last month, a court ordered the government to release almost 300 pages of emails to the Center for Public Integrity in response to a FOIA lawsuit.

[...]

Since then, Just Security has viewed unredacted copies of these emails, which begin in June and end in early October. Together, they tell the behind-the-scenes story of the defense and budget officials who had to carry out the president’s unexplained hold on military aid to Ukraine.

The documents reveal growing concern from Pentagon officials that the hold would violate the Impoundment Control Act, which requires the executive branch to spend money as appropriated by Congress, and that the necessary steps to avoid this result weren’t being taken. Those steps would include notifying Congress that the funding was being held or shifted elsewhere, a step that was never taken. The emails also show that no rationale was ever given for why the hold was put in place or why it was eventually lifted.

What is clear is that it all came down to the president and what he wanted; no one else appears to have supported his position. [...] And while the situation continued throughout the summer, senior defense officials were searching for legal guidance, worried they would be blamed should the hold be lifted too late to actually spend all of the money, which would violate the law.

The emails also reveal key decision points, moments when senior officials hoped the hold might be lifted. This includes Vice President Mike Pence’s September meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, which a senior defense official expected would resolve the funding issue, raising the question: Why? What was supposed to come out of that meeting that would pave the way for Trump to lift the hold? What was Pence expected to communicate?

  Just Security

Pence needs to testify at the trial, along with all those others that Trump has been blocking. But I don't think the Dems would have the guts to request his testimony, because that would make it obvious that Pence should also be impeached. No Republicans would vote for that, because that would make Nancy Pelosi president. In a world where the law was followed and Congress wasn't corrupt, that's what would happen, though.

But, the hold wasn’t immediately lifted after Pence’s meeting with Zelenskyy. Instead, the president finally released the money on Sept. 11, just as the whistleblower complaint was about to break into the open.

Pence's only defense would be to argue he didn't pass on the extortion demand to Zelensky. But there's a non-zero chance he wasn't made aware of it - even though it's almost zero, since that "senior defense official" (which turns out to be Dept. of Defense Secretary Esper's chief of staff, Eric Chewning) seemed to think Pence's visit would resolve the issue.

Hours after Trump concluded his infamous July 25 call with Zelenskyy, during which he asked the Ukrainian president to investigate Biden, Duffey sent an email to top senior defense officials, which was released in full to the Center for Public Integrity. The letter advised the Pentagon to suspend any future military aid for Ukraine.

It was in fact 91 minutes later.

[Elaine] McCusker followed up in an email to OMB asking if this had gone through the Defense Department’s general counsel, indicating an early concern about the legality of these actions. When it released this email to the Center for Public Integrity, the Justice Department redacted this simple question from McCusker.

[...]

[On] July 26, John Rood, head of policy at the Defense Department, sent his boss, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, a readout from the “Ukraine Deputies Small Group” meeting. This is the meeting convened by the National Security Council where we know, thanks to Cooper’s congressional testimony, that the national security community voiced its “unanimous support” for resuming the funding and Cooper raised the Defense Department’s concern about the urgency of the matter due to the legal requirement to spend all of the money by the end of the fiscal year.

Nothing suspicious there.

The readout includes this line, which makes it clear the hold on Defense and State Department Ukraine funding came at the president’s direction:

OMB noted that the President’s direction via the Chief of Staff in early July was to suspend security assistance to Ukraine including by blocking the $115 [Foreign Military Financing] congressional notification and by halting execution of the $250M FY19 USAI programs.

[...]

On Aug. 6, Duffey sent McCusker an email telling her he planned to extend the hold on the Ukraine funding by reinserting the same footnote into the budget document. The footnote still noted that the pause would not prevent the Defense Department from spending the money before the fiscal year ended, if the hold was lifted.

McCusker wrote back asking to whom Duffey spoke to confirm that the additional pause would not affect the ultimate execution of the program.

“Good catch,” Duffey wrote back and then asked with whom he should check in.

“Good catch.” Apparently he didn't think he would be caught. If he thought a direction from the president to do it was all he needed, he would have just said something like, "Oh, I didn't know I needed to."  He's obviously gaslighting McCusker.  Too bad for him, she's smarter than he is.

On Aug. 9, McCusker wrote to senior OMB officials, including Sandy and Duffey:

“As we discussed, as of 12 AUG I don’t think we can agree that the pause ‘will not preclude timely execution.’ We hope it won’t and will do all we can to execute once the policy decision is made, but can no longer make that declarative statement.”

The Pentagon’s warning: We’re running out of time.

The Justice Department chose to black this out when it released the email last month.

Nothing suspicious there.

Duffey followed up with a number of questions, mostly about whether the money could be shifted to other programs if the decision was made not to spend it on Ukraine. McCusker told him that reprogramming was possible but that it was very unlikely to get approved on Capitol Hill because Congress had not only approved the Pentagon’s request for $200 million for Ukraine military assistance, but had added $50 million, indicating that bipartisan support for the program was overwhelming.

On Aug. 12, understanding that the hold on Ukraine funding was going to be extended again, McCusker sent Duffey proposed language to be included in the next footnote to reflect the growing risk to the program. It read:

“Based on OMB’s communication with DOD on August 12, 2019, OMB understands from the Department that this additional pause in obligations may not preclude DOD’s timely execution of the final policy direction but that execution risk increases with continued delays.”

But the next time the hold was extended, the footnote did not include any text that indicated the growing risk to the funding — the language that the Defense Department thought should be included. It was also redacted in the documents publicly released last month.

Nothing suspicious there.

I've lost count. How many times has Duffey had to claim an extension of a "temporary" hold on the funds now? Three? More?

The emails show there was supposed to be an Aug. 16 meeting between Trump, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Esper at Trump’s New Jersey golf resort where they would discuss Ukraine. Talking points were prepared and shared among officials.

[...]

While there was an expectation that it would be on the day’s agenda, an Aug. 17 email from Duffey to McCusker says,

“Sounds like Ukraine was not discussed.”

[T]ension began to build between the Defense Department and OMB toward the end of August as the funding hold complicated all of the contractual processes that needed to take place in order to buy the equipment for Ukraine. OMB was pushing the Defense Department to micromanage down to the lowest level — the field contracting offices — in an apparent effort to buy time and keep the process on track even though the hold was upending everything. The Pentagon was growing frustrated.

On Aug. 20, OMB issued another footnote, extending the hold through Aug. 26. It did not include any language flagging the growing risk.

In an Aug. 21 email to her DOD colleagues, McCusker notes that members of the House Appropriations Committee traveled to Ukraine earlier that month and sent the Pentagon a request for information regarding the funding.

On Aug. 26, Duffey let McCusker know that the funding hold was being extended again.

McCusker responded, “What is the status of the impoundment paperwork?”

To which Duffey, replied, “I am not tracking that. Is that something you are expecting from OMB?”

McCusker: “Yes, it is now necessary — legal teams were discussing last week.”

The Justice Department redacted McCusker’s side of this exchange.

Nothing suspicious there.

In an email to Duffey later that morning, McCusker’s frustration is palpable. For starters, DOD still hasn’t gotten the footnote extending the hold, so technically the Pentagon should start obligating the money. Plus, Mark Paoletta, OMB’s general counsel, “appears to continue to consistently misunderstand the process and the timelines we have provided for funds execution,” McCusker said.

"Consistently misunderstand."  In the words of Upton Sinclair, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

Again, this detail was redacted by the Trump administration in its court-compelled FOIA release.

Nothing suspicious there.

McCusker asks Duffey: “Are you working with him and can you help? Starting on 19 AUG, the footnotes have put our ability to execute at risk.”

She also tells Duffey that the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) is now asking questions, in addition to House Appropriators. The question from SASC is:

“Has OMB directed DOD/DSCA to halt execution of all or any part of FY19 funds for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative? If so, when, and what was the reason given?”

On Aug. 27, Chewning, Esper’s chief of staff, shares with McCusker an Aug. 26 email he received from L3 Harris Technologies, one of the defense contractors waiting on the Ukraine money. The company has learned of the “hold” and wants to know what’s going on.

McCusker responds to Chewning saying,

“Recognizing the importance of decision space, but this situation is really unworkable made particularly difficult because OMB lawyers continue to consistently mischaracterize the process — and the information we have provided. They keep repeating that this pause will not impact DOD’s ability to execute on time.”

Her response was redacted by the Justice Department.

As frustration mounted, the Pentagon considered ratcheting up its warnings and prepared a draft letter from the deputy defense secretary to Vought, the acting director of OMB. McCusker shared the letter with Duffey on Aug. 27 just to let him know it was in the works. The entirety of the one-page letter was redacted in the emails released to CPI.

You know the drill.

"As a result, we have repeatedly advised OMB officials that pauses beyond Aug. 19, 2019 jeopardize the Department’s ability to obligate USAI funding prudently and fully, consistent with the Impoundment Control Act.

The latest OMB-directed pause ended on August 26, 2019, and has not been extended. Accordingly, the Department is resuming its obligation of USAI funding. We believe that OMB’s imposition of any further delays in obligating USAI funding will trigger the ICA’s requirement to transmit to Congress a special message proposing rescission or deferral of funding for the USAI.”

A new footnote was signed by Duffey later that day, extending the hold yet again.

In the meantime, [...] word of it was getting out. It had now reached Capitol Hill, U.S. defense contractors and officials in Ukraine.

Finally, on Aug. 28, the situation burst into the open, when POLITICO broke the story.

Talking points were hashed out and Paoletta, the OMB general counsel, forwarded them around. The final talking point read:

“No action has been taken by OMB that would preclude the obligation of these funds before the end of the fiscal year.”

When McCusker read this, she wrote to Duffey,

“I don’t agree to the revised TPs — the last one is just not accurate from a financial execution standpoint, something we have been consistently conveying for a few weeks.”

Her reaction to the talking points was redacted in the FOIA release last month.

Say it with me: Nothing suspicious there.

The talking points were also discussed internally at the Defense Department. McCusker told a group of senior defense officials:

OMB continues to ignore our repeated explanation regarding how the process works. We can not release funds for obligation until they can obligate, so the process has stopped for those cases whose lines are ready to execute.

The draft [deputy secretary of defense] memo to the OMB director says: ‘Although we will proceed to take all necessary preparatory steps, please be advised that we can no longer confirm that USAI funds will be fully and prudently obligated before they expire on September 30, 2019.’

This is due to OMB actions. I am sure I am missing some nuance here?

On Aug. 29, Chewning let McCusker know:

“Sec State and Sec Def will discuss with POTUS tomorrow. We should wait on communicating anything more privately.”

On Aug. 30, after the meeting with the president took place, Duffey told McCusker, “Clear direction from POTUS to hold.” He let her know that he’d soon be sending new paperwork extending the hold.

“Clear direction from POTUS to hold.” Reason being???

The Defense Department had prepared another strongly worded letter to OMB, to be signed by David Norquist, the deputy defense secretary, that would again remind OMB that DOD could no longer guarantee that it could spend all of the Ukraine money before it expired on Sept. 30.

[...]

With news that another extension was coming, McCusker emailed Chewning:

Do you believe DOD is adequately protected from what may happen as a result of the Ukraine obligation pause? I realize we need to continue to give the WH has [sic] much decision space as possible, but am concerned we have not officially documented the fact that we can not promise full execution at this point in the [fiscal year].

Chewning wrote back:

The Ukrainian PM speaks with VPOTUS on Tuesday. We expect the issue to get resolved then. If not, I think we need to send the letter.

[...]

While Trump reportedly instructed Pence to communicate that U.S. military aid was still being withheld and to push for more aggressive action on corruption, Pence’s staff has claimed the vice president did not understand corruption to mean “investigate Joe Biden” as other officials in the administration understood at the time. Pence’s visit came and went and another extension of the hold was implemented on Sept. 5.

On Sept. 7, McCusker asked Duffey again, “When will impoundment paperwork be processed?”

On Monday morning, Sept. 9, McCusker sent Duffey another email.

“The amounts identified as not being able to ‘fully’ obligate by the end of FY total ~$120M based on the current hold. If the hold continues this amount will grow.”

Duffey, adding OMB and Pentagon lawyers to the recipients list, and in a formal and lengthy letter that was quite different from the way he’d addressed McCusker all summer, chastised her and the Defense Department for dropping the ball, saying that if and when the hold is lifted, and DOD finds itself unable to obligate the funding, it would be DOD’s fault.

“As you know, the President wanted a policy process run to determine the best use of these funds, and he specifically mentioned this to the SecDef the previous week. OMB developed a footnote authorizing DoD to proceed with all processes necessary to obligate funds. If you have not taken these steps, that is contrary to OMB’s direction and was your decision not to proceed. If you are unable to obligate the funds, it will have been DoD’s decision that cause any impoundment of funds.”

You're right. That chapped her ass big time. As it would anyone's.

McCusker responded:

“You can’t be serious. I am speechless.”

[...]

The unredacted emails show the Pentagon’s repeated and clear warnings to OMB that by mid-August it could no longer guarantee that the funds could be fully executed within the fiscal year. But, [Mark] Paoletta’s letter [to the GAO, a congressional investigative office,] stated, “at no point during the pause in obligations did DOD [Office of General Counsel] indicate to OMB that, as a matter of law, the apportionments would prevent DOD from being able to obligate the funds before the end of the fiscal year.”

Wow.

Mark Paoletta, OMB attorney and former Mike Pence assistant, should be doing some jail time. Lying to a congressional investigation. And he should lose his law license, to boot. Unless he's going to argue that Michael Duffey lied to him, and I wouldn't bet he didn't. Some research may be in order here.*

Finally, on Sept. 11, Duffey emailed McCusker to tell her: The hold is lifted. When she asked him why, Duffey responded, “Not exactly clear but president made the decision to go. Will fill you in when I get details.”

And I'm willing to bet he never told her anything further.

“Glad to have this behind us,” Duffey told McCusker.

"You prick," I hope she said.

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

*I take that back.  McCusker earlier says Paoletta "consistently misunderstands" what she's telling them, so he gets no defense.  He needs to be in jail and disbarred.

UPDATE:  Pence said at the time that he didn't talk to Zelensky about investigating the Bidens.

UPDATE:  Adam Schiff statement:

Doomsday clock

Somebody needs to seet up something like the doomsday clock for how close we are getting to dictatorship.

Democracy dies in darkness.

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

Edward Snowden book

The U.S. government is once again trying to silence Edward Snowden — this time with a lawsuit arguing that he should have allowed the CIA and NSA to censor his new memoir before publication.

The book doesn’t contain any secrets that haven’t already been made public; the government simply doesn’t want more discussion and debate of the mass surveillance systems he revealed.

The good news is that the six-year attempt to silence Snowden has so far failed spectacularly.

This new lawsuit shows that the government remains determined to silence whistleblowers and journalists.

  Glenn Greenwald email

Also, they just don't want him profiting from the sales. And it's an embarrassment all over again.

Citing what First Amendment advocates have called an "unconstitutional" system of controlling what federal employees can and cannot say about their work, President Trump's Justice Department on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden over the publication of his new memoir.

The day the book "Permanent Record" was released, the DOJ filed its lawsuit claiming Snowden had published without submitting the book for "pre-publication review."

The DOJ is not seeking to block publication of the book but is instead arguing that Snowden should not profit from the story of his 2013 decision to leak files about the NSA's phone and email spying program since he didn't have permission from the government to share the information.

The government wants all proceeds from the book and is asking Macmillan Publishers to keep any revenue from being transferred to Snowden.

  Salon

I think it's going to be a hard suit for the government to win, since there are no new secrets revealed, and anyone could have written the book using information already reported in newspapers.  That is, it WOULD be hard if the GOP didn't have the federal courts packed.

The ACLU and the Knight First Amendment Institute are currently challenging the pre-publication review in court, arguing it violates the First and Fifth Amendments.

Brett Max Kaufman, staff attorney with the ACLU's Center for Democracy, said in April when the groups filed suit [...] "It's one thing to censor the nuclear codes, but it's another to censor the same information high schoolers are pulling from Wikipedia. Pre-publication review gives the government far too much power to suppress speech that the public has a right to hear."

Showdown

President Donald Trump’s declassification order Thursday night has set up a showdown between his own Justice Department and the intelligence community that could trigger resignations and threaten the CIA’s ability to conduct its core business — managing secret intelligence and sources.

Trump’s order directed intelligence agencies to fully comply with Attorney General William Barr’s look at “surveillance activities” during the 2016 election — a probe that Trump’s allies see as a necessary check on government overreach but that critics lambaste as an attempt to create the impression of scandal. Numerous former intelligence officials called the move “unprecedented,” saying it grants the attorney general sweeping powers over the nation’s secrets, subverts the intelligence community and raises troubling legal questions.

  Politico

I have no proble with the CIA being put on a short leash. But it won't happen via the Trump administration without something even more lawless taking its place. Something likely involving Erik Prince.

Under the National Security Act, a post-World War II overhaul of the country’s military and intelligence structure, intelligence agencies are legally required to protect the unauthorized declassification of their secretive sources and information-gathering tactics. But Trump’s directive seemingly gave the attorney general the power to determine what should be declassified, potentially upending decades of precedent.

[...]

While the order includes a caveat that the directive should not impair “the authority granted by law” to agency heads on classification, it also notes that Barr has to consult these agency heads only “to the extent he deems it practicable” about declassification decisions.

[...]

Trump on Friday defended his decision as a pro-transparency move that will give the public insight into nefarious government activity. And he praised Barr as the ideal person to judge what should be released.

Barr is “a great gentleman and a highly respected man, so everything that they need is declassified and they’ll able to see how the hoax or witch hunt started and why it started,” Trump told reporters before leaving for a trip to Japan. “It was an attempted coup, an attempted takedown of the president of the United States.”

He only likes transparency if it makes him look good. And Barr is his personal henchman, who is not so highly respected. In fact, he may be even less respected than Trump.

“I can’t remember a time when a non-IC officer was given declassification authority over intelligence information,” said Michael Morell, the former acting director of the CIA under Obama and the host of the Intelligence Matters podcast.

Things have changed.

The Wall:


source

He'll be giving Barr the medal of freedom, or some such soon enough.


source

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

Jeremy Scahill, as always

What I was most appreciative of in this podcast was a discussion of what America's drone policy has become.  Secretive and terrible.

UPDATE:

In case you missed it (I did), here's the cartoon discussed by Jeremy and his guest Eli Valley.

Poor Meghan, she's so abused.

States rights

The Department of Energy (DOE) secretly shipped about a half-ton of weapons-grade radioactive plutonium to Nevada despite the state’s opposition.

The Trump administration made the disclosure Wednesday as part of a federal court case in Nevada in which the state is trying to block the DOE from its publicly stated plans to ship radioactive materials from South Carolina.

“Because sufficient time has now elapsed after conclusion of this campaign, DOE may now publicly state that it has completed all shipment of plutonium (approximately ½ metric ton) to Nevada,” Bruce Diamond, general counsel for the DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration, wrote in a court declaration, noting that the action was previously classified.

“Although the precise date that this occurred cannot be revealed for reasons of operational security, it can be stated that this was done before November 2018, prior to the initiation of the litigation.”

  The Hill

And we believe you.

Nevada sued the DOE that month to stop the shipments, arguing that the agency had not properly considered the environmental impacts of shipping the materials. The agency’s plan is to move a total of one ton of material to the Nevada site.

[...]

The department led the State of Nevada to believe that they were engaging in good-faith negotiations with us regarding a potential shipment of weapons-grade plutonium, only to reveal that those negotiations were a sham all along. They lied to the State of Nevada, misled a federal court, and jeopardized the safety of Nevada’s families and environment,” he said.

[...]

“I am beyond outraged by this completely unacceptable deception from the U.S. Department of Energy,” Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak (D) said in a statement.

Much good may it do you, Steve.

Go, Jerry

As long as I can remember, California has been ahead of the curve. We'll miss it when the ocean swallows it.

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

UPDATE:

There's more!

Predictive policing in the US

Predictive policing technology has proven highly controversial wherever it is implemented, but in New Orleans, the program escaped public notice, partly because Palantir established it as a philanthropic relationship with the city through Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s signature NOLA For Life program. Thanks to its philanthropic status, as well as New Orleans’ “strong mayor” model of government, the agreement never passed through a public procurement process.

In fact, key city council members and attorneys contacted by The Verge had no idea that the city had any sort of relationship with Palantir, nor were they aware that Palantir used its program in New Orleans to market its services to another law enforcement agency for a multimillion-dollar contract.

[...]

Even within the law enforcement community, there are concerns about the potential civil liberties implications of the sort of individualized prediction Palantir developed in New Orleans, and whether it’s appropriate for the American criminal justice system.

[...]

Six years ago, one of the world’s most secretive and powerful tech firms developed a contentious intelligence product in a city that has served as a neoliberal laboratory for everything from charter schools to radical housing reform since Hurricane Katrina. Because the program was never public, important questions about its basic functioning, risk for bias, and overall propriety were never answered.

  The Verge

P.S.

James Carville, the Democratic Party power broker and architect of Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 presidential campaign. Carville is a paid adviser of Palantir whose involvement with the data-mining company dates back at least to 2011.

In an interview, Carville told The Verge that he was the impetus for the collaboration between Palantir and New Orleans. “I am the sole driver of that project. It was entirely my idea,” said Carville, adding that he and Palantir CEO Alex Karp flew down to New Orleans to meet with Mayor Landrieu. “To me, it was a case of morality. Young people were shooting each other, and the public wasn’t as involved as they should have been.”

So his idea of how to rectify that was to introduce a secret project? Interesting approach.

We've heard about Palantir before.  I posted excerpts from an Intercept article back in 2016:

Since 2011, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s Office of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) has paid Palantir [Palantir Technologies, the data mining company co-founded by billionaire and Trump transition advisor Peter Thiel] tens of millions of dollars to help construct and operate a complex intelligence system called FALCON, which allows ICE to store, search, and analyze troves of data that include family relationships, employment information, immigration history, criminal records, and home and work addresses.

In a separate multi-million-dollar contract signed in 2014, Thiel’s $20 billion company is building a complex case management system for ICE’s HSI, which processes tens of thousands of civil and criminal cases each year.

[...] 

In recent years, the federal government has reportedly paid Palantir  some $340 million in contracts. Concerns over Thiel’s potential conflicts deepened last week when it was reported that he would not confirm whether or not he had signed standard paperwork barring him from participating in Trump transition matters that might conflict with his private interests. 

  The Intercept

All the horror stories of late about how ICE has been systematically rounding up and deporting people who have been model citizens for years in this country should be a cautionary tale about the use of data mining programs.  But it won't be. 

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

Human error

The independent watchdog charged with helping to oversee the war in Afghanistan claimed the Pentagon blocked it from publishing information about the control of territory in Afghanistan, a key metric that has been touted by US and Afghan officials as a benchmark to determine whether the US strategy is working.

The Pentagon has denied being responsible for the request to block the publishing of the information. The NATO-led mission in Afghanistan, Operation Resolute Support, said the request was due to a "human error."

  CNN

Operation Resolute Support - indeed, all of the Afghan war effort - can properly be described as "human error".

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

It's time to stop belittling and marginalizing people who believe in UFOs

If it's just a matter of tinfoil hatters, then why is the Pentagon still keeping an eye out?

In the $600 billion annual Defense Department budgets, the $22 million spent on the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program was almost impossible to find.

Which was how the Pentagon wanted it.

For years, the program investigated reports of unidentified flying objects, according to Defense Department officials, interviews with program participants and records obtained by The New York Times. It was run by a military intelligence official, Luis Elizondo, on the fifth floor of the Pentagon’s C Ring, deep within the building’s maze.

[...]

Officials insisted that the effort had ended after five years, in 2012.

“It was determined that there were other, higher priority issues that merited funding, and it was in the best interest of the DoD to make a change,” a Pentagon spokesman, Thomas Crosson, said in an email, referring to the Department of Defense.

  New York Times

Sure, and there was the Air Force's investigation - Project Blue Book - after the 1947 Roswell incident, that also was finally shut down, which reconfirms to me that the government never shuts down any secret project. They just go deeper into the shadows with it.  Or "reinvent" it in a different agency or give it a different name: see, for instance, Total Information Awareness.

Mr. Elizondo said the only thing that had ended was the effort’s government funding, which dried up in 2012. From then on, Mr. Elizondo said in an interview, he worked with officials from the Navy and the C.I.A. He continued to work out of his Pentagon office until this past October, when he resigned to protest what he characterized as excessive secrecy and internal opposition.

[...]

Mr. Elizondo said that the effort continued and that he had a successor, whom he declined to name.

[...]

The Defense Department has never before acknowledged the existence of the program, which it says it shut down in 2012. But its backers say that, while the Pentagon ended funding for the effort at that time, the program remains in existence.

[...]

Most of the money went to an aerospace research company run by a billionaire entrepreneur and longtime friend of [Congressman Harry] Reid’s, Robert Bigelow, who is currently working with NASA to produce expandable craft for humans to use in space.

On CBS’s “60 Minutes” in May, Mr. Bigelow said he was “absolutely convinced” that aliens exist and that U.F.O.s have visited Earth.

[...]

A 2009 Pentagon briefing summary of the program prepared by its director at the time asserted that “what was considered science fiction is now science fact,” and that the United States was incapable of defending itself against some of the technologies discovered.

[...]

Mr. Elizondo said he and his government colleagues had determined that the phenomena they had studied did not seem to originate from any country. “That fact is not something any government or institution should classify in order to keep secret from the people,” he said.

For his part, Mr. Reid said he did not know where the objects had come from. “If anyone says they have the answers now, they’re fooling themselves,” he said. “We do not know.”

But, he said, “we have to start someplace.”

[...]

“We’re sort of in the position of what would happen if you gave Leonardo da Vinci a garage-door opener,” said Harold E. Puthoff, an engineer who has conducted research on extrasensory perception for the C.I.A. and later worked as a contractor for the program. “First of all, he’d try to figure out what is this plastic stuff. He wouldn’t know anything about the electromagnetic signals involved or its function.”

Hal Puthoff, also a pioneer of remote viewing.  Check that out some time.  There's also a serious civilian organization studying the phenomenon of extraterrestrial communication: CSETI.  Check Netflix "Unacknowledged" if you're insterested in where they are to date.

And it's the height of ignorant arrogance for us to think that at last humans have encountered everything there is in the universe and are equipped to study anything we've found. We readily note that early humans were primitive and ignorant but fail to realize that in another three thousand years, people will look at us the same way. That is, should the earth survive us that long. One thing about those early primitives - they weren't ignorant enough to destroy the planet.

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

Depends on what you mean by "national security"

What You Don't Know Won't Hurt Them

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

For May to Know and You to Find Out

A report on the foreign funding of extremism in the UK was given to Downing Street last year, it has been revealed, but Theresa May is still to decide whether to make its findings public.

[...]

The whereabouts of the report into foreign funding of extremism and radicalisation in the UK became a controversial issue in the final days of the general election after the terror attacks in Manchester and London Bridge.

It was commissioned by David Cameron and approved by May as part of a deal with the Liberal Democrats to secure the party’s support before a crucial vote on airstrikes in Syria in December 2015.

  The Guardian

The cynicism in US and UK foreign policy is astounding.

This week, [Green party co-leader, Caroline] Lucas resubmitted her parliamentary question on the review’s whereabouts to May, who wrote back to confirm ministers were still “considering advice on what is able to be published and will report to parliament with an update in due course”.

[...]

The Brighton Pavilion MP said it was crucial to determine if the report’s delay was linked to whether it was critical of Saudi Arabia.

What do you think?

During the election, the Liberal Democrat leader, Tim Farron, said Cameron had committed to publishing the report by spring 2016

[...]

However, despite Farron’s insistence that publication had been part of the deal, both the home secretary, Amber Rudd, and the foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, said the report may never be seen in public.

That would be my guess.

Farron said the written statement showed the power was in May’s hands to release the report. “It is a scandal that the government are suppressing this report. The only conclusion you can draw is that they are worried about what it actually says,” he said.

“We hear regularly about the Saudi arms deals or ministers going to Riyadh to kowtow before their royal family, but yet, our government won’t release a report that will clearly criticise Saudi Arabia."

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

We're Always in Need of Whistleblowers and Leakers

We just don't always get them when we need them.

[L]ike so many things about the Obama administration, the response to what the Russians did was measured and allegedly proportional. ("I feel like we choked," one official told the  [Washington] Post.)

[...]

Before departing for an August vacation to Martha's Vineyard, Obama instructed aides to pursue ways to deter Moscow and proceed along three main paths: Get a high-confidence assessment from U.S. intelligence agencies on Russia's role and intent; shore up any vulnerabilities in state-run election systems; and seek bipartisan support from congressional leaders for a statement condemning Moscow and urging states to accept federal help.

Ah, yes. "Bipartisan support." The brilliant snow-white unicorn pursued by that administration for nearly eight years. How did that work out? How did it ever work out?

[...]

The American people had damned close to an absolute right to the information their government already had. The most fundamental act of citizenship is the right to cast an informed vote. The idea that the Obama administration withheld the fact that the Russians were ratfcking the election in order to help elect a vulgar talking yam is a terrible condemnation of the whole No Drama Obama philosophy. Would Donald Trump have raised hell if the White House released what it knew? Of course, he would have. But, as it was, the American people went to vote with only about half of the information they needed to assess his candidacy. This was a terrible decision.

  Charles P Pierce

As it turns out, Trump is raising hell anyway. (Read them from the bottom up. I didn't feel like cutting them out one at a time to embed them.)

via GIPHY

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