‘There is no justification to Gitmo’: Barack Obama’s speech on counter-terrorism

President Barack Obama has given a speech – justifying and outlining changes to the national defence policies of the United States. The address is seen as an opening up of America’s security policies. Obama has discussed the legality of drone strikes and the future of the Guantanamo prison.

Document: Text of Obama speech on counterterrorism, May 23, 2013

President Barack Obama’s speech on the fight against terrorism at the National Defense University, as provided by the White House:

It’s an honor to return to the National Defense University. Here, at Fort McNair, Americans have served in uniform since 1791– standing guard in the early days of the Republic, and contemplating the future of warfare here in the 21st century.

For over two centuries, the United States has been bound together by founding documents that defined who we are as Americans, and served as our compass through every type of change. Matters of war and peace are no different. Americans are deeply ambivalent about war, but having fought for our independence, we know that a price must be paid for freedom. From the Civil War, to our struggle against fascism, and through the long, twilight struggle of the Cold War, battlefields have changed, and technology has evolved. But our commitment to constitutional principles has weathered every war, and every war has come to an end.

With the collapse of the Berlin Wall, a new dawn of democracy took hold abroad, and a decade of peace and prosperity arrived at home. For a moment, it seemed the 21st century would be a tranquil time. Then, on September 11th, 2001, we were shaken out of complacency. Thousands were taken from us, as clouds of fire, metal and ash descended upon a sun-filled morning. This was a different kind of war. No armies came to our hores, and our military was not the principal target. Instead, a group of terrorists came to kill as many civilians as they could.

And so our nation went to war. We have now been at war for well over a decade. I won’t review the full history. What’s clear is that we quickly drove al-Qaida out of Afghanistan, but then shifted our focus and began a new war in Iraq. This carried grave consequences for our fight against al-Qaida, our standing in the world, and — to this day — our interests in a vital region.

Meanwhile, we strengthened our defenses — hardening targets, tightening transportation security, and giving law enforcement new tools to prevent terror. Most of these changes were sound. Some caused inconvenience. But some, like expanded surveillance, raised difficult questions about the balance we strike between our interests in security and our values of privacy. And in some cases, I believe we compromised our basic values — by using torture to interrogate our enemies, and detaining individuals in a way that ran counter to the rule of law.

After I took office, we stepped up the war against al-Qaida, but also sought to change its course. We relentlessly targeted al-Qaida’s leadership. We ended the war in Iraq, and brought nearly 150,000 troops home. We pursued a new strategy in Afghanistan, and increased our training of Afghan forces. We unequivocally banned torture, affirmed our commitment to civilian courts, worked to align our policies with the rule of law, and expanded our consultations with Congress.

Today, Osama bin Laden is dead, and so are most of his top lieutenants. There have been no large-scale attacks on the United States, and our homeland is more secure. Fewer of our troops are in harm’s way, and over the next 19 months they will continue to come home. Our alliances are strong, and so is our standing in the world. In sum, we are safer because of our efforts.

Now make no mistake: our nation is still threatened by terrorists. From Benghazi to Boston, we have been tragically reminded of that truth. We must recognize, however, that the threat has shifted and evolved from the one that came to our shores on 9/11. With a decade of experience to draw from, now is the time to ask ourselves hard questions — about the nature of today’s threats, and how we should confront them.

These questions matter to every American. For over the last decade, our nation has spent well over a trillion dollars on war, exploding our deficits and constraining our ability to nation build here at home. Our service-members and their families have sacrificed far more on our behalf. Nearly 7,000 Americans have made the ultimate sacrifice. Many more have left a part of themselves on the battlefield, or brought the shadows of battle back home. From our use of drones to the detention of terrorist suspects, the decisions we are making will define the type of nation — and world — that we leave to our children.

So America is at a crossroads. We must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or else it will define us, mindful of James Madison’s warning that “No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” Neither I, nor any president, can promise the total defeat of terror. We will never erase the evil that lies in the hearts of some human beings, nor stamp out every danger to our open society. What we can do — what we must do — is dismantle networks that pose a direct danger, and make it less likely for new groups to gain a foothold, all while maintaining the freedoms and ideals that we defend. To define that strategy, we must make decisions based not on fear, but hard-earned wisdom. And that begins with understanding the threat we face.

Today, the core of al-Qaida in Afghanistan and Pakistan is on a path to defeat. Their remaining operatives spend more time thinking about their own safety than plotting against us. They did not direct the attacks in Benghazi or Boston. They have not carried out a successful attack on our homeland since 9/11. Instead, what we’ve seen is the emergence of various al-Qaida affiliates. From Yemen to Iraq, from Somalia to North Africa, the threat today is more diffuse, with al-Qaida’s affiliate in the Arabian Peninsula — AQAP — the most active in plotting against our homeland. While none of AQAP’s efforts approach the scale of 9/11 they have continued to plot acts of terror, like the attempt to blow up an airplane on Christmas Day in 2009.

Unrest in the Arab World has also allowed extremists to gain a foothold in countries like Libya and Syria. Here, too, there are differences from 9/11. In some cases, we confront state-sponsored networks like Hezbollah that engage in acts of terror to achieve political goals. Others are simply collections of local militias or extremists interested in seizing territory. While we are vigilant for signs that these groups may pose a transnational threat, most are focused on operating in the countries and regions where they are based. That means we will face more localized threats like those we saw in Benghazi, or at the BP oil facility in Algeria, in which local operatives — in loose affiliation with regional networks — launch periodic attacks against Western diplomats, companies, and other soft targets, or resort to kidnapping and other criminal enterprises to fund their operations.

Finally, we face a real threat from radicalized individuals here in the United States. Whether it’s a shooter at a Sikh Temple in Wisconsin; a plane flying into a building in Texas; or the extremists who killed 168 people at the Federal Building in Oklahoma City — America has confronted many forms of violent extremism in our time. Deranged or alienated individuals — often U.S. citizens or legal residents – can do enormous damage, particularly when inspired by larger notions of violent jihad. That pull towards extremism appears to have led to the shooting at Fort Hood, and the bombing of the Boston Marathon.

Lethal yet less capable al-Qaida affiliates. Threats to diplomatic facilities and businesses abroad. Homegrown extremists. This is the future of terrorism. We must take these threats seriously, and do all that we can to confront them. But as we shape our response, we have to recognize that the scale of this threat closely resembles the types of attacks we faced before 9/11. In the 1980s, we lost Americans to terrorism at our Embassy in Beirut; at our Marine Barracks in Lebanon; on a cruise ship at sea; at a disco in Berlin; and on Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie. In the 1990s, we lost Americans to terrorism at the World Trade Center; at our military facilities in Saudi Arabia; and at our Embassy in Kenya. These attacks were all deadly, and we learned that left unchecked, these threats can grow. But if dealt with smartly and proportionally, these threats need not rise to the level that we saw on the eve of 9/11.

Moreover, we must recognize that these threats don’t arise in a vacuum. Most, though not all, of the terrorism we face is fueled by a common ideology — a belief by some extremists that Islam is in conflict with the United States and the West, and that violence against Western targets, including civilians, is justified in pursuit of a larger cause. Of course, this ideology is based on a lie, for the United States is not at war with Islam; and this ideology is rejected by the vast majority of Muslims, who are the most frequent victims of terrorist acts.

Nevertheless, this ideology persists, and in an age in which ideas and images can travel the globe in an instant, our response to terrorism cannot depend on military or law enforcement alone. We need all elements of national power to win a battle of wills and ideas. So let me discuss the components of such a comprehensive counter-terrorism strategy.

First, we must finish the work of defeating al-Qaida and its associated forces.

In Afghanistan, we will complete our transition to Afghan responsibility for security. Our troops will come home. Our combat mission will come to an end. And we will work with the Afghan government to train security forces, and sustain a counter-terrorism force which ensures that al-Qaida can never again establish a safe-haven to launch attacks against us or our allies.

Beyond Afghanistan, we must define our effort not as a boundless ‘global war on terror’ — but rather as a series of persistent, targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists that threaten America. In many cases, this will involve partnerships with other countries. Thousands of Pakistani soldiers have lost their lives fighting extremists. In Yemen, we are supporting security forces that have reclaimed territory from AQAP. In Somalia, we helped a coalition of African nations push al Shabaab out of its strongholds. In Mali, we are providing military aid to a French-led intervention to push back al-Qaida in the Maghreb, and help the people of Mali reclaim their future.

Much of our best counter-terrorism cooperation results in the gathering and sharing of intelligence; the arrest and prosecution of terrorists. That’s how a Somali terrorist apprehended off the coast of Yemen is now in prison in New York. That’s how we worked with European allies to disrupt plots from Denmark to Germany to the United Kingdom. That’s how intelligence collected with Saudi Arabia helped us stop a cargo plane from being blown up over the Atlantic.

But despite our strong preference for the detention and prosecution of terrorists, sometimes this approach is foreclosed. Al-Qaida and its affiliates try to gain a foothold in some of the most distant and unforgiving places on earth. They take refuge in remote tribal regions. They hide in caves and walled compounds. They train in empty deserts and rugged mountains.

In some of these places — such as parts of Somalia and Yemen — the state has only the most tenuous reach into the territory. In other cases, the state lacks the capacity or will to take action. It is also not possible for America to simply deploy a team of Special Forces to capture every terrorist. And even when such an approach may be possible, there are places where it would pose profound risks to our troops and local civilians– where a terrorist compound cannot be breached without triggering a firefight with surrounding tribal communities that pose no threat to us, or when putting U.S. boots on the ground may trigger a major international crisis.

To put it another way, our operation in Pakistan against Osama bin Laden cannot be the norm. The risks in that case were immense; the likelihood of capture, although our preference, was remote given the certainty of resistance; the fact that we did not find ourselves confronted with civilian casualties, or embroiled in an extended firefight, was a testament to the meticulous planning and professionalism of our Special Forces — but also depended on some luck. And even then, the cost to our relationship with Pakistan — and the backlash among the Pakistani public over encroachment on their territory — was so severe that we are just now beginning to rebuild this important partnership.

It is in this context that the United States has taken lethal, targeted action against al-Qaida and its associated forces, including with remotely piloted aircraft commonly referred to as drones. As was true in previous armed conflicts, this new technology raises profound questions — about who is targeted, and why; about civilian casualties, and the risk of creating new enemies; about the legality of such strikes under U.S. and international law; about accountability and morality.

Let me address these questions. To begin with, our actions are effective. Don’t take my word for it. In the intelligence gathered at bin Laden’s compound, we found that he wrote, “we could lose the reserves to the enemy’s air strikes. We cannot fight air strikes with explosives.” Other communications from al-Qaida operatives confirm this as well. Dozens of highly skilled al-Qaida commanders, trainers, bomb makers, and operatives have been taken off the battlefield. Plots have been disrupted that would have targeted international aviation, U.S. transit systems, European cities and our troops in Afghanistan. Simply put, these strikes have saved lives.

Moreover, America’s actions are legal. We were attacked on 9/11. Within a week, Congress overwhelmingly authorized the use of force. Under domestic law, and international law, the United States is at war with al-Qaida, the Taliban, and their associated forces. We are at war with an organization that right now would kill as many Americans as they could if we did not stop them first. So this is a just war — a war waged proportionally, in last resort, and in self-defense.

And yet as our fight enters a new phase, America’s legitimate claim of self-defense cannot be the end of the discussion. To say a military tactic is legal, or even effective, is not to say it is wise or moral in every instance. For the same human progress that gives us the technology to strike half a world away also demands the discipline to constrain that power — or risk abusing it. That’s why, over the last four years, my administration has worked vigorously to establish a framework that governs our use of force against terrorists — insisting upon clear guidelines, oversight and accountability that is now codified in Presidential Policy Guidance that I signed yesterday.

In the Afghan war theater, we must support our troops until the transition is complete at the end of 2014. That means we will continue to take strikes against high value al-Qaida targets, but also against forces that are massing to support attacks on coalition forces. However, by the end of 2014, we will no longer have the same need for force protection, and the progress we have made against core al-Qaida will reduce the need for unmanned strikes.

Beyond the Afghan theater, we only target al-Qaida and its associated forces. Even then, the use of drones is heavily constrained. America does not take strikes when we have the ability to capture individual terrorists — our preference is always to detain, interrogate, and prosecute them. America cannot take strikes wherever we choose — our actions are bound by consultations with partners, and respect for state sovereignty. America does not take strikes to punish individuals — we act against terrorists who pose a continuing and imminent threat to the American people, and when there are no other governments capable of effectively addressing the threat. And before any strike is taken, there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured — the highest standard we can set.

This last point is critical, because much of the criticism about drone strikes — at home and abroad — understandably centers on reports of civilian casualties. There is a wide gap between U.S. assessments of such casualties, and non-governmental reports. Nevertheless, it is a hard fact that U.S. strikes have resulted in civilian casualties, a risk that exists in all wars. For the families of those civilians, no words or legal construct can justify their loss. For me, and those in my chain of command, these deaths will haunt us as long as we live, just as we are haunted by the civilian casualties that have occurred through conventional fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But as Commander-in-Chief, I must weigh these heartbreaking tragedies against the alternatives. To do nothing in the face of terrorist networks would invite far more civilian casualties — not just in our cities at home and facilities abroad, but also in the very places — like Sana’a and Kabul and Mogadishu — where terrorists seek a foothold. Let us remember that the terrorists we are after target civilians, and the death toll from their acts of terrorism against Muslims dwarfs any estimate of civilian casualties from drone strikes.

Where foreign governments cannot or will not effectively stop terrorism in their territory, the primary alternative to targeted, lethal action is the use of conventional military options. As I’ve said, even small Special Operations carry enormous risks. Conventional airpower or missiles are far less precise than drones, and likely to cause more civilian casualties and local outrage. And invasions of these territories lead us to be viewed as occupying armies; unleash a torrent of unintended consequences; are difficult to contain; and ultimately empower those who thrive on violent conflict. So it is false to assert that putting boots on the ground is less likely to result in civilian deaths, or to create enemies in the Muslim world. The result would be more U.S. deaths, more Blackhawks down, more confrontations with local populations, and an inevitable mission creep in support of such raids that could easily escalate into new wars.

So yes, the conflict with al-Qaida, like all armed conflict, invites tragedy. But by narrowly targeting our action against those who want to kill us, and not the people they hide among, we are choosing the course of action least likely to result in the loss of innocent life. Indeed, our efforts must also be measured against the history of putting American troops in distant lands among hostile populations. In Vietnam, hundreds of thousands of civilians died in a war where the boundaries of battle were blurred. In Iraq and Afghanistan, despite the courage and discipline of our troops, thousands of civilians have been killed. So neither conventional military action, nor waiting for attacks to occur, offers moral safe-harbor. Neither does a sole reliance on law enforcement in territories that have no functioning police or security services — and indeed, have no functioning law.

This is not to say that the risks are not real. Any U.S. military action in foreign lands risks creating more enemies, and impacts public opinion overseas. Our laws constrain the power of the president, even during wartime, and I have taken an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States. The very precision of drones strikes, and the necessary secrecy involved in such actions can end up shielding our government from the public scrutiny that a troop deployment invites. It can also lead a president and his team to view drone strikes as a cure-all for terrorism.

For this reason, I’ve insisted on strong oversight of all lethal action. After I took office, my administration began briefing all strikes outside of Iraq and Afghanistan to the appropriate committees of Congress. Let me repeat that — not only did Congress authorize the use of force, it is briefed on every strike that America takes. That includes the one instance when we targeted an American citizen: Anwar Awlaki, the chief of external operations for AQAP.

This week, I authorized the declassification of this action, and the deaths of three other Americans in drone strikes, to facilitate transparency and debate on this issue, and to dismiss some of the more outlandish claims. For the record, I do not believe it would be constitutional for the government to target and kill any U.S. citizen — with a drone, or a shotgun — without due process. Nor should any president deploy armed drones over U.S. soil.

But when a U.S. citizen goes abroad to wage war against America — and is actively plotting to kill U.S. citizens; and when neither the United States, nor our partners are in a position to capture him before he carries out a plot — his citizenship should no more serve as a shield than a sniper shooting down on an innocent crowd should be protected from a swat team

That’s who Anwar Awlaki was — he was continuously trying to kill people. He helped oversee the 2010 plot to detonate explosive devices on two U.S. bound cargo planes. He was involved in planning to blow up an airliner in 2009. When Farouk Abdulmutallab — the Christmas Day bomber — went to Yemen in 2009, Awlaki hosted him, approved his suicide operation, and helped him tape a martyrdom video to be shown after the attack. His last instructions were to blow up the airplane when it was over American soil. I would have detained and prosecuted Awlaki if we captured him before he carried out a plot. But we couldn’t. And as President, I would have been derelict in my duty had I not authorized the strike that took out Awlaki.

Of course, the targeting of any Americans raises constitutional issues that are not present in other strikes — which is why my Administration submitted information about Awlaki to the Department of Justice months before Awlaki was killed, and briefed the Congress before this strike as well. But the high threshold that we have set for taking lethal action applies to all potential terrorist targets, regardless of whether or not they are American citizens. This threshold respects the inherent dignity of every human life. Alongside the decision to put our men and women in uniform in harm’s way, the decision to use force against individuals or groups — even against a sworn enemy of the United States — is the hardest thing I do as president. But these decisions must be made, given my responsibility to protect the American people.

Going forward, I have asked my administration to review proposals to extend oversight of lethal actions outside of warzones that go beyond our reporting to Congress. Each option has virtues in theory, but poses difficulties in practice. For example, the establishment of a special court to evaluate and authorize lethal action has the benefit of bringing a third branch of government into the process, but raises serious constitutional issues about presidential and judicial authority. Another idea that’s been suggested — the establishment of an independent oversight board in the executive branch — avoids those problems, but may introduce a layer of bureaucracy into national-security decision-making, without inspiring additional public confidence in the process. Despite these challenges, I look forward to actively engaging Congress to explore these — and other — options for increased oversight.

I believe, however, that the use of force must be seen as part of a larger discussion about a comprehensive counter-terrorism strategy. Because for all the focus on the use of force, force alone cannot make us safe. We cannot use force everywhere that a radical ideology takes root; and in the absence of a strategy that reduces the well-spring of extremism, a perpetual war — through drones or Special Forces or troop deployments — will prove self-defeating, and alter our country in troubling ways.

So the next element of our strategy involves addressing the underlying grievances and conflicts that feed extremism, from North Africa to South Asia. As we’ve learned this past decade, this is a vast and complex undertaking. We must be humble in our expectation that we can quickly resolve deep rooted problems like poverty and sectarian hatred. Moreover, no two countries are alike, and some will undergo chaotic change before things get better. But our security and values demand that we make the effort.

This means patiently supporting transitions to democracy in places like Egypt, Tunisia and Libya — because the peaceful realization of individual aspirations will serve as a rebuke to violent extremists. We must strengthen the opposition in Syria, while isolating extremist elements — because the end of a tyrant must not give way to the tyranny of terrorism. We are working to promote peace between Israelis and Palestinians – because it is right, and because such a peace could help reshape attitudes in the region. And we must help countries modernize economies, upgrade education, and encourage entrepreneurship — because American leadership has always been elevated by our ability to connect with peoples’ hopes, and not simply their fears.

Success on these fronts requires sustained engagement, but it will also require resources. I know that foreign aid is one of the least popular expenditures — even though it amounts to less than one percent of the federal budget. But foreign assistance cannot be viewed as charity. It is fundamental to our national security, and any sensible long-term strategy to battle extremism. Moreover, foreign assistance is a tiny fraction of what we spend fighting wars that our assistance might ultimately prevent. For what we spent in a month in Iraq at the height of the war, we could be training security forces in Libya, maintaining peace agreements between Israel and its neighbors, feeding the hungry in Yemen, building schools in Pakistan, and creating reservoirs of goodwill that marginalize extremists.

America cannot carry out this work if we do not have diplomats serving in dangerous places. Over the past decade, we have strengthened security at our Embassies, and I am implementing every recommendation of the Accountability Review Board which found unacceptable failures in Benghazi. I have called on Congress to fully fund these efforts to bolster security, harden facilities, improve intelligence, and facilitate a quicker response time from our military if a crisis emerges.

But even after we take these steps, some irreducible risks to our diplomats will remain. This is the price of being the world’s most powerful nation, particularly as a wave of change washes over the Arab World. And in balancing the trade-offs between security and active diplomacy, I firmly believe that any retreat from challenging regions will only increase the dangers we face in the long run.

Targeted action against terrorists. Effective partnerships. Diplomatic engagement and assistance. Through such a comprehensive strategy we can significantly reduce the chances of large scale attacks on the homeland and mitigate threats to Americans overseas. As we guard against dangers from abroad, however, we cannot neglect the daunting challenge of terrorism from within our borders.

As I said earlier, this threat is not new. But technology and the Internet increase its frequency and lethality. Today, a person can consume hateful propaganda, commit themselves to a violent agenda, and learn how to kill without leaving their home. To address this threat, two years ago my administration did a comprehensive review, and engaged with law enforcement. The best way to prevent violent extremism is to work with the Muslim American community — which has consistently rejected terrorism — to identify signs of radicalization, and partner with law enforcement when an individual is drifting towards violence. And these partnerships can only work when we recognize that Muslims are a fundamental part of the American family. Indeed, the success of American Muslims, and our determination to guard against any encroachments on their civil liberties, is the ultimate rebuke to those who say we are at war with Islam.

Indeed, thwarting homegrown plots presents particular challenges in part because of our proud commitment to civil liberties for all who call America home. That’s why, in the years to come, we will have to keep working hard to strike the appropriate balance between our need for security and preserving those freedoms that make us who we are. That means reviewing the authorities of law enforcement, so we can intercept new types of communication, and build in privacy protections to prevent abuse. That means that — even after Boston — we do not deport someone or throw someone in prison in the absence of evidence. That means putting careful constraints on the tools the government uses to protect sensitive information, such as the State Secrets doctrine. And that means finally having a strong Privacy and Civil Liberties Board to review those issues where our counter-terrorism efforts and our values may come into tension.

The Justice Department’s investigation of national security leaks offers a recent example of the challenges involved in striking the right balance between our security and our open society. As Commander-in Chief, I believe we must keep information secret that protects our operations and our people in the field. To do so, we must enforce consequences for those who break the law and breach their commitment to protect classified information. But a free press is also essential for our democracy. I am troubled by the possibility that leak investigations may chill the investigative journalism that holds government accountable.

Journalists should not be at legal risk for doing their jobs. Our focus must be on those who break the law. That is why I have called on Congress to pass a media shield law to guard against government over-reach. I have raised these issues with the Attorney General, who shares my concern. So he has agreed to review existing Department of Justice guidelines governing investigations that involve reporters, and will convene a group of media organizations to hear their concerns as part of that review. And I have directed the Attorney General to report back to me by July 12th.

All these issues remind us that the choices we make about war can impact — in sometimes unintended ways — the openness and freedom on which our way of life depends. And that is why I intend to engage Congress about the existing Authorization to Use Military Force, or AUMF, to determine how we can continue to fight terrorists without keeping America on a perpetual war-time footing.

The AUMF is now nearly twelve years old. The Afghan War is coming to an end. Core al-Qaida is a shell of its former self. Groups like AQAP must be dealt with, but in the years to come, not every collection of thugs that labels themselves al-Qaida will pose a credible threat to the United States. Unless we discipline our thinking and our actions, we may be drawn into more wars we don’t need to fight, or continue to grant presidents unbound powers more suited for traditional armed conflicts between nation states. So I look forward to engaging Congress and the American people in efforts to refine, and ultimately repeal, the AUMF’s mandate. And I will not sign laws designed to expand this mandate further. Our systematic effort to dismantle terrorist organizations must continue. But this war, like all wars, must end. That’s what history advises. That’s what our democracy demands.

And that brings me to my final topic: the detention of terrorist suspects.

To repeat, as a matter of policy, the preference of the United States is to capture terrorist suspects. When we do detain a suspect, we interrogate them. And if the suspect can be prosecuted, we decide whether to try him in a civilian court or a Military Commission. During the past decade, the vast majority of those detained by our military were captured on the battlefield. In Iraq, we turned over thousands of prisoners as we ended the war. In Afghanistan, we have transitioned detention facilities to the Afghans, as part of the process of restoring Afghan sovereignty. So we bring law of war detention to an end, and we are committed to prosecuting terrorists whenever we can.

The glaring exception to this time-tested approach is the detention center at Guantanamo Bay. The original premise for opening GTMO — that detainees would not be able to challenge their detention — was found unconstitutional five years ago. In the meantime, GTMO has become a symbol around the world for an America that flouts the rule of law. Our allies won’t cooperate with us if they think a terrorist will end up at GTMO. During a time of budget cuts, we spend $150 million each year to imprison 166 people — almost $1 million per prisoner. And the Department of Defense estimates that we must spend another $200 million to keep GTMO open at a time when we are cutting investments in education and research here at home.

As president, I have tried to close GTMO. I transferred 67 detainees to other countries before Congress imposed restrictions to effectively prevent us from either transferring detainees to other countries, or imprisoning them in the United States. These restrictions make no sense. After all, under President Bush, some 530 detainees were transferred from GTMO with Congress’s support. When I ran for president the first time, John McCain supported closing GTMO. No person has ever escaped from one of our super-max or military prisons in the United States. Our courts have convicted hundreds of people for terrorism-related offenses, including some who are more dangerous than most GTMO detainees. Given my administration’s relentless pursuit of al-Qaida’s leadership, there is no justification beyond politics for Congress to prevent us from closing a facility that should never have been opened.

Today, I once again call on Congress to lift the restrictions on detainee transfers from GTMO. I have asked the Department of Defense to designate a site in the United States where we can hold military commissions. I am appointing a new, senior envoy at the State Department and Defense Department whose sole responsibility will be to achieve the transfer of detainees to third countries. I am lifting the moratorium on detainee transfers to Yemen, so we can review them on a case by case basis. To the greatest extent possible, we will transfer detainees who have been cleared to go to other countries. Where appropriate, we will bring terrorists to justice in our courts and military justice system. And we will insist that judicial review be available for every detainee.

Even after we take these steps, one issue will remain: how to deal with those GTMO detainees who we know have participated in dangerous plots or attacks, but who cannot be prosecuted — for example because the evidence against them has been compromised or is inadmissible in a court of law. But once we commit to a process of closing GTMO, I am confident that this legacy problem can be resolved, consistent with our commitment to the rule of law.

I know the politics are hard. But history will cast a harsh judgment on this aspect of our fight against terrorism, and those of us who fail to end it. Imagine a future — 10 years from now, or 20 years from now — when the United States of America is still holding people who have been charged with no crime on a piece of land that is not a part of our country. Look at the current situation, where we are force-feeding detainees who are holding a hunger strike. Is that who we are? Is that something that our Founders foresaw? Is that the America we want to leave to our children?

Our sense of justice is stronger than that. We have prosecuted scores of terrorists in our courts. That includes Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to blow up an airplane over Detroit; and Faisal Shahzad, who put a car bomb in Times Square. It is in a court of law that we will try Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who is accused of bombing the Boston Marathon. Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, is as we speak serving a life sentence in a maximum security prison here, in the United States. In sentencing Reid, Judge William Young told him, “the way we treat you.is the measure of our own liberties.” He went on to point to the American flag that flew in the courtroom — “That flag,” he said, “will fly there long after this is all forgotten. That flag still stands for freedom.”

America, we have faced down dangers far greater than al-Qaida. By staying true to the values of our founding, and by using our constitutional compass, we have overcome slavery and Civil War; fascism and communism. In just these last few years as president, I have watched the American people bounce back from painful recession, mass shootings, and natural disasters like the recent tornados that devastated Oklahoma. These events were heartbreaking; they shook our communities to the core. But because of the resilience of the American people, these events could not come close to breaking us.

I think of Lauren Manning, the 9/11 survivor who had severe burns over 80 percent of her body, who said, “That’s my reality. I put a Band-Aid on it, literally, and I move on.”

I think of the New Yorkers who filled Times Square the day after an attempted car bomb as if nothing had happened.

I think of the proud Pakistani parents who, after their daughter was invited to the White House, wrote to us, “we have raised an American Muslim daughter to dream big and never give up because it does pay off.”

I think of the wounded warriors rebuilding their lives, and helping other vets to find jobs.

I think of the runner planning to do the 2014 Boston Marathon, who said, “Next year, you are going to have more people than ever. Determination is not something to be messed with.”

That’s who the American people are. Determined, and not to be messed with.

Now, we need a strategy — and a politics — that reflects this resilient spirit. Our victory against terrorism won’t be measured in a surrender ceremony on a battleship, or a statue being pulled to the ground. Victory will be measured in parents taking their kids to school; immigrants coming to our shores; fans taking in a ballgame; a veteran starting a business; a bustling city street. The quiet determination; that strength of character and bond of fellowship; that refutation of fear — that is both our sword and our shield. And long after the current messengers of hate have faded from the world’s memory, alongside the brutal despots, deranged madmen, and ruthless demagogues who litter history — the flag of the United States will still wave from small-town cemeteries, to national monuments, to distant outposts abroad. And that flag will still stand for freedom.

Thank you. God Bless you. And may God bless the United States of America.

Obama reframes counterterrorism policy with new rules on drones

By Tom Curry, National Affairs Writer, NBC News

In a major address Thursday President Barack Obama sought to reframe the nation’s counterterrorism strategy, saying, “Our systematic effort to dismantle terrorist organizations must continue. But this war, like all wars, must end. That’s what history advises. That’s what our democracy demands.”

He said in a speech at the National Defense University in Washington, “America is at a crossroads. We must define our effort not as a boundless ‘global war on terror’ – but rather as a series of persistent, targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists that threaten America.”

In an attempt to define a new post-Sept. 11 era, Obama outlined new guidelines for the use of drones to kill terrorists overseas and pledged a renewed effort to close the military detention center in Guantanamo Bay.  In the speech, Obama argued that, “In the years to come, not every collection of thugs that labels themselves al Qaeda will pose a credible threat to the United States.” He warned that “unless we discipline our thinking and our actions, we may be drawn into more wars we don’t need to fight.”

With efforts under way in Congress to redefine the 2001 authorization to use military force (AUMF) against al Qaida, Obama said he would work with Congress “in efforts to refine, and ultimately repeal, the AUMF’s mandate. And I will not sign laws designed to expand this mandate further.”

Toward the end of Obama’s address as he discussed the Guantanamo detainees, he was repeatedly interrupted by heckling from Medea Benjamin, founder of the antiwar Code Pink, whose members have frequently been arrested for disrupting hearings on Capitol Hill – but Obama patiently said that Benjamin’s concerns are “something to be passionate about.”

“We must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or else it will define us, mindful of James Madison’s warning that ‘No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.’ Neither I, nor any president, can promise the total defeat of terror,” he declared.

As part of his redefinition of counterterrorism, the president announced several initiatives:

• Setting narrower parameters for the use of remotely piloted aircraft, or drones, to kill terrorists overseas and to limit collateral casualties;
• Renewing efforts to persuade Congress to agree to close the Guantanamo detention site in Cuba where 110 terrorist suspects are being held;
• Appointing a new envoy at the State Department and an official at the Defense Department who will attempt to negotiate transfers of Guantanamo detainees to other countries.
• Lifting the moratorium he imposed in 2010 on transferring some detainees at Guantanamo to Yemen. Obama imposed that moratorium after it was revealed that Detroit “underwear bomber” Umar Farouq Abdulmuttalab was trained in Yemen.

Obama argued that when compared to the Sept. 11, 2001 attackers, “the threat today is more diffuse, with Al Qaeda’s affiliates in the

Arabian Peninsula – AQAP – the most active in plotting against our homeland. While none of AQAP’s efforts approach the scale of 9/11 they have continued to plot acts of terror, like the attempt to blow up an airplane on Christmas Day in 2009.”

So he said, “As we shape our response, we have to recognize that the scale of this threat closely resembles the types of attacks we faced before 9/11.”

He said that the current threat is often from “deranged or alienated individuals – often U.S. citizens or legal residents – (who) can do enormous damage, particularly when inspired by larger notions of violent jihad. That pull towards extremism appears to have led to the shooting at Fort Hood, and the bombing of the Boston Marathon.”

In discussing his drone strategy he indicated his remorse over the innocent people who had been killed: “it is a hard fact that U.S. strikes have resulted in civilian casualties, a risk that exists in all wars. For the families of those civilians, no words or legal construct can justify their loss. For me, and those in my chain of command, these deaths will haunt us as long as we live, just as we are haunted by the civilian casualties that have occurred through conventional fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

There remains considerable doubt about Obama’s ability to persuade a majority in Congress to change the current law on releasing detainees held there.

The defense spending bill which Obama signed into law last year prohibits any transfers to the United States of any detainee at Guantanamo who was held there on or before Jan. 20, 2009, the day Obama became president.

And the law sets a very high legal bar for Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to transfer a detainee to his country of origin, or to any other foreign country.

Hagel would need to certify to Congress that the detainee will not be transferred to a country that is a designated state sponsor of terrorism. The country must have agreed to take steps to ensure that the detainee cannot take action to threaten the United States, U.S. citizens, or its allies in the future.

The law allows Hagel to use waivers in some cases to transfer detainees.

Speaking a day before Obama’s speech, Ben Wittes, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-founder of the Lawfare blog which covers detainee news, said, “I don’t see any significant change in congressional sentiment right now” on closing the Guantanamo site.

“He’s got a lot of domestic pressure from his base to be seen to be doing something and he’s also got a hunger strike there (at Guantanamo) — and I think there’s a lot of genuine sentiment in the administration that they want to do something (about Guantanamo) so they’re committed to another push and trying again – but the question of what they actually could get done is a difficult question. There’s very limited latitude.”

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Islam for Leftists – Robert Spencer

British soldier killed in London by a Muslim

British soldier savagely killed in London machete attack

A British soldier was savagely killed in an attack in South London in an attack that may have been the work of terrorists. CBS News’ Charlie D’Agata reports.

Malkin Explodes On Hannity Over UK Terrorist Attack

British Soldier Killed in Machete Attack in London

British soldier hacked to death in London, witness who filmed attackers speaks out (May 22, 2013)

British SOLDIER BEHEADED on busy London street in Act of TERRORISM

London TERROR ATTACKED: British Soldier BEHEADED by two Islamic TERRORISTS in Woolwich

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UK PM David Cameron condemns terror attack which saw British soldier killed in London

Woolwich Terrorist Atttack Police statement

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POLICE HIT BACK AT CLAIMS THEY TOOK 20 MINS TO REACH SCENE

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2329458/The-Angels-Woolwich-Three-womens-outstanding-courage-confront-killers-pray-slaughtered-soldier.html#ixzz2U8zxz44p
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

You and your children will be next’: Islamic fanatics wielding meat cleavers butcher and try to behead a British soldier, taking their war on the West to a new level of horror

• One of the men arrested is believed to be Michael Adebolajo
• Two men repeatedly stab and tried to behead off-duty soldier in SE London
• They shouted ‘Allah Akbar’ attack and told witnesses to film them
• Charged at police officers with rusty revolver, knives and meat cleavers
• Killing took place 200 yards from barracks and close to primary school
• Both men placed under arrest after being treated for gunshot wounds
• PM: Killing is ‘sickening’ and Britain will ‘never buckle’ in face of terror

Clutching a bloodied meat cleaver, the man suspected of executing a soldier on a crowded street declared: ‘you and your kids will be next’.

In a chilling rant captured on camera, the knife-wielding man declared: ‘The only reason we have killed this man today is because Muslims are dying daily by British soldiers.’

The man who launched the terrifying diatribe in Woolwich, south-east London, is believed to be Michael Adebolajo, who has been identified on Twitter and web forums as one of the two people arrested.

In the video obtained by ITV News he added: ‘Remove your governments – they don’t care about you. You think David Cameron is going to get caught in the street when we start bursting our guns? You think politicians are going to die?

‘No, it’s going to be the average guy, like you, and your children. So get rid of them – tell them to bring our troops back so we can… so you can all live in peace.’

Police are today believed to be searching addresses that Adebolajo, known by the Muslim name Mujahid, is linked to in Romford, Essex.

They also carried out raids in Lincolnshire and Greenwich, south east London.

Yesterday the serviceman, wearing a Help for Heroes top, was run down by a car before being brutally attacked in Woolwich, just 200 yards from the barracks.

In broad daylight, an attacker and an accomplice repeatedly stabbed and tried to behead the man in front of dozens of passers-by.

After the attack, speaking in a clear south London accent, the man named as Adebolajo said: ‘You people will never be safe. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.’

Throughout the frenzied attack the two killers shouted ‘Allah Akbar’ – Arabic for ‘God is great’ – then demanded horrified witnesses film them as they ranted over the  crumpled body.

The two black men in their 20s, waited calmly for armed police to arrive before charging at officers brandishing a rusty revolver, knives and meat cleavers.

When the old pistol was shot towards police it backfired and blew the thumb off one of the men.

Moments later they were cut down in a hail of bullets believed to be fired by a woman marksman. Last night both men were being treated in hospital for their wounds and will face questioning.

Mother-of-two Ingrid Loyau-Kennett bravely remonstrated with one of the killers in the aftermath of the terror attack.

After pleading with them to hand her the weapons, one told her: ‘We want to start a war in London tonight’.

She replied: ‘Right now it is only you versus many people, you are going to lose’.

Ms Loyau-Kennett said she was not trained in any way to deal with the situation – she used to be a teacher.

Yesterday’s slaughter took place close to a primary school at 2.20pm. Witnesses told how the men drove a dark blue Vauxhall Tigra on to the pavement.

The soldier was wearing a t-shirt with the army charity Help for Heroes logo on it and was carrying a military issue rucksack. The men then leapt out of their car and ‘hacked and chopped’ at their victim before dragging his bloodied body into the middle of the road.

Last night both men were placed under arrest after being treated for gunshot wounds under armed guard in separate hospitals.

Today Prime Minister David Cameron said the murder of a ‘brave soldier’ on the streets of London will bring the UK together and ‘make us stronger’.

Speaking outside Downing Street after chairing a meeting of the Government’s emergency Cobra committee, the Prime Minister said the attack ‘sickens us all’ and was a ‘betrayal of Islam’.

‘The people who did this were trying to divide us. They should know something like this will only bring us together and make us stronger,’ he said.

‘This country will be absolutely resolute in its stand against violent extremism and terror. We will never give in to terror or terrorism in any of its forms.

‘This view is shared by every community in our country. This was not just an attack on Britain and on the British way of life; it was also a betrayal of Islam and of the Muslim communities who give so much to our country.’

Last night Mr Cameron cut short his trip to Paris and described the assassination as ‘absolutely sickening’, insisting Britain will ‘never buckle’ in the face of terrorist attacks.

Security was tightened at dozens of other Army barracks across the country amid fears of copycat attacks and Home Secretary Theresa May called a meeting of Cobra, Whitehall’s emergency committee, after being briefed by MI5 and counter-terrorism police.

Experts believe the pair were using Muslim names and could be of Somali or Nigerian heritage.

It is thought the two fundamentalists had spent weeks watching the barracks, which the Queen is due to visit next week, prior to the attack.

The ambush and stabbing of a soldier close to an army barracks is an unprecedented Islamic attack on mainland Britain.

A group of military wives who laid flowers today said they were ‘numb’.

One of the women, in her 20s, who did not want to be named, said: ‘We are all just very numb at the moment – shaken up and very shocked. It could have been any one of our husbands.

‘He was a young guy who cared very much about his job, like they all do. I think he was in training.’

The killing immediately prompted widespread revulsion. David Cameron said Britain ‘will not be cowed, will never buckle’ in the face of terrorism last night as he urged people to go about their lives as normal in defiance of the ‘absolutely sickening’ killing in London.

London Mayor Mr Johnson said: ‘Londoners from all communities, from across this city have been here before.

I know that this is a city of incredible resilience and courage and we have to protect ourselves with the best security services, the most professional police service, in the world.’

Relations between British Muslims in the armed forces and their colleagues will not be strained following the murder of a British soldier in Woolwich, a retired army captain has said.

Captain Afzal Amin, former chairman of the Armed Forces Muslim Association, said: ‘I send my condolences to the poor victim, not just as a former army officer but as a British Muslim.

‘We’re not accustomed to this kind of completely inexplicable attack.’

‘There are a wide range of racial backgrounds in the armed forces which have formed a good, solid integrated body. I’m sure relations are already well established.’

‘Remember the context of all of this,’ he added. ‘This was an attack on an innocent soldier, an abhorrent crime in a normally cohesive society.’

Last night the Muslim Council of Britain said it was a ‘truly barbaric act that has no basis in Islam’. ‘We condemn this unreservedly,’ a spokesman said. ‘Our thoughts are with the victim and his family.

‘We understand the victim is a serving member of the Armed Forces. Muslims have long served in this country’s Armed Forces, proudly and with honour.

‘This attack on a member of the Armed Forces is dishonourable and no cause justifies this murder. This action will no doubt heighten tensions on the streets of the United Kingdom.’

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Judge Napolitano To Shep: Rosen Committed ‘No Crime,’ ‘Absolutely Protected By 1st Amendment’

Report: DOJ seized multiple White House, Fox News records in Rosen ‘investigation’

Over the weekend, the Washington Post reported that the Justice Department’s secretive and sketchy gathering of two months’ worth of Associated Press editors and journalists’ phone records is unfortunately a far cry from a the only freedom-of-the-press-stifling incident coming out of this administration. In 2010, the DOJ also spied on Fox News’ Washington correspondent James Rosen as a supposed co-conspirator in an espionage case for the oh-so-heinous crime of cultivating a State Department source — a.k.a., doing what D.C. journalists regularly and rightly do.

A new report from the New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza, however, reveals more details on the case, and it appears that their specific targeting of James Rosen does not quite cover the extent of the DOJ’s lack of scrupulousness:

The Obama Justice Department has seized the phone records of numbers that are associated with White House staffers and, apparently, with Fox News reporters, according to a document filed on October 13, 2011, in the case of Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, a former State Department contractor accused of violating the Espionage Act for allegedly leaking classified information to James Rosen, a Fox News reporter. Ronald C. Machen, Jr., the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, who is prosecuting the case, has seized records associated with two phone numbers at the White House, at least five numbers associated with Fox News, and one that has the same area code and exchange as Rosen’s personal-cell-phone number (the last four numbers are redacted).

In all, Ronald C. Machen, Jr., the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, has seized records associated with over thirty different phone numbers. In the filing that included the new information, the last four digits of each telephone line targeted by the Obama Administration are redacted. Two of the numbers begin with area code 202 and the exchange 456, which, according to current and former Administration officials, are used exclusively by the White House. (The phone number for the White House switchboard is (202) 456-1414.)

At least five other numbers targeted by the government include the area code 202 and the exchange 824. The phone number for the Fox News Washington bureau, which is publicly available, is (202) 824-0001. Rosen’s work phone number at Fox News begins with the same area code and exchange.

So, it looks like the DOJ had not ‘merely’ been sticking their big, fat nose into Rosen’s personal and professional e-mails/calls/comings and goings, but just higgledy-piggledy been nabbing up records that may-or-may-not have been associated with the ‘case’ — including five separate Fox News phone numbers — all in the attempt to somehow involve investigative reporting in a probe of potentially criminal behavior? Wow, guys. Really crack team you got there. Bang-up job on protecting and respecting the First Amendment, and all that.

The White House Correspondents’ Association, as you might imagine, is getting somewhat concerned about all of the targeting of the press coming out of this administration, because this is quickly turning into a dangerous-looking pattern:

The White House Correspondents’ Association said Tuesday that two recent cases in which the Obama administration went after reporters’ phone and email records show the government may be getting “far too aggressive” in tracking journalists. …

Though no charges were brought against Rosen, the White House Correspondents’ Association said no journalist should even face that threat for doing their jobs.

“Reporters should never be threatened with prosecution for the simple act of doing their jobs,” the WHCA said in a statement Tuesday. “The problem is that in two recent cases, one involving Fox News’ James Rosen and the other focused on the Associated Press, serious questions have been raised about whether our government has gotten far too aggressive in its monitoring of reporters’ movements, phone records, and even personal email.”

http://hotair.com/archives/2013/05/21/report-doj-seized-multiple-white-house-fox-news-records-in-rosen-investigation/

Washington Times Writer: Fox News Scandal Goes ‘Much Deeper,’ W.H. Sitting on Something Top Obama Aides ‘Terrified’ About

Jason Howerton

Washington Times columnist and Drudge Report editor Joseph Curl on Monday said the Obama administration’s developing scandal involving the monitoring of Fox News reporter James Rosen’s email accounts goes “much deeper.”

Citing a “CIA source,” Curl claimed via his official Twitter account that the Fox News scandal was the “4th Shoe” and the White House is sitting on “something” that has top White House aides “terrified.”

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Who’s pulling the 501(c)(4)s’ strings?

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Types of Organizations Exempt under Section 501(c)(4)

Internal Revenue Code section 501(c)(4) provides for the exemption of two very different types of organizations with their own distinct qualification requirements. They are:

• Social welfare organizations: Civic leagues or organizations not organized for profit but operated exclusively for the promotion of social welfare, and
• Local associations of employees, the membership of which is limited to the employees of designated person(s) in a particular municipality, and the net earnings of which are devoted exclusively for the promotion of social welfare.

Homeowners associations and volunteer fire companies may be recognized as exempt as social welfare organizations if they meet the requirements for exemption. Organizations that engage in substantial lobbying activities sometimes also are classified as social welfare organizations.

Additional information

Social welfare organization – Examples

http://www.irs.gov/Charities-&-Non-Profits/Other-Non-Profits/Types-of-Organizations-Exempt-under-Section-501(c)(4)

Social Welfare Organizations

To be tax-exempt as a social welfare organization described in Internal Revenue Code (IRC) section 501(c)(4), an organization must not be organized for profit and must be operated exclusively to promote social welfare. The earnings of a section 501(c)(4) organization may not inure to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual. If the organization engages in an excess benefit transaction with a person having substantial influence over the organization, an excise tax may be imposed on the person and any managers agreeing to the transaction. See Introduction to IRC 4958 for more information about this excise tax. For a more detailed discussion of the exemption requirements for section 501(c)(4) organizations, see IRC 501(c)(4) Organizations. For more information about applying for exemption, see Application for Recognition of Exemption.

To be operated exclusively to promote social welfare, an organization must operate primarily to further the common good and general welfare of the people of the community (such as by bringing about civic betterment and social improvements). For example, an organization that restricts the use of its facilities to employees of selected corporations and their guests is primarily benefiting a private group rather than the community and, therefore, does not qualify as a section 501(c)(4) organization. Similarly, an organization formed to represent member-tenants of an apartment complex does not qualify, because its activities benefit the member-tenants and not all tenants in the community, while an organization formed to promote the legal rights of all tenants in a particular community may qualify under section 501(c)(4) as a social welfare organization. An organization is not operated primarily for the promotion of social welfare if its primary activity is operating a social club for the benefit, pleasure or recreation of its members, or is carrying on a business with the general public in a manner similar to organizations operated for profit link].

Seeking legislation germane to the organization’s programs is a permissible means of attaining social welfare purposes. Thus, a section 501(c)(4) social welfare organization may further its exempt purposes through lobbying as its primary activity without jeopardizing its exempt status. An organization that has lost its section 501(c)(3) status due to substantial attempts to influence legislation may not thereafter qualify as a section 501(c)(4) organization. In addition, a section 501(c)(4) organization that engages in lobbying may be required to either provide notice to its members regarding the percentage of dues paid that are applicable to lobbying activities or pay a proxy tax. For more information, see Lobbying Issues .

The promotion of social welfare does not include direct or indirect participation or intervention in political campaigns on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for public office. However, a section 501(c)(4) social welfare organization may engage in some political activities, so long as that is not its primary activity. However, any expenditure it makes for political activities may be subject to tax under section 527(f). For further information regarding political and lobbying activities of section 501(c) organizations, see Election Year Issues, Political Campaign and Lobbying Activities of IRC 501(c)(4), (c)(5), and (c)(6) Organizations, and Revenue Ruling 2004-6.

http://www.irs.gov/Charities-&-Non-Profits/Other-Non-Profits/Social-Welfare-Organizations

Application for recognition of exemption

To apply for recognition by the IRS of exempt status under section 501(c) of the Internal Revenue Code, most organizations use Form 1023, Application for Recognition of Exemption and the related instructions. (Organizations applying for recognition of exemption under a provision other than section 501(c)(3) generally use Form 1024.) The application must be complete and accompanied by the appropriate user fee. See Application Process for a step-by-step review of what an organization needs to know and to do in order to apply for recognition by the IRS of tax-exempt status. Frequently asked questions about applying for exemption are also available.

The organization should also request an employer identification number, even if it does not have any employees. See Form SS-4, Application for Employer Identification Number, and its instructions to learn how to obtain an EIN. You may also obtain an EIN via telephone, by calling 1-800-829-4933, or by applying online.

A tax-exempt organization must make available for public inspection its approved application for recognition of exemption with all supporting documents available and its last three annual information returns. The organization must provide copies of these documents upon request without charge (other than a reasonable fee for reproduction and copying costs). Penalties are provided for failure to comply with these requirements.

Additional information:

• Frequently asked questions – disclosure
• T.D. 8818 (final disclosure regulations)
• Publication 557, Tax-Exempt Status for Your Organization
• Publication 4573, Group Exemptions
• Publication 1635, Understanding Your EIN
• Disclosure Requirements

http://www.irs.gov/Charities-&-Non-Profits/Application-for-Recognition-of-Exemption-1

Exempt Organization Public Disclosure and Availability Requirements

Tax-exempt organizations must make annual returns and exemption applications filed with the IRS available for public inspection and copying upon request. In addition, the IRS makes these documents available. The questions below relate to the public disclosure and availability of documents filed by tax-exempt organizations with the IRS.

A. Questions about Requirements for Exempt Organizations to Disclose IRS Filings to the General Public

1. In general, what public disclosure requirements apply to tax-exempt organizations?
2. tax-exempt organizations for purposes of the law requiring that certain tax documents be disclosed and copies of those documents be provided to persons requesting them?”>What organizations are tax-exempt organizations for purposes of the law requiring that certain tax documents be disclosed and copies of those documents be provided to persons requesting them?
3. What tax documents must an exempt organization make available for public inspection and copying?
4. What does the disclosure law require a tax-exempt organization to do?
5. What does the IRS consider to be a reasonable charge for copying costs, which an exempt organization may charge for copies of tax documents covered by public disclosure requirements?
6. What are our organization’s public disclosure obligations for the Form 990?
7. Are organizations that are not required to provide copies of their exemption applications also exempt from the requirement to provide copies of annual returns to requesters?
8. What disclosure laws apply to private foundations?
9. Is a tax-exempt organization required to disclose the names or addresses of its contributors?
10. Is there an exception to the requirement that an exempt organization provide copies of its exemption application and annual returns?
11. widely available must it make the documents available for public inspection?”>If an organization makes it documents widely available must it make the documents available for public inspection?
12. What are the penalties for failure to comply with the disclosure requirements, and who must pay them?
13. If a request for copies of exempt organizations documents is not fulfilled, to whom may the requester complain?
14. What disclosures is a charitable organization required to make to its donors?
15. What disclosures must an exempt organization, other than a charity, make to its donors?
16. Is personal identifying information provided on an exempt organization return subject to public disclosure?
17. How can I obtain a copy of an organization’s annual return or exemption application?
18. What should I do if an exempt organization will not let me see its Form 990 or 990-T returns or exemption application materials?
19. e-Postcard?”>How will the public get access to information on the e-Postcard?

B. Questions about Requirements that the IRS Make Exempt Organizations Filings Available for Public Inspection and Copying

1. How can one get a copy of an organization’s exemption application or annual information return from the IRS?
2. Is personal identifying information provided on an exempt organization return subject to public disclosure?
3. e-Postcard?”>How will the public get access to information on the e-Postcard?

View and print all FAQs (Adobe).

http://www.irs.gov/Charities-&-Non-Profits/Exempt-Organization-Public-Disclosure-and-Availability-Requirements

What is a 501(c)(4), anyway?

“If freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”

~George Washington

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Background Articles and Videos

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Treasury Inspector General

for Tax Administration

Office of Audit

Original Inspector general’s report on the IRS

http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/700665/treasury-inspector-general-report.pdf

http://www.treasury.gov/tigta/auditreports/2013reports/201310053fr.pdf

Inspector general’s report on the IRS

http://documents.latimes.com/inspector-general-report-irs/

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Paul Ryan Angry Over IRS, Benghazi on Fox News

Obama Has Declared WAR on American Values in IRS Scandal – Fox News Lou Dobbs

Jay Sekulow on Fox News: IRS Hearings Arrogant & Embarrassing

Heller Questions Secretary of the Treasury About IRS Scandal

Senate Finance Committee Hearing On IRS Scandal

C-SPAN Senator Hatch Opening Statement – IRS Hearing

A opening statement at the IRS scandal hearing by U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Ranking Member of the Senate Finance Committee.

Senator Hatch questions IRS during hearing

U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Ranking Member of the Senate Finance Committee, questions Douglas Shulman, former Commissioner of Internal Revenue, and Steven Miller, outgoing acting IRS Commissioner Tuesday, May 21, 2013, during the IRS scandal hearing.

Thune at Finance on IRS Scandal

Crapo questions the IG for tax administration on the IRS scandal

Senator Roberts’ Remarks at Today’s IRS Scandal Hearing in the Senate Finance Committee

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House Hearing On IRS Scandal

House hearing on IRS scandal 

HOUSE HEARING ON IRS TARGETING CONSERVATIVE GROUPS PT 1

HOUSE HEARING ON IRS TARGETING CONSERVATIVE GROUPS PT 2

HOUSE HEARING ON IRS TARGETING CONSERVATIVE GROUPS PT 3

HOUSE HEARING ON IRS TARGETING CONSERVATIVE GROUPS PT 4

HOUSE HEARING ON IRS TARGETING CONSERVATIVE GROUPS PT 5

HOUSE HEARING ON IRS TARGETING CONSERVATIVE GROUPS PT 6

HOUSE HEARING ON IRS TARGETING CONSERVATIVE GROUPS PT 7

HOUSE HEARING ON IRS TARGETING CONSERVATIVE GROUPS PT 8

HOUSE HEARING ON IRS TARGETING CONSERVATIVE GROUPS PT 9

HOUSE HEARING ON IRS TARGETING CONSERVATIVE GROUPS PT 10

HOUSE HEARING ON IRS TARGETING CONSERVATIVE GROUPS PT 12

HOUSE HEARING ON IRS TARGETING CONSERVATIVE GROUPS PT 13

HOUSE HEARING ON IRS TARGETING CONSERVATIVE GROUPS PT 14

HOUSE HEARING ON IRS TARGETING CONSERVATIVE GROUPS PT 15

HOUSE HEARING ON IRS TARGETING CONSERVATIVE GROUPS PT 16

HOUSE HEARING ON IRS TARGETING CONSERVATIVE GROUPS PT 17

HOUSE HEARING ON IRS TARGETING CONSERVATIVE GROUPS PT 18

HOUSE HEARING ON IRS TARGETING CONSERVATIVE GROUPS PT 19

NOT REALLY FIRED YET Steven Miller Outgoing Acting IRS Commissioner

May 17 2013 House Ways and Means Hearing – Steven Miller testifying

IRS HEATED on Capitol Hill: IS THIS STILL AMERICA? Government Threatens average Americans?

IRS Commissioner: Targeting Conservatives is “Absolutely Not Illegal”

News Reports

Luke Russert: IRS Official ‘Winging This’ In Testimony, Saying ‘Hey, I’m The Fall Guy For This’

Jay Sekulow on Fox News: IRS Knew About Tageting Conservative Groups

Background Articles and Videos

How to Assert Your Rights with the Police

David Allen – Does the Fifth Amendment Apply to Tax Preparation Records

In Praise of the 5th Amendment – part 1

In Praise of the 5th Amendment – part 2

In Praise of the 5th Amendment – part 3

In Praise of the 5th Amendment – part 4

In Praise of the 5th Amendment – part 5

Top IRS official will invoke the Fifth Amendment in congressional hearing about  tea party targeting program

By David Martosko

The Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday  afternoon that Lois Lerner, who heads up the Internal Revenue Service’s  tax-exempt division, plans to invoke the Fifth Amendment to the U.S.  Constitution in a hearing Wednesday before the House Committee on Oversight and  Government Affairs.

The Fifth Amendment provides that U.S.  citizens may not be compelled to offer testimony if telling the truth would  incriminate them.

Lerner’s defense lawyer, William W. Taylor  III, wrote to the committee on Tuesday that his client would refuse to answer  questions related to what she knew about the extra levels of scrutiny applied to  conservative nonprofit organizations that applied for tax-exempt status  beginning in 2010.

She also will decline to say why she didn’t  disclose what she knew to Congress, according to the LA  Times.

Lerner ‘has not committed any crime or made  any misrepresentation,’ Taylor’s  letter read, ‘but under the circumstances she  has no choice but to take  this course.’

He is asking the oversight committee to  excuse Lerner from testifying, claiming that calling her in a congressional  hearing would ‘have no purpose other than to embarrass or burden her’ since  members would not expect her to answer questions.

Ahmad Ali, a committee spokesman, told  MailOnline that ‘Ms. Lerner remains under subpoena from Chairman Issa to appear  at tomorrow’s hearing – the Committee has a Constitutional obligation to conduct  oversight.’

‘Chairman [Darrel] Issa remains hopeful that  she will ultimately decide to testify tomorrow about her knowledge of outrageous  IRS targeting of Americans for their political beliefs.’

The IRS applied special criteria to  conservative organizations seeking tax-exempt status, putting them on a ‘Be On  The Lookout’ (BOLO) list, based on the groups’ names and political  philosophies.

President Barack Obama has said he was  unaware of the program until May 10, when excerpts of an IRS Inspector General  Report on the practice were leaked to reporters.

But Jay Carney, the president’s chief  spokesman, confirmed Monday that senior White House staff, including White House  Counsel Kathy Ruemmler and Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, knew about the IRS’s  habits as early as April 24, and chose not to tell Obama.

The Inspector General report found that  Lerner and other IRS were notified in or before June 2011 that some staff in the  agency’s Cincinnati, Ohio office were using ‘tea party,’ ‘patriots’ and other  key words to add applicants to the BOLO list.

Once on that list, the groups were subjected  to additional auditing of their financial practices, their membership and their  political activities.

Despite knowing about the program, Lerner and  other senior IRS staffers withheld the information from Congress despite  receiving several requests from House committees whose members heard from  constituents that their tea party groups’ tax-exempt approvals were taking as  long as two years to be resolved.

The House Oversight and Government Affairs  Committee was among those that specifically asked the IRS whether it was  inspecting tea party groups more closely than other applicants, including those  on the political left.

Lerner herself launched her agency’s scandal  with a planted question-and-answer exchange during a May 10 American Bar  Association conference.

Asked the pre-arranged question, Lerner  responded by conceding that her employees had acted inappropriately.

‘Instead of referring to the cases as  advocacy cases, they actually used case names on this list,’ she told the  assembled tax lawyers.

‘They used names like “tea party” or  “Patriots,” and they selected cases simply because the applications had those  names in the title.That was wrong. That was absolutely incorrect, insensitive,  and inappropriate — that’s not how we go about selecting cases for further  review.’

She later claimed that the increase in  scrutiny of tea party groups was due to an influx of new applications from  right-wing organizations, following the Supreme Court’s ‘Citizens United’  ruling, which opened the floodgates to greater political participation by  nonprofit advocacy groups.

The Washington Post called that claim bogus,  however, with the newspaper’s fact checker awarding it a ‘four Pinocchios’  rating for dishonesty.

Read more:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2328696/Lois-Lerner-Top-IRS-official-invoke-Fifth-Amendment-congressional-hearing-tea-party-targeting-program.html

Top IRS official will invoke 5th Amendment

By Richard Simon and Joseph Tanfani May 21, 2013, 1:17 p.m.

WASHINGTON — A top IRS official in the division that reviews nonprofit groups will invoke the 5th Amendment and refuse to answer questions before a House committee investigating the agency’s improper screening of conservative nonprofit groups.

Lois Lerner, the head of the exempt organizations division of the IRS, won’t answer questions about what she knew about the improper screening — or why she didn’t disclose it to Congress, according to a letter from her defense lawyer, William W. Taylor III. Lerner was scheduled to appear before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday.

“She has not committed any crime or made any misrepresentation but under the circumstances she has no choice but to take this course,” said a letter by Taylor to committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Vista). The letter, sent Monday, was obtained Tuesday by the Los Angeles Times.

DOCUMENT: The Inspector General’s report on the IRS

Taylor, a criminal defense attorney from the Washington firm Zuckerman Spaeder, said that the Department of Justice has launched a criminal investigation, and that the House committee has asked Lerner to explain why she provided “false or misleading information” to the committee four times last year.

Since Lerner won’t answer questions, Taylor asked that she be excused from appearing, saying that would “have no purpose other than to embarrass or burden her.” There was no immediate word whether the committee will grant her request.

According to an inspector general’s report, Lerner found out in June 2011 that some staff in the nonprofits division in Cincinnati had used terms such as “Tea Party” and “Patriots” to select some applications for additional screening of their political activities. She ordered changes.

But neither Lerner nor anyone else at the IRS told Congress, even after repeated queries from several committees, including the House Oversight panel, about whether some groups had been singled out unfairly.

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-top-irs-official-fifth-amendment-20130521,0,6645565.story

IRS’s Lois Lerner to take the Fifth

By LAUREN FRENCH and GINGER GIBSON

Embattled IRS official Lois Lerner will invoke her Fifth Amendment right not  to incriminate herself when she appears before the House Oversight Committee on  Wednesday.

In a letter to Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), Lerner’s attorney  William W. Taylor III cites the Justice Department’s criminal investigation into  the issue of whether the IRS singled out tea party and other conservative groups  for extra scrutiny.

Embattled IRS official Lois Lerner will invoke her Fifth Amendment right not  to incriminate herself when she appears before the House Oversight Committee on  Wednesday.

In a letter to Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), Lerner’s attorney  William W. Taylor III cites the Justice Department’s criminal investigation into  the issue of whether the IRS singled out tea party and other conservative groups  for extra scrutiny.

“Just when you think things can’t get any stranger around here, they take a  twist,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) told POLITICO, adding, “this is a very  serious matter.”

Taylor’s letter requests that Lerner be excused from testifying, but Issa has  issued a subpoena to compel her appearance.

“Requiring her to appear at the hearing merely to assert her Fifth Amendment  privilege would have no purpose other than to embarrass or burden her,” Taylor  wrote.

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said Lerner’s decision shows she is “afraid” to  face Congress and account for her actions.

The decision to take the fifth is a “slap in the face” to Americans, said  Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.).

“What’s she hiding?” Buchanan asked. “The American people demand and deserve  answers. Pleading the Fifth is a direct slap in the face of every American  taxpayer betrayed by the IRS’s gross abuse of power.”

Issa has accused Lerner of lying to Congress on four separate occasions last  year. He and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) wrote a letter to Lerner last week asking  her to brief the Oversight Committee on the disparities in her comments before  the scandal broke on the criteria used to flag conservative applications for  tax-exempt status.

“It appears that you provided false or misleading information on four  separate occasions last year in response to the Committee’s oversight of the  IRS’s treatment of conservative groups applying for tax exempt status,” Issa and  Jordan wrote.

The California Republican has cast himself as the chief investigator of the  administration and had demanded Lerner’s presence to better understand when the  IRS learned of the extent of the targeting program.

Rep. Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said  he expects Lerner to appear before the panel Wednesday, but had suggested she  may invoke her Fifth Amendment right.

“She might, she very well may,” Cummings told reporters Tuesday afternoon  when asked if she could invoke the Fifth Amendment. “We’ll see when she comes.  She will be there.”

The question was prompted by Cummings correcting himself after saying she  would be testifying on Wednesday.

“She should be testifying. She should be there tomorrow,” Cummings said,  correcting himself. “I expected her to be there.”

Asked whether she could show up and not testify, he said, “I can’t answer  that right now.”

Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin, former IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman  and J. Russell George, the IRS inspector general who conducted the  investigation, are scheduled to testify.

Taylor has been involved in several high-profile cases in recent years,  including the defense of former IMF President Dominique Strauss-Kahn against  criminal assault charges and leading the team that obtained dismissal of claims  against former NYSE official and Home Depot co-founder Kenneth Langone,  according to the website  of his firm, Zuckerman Spaeder.

He has given over $100,000 to Democratic candidates and causes over the  years, according to Federal Election Commission records. Taylor donated $57,000  to the Obama Victory Fund in 2008 and $10,000 to the Obama Victory Fund 2012  last year.

The Los Angeles Times first reported Lerner’s intention to invoke the Fifth  Amendment.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/05/lois-lerner-could-plead-the-fifth-rep-cummings-says-91686.html#ixzz2TyFY25U8

How the IRS seeded the clouds in 2010 for a political deluge three years later

The IRS officials decided to single out one type of political group for particular scrutiny. “These cases involve various local organizations in the Tea Party movement,” read one internal IRS e-mail sent at the time.

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The Secret History by Donna Tartt

‘The Secret History’ prologue

Donna Tartt (born December 23, 1963) is an American writer and author of the novels The Secret History (1992), The Little Friend (2002), and The Goldfinch (2013).^[1] She won the WH Smith Literary Award for The Little Friend in 2003.

Early life

The daughter of Don and Taylor Tartt, she was born in Greenwood, Mississippi and raised in the nearby town of Grenada. At age five, she wrote her first poem, and she was first published in a Mississippi literary review when she was 13.

Enrolling in the University of Mississippi in 1981, she pledged to the sorority Kappa Kappa Gamma. Her writing caught the attention of Willie Morris while she was a freshman. Following a recommendation from Morris, Barry Hannah, then an Ole Miss Writer-in-Residence, admitted Tartt into his graduate short story course. Following the suggestion of Morris and others, she transferred to Bennington College in 1982, meeting then-students Bret Easton Ellis and Jill Eisenstadt and studying classics with Claude Fredericks.

The Secret History

Tartt began writing her first novel, originally titled “The God of Illusions”^[2] and later published as The Secret History, during her second year at Bennington. She graduated from Bennington in 1986. After Ellis recommended her work to literary agent Amanda Urban, The Secret History was published in 1992, and sold out its original print-run of 75,000 copies, becoming a bestseller. It has been translated into 24 languages.

The Secret History is set at a fictional college and concerns a close-knit group of six students and their professor of classics. The students embark upon a secretive plan to stage a bacchanal. The narrator reflects on a variety of circumstances that lead ultimately to murder within the group.

The murder, the location and the perpetrators are revealed in the opening pages, upending the familiar framework and accepted conventions of the murder mystery genre. Critic A.O. Scott labelled it “a murder mystery in reverse.”^[3]

The book was wrapped in a transparent acetate book jacket, a retro design by Barbara De Wilde and Chip Kidd. According to Kidd, “The following season acetate jackets sprang up in bookstores like mushrooms on a murdered tree.”^[4]

The Little Friend

The Little Friend, Tartt’s second novel, was published in October 2002. It is a mystery centered on a young girl living in the American South in the late 20th century. Her implicit anxieties about the long-unexplained death of her brother and the dynamics of her extended family are a strong focus, as are the contrasting lifestyles and customs of small-town Southerners.

The Goldfinch

In February 2013, the New York Observer announced that Tartt’s long-awaited third novel, titled The Goldfinch, was set for publication on October 22, 2013 after originally being slated for publication in September 2008.^[5] The plot is described thus: ““A young boy in New York City, Theo Decker, miraculously survives an accident that takes the life of his mother. Alone and determined to avoid being taken in by the city as an orphan, Theo scrambles between nights in friends’ apartments and on the city streets,” Amazon’s description reads. “He becomes entranced by the one thing that reminds him of his mother: a small, mysteriously captivating painting that soon draws Theo into the art underworld. Composed with the skills of a master, The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present-day America. It is a story of loss and obsession, survival and self-invention, and the enormous power of art”^[6]

Other writing

In 2002, it was reported that Tartt was working on a retelling of the myth of Daedalus and Icarus for the Canongate Myth Series, a series of novellas in which ancient myths are reimagined and rewritten by contemporary authors.^[7]

Audio

Tartt has recorded several audiobooks:

• The Secret History
• The Little Friend (abridgment)
• True Grit (with afterword expressing her love of the novel)
• Winesburg, Ohio (selection)

Bibliography

Novels

• The Secret History, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992.
• The Little Friend, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002.
• The Goldfinch, 2013

Short stories

• “Tam-O’-Shanter”. The New Yorker April 19, 1993, p. 90.^[8]
• “A Christmas Pageant”. Harper’s 287.1723. December 1993, p. 45+.
• “A Garter Snake”. GQ 65.5, May 1995, p. 89+.
• “The Ambush”. The Guardian, June 25, 2005.

Nonfiction

• “Sleepytown: A Southern Gothic Childhood, with Codeine.” Harper’s 286, July 1992, p. 60-66.
• “Basketball Season.” The Best American Sports Writing, edited and with an introduction by Frank Deford. Houghton Mifflin, 1993.
• “Team Spirit: Memories of Being a Freshman Cheerleader for the Basketball Team.” Harper’s 288, April 1994, p. 37-40.

Awards

• 2003 WH Smith Literary Award (The Little Friend)
• shortlisted for the 2003 Orange Prize for Fiction (The Little Friend)^[9]

References

Sources

• Tracy Hargreaves, Donna Tartt’s “The Secret History”, New York and London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2001 ISBN 0-8264-5320-1
• Adrian McOran-Campbell, The Secret History (August 2000)^{[dead link]}
• Danny Yee, “Studying Ancient Greek Warps the Mind of the Young?” (January 4, 1994)

Listen to

• NPR: Talk of the Nation: Donna Tartt interviewed by Lynn Neary (November 5, 2002)
• NPR: Talk of the Nation: Donna Tartt and Anne Rice interviewed by Ray Suarez (October 30, 1997)
• Donna Tartt reads The Secret History (pages 1-9) at Salon
• Donna Tartt reads The Little Friend at a Jackson, Mississippi bookstore (November 13, 2002)

External links

• “The Little Friend” by Donna Tartt: Links
• Donna Tartt interviewed by Robert Birnbaum at identitytheory.com
• Tartt on reading and her Scottish grandmother
• Tartt in Vogue on her teenage worship of Hunter S. Thompson
• The Secret History community on LiveJournal

The Secret History

The Secret History, the first novel by Mississippi-born writer Donna Tartt, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1992. A 75,000 print order was made for the first edition (as opposed to the usual 10,000 order for a debut novel), and the book became a bestseller.

Set in New England, The Secret History tells the story of a closely knit group of six classics students at a small, elite Vermont college, Hampden College, similar in many respects to Bennington College (in Bennington, Vermont) where Tartt was a student from 1982 to 1986.

The story is an inverted detective story, not a Whodunit but a Whydunit.

One of the six students is the story’s narrator, Richard Papen, who reflects, years later, on the situation that led to a murder within the group, the murder being confessed at the outset of the novel but the events otherwise revealed sequentially. In the opening chapter, as the reader is introduced to Papen, we are told of the death of student Edmund “Bunny” Corcoran, although few details are given initially. The novel explores the circumstances and lasting effects of Bunny’s death on the academically and socially isolated group of Classics students of which he was a part.

The impact on the students is ultimately destructive, and the potential promise of many young lives is lost to circumstance. The story parallels, in many ways, a Greek tragedy with fate dictating the very circumstances that lead to an escalation of already fermenting issues.

Synopsis

As the story opens, Richard leaves Plano, California, where he is generally unhappy, for Hampden College in Vermont. His approach to his background is in keeping with the contrast of aestheticism and literary beauty, as opposed to harsh reality, that continues throughout the novel. He misleads others about his background as necessary, replacing his mediocre working-class childhood with a fabricated and more glamorous one of boarding schools and wealth.

After moving to Vermont, Richard attempts to continue his study of Ancient Greek, only to be denied admittance to the Greek class, as Classics professor Julian Morrow limits his enrollment to a tiny hand-picked coterie of students. Richard becomes obsessed with the small group, after observing them around campus, and eventually manages to ingratiate himself with the group by helping them solve a Greek grammar problem as they study in the college library. Soon after, armed with advice from the students on how to impress Julian, he meets with him once more and is finally admitted to the select Classics tutorial.

The group includes fraternal twins Charles and Camilla Macaulay, who are charming but secretive, as well as Francis Abernathy, whose secluded country home becomes a sanctuary for the group. Two students become the central focus of the story: the linguistic genius Henry Winter, an intellectual with a passion for the Pali canon and Plato, and the back-slapping Bunny Corcoran, a slightly bigoted jokester more comfortable reading Sax Rohmer‘s Fu Manchu, particularly if someone else has bought him a copy.

Their relationship, already considered odd by Richard, becomes even more mystifying when Bunny announces that he and Henry will be spending the winter break together in Italy. This, despite the fact that Henry appears barely tolerant of Bunny and that Bunny is unable to afford such a lavish holiday himself. In fact, it is Henry who is footing the bill for the trip. To avoid unraveling his fabricated past, Richard takes a low-paying job on the college campus and spends the winter break in an unheated warehouse. He nearly dies from exposure and pneumonia but is rescued and taken to the hospital by Henry, who has returned early from the trip to Italy.

When the rest of the group returns from winter break, Richard notes that the relationships between them and Bunny have become even more strained. Ultimately, Richard learns the truth from Henry and Francis: during a Bacchanal that both Richard and Bunny were excluded from, Henry had inadvertently killed a local farmer. Bunny, having been suspicious for some time, uncovers the truth during the trip to Italy after reading some of Henry’s private notes, and has blackmailed the group ever since. The group, led by Henry, begin to view Bunny as the weak link who threatens to reveal their secret, and Bunny’s penchant for playing on his friends’ fears and insecurities does little to assuage their concern.

No longer able to meet Bunny’s demands and fearing that Bunny will report the matter to the police, the group resolves to kill Bunny. Henry forms several plots to accomplish such, and one of the plans is finally put into motion after Bunny tells Richard of the killing of the farmer in a drunken rant. The group confronts Bunny while he is hiking, with Henry pushing him into a ravine to his death.

The remainder of the novel focuses on the aftermath of Bunny’s death, especially the collapse of the group, the psychological strains of remorse borne by the individual members and their efforts to maintain secrecy as investigators and other students develop theories about Bunny’s disappearance. The supporting cast of other students includes loquacious drug user Judy Poovey, a reader of “those paranoia books by Philip K. Dick.”

Charles develops a drinking problem and becomes increasingly abusive towards his sister. Francis begins to suffer panic attacks. Julian discovers the evidence in the form of a pleading letter sent to him by Bunny, imploring him to help: “You’re the only one who can.” Julian never reports the crime but instead leaves the college.

With the group splintered, the members deal with their crime, to a large extent, in isolation. Henry begins living and sleeping with Camilla, which drives Charles further into the grip of his barely controlled alcoholism. Henry is deeply upset by Julian’s departure, seeing it as an act of cowardice and hypocrisy. The plot reaches a climax when Charles, jealous of Henry and now a full-blown alcoholic, barges into Camilla and Henry’s hotel room and tries to kill Henry with Francis’ Beretta. In the struggle that follows, Henry gets hold of the gun as the inn-keeper pounds on the door. Aghast, the others are not sure whom he intends to kill. Instead, Henry kisses Camilla for a final time, and shoots himself. It seems that Henry wants to uphold the principles that he feels Julian has betrayed. With Henry’s suicide, the group disintegrates: Francis, a homosexual, is forced by his rich grandfather to marry a woman; Camilla takes care of her grandmother and ends up isolated; Charles runs from rehab with a married woman; Richard, the narrator, becomes a lonely academic whose love for Camilla is unrequited. Henry’s death is described as having cut the cord between them and set them all adrift. The book ends with Richard recounting a strange dream where he meets Henry in a tall atrium, and doesn’t know how to voice everything he feels about what has happened. Finally, he settles on asking him “Are you happy here?”; Henry replies, “Not particularly. But you’re not very happy where you are, either”, and walks away, leaving Richard as aimless as ever.

Themes

Michiko Kakutani (New York Times) commented, “In The Secret History, Ms. Tartt managed to make… melodramatic and bizarre events (involving Dionysian rites and intimations of satanic power) seem entirely plausible.” Because the author introduces the murder and those responsible at the outset, critic A.O. Scott labeled it “a murder mystery in reverse.” ^[2]

On a deeper level, highlighted by many literary references and allusions, the novel undertakes a complex analysis of truth versus beauty, aesthetics versus justice, social constraints compared to the desire for liberation, and an examination of the relationships that exist behind social structure, particularly relationships of power and control. Early on, the question arises: “Does such a thing as ‘the fatal flaw,’ that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn’t. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.” This theme continues throughout the novel as Richard is repeatedly confronted with the separation of literary and artistic beauty as he would capture and report it, compared to reality as it unfolds.

Cross-references

Bret Easton Ellis‘s novel The Rules of Attraction is set at Camden College, a fictional liberal arts college in northeastern New Hampshire. In many ways, Camden mirrors Ellis’ alma mater, Bennington College, and Hampden College, the setting of Tartt’s The Secret History. Both books contain cross-references to each other’s storylines and characters. Tartt mentions the suicide of a freshman girl in passing, while Ellis repeatedly mentions a group of classics majors who “dress like undertakers” and are suspected of staging pagan rituals and slaying farmers in the countryside.

References

Listen to

• NPR: Talk of the Nation: Donna Tartt interviewed by Lynn Neary (November 5, 2002)
• NPR: Talk of the Nation: Donna Tartt and Anne Rice interviewed by Ray Suarez (October 30, 1997)

External links

• “Students Indulging in Course of Destruction”: The New York Times review
• John Mullan in Guardian (January 11, 2003)
• Review by Ted Gioia
• “Book cover: The Secret History”

NAACP’s Leader Calls The Tea Party The Taliban Wing Of American Politics

Rand Paul Discusses IRS Scandal & Enemies List on Hannity – 5/13/13

Sarah Hall Ingram promoted to Obamacare boss!

Paul Ryan Rips The IRS On Fox News Sunday

Krauthammer Reacts To Trio Of Political Scandals Surrounding Obama Administration

May 16 Press Conference, Question on IRS scandal asked of the president, not answered

The I.R.S. Takes Aim at the Tea Party (David Keating)

The I.R.S. Abusing Americans Is Nothing New

The I.R.S. targeting of tea party groups in the United States is par for the course. It’s not the first time the agency has been used for partisan political ends. Whether or not the targeting was undertaken as a directive from the White House, the agency’s broad latitude in determining what constitutes partisan political activity is very problematic. The solutions offered by campaign finance reformers would unfortunately only give the agency more power.

Scarborough, Willie Geist Tear Into Obama Admin Over IRS Scandal ‘This Is Tyranny…’

Jon Stewart Destroys Obama Over IRS Scandal & Lack Of ‘Managerial Competence’

IRS chief: Disclosure of targeting was intentional 

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Who knew what and when at the IRS?

Obama’s Enemies List 2.0 

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You are a conspiracy theorist if you blame Obama.

Obama’s 3 Major Scandals Explained

White House aide: ‘Nothing that suggests’ IRS official at center of scandal ‘did anything wrong’

By Ben Wolfgang

The Washington Times

A besieged White House dug in its heels Sunday and defended figures at the center of the unfolding Internal Revenue Service scandal while reiterating that President Obama knew nothing of the misdeeds inside the agency.

White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer, appearing on four Sunday morning political talk shows, offered strong support for Sarah Hall Ingram, who led the agency’s tax-exempt division as it admittedly targeted conservative groups. She recently was promoted to chief of the health care reform office, tasked with implementing “Obamacare.”

Critics of the administration expect many more heads to roll as the true scope and intent of the IRS actions come to light, but Mr. Pfeiffer on Sunday strongly defended Ms. Ingram.

“No one has suggested that she did anything wrong yet,” Mr. Pfeiffer said on “Fox News Sunday.”

“Before everyone in this town convicts this person in the court of public opinion with no evidence, let’s actually get the facts and make decisions after that. There’s nothing that suggests she did anything wrong,” he said.

Mr. Pfeiffer added that a top-down investigation of the IRS will examine Ms. Ingram’s 2009 to 2012 tenure as head of the tax-exempt division.

Other IRS authorities have paid the price for what officials on both sides of the aisle, along with a host of others, have described as outrageous behavior. Steven Miller, former acting IRS commissioner questioned by Congress last week, was pushed out by the president.

Ms. Ingram’s replacement, Joseph Grant, has announced his retirement despite taking the job only a few weeks ago.

By keeping Ms. Ingram in place — and giving her the controls of something as complex and controversial as Obamacare — the administration is adding fuel to an already raging fire.

Republicans and many others were skeptical of the federal government and its competence to implement health care reform, and Ms. Ingram’s involvement only generates more questions.

Many Republicans also say that when the smoke clears, the American public will learn that it was not merely rogue IRS employees who targeted tea party and other conservative groups. Rather, they argue, there was a policy directive to silence critics of the president, and some higher-level figure, whether it was Ms. Ingram or someone else, had to have been involved.

“I think we’re going to find that there’s a written policy that says we were targeting people who were opposed to the president. I can’t believe that one rogue agent started this. It seems to be too widespread,” said Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky Republican and potential 2016 presidential candidate.

His Republican colleague Sen. John Cornyn of Texas agreed that there must be more to the story.

“Bureaucrats don’t take risks unless they have a signal, either explicit or implicit, from their higher-ups that what you’re doing is exactly what we expect you to do,” he said during an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “I have a very hard time believing that this was something cooked up in Cincinnati by midlevel employees.”

Rep. Paul Ryan, Wisconsin Republican, called the situation “rotten to the core” and said the IRS ordeal gives the American people a chance to truly see “big government in practice.”

Many of the president’s fellow Democrats are fighting back on a different front. There is no defending the targeting of Americans based on political belief, but lawmakers increasingly are raising the broader issue of whether so many groups should be granted tax-exempt status.

“There’s a second scandal here, and that is that hundreds of millions have been used [by tax-exempt groups] that are supposed to be used as nonprofit social welfare entities for political purposes” said Sen. Robert Menendez, New Jersey Democrat, speaking on ABC’s “This Week.”

Rep. Charles B. Rangel, New York Democrat, argued that IRS employees couldn’t have understood the complex laws governing which groups can be considered tax-exempt or how politically active they can be before they cross the line.

“This law lends itself to abuse,” he said, also appearing on ABC. “I don’t think that gang in Cincinnati had the slightest clue as to find out whether or not people making contributions were involved in politics or whether they were involved in social welfare.”

IRS Official in Charge During Tea Party Targeting Now Runs Health Care Office

The Internal Revenue Service official in charge of the tax-exempt organizations at the time when the unit targeted tea party groups now runs the IRS office responsible for the health care legislation.

Sarah Hall Ingram served as commissioner of the office responsible for tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012. But Ingram has since left that part of the IRS and is now the director of the IRS’ Affordable Care Act office, the IRS confirmed to ABC News today.

Her successor, Joseph Grant, is taking the fall for misdeeds at the scandal-plagued unit between 2010 and 2012. During at least part of that time, Grant served as deputy commissioner of the tax-exempt unit.

Grant announced today that he would retire June 3, despite being appointed as commissioner of the tax-exempt office May 8, a week ago.

As the House voted to fully repeal the Affordable Care Act Thursday evening, House Speaker John Boehner expressed “serious concerns” that the IRS is empowered as the law’s chief enforcer.

“Fully repealing ObamaCare will help us build a stronger, healthier economy, and will clear the way for patient-centered reforms that lower health care costs and protect jobs,” Boehner, R-Ohio, said.

“Obamacare empowers the agency that just violated the public’s trust by secretly targeting conservative groups,” Rep. Marlin Stutzman, R-Ind., added. “Even by Washington’s standards, that’s unacceptable.”

Sen. John Cornyn even introduced a bill, the “Keep the IRS Off Your Health Care Act of 2013,” which would prohibit the Secretary of the Treasury, or any delegate, including the IRS, from enforcing the Affordable Care Act.

“Now more than ever, we need to prevent the IRS from having any role in Americans’ health care,” Cornyn, R-Texas, stated. “I do not support Obamacare, and after the events of last week, I cannot support giving the IRS any more responsibility or taxpayer dollars to implement a broken law.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell also reacted to the revelation late Thursday, stating the news was “stunning, just stunning.”

ABC News’ Abby D. Phillip contributed to this report.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/05/irs-official-in-charge-during-tea-party-targeting-now-runs-health-care-office/

Who Is Sarah Hall Ingram?

June, 2009 –Sarah Hall Ingram, the new commissioner of the IRS TE/GE (Tax-exempt and Government Entities) division of the IRS, spoke on June 23 at Georgetown’s Continuing Legal Education program about the IRS role in nonprofit governance. In the speech, Ingram identified four general principles that she believes are essential to good nonprofit governance:

A foundational principle is that the organization should clearly understand and publicly express its mission. This helps assure that the organization provides a public benefit and does not drift away from a charitable purpose. It helps an organization avoid practices that are inconsistent with tax-exempt status.
Equally important is the principle that the organization’s board should be engaged, informed and independent. The board should have real responsibility and authority. It must, for example, be able to implement, in the life of the organization, the rules against inurement and self-dealing.
Another set of key good governance principles are those relating to the proper use and safeguarding of assets. These principles are supported by policies and practices that address executive compensation, that protect against conflicts of interest, and that support independent financial reviews.
Transparency is another key principle. I believe that board decisions should be reflected in minutes, that records supporting decisions should be retained for reasonable periods, that whistleblowers should be protected, and that each year’s Form 990 should be complete, accurate and prepared in good faith.

Ingram insisted that the IRS would not create a “one size fits all” definition of governance, but strongly reaffirmed the IRS’s role in governance issues: “Another principle I will follow is that the IRS has a clear, unambiguous role to play in governance.”   While I have some doubts about the extent to which the IRS should be active in governance matters, it is hard to argue with Ingram’s view that certain core exemption issues (executive pay, other private inurement, political activity, etc.) do involve governance processes.  It will be interesting to see how the IRS’s role in governance evolves under Ingram’s leadership.

To read Commissioner Ingram’s full address go to http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-tege/ingram__gtown__governance_062309.pdf

http://www.mapfornonprofits.org/index.asp?Type=B_BASIC&SEC={136E71A8-5197-4841-B935-541944239E23}

IRS Announces Appointment of Sarah Hall Ingram as Chief, Appeals

IR-2006-59, April 11, 2006

WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service today announced that Sarah Hall Ingram has been appointed to the position of Chief, Appeals. Ingram will replace David Robison, effective May 7.

As the head of the agency’s Appeals division, Ingram will be responsible for overseeing the operations of an administrative forum for taxpayers contesting an IRS compliance action. The Appeals mission is to resolve tax disputes without litigation; it provides an independent administrative appeal process for all taxpayers.

“I’m pleased Sarah Hall Ingram will be stepping into the position of Chief, Appeals,” said IRS Commissioner Mark W. Everson. “Her broad legal and technical experience will serve the IRS well as she assumes this important post.”

Since July 2004, Ingram has been serving as Deputy Commissioner of the Tax Exempt/Government Entities Division (TE/GE). Ingram began her career with the IRS in the former Tax Litigation Division in 1982. She became Employee Plans Litigation Counsel in 1987, providing litigation coordination nationwide for employee benefit cases. In 1992, Ingram became Deputy Associate Chief Counsel, Employee Benefits and Exempt Organizations (EBEO), where she served until her 1994 appointment as Associate Chief Counsel, EBEO. As part of the IRS Modernization program, Ingram was appointed in 1999 to the new position of Division Counsel/Associate Chief Counsel, TE/GE, where she was responsible for providing legal services to the TE/GE Division and its customers as well as other parts of the IRS.

Ingram received her Bachelor of Arts from Yale University in 1979 and her J.D. in 1982 from Georgetown University Law School. She is a member of the District of Columbia Bar.

Everson also expressed his thanks to Robison, who will retire May 6, after serving 35 years with the IRS.

“David’s service as the Chief, Appeals, for the past four years has been exemplary,” Everson said. “We wish him well in his future endeavors.”

Previously, Robison served in numerous positions involving corporate and international taxation. Last year Robison was selected by Everson to coordinate IRS support for President Bush’s Tax Reform Panel.

http://www.irs.gov/uac/IRS-Announces-Appointment-of-Sarah-Hall-Ingram-as-Chief,-Appeals

IRS targets conservative groups

The IRS grants tax-exempt status to 40,000 nonprofit groups per year. When the IRS began targeting conservative groups’ applications in 2011, nonprofit approvals for groups with tea party or 9-12 in their name stopped entirely. Five groups with those names had been approved in 2009 and 2010, but zero were approved in 2011. After policy reconsideration in 2012, the backlog was broken and 27 groups were approved, mostly in the second half of the year.

The slowdown was evident with other conservative-sounding groups, as well. Thirty-seven groups with the words patriot or constitution had been approved in 2009 and 2010, but only 10 were approved in 2011. Once again, the backlog was relieved in 2012 with 29 approvals.

On the other hand, groups with the word progressive in their names suffered no similar slowdown pattern. The number of approvals increased each year from 17 in 2009 to 20 in 2012. Read related article.

Republicans Expand I.R.S. Inquiry, With Eye on White House

Congressional Republicans, not resting with the Internal Revenue Service scandal, are moving to broaden the matter to an array of tax malfeasances and “intimidation tactics” they hope will ensnare the White House.

Republican charges range from clearly questionable actions to seemingly specious allegations, and they grow by the day. On Friday, lawmakers sought to tie the I.R.S. matter to the carrying out of President Obama’s health care law, which will rely heavily on the agency. Whether they succeed holds significant ramifications for Mr. Obama, who will soon know if he is dealing with a late spring thunderstorm that may soon blow over or a consuming squall that will leave lasting damage.

Representative Dave Camp, Republican of Michigan, the usually mild-mannered chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, set the tone Friday at Congress’s first hearing on the targeting of conservative groups by the I.R.S., laying out details, from the alleged threatening of donors to conservative nonprofit groups to the leaking of confidential I.R.S. documents.

In that context, he said, the screening of Tea Party groups for special scrutiny was not the scandal itself but “just the latest example of a culture of cover-ups — and political intimidation — in this administration.”

“It seems like the truth is hidden from the American people just long enough to make it through an election,” Mr. Camp said.

Taken aback, the ranking Democrat on the committee, Representative Sander M. Levin of Michigan, modified his prepared remarks to warn, “If this hearing becomes essentially a bootstrap to continue the campaign of 2012 and to prepare for 2014, we will be making a very, very serious mistake.”

Republicans raised a long list of issues. Mr. Camp contended, for instance, that a White House official’s divulging of a private company’s tax status constituted “a clear intimidation tactic.” The 2010 incident involved an offhand comment by the White House economist Austan Goolsbee that Koch Industries had not paid corporate income taxes because it pays taxes through the personal income tax code. As it turned out, that was not true, but the assertion was made in a discussion of tax reform ideas, not politics.

The Republicans also criticized the publication of donors to the National Organization for Marriage, a group opposed to same-sex marriage. That donors list surfaced mysteriously in March 2012 from a whistle-blower whose identity is still unknown. The whistle-blower apparently obtained it by simply requesting it from the I.R.S.

Linkage to the health care law came through Sarah Hall Ingram, a longtime I.R.S. official who has headed the agency’s program to carry out the Affordable Care Act since December 2010. Before that, she led the I.R.S.’s tax-exempt and government-entities division, which contained the political targeting effort.

“This is an audit, and it’s helpful,” Representative Tim Griffin, Republican of Arkansas, said of the investigation of I.R.S. targeting by the Treasury inspector general for tax administration, “but it’s the tip of the iceberg.”

But the inspector general made clear that effort did not reach the attention of high-level I.R.S. officials until 2011 at the earliest.

The inspector general gave Republicans some fodder Friday when he divulged that he informed the Treasury’s general counsel he was auditing the I.R.S.’s screening of politically active groups seeking tax exemptions on June 4, 2012. He told Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin “shortly after,” he said. That meant Obama administration officials were aware of the matter during the presidential campaign year.

The disclosure last summer came as part of a routine briefing of the investigations that the inspector general would be conducting in the coming year, and he did not tell the officials of his conclusions that the targeting had been improper, he said.

Treasury officials stressed they did not know the results until March 2013, when the inspector presented a draft.

“Treasury strongly supports the independent oversight of its three inspectors general, and it does not interfere in ongoing I.G. audits,” the department said in a statement Friday evening.

Still, Inspector General J. Russell George’s testimony fueled efforts by Congressional Republicans to ensnare Mr. Obama in the scandals suddenly swirling over the White House. Representative Paul D. Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican who joined the national ticket as the vice-presidential nominee last year, said of the revelation, “That raises a big question.”

Republicans hit hard on the divulging of confidential tax information, hinting of intimidation not only by the I.R.S. but also by the White House.

In March 2012, the Human Rights Campaign and The Huffington Post made public confidential tax documents from the National Organization for Marriage. The Human Rights Campaign said it obtained the documents from a “whistle-blower” who mailed them to the gay rights group’s Washington headquarters.

In a similar incident, ProPublica, an investigative journalism Web site, asked the I.R.S.’s Cincinnati office for the applications of 67 nonprofits, both liberal and conservative. When the I.R.S. responded, it inadvertently included applications for nine conservative groups that had not yet been granted tax-exempt status, a violation of confidentiality law.

When ProPublica realized what it had — including the application from Crossroads GPS, the conservative group founded by Karl Rove and other Republican strategists — it alerted the I.R.S., which warned the journalists that “publishing unauthorized returns or return information was a felony” punishable by up to five years in prison. ProPublica ProPublica redacted certain details and published the documents anyway.

Representative Peter Roskam, Republican of Illinois, hit on a different explanation. “On the one hand, you’re arguing today that the I.R.S. is not corrupt, but the subtext of that is you’re saying, ‘Look, we’re just incompetent,’ ” Mr. Roskam said. “It is a perilous pathway to go down.”

One release that turned out to be advertent was last Friday’s disclosure of the agency’s conservative targeting. Steven Miller, the ousted acting commissioner of the I.R.S., confessed that the agency’s apology was prompted by a question planted by the agency at an American Bar Association meeting. At that meeting, Lois Lerner, the head of the I.R.S.’s division overseeing tax-exempt organizations, was asked about an inquiry into the targeting issue, eliciting an apology that quickly leaked out of the closed-door session. The I.R.S. then scrambled to issue a formal release on the issue.

Mr. Miller divulged that the exchange was not an impromptu apology but a planned exchange between Ms. Lerner and Celia Roady, a tax lawyer at the Washington office of the Morgan Lewis law firm. That revelation only underscored the ham-handed way the scandal has burst into view.

Under fire, Mr. Miller called the agency’s targeting of conservative groups “obnoxious,” but he told the House Ways and Means Committee it was not motivated by partisanship. And in testy exchanges, he said he had not misled Congress, even though he did not divulge the targeting efforts of a Cincinnati unit examining 70,000 applications for tax exemption.

He called the group’s centralization of applications from groups with names that included the words “Tea Party” or “patriots” simply “foolish mistakes” that “were made by people trying to be more efficient in their workload selection.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/18/us/politics/irs-scandal-congressional-hearings.html?pagewanted=2&_r=3&hp

First They Killed Four Americans In Benghazi, Libya–Now They Are Killing Syrians

 The Muslim Brotherhood and Al-Qaeda At Work

FSA Alqaeda Terrorists execute 28 Syrian prisoners

Syrian Rebels Burning Whole Village in Daraa | Syria War

Ron Paul Stop Giving Weapons To Terrorist Rebels In Syria

SYRIA CNBC: Benghazi Is Not About Libya But An Operation To Put Arms & Men In Syria

Retired Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin suspects US Was Running Guns To Syrian Rebels Via Benghazi

SYRIA Geraldo Rivera: My Sources Say The US Running Libya Arms To Syrian Rebels

SYRIA Rand Paul “Maybe We Were Facilitating Arms Leaving Libya Going Through Turkey Into Syria”

Rand Paul asks Hillary Clinton About Involvement in Transferring Weapons to Turkey out of Libya

Benghazi-Gate: Connection between CIA and al-Qaeda in Libya and Syria, with Turkey’s Help

FMR CIA Chief on ‘Benghazi-Gate’: “The Democrats Are Very Good At Watching People Die”

‘Benghazi: The Definitive Report’ 02/19/13

Special Report investigates: DEATH AND DECEIT IN BENGHAZI w/Bret Baier 10/19/2012

The Project parts 1-2, FULL video

(1/2) Glenn Beck – Muslim Brotherhood

(2/2) Glenn Beck – Muslim Brotherhood

Glenn Beck: Shariah, the Muslim Brotherhood & the Threat to America

Frank Gaffney and Gen. Jerry Boykin join Erick Stakelbeck and Glenn Beck on GBTV to discuss the rise of the new caliphate and creeping shariah. Boykin and Gaffney are authors of Shariah: The Threat to America, available here: http://www.amazon.com/Shariah-America…

Barack Obama and the Muslim Brotherhood

Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front Now Dominant Partner in “Free Syrian Army”

Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front Now Dominant Partner in “Free Syrian Army”; Kerry Sends Death Squad Expert Ambassador Ford to Support Gen. Idriss, CIA’s New Golden Boy

The Middle East ‘CIA death squads behind Syria bloodbath’

SYRIAN CRISIS: 95% of REBEL fighters NOT Syrian! FM accuses WEST of supporting TERRORISM! [WW3]

SYRIAN WAR OUTCOME [CrossTalk]

BBC HARDtalk – Joseph Nye – Former US Assistant Secretary of Defense (13/5/13)

Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands, With Aid From C.I.A.

By C. J. CHIVERS and ERIC SCHMITT

With help from the C.I.A., Arab governments and Turkey have sharply increased their military aid to Syria’s opposition fighters in recent months, expanding a secret airlift of arms and equipment for the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, according to air traffic data, interviews with officials in several countries and the accounts of rebel commanders.

Muslim Brotherhood

The Society of the Muslim Brothers  (Arabic: جماعة الإخوان المسلمين‎, often simply: الإخوان المسلمون, the Muslim Brotherhood, transliterated: al-ʾIkḫwān al-Muslimūn) is the Arab world’s most influential and one of the largest Islamic movements, and is the largest political opposition organization in many Arab states.^[1][2] Founded in Egypt in 1928^[3] as a Pan-Islamic, religious, political, and social movement by the Islamic scholar and schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna,^[4][5][6][7] by the end of World War II the Muslim Brotherhood had an estimated two million members.^[8] Its ideas had gained supporters throughout the Arab world and influenced other Islamist groups with its “model of political activism combined with Islamic charity work”.^[9]

The Brotherhood’s stated goal is to instill the Qur’an and Sunnah as the “sole reference point for …ordering the life of the Muslim family, individual, community … and state.” The organization seeks to make Muslim countries become Islamic caliphates and to isolate women and non-Muslims from public life.^[10] The movement is also known for engaging in political violence. They were responsible for creating Hamas, a U.S. designated terrorist organization, who grew to infamy for its suicide bombings of Israelis during the first and second intifada.^[10] Muslim brotherhood members are suspected to have assasinated political opponents like Egyptian Prime Minister Mahmoud an-Nukrashi Pasha.^[9][10][11]

The Muslim Brotherhood started as a religious social organization; preaching Islam, teaching the illiterate, setting up hospitals and even launching commercial enterprises. As it continued to rise in influence, starting in 1936, it began to oppose British rule in Egypt.^[12] Many Egyptian nationalists accuse the Muslim Brotherhood of violent killings during this period.^[13] After the Arab defeat in the First Arab-Israeli war, the Egyptian government dissolved the organisation and arrested its members.^[12] It supported the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, but after an attempted assassination of Egypt’s president it was once again banned and repressed.^[14] The Muslim Brotherhood has been suppressed in other countries as well, most notably in Syria in 1982 during the Hama massacre.^[15]

The Muslim Brotherhood is financed by contributions from its members, who are required to allocate a portion of their income to the movement. Some of these contributions are from members who work in Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich countries.^[16]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_brotherhood

Al-Qaeda

Al-Qaeda (pron.: /ælˈkaɪdə/ al-KY-də; Arabic: القاعدة‎ al-qāʿidah, Arabic: [ælqɑːʕɪdɐ], translation: “The Base” and alternatively spelled al-Qaida and sometimes al-Qa’ida) is a global militant Islamist organization founded by Osama bin Laden at some point between August 1988^[21] and late 1989,^[22] with its origins being traceable to the Soviet War in Afghanistan.^[23] It operates as a network comprising both a multinational, stateless army^[24] and a radical Sunni Muslim movement calling for global Jihad and a strict interpretation of sharia law. It has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United Nations Security Council, NATO, the European Union, the United Kingdom, the United States, and various other countries (see below). Al-Qaeda has carried out several attacks on non-Muslims,^[25][26] and other targets it considers kafir.^[27]

Al-Qaeda has attacked civilian and military targets in various countries, including the September 11 attacks, 1998 U.S. embassy bombings and the 2002 Bali bombings. The U.S. government responded to the September 11 attacks by launching the War on Terror. With the loss of key leaders, culminating in the death of Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda’s operations have devolved from actions that were controlled from the top-down, to actions by franchise associated groups, to actions of lone wolf operators.

Characteristic techniques employed by al-Qaeda include suicide attacks and simultaneous bombings of different targets.^[28] Activities ascribed to it may involve members of the movement, who have taken a pledge of loyalty to Osama bin Laden, or the much more numerous “al-Qaeda-linked” individuals who have undergone training in one of its camps in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq or Sudan, but who have not taken any pledge.^[29] Al-Qaeda ideologues envision a complete break from all foreign influences in Muslim countries, and the creation of a new world-wide Islamic caliphate.^[3][30][31] Among the beliefs ascribed to Al-Qaeda members is the conviction that a Christian–Jewish alliance is conspiring to destroy Islam.^[32] As Salafist jihadists, they believe that the killing of civilians is religiously sanctioned, and they ignore any aspect of religious scripture which might be interpreted as forbidding the murder of civilians and internecine fighting.^[9][33] Al-Qaeda also opposes man-made laws, and wants to replace them with a strict form of sharia law.^[34]

Al-Qaeda is also responsible for instigating sectarian violence among Muslims.^[35] Al-Qaeda is intolerant of non-Sunni branches of Islam and denounces them by means of excommunications called “takfir”. Al-Qaeda leaders regard liberal Muslims, Shias, Sufis and other sects as heretics and have attacked their mosques and gatherings.^[36] Examples of sectarian attacks include the Yazidi community bombings, the Sadr City bombings, the Ashoura Massacre and the April 2007 Baghdad bombings.^[37]

Alawites

The Alawites, also known as Alawis, Nusayris and Ansaris (ʿAlawīyyah (Arabic: علوية‎), Nuṣayrī (Arabic: نصيريون‎), and al-Anṣāriyyah) are a prominent mystical^[8] religious group centred in Syria who follow a branch of the Twelver school of Shia Islam.^[9][10][11] They were long persecuted for their beliefs by the various rulers of Syria, until Hafez al-Assad took power there in 1970.

Today they represent 12% of the Syrian population and for the past 50 years the political system has been dominated by an elite led by the Alawite Assad family. During the Syrian civil war, this rule has come under significant pressure.

Etymology

The Alawites take their name from Ali ibn Abi Talib, cousin of Muḥammad,^[12] who was considered the first Shi’a Imam and the fourth “Rightly Guided Caliph” of Sunni Islam.

Until fairly recently, Alawites were referred to as “Nusairis”, after Abu Shu’ayb Muhammad ibn Nusayr (d. ca 270 h, 863 AD) who is reported to have attended the circles of the last three Imams of the prophet Muhammad’s line. This name is considered offensive, and they refer to themselves as Alawites.^{[page needed][13]} They have allegedly “generally preferred” to be called Alawites, because of the association of the name with Ali ibn Abi Talib, rather than commemorating Abu Shu’ayb Muhammad Ibn Nusayr. In September 1920 French occupational forces instituted the policy of referring to them by the term Alaouites.

In official sources they are often referred to as Ansaris, as this is how they referred to themselves, according to the Reverend Samuel Lyde, who lived among Alawites in the mid-19th century. Other sources state that “Ansari”, as referring to Alawites, is simply a Western mis-transliteration of “Nosairi”.^{[page needed][14][15]}

Alawites are separate from the Alevi religious sect in Turkey, but the terms share similar etymologies, and are often confused by outsiders.^[16][17]

History

he origin of the Alawites is disputed. The Alawites themselves trace their origins to the followers of the eleventh Imām, Hassan al-’Askarī (d. 873), and his pupil ibn Nuṣayr (d. 868).^[18] The sect seems to have been organised by a follower of Muḥammad ibn Nuṣayr known as al-Khasibi, who died in Aleppo about 969. In 1032 Al-Khaṣībī’s grandson and pupil al-Tabarani moved to Latakia, which was then controlled by the Byzantine Empire. Al-Tabarani became the perfector of the Alawite faith through his numerous writings. He and his pupils converted the rural population of the Syrian Coastal Mountain Range to the Alawite faith.^[19]

In the 19th century and early 20th century, some Western scholars believed Alawites to be descended from ancient Middle Eastern peoples such as Canaanites and Hittites.^{[page needed][20][21]}

Under the Ottoman Empire

Under the Ottoman Empire they were often ill treated,^[22] and they resisted an attempt to convert them to Sunni Islam.^[23] The Alawites were traditionally good fighters, revolted against the Ottomans on several occasions, and maintained virtual autonomy in their mountains.^[24] In his book Seven Pillars of Wisdom, T. E. Lawrence wrote:

“The sect, vital in itself, was clannish in feeling and politics. One Nosairi would not betray another, and would hardly not betray an unbeliever. Their villages lay in patches down the main hills to the Tripoli gap. They spoke Arabic, but had lived there since the beginning of Greek letters in Syria. Usually they stood aside from affairs, and left the Turkish Government alone in hope of reciprocity.”^[25]

On the other hand, throughout the 18th century a number of Alawite notables were engaged as local Ottoman tax farmers (multazim). In the 19th century, some Alawites also supported the Ottomans against the Egyptian occupation (1831–1840),^[26] while individual Alawites made careers in the Ottoman army or as Ottoman governors.^[27] In the early part of the 20th century, the mainly Sunni notables sat on wealth and dominated politics, while Alawites lived as poor peasants.^[28][29] Alawites were not allowed to testify in court until after World War I.^[30]

French Mandate period

After the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Syria and Lebanon came under a French mandate. On December 15, 1918, prominent Alawite leader Saleh al-Ali called for a meeting of Alawite notables in the town of Sheikh Badr, and urged them to revolt and expel the French from Syria. When the French authorities heard of the meeting, they sent a force in order to arrest Saleh al-Ali. Al-Ali and his men ambushed them, and the French forces were defeated and suffered more than 35 casualties.^[31] After the initial victory, al-Ali started to organize his Alawite rebels into a disciplined force, with its own general command and military ranks, which resulted in the Syrian Revolt of 1919.^[31][32]

In 1919, Al-Ali retaliated to French attacks against rebel positions by attacking and occupying al-Qadmus, from which the French conducted their military operations against him.^[31] In November, General Henri Gouraud mounted a full-fledged campaign against Saleh al-Ali’s forces in the An-Nusayriyah Mountains. They entered al-Ali’s village of al-Shaykh Badr and arrested many Alawi notables. Al-Ali fled to the north, but a large French force overran his positions and al-Ali went underground.^[31]

Alawite State

When the French finally occupied Syria in 1920, they recognized the term Alaouites, i.e. “Alawites”, gave autonomy to them and other minority groups, and accepted them into their colonial troops.^[33] On 2 September 1920 an Alawite State was created in the coastal and mountain country comprising Alawite villages; the French justified this separation with the “backwardness” of the mountain-dwelling people, religiously distinct from the surrounding Sunni population. It was a division meant to protect the Alawite people from more powerful majorities.^[34] Under the mandate, many Alawite chieftains supported the notion of a separate Alawite nation and tried to convert their autonomy into independence. The French encouraged Alawites to join their military force, in part to provide a counterweight to the Sunni majority, which was more hostile to their rule. According to a 1935 letter by the French minister of war, the French considered the Alawites, along with the Druze, as the only “warlike races” in the mandate territories, as excellent soldiers, and the communities from where they could recruit their best troops.^[35]

The region was both coastal and mountainous, and home to a mostly rural, highly heterogeneous population. During the French Mandate period, society was divided by religion and geography: the landowning families of the port city of Latakia, and 80% of the population of the city, were Sunni Muslim. However, more than 90% of the population of the province was rural, 62% being Alawite peasantry.^[36] In May 1930, the Alawite State was renamed “the Government of Latakia”, the only concession the French made to Arab nationalists until 1936.^[36] There was a great deal of Alawite separatist sentiment in the region,^[36] as evidenced by a letter dating to 1936 and signed by 80 Alawi notables and was addressed to the French Prime Minister stating that “Alawite people rejected attachment to Syria and wished to stay under French protection.” Among the signatories was Sulayman Ali al-Assad, the father of Hafez al-Assad who would later become president of the country, and grandfather of Bashar al-Assad, the current president.^[37] However, these political views could not be coordinated into a unified voice. This was attributed to the majority of Alawites being peasants “exploited by a predominantly Sunni landowning class resident in Latakia and Hama”.^[36] Nevertheless, on 3 December 1936 (effective in 1937), the Alawite State was re-incorporated into Syria as a concession by the French to the Nationalist Bloc, the party in power of the semi-autonomous Syrian government.^[38]

In 1939 a portion of northwest Syria, the Sanjak of Alexandretta, now Hatay, that contained a large number of Alawites, was given to Turkey by the French following a plebiscite carried out in the province under the guidance of League of Nations which favored joining Turkey. However, this development greatly angered the Alawite community and Syrians in general. In 1938, the Turkish military had gone into Alexandretta and expelled most of its Arab and Armenian inhabitants.^[39] Before this, Alawite Arabs and Armenians were the majority of the province’s population.^[39] Zaki al-Arsuzi, the young Alawite leader from Iskandarun province in the Sanjak of Alexandretta, who led the resistance to the annexation of his province to the Turks, later became a co-founder of the Ba’ath Party along with the Eastern Orthodox Christian schoolteacher Michel Aflaq and Sunni politician Salah al-Din al-Bitar when his Arab Ba’ath merged with their Arab Ba’ath Movement . After World War II, Salman Al Murshid played a major role in uniting the Alawite province with Syria. He was executed by the newly independent Syrian government in Damascus on December 12, 1946 only three days after a hasty political trial.

After Syrian independence

Syria became independent on April 17, 1946. In 1949, following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Syria endured a succession of military coups and the rise of the Ba’ath Party. In 1958, Syria and Egypt were united through a political agreement into the United Arab Republic. The UAR lasted for three years. In 1961, it broke apart when a group of army officers seized power and declared Syria independent anew.

A further succession of coups ensued until, in 1963, a secretive military committee, which included a number of disgruntled Alawite officers, including Hafez al-Assad and Salah Jadid, helped the Ba’ath Party seize power. In 1966, Alawite-affiliated military officers successfully rebelled and expelled the old Ba’ath that had looked to the founders of the Ba’ath Party, the Greek Orthodox Christian Michel Aflaq and the Sunni Muslim Salah al-Din al-Bitar, for leadership. They promoted Zaki al-Arsuzi as the “Socrates” of their reconstituted Ba’ath Party.

The al-Assad family

In 1970, then Air Force General, Hafez al-Assad, an Alawite, took power and instigated a “Correctionist Movement” in the Ba’ath Party. The coup of 1970 ended the political instability that had lasted since the arrival of independence.^[40] Robert D. Kaplan has compared Hafez al-Assad’s coming to power to “an untouchable becoming maharajah in India or a Jew becoming tsar in Russia—an unprecedented development shocking to the Sunni majority population which had monopolized power for so many centuries.”^[33] In 1971, al-Assad declared himself president of Syria, a position the constitution at the time allowed only for Sunni Muslims to hold. In 1973, a new constitution was adopted that omitted the old requirement that the religion of the state be Islam and replaced it with the statement that the religion of the republic’s president is Islam. Protests erupted when this was known.^[41] In 1974, in order to satisfy this constitutional requirement, Musa Sadr, a leader of the Twelvers of Lebanon and founder of the Amal Movement who had earlier sought to unite Lebanese Alawites and Shi’ites under the Supreme Islamic Shi’ite Council without success,^[42] issued a fatwa stating that Alawites were a community of Twelver Shi’ite Muslims.^[43][44] Under the authoritarian but secular Assad government, religious minorities were tolerated more than before, but political dissidents were not. In 1982 when the Muslim Brotherhood mounted an anti-government Islamist insurgency, Hafez Assad staged a military offensive against them which has since been referred to as the Hama massacre.

Beliefs

Alawites celebrating a festival in Banyas, Syria, during World War II

The Alawites derive their beliefs from the Prophets of Islam, from the Quran, and from the books of the Imams from the Ahlulbayt such as the Nahj al-Balagha by Ali ibn Abu Talib. Alawites are self-described Shi’ite Muslims, and have been recognised as such by Shi’ite authorities such as Ayatollah Khomeini and the influential Lebanese Shi’ite cleric Musa al-Sadr of Lebanon.^[43][45] The prominent Sunni Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Mohammad Amin al-Husayni also issued a fatwah recognizing them as part of the Muslim community in the interest of Arab nationalism.^[46][47] Some Sunni scholars such as Ibn Kathir, on the other hand, have categorized Alawites as pagans in their religious works^[48] and documents.^[22] At least one source has compared them to Baha’is, Babis, Bektashis, Ahmadis, and “similar groups that have arisen within the Muslim community”.^[49]

Heterodox

Alawite man in Latakia, early 20th century

Some tenets of the faith may be secret and known only to a select few Alawis. ^[22][50] Alawis may have integrated doctrines from other religions (syncretism), in particular from Ismaili Islam and Christianity.^[8][22][44] Alawis are reported to celebrate certain Christian festivals, “in their own way”,^[44] including Christmas, Easter, and Palm Sunday.^[33] The claim that Alawis believe Ali is a deity has been contested by scholars.^[51] By some accounts, Alawis believe in reincarnation.^[52]

Orthodox

Alawi women in Syria, early 20th century

Some sources have suggested that the non-Muslim nature of some of the historical Alawite beliefs, notwithstanding, Alawite beliefs may have changed in recent decades. In the early 1970s a booklet entitled “al-`Alawiyyun Shi’atu Ahl al-Bait” (“The Alawites are Followers of the Household of the Prophet”), was issued in which doctrines of the Imami Shi’ah were described as Alawite, and which was “signed by numerous `Alawi` men of religion”.^[53]

A scholar suggests that factors such as the high profile of Alawites in Syria, the strong aversion of the Muslim majority to apostasy, and the relative lack of importance of religious doctrine to Alawite identity may have induced Syrian leader Hafez al-Assad and his successor son to press their fellow Alawites “to behave like ‘regular Muslims’, shedding or at least concealing their distinctive aspects”.^[54]

Alawites have their own scholars, referred to as shaikhs, although more recently there has been a movement to bring Alawism and the other branches of Twelver Islam together through educational exchange programs in Syria and Qom.^[55]

Some sources have talked about “Sunnification” of Alawites under Baathist Syrian leader and Alawite Hafiz al-Assad.^[56] Joshua Landis, Director of the Center for Middle East Studies, writes that Hafiz al-Assad “tried to turn Alawites into ‘good’ (read Sunnified) Muslims in exchange for preserving a modicum of secularism and tolerance in society.” On the other hand Al-Assad “declared the Alawites to be nothing but Twelver Shiites”.^[56] In a paper on “Islamic Education in Syria”, Landis wrote that “no mention” is made in Syrian textbooks controlled by the Al-Assad regime, of Alawites, Druze, and Ismailis or even Shi`a Islam. Islam was presented as a monolithic religion.<sup>[57]</sup> Ali Sulayman al-Ahmad, chief judge of the Baathist Syrian state, has stated: “We are Alawi Muslims. Our book is the Quran. Our prophet is Muhammad. The Ka`ba is our qibla, and our religion is Islam.”^[58]

Population

Map showing the current distribution of Alawites in the Levant

Syria

Traditionally Alawites have lived in the Alawite Mountains along the Mediterranean coast of Syria. Latakia and Tartous are the region’s principal cities. Today Alawites are also concentrated in the plains around Hama and Homs. Alawites also live in all major cities of Syria. They have been estimated to constitute about 12% of Syria’s population^[59][60][61]—2.6 million people of Syria’s 22 million population.^[2]

There are four Alawite confederations—Kalbiyya, Khaiyatin, Haddadin, and Matawirah—each divided into tribes.^[22] Alawites are concentrated in the Latakia region of Syria, extending north to Antioch (Antakya), Turkey, and in and around Homs and Hama.^[62]

Before 1953, Alawites held specifically reserved seats in the Syrian Parliament like all other religious communities. After that, including for the 1960 census, there were only general Muslim and Christian categories, without mention of subgroups in order to reduce “communalism” (taïfiyya).

Lebanon

There are an estimated 100,000 to 120,000^[4][63] Alawites in Lebanon, where they have lived since at least the 16th century.^[64] They are recognized as one of the 18 official Lebanese sects, and due to the efforts of their leader Ali Eid, the Taif Agreement of 1989 gave them two reserved seats in the Parliament. Lebanese Alawites live mostly in the Jabal Mohsen neighbourhood of Tripoli, where they number 40,000–60,000, and in 15 villages in the Akkar region, and are mainly represented by the Arab Democratic Party.^[65][66][67] Their Mufti is Sheikh Assad Assi.^[68] The Bab al-Tabbaneh, Jabal Mohsen clashes between pro-Syrian Alawites and anti-Syrian Sunnis have haunted Tripoli for decades.^[69]

There are also about 2000 Alawites living in the village of Ghajar, split between Lebanon and the Golan Heights.^[70] In 1932, the residents of Ghajar were given the option of choosing their nationality and overwhelmingly chose to be a part of Syria, which has a sizable Alawite minority.^[71] Prior to the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, the residents of Ghajar were counted in the 1960 Syrian census.^[72] When Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967, Ghajar remained a no-man’s land for two and a half months.

Turkey

In order to avoid confusion with Alevis, Alawites prefer the self-appellation Arap Alevileri (“Arab Alevis”) in Turkish. The term Nusayrī, which used to exist in (often polemical) theological texts is also revived in recent studies. In Çukurova, they are named as Fellah and Arabuşağı, the latter considered highly offensive by Alawites, by the Sunni population. A quasi-official name used particularly in 1930s by Turkish authorities was Eti Türkleri (“Hittite Turks”), in order to conceal their Arab origins. Today, this term is almost obsolete but it is still used by some people of older generations as a euphemism.

The exact number of Alawites in Turkey is unknown, but there were 185,000 in 1970^[73] (this number suggests circa 400,000 in 2009). As Muslims, they are not recorded separately from Sunnis in ID registration. In the 1965 census (the last Turkish census where informants were asked their mother tongue), 180,000 people in the three provinces declared their mother tongue as Arabic. However, Arabic-speaking Sunni and Christian people are also included in this figure. Alawites traditionally speak the same dialect of Levantine Arabic with Syrian Alawites. Arabic is best preserved in rural communities and Samandağ. Younger people in Çukurova cities and (to a lesser extent) in İskenderun tend to speak Turkish. Turkish spoken by Alawites is distinguished by Alawites and non-Alawites alike by its particular accents and vocabulary. Knowledge of the Arabic alphabet is confined to religious leaders and men who have worked or studied in Arab countries.

Alawites show a considerable pattern of social mobility. Until 1960s, they used to work bound to Sunni aghas around Antakya and were among the poorest folk in Çukurova. Today, Alawites are prominent in economic sectors such as transportation and commerce. A large professional middle-class had also emerged. In recent years, there has been a tendency of exogamy, particularly among males who had attended universities and/or had lived in other parts of Turkey. These marriages are highly tolerated but exogamy of women, as in other patrilineal groups, is usually disfavoured.

Alawites, like Alevis, mainly have strong leftist political preferences. However, some people in rural areas (usually members of notable Alawite families) may be found supporting secularist conservative parties such as True Path Party. Most Alawites feel discriminated by the policies of the Presidency of Religious Affairs in Turkey (Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı).^[74][75]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alawite

President Obama Announces Resignation of Acting IRS Commissioner: I Am Angry About It

Obama the Liar

Glenn Beck Ties Together Benghazi, IRS, & AP Scandals ‘Fundamental Transformation’

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The Owners of the Country

Entropy fan

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George Carlin: Brain Droppings

George Carlin Interview

Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration

http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/TIGTA-201310053fr-revised-redacted-1.pdf

Glenn Beck Ties Together Benghazi, IRS, & AP Scandals ‘Fundamental Transformation’

Glenn Beck – IRS targeted conservatives

IRS Admits Targeting Conservatives – TheBlazeTV – The Glenn Beck Radio Program – 2013.05.10

Lou Dobbs Rips ‘Nixonian’ Obama For Lying ‘Through His Teeth’ About IRS ‘President Who Has Lost His

Paul Steiger: The ProPublica Story

ProPublica founder and CEO, Paul Steiger, on the creation of this foundation-funded investigative newsroom, the challenges they faced and their plans for the future. ProPublica is the first online-only organization to win a Pulitzer Prize.

Paul Steiger: The ProPublica Story part 2

Paul Steiger: The ProPublica Story part 3

Paul Steiger: The ProPublica Story part 4 Q&A

Paul Steiger: The ProPublica Story part 5 Q&A

Jon Stewart Totally DESTROYS Obama Administration Over IRS Scandal | A MUST WATCH

IRS scandal widens

Ex-commissioner on tea party scandal: IRS did “the wrong thing”

Tea Party IRS Investigations Not Politically Motivated? ‘How Stupid Do They Think We Are’

IRS in the spotlight: What’s a 501(c)(4)? By Martina Stewart, CNN

Deceptive Dollars Tied To 501(c)(4) Groups

Mark Levin Dissects Obama, The IRS & The Republican Party in Scandal – Sean Hannity – 5-13-13

Mark Levin Attacks Obama & ‘Impotent’ House GOP Over IRS Scandal ‘Absolutely Unacceptable’

Glenn Beck: Failure to Impeach Over IRS Scandal Means America ‘Already Operating Under Tyranny’

CU President David Bossie on Fox News (02/19/2013)

President Obama Calls IRS Targeting of Conservative, Tea Party Groups ‘Outrageous’

Obama Administration – The I.R.S. Targets Teaparty and Patriot Groups for Review

IRS Gave Higher Scruity to Tea Party, Conservatives According to Document Draft

Political Firestorm Erupts in IRS ‘Tea Party’ Scandal

Tea Party Patriots Jenny Beth Martin Talks ‘IRS Scandal’ with Lou Dobbs – 5-13-13

IRS Caught in the Act – Jenny Beth Martin CBS This Morning 051113

Senator Rand Paul Discusses IRS Scandal & Enemies List with Sean Hannity – 5-13-13

IRS Issues Apology For Targeting Tea Party & PATRIOT Groups! “Definitely 1st Amendment Concerns Here

IRS Targets Tea Party Groups During 2012 Election

Rep. Issa Rips Obama Over IRS Scandal: ‘How Dare The Admin Imply’ They’ll ‘Get To The Bottom Of It’

Progressive Group: IRS Gave Us Conservative Groups’ Confidential Docs

by Wynton Hall

The progressive-leaning investigative journalism group ProPublica says the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) office that targeted and harassed conservative tax-exempt groups during the 2012 election cycle gave the progressive group nine confidential applications of conservative groups whose tax-exempt status was pending.

The commendable admission lends further evidence to the lengths the IRS went during an election cycle to silence tea party and limited government voices.

ProPublica says the documents the IRS gave them were “not supposed to be made public”:

The same IRS office that deliberately targeted conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status in the run-up to the 2012 election released nine pending confidential applications of conservative groups to ProPublica late last year… In response to a request for the applications for 67 different nonprofits last November, the Cincinnati office of the IRS sent ProPublica applications or documentation for 31 groups. Nine of those applications had not yet been approved—meaning they were not supposed to be made public. (We made six of those public, after redacting their financial information, deeming that they were newsworthy.)

The group says that “no unapproved applications from liberal groups were sent to ProPublica.”

According to Media Research Center Vice President for Business and Culture Dan Gainor, ProPublica’s financial backers include top progressive donors:

ProPublica, which recently won its second Pulitzer Prize, initially was given millions of dollars from the Sandler Foundation to “strengthen the progressive infrastructure”–“progressive” being the code word for very liberal. In 2010, it also received a two-year contribution of $125,000 each year from the Open Society Foundations. In case you wonder where that money comes from, the OSF website is http://www.soros.org. It is a network of more than 30 international foundations, mostly funded by Soros, who has contributed more than $8 billion to those efforts.

On Friday, the House Ways and Means Committee is scheduled to hold a formal hearing on the IRS conservative targeting scandal. IRS Commissioner Steve Miller and Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration J. Russell George are slated to testify.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/05/14/Progressive-Group-Says-IRS-Gave-Them-Confidential-Docs-On-Conservative-Groups

IRS Also Leaked Info About Conservative Groups

Targeting scandal widens

More trouble for the IRS: The same office that singled out conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status also leaked confidential information about conservative groups last year, ProPublica reports. How does ProPublica know? Well, because the nine pending applications were leaked to ProPublica in the first place. The investigative site had asked to see the applications for 67 nonprofits and the IRS’ Cincinnati office sent over 31, nine of which had not been approved yet, meaning they were supposed to be confidential.

ProPublica was interested in the applications because it was revealing how social-welfare nonprofits, which don’t have to identify their donors and can spend money on elections as long as social welfare is their primary goal, misled the IRS when applying for tax-exempt status. Among the applications released to ProPublica: Karl Rove’s Crossroads group, which had promised to spend only “limited” money on 2012 elections and ended up spending more than $70 million. Also included were five other groups that all claimed they would not spend any money to sway the elections and spent more than $5 million. ProPublica reported on all six (here and here). Interestingly, the New York Times reported today that Crossroads and other larger groups were not subjected to the same intense scrutiny the IRS applied to small Tea Party groups; click for more on that.

http://www.newser.com/story/167882/irs-also-leaked-info-about-conservative-groups.html

ProPublica

ProPublica is a non-profit corporation based in New York City. It describes itself as an independent non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest.^[2] In 2010 it became the first online news source to win a Pulitzer Prize, for a piece^[3] written by one of its journalists^[4][5] and published in The New York Times Magazine^[6] as well as on ProPublica.org.^[7] ProPublica’s investigations are conducted by its staff of full-time investigative reporters and the resulting stories are given away to news ‘partners’ for publication or broadcast. In some cases, reporters from both ProPublica and the news partners work together on a story. ProPublica has partnered with more than 90 different news organizations, including 60 Minutes, ABC World News, Business Week, CNN, Frontline, Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Newsweek, USA Today, The Washington Post, Huffington Post, MSN Money, MSNBC.com, Politico, Reader’s Digest, Salon.com, Slate, This American Life, and NPR, among many others.

History

ProPublica is the brainchild of Herbert and Marion Sandler, the former chief executives of the Golden West Financial Corporation, who have committed $10 million a year to the project.^[8] The Sandlers hired Paul Steiger, former managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, to create and run the organization as editor in chief. At the time ProPublica was set up, Steiger responded to concerns about the role of the Sandlers’ political views, saying on The Newshour with Jim Lehrer:

Coming into this, when I talked to Herb and Marion Sandler, one of my concerns was precisely this question of independence and nonpartisanship… My history has been doing ‘down the middle’ reporting. And so when I talked to Herb and Marion I said ‘are you comfortable with that?’ They said ‘absolutely’. I said ‘well suppose we did an expose of some of the left leaning organizations that you have supported or that are friendly to what you’ve supported in the past’. They said ‘no problem’. And when we set up our organizational structure, the board of directors, on which I sit and which Herb is the chairman, does not know in advance what we’re going to report on.^[9]

ProPublica had an initial news staff of 28 reporters and editors, including Pulitzer Prize winners, Charles Ornstein, Tracy Weber, Jeff Gerth, and Marcus Stern, but has since grown to 34 full-time working journalists. Steiger claimed that he received as many as 850 applications upon ProPublica’s start. The organization also appointed a 12-member journalism advisory board consisting of professional journalists.

The newsgroup shares its work under the Creative Commons no-derivative, non-commercial license.

Funding

While the Sandler Foundation provided ProPublica with significant financial support, it has also received funding from the Knight Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Pew Charitable Trusts, Ford Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation and others. ProPublica and the Knight Foundation have various connections. For example, Paul Steiger, President of ProPublica, is a trustee of the Knight Foundation.^[10] In like manner, Alberto Ibarguen, the President and CEO of the Knight Foundation is on the board of ProPublica.^[11] In 2010, it received a two-year contribution of $125,000 each year from George Soros‘ Open Society Foundations.

ProPublica has attracted attention for the salaries it pays its top executives.^[12][13] The head of ProPublica, Paul Steiger, was paid $571,687 in 2008, according to the company’s tax filings.^[14] The managing editor, Stephen Engelberg, was paid $343,463.^[15][16] The large salaries have been widely criticized by other journalists and even some in the non-profit world as excessive.^[17][17][18] Steiger is the former managing editor at the Wall Street Journal. Engelberg is a former New York Times editor who co-wrote the non-fiction book Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War, with Times reporter Judith Miller. He was recently elected to the Pulitzer Prize Board.

Awards

In 2010, ProPublica jointly won the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting (it was also awarded to another new organization for a different story), for “a story that chronicles the urgent life-and-death decisions made by one hospital’s exhausted doctors when they were cut off by the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina.”^[19] It was written by ProPublica’s Sheri Fink and published in the New York Times Magazine^[6] as well as on ProPublica.org.^[7] This was the first Pulitzer awarded to an online news source.^[4][5] That investigation also won a National Magazine Award for reporting.

In 2011, ProPublica won its second Pulitzer Prize.^[20] Reporters Jesse Eisinger and Jake Bernstein won the Pulitzer for National Reporting for their series, The Wall Street Money Machine. This was the first time a Pulitzer was awarded to a group of stories not published in print.

ProPublica’s reporters have also received the Selden Ring, George Polk, National Magazine, Society of Professional Journalists, James Aronson, ABA Silver Gavel, Overseas Press Club, Online Journalism, Investigative Editors and Reporters, Society of News Design, Society of American Business Editors and Writers, and Dart Center awards (among others) for their work.

Reception

Praise

ProPublica is also renowned for conducting a large-scale, circumscribed investigation on Psychiatric Solutions, a company based in Tennessee that buys failing hospitals, cuts staff, and accumulates profit.^[21] The report covered patient deaths at numerous Psychiatric Solutions facilities, the failing physical plant at many of their facilities, and covered the State of Florida‘s first closure of Manatee Palms Youth Services, which has since been shut down^[22] by Florida officials once again.^[23] Their report was published in conjunction with The Los Angeles Times.

Criticism

Dave Kopel, a policy analyst for the libertarian Cato Institute and a former columnist for the now-defunct Rocky Mountain News, criticized a ProPublica report on hydraulic fracturing as a “one-sided series of facts arrayed to support a point of view”. He argued that a common theme in ProPublica’s work is that “the government is not doing a good enough job in controlling things, particularly things involving big business”.^[24] ProPublica later responded to his article, countering those claims and saying quote, “using carefully culled quotations and selected statistics, Kopel asserts ‘indisputably false facts’ in ProPublica’s reporting.” ^[25]

After fallout from the IRS publicly admitting to targeting conservative tax exempt groups for added scrutiny, ProPublica broke the news that it had requested and received confidential pending applications for groups requesting tax exempt status.

Board members

• Herbert Sandler
• Paul Steiger
• Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
• Mary Graham
• Alberto Ibargüen

Investigations

References

This article uses bare URLs for citations. Please consider adding full citations so that the article remains verifiable. Several templates and the Reflinks tool are available to assist in formatting. (Reflinks documentation) (December 2011)

The Company [2007] 1/3

THE COMPANY [2007] 2/3

THE COMPANY [2007] 3/3

Background Articles and Videos

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: 1 – Return To The Circus

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: 2 – Tarr Tells His Story

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: 3 – Smiley Tracks The Mole

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: 5 – Tinker Tailor

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: 6 – Smiley Sets A Trap

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: 7 – Flushing Out The Mole

Cambridge Spies | Sub. ITA Episodio 1 di 4

Cambridge Spies | Sub. ITA Episodio 2 di 4

Cambridge Spies | Sub. ITA Episodio 3 di 4

Cambridge Spies | Sub. ITA Episodio 4 di 4

Covert Action

“The term “covert action” means an activity or activities of the United States Government to influence political, economic, or military conditions abroad, where it is intended that the role of the United States Government will not be apparent or acknowledged publicly, but does not include . . . (2) traditional . . . military activities or routine support to such activities.^“

What roles Turkey play in Syria’s insurgency?

WW3 in ACTION: US LAUNCH covert OPERATION to ARM militants in Syria with HEAVY WEAPONS!

Retired Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin suspects US Was Running Guns To Syrian Rebels Via Benghazi

Retired Army Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin—who is the former commander of the U.S. Special Forces Command, the former deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence and who, in the 1990s, worked with the CIA—told CNSNews.com in a video interview last week that he believes it is a reasonable supposition that the U.S. was supporting or planning to support the Syrian rebels via Benghazi, Libya.

“The CIA Is Nothing More Than A Front For Global Gansters!” CIA’s Role In The Syrian Conflict

BREAKING! Pres Obama Authorizes COVERT Support To Syrian Rebels “Could Have Been Going On For Months

English News Today – CIA: from intelligence agency to killing machine

English News Today – ‘CIA-armed Syria militants will turn against US’

The United States government assists militants across the world, only to one day fight against them, a prominent political activist tells Press TV. In the background to this, Syria has been experiencing unrest since mid-March 2011, with the Syrian government and experts saying an anti-Syria plot was hatched by the US, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

Press TV has conducted an interview with Sara Flounders, co-director of the International Action Center, from New York, to further discuss the issue. Flounders is joined by Scott Rickard, a former US intelligence linguist from Florida, and George Lambraski, a former US diplomat, from London.

Ron Paul on Covert U.S. Support of Terrorist Insurrection in Syria

June 27, 2012 – Ron Paul warns of the ongoing U.S. government’s covert support of the terrorist insurrection against the Syrian government and offers a short history of the quagmires and blowback that U.S. interventions abroad have brought about.

Pul – Interview with Charlie Wilson, 2009

Charlie Wilson’s War – Trailer(HD) Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts

Charlie Wilson’s War (8/9) Movie CLIP – Anti-Helicopter Light Missile (2007) HD

Glenn Beck – Benghazi: Truth coming out

Soros, Obama & ‘Responsibility to Protect’

END WAR: Scheuer On CIA In Libya To Arm Islamist And May Be US Ground Invasion In Another Arab State

The truth about SYRIA by Westerns

Syrian Rebels Capture City Near Jordanian Border – Libya Vs Syria Where’s The Obama Admin?

Gaffney on Benghazi » Not Just About Cover Up « About Administration Embracing Muslim Brotherhood

ADM Lyons, “Muslim Brotherhood has penetrated every government agency”

ADM “Ace” Lyons, Former Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, the largest single military command in the world, states, “The Muslim Brotherhood has penetrated every level of the US government.”

End the Coverup: Rep. Frank Wolf Urges New Benghazi Investigation

Rep. Frank Wolf called a press conference outside the capitol to discuss his sponsorship of H. Res. 36, which would create a special congressional committee to investigate the failures that contributed to the deadly jihadist attack in Benghazi, Libya last year. He was joined by Family Research Council’s Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin, former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and former member of Delta Force. Boykin represented Special Operations Speaks, a group of ex-special forces operators who came together to write a letter to Members of Congress, urging them to commit to getting to the bottom of what happened in Benghazi, and to end the administration’s cover-up. Finally, the Center for Security Policy’s Frank Gaffney spoke about the implications of the attack in Libya on America’s national security and foreign policy in the Middle East/North Africa region.

Write a letter to your congressman at Http://www.endthecoverup.com

Gen. Jerry Boykin: “Get accountability and get the truth out” on Benghazi

Rand Paul: I Believe Part of Cause for Benghazi Attack Was Gun-Running Operation Going

Syrian rebel group Al-Nusra allies itself to al-Qaeda

Nusra Front and al-Qaeda in Iraq are joining forces to bring back the Caliphate.

A Caliphate Is Coming – GBTV

George Galloway In Syria Rebels are funded & operated by Americans & NATO Forces

Obama Hiding Arms Shipments To Syrian Jihadists

Lebanon seizes 150 tons of Libyan arms en route to Syrian rebels

Treason: Benghazi Revelations Could Sink Obama

Benghazi-Gate: Connection between CIA and al-Qaeda in Libya and Syria, with Turkey’s Help

Benghazi-Gate: Connection between CIA and al-Qaeda in Libya and Syria, with Turkey’s Help

Syrian Rebel Group Joins Branch Of Al Qaeda

West Intervenes to Stop Islamist Rebels in Mali but Supports Them to Destroy Syria

Presidential Finding

A presidential finding is an executive directive issued by the head of the executive branch of a government, similar to the more well-known executive order. The term is mostly used by the United States Government, and in other countries may be identified by different terms. Such findings and other executive decrees are usually protocols which have evolved through the course of government and not typically established by law.

Use and history in the United States

“US President Barack Obama has signed a secret order allowing the CIA and other American agencies to support rebels seeking to overthrow the Assad regime, a US government source told Reuters. Obama reportedly gave the order, known as an intelligence “finding”, earlier this year. The presidential finding also provides for US collaboration with a secret command center operated by Turkey and its allies. The full extent of the assistance the “finding” allows the CIA to give the Syrian rebels is unclear. It is also unknown precisely when Obama signed the order.” The report of Obama’s authorization for covert rebel support comes amidst continued fighting between Syrian government troops and rebels over control of Aleppo, the country’s economic capital. Thousands of people have fled the city, while the government and rebels continue to release conflicting reports on the extent of their control over the city. Asia Times Online correspondent Pepe Escobar told RT that the leak’s timing was intended to distort the true nature of Washington’s covert operations on the ground in Syria.

“This intelligence finding signed by Obama – that’s the code for a secret order – this was signed six months ago. So the fact that Reuters has only been allowed now to report about it proves that there have been high deliberations in Washington: ‘should we let people know about what they already know?’”

“In fact, the Washington Post two weeks ago had already reported about it, and when the CIA wants to leak something in the US, they usually go to the Washington Post. The CIA and Mossad, on the ground [in Syria], side by side working with the Qataris, the Turks, the Saudis and a swarm of jihadis coming from everywhere, but especially from across the border in Iraq,” he argues.

Escobar says the leak was intended to make it look as though Washington was leading the Syrian campaign from behind the scenes, when in fact the US is “leading from the front lines alongside al-Qaeda-style Jihadists, Qatari intelligence, and Turkish logistics.” ^[1]

The first specific use of presidential findings was precipitated by the Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act of 1954, in which the findings indicated that certain conditions of that act had be satisfied and, therefore, sales of agricultural commodities could proceed. In their use under this act, such findings were published in the Federal Register and the CFR Title 3 compilations. In contrast, presidential findings in their modern use are not published in these or other governmental publications.

Current use of the presidential finding stems from the so-called Hughes-Ryan amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act of 1974, which prohibited the expenditure of appropriated funds by or on behalf of the Central Intelligence Agency for intelligence activities “unless and until the President finds that each such operation is important to the national security of the United States and reports, in a timely fashion, a description and scope of such operation to the appropriate committees of Congress” (section 662). This was intended to ensure that clear responsibility for such action was attributable to the President and that Congress was always made aware of such activities. Due to the sensitivity of their content, presidential findings are almost always classified.

The most recent change to exercise of findings occurred in the Intelligence Authorization Act of 1991, which introduced increased flexibility in the reporting requirement: findings are to be “reported to the intelligence committees as soon as possible” after being approved “and before the initiation of the covert action authorized by the finding.” As such, presidential findings are one of the primary means through which the intelligence committees exercise their oversight of the government’s intelligence operations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_finding

Covert Action: Title 10, Title 50, and the Chain of Command

By Joseph B. Berger III

Background Articles and Videos

Covert Action – Operation Field Goal

A CIA special operations officer pursues a tip from an intercepted al-Qaeda transmission and ventures alone into enemy territory – where he’ll need all his training to survive.

CIA Covert Operations and U.S. Interventions Since World War II Full documentary

Col. L Fletcher Prouty: Secret Team – The Formation & Purpose of The NSC – PT 1 of 4

Col. L Fletcher Prouty: The Secret Team – The CIA’s Origins Of Covert Operations – PT 2 of 4

Col. L Fletcher Prouty: The Secret Team – Covert Operations & Their Consequences – PT 3 of 4

Col. L Fletcher Prouty: Secret Team – Conclusion – PT 4 of 4

Muslim Brotherhood Subversion: 12 Key Players in Obama/Bush Administrations

C.I.A. Agents in Libya Aid Airstrikes and Meet Rebels

By MARK MAZZETTI and ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON — The Central Intelligence Agency has inserted clandestine operatives into Libya to gather intelligence for military airstrikes and to contact and vet the beleaguered rebels battling Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces, according to American officials.

While President Obama has insisted that no American military ground troops participate in the Libyan campaign, small groups of C.I.A. operatives have been working in Libya for several weeks as part of a shadow force of Westerners that the Obama administration hopes can help bleed Colonel Qaddafi’s military, the officials said.

In addition to the C.I.A. presence, composed of an unknown number of Americans who had worked at the spy agency’s station in Tripoli and others who arrived more recently, current and former British officials said that dozens of British special forces and MI6 intelligence officers are working inside Libya. The British operatives have been directing airstrikes from British jets and gathering intelligence about the whereabouts of Libyan government tank columns, artillery pieces and missile installations, the officials said.

American officials hope that similar information gathered by American intelligence officers — including the location of Colonel Qaddafi’s munitions depots and the clusters of government troops inside towns — might help weaken Libya’s military enough to encourage defections within its ranks.

In addition, the American spies are meeting with rebels to try to fill in gaps in understanding who their leaders are and the allegiances of the groups opposed to Colonel Qaddafi, said United States government officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the classified nature of the activities.  American officials cautioned, though, that the Western operatives were not directing the actions of rebel forces.

A C.I.A. spokesman declined to comment.

The United States and its allies have been scrambling to gather detailed information on the location and abilities of Libyan infantry and armored forces that normally takes months of painstaking analysis.

“We didn’t have great data,” Gen. Carter F. Ham, who handed over control of the Libya mission to NATO on Wednesday, said in an e-mail last week.   “Libya hasn’t been a country we focused on a lot over past few years.”

Several weeks ago, President Obama signed a secret finding authorizing the C.I.A. to provide arms and other support to Libyan rebels, American officials said Wednesday. But weapons have not yet been shipped into Libya, as Obama administration officials debate the effects of giving them to the rebel groups. The presidential finding was first reported by Reuters.

In a statement released Wednesday evening, Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, declined to comment “on intelligence matters,” but he said that no decision had yet been made to provide arms to the rebels.

Representative Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican who leads the House Intelligence Committee, said Wednesday that he opposed arming the rebels. “We need to understand more about the opposition before I would support passing out guns and advanced weapons to them,” Mr. Rogers said in a statement.

Because the publicly stated goal of the Libyan campaign is not explicitly to overthrow Colonel Qaddafi’s government, the clandestine war now going on is significantly different from the Afghan campaign to drive the Taliban from power in 2001. Back then, American C.I.A. and Special Forces troops worked alongside Afghan militias, armed them and called in airstrikes that paved the rebel advances on strategically important cities like Kabul and Kandahar.

In recent weeks, the American military has been monitoring Libyan troops with U-2 spy planes and a high-altitude Global Hawk drone, as well as a special aircraft, JSTARS, that tracks the movements of large groups of troops.  Military officials said that the Air Force also has Predator drones, similar to those now operating in Afghanistan, in reserve.

Air Force RC-135 Rivet Joint eavesdropping planes intercept communications from Libyan commanders and troops and relay that information to the Global Hawk, which zooms in on the location of armored forces and determines rough coordinates. The Global Hawk sends the coordinates to analysts at a ground station, who pass the information to command centers for targeting. The command center beams the coordinates to an E-3 Sentry Awacs command-and-control plane, which in turn directs warplanes to their targets.

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, who recently retired as the Air Force’s top intelligence official, said that Libya’s flat desert terrain and clear weather have allowed warplanes with advanced sensors to hunt Libyan armored columns with relative ease, day or night, without the need for extensive direction from American troops on the ground.

But if government troops advance into or near cities in along the country’s eastern coast, which so far have been off-limits to coalition aircraft for fear of causing civilian casualties, General Deptula said that ground operatives would be particularly helpful in providing target coordinates or pointing them out to pilots with hand-held laser designators.

The C.I.A. and British intelligence services were intensely focused on Libya eight years ago, before and during the successful effort to get Colonel Qaddafi to give up his nuclear weapons program. He agreed to do so in the fall of 2003, and allowed C.I.A. and other American nuclear experts into the country to assess Libya’s equipment and bomb designs and to arrange for their transfer out of the country.

Once the weapons program was eliminated, a former American official said, intelligence agencies shifted their focus away from Libya. But as Colonel Qaddafi began his recent crackdown on the rebel groups, the American spy agencies have worked to rekindle ties to Libyan informants and to learn more about the country’s military leaders.

A former British government official who is briefed on current operations confirmed media reports that dozens of British Special Forces soldiers, from the elite Special Air Service and Special Boat Service units, are on the ground across Libya. The British soldiers have been particularly focused on finding the locations of Colonel Qaddafi’s Russian-made surface-to-air missiles.

A spokesman for Britain’s Ministry of Defense declined to comment, citing a policy not to discuss the operations of British Special Forces.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/31/world/africa/31intel.html?_r=3&hp&

Military, CIA shun 9/11 panel on covert operations

Special-ops lead urged in report

By Bill Gertz The Washington Times

The U.S. military and the CIA failed to agree on implementing a key recommendation of the commission that investigated the 9/11 terrorist attacks: Give special-operations commandos the lead for all covert military action.

The 9/11 Commission ordered the shift in response to concerns that CIA covert action — a mainstay of the agency’s World War II predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services — had “atrophied.” The agency also had a “risk averse” approach to spying and semisecret military activities.

Former Navy Secretary John F. Lehman, a member of the panel, said a report card made public last week by the Bipartisan Policy Center didn’t address the failure to implement the covert action change because of the secrecy surrounding the issue.

“The situation has evolved far beyond where it was at the time of our report,” Mr. Lehman said, adding that the raid to kill Osama bin Laden “shows that they are now doing something right.”

Retired Army Lt. Gen. William “Gerry” Boykin, a former Delta Force commando and Pentagon intelligence policymaker during the George W. Bush administration, said that after the commission issued its recommendation in 2004, disagreements arose over bureaucratic turf, and the CIA and the U.S. Special Operations Command (SoCom) could not agree on how to implement it.

The military has expanded special operations forces in recent years. But critics complain that the Pentagon official in charge of the policies for their use is Michael G. Vickers, a former CIA official who comes from the agency’s risk-averse, anti-covert-action culture.

Military covert action involves training and equipping foreign military or paramilitary forces in semisecret activities where the U.S. role is hidden. Past programs included arming Cuban rebels for the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion, deploying direct-action hit teams in Vietnam, and the arming and training of anti-communist rebels in Latin America and anti-Soviet rebels in Afghanistan.

Since 2004, the CIA’s most successful covert military operation was the hunt for bin Laden and the raid to kill him in Pakistan on May 2 with Navy SEALs.

The CIA’s other successful covert military action is the war against al Qaeda and other terrorist groups using drone missile strikes in the Middle East and South Asia.

One setback was the suicide bombing by a double agent in December 2009 at a CIA covert base in Khost, Afghanistan, that killed seven agency officers.

The military’s most secret units and those involved in covert warfare are the Army’s Delta Force and the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, formerly SEAL Team 6.

CIA spokeswoman Marie Harf said the agency and the Pentagon have worked closely in the fight against al Qaeda, notably in the Abbottabad, Pakistan, operation against bin Laden.

“Our capabilities are complementary, not duplicative, and the success of those capabilities should speak for itself,” she said.

Gen. Boykin said a task force was set up to study the 9/11 recommendation, but it failed to define paramilitary covert action. “This was a fundamental question that no one could answer,” Gen. Boykin said.

If the commission meant training, SoCom already had the mission of working with surrogates. But “paramilitary” operations — activities that are militarylike but carried out by groups other than the military — automatically would become military if the function is passed to the Pentagon.

Gen. Boykin said that if the commission wanted to give responsibility for covert action to the Pentagon, the CIA was opposed, arguing that the change would hinder intelligence collection. The agency said its facilities and equipment were “dual-use” — for spying and paramilitary — and could not be transferred.

Gen. Boykin said the command was against duplicating the CIA’s training facilities, methods and equipment, because of high costs needed to “age” equipment and weapons for operations.

“Working from the assumption that the commission was not really sure what they were recommending, the study group determined that the capabilities already in SoCom were competent to train indigenous forces including using clandestine methodology,” he said.

“The agreement was that the CIA would support [special operations] as needed with facilities and other resources.”

Bureaucratic turf also played a role.

“CIA did not want to lose anything since that would result in a reduction of resources as well as a loss of authority,” Gen. Boykin said.

However, special operations forces also “did not want the covert action mission because they saw it as something that would absorb huge amounts of time and resources and would be a distraction,” he said.

Former CIA officer Robert Baer, who was investigated by the Clinton administration during a covert action in northern Iraq, said he favors giving the mission to the military. “No matter what the bosses say, the CIA hates covert and paramilitary operations,” he said.

“The place is managed by liberal-arts majors who do a lot better operating on intuition and big-horizon stuff — like whether we’re winning or losing in Afghanistan,” Mr. Baer said. “But never ask it to run a bunch of Hmong tribesmen or disaffected Pashtuns and ever hope to win a war with them.”

Mr. Baer said the Pentagon is better tactically at making things work and has a larger pool of recruits with foreign-language skills.

“The problem is that presidents always reach for the CIA when they think they need a ‘silver bullet,’ like the Bay of Pigs,” he said. “The CIA inevitably fails, and then it gets blamed for the mess.”

Every covert action requires a presidential directive stating that the proposed action is in the country’s national interest. The procedure is often cumbersome and prone to public disclosure. Supporters of the change say military-led covert action would be more flexible and easier to approve.

Hiring former special operations forces at the CIA will not help the agency’s covert military capabilities, Mr. Baer said. “Outside military discipline, they just don’t perform up to their capabilities,” he said.

Mr. Baer said the covert program to supply Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to Afghan rebels in the 1980s was less a covert action success than a “logistics” plan to ship arms to the fighters in the field. “It was not a proper paramilitary campaign,” he said.

A Harvard University study several years ago quoted anti-covert-action officials at the CIA as opposing the Stinger operation because of fears it would trigger a war with the Soviet Union.

The 9/11 Commission report describes the CIA in 2001 as “institutionally averse to risk, with its capacity for covert action atrophied.”

It also says the CIA did not invest in developing “robust” paramilitary operations with U.S. personnel but instead relied on proxies trained and organized by CIA officers without military experience. “The results were unsatisfactory,” it says.

The 9/11 Commission said the CIA could continue clandestine and nonmilitary covert action, including propaganda and nonmilitary disruption.

“We believe, however, that one important area of responsibility should change,” the commission’s report says. “Lead responsibility for directing and executing paramilitary operations, whether clandestine or covert, should shift to the Defense Department.”

There, covert military action programs should be consolidated and placed under Special Operations Command, it says.

“Whether the price is measured in either money or people, the United States cannot afford to build two separate capabilities for carrying out secret military operations, secretly operating standoff missiles, and secretly training foreign military or paramilitary forces,” the report says.