06/16/15

Green Policies Kill Military Readiness and Vets

As the world waits for the pope’s climate change encyclical, new attention has been focused on how the Obama administration’s green energy policies are undermining U.S. military readiness and diverting resources from caring for America’s veterans.

We reported recently that the Obama administration didn’t have time to develop a strategy to fight against global Islamic terrorism because it was too busy putting homosexuals into the Armed Forces and celebrating gay pride. In fact, there was something else on the agenda that Obama had ordered the military to handle that had assumed more importance than global terrorism—climate change.

On May 20, in his remarks to the United States Coast Guard Academy commencement, Obama actually told the Coast Guard grads that “It is a dereliction of duty” for them to ignore this alleged problem.

The speech got enormous favorable attention from our media. “Obama Recasts Climate Change as a Peril With Far-Reaching Effects,” was The New York Times headline over a story covering the speech. CNN reported, “In Coast Guard commencement address, Obama buoys climate change.”

Obama even went so far as to imply that climate change was behind terrorism. He said, “…climate change did not cause the conflicts we see around the world. Yet what we also know is that severe drought helped to create the instability in Nigeria that was exploited by the terrorist group Boko Haram.”

The bizarre claim that Islamist terrorists kill Christians because of climate change has been echoed by the British Guardian and Mother Jones, both of them far-left outlets.

The other side of the story was provided by two excellent speakers at the recent 10th International Conference on Climate Change in Washington, D.C. Jay Lehr, Ph.D., who is the science director at The Heartland Institute, said the U.S. Navy is being transformed into a “Green Navy” that will cost $1.9 billion in alternative fuels alone. The same money, he said, could buy a new aircraft carrier.

“The money that we are spending in this manner is going to reduce our weaponry and reduce our ability to protect our fighting men and women, and it is entirely disgraceful,” Lehr said.

James M. Taylor, vice president for external relations and senior fellow for environment and energy policy at The Heartland Institute, discussed his group’s publication of the report, “Climate Change, Energy Policy, and National Power.” It was written by three retired military officials who argue that the Obama administration’s so-called National Security Strategy pays lip service to a balanced energy strategy, while in reality it is actually “defaulting on its responsibility to develop and execute a credible national energy policy.”

In his own talk, Taylor discussed in detail how the costly energy schemes being imposed on the U.S. military impede military readiness and waste resources, even at the expense of veterans in need of health care.

Dominance in the world, he said, requires the projection of military power, which rests on a strong and growing economy. But Obama’s plan for less reliance on fossil fuels and the increased usage of so-called renewable sources such as solar and wind power can only weaken the U.S. economy, he said. He noted that Russia is already moving into the Arctic area, with no credible U.S. military response.

What’s more, Taylor noted, Obama has ordered the Defense Department to rely increasingly—as much as 25 percent of its energy—on “grossly expensive” solar and wind power that detracts from military preparedness. “This is coming out of the defense budget,” he said. “It’s a budgetary boondoggle that takes away from money that could be spent on men, machinery and weaponry, and instead is being spent on more expensive power.”

He cited a machine made for the military that is supposed to be dragged around on a battlefield and transforms trash into electricity, rather than being buried or burned. The contraption was highlighted by the Mother Nature Network news service as one of the “6 green things the U.S. military is doing.”

Citing another boondoggle, he said the Navy is paying an incredibly high price of $67.50 per gallon for a “camelina-based fuel” made from a plant in the mustard family.

Even more shocking, he cited a case of money from the Department of Veterans Affairs intended for military care that is instead being used to purchase solar panels. “That’s coming at the expense of folks who are not getting the care they should be getting,” he said.

Indeed, the VA announced in 2011 that it had awarded $56.7 million in contracts to build solar panels.

However, it was reported in Arkansas in April of this year by local television station KATV that a section of solar panels at the Little Rock Veteran’s Affairs Hospital was being torn down after being built only two years ago and never turned on. The panels had cost $8 million.

The VA Secretary at the time, Eric Shinseki, said that “in order to continue providing Veterans with the best health care and benefit services, VA must adapt to climate change.”

Shinseki’s green campaign included installing a wind turbine at the Massachusetts National Cemetery. The turbine cost $533,000 and was funded under Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

The VA issued a news release about this development, saying, “Under the leadership of Secretary Eric K. Shinseki, who flipped the switch at today’s wind turbine dedication, VA is transitioning into a 21st century organization that better serves America’s Veterans.”

The VA scandal over poor or non-existent care for veterans forced Shinseki’s resignation more than a year ago.

But he has bounced back, recently joining the board of First Hawaiian Bank. Bob Harrison, First Hawaiian Bank chairman, president and chief executive officer, said, “He is a man of great integrity and character who has dedicated his entire career to serving our nation.”

06/9/15

The Secret Russian Role in Global Conflict

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

In an extraordinary judgment that throws U.S. policy in the Middle East into complete turmoil, strategic analyst Michael Ledeen has concluded, in regard to the activities of the Islamic State, “I think the Russians are involved, in tandem with the Iranians, who have had their own troops on the Syrian battlefield for years.”

This means that a U.S. congressional declaration of war on the Islamic State would miss the point, and that the Russians and the Iranians are the bigger threat.

“It’s part of the global war, of which Syria is only one killing field, and IS [Islamic State] is one of the band of killers,” says Ledeen.

The analysis of Ledeen, who previously served as a consultant to the National Security Council, the State Department, and the Defense Department, should serve as an opportunity to review what is really happening in the Middle East, and to examine whether the Islamic State is a Russian creation that is designed to pave the way for Iranian expansion.

Ledeen notes evidence that the top IS military commander, Abu Omar al-Shishani, is a Russian asset, and that “the Russians are exploiting their strategic position in Ukraine to set up transit facilities for IS.” He adds that Ukrainian security forces recently arrested five IS volunteers coming from Russia or the former Soviet republics.

Last September we reported on some of this evidence, noting, “We have heard repeatedly about Americans and Europeans fighting for ISIL [the Islamic state], but little attention is being devoted to the Russian-speaking foreign fighters that make up the group. Their numbers are estimated at 500 or more. Omar al-Shishani is usually described as a prominent Islamic State fighter who is Chechen. In fact, he was born in the former Soviet republic of Georgia and was trained there.”

Those who believe the Russians are incapable of such deception and misdirection have conveniently forgotten about the history of the old Soviet intelligence service, the KGB. It is represented in the Kremlin today by Russian President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer once based in East Germany.

In another area of global affairs that reveals a hidden Russian role, The New York Times has taken note in a June 7 story of evidence that the Russians under Putin are financing conservative movements and political parties around the world. The Times reports, “Not only is it [the Kremlin] aligning itself with the leftists traditionally affiliated with Moscow since the Cold War, but it is making common cause with far-right forces rebelling against the rise of the European Union that are sympathetic to Mr. Putin’s attack on what he calls the West’s moral decline.”

This is actually an old story. We have been reporting for more than a year about Putin acquiring agents of influence or dupes in the West, even in the United States. Perhaps the most prominent name associated with this pro-Moscow trend is veteran conservative columnist Patrick J. Buchanan. The World Congress of Families is the most prominent organization to embrace Moscow’s alleged devotion to Christian values.

It is quite natural for conservatives in favor of traditional values to abhor the Obama administration’s embrace of the so-called LGBT agenda, here and abroad. But to adore Putin in reaction to this trend is a major miscalculation that assumes Moscow is genuinely interested in preserving Western values.

It is a welcome development that The New York Times has finally taken note of Moscow’s hand in right-wing political movements.

But there’s more. The paper added, “American and European officials have accused Moscow of financing green movements in Europe to encourage protests against hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a move intended to defend Russia’s gas industry. And a shadowy ‘troll farm’ in St. Petersburg uses Twitter to plant fake stories about chemical spills or Ebola outbreaks in the West.”

Another example of how Putin is deceiving the world lies in his exploitation of Edward Snowden, the former NSA employee still being hailed as a whistleblower in the United States.

Buchanan’s magazine, The American Conservative, has written about how figures on the U.S. political right such as Ronald Reagan biographer Craig Shirley have rallied to Snowden’s defense. In a recent column, Shirley condemned “the senior GOP leadership’s embrace of the National Security Agency’s enveloping surveillance activities.”

What Shirley and other Snowden supporters ignore is the fact that the NSA’s surveillance activities rely mostly on a Ronald Reagan Executive Order (12333) and that funding and manpower for the NSA increased dramatically under Reagan.

In fact, President Reagan used the NSA to undermine America’s enemies, especially the old USSR.

National security reporter Bill Gertz wrote in 2013 about how a former “top-secret” document, “United States Cryptologic History, Series VI, Vol. 5: American Cryptology During the Cold War, 1945-89,” contained a section on how President Ronald Reagan realized the value of the NSA’s unique electronic intelligence collection capabilities.

The history notes that “the best known exposure of SIGINT [signals intelligence] since the Pearl Harbor hearings of 1945 had actually come in 1983, when the Reagan administration played the intercepted cockpit conversations of the Soviet pilot as he shot down KAL-007. The SIGINT gave the administration a tremendous foreign policy coup.”

On September 1, 1983, the Soviet Union shot down the civilian airliner KAL-007, killing 269 people.

In 1986, the document states, Reagan became the first American president to visit the NSA, as he gave the official dedication speech for the NSA’s two new buildings. He wanted to loosen “the legal reins governing intelligence,” the document says, giving rise to Reagan executive order 12333. It gave the NSA latitude in SIGINT collection that the agency had not had during the disastrous Carter years.

This executive order remains in effect. Not even Obama has tried to revoke it.

Based on this history, one would have to conclude that President Reagan would defend the NSA, just as the GOP leadership in the U.S. Senate has done. Leaders like Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) defended the NSA against the Obama administration, liberal Democrats and libertarian Republicans.

The tragedy is that, with Obama in office rather than a conservative like Reagan, some conservatives decided to join the campaign to undermine the agency that Reagan considered absolutely essential to America’s security and survival.

Could it be just a coincidence that the Islamic state, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and aggressive Chinese cyber-warfare against the U.S. have emerged as major problems in the wake of Snowden’s arrival in Moscow?

Those who blame Obama alone for all of our foreign policy setbacks should examine the evidence that Putin and the Russians may ultimately be pulling the strings. At the same time, the NSA can’t be blamed for Obama’s failure or unwillingness to use the agency effectively against our enemies.

When the next president takes office, he will need an NSA capable of gathering the intelligence information the nation needs to defend itself. The next administration will have to consider apprehending and then prosecuting Snowden for operating as a Russian/Chinese agent of influence and committing espionage against the United States.

Hopefully, those who defended or praised Snowden will one day have to answer for their foolishness.

02/17/15

Suit Seeks Financial Damages from Snowden Inc.

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

A federal lawsuit has been filed against the Oscar-nominated movie “Citizenfour,” which features NSA defector Edward Snowden and celebrates his theft and release of classified documents. Snowden and his associates are being sued for financial damages for providing aid and comfort to America’s enemies.

Filed on behalf of a retired naval officer who saw the film and took offense at Snowden’s illegal activities, the suit says Snowden and his associates have participated in “a scheme to profit from stolen U.S. government property” and have no right to the money generated by the film. Snowden, who has been charged with espionage and is currently living in Russia, makes regular appearances via video to his supporters in the U.S. He spoke, for example, to a Koch Brothers-sponsored International Students for Liberty conference on February 13.

The “Citizenfour” film has already been shown in theaters, is up for an Oscar at the Academy Awards on Sunday night in the “documentary” category, and is then scheduled to air on the HBO cable channel the night of Monday, February 23.

The suit alleges that the film “glorifies international espionage for profit” and that Snowden’s “dissemination of top-secret documents to foreign enemies” has “seriously damaged” U.S. national security, putting the lives of Americans at risk. Information included in the complaint (Exhibit A) also alleges that the film is not eligible for an Oscar nomination because its entry violates the rules for documentary awards.

While the lawsuit has generated some interest from outlets like The Hollywood Reporter, it has not garnered the national press attention it deserves. Yet, the lawsuit has a very strong factual basis. It cites the 1980 precedent of Snepp vs. United States, in which a former CIA officer was denied the right to gain a profit from a book based on information obtained and then released to the public, in violation of his standard secrecy agreement.

Like Snepp, Snowden violated a secrecy agreement. What’s more, it has been reported that Snowden stole highly classified “Tier 3” documents about ongoing NSA operations. The NSA is part of the Defense Department and its mission is to support military men and women as they fight America’s foreign enemies.

The lawsuit shines a light on how Snowden’s disclosures have put our citizens, military personnel and allies in danger.

Snowden’s disclosures have been blamed for enabling the Russians to conduct a surprise invasion of Ukraine, and for the Islamic State terror group, also known as ISIS, to unexpectedly grow in power and strength in the Middle East. Former CIA officer Robert Baer has said, “…ISIS has been reading Snowden…they know to stay off phones, stay off e-mail and the rest of it. They’re communicating with mobile Wi-Fi. They can beat the National Security Agency…”

In addition to Snowden, defendants in the lawsuit include his collaborator Laura Poitras, the director of “Citizenfour,” and the Weinstein Company, which is distributing the film in the U.S.

To attempt to rectify the damage done to U.S. foreign policy, the lawsuit seeks the establishment of a “constructive trust” to hold the funds generated by the film. The suit argues that a trust would enable the government “to obtain an accounting of all monies, gains, profits, royalties, and other advantages that all Defendants have derived, or will derive in the future, from the publication, distribution, sale, serialization, or republication in any form, including any other rights, of the work entitled ‘Citizenfour,’ whether or not such gains remain in Defendant Snowden’s possession or in the possession, custody or control, whether direct or indirect, of any other Defendant herein.”

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Horace B. Edwards, a patriotic retired naval officer and former Secretary of the Kansas Department of Transportation. Edwards is also a former president of both a pipeline and an engineering company.

His local newspaper, the Topeka Capital-Journal, quotes him as saying that he went to watch the film and soon realized that it was celebrating illegal activity that hurt the United States. Edwards said he had a security clearance while working for the government and would never think of disclosing secret documents. He contacted a local attorney, Jean Lamfers, a former journalist, to bring the legal action.

“Plaintiff Edwards views Defendant Snowden’s acts as dishonorable and indefensible and not the acts of a legitimate whistleblower,” the lawsuit says.

The defendants have argued that their activities are protected by the First Amendment, and that Edwards doesn’t have the standing to sue.

As previously noted by Accuracy in Media, “Citizenfour” shows Snowden in Hong Kong, China, after arranging through encrypted messages to meet his collaborators and disseminate his stolen NSA documents. We argued that the film describes what amounts to an espionage operation to damage America and our allies. Snowden fled from China to Russia, where he is under the control of the Russian secret police, the FSB.

Because of the damage inflicted by Snowden and his associates, the suit anticipates that “hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars” will be needed “to protect human assets placed at risk, restore/revamp computer infrastructure, rebuild relationships with foreign governments, and respond to various enemies’ resurgence efforts, due to the blowback associated with the film and the release of classified information to foreign enemies of this Nation.”

A similar estimate has also been made by former CIA officer Baer, who said about Snowden, “…this guy has done more damage to U.S. intelligence than I’ve seen anybody do. And he’s gone way beyond…protecting privacy of Americans…It’s going to cost us billions.”

Catherine Herridge, chief intelligence correspondent for the Fox News Channel, noted in December of 2013, “A review of the NSA leaks by Fox News shows the majority of the leaks since June now deal with sources, methods and surveillance activities overseas, rather than the privacy rights of American citizens.”

We commented at the time that the evidence showed that Snowden “stole NSA documents and leaked them for the express purpose of weakening America’s defenses against terrorism.”

The lawsuit highlights the financial nature of the Snowden operation, and how he and his associates stand to make millions of dollars from undermining U.S. national security.