We begin with the hyperbolic, via the Guardian:
US intelligence chief warns Congress of danger of failing to renew Patriot Act
Congress must accept responsibility if ‘untoward incident’ occurs
James Clapper also discusses Syria, Russia and North Korea
If Congress fails to renew a controversial provision of the Patriot Act by June, the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, says opponents of the bill on Capitol Hill should bear the blame if an otherwise preventable terrorist attack happens afterwards.
In a question-and answer-session at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, Clapper reiterated his support for renewing Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which allows the FBI and NSA to collect domestic phone records in bulk, is set to expire on 1 June. He expressed this support strongly and pointed a finger at opponents of the legislation on Capitol Hill. Clapper, America’s top-ranking intelligence official, said if Congress decides not to renew the legislation and an “untoward incident” occurs as a result, he hopes “everyone involved in that decision assumes responsibility” and doesn’t just blame the intelligence community.
However, Clapper did indicate his support for the reforms proposed to Section 215 by Senator Patrick Leahy last year, which shift responsibility for retaining phone records to individual phone companies from the FBI. This proposal failed to receive the needed supermajority in the Senate for a final vote in 2014 on a near party-line vote where 41 Republicans and one Democrat opposed it.
From the Intercept, cognitive dissonance:
Bush White House’s Repeated Torture Denials Led CIA Torturers to Seek Repeated Reassurances
The Bush administration was so adamant in its public statements against torture that CIA officials repeatedly sought reassurances that the White House officials who had given them permission to torture in the first place hadn’t changed their minds.
In a July 29, 2003, White House meeting that included Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, CIA Director George Tenet went so far as to ask the White House “to cease stating that US Government practices were ‘humane’.” He was assured they would.
The memo describing that meeting is one of several documents that were unclassified last year but apparently escaped widespread notice until now. Georgetown Law Professor David Cole called attention to the trove of documents on the Just Security blog.
The documents were apparently posted in December at ciasavedlives.com, a website formed by a group of former senior intelligence officials to rebut the newly released Senate report that documented the horrors that CIA officers inflicted upon detainees and the lies about those tactics’ effectiveness that they told their superiors, would-be overseers and the public.
VICE News reminds:
Violence Caused by Far-Right Extremists Has Surpassed That Caused by Domestic Jihadists, Study Says
Since the September 11 attacks, the notion of terrorism has looked somewhat one-dimensional in United States public discourse, with the majority of Americans coming to think of political violence as the acts of organized, foreign groups — from al Qaeda in the early 2000s to Islamic State (IS) today.
This frequently one-dimensional understanding in the US of terrorism has led both the public and law enforcement to overlook a very different kind of homegrown threat — one posed by antigovernment radicals, white supremacists, and other domestic and far-right ideologues.
In both cases — radical Islamism and far right extremism — a majority of terrorist attacks on US soil have been at the hands of individual “lone wolves” acting outside established groups. But violence caused by far right extremism has surpassed that caused by domestic “jihadis,” according to a study published last month by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).
From the Los Angeles Times, no comment needed:
‘Jihadi John’ suspect took anger management classes, says teacher
The British-educated Muslim man now believed to be the notorious Islamic State killer “Jihadi John” reportedly took anger management classes as a student.
A teacher at Mohammed Emwazi’s high school told the BBC he used to get into fights as a teenager and had difficulty keeping his emotions in check.
“We would find that he would get very angry and worked up and it would take him a long time to calm himself down,” the teacher said, speaking on condition of anonymity for security sake, according to the BBC. “We did a lot of work as a school to help him with his anger and to control his emotions and it seemed to work.”
From the London Daily Mail, conclusion about biased cops behaving badly:
‘Racially biased’ Ferguson police sent emails laughing at black people and ticketed African Americans to make money before Michael Brown shooting, Justice Department report to reveal
Justice Department report due to be released later this week
Will find some white officials targeted black people in Ferguson, Missouri
Traffic tickets were used to boost police department’s coffers, officials say
Will also feature a racist joke circulated by officers via email
Expected to say attitude was ‘avoidable’ and created racial tension
Reached a climax when Michael Brown was fatally shot in August 2014
From the Associated Press, Attica! Attica!:
3 Attica guards plead guilty as assault trial about to begin
Three Attica prison guards charged with beating a jewelry thief until bones in his face and legs broke in 2011 pleaded guilty Monday in an agreement that will spare them jail time.
Keith Swack, Sean Warner and Matthew Rademacher admitted to misdemeanor charges of official misconduct as jury selection was about to begin for their trial in Wyoming County Court.
The guards, who had been suspended without pay since 2011, were given conditional discharges and agreed to resign.
“This is the first time in New York state history that a correction officer has been prosecuted and pleaded guilty to committing an unauthorized violent act to an inmate while on duty,” Wyoming County District Attorney Donald O’Geen said at a news conference.
A corporate media hack in Canada, via SecurityWeek:
Rogers Says Hackers Accessed Small Number of Business Accounts
A hacker group called TeamHans has leaked hundreds of megabytes of data allegedly stolen from the systems of Canadian communications and media company Rogers.
According to DataBreaches.net, the attackers leaked sensitive corporate information such as contracts, emails, documents, and even VPN data. TeamHans said it gained access to the information on February 20 after tricking support staff into changing the password for an employee’s email account.
The information found in the targeted employee’s email account led TeamHans to an online tool used by Rogers to manage contracts.
Hackable Microsoftness from SecurityWeek:
Internet Explorer Exploit Added to Angler Kit: FireEye
Hackers have modified an exploit for a vulnerability in Internet Explorer fixed last October and added it to a notorious exploit kit.
The vulnerability is a use-after-free issue patched in MS14-056, which fixed a total of 14 IE bugs altogether. According to FireEye Staff Research Scientist Dan Caselden, the exploit has been added to the Angler exploit kit. Angler is often associated with exploits for Internet Explorer, Adobe Flash Player and Microsoft Silverlight.
“The Angler Exploit Kit (EK) recently implemented a modified version of k33nteam’s exploit targeting the same patched vulnerability,” Caselden blogged. “This is interesting because it is the first instance we’ve seen of an attack in the wild targeting IE deployments that are using Microsoft’s new MEMPROTECT mitigations. It shows that exploit authors are still interested in attacking IE.”
MEMPROTECT (Memory Protector) was introduced by Microsoft in July to make it difficult for hackers to execute use-after-free attacks. While the mitigations are not unbeatable, they increased the difficulty for exploit authors developing new IE exploits as evidenced by the absence of new IE exploits discovered in the wild, Caselden blogged.
Beheadings and burnings as bad fund-raising PR, via the London Telegraph:
Donations dry up for Islamic State, says US spy chief
Brutal beheadings have shocked Middle East and many donors have withdrawn support
Donations to Islamic State jihadists have dramatically declined in the wake of brutal executions by the group that have shocked public opinion in the Middle East, the chief of US intelligence said Monday.
“I think there is change afoot in the Mideast,” said James Clapper, director of national intelligence, referring to perceptions of the IS group in the region.
“It’s not going to occur overnight. But I think these brutalities, publicized brutalities by ISIL (IS), beheadings, immolation and the like, have really had a galvanising effect even in the Mideast,” Clapper said at an event in New York organized by the Council on Foreign Relations.
As a result, donations to the extremists in Islamic countries were dropping off, according to Clapper. “There’s been a big decline,” he said.
From the New York Times, Clintonism at work:
Hillary Clinton Used Personal Email at State Dept., Possibly Breaking Rules
Hillary Rodham Clinton exclusively used a personal email account to conduct government business as secretary of state, State Department officials said, and may have violated federal requirements that officials’ correspondence be retained as part of the agency’s record.
Mrs. Clinton did not have a government email address during her four-year tenure at the State Department. Her aides took no actions to have her personal emails preserved on department servers at the time, as required by the Federal Records Act.
It was only two months ago, in response to a new State Department effort to comply with federal record-keeping practices, that Mrs. Clinton’s advisers reviewed tens of thousands of pages of her personal emails and decided which ones to turn over to the State Department. All told, 55,000 pages of emails were given to the department. Mrs. Clinton stepped down from the secretary’s post in early 2013.
After the jump, Isis threatens Twitter over blocks, the battle for Tikrit commences, more Aussie troops on the way, Saudi terrorist prisons a suite deal, Pakistan stages an Afghan mass expulsion, an ominous North Korean hint to Washington’s master spy, Pyongyang fires off demonstrative missiles, A Red Army military crackdown, Shinzo Abe spells out a Japanese foreign military agenda, and allegations of massive U.S. military rapes in Germany as World War II drew to a close. . .
A Tweet threat, via BuzzFeed News:
ISIS Threatens Twitter Founder And Employees Over Blocked Accounts
“Your virtual war on us will cause a real war on you.”
ISIS supporters on Sunday called on jihadis around the world to kill Twitter employees because of the company’s frequent blocking of their social media accounts.
“Your virtual war on us will cause a real war on you,” reads an online post addressed to Twitter founder Jack Dorsey and shared by ISIS supporters.
The post, whose authorship is unclear, was accompanied by a digitally altered image of Dorsey in the cross sights of a gun.
The battle for Tikrit commences, via Deutsche Welle:
Iraq forces battle to recapture Tikrit from ‘Islamic State’
Iraq has begun a large-scale military operation to recapture Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit from the “Islamic State” (IS) militant group, according to state television.
Iraq’s state television Al-Iraqiya television said on Monday that government forces – backed by allied Shiite and Sunni fighters – were attacking the city of Tikrit, with the support of artillery and airstrikes by Iraqi fighter jets.
Militants were reported to have been dislodged from some areas outside the city, but there were no further details.
Forces in northern Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region are also making gains against the IS. Similarly, in Syria, Kurdish fighters recently ran the group out of Kobani, a city on the Turkish-Syrian border.
More Aussie troops on the way, via BBC News:
Australia to send more troops to train Iraqi forces
Australia is to significantly increase its contingent of troops training local forces in Iraq, Prime Minister Tony Abbott has announced.
An additional 300 troops will be sent to the country in a joint mission with New Zealand, Mr Abbott said. They will join the 200 special forces already in the country tasked with training the Iraqi army.
The Royal Australian Air Force joined the US-led coalition against Islamic State (IS) in Iraq in October.
From the Independent, Saudi terrorist prisons a suite deal:
‘This is what Islam tells us to do’: A rare glimpse inside a Saudi Arabian prison – where Isis terrorists are showered with perks and privileges
Except for the machine guns and guard towers, the al-Hair high-security prison looks remarkably like a hotel — especially the conjugal-visit wing.
Beyond a heavy iron gate, its bars painted a cheerful lavender, a red carpet stretches the length of a long hallway, where each of the 38 private cells has a queen-size bed, a fridge, a television and a shower.
Here, just around the corner from the prison ATM, married inmates are allowed to spend three to five private hours with their wives at least once a month, with fresh linens and tea and sweets on the nightstand.
Nearly 1,100 high-security prisoners, all of them jailed on terrorism-related charges, are serving time in this prison a few miles south of Riyadh. Al-Hair is the largest of five high-security Saudi prisons established in the past decade to deal with a growing terrorism threat, first from al-Qaeda and more recently from Isis.
Pakistan stages an Afghan mass expulsion, via the Express Tribune:
No more welcome: 2,000 unregistered Afghans deported since APS attack
Pakistan has deported around 2,000 unregistered Afghans after the attack on Army Public School in Peshawar in December 2014.
“Pakistani authorities have clearly conveyed to the Afghan government that around three million refugees are posing grave security risk and it is now working to send back non-registered Afghan refugees at the earliest to minimise these risks,” security officials told Daily Express on the condition of anonymity.
These sources said that after the approval of the National Action Plan (NAP) the provincial governments have been directed to arrest illegal Afghans and deport them immediately.
From SINA English, an ominous North Korean hint to Washington’s master spy:
U.S. spy chief gives details of North Korea trip
U.S. spy chief James Clapper said that when he made a secret visit to North Korea in November to bring home two jailed Americans he was first given a 12-course banquet and then later told by his hosts that his security could not be guaranteed.
Clapper gave details of his trip, made at the behest of President Barack Obama, for the first time during a forum on Monday at the Council on Foreign relations.
He said that after his arrival in the country’s capital, a North Korean four-star general hosted what Clapper called a “marvelous” 12-course meal at a restaurant above a bowling alley.
The next day, Clapper said, a representative of the state security ministry came to his guest house and told him the government no longer considered him a presidential envoy and could not guarantee his security and that of his party.
From the New York Times, a ballistic riposte:
North Korea Launches 2 Missiles Into Sea to Protest U.S. War Games With South
North Korea flouted United Nations resolutions on Monday by launching two Scud-type ballistic missiles toward the sea between the Korean Peninsula and Japan, as the United States and South Korea started their annual joint military drills.
The two missiles, believed to be Scud-C missiles, took off from near Nampo, a coastal city southwest of Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, and flew across the peninsula before crashing into the sea off the North’s east coast, officials at the South Korean Defense Ministry said. The two projectiles flew about 490 kilometers, or about 300 miles, they said.
The ministry’s main spokesman, Kim Min-seok, condemned the North Korean missile tests as a “saber-rattling provocation” and a violation of United Nations resolutions that banned the North from testing any ballistic missile-related technology. The ban was imposed after the North’s recent tests of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles raised fears that the country was developing a nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile.
A Red Army military crackdown, via Shanghai Daily:
14 generals named in corruption crackdown
CHINA’S military has released a list of 14 generals convicted of graft or placed under investigation in an accelerating nationwide anti-corruption drive.
Those under investigation include Major General Guo Zhenggang, the son of Guo Boxiong who retired as vice chairman of the Central Military Commission in 2013.
Guo, the deputy political commissar of the military in the eastern province of Zhejiang, was put under investigation by the military procuratorate in February for suspected “serious legal violations and criminal offenses,” the defense ministry said in a statement on its website, without elaborating.
Others named include leading officers in provincial military commands, as well as those in the navy, missile corps and the National Defense University.
Shinzo Abe spells out a Japanese foreign military agenda, via NHK WORLD:
Possible overseas SDF rescue operations discussed
Leaders of the government and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party are discussing possible crises in which Japan’s Self-Defense Forces might go to the rescue of Japanese nationals outside the country.
At a meeting with senior party members in charge of legislation on national security, government officials proposed that Self-Defense Force rescue operations should be called for if Japanese diplomatic missions or schools were to be seized by an armed group.
They say other cases would include hijackings of Japanese passenger aircraft and SDF units being held by armed groups.
And from Der Spiegel, allegations of massive U.S. military rapes in Germany as World War II drew to a close:
Postwar Rape: Were Americans As Bad as the Soviets?
In the popular imagination, American GIs in postwar Germany were well-liked and well-behaved. But a new book claims that US soldiers raped up to 190,000 women at the end of World War II. Is there any truth to the controversial claim?
By the end of the war, some 1.6 million American troops had advanced deep into Germany, ultimately meeting the advancing Soviets at the Elbe River. In the US, those who freed Europe from the plague of the Nazis came to be known as the “Greatest Generation.” And Germans too developed a positive image of their occupiers: cool soldiers who handed out chewing gum to the children and wowed the German fräuleins with jazz and nylons.
But is that image consistent with reality? German historian Miriam Gebhardt, well known in Germany for her book about leading feminist Alice Schwarzer and the feminist movement, has now published a new volume casting doubt on the accepted version of America’s role in German postwar history.
The work, which came out in German on Monday, takes a closer look at the rape of German women by all four victorious powers at the end of World War II. In particular, though, her views on the behavior of American GIs are likely to raise eyebrows. Gebhardt believes that members of the US military raped as many as 190,000 German women by the time West Germany regained sovereignty in 1955, with most of the assaults taking place in the months immediately following the US invasion of Nazi Germany.
